By three o’clock Chambery was well in sight, lying far below us as we wound down from mountain heights, and looking, from our point of view, in position something like an inferior Aosta.  It basked in a great sun-swept plain, and away to the left a lateral valley, dimly blue, opened towards Modane and the Mont Cenis.  Descending, we found the resemblance carried on by a few ancient chateaux and fortified farmhouses, and as we had now come upon a part of the road which Joseph knew, he pointed out to me, in the far distance, the little villa, Les Charmettes, where Rousseau and Madame de Warens kept house together.  Again and again I thought we were on the point of arriving in the town, and had visions of exchanging adventures with the Boy at the Hotel de France; but always the place seemed to recede before our eyes, elusive as a mirage, alighting again five or six miles away; and this it did, not once, but several times, with singular skill and accuracy.

At last, however, after a tedious tramp along a monotonously level road, upon which we had plunged suddenly, we came into an old town, all grey, with the soft grey of storks’ wings.  The place had a mild dignity of its own—­as befitted the ancient capital of Savoie—­and might have lived, if necessary, on the romantic reputation of its ancient chateau, standing up high and majestic above a populous modern street.  There was an air of almost courtly refinement that reminded me of the wide, sedate avenues of Versailles; and no doubt this effect was largely due to the fine statues and decorative grouping of the arcaded streets.  One monument was so imposing and so unique, that I forgot for a moment my anxiety to find the Boy and hear his news.  The huge pile held me captive, staring up at a miniature Nelson column, supported on the backs of four colossal elephants sculptured in grey granite of true elephant-colour.  These benevolent mammoths, not content with the duty of bearing a tower of stone with a more than life-sized general balancing on top of it, generously spent their spare time in pouring volumes of water from wrinkled trunks into a huge basin.  Joseph knew that the balancing general, De Boigne, had used a vast fortune made in the service of an Indian prince, to shower benefits on his native town, as his elephants showered water, and that it was in gratitude to him that Chambery had raised the monument; but I was disappointed to learn that the elephants had no prototypes in real life.  It would have satisfied my imagination to hear that the soldier of fortune had returned from the Orient to his birthplace, with the four original elephants following him like dogs, having refused to be left behind.  But nothing is quite perfect in history, and one usually feels that one could have arranged the incidents more dramatically one’s self; indeed, some historians seem to have found the temptation irresistible.

Joseph promised other choice bits of interest in and near mountain-ringed Chambery; but I had small appetite for sightseeing without the Boy, and after my brief reverence to the elephants, I hurried the muleteer and mule to the hotel.