committed, or wished to commit some great crime, which they feared to give away in drinking, that in the end we let ourselves go, passing the time in Pantagruelic fashion. The next morning having taken some "hair from the beast" and a guide which our host gave to us to conduct us to the _Froidiere_--we continued our wanderings, and arrived at a little village called Chaud, joining a large wood, where our guide told us, that although he had been more than six times to the _Froidiere_, yet the road was so tortuous and so cut up by small paths, that if we did not take a man from this village, to be more sure, we might spend more than half a day in the wood, before finding what we were seeking. Getting off our horses now, we added to our company a native of the place, who having led us by crooked roads, about a quarter of a league, through the forest, made us enter into a close thicket and by a little path led us to a pleasant meadow; where, looking down, we saw a hole, of difficult descent, at the bottom of which was the opening of a grotto, pretty big, and so awful and terrifying to see, that one would have said, it was the mouth of Hell. And in truth, I remembered then, the hole of St. Patrick, which is said to be in Hibernia. We were not brave enough knights, to try the adventure, my companion and I, if our guides had not taken the lead. After whom we descended as magnanimously as the Trojan Duke followed the Sybil to the Plutonic realms, the sword half drawn from the scabbard, and well determined to make test of the Platonic doctrine, which teaches that demons can be dissected, in case any shade or spook should have come to meet us. About the middle of the way, we began to feel in descending a very agreeable freshness; for it was the second day of July and the sun shone very warmly, which made us sweat drop by drop. But we had good opportunity to refresh ourselves and put ourselves to cool, having reached the grotto which we found of the length and breadth of a large hall, all paved with ice in the bottom, and where a crystalline water, colder than that of the mountains of Arcadia Nonacris, streamed from many small brooklets, which formed very clear fountains, with the water of which I washed myself and drank so eagerly, that I had wished the thirst of Tantalus, or else that I had been bitten by a Dipsas, in order to be always thirsty, amid such a pleasant beverage. A great lord, who in some pleasure resort, should have such a refrigerator in summer, could boast according to my judgment, to be better provided with drink, than the kings of Persia were with their river Coaspis, which engulphs itself into the Tigris, the water whereof was so sweet, that the use of it was allowed only to the great King, for the retinue and cronies of his household. Do not think, that among these delights, I was at all free from fear, for never did I raise my eyes above that from terror my whole body shivered and the hair stood up on my head, seeing the whole