Our visit to Notre Dame des Commiers was like reading a living page of early Reformation history, and the whole neighborhood made a fitting stage for such a reproduction. Some six or seven miles from Grenoble we passed the restored but still, in parts at least, historic château of Lesdiguières at Vizille. Nearer our mountain-village we stopped to admire an ivy-covered bit of tower-ruin, associated by a grim tradition with the same Dauphiné hero. A prisoner confined here by the apostate constable had, says the legend, a lady true who came every night and clasped her lover's hand stretched out to her between the bars of his dungeon window. Lesdiguières discovered the rendezvous, and the spot is still pointed out where his soldier was stationed one fatal night to chop off the hand that sought its accustomed pledge. The historical associations of our excursion were, indeed, somewhat confused, but a fresh feature was added to its interest by the departure, which we chanced to witness, of Monsieur Thiers from the Château de Vizille, now occupied by Casimir Perier, whom the ex-president had been visiting. The two days' diligence journey from Grenoble to the département des Hautes-Alpes was over one of those broad macadamized highways which make driving a luxury in many parts of Europe. If we were more huddled than in the less-antiquated Swiss diligences, we had the compensation of far more original fellow-travelers than one is apt to find among the tourists that monopolize those vehicles. There were generally two or three priests, half a dozen merry peasants, and a sprinkling of small officers and country-townspeople, who respectively lost no time in establishing a pleasant intimacy with their neighbors. The unflagging chatter, in which all joined vivaciously, and often all at once, was in striking contrast with the silent gloom which would have enshrouded a similar party of English or American travelers. It was impossible to resist the contagion of cheerfulness or to refuse to mingle more or less in the talk.