My hand flew to my pocket, but paused, even as it grasped the water
pistol. The dog was small, the weapon large. A fierce jet of water
propelled from its muzzle might blow the breath from that tiny body,
which my sole wish was to warn from under the wheels of Juggernaut.
However, he was persistent, and was in real danger, since to avoid an
approaching cart, Jack was forced to steer perilously near the yapping
beast.

I snatched the weapon, pulled the trigger, and--a mild, mellifluous
trickle which would have disgraced a toilet vaporiser sprayed forth.
Jack, Molly, and the peasants in the approaching cart burst into
shouts of laughter. The Spitz, undismayed by the gentle shower, which
had spattered his nose with a drop or two, leaped at the weapon, and,
irritated, I flung it at his head. It fell innocuously in the road and
our last sight of the Spitz was when, rejoined by his lizard friend,
he industriously gnawed at the pistol, mistaking it for a bone, while
the Dachs gratefully lapped up the water I had provided. My surprise
was a popular success, but not the kind of success which I had
planned. Jack said that he could have "told me so" if I had asked him,
and I vowed in future to let dogs delight to bark and bite without
interference from me.

The one inept remark which Shelley seems ever to have made was that
"there is nothing to see in France." My opinion, as we spun along the
road which would lead us to Lucerne and my waiting mule, was that
there was almost too much to see, too much charm, too much beauty for
the peace of mind of an imaginative traveller; there were so many
valleys which one longed to explore, in which one felt one could be
content without going farther, so many blue glimpses of mysterious