The next morning I visited the still smouldering ruins, and saw the homeless families sitting in a dismal row in front of their charred property. The people said that one of the houses had been well insured, and that its owner had endeavoured to forestall luck. He had arranged the place for a bonfire, set the lower rooms on fire in several places, and had then gone out of the way, leaving his wife and children in the upper rooms, to be roasted or not as the case might be. His plans only partially succeeded, and it was satisfactory to see the scoundrel brought back in the custody of two stalwart gensdarmes. Three days afterwards I was in London. [Illustration: “BUT WHAT IS THIS?”] CHAPTER V. THE VAL TOURNANCHE—DIRECT PASS FROM BREIL TO ZERMATT (BREUILJOCH)—ZERMATT—FIRST ASCENT OF THE GRAND TOURNALIN. “How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of a fleeting year!” W. SHAKESPEARE. I crossed the Channel on the 29th of July 1863, embarrassed by the possession of two ladders, each twelve feet long, which joined together like those used by firemen, and shut up like parallel rulers. My luggage was highly suggestive of housebreaking, for, besides these, there were several coils of rope, and numerous tools of suspicious appearance, and it was reluctantly admitted into France, but it passed through the custom-house with less trouble than I anticipated, after a timely expenditure of a few francs. I am not in love with the douane. It is the purgatory of travellers, where uncongenial spirits mingle together for a time, before they are separated into rich and poor. The douaniers look upon tourists as their natural enemies; see how eagerly they pounce upon the portmanteaux! One of them has discovered something! He has never seen its like before, and he holds it aloft in the face of its owner, with inquisitorial insolence. “But _what is_ this?” The explanation is only half-satisfactory. “But what is _this_?” says he, laying hold of a little box. “Powder.” “But that it is forbidden to carry of powder on the railway.” “Bah!” says another and older hand, “pass the effects of Monsieur;” and our countryman—whose cheeks had begun to redden under the stares of his fellow-travellers—is allowed to depart with his half-worn tooth-brush, while the discomfited douanier gives a mighty shrug at the strange habits of those “whose insular position excludes them from the march of continental ideas.”