In the west the spectacle changes. Beyond the vast plain of the Drac appears a long, white cliff, little carved out—a rigid line of limestone falling sheer to the valley where lies Grenoble. This is the compact mass of Vercors, almost impassable. Yet, suddenly, the cliff makes way; the vale of Furon leaps through the chasm in the mountain wall. An ancient road, winding ribbonwise to westward, puts into communication the valley of the Isère with the wooded brows, the vast grassy hollows, of the Vercors countryside. Northward, the limestone reappears in the Chartreuse. But these mountains, unlike Vercors, are twisted and broken, resembling a half demolished castle with great apertures and rents in its once impregnable sides. Their countless little vales and fertile levels glow with stream-fed pasturage and with billowy forests. And everywhere, among the foothills of the encircling ranges, roam herds of goats and cattle, without suspicion of the fate which awaits them with the coming of the great Fair of the autumn at Grenoble. On this July morning the old town gleams like a strange jewel, set in the spacious, lush meadow lands, stretching league on league, to the mountains. Vast gardens of hemp wave to its very walls. Vineyards veil the nearer hills, and the mulberry dots the plains of the southeast. The Isère, restless, ever seeking new outlet, interlaces with a network of sparkling tributaries the great expanse of Grésivaudan. All the richness of the region, all the amazing variety and beauty with which nature has surrounded this ancient city, seems concentrated, in the early hush and radiance, in an act of worship. Now the sun has penetrated the shadows below the city walls, and is stealing through the sinuous, crowded streets, peculiar to towns which long have been cramped within the precincts of strong fortifications. The tiled eaves lean so close one upon another, as in some places actually to shut out the sky. If we might fly up like a bird and look down over the Grenoble of 1650, we would be gazing upon a confusion of multi-colored roofs, set at every conceivable angle of picturesqueness, and upon a bewildering congregation of chimneys and chimney-pots. Also, we would note that the town lay on both banks of the Isère, connected by a tower bridge, and protected on the north by the fortress of the Bastille.