He gathered up his reins and shook up his horses again, the carriage soon pulling out of sight. Maurice continued on his way alone. Slowly he drew higher above the valley. Before he entered the various gorges of the Alps he turned again, and gathered in the last grace of the Italian country. It flowered above the sinuous plain of the Tosa and on the wooded slopes; even the abrupt declivities, which some golden thickets decorated, profited by it. In the sunlight it was clear that this country tried to please in spite of its mountain rigours. The peasant women coming down to mass--it was a Sunday--wore coloured kerchiefs, which fell in a point down their backs, with short and many-coloured skirts. The women first saluted the passersby, with a gentle good-day, which gave the young man a tender feeling of accord with them. He had an impression as of going voluntarily into exile. Was not Edith his native land? Edith! She would be waking at this hour, she would know. And he walked more briskly, to tire himself and forget his grief. He had divided the sixty-four kilometres of the crossing into three stages--Isella eighteen, the Pass twenty-two, Brieg twenty-four. He counted on lunching at Isella, reaching the Pass, an altitude of two thousand metres, to dine and sleep at the hospice, and descend to Brieg the next morning, in time to catch the train from Lausanne and Geneva which made connections at the frontier for Savoy. Monday, at six in the evening, he should be in Chambéry. Isella, at the head of a verdant little valley, is the last Italian village before you come to Switzerland. Here you have truly the impression of saying a melancholy farewell to Italy. Built lengthwise along the borders of Napoleon’s route, it is enclosed between two natural high walls of four or five thousand feet, but one has only to look backward and see prairies and groups of trees, like a shaft of light across the mountains. The bells of the stage-coach, which relays at Isella, and the proceedings of the customs officers, who are as proud and smart as soldiers and bear the majestic title of Financial Guards, were formerly the only excitements of the little burg; but in August, 1898, began the work on the new iron route scooped out across the Alps. As if by enchantment the population quadrupled. Workmen’s cities were built, with little villas and gardens for the engineers and overseers. Alberghi and tratorie multiplied themselves, with announcements of the glory of the Simplon, and advertisements of a sparkling asti.