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From Gressoney in September 1885 he wrote: "We are all but alone, the brief 'season' being over, and only a chance traveller turning up for a fortnight's lodging. We take our walks in the old way; two and a half hours before breakfast, three after it, in the most beautiful country I know.

He became, indeed, so attached to Gressoney, with its beautiful outlook upon Monte Rosa, that nothing I believe would have hindered his returning, or at least contemplating a return to it, but the great fatigue to his sister of the mule ride up the mountain, by a path which made walking, wherever possible, the easier course.

'The weather continues exquisitely temperate, yet sunny, ever since the clearing thunderstorm of which I must have told you in my last. It is, I am more and more confirmed in believing, the most beautiful place I was ever resident in: far more so than Gressoney or even St.-Pierre de Chartreuse.

In 1881 and 1882 it was St Pierre de Chartreuse, from which he visited the Grande Chartreuse, and heard the midnight mass; in 1883 and 1885 it was Gressoney St Jean in the Val d'Aosta the "delightful Gressoney" of the Prologue to Ferishtah's Fancies, where "eggs, milk, cheese, fruit" sufficed "for gormandizing"; in 1888 it was the yet more beautiful Primiero, near Feltre.

Each time he had halted first in some more or less elevated spot, generally suggested by his French friend, Monsieur Dourlans, himself an inveterate wanderer, whose inclinations also tempted him off the beaten track. The places he most enjoyed were Saint-Pierre la Chartreuse, and Gressoney Saint-Jean, where he stayed respectively in 1881 and 1882, 1883 and 1885.