We only got as far as Monêtier after all, for, reaching that town at half-past eight, and finding that Briançon was still eight miles further on, we preferred resting there at the miserable but cheap and honest Hôtel de l’Europe; had we gone on a little farther we should have found a much better one, but we were tired with our forty-two miles’ walk, and, after a hasty supper and a quiet pipe, over which we watch the last twilight on the Alps above Briançon, we turn in very tired but very much charmed.
Sunday morning was the clearest and freshest morning that ever tourists could wish for, the grass crisply frozen (for we are some three or four thousand feet above the sea), the glaciers descending to a level but little higher than the road; a fine range of Alps in front over Briançon, and the road winding down past a new river (for we have long lost the Romanche) towards the town, which is some six or seven miles distant.
It was a fête—the _Fête du bon Dieu_, celebrated annually on this day throughout all this part of the country; in all the villages there were little shrines erected, adorned with strings of blue corncockle, narcissus heads, and poppies, bunches of green, pink, and white calico, moss and fir-tree branches, and in the midst of these tastefully arranged bowers was an image of the Virgin and her Son, with whatever other saints the place was possessed of.
At Briançon, which we reached (in a trap) at eight o’clock, these demonstrations were more imposing, but less pleasing; the soldiers, too, were being drilled and exercised, and the whole scene was one of the greatest animation, such as Frenchmen know how to exhibit on the morning of a gala day.
Leaving our trap at Briançon and making a hasty breakfast at the Hôtel de la Paix, we walked up a very lonely valley towards Cervières. I dare not say how many hours we wended our way up the brawling torrent without meeting a soul or seeing a human habitation; it was fearfully hot too, and we longed for _vin ordinaire_; Cervières seemed as though it never would come—still the same rugged precipices, snow-clad heights, brawling torrent, and stony road, butterflies beautiful and innumerable, flowers to match, sky cloudless. At last we are there; through the town, or rather village, the river rushes furiously, the dismantled houses and gaping walls affording palpable traces of the fearful inundations of the previous year, not a house near the river was sound, many quite uninhabitable, and more such as I am sure few of us would like to inhabit. However, it is Cervières such as it is, and we hope for our _vin ordinaire_; but, alas!—not a human being, man, woman or child, is to be seen, the houses are all closed, the noonday quiet holds the hill with a vengeance, unbroken, save by the ceaseless roar of the river.