world of vineyards. In other words, the vines clothe all the little
levels and vast slopes of the mountain-sides as far up as the cold will
let the grapes grow. There is literally almost no other cultivation, and
it is a very pretty sight. On top of the mountains are the chalets with
their kine, and at a certain elevation the milk and the wine meet, while
below is the water of the lake, so good to mix with both. I do not know
that the Swiss use it for that purpose, but there are countries where
something of the sort would be done.

When the train put us down at Villeneuve, among railway people as
indifferent as our own at country stations, and much crosser and more
snubbing, the demand for grapes began with the party who remained with
the baggage, while a party of the second part went off to find the
_pension_ where we were to pass the next three months. The grape-seekers
strolled up the stony, steaming streets of the little town, asking for
grapes right and left, at all the shops, in their imperfect French, and
returned to the station with a paper of gingerbread which they had
bought at a jeweller's. I do not know why this artist should have had it
for sale, but he must have had it a long time, for it was densely
inhabited. Afterwards we found two shops in Villeneuve where they had
the most delicious _petits gâteaux_, fresh every day, and nothing but
the mania for unattainable grapes prevented the first explorers from
seeing them.

In the mean time the party of the second part had found the pension--a
pretty stone villa overlooking the lake, under the boughs of tall
walnut-trees, on the level of a high terrace. Laurel and holly hemmed it
in on one side, and southward spread a pleasant garden full of roses and
imperfectly ripening fig-trees. In the rear the vineyards climbed the
mountains in irregular breadths to the belt of walnuts, beyond which