No matter how charming a travelling-party you belong to, the moment they
are all mounted and climbing a mountain, single file, you feel yourself
a unit in creation. Everybody has turned his back upon you, and you have
turned your back upon everybody. You are a solitary traveller. Are you
aghast at your own situation on the steep slope of a mule's back, with a
precipice above your head and your feet dangling over a gulf below?
There is no help for it. Imagine yourself a sack of meal, if you can,
and expect as little sympathy as would be accorded to that article. Are
you moved to a keen sense of the ridiculous, as a curve in the road
discloses the figures of your elongated party, unused to riding, and
rendered the more grotesque by their mountain-equipment? A laugh
unshared is no laugh at all, so you may as well smother it at once. Does
the scenery through which you are passing awaken emotions of sublimity?
It would be sacrilege to shout out your sentiments to the occupant of
the next mule in such tones as a watchman would employ to cry, "Fire!"
No,--if you are essentially a social creature, there is nothing for it
but to bottle up your sensibilities and await the opportunity for an
explosion when you reach your inn.
Something like this result occurred, I remember, on the evening of that
very day, when Mademoiselle, who, under the charge of Michel, led the
van, met me at the hotel at Martigny, at which place she had of course
arrived a little in advance.
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