twenty-seven languages, he could be silent in all of them.

He did let me play the car's musical siren, though; a fascinating
bugbear, supposed to warn children, chickens, and other light-minded
animals that something important is coming, and they'd better look
alive. It has two tunes, one grave, one gay. I suppose we would use the
grave one if the creature hadn't looked alive?

Although he didn't say much, the chauffeur (or "shuvvie" as he
scornfully names himself) knew all about Robert Macaire and Gaspard De
Besse--knew more about them than I, also their escapades on this road
over the Esterels, and in the mountain fastnesses, when highwaymen were
as fashionable as motor-cars are now. I'd forgotten that it was this
part of the world where they earned their bread and fame; and was quite
thrilled to hear that the ghost of De Besse is supposed to keep on, as a
permanent residence, his old shelter cave near the summit of strangely
shaped Mont Vinaigre. I'm sure, though, even if we'd passed his pitch at
midnight instead of midday, he wouldn't have dared pop out and cry
"Stand and deliver!" to a sixty-horsepower Aigle.

I almost wished it were night, as we swooped over mountain tops, our
eyes plunging down the deep gorges, and dropping with fearful joy over
precipices, for the effect would have been more solemn, more mysterious.
I could imagine that the fantastically formed rocks which loomed above
us or stood ranged far below would have looked by moonlight like statues
and busts of Titans, carved to show poor little humanity such creatures
as a dead world had known. But it is hard for one's imagination to do
the best of which it feels capable when one is dying for lunch.

Even the old "Murder Inn," which my companion obligingly pointed out,