a fresh coat of paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the stairs.  The natural salle-a-manger was evidently an excellent room, with oleander balconies, but it was at present in the hands of joiners, and a card pointed the way to the ’provisionary salle-a-manger’—­not a bad name for it—­in the neighbourhood of the kitchen.

There was one redeeming feature.  The people of the house were nice-looking and well-dressed.  But experience has taught me to view such a phenomenon in French towns of humbler rank with somewhat mixed feelings.  When the house is superintended with a keen and watchful eye by a young lady of fashionable appearance, who takes a personal interest in a solitary traveller, and suggests an evening’s course on the lake, or a morning’s drive to some good view, and makes herself most winning and agreeable; who takes the words, moreover, out of the mouth of a man meditating an ordinary dinner, and assures him that she knows exactly what he wants, and he shall be well satisfied, with a sisterly air that makes the idea of francs and sous not sordid only, but impossible; I have slowly learned to expect that this fashion and condescension will appear in the bill.  Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case; and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at the Hotel d’Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should certainly try the Hotel de Geneve on any future visit to Annecy.

The first thing to be done was to determine the position of the Mont Parmelan.  I was prepared to find the people of the town denying the existence of such a mountain; but, as it was visible from the door of the hotel, they could not go quite so far as that.  The small crowd at the door repudiated the glacieres with one voice, and pointed out how unlikely it was that Lyons should be supplied with ice from Annecy; nevertheless, I continued to ask my way in spite of protestation, till at length a lame man passed by, who said monsieur was quite right—­he himself knew two glacieres on the Mont Parmelan very well.  He had never seen either of them, but he knew them as well as if he had.  It was useless to go to them now, he added, for the owners extracted all the ice early in the year, and stored it in holes in the lower part of the mountain.  He had no idea by what route they were to be approached from Annecy, or on which side of the Mont Parmelan they lay.