At first I thought that the Prince had only been trying to frighten us, and make us wish we were in a big car like his, for the road went curving up as gracefully and easily as a swan makes tracks in the water, and our automobile hummed cheerfully to itself, forging steadily up. It was so nice having nothing to drag that, by comparison with yesterday afternoon, we moved like a ship under full sail; but suddenly the road reared up on its hind feet and stood almost erect, as though it had been frightened by the huge snow-capped mountains that all at once crowded round us. An icy wind rushed down from the tops of the great white towers, as if with the swooping wings of a giant bird, and it took our car's breath away. Instead of humming it began to pant, and I noticed the difference at once. If I'd been Maida, I should probably have been too polite to put questions about the thing's behaviour, for fear Mr. Barrymore might think I hadn't proper confidence in him; but being Beechy, with no convictions to live up to, I promptly asked if anything was the matter. "The car's only trying to tell me that she can't manage to spurt up on third speed any more," said he. "I shall put on the second, and you'll hear what a relief it gives to the motor." It certainly was as if the automobile had gulped down a stimulant, and revived in a second. But as we turned a shoulder of the mountain, coming in sight of a railroad depot, a high embankment, and a monstrous wall of mountain with the sky for a ceiling, I couldn't help giving a little squeak. "Is that a _road_?" I asked, pointing up to a network like a skein of silk twisted in a hundred zigzags across the face of the mountain from bottom to top. "Why, it's like the way up Jack's beanstalk. No sane automobile could do it." "Some could," said Mr. Barrymore, "but I dare say it's lucky for us that ours hasn't got to. It's the old road, only used now to communicate with that desolate fortress you see on the top shelf of the mountain, standing up there on the sky-line like the ark on Ararat. All this country is tremendously fortified by both the French and Italians, in case they should ever come to loggerheads. Above us somewhere is a long tunnel burrowing into the _col_, and the new road runs through that instead of over the summit." "Bump!" went the car, as he finished his explanation, and then we began to wade jerkily through a thick layer of loose stones that had been spread over the road like hard butter over stale bread.