learning the place of my nativity, and his
polite exclamation, "_De l'Amerique! O! j'avais cru que vous etiez de
Paris_!"

The conversation you hold with your guide has this advantage,--you can
suspend it at will. There are miles of travel, in crossing the
Tete-Noire, when, if your most sympathizing friend walked beside you,
the thought of both hearts would be, "Let all the earth keep silence!"
and in the absence of such unspoken sympathy, the next best thing is the
innocent gravity of an attendant hired for so many francs a day, and not
presuming to speak unless spoken to.

But when these sublimer passages are passed, when the path skirts the
edge of the valley, when the giant mountains have retired a little and
you slacken the tense cord of emotion which for a while has held you
spell-bound, it is a relief to loosen the tongue also, and reassure
yourself with the sound of the human voice. Thus Auguste and I had
frequent dialogues. He told me something of his past life, which I do
not remember very well. I think its chief incident was his having been
drafted for the army, and having served his term. Of his future,
however, he spoke with an earnestness which has left its impression on
my mind. He said that the next winter he meant to go to Paris and seek a
service; and his perseverance in wringing employment out of us inclines
me to think that he fulfilled his intention. Savoy, to which province he
belonged, had just been annexed to France. A party of guides from
Chamouni had the day before succeeded, with difficulty, in planting the
imperial flag on the summit of Mont Blanc. Was it this which had
awakened the ambition of the young Savoyard to share the spoils of the
empire of which he had so suddenly become a member? Perhaps (I never
thought of it before, but perhaps) he was already seeking means for his
journey to the capital. Perhaps the price of his hard-won service was to
be the nucleus of his savings. Have I, then, aided your purpose,
Auguste? helped to transform you from a simple mountain-lad to a mere
link in a chain of street-sweepers, an artful official of a third-rate
billiard-saloon, or a roystering cab-driver with his perpetual entreaty
for an extra fee in the form of "_Quelque chose a boire_"? My mind
shrinks from the possibility, for I cannot bear to think of him as other
than he then seemed,--a child of Nature and of the truth.

In the course of our day's journey we drew near a little village. I had
b