I visited the _bibliothèque_, which was haunted by a fragrance intoxicating to booklovers, of dead centuries, leather bindings, and parchment. I saw the piano given by the King when he was Prince of Wales; the fine collection of coins and early Roman remains found in the neighbourhood of the monastery; I dropped a louis into the box of offerings in the chapel, and then was taken by a mild-eyed, frail-looking monk to see some of the rooms allotted to guests at the Hospice. Seeing them, I was inclined to wish that I had pushed on through the darkness last night, and reached this mountain-top to sleep. I liked the wainscoted walls, the white, canopied beds, but most of all, I liked the deep-set windows with their view of the silent lake, asleep in the bosom of the mountains, and dreaming of the sky. On most of the walls were votive offerings in the shape of pictures, sent to the monks by grateful visitors in far-off countries. One was an engraving which had adorned the nursery in my youth, and had been a never-failing source of curiosity to me. It was Gustave Doré's "Christian Martyrs," and I had once been deprived of pudding at the nursery dinner, because I had remarked (with irreverence wholly unintentional) that one of the lions seemed ill, and anxious to "climb up the wall and get away from the nasty martyrs." Thus it is that children are misunderstood by their elders! and now, as I gazed at the same picture on the monastery wall, I felt again all the old, impotent rebellion against injustice and misplaced power. Later, I wandered through the pathetically interesting Alpine garden, carefully kept by the monks; and then, sure that by this time the Brat and his cavalcade must be far on their way, I started, with Joseph and Finois, to stroll down the Pass towards Aosta. I had promised Jack and Molly to tell them in my letters, whether it would be possible for them, with a motor, to go by some of the routes which I chose. Over the St. Bernard from Martigny to the Hospice they could not have ventured, even in the stealthy, fly-by-night manner in which they had "done" the St. Gothard and the Simplon; for on the St. Bernard the road was always narrow, often stony and dangerous. Beyond, on the other side, even carriages cannot yet pass, descending to Aosta, though in another year the new road will be finished. As it is, for many a generation pilgrims from the Hospice to Italy have been obliged to go down as far as the mountain village of St. Rhémy either on foot or mule-back; thus there was no hope for Mercédès there.