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.

Our first demand was for food; our next, for a guide to the glacieres.