They invoked more saints than I had ever heard of, and, in default, did not scruple to appeal with shocking volubility to darker aid.

It was all of no use,--and well it might be; for when we had given it up in despair, after long patience and a considerable period of the contrary, and had descended for half an hour in the direction of a third glaciere, I chanced to look back, and saw that the Col in the neighbourhood of which we had been searching lay between two points of the Montagne de l'Eau; while the true Col between that mountain and the Mont Parmelan lay considerably to the west.

When it appears that a guide has probably made a mistake, the only plan is to assume quietly that it is so, as if it were a matter of no consequence, and then he may sometimes be decoyed into allowing the fact: I therefore pointed out to the maire the true Col, and told him that was the one by which he had passed southwards, when he found the glaciere; to which, with unnecessary strength of language, he at once assented.

But all my efforts to take him back were unavailing.

Nothing in the world should carry him up the mountain again, now that he had happily got so far down.