"One is not badly off in Canton Valais," said his uncle, "we have the
chamois, they do not die out so soon as the mountain goat! It is a
great deal better here now, than in the old times; they may talk about
their glory as much as they please. The present time is much better,
for a hole has been made in the purse and light and air let into our
quiet valley. When old worn-out customs die away, something new
springs forth!" said he. When uncle became talkative, he told of the
years of his childhood and of his father's active time, when Valais
was still a closed purse, as the people called it, and when it was
filled with sick people and miserable cretins. French soldiers came,
they were the right kind of doctors, they not only shot down the
sickness but the men also.

"The Frenchmen can beat the stones until they surrender! they cut the
Simplon-road out of the rocks--they have hewn out such a road, that I
now can tell a three year old child to go to Italy! Keep to the
highway, and a child may find his way there!" Then the uncle would
sing a French song and cry hurrah for Napoleon Bonaparte.

Rudy now heard for the first time of France, of Lyons--the large city
of the Rhone--for his uncle had been there.

"I wonder if Rudy will become an agile chamois hunter in a few years?
He has every disposition for it!" said his uncle, and instructed him
how to hold a rifle, how to aim and to fire. In the hunting season, he
took him with him in the mountains and made him drink the warm chamois
blood, which prevents the hunter from becoming dizzy. He taught him to
heed the time when the avalanches roll down the different sides of the
mountain--at mid-day or at night-fall--which depended upon the heat of
the rays of the sun. He taught him to notice the chamois, in order to