We
represented to M. Paget that it would be possible to make our way
through the wheat; but he declared himself perfectly happy where he was,
and declined to take any steps in the matter; whereupon I assumed the
command of the expedition, and led the horse through the corn, thus
turning the flank of the _sapin_ and its attendants. Our driver
submitted to this act of violence much as a member of the Society of
Friends allows a chamberlain to remove his hat from behind when he is
favoured with an audience of the sovereign; and when we regained the
high road, he meekly took up the reins and drove us at a good pace to
Arc.
The village lies in a curiously open plain, with a girdle of hills, in
one of which the glacieres were supposed to lie. The first _auberge_
refused us admittance, on the ground that the dinner was all
pre-engaged, and the result was that we found a pleasanter place higher
up the village, near a vast new _maison de ville_ with every window
shattered by recent hail. The people groaned over the unnecessary
expense of this huge building, which might well, from its size, have
been a home for the whole village; and they told us that the communal
forests had been terribly over-cut to provide the money for it.
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