she reduced him to silence by quoting a case in point. She said, too,
that if a man slipped and fell, there was nothing to prevent him from
going helplessly down a run of ice into a subterranean watercourse,
which would carry him for two or three leagues underground; and on this
head our boy had no counter-statement to make. She asserted that without
ladders it was utterly impossible to make the descent to the
commencement of the glacière; and she vowed there was no ladder now, nor
had been for some time. Here the boy came in, stating that the cave
belonged to a mademoiselle of Neufchâtel, who had a summer cottage at no
great distance, and loved to be supplied with ice during her residence
in the country, for which purpose she kept a sound ladder on the spot,
and had it removed in the winter that it might not be destroyed. There
was a circumstantial air about this statement which for the moment got
the better of the old woman; but she speedily recovered herself, and
repeated positively that there was no ladder of any description, adding,
somewhat inconsequently, that it was such a bad one, no Christian could
use it with safety. The boy retorted, that it was all very well for her
to run the glacière down, as she lived near it, but for the world from a
distance it was a most wonderful sight; and, as for the ladder, he
happened to know that it was at this time in excellent preservation. The
event proved that in saying this he drew entirely upon his imagination.
It is, perhaps, only fair to suppose that they don't mean anything by
it, and it may be mere ignorance on their part; but the simple fact is,
that some of those Swiss rustics tell the most barefaced lies
conceivable,--_unblushing_ is an epithet that cannot be safely applied
without previous soap and water,--and tell them in a plodding systematic
manner which takes in all but the experienced and wary traveller. I have
myself learned to suspend my judgment regarding the most simple thing in
nature, until I have other grounds for forming an opinion than the
solemn asseverations of the most stolid and respectable Swiss, if it so