It was during this ascent that the fold of Ermengarde's brain in which the French language was located suddenly became accessible, and she implored them in choicest Parisian to stop, to take her off, to allow her to fall in some soft place, anywhere, with the sole result of bringing a fresh shower of twig-blows and _jays_ from these harmless people, who only understood the Italian patois of the district, and supposed from her agonized voice and gestures that she was anxious to ascend more quickly, whereas her one consuming desire was to get off her ambulant armchair at any price. It was some years since the unfortunate Ermengarde had ridden at all, and then it had been upon an average Christian horse, and only those who have been borne unwillingly by a series of bone-dislocating rears and jerks up endless staircases enclosed in rock-walls, and along knife-edged ledges overhanging abysmal nothingness, upon animals that understand no civilized language, and answer to no bit or bridle, and whose sole form of obedience is to run away from whoever pronounces the word "jay" in their rear, can imagine the complicated anguish of such riding. Nothing but the delight inherent to fallen nature at the spectacle of the misfortunes of others enabled Ermengarde to endure this singular form of torture; but when she witnessed the spluttering indignation of the British matron of majestic girth at being constantly, either crushed between the thin man and the adjacent rock-wall, or edged perilously over the precipice by his donkey, and his agonized attempts to avoid this unseemly proximity, with his wild and ineffectual endeavours to explain his own innocence and the friendly relations existing between their respective beasts, who could by no human means be induced to travel apart, she became uplifted in spirit and capable of enduring anything. Especially when the thin man weakly tried to apologize in French, of which he was hopelessly incapable, thus exasperating the woman of majestic girth to madness at the idea of being taken for a foreigner. It was not until the handsome and stalwart donkey that bore the tortured form of Ermengarde took advantage of some mischance to the driver's apparel to dart up a side staircase, bordered by succulent grasses, with a suddenness that extracted an involuntary shriek from his hapless burden, that her woes came to pause, and, like Balaam's, her donkey found the path between the vineyards barred by the sudden apparition, not, indeed, of an angel with a sword, but of a comfortably real figure, with a walking-stick and two laughing dark eyes. He had dropped from heaven knew whence, and understood Parisian French even on English lips. "If I don't stop I shall certainly die," gasped Ermengarde, suddenly relapsing into German, which presented no difficulty to the owner of the laughing eyes. "Never in my life have I had to climb a broken staircase on a wild ass before. It's like a nightmare."