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Presently a heavy double-bass gurgle issued forth with ominous depth of voice, indicating the danger of farther progress. M. Thury's list contained a bare mention of two glacières on the M. Parmelan, near Annecy, without any further information respecting them, beyond the fact that they supplied ice for Lyons.
The small crowd at the door repudiated the glacières with one voice, and pointed out how unlikely it was that Lyons should be supplied with ice from Annecy; nevertheless, I continued to ask my way in spite of protestation, till at length a lame man passed by, who said monsieur was quite right he himself knew two glacières on the Mont Parmelan very well.
If I can ever make an opportunity for visiting the Mont Parmelan again, I shall hope to take a cord, in order to investigate the mysterious corner of the triangular chamber; and I shall certainly make myself independent of shivering Frenchmen while I measure the temperature of the lake and the current of air.
It was all of no use, and well it might be; for when we had given it up in despair, after long patience and a considerable period of the contrary, and had descended for half an hour in the direction of a third glacière, I chanced to look back, and saw that the Col in the neighbourhood of which we had been searching lay between two points of the Montagne de l'Eau; while the true Col between that mountain and the Mont Parmelan lay considerably to the west.
I now looked on the local map, and determined that the best plan would be to take the Bonneville diligence as far as Charvonnaz, the point on the road which seemed to lie nearest to the roots of the Mont Parmelan, and then be guided by what I might learn among the peasants. Everyone said there was no chance of getting to anything by that means; but as the hotel people saw that it was of no use to deny the glacières any longer, they proposed to take me to a man who knew the M. Parmelan well, and could tell me all about it. This man proved to be a keeper of voitures, an ominous profession under the circumstances, and he assured me that I could make a most lovely course the next day, through scenery of unrivalled beauty; and he eloquently told on his fingers the villages and sights I should come to. I suggested without in the least knowing that it was so that the drive might be all very well in itself, but it would not bring me to the glacières; on which he assured me that he knew every inch of the mountain, and there was not such a thing as a glacière in the whole district. At this moment, a gentlemanlike man was brought up by the waiter, and introduced to me as a monsieur who knew a monsieur who knew the proprietor of one of the glacières, and would he happy to conduct me to this second monsieur: so, without any very ceremonious farewell to the owner of the proffered voiture, we marched off together down the street, and eventually turned into a café, whose master was the monsieur for whom we were in search. Know the glacière? yes, indeed! he had ice from it one year every morning. His wife and he had made a course to the campagne of M. the Maire of Aviernoz, and he the cafétier had descended for miles, as it were, down and down, till he came to an underground world of ice, wonderful, totally wonderful: there he perceived so immense a cold, that he drank a bottle of rhoom a whole bottle and drank it from the neck,
He was certain of two things: first, that they had passed by the Col between the Mont Parmelan and the Montagne de l'Eau; and, secondly, that the glacière was within five minutes of the highest point of the Col. For three-quarters of an hour we all broke our shins, and the officials the Third Commandment.
He had never seen either of them, but he knew them as well as if he had. It was useless to go to them now, he added, for the owners extracted all the ice early in the year, and stored it in holes in the lower part of the mountain. He had no idea by what route they were to be approached from Annecy, or on which side of the Mont Parmelan they lay.
Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case; and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should certainly try the Hôtel de Genève on any future visit to Annecy. The first thing to be done was to determine the position of the Mont Parmelan.
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