One summer in about 1510, an apparently unremarkable civil servant called Pierre Sala tells us, he found himself in Grenoble, in the train of King Louis XII – and was intrigued.2 Not far away, he knew, a mere twenty miles or so, was a most strange and noteworthy site, an estrange assiete: the Carthusian monastery known as the Grande Chartreuse, perched remotely and spectacularly in the mountains of the Dauphiné. It was not, he knew, easy of access – yet the way was even more saulvaige, the monastery even more austere, than he had expected. Even though it was June, there was still snow drifted in the cloisters; he was frozen (je cuydey mourir de froyt) and forced into a quick retreat. But rather than scurry back to Grenoble and the warmth of the valley, he took advantage of the opportunity to make another tourist visit, this one involving his forcing a way through something called the Passaige Affreux – so affreux, so dangerous, he says, that no one who has not been there can imagine how terrifying it is, a grant poyne pourroit l'on croire que c'est But the temptation was irresistible: it took him, he tells us, to