TARTARIN ON THE ALPS. 

By Alphonse Daudet

TARTARIN ON THE ALPS. 

I. 

 Apparition on the Rigi-Kulm. Who is it? What was said around a table of six hundred covers. Rice and Prunes, An improvised ball. The Unknown signs his name on the hotel register, P. C. A. 

On the 10th of August, 1880, at that fabled hour of the setting sun sovaunted by the guide-books Joanne and Baedeker, an hermetic yellow fog, complicated with a flurry of snow in white spirals, enveloped the summitof the Rigi (_Regina monhum_) and its gigantic hotel, extraordinary tobehold on the arid waste of those heights, --that Rigi-Kulm, glassed-inlike a conservatory, massive as a citadel, where alight for a night anda day a flock of tourists, worshippers of the sun. 

While awaiting the second dinner-gong, the transient inmates of thevast and gorgeous caravansary, half frozen in their chambers above, orgasping on the divans of the reading-rooms in the damp heat of lightedfurnaces, were gazing, in default of the promised splendours, at thewhirling white atoms and the lighting of the great lamps on the portico, the double glasses of which were creaking in the wind. 

To climb so high, to come from all four corners of the earth to seethat... Oh, Baedeker!.. 

Suddenly, something emerged from the fog and advanced toward the hotelwith a rattling of metal, an exaggeration of motions, caused by strangeaccessories. 

At a distance of twenty feet through the fog the torpid tourists, theirnoses against the panes, the _misses_ with curious little heads trimmedlike those of boys, took this apparition for a cow, and then for atinker bearing his utensils. 

Ten feet nearer the apparition changed again, showing a crossbow on theshoulder, and the visored cap of an archer of the middle ages, withthe visor lowered, an object even more unlikely to meet with on theseheights than a strayed cow or an ambulating tinker. 

On the portico the archer was no longer anything but a fat, squat, broad-backed man, who stopped to get breath and to shake the snow fromhis leggings, made like his cap of yellow cloth, and from his knittedcomforter, which allowed scarcely more of his face to be seen than a fewtufts of grizzling beard and a pair of enormous green spectacles made asconvex as the glass of a stereoscope. An alpenstock, knapsack, coil ofrope worn in saltire, crampons and iron hooks hanging to the belt ofan English blouse with broad pleats, completed the accoutrement of thisperfect Alpinist. 

On the desolate summits of Mont Blanc or the Finsteraarhorn thisclambering apparel would have seemed very natural, but on the Rigi-Kulmten feet from a railway track!--

The Alpinist, it is true, came from the side opposite to the station, and the state of his leggings testified to a long march through snow andmud. 

For a moment he gazed at the hotel and its surrounding buildings, seemingly stupefied at finding, two thousand and more yards above thesea, a building of such importance, glazed galleries, colonnades, sevenstoreys of windows, and a broad portico stretching away between tworows of globe-lamps which gave to this mountain-summit the aspect of thePlace de l'Opéra of a winter's evening. 

But, surprised as he may have been, the people in the hotel weremore surprised still, and when he entered the immense antechamber aninquisitive hustling took place in the doorways of all the salons:gentlemen armed with billiard-cues, others with open newspapers, ladiesstill holding their book or their work pressed forward, while in thebackground, on the landing of the staircase, heads leaned over thebaluster and between the chains of the lift. 

The man said aloud, in a powerful deep bass voice, the chest voice ofthe South, resounding like cymbals:--

"_Coquin de bon sort!_ what an atmosphere!"

Then he stopped short, to take off his cap and his spectacles. 

He was suffocating. 

The dazzle of the lights, the heat of the gas and furnace, in contrastwith the cold darkness without, and this sumptuous display, these loftyceilings, these porters bedizened with _Regina Montium_ in lettersof gold on their naval caps, the white cravats of the waiters and thebattalion of Swiss girls in their native costumes coming forward atsound of the gong, all these things bewildered him for a second--butonly one. 

He felt himself looked at and instantly recovered his self-possession, like a comedian facing a full house. 

"Monsieur desires.. ?"

This was the manager of the hotel, making the inquiry with the tips ofhis teeth, a very dashing manager, striped jacket, silken whiskers, thehead of a lady's dressmaker. 

The Alpinist, not disturbed, asked for a room, "A good little room, _au mouain?_" perfectly at ease with that majestic manager, as if with aformer schoolmate. 

But he came near being angry when a Bernese servant-girl, advancing, candle in hand, and stiff in her gilt stomacher and puffed muslinsleeves, inquired if Monsieur would be pleased to take the lift. Theproposal to commit a crime would not have made him more indignant. 

"A lift! he!.. For him!.. " And his cry, his gesture, set all his metalsrattling. 

Quickly appeased, however, he said to the maiden, in an amiable tone:"_Pedibusse cum jambisse_, my pretty little cat... " And he went upbehind her, his broad back filling the stairway, parting the persons hemet on his way, while throughout the hotel the clamorous questions ran:"Who is he? What's this?" muttered in the divers languages of all fourquarters of the globe. Then the second dinner-gong sounded, and nobodythought any longer of this extraordinary personage. 

A sight to behold, that dining-room of the Rigi-Kulm. 

Six hundred covers around an immense horseshoe table, where tall, shallow dishes of rice and of prunes, alternating in long files withgreen plants, reflected in their dark or transparent sauces the flame ofthe candles in the chandeliers and the gilding of the panelled ceiling. 

As in all Swiss _tables d'hôte_, rice and prunes divided the dinner intotwo rival factions, and merely by the looks of hatred or of hankeringcast upon those dishes it was easy to tell to which party the guestsbelonged. The Rices were known by their anaemic pallor, the Prunes bytheir congested skins. 

That evening the latter were the most numerous, counting among themseveral important personalities, European celebrities, such as the greathistorian Astier-Réhu, of the French Academy, Baron von Stolz, anold Austro-Hungarian diplomat, Lord Chipendale (?), a member of theJockey-Club and his niece (h'm, h'm!), the illustrious doctor-professorSchwanthaler, from the University of Bonn, a Peruvian general with eightyoung daughters. 

To these the Rices could only oppose as a picket-guard a Belgian senatorand his family, Mme. Schwanthaler, the professor's wife, and an Italiantenor, returning from Russia, who displayed his cuffs, with buttons asbig as saucers, upon the tablecloth. 

It was these opposing currents which no doubt caused the stiffnessand embarrassment of the company. How else explain the silence of sixhundred half-frozen, scowling, distrustful persons, and the sovereigncontempt they appeared to affect for one another? A superficial observermight perhaps have attributed this stiffness to stupid Anglo-Saxonhaughtiness which, nowadays, gives the tone in all countries to thetravelling world. 

No! no! Beings with human faces are not born to hate one another thus atfirst sight, to despise each other with their very noses, lips, and eyesfor lack of a previous introduction. There must be another cause. 

Rice and Prunes, I tell you. There you have the explanation of thegloomy silence weighing upon this dinner at the Rigi-Kulm, which, considering the number and international variety of the guests, ought tohave been lively, tumultuous, such as we imagine the repasts at the footof the Tower of Babel to have been. 

The Alpinist entered the room, a little overcome by this refectory ofmonks, apparently doing penance beneath the glare of chandeliers; hecoughed noisily without any one taking notice of him, and seated himselfin his place of last-comer at the end of the room. Divested of hisaccoutrements, he was now a tourist like any other, but of aspect moreamiable, bald, barrel-bellied, his beard pointed and bunchy, his nosemajestic, his eyebrows thick and ferocious, overhanging the glance of adownright good fellow. 

Rice or Prunes? No one knew as yet. 

Hardly was he installed before he became uneasy, and leaving his placewith an alarming bound: "Ouf! what a draught!" he said aloud, as hesprang to an empty chair with its back laid over on the table. 

He was stopped by the Swiss maid on duty--from the canton of Uri, thatone--silver chains and white muslin chemisette. 

"Monsieur, this place is engaged... "

Then a young lady, seated next to the chair, of whom the Alpinist couldsee only her blond hair rising from the whiteness of virgin snows, said, without turning round, and with a foreign accent:

"That place is free; my brother is ill, and will not be down. "

"Ill?.. " said the Alpinist, seating himself, with an anxious, almostaffectionate manner... "Ill? Not dangerously, _au moins_. "

He said _au mouain_, and the word recurred in all his remarks, withother vocable parasites, such as _hé, que, téy zou, vé, vaï, etautrement, différemment_, etc. , still further emphasized by a Southernaccent, displeasing, apparently, to the young lady, for she answeredwith a glacial glance of a black blue, the blue of an abyss. 

His neighbour on the right had nothing encouraging about him either;this was the Italian tenor, a gay bird with a low forehead, oily pupils, and the moustache of a matador, which he twirled with nervous fingersat being thus separated from his pretty neighbour. But the good Alpinisthad a habit of talking as he ate; it was necessary for his health. 

"_Vé!_ the pretty buttons... " he said to himself, aloud, eying the cuffsof his neighbour. "Notes of music, inlaid in jasper--why, the effect is_charmain!_.. "

His metallic voice rang on the silence, but found no echo. 

"Surely monsieur is a singer, _que?_"

"_Non capisco_, " growled the Italian into his moustache. 

For a moment the man resigned himself to devour without uttering a word, but the morsels choked him. At last, as his opposite neighbour, theAustro-Hungarian diplomat, endeavoured to reach the mustard-pot with thetips of his shaky old fingers, covered with mittens, he passed it to himobligingly. "Happy to serve you, Monsieur le baron, " for he had heardsome one call him so. 

Unfortunately, poor M. De Stoltz, in spite of his shrewd and knowing aircontracted in diplomatic juggling, had now lost both words and ideas, and was travelling among the mountains for the special purpose ofrecovering them. He opened his eyes wide upon that unknown face, andshut them again without a word. It would have taken ten old diplomats ofhis present intellectual force to have constructed in common a formulaof thanks. 

At this fresh failure the Alpinist made a terrible grimace, and theabrupt manner in which he seized the bottle standing near him might havemade one fear he was about to cleave the already cracked head of thediplomatist Not so! It was only to offer wine to his pretty neighbour, who did not hear him, being absorbed by a semi-whispered conversation ina soft and lively foreign warble with two young men seated next to her. She bent to them, and grew animated. Little frizzles of hair were seenshining in the light against a dainty, transparent, rosy ear... Polish, Russian, Norwegian?.. From the North certainly; and a pretty song ofthose distant lands coming to his lips, the man of the South begantranquilly to hum:--

 O coumtesso gento, Estelo dou Nord, Que la neu argento, Qu' Amour friso en or. {*}

 * O pretty countess, Light of the North, Which the snow silvers, And Love curls in gold. 

 (Frédéric Mistral. )

The whole table turned round; they thought him mad. He coloured, subsided into his plate, and did not issue again except to repulsevehemently one of the sacred compote-dishes that was handed to him. 

"Prunes! again!.. Never in my life!"

This was too much. 

A grating of chairs was heard. The academician, Lord Chipendale (?), the Bonn professor, and other notabilities rose, and left the room as ifprotesting. 

The Rices followed almost immediately, on see-tog the secondcompote-dish rejected as violently as the first. 

Neither Rice nor Prunes!.. Then what?.. 

All withdrew; and it was truly glacial, that silent defile of scornfulnoses and mouths with their corners disdainfully turned down at theluckless man, who was left alone in the vast gorgeous dining-room, engaged in sopping his bread in his wine after the fashion of hiscountry, crushed beneath the weight of universal disdain. 

My friends, let us never despise any one. Contempt is the resourceof parvenus, prigs, ugly folk, and fools; it is the mask behind whichnonentity shelters itself, and sometimes blackguardism; it dispenseswith mind, judgment, and good-will. All humpbacked persons arecontemptuous; all crooked noses wrinkle with disdain when they see astraight one. 

He knew that, this worthy Alpinist. Having passed, by several years, his"fortieth, " that landing on the fourth storey where man discovers andpicks up the magic key which opens life to its recesses, and reveals itsmonotonous and deceptive labyrinth; conscious, moreover, of his value, of the importance of his mission, and of the great name he bore, hecared nothing for the opinion of such persons as these. He knew that heneed only name himself and cry out "'Tis I... " to change to grovellingrespect those haughty lips; but he found his incognito amusing. 

He suffered only at not being able to talk, to make a noise, unbosomhimself, press hands, lean familiarly on shoulders, and call men bytheir Christian names. That is what oppressed him on the Rigi-Kulm. 

Oh! above all, not being able to speak. 

"I shall have dyspepsia as sure as fate, " said the poor devil, wanderingabout the hotel and not knowing what to do with himself. 

He entered a café, vast and deserted as a church on a week day, calledthe waiter, "My good friend, " and ordered "a mocha without sugar, _que'_. " And as the waiter did not ask, "Why no sugar?" the Alpinistadded quickly, "'Tis a habit I acquired in Africa, at the period of mygreat hunts. "

He was about to recount them, but the waiter had fled on his phantomslippers to Lord Chipendale, stranded, full length, upon a sofa andcrying, in mournful tones: "Tchempègne!.. Tchempègne!.. " The cork flewwith its silly noise, and nothing more was heard save the gusts of windin the monumental chimney and the hissing click of the snow against thepanes. 

Very dismal too was the reading-room; all the journals in hand, hundredsof heads bent down around the long green tables beneath the reflectors. From time to time a yawn, a cough, the rustle of a turned leaf; andsoaring high above the calm of this hall of study, erect and motionless, their backs to the stove, both solemn and both smelling equally musty, were the two pontiffs of official history, Astier-Réhu and Schwanthaler, whom a singular fatality had brought face to face on the summit of theRigi, after thirty years of insults and of rending each other toshreds in explanatory notes referring to "Schwanthaler, jackass, " "_virineptissimus_, Astier-Réhu. "

You can imagine the reception which the kindly Alpinist received ondrawing up a chair for a bit of instructive conversation in that chimneycorner. From the height of these two caryatides there fell upon himsuddenly one of those currents of air of which he was so afraid. He rose, paced the hall, as much to warm himself as to recoverself-confidence, and opened the bookcase. A few English novels layscattered about in company with several heavy Bibles and tatteredvolumes of the Alpine Club. He took up one of the latter, and carriedit off to read in bed, but was forced to leave it at the door, the rulesnot allowing the transference of the library to the chambers. 

Then, still continuing to wander about, he opened the door of thebilliard-room, where the Italian tenor, playing alone, was producingeffects of torso and cuffs for the edification of their prettyneighbour, seated on a divan, between the two young men, to whom she wasreading a letter. On the entrance of the Alpinist she stopped, and oneof the young men rose, the taller, a sort of moujik, a dog-man, withhairy paws, and long, straight, shining black hair joining an unkemptbeard. He made two steps in the direction of the new-comer, looked athim provocatively, and so fiercely that the worthy Alpinist, withoutdemanding an explanation, made a prudent and judicious half-turn to theright. 

"_Différemment_, they are not affable, these Northerners, " he saidaloud; and he shut the door noisily, to prove to that savage that he wasnot afraid of him. 

The salon remained as a last refuge; he went there... _Coquin desort!_... The morgue, my good friends, the morgue of the Saint-Bernardwhere the monks expose the frozen bodies found beneath the snows inthe various attitudes in which congealing death has stiffened them, canalone describe that salon of the Rigi-Kulm. 

All those numbed, mute women, in groups upon the circular sofas, orisolated and fallen into chairs here and there; all those misses, motionless be-. Neath the lamps on the round tables, still holding intheir hands the book or the work they were employed on when the coldcongealed them. Among them were the daughters of the general, eightlittle Peruvians with saffron skins, their features convulsed, the vividribbons on their gowns contrasting with the dead-leaf tones of Englishfashions; poor little _sunny-climes_, easy to imagine as laughing andfrolicking beneath their cocoa-trees and now more distressingto behold than the rest in their glacial, mute condition. In thebackground, before the piano, was the death-mask of the old diplomat, his mittened hands resting inert upon the keyboard, the yellowing tonesof which were reflected on his face. 

Betrayed by his strength and his memory, lost in a polka of his owncomposition, beginning it again and again, unable to remember itsconclusion, the unfortunate Stoltz had gone to sleep while playing, and with him all the ladies on the Rigi, nodding, as they slumbered, romantic curls, or those peculiar lace caps, in shape like the crust ofa vol-au-vent, that English dames affect, and which seem to be part ofthe canf of travelling. 

The entrance of the Alpinist did not awaken them, and he himself haddropped upon a divan, overcome by such icy discouragement, when thesound of vigorous, joyous chords burst from the vestibule; where three"musicos, " harp, flute, and violin, ambulating minstrels with pitifulfaces, and long overcoats flapping their legs, who infest the Swisshostelries, had just arrived with their instruments. 

At the very first notes our man sprang up as if galvanized. 

"_Zou!_ bravo!.. Forward, music!"

And off he went, opening the great doors, feting the musicians, soakingthem with champagne, drunk himself without drinking a drop, solely withthe music which brought him back to life. He mimicked the piston, hemimicked the harp, he snapped his fingers over his head, and rolled hiseyes and danced his steps, to the utter stupefaction of the touristsrunning in from all sides at the racket. Then suddenly, as theexhilarated musicos struck up a Strauss waltz with the fury of truetziganes, the Alpinist, perceiving in the doorway the wife of ProfessorSchwanthaler, a rotund little Viennese with mischievous eyes, stillyouthful in spite of her powdered gray hair, he sprang up her, caughther by the waist, and whirled her into the room, crying put to theothers; "Come on! come on! let us waltz!"

The impetus was given, the hotel thawed and twirled, carried off itscentre. People danced in the vestibule, in the salon, round the longgreen table of the reading-room. 'Twas that devil of a man who set fireto ice. He, however, danced no more, being out of breath at the end ofa couple of turns; but he guided his ball, urged the musicians, coupledthe dancers, cast into the arms of the Bonn professor an elderlyEnglishwoman; and into those of the austere Astier-Réhu the friskiestof the Peruvian damsels. Resistance was impossible. From that terribleAlpinist issued I know not what mysterious aura which lightened andbuoyed up every one. And _zou! zou! zou!_ No more contempt and disdain. Neither Rice nor Prunes, only waltzers. Presently the madness spread;it reached the upper storeys, and up through the well of the staircasecould be seen to the sixth-floor landing the heavy and high-colouredskirts of the Swiss maids on duty, twirling with the stiffness ofautomatons before a musical chalet. 

Ah! the wind may blow without and shake the lamp-posts, make thetelegraph wires groan, and whirl the snow in spirals across thatdesolate summit Within all are warm, all are comforted, and remain sofor that one night. 

"_Différemment_, I must go to bed, myself, " thought the worthy Alpinist, a prudent man, coming from a country where every one packs and unpackshimself rapidly. Laughing in his grizzled beard, he slipped away, covertly escaping Madame Schwanthaler, who was seeking to hook him againever since that initial waltz. 

He took his key and his bedroom candle; then, on the first landing, hepaused a moment to enjoy his work and to look at the mass of congealedones whom he had forced to thaw and amuse themselves. 

A Swiss maid approached him all breathless from the waltz, and said, presenting a pen and the hotel register:--

"Might I venture to ask t_mossié_ to be so good as to sign his name?"

He hesitated a moment. Should he, or should he not preserve hisincognito?

After all, what matter! Supposing that the news of his presence on theRigi should reach _down there_, no one would know what he had come todo in Switzerland. And besides, it would be so droll to see, to-morrowmorning, the stupor of those "Inglichemans" when they should learn thetruth... For that Swiss girl, of course, would not hold her tongue... What surprise, what excitement throughout the hotel!.. 

"Was it really he?.. He?.. Himself?.. " These reflections, rapid andvibrant, passed through his head like the notes of a violin in anorchestra. He took the pen, and with careless hand he signed, beneathSchwanthaler, Astier-Réhu, and other notabilities, the name thateclipsed them all, his name; then he went to his room, without so muchas glancing round to see the effect, of which he was sure. 

Behind him the Swiss maid looked at the name:

TARTARIN OF TARASCON, beneath which was added:

P. C. A. 

She read it, that Bernese girl, and was not the least dazzled. She didnot know what P. C. A. Signified, nor had she ever heard of "Dardarin. "

Barbarian, _Vaï!_

II. 

 Tarascon, five minutes' stop! The Club of the Alpines. Explanation of P. C. A. Rabbits of warren and cabbage rabbits. This is my last will and testament. The Sirop de cadavre. First ascension, Tartarin takes out his spectacles. 

When that name "Tarascon" sounds trumpetlike along the track of theParis-Lyons-Mediterranean, in the limpid, vibrant blue of a Provençalsky, inquisitive heads are visible at all the doors of the expresstrain, and from carriage to carriage the travellers say to each other:"Ah! here is Tarascon!.. Now, for a look at Tarascon. "

What they can see of it is, nevertheless, nothing more than a veryordinary, quiet, clean little town with towers, roofs, and a bridgeacross the Rhone. But the Tarasconese sun and its marvellous effectsof mirage, so fruitful in surprises, inventions, delirious absurdities, this joyous little populace, not much larger than a chick-pea, whichreflects and sums up in itself the instincts of the whole French South, lively, restless, gabbling, exaggerated, comical, impressionable--thatis what the people on the express-train look out for as they pass, andit is that which has made the popularity of the place. 

In memorable pages, which modesty prevents him from mentioning moreexplicitly, the historiographer of Tarascon essayed, once upon a time, to depict the happy days of the little town, leading its club life, singing its romantic songs (each his own) and, for want of real game, organizing curious cap-hunts. Then, war having come and the dark times, Tarascon became known by its heroic defence, its torpedoed esplanade, the club and the Café de la Comédie, both made impregnable; all theinhabitants enrolled in guerilla companies, their breasts braided withdeath's head and cross-bones, all beards grown, and such a displayof battle-axes, boarding cutlasses, and American revolvers that theunfortunate inhabitants ended by frightening themselves and no longerdaring to approach one another in the streets. 

Many years have passed since the war, many a worthless almanac has beenput in the fire, but Tarascon has never forgotten; and, renouncing thefutile amusements of other days, it thinks of nothing now but how tomake blood and muscle for the service of future revenge. Societies forpistol-shooting and gymnastics, costumed and equipped, all having bandand banners; armouries, boxing-gloves, single-sticks, list-shoes; footraces and flat-hand fights between persons in the best society; thesethings have taken the place of the former cap-hunts and the platoniccynegetical discussions in the shop of the gunsmith Costecalde. 

And finally the club, the old club itself, abjuring bouillotte andbézique, is now transformed into a "Club Alpin" under the patronage ofthe famous Alpine Club of London, which has borne even to India the fameof its climbers. With this difference, that the Tarasconese, instead ofexpatriating themselves on foreign summits, are content with those theyhave in hand, or rather underfoot, at the gates of their town. 

"The Alps of Tarascon?" you ask. No; but the Alpines, that chain ofmountainettes, redolent of thyme and lavender, not very dangerous, noryet very high (five to six hundred feet above sea-level), which make anhorizon of blue waves along the Provençal roads and are decorated by thelocal imagination with the fabulous and characteristic names of: MountTerrible; The End of the World; The Peak of the Giants, etc. 

'T is a pleasure to see, of a Sunday morning, the gaitered Tarasconese, pickaxe in hand, knapsack and tent on their backs, starting off, buglesin advance, for ascensions, of which the _Forum_, the localjournal, gives full account with a descriptive luxury and wealth ofepithets--abysses, gulfs, terrifying gorges--as if the said ascensionwere among the Himalayas. You can well believe that from this exercisethe aborigines have acquired fresh strength and the "double muscles"heretofore reserved to the only Tartarin, the good, the brave, theheroic Tartarin. 

If Tarascon epitomizes the South, Tartarin epitomizes Tarascon. He isnot only the first citizen of the town, he is its soul, its genius, hehas all its finest whimseys. We know his former exploits, his triumphsas a singer (oh! that duet of "Robert le Diable" in Bézuquet'spharmacy!), and the amazing odyssey of his lion-hunts, from which hereturned with that splendid camel, the last in Algeria, since deceased, laden with honours and preserved in skeleton at the town museum amongother Tarasconese curiosities. 

Tartarin himself has not degenerated; teeth still good and eyes good, inspite of his fifties; still that amazing imagination which brings nearerand enlarges all objects with the power of a telescope. He remains thesame man as he of whom the brave Commander Bravida used to say: "He's a_lapin_... "

Or, rather, _two lapins!_ For in Tartarin, as in all the Tarasconese, there is a warren race and a cabbage race, very clearly accentuated:the roving rabbit of the warren, adventurous, headlong; and thecabbage-rabbit, homekeeping, coddling, nervously afraid of fatigue, ofdraughts, and of any and all accidents that may lead to death. 

We know that this prudence did not prevent him from showing himselfbrave and even heroic on occasion; but it is permissible to ask whathe was doing on the Rigi (_Regina Montium_) at his age, when he had sodearly bought the right to rest and comfort. 

To that inquiry the infamous Costecalde can alone reply. 

Costecalde, gunsmith by trade, represents a type that is rather rare inTarascon. Envy, base, malignant envy, is visible in the wicked curve ofhis thin lips, and a species of yellow bile, proceeding from his liverin puffs, suffuses his broad, clean-shaven, regular face, with itssurface dented as if by a hammer, like an ancient coin of Tiberius orCaracalla. Envy with him is a disease, which he makes no attemptto hide, and, with the fine Tarasconese temperament that overlayseverything, he sometimes says in speaking of his infirmity: "You don'tknow how that hurts me... "

Naturally the curse of Costecalde is Tartarin. So much fame for a singleman! He everywhere! always he! And slowly, subterraneously, like aworm within the gilded wood of an idol, he saps from below for the lasttwenty years that triumphant renown, and gnaws it, and hollows it. When, in the evening, at the club, Tartarin relates his encounters with lionsand his wanderings in the great Sahara, Costecalde sits by with mutelittle laughs, and incredulous shakes of the head. 

"But the skins, _au mouain_, Costecalde... Those lions' skins he sentus, which are there, in the salon of the club?.. "

"_Té! pardi_... Do you suppose there are no furriers in Algeria?.. "

"But the marks of the balls, all round, in the heads?"

"_Et autremain_, did n't we ourselves in the days of the cap-hunts seeragged caps torn with bullets at the hatters' for sale to clumsy shots?"

No doubt the long established fame of Tartarin as a slayer of wildbeasts resisted these attacks; but the Alpinist in himself was open tocriticism, and Costecalde did not deprive himself of the opportunity, being furious that a man should be elected as president of the "Clubof the Alpines" whom age had visibly overweighted and whose liking, acquired in Algeria, for Turkish slippers and flowing garmentspredisposed to laziness. 

In fact, Tartarin seldom took part in the ascensions; he was satisfiedto accompany them with votive wishes, and to read in full session, withrolling eyes, and intonations that turned the ladies pale, the tragicnarratives of the expeditions. 

Costecalde, on the contrary, wiry, vigorous "Cock-leg, " as they calledhim, was always the foremost climber; he had done the Alpines, one byone, planting on their summits inaccessible the banner of the Club, _LaTarasque_, starred in silver. Nevertheless, he was only vice-president, V. P. C. A. But he manipulated the place so well that evidently, at thecoming elections, Tartarin would be made to skip. 

Warned by his faithfuls--Bézuquet the apothecary, Excourbaniès, thebrave Commander Bravida--the hero was at first possessed by blackdisgust, by that indignant rancour which ingratitude and injusticearouse in the noblest soul. He wanted to quit everything, to expatriatehimself, to cross the bridge and go and live in Beaucaire, among theVolsci; after that, he grew calmer. 

To quit his little house, his garden, his beloved habits, to renouncehis chair as president of the Club of the Alpines, founded by himself, to resign that majestic P. C. A. Which adorned and distinguished hiscards, his letter-paper, and even the lining of his hat! Not possible, _vé!_ Suddenly there came into his head an electrifying idea... 

In a word, the exploits of Costecalde were limited to excursions amongthe Alpines. Why should not Tartarin, during the three months thatstill intervened before the elections, why should he not attempt somegrandiose adventure? plant, for instance, the standard of the Club onthe highest peak of Europe, the Jungfrau or the Mont Blanc?

What triumph on his return! what a slap in the face to Costecalde whenthe _Forum_ should publish an account of the ascension! Who would dareto dispute his presidency after that?

Immediately he set to work; sent secretly to Paris for quantities ofworks on Alpine adventure: Whymper's "Scrambles, " Tyndall's "Glaciers, "the "Mont-Blanc" of Stephen d'Arve, reports of the Alpine Club, English and Swiss; cramming his head with a mass of mountaineeringterms--chimneys, couloirs, moulins, névés, séracs, moraines, rotures--without knowing very well what they meant. 

At night, his dreams were fearful with interminable slides and suddenfalls into bottomless crevasses. Avalanches rolled him down, icy arêtescaught his body on the descent; and long after his waking and thechocolate he always took in bed, the agony and the oppression of thatnightmare clung to him. But all this did not hinder him, once afoot, from devoting his whole morning to the most laborious trainingexercises. 

Around Tarascon is a promenade planted with trees which, in the localdictionary, is called the "Tour de Ville. " Every Sunday afternoon, the Tarasconese, who, in spite of their imagination, are a people ofroutine, make the tour of their town, and always in the same direction. Tartarin now exercised himself by making it eight times, ten times, ofa morning, and often reversed the way. He walked, his hands behindhis back, with short-mountain-steps, both slow and sure, till theshopkeepers, alarmed by this infraction of local habits, were lost insuppositions of all possible kinds. 

At home, in his exotic garden, he practised the art of leapingcrevasses, by jumping over the basin in which a few gold-fish wereswimming about among the water-weeds. On two occasions he fell in, andwas forced to change his clothes. Such mishaps inspired him only themore, and, being subject to vertigo, he practised walking on thenarrow masonry round the edge of the water, to the terror of his oldservant-woman, who understood nothing of these performances. 

During this time, he ordered, _in Avignon_, from an excellent locksmith, crampons of the Whymper pattern, and a Kennedy ice-axe; also he procuredhimself a reed-wick lamp, two impermeable coverlets, and two hundredfeet of rope of his own invention, woven with iron wire. 

The arrival of these different articles from Avignon, the mysteriousgoings and comings which their construction required, puzzled theTaras-conese much, and it was generally said about town: "The presidentis preparing a stroke. " But what? Something grand, you may be sure, for, in the beautiful words of the brave and sententious Commander Bravida, retired captain of equipment, who never spoke except in apothegms:"Eagles hunt no flies. "

With his closest intimates Tartarin remained impenetrable. Only, at thesessions of the Club, they noticed the quivering of his voice andthe lightning flash of his eyes whenever he addressed Costecalde--theindirect cause of this new expedition, the dangers and fatigues of whichbecame more pronounced to his mind the nearer he approached it. Theunfortunate man did not attempt to disguise them; in fact he took soblack a view of the matter that he thought it indispensable to set hisaffairs in order, to write those last wishes, the expression of whichis so trying to the Tarasconese, lovers of life, that most of them dieintestate. 

On a radiant morning in June, beneath a cloudless arched and splendidsky, the door of his study open upon the neat little garden withits gravelled paths, where the exotic plants stretched forth theirmotionless lilac shadows, where the fountain tinkled its silvery note'mid the merry shouts of the Savoyards, playing at marbles before thegate, behold Tartarin! in Turkish slippers, wide flannel under-garments, easy in body, his pipe at hand, reading aloud as he wrote the words:--

"This is my last will and testament. "

Ha! one may have one's heart in the right place and solidly hookedthere, but these are cruel moments. Nevertheless, neither his hand norhis voice trembled while he distributed among his fellow-citizens allthe ethnographical riches piled in his little home, carefully dusted andpreserved in immaculate order. 

"To the Club of the Alpines, my baobab (_arbos gigantea_) to stand onthe chimney-piece of the hall of sessions;"

To Bravida, his carbines, revolvers, hunting knives, Malay krishes, tomahawks, and other murderous weapons;

To Excourbaniès, all his pipes, calumets, narghilés, and pipelets forsmoking kif and opium;

To Costecalde--yes, Costecalde himself had his legacy--the famouspoisoned arrows (Do not touch). 

Perhaps beneath this gift was the secret hope that the traitor wouldtouch and die; but nothing of the kind was exhaled by the will, whichclosed with the following words, of a divine meekness:

"I beg my dear Alpinists not to forget their president... I wish themto forgive my enemy as I have forgiven him, although it is he who hascaused my death... "

Here Tartarin was forced to stop, blinded by a flood of tears. For aminute he beheld himself crushed, lying in fragments at the foot ofa high mountain, his shapeless remains gathered up in a barrow, andbrought back to Tarascon. Oh, the power of that Provençal imagination!he was present at his own funeral; he heard the lugubrious chants, andthe talk above his grave: "Poor Tartarin, _péchère!_" and, mingling withthe crowd of his faithful friends, he wept for himself. 

But immediately after, the sight of the sun streaming into his study andglittering on the weapons and pipes in their usual order, the song ofthat thread of a fountain in the middle of the garden recalled him tothe actual state of things. _Différemment_, why die? Why go, even? Whoobliged him? What foolish vanity! Risk his life for a presidential chairand three letters!.. 

'Twas a passing weakness, and it lasted no longer than any other. At theend of five minutes the will was finished, signed, the flourish added, sealed with an enormous black seal, and the great man had concluded hislast preparations for departure. 

Once more had the warren Tartarin triumphed over the cabbage Tartarin. It could be said of the Tarasconese hero, as was said of Turenne: "Hisbody was not always willing to go into battle, but his will led himthere in spite of himself. "

The evening of that same day, as the last stroke of ten was soundingfrom the tower of the town-hall, the streets being already deserted, aman, after brusquely slamming a door, glided along through thedarkened town, where nothing lighted the fronts of the houses, savethe hanging-lamps of the streets and the pink and green bottles of thepharmacy Bézuquet, which projected their reflections on the pavement, together with a silhouette of the apothecary himself resting his elbowson his desk and sound asleep on the Codex;--a little nap, which he tookevery evening from nine to ten, to make himself, so he said, the fresherat night for those who might need his services. That, between ourselves, was a mere tarasconade, for no one ever waked him at night, in facthe himself had cut the bell-wire, in order that he might sleep moretranquilly. 

Suddenly Tartarin entered, loaded with rugs, carpet-bag in hand, andso pale, so discomposed, that the apothecary, with that fiery localimagination from which the pharmacy was no preservative, jumped to theconclusion of some alarming misadventure and was terrified. "Unhappyman!" he cried, "what is it?.. You are poisoned?.. Quick! quick! someipeca... "

And he sprang forward, bustling among his bottles. To stop him, Tartarinwas forced to catch him round the waist. "Listen to me, _qué diable!_"and his voice grated with the vexation of an actor whose entrancehas been made to miss fire. As soon as the apothecary was renderedmotionless behind the counter by an iron wrist, Tartarin said in a lowvoice:--

"Are we alone, Bézuquet?"

"_Bé_! yes, " ejaculated the other, looking about in vague alarm... "Pascalon has gone to bed. " [ Pascalon was his pupil. ] "Mamma too; why doyou ask?"

"Shut the shutters, " commanded Tartarin, without replying; "we might beseen from without. "

Bézuquet obeyed, trembling. An old bachelor, living with his mother, whom he never quitted, he had all the gentleness and timidity of agirl, contrasting oddly with his swarthy skin, his hairy lips, hisgreat hooked nose above a spreading moustache; in short, the head of anAlgerine pirate before the conquest. These antitheses are frequent inTarascon, where heads have too much character, Roman or Saracen, headswith the expression of models for a school of design, but quite outof place in bourgeois trades among the manners and customs of a littletown. 

For instance, Excourbaniès, who has all the air of a _conquistador_, companion of Pizarro, rolls flaming eyes in selling haberdasheryto induce the purchase of two sous' worth of thread. And Bézuquet, labelling liquorice and _sirupus gummi_, resembles an old sea-rover ofthe Barbary coast. 

When the shutters were put up and secured by iron bolts and transversalbars, "Listen, Ferdinand... " said Tartarin, who was fond of callingpeople by their Christian names. And thereupon he unbosomed himself, emptied his heart full of bitterness at the ingratitude of hiscompatriots, related the manoeuvres of "Cock-leg, " the trick about tobe played upon him at the coming elections, and the manner in which heexpected to parry the blow. 

Before all else, the matter must be kept very secret; it must notbe revealed until the moment when success was assured, unless someunforeseen accident, one of those frightful catastrophes--"Hey, Bézuquet! don't whistle in that way when I talk to you. "

This was one of the apothecary's ridiculous habits. Not talkative bynature (a negative quality seldom met with in Tarascon, and which wonhim this confidence of the president), his thick lips, always in theform of an O, had a habit of perpetually whistling that gave him anappearance of laughing in the nose of the world, even on the gravestoccasions. 

So that, while the hero made allusion to his possible death, saying, ashe laid upon the counter a large sealed envelope, "This is my last willand testament, Bézuquet; it is you whom I have chosen as testamentaryexecutor... " "Hui... Hui... Hui... " whistled the apothecary, carriedaway by his mania, while at heart he was deeply moved and fullyconscious of the grandeur of his rôle. 

Then, the hour of departure being at hand, he desired to drink to theenterprise, "something good, _qué?_ a glass of the elixir of Garus, hey?" After several closets had been opened and searched, he rememberedthat mamma had the keys of the Garus. To get them it would be necessaryto awaken her and tell who was there. The elixir was therefore changedto a glass of the _sirop de Calabre_, a summer drink, inoffensiveand modest, which Bézuquet invented, advertising it in the _Forum_as follows: _Sirop de Calabre, ten sous a bottle, including the glass(verre)_. "Sirop de Cadavre, including the worms (_vers_), " said thatinfernal Costecalde, who spat upon all success. But, after all, that horrid play upon words only served to swell the sale, and theTarasconese to this day delight in their _sirop de cadavre_. 

Libations made and a few last words exchanged, they embraced, Bézuquetwhistling as usual in his moustache, adown which rolled great tears. 

"Adieu, _au mouain_"... Said Tartarin in a rough tone, feeling thathe was about to weep himself, and as the shutter of the door had beenlowered the hero was compelled to creep out of the pharmacy on his handsand knees. 

This was one of the trials of the journey now about to begin. 

Three days later he landed in Vitznau at the foot of the Rigi. As themountain for his début, the Rigi had attracted him by its low altitude(5900 feet, about ten times that of Mount Terrible, the highest of theAlpines) and also on account of the splendid panorama to be seen fromthe summit--the Bernese Alps marshalled in line, all white and rosy, around the lakes, awaiting the moment when the great ascensionist shouldcast his ice-axe upon one of them. 

Certain of being recognized on the way and perhaps followed--'t wasa foible of his to believe that throughout all France his fame was asgreat and popular as it was at Tarascon--he had made a great détourbefore entering Switzerland and did not don his accoutrements untilafter he had crossed the frontier. Luckily for him; for never could hisarmament have been contained in one French railway-carriage. 

But, however convenient the Swiss compartments might be, the Alpinist, hampered with utensils to which he was not, as yet, accustomed, crushedtoe-nails with his crampons, harpooned travellers who came in his waywith the point of his alpenstock, and wherever he went, in the stations, the steamers, and the hotel salons, he excited as much amazement as hedid maledictions, avoidance, and angry looks, which he could not explainto himself though his affectionate and communicative nature sufferedfrom them. To complete his discomfort, the sky was always gray, withflocks of clouds and a driving rain. 

It rained at Bâle, on the little white houses, washed and rewashed bythe hands of a maid and the waters of heaven. It rained at Lucerne, onthe quay where the trunks and boxes appeared to be saved, as it were, from shipwreck, and when he arrived at the station of Vitznau, on theshore of the lake of the Four-Cantons, the same deluge was descendingon the verdant slopes of the Rigi, straddled by inky clouds and stripedwith torrents that leaped from rock to rock in cascades of misty sleet, bringing down as they came the loose stones and the pine-needles. Neverhad Tartarin seen so much water. 

He entered an inn and ordered a _café au lait_ with honey and butter, the only really good things he had as yet tasted during his journey. Then, reinvigorated, and his beard sticky with honey, cleaned on acorner of his napkin, he prepared to attempt his first ascension. 

"_Et autremain_" he asked, as he shifted his knapsack, "how long does ittake to ascend the Rigi?"

"One hour, one hour and a quarter, monsieur; but make haste about it;the train is just starting. "

"A train upon the Rigi!.. You are joking!.. "

Through the leaded panes of the tavern window he was shown the trainthat was really starting. Two great covered carriages, windowless, pushed by a locomotive with a short, corpulent chimney, in shape like asaucepan, a monstrous insect, clinging to the mountain and clambering, breathless up its vertiginous slopes. 

The two Tartarins, cabbage and warren, both, at the same instant, revolted at the thought of going up in that hideous mechanism. Oneof them thought it ridiculous to climb the Alps in a lift; as forthe other, those aerial bridges on which the track was laid, with theprospect of a fall of 4000 feet at the slightest derailment, inspiredhim with all sorts of lamentable reflections, justified by the littlecemetery of Vitzgau, the white tombs of which lay huddled together atthe foot of the slope, like linen spread out to bleach in the yard ofa wash-house. Evidently the cemetery is there by way of precaution, sothat, in case of accident, the travellers may drop on the very spot. 

"I'll go afoot, " the valiant Tarasconese said to himself; "'twillexercise me... Zou!"

And he started, wholly preoccupied with manoeuvring his alpenstockin presence of the staff of the hotel, collected about the door andshouting directions to him about the path, to which he did not listen. He first followed an ascending road, paved with large irregular, pointedstones like a lane at the South, and bordered with wooden gutters tocarry off the rains. 

To right and left were great orchards, fields of rank, lush grasscrossed by the same wooden conduits for irrigation through hollowedtrunks of trees. All this made a constant rippling from top to bottomof the mountain, and every time that the ice-axe of the Alpinistbecame hooked as he walked along in the lower branches of an oak or awalnut-tree, his cap crackled as if beneath the nozzle of a watering-pot. 

"Diou! what a lot of water!" sighed the man of the South. But it wasmuch worse when the pebbly path abruptly ceased and he was forcedto puddle along in the torrent or jump from rock to rock to save hisgaiters. Then a shower joined in, penetrating, steady, and seeming toget colder the higher he went. When he stopped to recover breath hecould hear nothing else than a vast noise of waters in which he seemedto be sunk, and he saw, as he turned round, the clouds descending intothe lake in delicate long filaments of spun glass through which thechalets of Vitznau shone like freshly varnished toys. 

Men and children passed him with lowered heads and backs bent beneathhods of white-wood, containing provisions for some villa or _pension_, the balconies of which could be distinguished on the slopes. "Rigi-Kulm?" asked Tartarin, to be sure he was heading in the rightdirection. But his extraordinary equipment, especially, that knittedmuffler which masked his face, cast terror along the way, and allwhom he addressed only opened their eyes wide and hastened their stepswithout replying. 

Soon these encounters became rare. The last human being whom he saw wasan old woman washing her linen in the hollowed trunk of a tree under theshelter of an enormous red umbrella, planted in the ground. 

"Rigi-Kulm?" asked the Alpinist. 

The old woman raised an idiotic, cadaverous face, with a goitre swayingupon her throat as large as the rustic bell of a Swiss cow. Then, aftergazing at him for a long time, she was seized with inextinguishablelaughter, which stretched her mouth from ear to ear, wrinkled up thecorners of her little eyes, and every time she opened them the sight ofTartarin, planted before her with his ice-axe on his shoulder, redoubledher joy. 

"_Tron de l'air!_" growled the Tarasconese, "lucky for her that she'sa woman... " Snorting with anger, he continued his way and lost it in apine-wood, where his boots slipped on the oozing moss. 

Beyond this point the landscape changed. No more paths, or trees, orpastures. Gloomy, denuded slopes, great boulders of rock which he scaledon his knees for fear of falling; sloughs full of yellow mud, which hecrossed slowly, feeling before him with his alpenstock and lifting hisfeet like a knife-grinder. At every moment he looked at the compasshanging to his broad watch-ribbon; but whether it were the altitude orthe variations of the temperature, the needle seemed untrue. And howcould he find his bearings in a thick yellow fog that hindered himfrom seeing ten steps about him--steps that were now, within a moment, covered with an icy glaze that made the ascent more difficult. 

Suddenly he stopped; the ground whitened vaguely before him... Look outfor your eyes!.. 

He had come to the region of snows... 

Immediately he pulled out his spectacles, took them from their case, andsettled them securely on his nose. The moment was a solemn one. Slightlyagitated, yet proud all the same, it seemed to Tar-tarin that inone bound he had risen 3000 feet toward the summits and his greatestdangers. 

He now advanced with more precaution, dreaming of crevasses and fissuressuch as the books tell of, and cursing in the depths of his heart thosepeople at the inn who advised him to mount straight and take no guide. After all, perhaps he had mistaken the mountain! More than six hours hadhe tramped, and the Rigi required only three. The wind blew, a chillingwind that whirled the snow in that crepuscular fog. 

Night was about to overtake him. Where find a hut? or even a projectingrock to shelter him? All of a sudden, he saw before his nose on thearid, naked plain a species of wooden chalet, bearing, on a long placardin gigantic type, these letters, which he deciphered with difficulty:PHO... TO... GRA... PHIE DU RI... GI KULM. At the same instant the vasthotel with its three hundred windows loomed up before him between thegreat lamp-posts, the globes of which were now being lighted in the fog. 

III. 

 An alarm on the Rigi. "Keep cool! Keep cool!" The Alpine horn. What Tartarin saw, on awaking, in his looking-glass, Perplexity. A guide is ordered by telephone. 

"Quès aco?.. Quî vive?" cried Tartarin, ears alert and eyes straininghard into the darkness. 

Feet were running through the hotel, doors were slamming, breathlessvoices were crying: "Make haste! make haste!.. " while without wasringing what seemed to be a trumpet-call, as flashes of flame illuminedboth panes and curtains. 

Fire!.. 

At a bound he was out of bed, shod, clothed, and running headlongdown the staircase, where the gas still burned and a rustling swarm of_misses_ were descending, with hair put up in haste, and they themselvesswathed in shawls and red woollen jackets, or anything else that came tohand as they jumped out of bed. 

Tartarin, to fortify himself and also to reassure the young ladies, cried out, as he rushed on, hustling everybody: "Keep cool! Keep cool!"in the voice of a gull, pallid, distraught, one of those voices that wehear in dreams sending chills down the back of the bravest man. Now, canyou understand those young _misses_, who laughed as they looked at himand seemed to think it very funny? Girls have no notion of danger, atthat age!.. 

Happily, the old diplomatist came along behind them, very cursorilyclothed in a top-coat below which appeared his white drawers withtrailing ends of tape-string. 

Here was a man, at last!.. 

Tartarin ran to him waving his arms: "Ah! Monsieur le baron, what adisaster!.. Do you know about it?.. Where is it?.. How did it take?.. "

"Who? What?" stuttered the terrified baron, not understanding. 

"Why, the fire... "

"What fire?.. "

The poor man's countenance was so inexpressibly vacant and stupid thatTartarin abandoned him and rushed away abruptly to "organize help... "

"Help!" repeated the baron, and after him four or five waiters, sound asleep on their feet in the antechamber, looked at one anothercompletely bewildered and echoed, "Help!.. "

At the first step that Tartarin made out-of-doors he saw his error. Not the slightest conflagration! Only savage cold, and pitchy darkness, scarcely lighted by the resinous torches that were being carried hitherand thither, casting on the snow long, blood-coloured traces. 

On the steps of the portico, a performer on the Alpine horn wasbellowing his modulated moan, that monotonous _rànz des vaches_ on threenotes, with which the Rigi-Kulm is wont to waken the worshippers of thesun and announce to them the rising of their star. 

_It is said_ that it shows itself, sometimes, on rising, at the extremetop of the mountain behind the hotel. To get his bearings, Tartarin hadonly to follow the long peal of the misses' laughter which now went pasthim. But he walked more slowly, still full of sleep and his legs heavywith his six hours' climb. 

"Is that you, Manilof?.. " said a clear voice from the darkness, thevoice of a woman. "Help me... I have lost my shoe. "

He recognized at once the foreign warble of his pretty little neighbourat the dinner-table, whose delicate silhouette he now saw in the firstpale gleam of the coming sun. 

"It is not Manilof, mademoiselle, but if I can be useful to you... "

She gave a little cry of surprise and alarm as she made a recoilinggesture that Tartarin did not perceive, having already stooped to feelabout the short and crackling grass around them. 

"_Té, pardi!_ here it is!" he cried joyfully. He shook the dainty shoewhich the snow had powdered, and putting a knee to earth, most gallantlyin the snow and the dampness, he asked, for all reward, the honour ofreplacing it on Cinderella's foot. 

She, more repellent than in the tale, replied with a very curt "no;" andendeavoured, by hopping on one foot, to reinstate her silk stockingin its little bronze shoe; but in that she could never have succeededwithout the help of the hero, who was greatly moved by feeling for aninstant that delicate hand upon his shoulder. 

"You have good eyes, " she said, by way of thanks as they now walked sideby side, and feeling their way. 

"The habit of watching for game, mademoiselle. "

"Ah! you are a sportsman?"

She said it with an incredulous, satirical, accent Tartarin had onlyto name himself in order to convince her, but, like the bearers of allillustrious names, he preferred discretion, coquetry. So, wishing tograduate the surprise, he answered:--

"I am a sportsman, _efféctivemain_. "

She continued in the same tone of irony:--

"And what game do you prefer to hunt?"

"The great carnivora, wild beasts... " uttered Tartarin, thinking todazzle her. 

"Do you find many on the Rigi?"

Always gallant, and ready in reply, Tartarin was about to say thaton the Rigi he had so far met none but gazelles, when his answer wassuddenly cut short by the appearance of two shadows, who called out:--

"Sonia!.. Sonia!.. "

"I'm coming, " she said, and turning to Tartarin, whose eyes, nowaccustomed to the darkness, could distinguish her pale and pretty facebeneath her mantle, she added, this time seriously:--

"You have undertaken a dangerous enterprise, my good man... Take careyou do not leave your bones here. "

So saying, she instantly disappeared in the darkness with hercompanions. 

Later, the threatening intonation that emphasized those words was fatedto trouble the imagination of the Southerner; but now, he was simplyvexed at the term "good man, " cast upon his elderly embonpoint, and alsoat the abrupt departure of the young girl just at the moment when he wasabout to name himself, and enjoy her stupefaction. 

He made a few steps in the direction the group had taken, hearing aconfused murmur, with coughs and sneezes, of the clustering touristswaiting impatiently for the rising of the sun, the most vigorous amongthem having climbed to a little belvedere, the steps of which, waddedwith snow, could be whitely distinguished in the vanishing darkness. 

A gleam was beginning to light the Orient, saluted by a fresh blast fromthe Alpine horn, and that "Ah!!" of relief, always heard in theatreswhen the third bell raises the curtain. 

Slight as a ray through a shutter, this gleam, nevertheless, enlargedthe horizon, but, at the same moment a fog, opaque and yellow, rose fromthe valley, a steam that grew more thick, more penetrating as the dayadvanced. 'T was a veil between the scene and the spectators. 

All hope was now renounced of the gigantic effects predicted in theguide-books. On the other hand, the heteroclite array of the dancers ofthe night before, torn from their slumbers, appeared in fantastic andridiculous outline like the shades of a magic lantern; shawls, rugs, andeven bed-quilts wrapped around them. Under varied headgear, nightcapsof silk or cotton, broad-brimmed female hats, turbans, fur caps withear-pads, were haggard faces, swollen faces, heads of shipwrecked beingscast upon a desert island in mid-ocean, watching for a sail in theoffing with staring eyes. 

But nothing--everlastingly nothing!

Nevertheless, certain among them strove, in a gush of good-will, todistinguish the surrounding summits, and, on the top of the belvederecould be heard the clucking of the Peruvian family, pressing around abig devil, wrapped to his feet in a checked ulster, who was pointing outimperturbably, the invisible panorama of the Bernese Alps, naming in aloud voice the peaks that were lost in the fog. 

"You see on the left the Finsteraarhorn, thirteen thousand seven hundredand ninety-five feet high... The Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the Monk, the Jungfrau, the elegant proportions of which I especially point out tothese young ladies... "

"_Bé! vé!_ there's one who does n't lack cheek!" thought Tartarin; then, on reflection, he added: "I know that voice, _au mouain. _"

He recognized the accent, that accent of the South, distinguishablefrom afar like garlic; but, quite preoccupied in finding again his fairUnknown, he did not pause, and continued to inspect the groups--withoutresult. She must have reentered the hotel, as they all did now, wearywith standing about, shivering, to no purpose, so that presently no oneremained on the cold and desolate plateau of that gray dawn but Tartarinand the Alpine horn-player, who continued to blow a melancholy notethrough his huge instrument, like a dog baying the moon. 

He was a short old man, with a long beard, wearing a Tyrolese hatadorned with green woollen tassels that hung down upon his back and, in letters of gold, the words (common to all the hats and caps in theservice of the hotel) _Regina Montium_. Tartarin went up to give him apourboire, as he had seen all the other tourists do. "Let us go tobed again, my old friend, " he said, tapping him on the shoulder withTarasconese familiarity. "A fine humbug, _qué!_ the sunrise on theRigi. "

The old man continued to blow into his horn, concluding his ritornellein three notes with a mute laugh that wrinkled the corners of his eyesand shook the green glands of his head-gear. 

Tartarin, in spite of all, did not regret his night. That meeting withthe pretty blonde repaid him for his loss of sleep, for, though nighupon fifty, he still had a warm heart, a romantic imagination, a glowinghearthstone of life. Returning to bed, and shutting his eyes to makehimself go to sleep, he fancied he felt in his hand that dainty littleshoe, and heard again the gentle call of the fair young girl: "Is ityou, Manilof?"

Sonia... What a pretty name!.. She was certainly Russian; and thoseyoung men were travelling with her; friends of her brother, no doubt. 

Then all grew hazy; the pretty face in its golden curls joined the otherfloating visions, --Rigi slopes, cascades like plumes of feathers, --andsoon the heroic breathing of the great man, sonorous and rhythmical, filled the little room and the greater part of the long corridor... 

The next morning, before descending at the first gong for breakfast, Tartarin was about to make sure that his beard was well brushed, andthat he himself did not look too badly in his Alpine costume, when, all of a sudden, he quivered. Before him, open, and gummed to hislooking-glass by two wafers, was an anonymous letter, containing thefollowing threats:--

"_Devil of a Frenchman, your queer old clothes do not conceal you. You are forgiven once more for this attempt; but if you cross our pathagain, beware!_"

Bewildered, he read this two or three times over without understandingit. Of whom, of what must he beware? How came that letter there?Evidently during his sleep; for he did not see it on returning from hisauroral promenade. He rang for the maid on duty; a fat, white face, allpitted with the small-pox, a perfect gruyère cheese, from which nothingintelligible could be drawn, except that she was of "bon famille, " andnever entered the rooms of the gentlemen unless they were there. 

"A queer thing, _au mouain_, " thought Tartarin, turning and returningthe letter, and much impressed by it. For a moment the name ofCoste-calde crossed his mind, --Costecalde, informed of his projects ofascension, and endeavouring to prevent them by manoeuvres and threats. On reflection, this appeared to him unlikely, and he ended by persuadinghimself that the letter was a joke... Perhaps those little misses whohad laughed at him so heartily... They are so free, those English andAmerican young girls!

The second breakfast gong sounded. He put the letter in his pocket:"After all, we'll soon see... " and the formidable grimace with which heaccompanied that reflection showed the heroism of his soul. 

Fresh surprise when he sat down to table. Instead of his prettyneighbour, "whom Love had curled with gold, " he perceived the vulturethroat of an old Englishwoman, whose long lappets swept the cloth. Itwas rumoured about him that the young lady and her companions had leftthe hotel by one of the early morning trains. 

"'_Cri nom!_ I'm fooled... " exclaimed aloud the Italian tenor, who, theevening before, had so rudely signified to Tartarin that he could notspeak French. He must have learned it in a single night! The tenorrose, threw down his napkin, and hurried away, leaving the Southernercompletely nonplussed. 

Of all the guests of the night before, none now remained but himself. That is always so on the Rigi-Kulm; no one stays there more thantwenty-four hours. In other respects the scene was invariably the same;the compote-dishes in files divided the factions. But on this particularmorning the Rices triumphed by a great majority, reinforced by certainillustrious personages, and the Prunes did not, as they say, have it alltheir own way. 

Tartarin, without taking sides with one or the other, went up to hisroom before the dessert, buckled his bag, and asked for his bill. Hehad had enough of _Regina Montium_ and its dreary table d'hôte of deafmutes. 

Abruptly recalled to his Alpine madness by the touch of his ice-axe, hiscrampons, and the rope in which he rewound himself, he burned to attacka real mountain, a summit deprived of a lift and a photographer. Hehesitated between the Finsteraarhorn, as being the highest, and theJungfrau, whose pretty name of virginal whiteness made him think morethan once of the little Russian. 

Ruminating on these alternatives while they made out his bill, he amusedhimself in the vast, lugubrious, silent hall of the hotel by looking atthe coloured photographs hanging to the walls, representing glaciers, snowy slopes, famous and perilous mountain passes: here, wereascensionists in file, like ants on a quest, creeping along an icy_arête_ sharply defined and blue; farther on was a deep crevasse, withglaucous sides, over which was thrown a ladder, and a lady crossing iton her knees, with an abbé after her raising his cassock. 

The Alpinist of Tarascon, both hands on his ice-axe, had never, asyet, had an idea of such difficulties; he would have to meet them, _pasmouain!_.. 

Suddenly he paled fearfully. 

In a black frame, an engraving from the famous drawing of Gustave Doré, reproducing the catastrophe on the Matterhorn, met his eye. Four humanbodies on the flat of their backs or stomachs were coming headlongdown the almost perpendicular slope of a _névé_, with extended armsand clutching hands, seeking the broken rope which held this string oflives, and only served to drag them down to death in the gulf where themass was to fall pell-mell, with ropes, axes, veils, and all the gayoutfit of Alpine ascension, grown suddenly tragic. 

"Awful!" cried Tartarin, speaking aloud in his horror. 

A very civil maître d'hôtel heard the exclamation, and thought bestto reassure him. Accidents of that nature, he said, were becoming veryrare: the essential thing was to commit no imprudence and, above all, toprocure good guides. 

Tartarin asked if he could be told of one there, "with confidence... "Not that he himself had any fear, but it was always best to have a sureman. 

The waiter reflected, with an important air, twirling his moustache. "With confidence?.. Ah! if monsieur had only spoken sooner; we had a manhere this morning who was just the thing... The courier of that Peruvianfamily... "

"He understands the mountain?" said Tartarin, with a knowing air. 

"Oh, yes, monsieur, all the mountains, in Switzerland, Savoie, Tyrol, India, in fact, the whole world; he has done them all, he knows themall, he can tell you all about them, and that's something!.. I thinkhe might easily be induced... With a man like that a child could goanywhere without danger. "

"Where is he? How could I find him?"

"At the Kaltbad, monsieur, preparing the rooms for his party... I couldtelephone to him. "

A telephone! on the Rigi!

That was the climax. But Tartarin could no longer be amazed. 

Five minutes later the man returned bringing an answer. 

The courier of the Peruvian party had just started for the Tellsplatte, where he would certainly pass the night. 

The Tellsplatte is a memorial chapel, to which pilgrimages are made inhonour of William Tell. Some persons go there to see the mural pictureswhich a famous painter of Bâle has lately executed in the chapel... 

As it only took by boat an hour or an hour and a half to reach theplace, Tartarin did not hesitate. It would make him lose a day, but heowed it to himself to render that homage to William Tell, for whom hehad always felt a peculiar predilection. And, besides, what a chance ifhe could there pick up this marvellous guide and induce him to do theJungfrau with him. 

Forward, _zou!_

He paid his bill, in which the setting and the rising sun were reckonedas extras, also the candles and the attendance. Then, still preceded bythe rattle of his metals, which sowed surprise and terror on his way, he went to the railway station, because to descend the Rigi as he hadascended it, on foot, would have been lost time, and, really, it wasdoing too much honour to that very artificial mountain. 

IV. 

 On the boat. It rains. The Tarasconese hero salutes the Ashes. The truth about William Tell. Disillusion. Tartarin of Tarascon never existed. "Té! Bompard. "

He had left the snows of the Rigi-Kulm; down below, on the lake, hereturned to rain, fine, close, misty, a vapour of water through whichthe mountains stumped themselves in, graduating in the distance to theform of clouds. 

The "Föhn" whistled, raising white caps on the lake where the gulls, flying low, seemed borne upon the waves; one might have thought one'sself on the open ocean. 

Tartarin recalled to mind his departure from the port of Marseilles, fifteen years earlier, when he started to hunt the lion--that spotlesssky, dazzling with silvery light, that sea so blue, blue as the water ofdye-works, blown back by the mistral in sparkling white saline crystals, the bugles of the forts and the bells of all the steeples echoing joy, rapture, sun--the fairy world of a first journey. 

What a contrast to this black dripping wharf, almost deserted, on whichwere seen, through the mist as through a sheet of oiled paper, a fewpassengers wrapped in ulsters and formless india-rubber garments, andthe helmsman standing motionless, muffled in his hooded cloak, hismanner grave and sibylline, behind this notice printed in threelanguages:--

"Forbidden to speak to the man at the wheel. "

Very useless caution, for nobody spoke on board the "Winkelried, "neither on deck, nor in the first and second saloons crowded withlugubrious-looking passengers, sleeping, reading, yawning, pell-mell, with their smaller packages scattered on the seats--the sort of scene weimagine that a batch of exiles on the morning after a coup-d'État mightpresent. 

From time to time the hoarse bellow of the steam-pipe announced thearrival of the boat at a stopping-place. A noise of steps, and ofbaggage dragged about the deck. The shore, looming through the fog, camenearer and showed its slopes of a sombre green, its villas shiveringamid inundated groves, files of poplars flanking the muddy roads alongwhich sumptuous hotels were formed in line with their names in lettersof gold upon their façades, Hôtel Meyer, Müller, du Lac, etc. , whereheads, bored with existence, made themselves visible behind thestreaming window-panes. 

The wharf was reached, the passengers disembarked and went upward, allequally muddy, soaked, and silent. 'Twas a coming and going of umbrellasand omnibuses, quickly vanishing. Then a great beating of the wheels, churning up the water with their paddles, and the shore retreated, becoming once more a misty landscape with its _pensions_ Meyer, Müller, du Lac, etc. , the windows of which, opened for an instant, gavefluttering handkerchiefs to view from every floor, and outstretchedarms that seemed to say: "Mercy! pity! take us, take us... If you onlyknew!.. "

At times the "Winkelried" crossed on its way some other steamer with itsname in black letters on its white paddle-box: "Germania. ".. "GuillaumeTell"... The same lugubrious deck, the same refracting caoutchoucs, thesame most lamentable pleasure trip as that of the other phantom vesselgoing its different way, and the same heart-broken glances exchangedfrom deck to deck. 

And to say that those people travelled for enjoyment! and that allthose boarders in the Hôtels du Lac, Meyer, and Müller were captives forpleasure!

Here, as on the Rigi-Kulm, the thing that above all suffocated Tartarin, agonized him, froze him, even more than the cold rain and the murky sky, was the utter impossibility of talking. True, he had again met facesthat he knew--the member of the Jockey Club with his niece (h'm!h'm!.. ), the academician Astier-Réhu, and the Bonn ProfessorSchwanthaler, those two implacable enemies condemned to live side byside for a month manacled to the itinerary of a Cook's Circular, and others. But none of these illustrious Prunes would recognize theTarasconese Alpinist, although his mountain muffler, his metal utensils, his ropes in saltire, distinguished him from others, and marked him ina manner that was quite peculiar. They all seemed ashamed of the nightbefore, and the inexplicable impulse communicated to them by the fieryardour of that fat man. 

Mme. Schwanthaler, alone, approached her partner, with the rosy, laughing face of a plump little fairy, and taking her skirt in her twofingers as if to suggest a minuet. "Ballir... Dantsir... Very choli... "remarked the good lady. Was this a memory that she evoked, or atemptation that she offered? At any rate, as she did not let go of him, Tartarin, to escape her pertinacity, went up on deck, preferring to besoaked to the skin rather than be made ridiculous. 

And it rained!.. And the sky was dirty!.. To complete his gloom, a wholesquad of the Salvation Army, who had come aboard at Beckenried, a dozenstout girls with stolid faces, in navy-blue gowns and Greenaway bonnets, were grouped under three enormous scarlet umbrellas, and were singingverses, accompanied on the accordion by a man, a sort of David-la-Gamme, tall and fleshless with crazy eyes. These sharp, flat, discordantvoices, like the cry of gulls, rolled dragging, drawling through therain and the black smoke of the engine which the wind beat down upon thedeck. Never had Tartarin heard anything so lamentable. 

At Brünnen the squad landed, leaving the pockets of the other travellersswollen with pious little tracts; and almost immediately after the songsand the accordion of these poor larvae ceased, the sky began to clearand patches of blue were seen. 

They now entered the lake of Uri, closed in and darkened by lofty, untrodden mountains, and the tourists pointed out to each other, onthe right at the foot of the Seelisberg, the field of Grütli, whereMelchtal, Fürst, and Stauffacher made oath to deliver their country. 

Tartarin, with much emotion, took off his cap, paying no attention toenvironing amazement, and waved it in the air three times, to do honourto the ashes of those heroes. A few of the passengers mistook hispurpose, and politely returned his bow. 

The engine at last gave a hoarse roar, its echo repercussioning fromcliff to cliff of the narrow space. The notice hung out on deck beforeeach new landing-place (as they do at public balls to vary the countrydances) announced the Tells-platte. 

They arrived. 

The chapel is situated just five minutes' walk from the landing, at theedge of the lake, on the very rock to which William Tell sprang, duringthe tempest, from Gessler's boat. It was to Tartarin a most delightfulemotion to tread, as he followed the travellers of the Circular Cookalong the lakeside, that historic soil, to recall and live again theprincipal episodes of the great drama which he knew as he did his ownlife. 

From his earliest years, William Tell had been his type. When, in theBézuquet pharmacy, they played the game of preference, each personwriting secretly on folded slips the poet, the tree, the odour, thehero, the woman he preferred, one of the papers invariably ran thus:--

 "Tree preferred? ........... The baobab. Odour? ..................... Gunpowder. Writer? .................... Fenimore Cooper. What I would prefer to be .. William Tell. "

And every voice in the pharmacy cried out: "That's Tartarin!"

Imagine, therefore, how happy he was and how his heart was beating as hestood before that memorial chapel raised to a hero by the gratitude ofa whole people. It seemed to him that William Tell in person, stilldripping with the waters of the lake, his crossbow and his arrows inhand, was about to open the door to him. 

"No entrance... I am at work... This is not the day... " cried a loudvoice from within, made louder by the sonority of the vaulted roof. 

"Monsieur Astier-Réhu, of the French Academy... "

"Herr Doctor Professor Schwanthaler... "

"Tartarin of Tarascon... "

In the arch above the portal, perched upon a scaffolding, appeared ahalf-length of the painter in working-blouse, palette in hand. 

"My _famulus_ will come down and open to you, messieurs, " he said withrespectful intonations. 

"I was sure of it, _pardi!_" thought Tartarin; "I had only to namemyself. "

However, he had the good taste to stand aside modestly, and only enteredafter all the others. 

The painter, superb fellow, with the gilded, ruddy head of an artist ofthe Renaissance, received his visitors on the wooden steps which led tothe temporary staging put up for the purpose of painting the roof. Thefrescos, representing the principal episodes in the life of WilliamTell, were finished, all but one, namely: the scene of the apple inthe market-place of Altorf. On this he was now at work, and his young_famulus_, as he called him, feet and legs bare under a toga of themiddle ages, and his hair archangelically arranged, was posing as theson of William Tell. 

All these archaic personages, red, green, yellow, blue, made taller thannature in narrow streets and under the posterns of the period, intended, of course, to be seen at a distance, impressed the spectators rathersadly. However, they were there to admire, and they admired. Besides, none of them knew anything. 

"I consider that a fine characterization, " said the pontificalAstier-Réhu, carpet-bag in hand. 

And Schwanthaler, a camp-stool under his arm, not willing to bebehindhand, quoted two verses of Schiller, most of it remaining in hisflowing beard. Then the ladies exclaimed, and for a time nothing washeard but:--

"Schön!.. Schön... "

"Yes... Lovely... "

"Exquisite! delicious!.. "

One might have thought one's self at a confectioner's. 

Abruptly a voice broke forth, rending with the ring of a trumpet thatcomposed silence. 

"Badly shouldered, I tell you... That crossbow is not in place... "

Imagine the stupor of the painter in presence of this exorbitantAlpinist, who, alpenstock in hand and ice-axe on his shoulder, riskingthe annihilation of somebody at each of his many evolutions, wasdemonstrating to him by A + B that the motions of his William Tell werenot correct. 

"I know what I am talking about, _au mouain_... I beg you to believeit... "

"Who are you?"

"Who am I!" exclaimed the Alpinist, now thoroughly vexed... So it wasnot to him that the door was opened; and drawing himself up he said: "Goask my name of the panthers of the Zaccar, of the lions of Atlas... Theywill answer you, perhaps. "

The company recoiled; there was general alarm. 

"But, " asked the painter, "in what way is my action wrong?"

"Look at me, _té!_"

Falling into position with a thud of his heels that made the planksbeneath them smoke, Tar-tarin, shouldering his ice-axe like a crossbow, stood rigid. 

"Superb! He's right... Don't stir... "

Then to the _famulus_: "Quick! a block, charcoal!.. "

The fact is, the Tarasconese hero was something worth painting, --squat, round-shouldered, head bent forward, the muffler round his chin like astrap, and his flaming little eye taking aim at the terrified _famulus_. 

Imagination, O magic power!.. He thought himself on the marketplace ofAltorf, in front of his own child, he, who had never had any; an arrowin his bow, another in his belt to pierce the heart of the tyrant. Hisconviction became so strong that it conveyed itself to others. 

"'T is William Tell himself!.. " said the painter, crouched on a stooland driving his sketch with a feverish hand. "Ah! monsieur, why did Inot know you earlier? What a model you would have been for me!.. "

"Really! then you see some resemblance?" said Tartarin, much flattered, but keeping his pose. 

Yes, it was just so that the artist imagined his hero. 

"The head, too?"

"Oh! the head, that's no matter... " and the painter stepped back tolook at his sketch. "Yes, a virile mask, energetic, just what Iwanted--inasmuch as nobody knows anything about William Tell, whoprobably never existed. "

Tartarin dropped the cross-bow from stupefaction. 

"_Outre!_ {*}.. Never existed!.. What is that you are saying?"

 * "Outre" and "boufre" are Tarasconese oaths of mysterious etymology. 

"Ask these gentlemen... "

Astier-Réhu, solemn, his three chins in his white cravat, said: "That isa Danish legend. "

"Icelandic.. " affirmed Schwanthaler, no less majestic. 

"Saxo Grammaticus relates that a valiant archer named Tobé orPaltanoke... "

"Es ist in der Vilkinasaga geschrieben... "

Both together:--

 was condemned by the | dass der Islandische König King of Denmark Harold | Needing... " of the Blue Teeth... " |

With staring eyes and arms extended, neither looking at norcomprehending each other, they both talked at once, as if on a rostrum, in the doctoral, despotic tones of professors certain of never beingrefuted; until, getting angry, they only shouted names: "Justinger ofBerne!.. Jean of Winterthur!.. "

Little by little, the discussion became general, excited, and furiousamong the visitors. Umbrellas, camp-stools, and valises were brandished;the unhappy artist, trembling for the safety of his scaffolding, wentfrom one to another imploring peace. When the tempest had abated, hereturned to his sketch and looked for his mysterious model, for himwhose name the panthers of the Zaccar and the lions of Atlas could alonepronounce; but he was nowhere to be seen; the Alpinist had disappeared. 

At that moment he was clambering with furious strides up a little pathamong beeches and birches that led to the Hôtel Tellsplatte, where thecourier of the Peruvian family was to pass the night; and under theshock of his deception he was talking to himself in a loud voice andramming his alpenstock furiously into the sodden ground:--

Never existed! William Tell! William Tell a myth! And it was a paintercharged with the duty of decorating the Tellsplatte who said thatcalmly. He hated him as if for a sacrilege; he hated those learnedmen, and this denying, demolishing impious age, which respects nothing, neither fame nor grandeur--_coquin de sort!_

And so, two hundred, three hundred years hence, when _Tartarin_ wasspoken of there would always be Astier-Réhus and Professor Schwanthalersto deny that he ever existed--a Provençal myth! a Barbary legend!.. He stopped, choking with indignation and his rapid climb, and seatedhimself on a rustic bench. 

From there he could see the lake between the branches, and the whitewalls of the chapel like a new mausoleum. A roaring of steam and thebustle of getting to the wharf announced the arrival of fresh visitors. They collected on the bank, guide-books in hand, and then advanced withthoughtful gestures and extended arms, evidently relating the "legend. "Suddenly, by an abrupt revulsion of ideas, the comicality of the wholething struck him. 

He pictured to himself all historical Switzerland living upon thisimaginary hero; raising statues and chapels in his honour on the littlesquares of the little towns, and placing monuments in the museums ofthe great ones; organizing patriotic fêtes, to which everybody rushed, banners displayed, from all the cantons, with banquets, toasts, speeches, hurrahs, songs, and tears swelling all breasts, and this for agreat patriot, whom everybody knew had never existed. 

Talk of Tarascon indeed! There's a tarasconade for you, the like ofwhich was never invented down there!

His good-humour quite restored, Tartarin in a few sturdy strides struckthe highroad to Fluelen, at the side of which the Hôtel Tellsplattespreads out its long façade. While awaiting the dinner-bell the guestswere walking about in front of a cascade over rock-work on the gulliedroad, where landaus were drawn up, their poles on the ground amongpuddles of water in which was reflected a copper-coloured sun. 

Tartarin inquired for his man. They told him he was dining. "Then takeme to him, _zou!_" and this was said with such authority that inspite of the respectful repugnance shown to disturbing so importanta personage, a maid-servant conducted the Alpinist through the wholehotel, where his advent created some amazement, to the invaluablecourier who was dining alone in a little room that looked upon thecourt-yard. 

"Monsieur, " said Tartarin as he entered, his ice-axe on his shoulder, "excuse me if... "

He stopped stupefied, and the courier, tall, lank, his napkin at hischin, in the savoury steam of a plateful of hot soup, let fall hisspoon. 

"_Vé!_ Monsieur Tartarin... "

"_Té!_ Bompard. "

It was Bompard, former manager of the Club, a good fellow, but afflictedwith a fabulous imagination which rendered him incapable of tellinga word of truth, and had caused him to be nicknamed in Tarascon "TheImpostor. "

Called an impostor in Tarascon! you can judge what he must have been. And this was the incomparable guide, the climber of the Alps, theHimalayas, the Mountains of the Moon. 

"Oh! now, then, I understand, " ejaculated Tartarin, rather nonplussed;but, even so, joyful to see a face from home and to hear once more thatdear, delicious accent of the Cours. 

"_Différemment_, Monsieur Tartarin, you 'll dine with me, _qué?_"

Tartarin hastened to accept, delighted at the pleasure of sitting downat a private table opposite to a friend, without the very smallestlitigious compote-dish between them, to be able to hobnob, to talk ashe ate, and to eat good things, carefully cooked and fresh; for couriersare admirably treated by innkeepers, and served apart with all the bestwines and the extra dainties. 

Many were the _au mouains, pas mouains_, and _différemments_. 

"Then, my dear fellow, it was really you I heard last night, up there, on the platform?.. "

"Hey! _parfaitemain_... I was making those young ladies admire... Fine, isn't it, sunrise on the Alps?"

"Superb!" cried Tartarin, at first without conviction and merely toavoid contradicting him, but caught the next minute; and after that itwas really bewildering to hear those two Tarasconese enthusiastslauding the splendours they had found on the Rigi. It was Joanne cappingBaedeker. 

Then, as the meal went on, the conversation became more intimate, fullof confidences and effusive protestations, which brought real tearsto their Provençal eyes, lively, brilliant eyes, but keeping always intheir facile emotion a little corner of jest and satire. In that alonedid the two friends resemble each other; for in person one was as lean, tanned, weatherbeaten, seamed with the wrinkles special to the grimacesof his profession, as the other was short, stocky, sleek-skinned, andsound-blooded. 

He had seen all, that poor Bompard, since his exodus from the Club. Thatinsatiable imagination of his which prevented him from ever staying inone place had kept him wandering under so many suns, and through suchdiverse fortunes. He related his adventures, and counted up thefine occasions to enrich himself which had snapped, there! in hisfingers--such as his last invention for saving the war-budget the costof boots and shoes... "Do you know how?.. Oh, _moun Diou!_ it is verysimple... By shoeing the feet of the soldiers. "

"_Outre!_" cried Tartarin, horrified. 

Bompard continued very calmly, with his natural air of cold madness:--

"A great idea, wasn't it? Eh! _be!_ at the ministry they did not evenanswer me... Ah! my poor Monsieur Tartarin, I have had my bad moments, I have eaten the bread of poverty before I entered the service of theCompany... "

"Company! what Company?"

Bompard lowered his voice discreetly. 

"Hush! presently, not here... " Then returning to his natural tones, "_Etautremain_, you people at Tarascon, what are you all doing? You haven'tyet told me what brings you to our mountains... "

It was now for Tartarin to pour himself out. Without anger, but withthat melancholy of declining years, that ennui which attacks as theygrow elderly great artists, beautiful women, and all conquerors ofpeoples and hearts, he told of the defection of his compatriots, theplot laid against him to deprive him of the presidency, the decisionhe had come to to do some act of heroism, a great ascension, theTarasconese banner borne higher than it had ever before been planted; inshort, to prove to the Alpinists of Tarascon that he was stillworthy... Still worthy of... Emotion overcame him, he was forced to keepsilence... Then he added:--

"You know me, Gonzague... " and nothing can ever render the effusion, the caressing charm with which he uttered that troubadouresque Christianname of the courier. It was like one way of pressing his hands, ofcoming nearer to his heart... "You know me, _que!_ You know if I balkedwhen the question came up of marching upon the lion; and during the war, when we organized together the defences of the Club... "

Bompard nodded his head with terrible emphasis; he thought he was therestill. 

"Well, my good fellow, what the lions, what the Krupp cannon could neverdo, the Alps have accomplished... I am afraid. "

"Don't say that, Tartarin!"

"Why not?" said the hero, with great gentleness... "I say it, because itis so... "

And tranquilly, without posing, he acknowledged the impression made uponhim by Doré's drawing of that catastrophe on the Matterhorn, whichwas ever before his eyes. He feared those perils, and being told of anextraordinary guide, capable of avoiding them, he resolved to seek himout and confide in him. 

Then, in a tone more natural, he added: "You have never been a guide, have you, Gonzague?"

"_Hé!_ yes, " replied Bompard, smiling... "Only, I never did all that Irelated. "

"That's understood, " assented Tartarin. 

And the other added in a whisper:--

"Let us go out on the road; we can talk more freely there. "

It was getting dark; a warm damp breeze was rolling up black clouds uponthe sky, where the setting sun had left behind it a vague gray mist. 

They went along the shore in the direction of Fluelen, crossing the muteshadows of hungry tourists returning to the hotel; shadows themselves, and not speaking until they reached a tunnel through which the road iscut, opening at intervals to little terraces overhanging the lake. 

"Let us stop here, " pealed forth the hollow voice of Bompard, whichresounded under the vaulted roof like a cannon-shot. There, seated onthe parapet, they contemplated that admirable view of the lake, thedownward rush of the fir-trees and beeches pressing blackly togetherin the foreground, and farther on, the higher mountains with wavingsummits, and farther still, others of a bluish-gray confusion as ofclouds, in the midst of which lay, though scarcely visible, the longwhite trail of a glacier, winding through the hollows and suddenlyillumined with irised fire, yellow, red, and green. They were exhibitingthe mountain with Bengal lights!

From Fluelen the rockets rose, scattering their multicoloured stars;Venetian lanterns went and came in boats that remained invisible whilebearing bands of music and pleasure-seekers. 

A fairylike decoration seen through the frame, cold and architectural, of the granite walls of the tunnel. 

"What a queer country, _pas mouain_, this Switzerland... " criedTartarin. 

Bompard burst out laughing. 

"Ah! _vaï_, Switzerland!.. In the first place, there is no Switzerland. "

V. 

 Confidences in a tunnel. 

"Switzerland, in our day, _vé!_ Monsieur Tar-tarin, is nothing more thana vast Kursaal, open from June to September, a panoramic casino, wherepeople come from all four quarters of the globe to amuse themselves, andwhich is manipulated and managed by a Company _richissime_ by hundredsof thousands of millions, which has its offices in London and Geneva. It costs money, you may be sure, to lease and brush up and trick out allthis territory, lakes, forests, mountains, cascades, and to keep a wholepeople of employés, supernumeraries, and what not, and set up miraculoushotels on the highest summits, with gas, telegraphs, telephones... "

"That, at least, is true, " said Tartarin, thinking aloud, andremembering the Rigi. 

"True!.. But you have seen nothing yet... Go on through the country andyou 'll not find one corner that is n't engineered and machine-workedlike the under stage of the Opera, --cascades lighted _à giorno_, turnstiles at the entrance to the glaciers, and loads of railways, hydraulic and funicular, for ascensions. To be sure, the Company, inview of its clients the English and American climbers, keeps up on thenoted mountains, Jungfrau, Monk, Finsteraarhorn, an appearance of dangerand desolation, though in reality there is no more risk there thanelsewhere... "

"But the crevasses, my good fellow, those horrible crevasses... Supposeone falls into them?"

"You fall on snow, Monsieur Tartarin, and you don't hurt yourself, andthere is always at the bottom a porter, a hunter, at any rate some one, who picks you up, shakes and brushes you, and asks graciously: 'Hasmonsieur any baggage?'"

"What stuff are you telling me now, Gonzague?"

Bompard redoubled in gravity. 

"The keeping up of those crevasses is one of the heaviest expenses ofthe Company. "

Silence fell for a moment under the tunnel, the surroundings of whichwere quieting down. No more varied fireworks, Bengal lights, or boatson the water; but the moon had risen and made another conventionallandscape, bluish, liquides-cent, with masses of impenetrable shadow... 

Tartarin hesitated to believe his companion on his word. Nevertheless, he reflected on the extraordinary things he had seen in four days--thesun on the Rigi, the farce of William Tell--and Bompard's inventionsseemed to him all the more probable because in every Tarasconese thebraggart is leashed with a gull. 

"_Différemment_, my good friend, how do you explain certain awfulcatastrophes... That of the Matterhorn, for instance?.. "

"It is sixteen years since that happened; the Company was not thenconstituted, Monsieur Tartarin. "

"But last year, the accident on the Wetterhorn, two guides buried withtheir travellers!.. "

"Must, sometimes, _té, pardi!_.. You understand... Whets theAlpinists... The English won't come to mountains now where heads are notbroke... The Wetterhorn had been running down for some time, but afterthat little item in the papers the receipts went up at once. "

"Then the two guides?.. "

"They are just as safe as the travellers; only they are kept out ofsight, supported in foreign parts, for six months... A puff like thatcosts dear, but the Company is rich enough to afford it. "

"Listen to me, Gonzague... "

Tartarin had risen, one hand on Bompard's shoulder. 

"You would not wish to have any misfortune happen to me, _que?_.. Well, then! speak to me frankly... You know my capacities as an Alpinist; theyare moderate. "

"Very moderate, that's true. "

"Do you think, nevertheless, that I could, without too much danger, undertake the ascension of the Jungfrau?"

"I 'll answer for it, my head in the fire, Monsieur Tartarin... You haveonly to trust to your guide, _vé!_"

"And if I turn giddy?"

"Shut your eyes. "

"And if I slip?"

"Let yourself go... Just as they do on the stage... Sort oftrap-doors... There 's no risk... "

"Ah! if I could have you there to tell me all that, to keep repeating itto me... Look here, my good fellow, make an effort, and come with me. "

Bompard desired nothing better, _pécaïré!_ but he had those Peruvians onhis hands for the rest of the season; and, replying to his old friend, who expressed surprise at seeing him accept the functions of a courier, a subaltern, --

"I could n't help myself, Monsieur Tartarin, " he said. "It is in ourengagement. The Company has the right to employ us as it pleases. "

On which he began to count upon his fingers his varied avatars duringthe last three years... Guide in the Oberland, performer on the Alpinehorn, chamois-hunter, veteran soldier of Charles X. , Protestant pastoron the heights... 

"_Quès aco?_" demanded Tartarin, astonished. 

"_Bé!_ yes, " replied the other, composedly. "When you travel in GermanSwitzerland you will see pastors preaching on giddy heights, standingon rocks or rustic pulpits of the trunks of trees. A few shepherds andcheese-makers, their leather caps in their hands, and women with theirheads dressed up in the costume of the canton group themselves about inpicturesque attitudes; the scenery is pretty, the pastures green, orthe harvest just over, cascades to the road, and flocks with their bellsringing every note on the mountain. All that, _vé_ that's decorative, suggestive. Only, none but the employés of the Company, guides, pastors, couriers, hotel-keepers are in the secret, and it is their interest notto let it get wind, for fear of startling the clients. "

The Alpinist was dumfounded, silent--in him the acme of stupefaction. Inhis heart, whatever doubt he may have had as to Bompard's veracity, hefelt himself comforted and calmed as to Alpine ascensions, and presentlythe conversation grew joyous. The two friends talked of Tarascon, oftheir good, hearty laughs in the olden time when both were younger. 

"Apropos of _galéjade_ [jokes], " said Tartarin, suddenly, "they playedme a fine one on the Rigi-Kulm... Just imagine that this morning... " andhe told of the letter gummed to his glass, reciting it with emphasis:"'Devil of a Frenchman'... A hoax, of course, _que?_"

"May be... Who knows?.. " said Bompard, seeming to take the mattermore seriously. He asked if Tartarin during his stay on the Rigi hadrelations with any one, and whether he had n't said a word too much. 

"Ha! _vaï!_ a word too much! as if one even opened one's mouth amongthose English and Germans, mute as carp under pretence of good manners!"

On reflection, however, he did remember having clinched a matter, andsharply too! with a species of Cossack, a certain Mi... Milanof. 

"Manilof, " corrected Bompard. 

"Do you know him?.. Between you and me, I think that Manilof had a spiteagainst me about a little Russian girl... "

"Yes, Sonia... "murmured Bompard. 

"Do you know her too? Ah! my friend, a pearl! a pretty little graypartridge!"

"Sonia Wassilief... It was she who killed with one shot of her revolverin the open that General Felianine, the president of the Council of Warwhich condemned her brother to perpetual exile. "

Sonia an assassin? that child, that little blond fairy!.. Tartarin couldnot believe it. But Bompard gave precise particulars and details of theaffair--which, indeed, is very well known. Sonia had lived for thelast two years in Zurich, where her brother Boris, having escaped fromSiberia, joined her, his lungs gone; and during the summers she took himfor better air to the mountains. Bompard had often met them, attendedby friends who were all exiles, conspirators. The Wassiliefs, veryintelligent, very energetic, and still possessed of some fortune, wereat the head of the Nihilist party, with Bolibine, the man who murderedthe prefect of police, and this very Manilof, who blew up the WinterPalace last year. 

"_Boufre!_" exclaimed Tartarin, "one meets with queer neighbours on theRigi. "

But here's another thing. Bompard took it into his head that Tartarin'sletter came from these young people; it was just like their Nihilistproceedings. The czar, every morning, found warnings in his study, underhis napkin... 

"But, " said Tartarin, turning pale, "why such threats? What have I doneto them?"

Bompard thought they must have taken him for a spy. 

"A spy! I!

"_Be!_ yes. " In all the Nihilist centres, at Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva, Russia maintained at great cost, a numerous body of spies; in fact, forsome time past she had had in her service the former chief of the FrenchImperial police, with a dozen Corsicans, who followed and watched allRussian exiles, and took countless disguises in order to detect them. The costume of the Alpinist, his spectacles, his accent, were quiteenough to confound him in their minds with those agents. 

"_Coquin de sort!_ now I think of it, " said Tartarin, "they had at theirheels the whole time a rascally Italian tenor... Undoubtedly a spy... _Différemment_, what must I do?"

"Above all things, never put yourself in the way of those people again;now that they have warned you they will do you harm... "

"Ha! _vaï! harm!_.. The first one that comes near me I shall cleave hishead with my ice-axe. "

And in the gloom of the tunnel the eyes of the Tarasconese hero glared. But Bompard, less confident than he, knew well that the hatred ofNihilists is terrible; it attacks from below, it undermines, and plots. It is all very well to be a _lapin_ like the president, but you hadbetter beware of that inn bed you sleep in, and the chair you sit upon, and the rail of the steamboat, which will give way suddenly and dropyou to death. And think of the cooking-dishes prepared, the glass rubbedover with invisible poison!

"Beware of the kirsch in your flask, and the frothing milk that cow-manin sabots brings you. They stop at nothing, I tell you. "

"If so, what's to be done! I'm doomed!" groaned Tartarin; then, graspingthe hand of his companion:--

"Advise me, Gonzague. "

After a moment's reflection, Bompard traced out to him a programme. Toleave the next day, early, cross the lake and the Brünig pass, and sleepat Interlaken. The next day, to Grindelwald and the Little Scheideck. And the day after, the JUNGFRAU! After that, home to Tarascon, withoutlosing an hour, or looking back. 

"I 'll start to-morrow, Gonzague... " declared the hero, in a virilevoice, with a look of terror at the mysterious horizon, now dim in thedarkness, and at the lake which seemed to him to harbour all treacherybeneath the glassy calm of its pale reflections. 

VI. 

 The Brünig pass. Tartarin falls into the hands of Nihilists, Disappearance of an Italian tenor and a rope made at Avignon, Fresh exploits of the cap-sportsman. Pan! pan!

"Get in! get in!"

"But how the devil, que! am I to get in? the places are full... Theywon't make room for me. "

This was said at the extreme end of the lake of the Four Cantons, on that shore at Alpnach, damp and soggy as a delta, where thepost-carriages wait in line to convey tourists leaving the boat to crossthe Brünig. 

A fine rain like needle-points had been falling since morning; and theworthy Tartarin, hampered by his armament, hustled by the porters andthe custom-house officials, ran from carriage to carriage, sonorous andlumbering as that orchestra-man one sees at fairs, whose every movementsets a-going triangles, big drums, Chinese bells, and cymbals. At allthe doors the same cry of terror, the same crabbed "Full!" growled inall dialects, the same swelling-out of bodies and garments to takeas much room as possible and prevent the entrance of so dangerous andresounding a companion. 

The unfortunate Alpinist puffed, sweated, and replied with "_Coquinde bon sort!_" and despairing gestures to the impatient clamour of theconvoy: "En route!.. All right!.. Andiamo!.. Vorwarts!.. " The horsespawed, the drivers swore. Finally, the manager of the post-route, atall, ruddy fellow in a tunic and flat cap, interfered himself, andopening forcibly the door of a landau, the top of which was half up, he pushed in Tartarin, hoisting him like a bundle, and then stood, majestically, with outstretched hand for his _trinkgeld_. 

Humiliated, furious with the people in the carriage who were forcedto accept him _manu militari_, Tartarin affected not to look at them, rammed his porte-monnaie back into his pocket, wedged his ice-axe onone side of him with ill-humoured motions and an air of determinedbrutality, as if he were a passenger by the Dover steamer landing atCalais. 

"Good-morning, monsieur, " said a gentle voice he had heard already. 

He raised his eyes, and sat horrified, terrified before the pretty, round and rosy face of Sonia, seated directly in front of him, beneaththe hood of the landau, which also sheltered a tall young man, wrappedin shawls and rugs, of whom nothing could be seen but a forehead oflivid paleness and a few thin meshes of hair, golden like the rim ofhis near-sighted spectacles. A third person, whom Tartarin knew but toowell, accompanied them, --Manilof, the incendiary of the Winter Palace. 

Sonia, Manilof, what a mouse-trap!

This was the moment when they meant to accomplish their threat, on thatBrünig pass, so craggy, so surrounded with abysses. And the hero, byone of those flashes of horror which reveal the depths of danger, beheldhimself stretched on the rocks of a ravine, or swinging from the topmostbranches of an oak. Fly! yes, but where, how? The vehicles had startedin file at the sound of a trumpet, a crowd of little ragamuffins wereclambering at the doors with bunches of edelweiss. Tartarin, maddened, had a mind to begin the attack by cleaving the head of the Cossackbeside him with his alpenstock; then, on reflection, he felt it wasmore prudent to refrain. Evidently, these people would not attempt theirscheme till farther on, in regions uninhabited, and before that, theremight come means of getting out. Besides, their intentions no longerseemed to him quite so malevolent. Sonia smiled gently upon him from herpretty turquoise eyes, the pale young man looked pleasantly at him, andManilof, visibly milder, moved obligingly aside and helped him to puthis bag between them. Had they discovered their mistake by reading onthe register of the Rigi-Kulm the illustrious name of Tartarin?.. Hewished to make sure, and, familiarly, good-humouredly, he began:--

"Enchanted with this meeting, beautiful young lady... Only, permit meto introduce myself... You are ignorant with whom you have to do, _vé!_whereas, I am perfectly aware who _you_ are. "

"Hush!" said the little Sonia, still smiling, but pointing with hergloved finger to the seat beside the driver, where sat the tenor withhis sleeve-buttons, and another young Russian, sheltering themselvesunder the same umbrella, and laughing and talking in Italian. 

Between the police and the Nihilists, Tartarin did not hesitate. 

"Do you know that man, _au mouain?_" he said in a low voice, puttinghis head quite close to Sonia's fresh cheeks, and seeing himself in herclear eyes, which suddenly turned hard and savage as she answered "yes, "with a snap of their lids. 

The hero shuddered, but as one shudders at the theatre, with thatdelightful creeping of the epidermis which takes you when the actionbecomes Corsican, and you settle yourself in your seat to see and tolisten more attentively. Personally out of the affair, delivered fromthe mortal terrors which had haunted him all night and prevented himfrom swallowing his usual Swiss coffee, honey, and butter, he breathedwith free lungs, thought life good, and this little Russian irresistiblypleasing in her travelling hat, her jersey close to the throat, tight tothe arms, and moulding her slender figure of perfect elegance. And sucha child! Child in the candour of her laugh, in the down upon her cheeks, in the pretty grace with which she spread her shawl upon the knees ofher poor brother. "Are you comfortable?.. " "You are not cold?" How couldany one suppose that little hand, so delicate beneath its chamois glove, had had the physical force and the moral courage to kill a man?

Nor did the others of the party seem ferocious: all had the sameingenuous laugh, rather constrained and sad on the drawn lips of thepoor invalid, and noisy in Manilof, who, very young behind his bushybeard, gave way to explosions of mirth like a schoolboy in his holidays, bursts of a gayety that was really exuberant. 

The third companion, whom they called Boli-bine, and who talked on thebox with the tenor, amused himself much and was constantly turning backto translate to his friends the Italian's adventures, his successesat the Petersburg Opera, his _bonnes fortunes_, the sleeve-buttons theladies had subscribed to present to him on his departure, extraordinarybuttons, with, three notes of music engraved thereon, _la do ré_(l'adoré), which professional pun, repeated in the landau, caused suchdelight, the tenor himself swelling up with pride and twirling hismoustache with so silly and conquering a look at Sonia, that Tartarinbegan to ask himself whether, after all, they were not mere tourists, and he a genuine tenor. 

Meantime the carriages, going at a good pace, rolled over bridges, skirted little lakes and flowery meads, and fine vineyards running withwater and deserted; for it was Sunday, and all the peasants whom theymet wore their gala costumes, the women with long braids of hair hangingdown their backs and silver chainlets. They began at last to mount theroad in zigzags among forests of oak and beech; little by little themarvellous horizon displayed itself on the left; at each turn of thezigzag, rivers, valleys with their spires pointing upward cameinto view, and far away in the distance, the hoary head of theFinsteraarhorn, whitening beneath an invisible sun. 

Soon the road became gloomy, the aspect savage. On one side, heavyshadows, a chaos of trees, twisted and gnarled on a steep slope, downwhich foamed a torrent noisily; to right, an enormous rock overhangingthe road and bristling with branches that sprouted from its fissures. 

They laughed no more in the landau; but they all admired, raising theirheads and trying to see the summit of this tunnel of granite. 

"The forests of Atlas!.. I seem to see them again... " said Tartarin, gravely, and then, as the remark passed unnoticed, he added: "Withoutthe lion's roar, however. "

"You have heard it, monsieur?" asked Sonia. 

Heard the lion, he!.. Then, with an indulgent smile: "I am Tartarin ofTarascon, mademoiselle... "

And just see what such barbarians are! He might have said, "My name isDupont;" it would have been exactly the same thing to them. They wereignorant of the name of Tartarin!

Nevertheless, he was not angry, and he answered the young lady, who wished to know if the lion's roar had frightened him: "No, mademoiselle... My camel trembled between my legs, but I looked to mypriming as tranquilly as before a herd of cows... At a distance theircry is much the same, like this, _té!_"

To give Sonia an exact impression of the thing, he bellowed in his mostsonorous voice a formidable "Meuh... " which swelled, spread, echoed andreechoed against the rock. The horses reared; in all the carriages thetravellers sprang up alarmed, looking round for the accident, thecause of such an uproar; but recognizing the Alpinist, whose head andoverwhelming accoutrements could be seen in the uncovered half of thelandau, they asked themselves once more: "Who is that animal?"

He, very calm, continued to give details: when to attack the beast, where to strike him, how to despatch him, and about the diamond sight heaffixed to his carbines to enable him to aim correctly in the darkness. The young girl listened to him, leaning forward with a little panting ofthe nostrils, in deep attention. 

"They say that Bombonnel still hunts; do you know him?" asked thebrother. 

"Yes, " replied Tartarin, without enthusiasm... "He is not a clumsyfellow, but we have better than he. "

A word to the wise! Then in a melancholy tone, "_Pas mouain_, they giveus strong emotions, these hunts of the great carnivora. When we havethem no longer life seems empty; we do not know how to fill it. "

Here Manilof, who understood French without speaking it, and seemed tobe listening to Tartarin very intently, his peasant forehead slashedwith the wrinkle of a great scar, said a few words, laughing, to hisfriends. 

"Manilof says we are all of the same brotherhood, " explained Sonia toTartarin... "We hunt, like you, the great wild beasts. "

"_Té!_ yes, _pardi_... Wolves, white bears... "

"Yes, wolves, white bears, and other noxious animals... "

And the laughing began again, noisy, interminable, but in a sharp, ferocious key this time, laughs that showed their teeth and remindedTartarin in what sad and singular company he was travelling. 

Suddenly the carriages stopped. The road became steeper and made at thisspot a long circuit to reach the top of the Brünig pass, which couldalso be reached on foot in twenty minutes less time through a nobleforest of birches. In spite of the rain in the morning, making the earthsodden and slippery, the tourists nearly all left the carriages andstarted, single file, along the narrow path called a _schlittage_. 

From Tartarin's landau, the last in line, all the men got out; butSonia, thinking the path too muddy, settled herself back in thecarriage, and as the Alpinist was getting out with the rest, a littledelayed by his equipments, she said to him in a low voice: "Stay! keepme company... " in such a coaxing way! The poor man, quite overcome, began immediately to forge a romance, as delightful as it wasimprobable, which made his old heart beat and throb. 

He was quickly undeceived when he saw the young girl leaning anxiouslyforward to watch Bolibine and the Italian, who were talking eagerlytogether at the opening of the path, Manilof and Boris having alreadygone forward. The so-called tenor hesitated. An instinct seemed towarn him not to risk himself alone in company with those three men. He decided at last to go on, and Sonia looked at him as he mountedthe path, all the while stroking her cheek with a bouquet of purplecyclamen, those mountain violets, the leaf of which is lined with thesame fresh colour as the flowers. 

The landau proceeded slowly. The driver got down to walk in front withother comrades, and the convoy of more than fifteen empty vehicles, drawn nearer together by the steepness of the road, rolled silentlyalong. Tartarin, greatly agitated, and foreboding something sinister, dared not look at his companion, so much did he fear that a word or alook might compel him to be an actor in the drama he felt impending. ButSonia was paying no attention to him; her eyes were rather fixed, andshe did not cease caressing the down of her skin mechanically with theflowers. 

"So, " she said at length, "so you know who we are, I and my friends... Well, what do you think of us? What do Frenchmen think of us?"

The hero turned pale, then red. He was desirous of not offending byrash or imprudent words such vindictive beings; on the other hand, howconsort with murderers? He got out of it by a metaphor:--

"_Différemment_, mademoiselle, you were telling me just now that webelonged to the same brotherhood, hunters of hydras and monsters, despots and carnivora... It is therefore to a companion of St. Hubertthat I now make answer... My sentiment is that, even against wild beastswe should use loyal weapons... Our Jules Gérard, a famous lion-slayer, employed explosive balls. I myself have never given in to that, I donot use them... When I hunted the lion or the panther I planted myselfbefore the beast, face to face, with a good double-barrelled carbine, and pan! pan! a ball in each eye. "

"In each eye!.. " repeated Sonia. 

"Never did I miss my aim. "

He affirmed it and he believed it. 

The young girl looked at him with naïve admiration, thinking aloud:--

"That must certainly be the surest way. "

A sudden rending of the branches and the underbrush, and the thicketparted above them, so quickly and in so feline a way that Tartarin, hishead now full of hunting adventures, might have thought himself still onthe watch in the Zaccar. But Manilof sprang from the slope, noiselessly, and close to the carriage. His small, cunning eyes were shining in aface that was flayed by the briers; his beard and his long lank hairwere streaming with water from the branches. Breathless, holding withhis coarse, hairy hands to the doorway, he spoke in Russian to Sonia, who turned instantly to Tartarin and said in a curt voice:--

"Your rope... Quick... "

"My... My rope?.. " stammered the hero. 

"Quick, quick... You shall have it again in half an hour. "

Offering no other explanation, she helped him with her little glovedhands to divest himself of his famous rope made in Avignon. Maniloftook the coil, grunting with joy; in two bounds he sprang, with theelasticity of a wild-cat, into the thicket and disappeared. 

"What has happened? What are they going to do?.. He looked ferocious... "murmured Tartaric not daring to utter his whole thought. 

Ferocious, Manilof! Ah! how plain it was he did not know him. No humanbeing was ever better, gentler, more compassionate; and to show Tartarina trait of that exceptionally kind nature, Sonia, with her clear, blueglance, told him how her friend, having executed a dangerous mandate ofthe Revolutionary Committee and jumped into the sledge which awaited himfor escape, had threatened the driver to get out, cost what it might, ifhe persisted in whipping the horse whose fleetness alone could save him. 

Tartarin thought the act worthy of antiquity. Then, having reflected onall the human lives sacrificed by that same Manilof, as consciencelessas an earthquake or a volcano in eruption, who yet would not let othershurt an animal in his presence, he questioned the young girl with aningenuous air:--

"Were there many killed by the explosion at the Winter Palace?"

"Too many, " replied Sonia, sadly; "and the only one that ought to havedied escaped. "

She remained silent, as if displeased, looking so pretty, her headlowered, with her long auburn eyelashes sweeping her pale rose cheeks. Tartarin, angry with himself for having pained her, was caught once moreby that charm of youth and freshness which the strange little creatureshed around her. 

"So, monsieur, the war that we are making seems to you unjust, inhuman?"She said it quite close to him in a caress, as it were, of her breathand her eye; the hero felt himself weakening... 

"You do not see that all means are good and legitimate to deliver apeople who groan and suffocate?.. "

"No doubt, no doubt... "

The young girl, growing more insistent as Tartarin weakened, went on:--

"You spoke just now of a void to be filled; does it not seem to you morenoble, more interesting to risk your life for a great cause than to riskit in slaying lions or scaling glaciers?"

"The fact is, " said Tartarin, intoxicated, losing his head and mad withan irresistible desire to take and kiss that ardent, persuasive littlehand which she laid upon his arm, as she had done once before, up there, on the Rigi when he put on her shoe. Finally, unable to resist, andseizing the little gloved hand between both his own, --

"Listen, Sonia, " he said, in a good hearty voice, paternal andfamiliar... "Listen, Sonia... "

A sudden stop of the landau interrupted him. They had reached the summitof the Brünig; travellers and drivers were getting into their carriagesto catch up lost time and reach, at a gallop, the next village where theconvoy was to breakfast and relay. The three Russians took their places, but that of the Italian tenor remained unoccupied. 

"That gentleman got into one of the first carriages, " said Boris to thedriver, who asked about him; then, addressing Tartarin, whose uneasinesswas visible:--

"We must ask him for your rope; he chose to keep it with him. "

Thereupon, fresh laughter in the landau, and the resumption for poorTartarin of horrid perplexity, not knowing what to think or believe inpresence of the good-humour and ingenuous countenances of the suspectedassassins. Sonia, while wrapping up her invalid in cloaks and plaids, for the air on the summit was all the keener from the rapidity withwhich the carriages were now driven, related in Russian her conversationwith Tartarin, uttering his pan! pan! with a pretty intonation whichher companions repeated after her, two of them admiring the hero, whileManilof shook his head incredulously. 

The relay!

This was on the market-place of a large village, at an old tavern witha worm-eaten wooden balcony, and a sign hanging to a rusty ironbracket. The file of vehicles stopped, and while the horses were beingunharnessed the hungry tourists jumped hurriedly down and rushed into aroom on the lower floor, painted green and smelling of mildew, wherethe table was laid for twenty guests. Sixty had arrived, and for fiveminutes nothing could be heard but a frightful tumult, cries, anda vehement altercation between the Rices and the Prunes around thecompote-dishes, to the great alarm of the tavern-keeper, who lost hishead (as if daily, at the same hour, the same post-carriages didnot pass) and bustled about his servants, also seized with chronicbewilderment--excellent method of serving only half the dishes calledfor by the _carte_, and of giving change in a way that made the whitesous of Switzerland count for fifty centimes. "Suppose we dine in thecarriage, " said Sonia, I annoyed by such confusion; and as no one hadtime to pay attention to them the young men themselves did the waiting. Manilof returned with a cold leg of mutton, Bolibine with a long loafof bread and sausages; but the best forager was Tartarin. Certainly theopportunity to get away from his companions in the bustle of relay ingwas a fine one; he might at least have assured himself that theItalian had reappeared; but he never once thought of it, being solelypreoccupied with Sonia's breakfast, and in showing Manilof and theothers how a Tarasconese can manage matters. 

When he stepped down the portico of the hotel, gravely, with fixed eyes, bearing in his robust hands a large tray laden with plates, napkins, assorted food, and Swiss champagne in its gilt-necked bottles, Soniaclapped her hands, and congratulated him. 

"How did you manage it?" she said. 

"I don't know... Somehow, _té!_.. We are all like that in Tarascon. "

Oh! those happy minutes! That pleasant breakfast opposite to Sonia, almost on his knees, the village market-place, like the scene of anoperetta, with clumps of green trees, beneath which sparkled the goldornaments and the muslin sleeves of the Swiss girls, walking about, twoand two, like dolls!

How good the bread tasted! what savoury sausages! The heavens themselvestook part in the scene, and were soft, veiled, clement; it rained, ofcourse, but so gently, the drops so rare, though just enough to temperthe Swiss champagne, always dangerous to Southern heads. 

Under the veranda of the hotel, a Tyrolian quartette, two giants andtwo female dwarfs in resplendent and heavy rags, looking as if they hadescaped from the failure of a theatre at a fair, were mingling theirthroat notes: "aou... Aou... " with the clinking of plates and glasses. They were ugly, stupid, motionless, straining the cords of their skinnynecks. Tartarin thought them delightful, and gave them a handfulof sous, to the great amazement of the villagers who surrounded theunhorsed landau. 

"Vife la Vranze!" quavered a voice in the crowd, from which issued atall old man, clothed in a singular blue coat with silver buttons, theskirts of which swept the ground; on his head was a gigantic shako, inform like a bucket of sauerkraut, and so weighted by its enormous plumethat the old man was forced to balance himself with his arms as hewalked, like an acrobat. 

"Old soldier... Charles X... "

Tartarin, fresh from Bompard's revelations, began to laugh, and said ina low voice with a wink of his eye:--

"Up to _that_, old fellow... " But even so, he gave him a white souand poured him out a bumper, which the old man accepted, laughing, andwinking himself, though without knowing why. Then, dislodging from acorner of his mouth an enormous china pipe, he raised his glass anddrank "to the company, " which confirmed Tartarin in his opinion thathere was a colleague of Bompard. 

No matter! one toast deserved another. So, standing up in the carriage, his glass held high, his voice strong, Tartarin brought tears to hiseyes by drinking, first: To France, my country!.. Next to hospitableSwitzerland, which he was happy to honour publicly and thank for thegenerous welcome she affords to the vanquished, to the exiled ofall lands. Then, lowering his voice and inclining his glass to thecompanions of his journey, he wished them a quick return to theircountry, restoration to their family, safe friends, honourable careers, and an end to all dissensions; for, he said, it is impossible to spendone's life in eating each other up. 

During the utterance of this toast Soma's brother smiled, cold andsarcastic behind his blue spectacles; Manilof, his neck pushed forth, his swollen eyebrows emphasizing his wrinkle, seemed to be askinghimself if that "big barrel" would soon be done with his gabble, whileBolibine, perched on the box, was twisting his comical yellow face, wrinkled as a Barbary ape, till he looked like one of those villanouslittle monkeys squatting on the shoulders of the Alpinist. 

The young girl alone listened to him very seriously, striving tocomprehend such a singular type of man. Did he think all that he said?Had he done all that he related? Was he a madman, a comedian, or simplya gabbler, as Manilof in his quality of man of action insisted, givingto the word a most contemptuous signification. 

The answer was given at once. His toast ended, Tartarin had just satdown when a sudden shot, a second, then a third, fired close to thetavern, brought him again to his feet, ears straining and nostrilsscenting powder. 

"Who fired?.. Where is it?.. What is happening?.. "

In his inventive noddle a whole drama was already defiling; attack onthe convoy by armed bands; opportunity given him to defend the honourand life of that charming young lady. But no! the discharges only camefrom the Stand, where the youths of the village practise at a markevery Sunday. As the horses were not yet harnessed, Tartarin, as ifcarelessly, proposed to go and look at them. He had his idea, and Soniahad hers in accepting the proposal. Guided by the old soldier of CharlesX. Wobbling under his shako, they crossed the market-place, opening theranks of the crowd, who followed them with curiosity. 

Beneath its thatched roof and its square uprights of pine wood theStand resembled one of our own pistol-galleries at a fair, with thisdifference, that the amateurs brought their own weapons, breech-loadingmuskets of the oldest pattern, which they managed, however, with someadroitness. Tar-tarin, his arms crossed, observed the shots, criticisedthem aloud, gave his advice, but did not fire himself. The Russianswatched him, making signs to each other. 

"Pan!.. Pan!.. " sneered Bolibine, making the gesture of taking aimand mimicking Tartarin's accent. Tartarin turned round very red, andswelling with anger. 

"_Parfaitemain_, young man... Pan!.. Pan!.. And as often as you like. "

The time to load an old double-barrelled carbine which must have servedseveral generations of chamois hunters, and--pan!.. Pan!.. T is done. Both balls are in the bull's-eye. Hurrahs of admiration burst forth onall sides. Sonia triumphed. Bolibine laughed no more. 

"But that is nothing, that!" said Tartarin; "you shall see... "

The Stand did not suffice him; he looked about for another target, and the crowd recoiled alarmed from this strange Alpinist, thick-set, savage-looking and carbine in hand, when they heard him propose to theold guard of Charles X. To break his pipe between his teeth at fiftypaces. The old fellow howled in terror and plunged into the crowd, histrembling plume remaining visible above their serried heads. None theless, Tartarin felt that he must put it somewhere, that ball. "_Té!pardi!_ as we did at Tarascon!.. " And the former cap-hunter pitched hisheadgear high into the air with all the strength of his double muscles, shot it on the fly, and pierced it. "Bravo!" cried Sonia, sticking intothe small hole made by the ball the bouquet of cyclamen with which shehad stroked her cheek. 

With that charming trophy in his cap Tartarin returned to the landau. The trumpet sounded, the convoy started, the horses went rapidly down toBrienz along that marvellous corniche road, blasted in the side of therock, separated from an abyss of over a thousand feet by single stonesa couple of yards apart. But Tartarin was no longer conscious of danger;no longer did he look at the scenery--that Meyringen valley, seenthrough a light veil of mist, with its river in straight lines, thelake, the villages massing themselves in the distance, and that wholehorizon of mountains, of glaciers, blending at times with the clouds, displaced by the turns of the road, lost apparently, and then returning, like the shifting scenes of a stage. 

Softened by tender thoughts, the hero admired the sweet child beforehim, reflecting that glory is only a semi-happiness, that 'tis sad togrow old all alone in your greatness, like Moses, and that this fragileflower of the North transplanted into the little garden at Tarasconwould brighten its monotony, and be sweeter to see and breathe thanthat everlasting baobab, _arbos gigantea_, diminutively confined in themignonette pot. With her childlike eyes, and her broad brow, thoughtfuland self-willed, Sonia looked at him, and she, too, dreamed--but whoknows what the young girls dream of?

VII. 

 The nights at Tarascon, Where is he? Anxiety. The grasshoppers on the promenade call for Tartarin. Martyrdom of a great Tarasconese saint. The Club of the Alpines. What was happening at the pharmacy. "Help! help! Bêzuquet!"

"A letter, Monsieur Bêzuquet!.. Comes from Switzerland, _vé!_.. Switzerland!" cried the postman joyously, from the other end of thelittle square, waving something in the air, and hurrying along in thecoming darkness. 

The apothecary, who took the air, as they say, of an evening before hisdoor in his shirt-sleeves, gave a jump, seized the letter with feverishhands and carried it into his lair among the varied odours of elixirsand dried herbs, but did not open it till the postman had departed, refreshed by a glass of that delicious _sirop de cadavre_ in recompensefor what he brought. 

Fifteen days had Bêzuquet expected it, this letter from Switzerland, fifteen days of agonized watching! And here it was. Merely from lookingat the cramped and resolute little writing on the envelope, the postmark"Interlaken" and the broad purple stamp of the "Hôtel Jungfrau, keptby Meyer, " the tears filled his eyes, and the heavy moustache of theBarbary corsair through which whispered softly the idle whistle of akindly soul, quivered. 

"_Confidential. Destroy when read. _" Those words, written large atthe head of the page, in the telegraphic style of the pharmacopoeia("external use; shake before using") troubled him to the point ofmaking him read aloud, as one does in a bad dream: "_Fearful thingsare happening to me_... " In the salon beside the pharmacy where she wastaking her little nap after supper, Mme. Bézuquet, _mère_, might hearhim, or the pupil whose pestle was pounding its regular blows in the bigmarble mortar of the laboratory. Bézuquet continued his reading in a lowvoice, beginning it over again two or three times, very pale, his hairliterally standing on end. Then, with a rapid look about him, _cracra_... And the letter in a thousand scraps went into the waste-paperbasket; but there it might be found, and pieced together, and as he wasstooping to gather up the fragments a quavering voice called to him:

"_Vé!_ Ferdinand, are you there?" "Yes, mamma, " replied the unluckycorsair, curdling with fear, the whole of his long body on its hands andknees beneath the desk. "What are you doing, my treasure?" "I am... H'm, I am making Mile. Tournatoire's eye-salve. "

Mamma went to sleep again, the pupil's pestle, suspended for a moment, began once more its slow clock movement, while Bézuquet walked up anddown before his door in the deserted little square, turning pink orgreen according as he passed before one or other of his bottles. Fromtime to time he threw up his arms, uttering disjointed words: "Unhappyman!.. Lost... Fatal love... How can we extricate him?" and, in spite ofhis trouble of mind, accompanying with a lively whistle the bugle "taps"of a dragoon regiment echoing among the plane-trees of the Tour deVille. 

"_Hé!_ good night, Bézuquet, " said a shadow hurrying along in theash-coloured twilight. 

"Where are you going, Pégoulade?"

"To the Club, _pardi!_.. Night session... They are going to discussTartarin and the presidency... You ought to come. "

"_Té!_ yes, I 'll come... " said the apothecary vehemently, aprovidential idea darting through his mind. He went in, put on hisfrock-coat, felt in its pocket to assure himself that his latchkey wasthere, and also the American tomahawk, without which no Tarasconesewhatsoever would risk himself in the streets after "taps. " Then hecalled: "Pascalon!.. Pascalon!.. " but not too loudly, for fear of wakingthe old lady. 

Almost a child, though bald, wearing all his hair in his curly blondbeard, Pascalon the pupil had the ardent soul of a partizan, a dome-likeforehead, the eyes of crazy goat, and on his chubby cheeks the delicatetints of a shiny crusty Beaucaire roll. On all the grand Alpineexcursions it was to him that the Club entrusted its banner, andhis childish soul had vowed to the P. C. A. A fanatical worship, theburning, silent adoration of a taper consuming itself before an altar inthe Easter season. 

"Pascalon, " said the apothecary in a low voice, and so close to himthat the bristle of his moustache pricked his ear. "I have news ofTartarin... It is heart-breaking... "

Seeing him turn pale, he added:

"Courage, child! all can be repaired... _Différemment_ I confide to youthe pharmacy... If any one asks you for arsenic, don't give it; opium, don't give that either, nor rhubarb... Don't give anything. If I am notin by ten o'clock, lock the door and go to bed. "

With intrepid step, he plunged into the darkness, not once looking back, which allowed Pascalon to spring at the waste-paper basket, turn it overand over with feverish eager hands and finally tip out its contents onthe leather of the desk to see if no scrap remained of the mysteriousletter brought by the postman. 

To those who know Tarasconese excitability, it is easy to imaginethe frantic condition of the little town after Tartarin's abruptdisappearance. _Et autrement, pas moins, différemment_, they lost theirheads, all the more because it was the middle of August and their brainsboiled in the sun till their skulls were fit to crack. From morning tillnight they talked of nothing else; that one name "Tartarin" alone washeard on the pinched lips of the elderly ladies in hoods, in the rosymouths of grisettes, their hair tied up with velvet ribbons:

"Tartarin, Tartarin... " Even among the plane-trees on the Promenade, heavy with white dust, distracted grasshoppers, vibrating in thesunlight, seemed to strangle with those two sonorous syllables: "Tar.. Tar.. Tar.. Tar.. Tar... "

As no one knew anything, naturally every one was well-informed and gaveexplanations of the departure of the president. Extravagant versionsappeared. According to some, he had entered La Trappe; he had elopedwith the Dugazon; others declared he had gone to the Isles to found acolony to be called Port-Tarascon, or else to roam Central Africa insearch of Livingstone. 

"Ah! _vaï!_ Livingstone!.. Why he has been dead these two years. "

But Tarasconese imagination defies all hints of time and space. And thecurious thing is that these ideas of La Trappe, colonization, distanttravel, were Tartarin's own ideas, dreams of that sleeper awake, communicated in past days to his intimate friends, who now, not knowingwhat to think, and vexed in their hearts at not being duly informed, affected toward the public the greatest reserve and behaved to oneanother with a sly air of private understanding. Excourbaniès suspectedBravida of being in the secret; Bravida, on his side, thought: "Bézuquetknows the truth; he looks about him like a dog with a bone. "

True it was that the apothecary suffered a thousand deaths from thishair-shirt of a secret, which cut him, skinned him, turned him pale andred in the same minute and caused him to squint continually. Rememberthat he belonged to Tarascon, unfortunate man, and say if, in allmartyrology, you can find so terrible a torture as this--the torture ofSaint Bézuquet, who knew a secret and could not tell it. 

This is why, on that particular evening, in spite of the terrifying newshe had just received, his step had something, I hardly know what, freer, more buoyant, as he went to the session of the Club. _Enfin!_.. He wasnow to speak, to unbosom himself, to tell that which weighed so heavilyupon him; and in his haste to unload his breast he cast a few half wordsas he went along to the loiterers on the Promenade. The day had beenso hot, that in spite of the unusual hour (_a quarter to eight_ on theclock of the town hall!) and the terrifying darkness, quite a crowd ofreckless persons, bourgeois families getting the good of the air whilethat of their houses evaporated, bands of five or six sewing-women, rambling along in an undulating line of chatter and laughter, wereabroad. In every group they were talking of Tartarin. 

"_Et autrement_, Monsieur Bézuquet, still no letter?" they asked of theapothecary, stopping him on his way. 

"Yes, yes, my friends, yes, there is... Read the _Forum_ to-morrowmorning... "

He hastened his steps, but they followed him, fastened on him, and alongthe Promenade rose a murmuring sound, the bleating of a flock, whichgathered beneath the windows of the Club, left wide open in greatsquares of light. 

The sessions were held in the _bouillotte_ room, where the longtable covered with green cloth served as a desk. At the centre, thepresidential arm-chair, with P. C. A. Embroidered on the back of it; atone end, humbly, the armless chair of the secretary. Behind, the bannerof the Club, draped above a long glazed map in relief, on which theAlpines stood up with their respective names and altitudes. Alpenstocksof honour, inlaid with ivory, stacked like billiard cues, ornamentedthe corners, and a glass-case displayed curiosities, crystals, silex, petrifactions, two porcupines and a salamander, collected on themountains. 

In Tartarin's absence, Costecalde, rejuvenated and radiant, occupiedthe presidential arm-chair; the armless chair was for Excourbaniès, whofulfilled the functions of secretary; but that devil of a man, frizzled, hairy, bearded, was incessantly in need of noise, motion, activity whichhindered his sedentary employments. At the smallest pretext, he threwout his arms and legs, uttered fearful howls and "Ha! ha! has!" offerocious, exuberant joy which always ended with a war-cry in theTarasconese patois: "_Fen dé brut_... Let us make a noise "... He wascalled "the gong" on account of his metallic voice, which cracked theears of his friends with its ceaseless explosions. 

Here and there, on a horsehair divan that ran round the room were themembers of the committee. 

In the first row, sat the former captain of equipment, Bravida, whom allTarascon called the Commander; a very small man, clean as a new penny, who redeemed his childish figure by making himself as moustached andsavage a head as Vercingétorix. 

Next came the long, hollow, sickly face of Pégoulade, the collector, last survivor of the wreck of the "Medusa. " Within the memory of man, Tarascon has never been without a last survivor of the wreck of the"Medusa. " At one time they even numbered three, who treated one anothermutually as impostors, and never con~ sented to meet in the same room. Of these three the only true one was Pégoulade. Setting sail with hisparents on the "Medusa, " he met with the fatal disaster when six monthsold, --which did not prevent him from relating the event, _de visu_, in its smallest details, famine, boats, raft, and how he had taken thecaptain, who was selfishly saving himself, by the throat: "To your duty, wretch!.. "At six months old, _outre!_... Wearisome, to tell the truth, with that eternal tale which everybody was sick of for the last fiftyyears; but he took it as a pretext to assume a melancholy air, detachedfrom life: "After what I have seen!" he would say--very unjustly, because it was to that he owed his post as collector and kept it 'underall administrations. 

Near him sat the brothers Rognonas, twins and sexagenarians, who neverparted, but always quarrelled and said the most monstrous things toeach other; their two old heads, defaced, corroded, irregular, and everlooking in opposite directions out of antipathy, were so alike that theymight have figured in a collection of coins with IANVS BIFRONS on theexergue. 

Here and there, were Judge Bédaride, Barjavel the lawyer, the notaryCambalalette, and the terrible Doctor Tournatoire, of whom Bravidaremarked that he could draw blood from a radish. 

In consequence of the great heat, increased by the gas, these gentlemenheld the session in their shirt-sleeves, which detracted much from thesolemnity of the occasion. It is true that the meeting was a verysmall one; and the infamous Costecalde was anxious to profit by thatcircumstance to fix the earliest possible date for the elections withoutawaiting Tartarin's return. Confident in this manoeuvre, he was enjoyinghis triumph in advance, and when, after the reading of the minutes byExcourbaniès, he rose to insinuate his scheme, an infernal smile curledup the corners of his thin lips. 

"Distrust the man who smiles before he speaks, " murmured the Commander. 

Costecalde, not flinching, and winking with one eye at the faithfulTournatoire, began in a spiteful voice:--

"Gentlemen, the extraordinary conduct of our president, the uncertaintyin which he leaves us... "

"False!.. The president has written... "

Bézuquet, quivering, planted himself squarely before the table; butconscious that his attitude was anti-parliamentary, he changed his tone, and, raising one hand according to usage, he asked for the floor, tomake an urgent communication. 

"Speak! Speak!"

Costecalde, very yellow, his throat tightened, gave him the floor by amotion of his head. Then, and not till then, Bézuquet spoke:

"Tartarin is at the foot of the Jungfrau... He is about to make theascent... He desires to take with him our banner... "

Silence; broken by the heavy breathing of chests; then a loud hurrah, bravos, stamping of the feet, above which rose the gong of Excourbanièsuttering his war-cry "Ha! ha! ha! _fen dé brut!_" to which the anxiouscrowd without responded. 

Costecalde, getting more and more yellow, tinkled the presidentialbell desperately. Bézuquet at last was allowed to continue, mopping hisforehead and puffing as if he had just mounted five pairs of stairs. 

_Différemment_, the banner that their president requested in order toplant it on virgin heights, should it be wrapped up, packed up, and sentby express like an ordinary trunk?.. 

"Never!.. Ah! ah! ah!.. " roared Excourbaniès. 

Would it not be better to appoint a delegation--draw lots for threemembers of the committee?.. 

He was not allowed to finish. The time to say _zou!_ and Bézuquet'sproposition was voted by acclamation, and the names of three delegatesdrawn in the following order: 1, Bravida; 2, Pégoulade; 3, theapothecary. 

No. 2, protested. The long journey frightened him, so feeble and ill ashe was, _péchèrel_ ever since that terrible event of the "Medusa. "

"I 'll go for you, Pégoulade, " roared Excour-baniès, telegraphing withall his limbs. As for Bézuquet, he could not leave the pharmacy, thesafety of the town depended on him. One imprudence of the pupil, and allTarascon might be poisoned, decimated:

"_Outre!_" cried the whole committee, agreeing as one man. 

Certainly the apothecary could not go himself, but he could sendFascalon; Pascalon could take charge of the banner. That was hisbusiness. Thereupon, fresh exclamations, further explosions of the gong, and on the Promenade such a popular tempest that Excourbaniès was forcedto show himself and address the crowd above its roarings, which hismatchless voice soon mastered. 

"My friends, Tartarin is found. He is about to cover himself withglory. "

Without adding more than "Vive Tartarin!" and his war-cry, givenwith all the force of his lungs, he stood for a moment enjoying thetremendous clamour of the crowd below, rolling and hustling confusedlyin clouds of dust, while from the branches of the trees the grasshoppersadded their queer little rattle as if it were broad day. 

Hearing all this, Costecalde, who had gone to a window with the rest, returned, staggering, to his arm-chair. 

"_Vé!_ Costecalde, " said some one. "What's the matter with him?.. Lookhow yellow he is!"

They sprang to him; already the terrible Tournatoire had whipped out hislancet: but the gunsmith, writhing in distress, made a horrible grimace, and said ingenuously:

"Nothing... Nothing... Let me alone... I know what it is... It is envy. "

Poor Costecalde, he seemed to suffer much. 

While these things were happening, at the other end of the Tour deVille, in the pharmacy, Bézuquet's pupil, seated before his master'sdesk, was patiently patching and gumming together the fragments ofTartarin's letter overlooked by the apothecary at the bottom of thebasket. But numerous bits were lacking in the reconstruction, for hereis the singular and sinister enigma spread out before him, not unlike amap of Central Africa, with voids and spaces of _terra incognita_, which the artless standard-bearer explored in a state of terrifiedimagination:

 mad with love reed -wick lam preserves of Chicago. Cannot tear myself Nihilist to death condition abom in exchange for her You know me, Ferdi know my liberal ideas, but from there to tzaricide rrible consequences Siberia hung adore her Ah! press thy loyal hand

 Tar Tar

VIII. 

 Memorable dialogue between the jungfrau and Tartarin. A nihilist salon. The duel with hunting-knives. Frightful nightmare, "Is it I you are seeking, messieurs?" Strange reception given by the hotel-keeper Meyer to the Tarasconese delegation. 

Like all the other choice hotels at Interlaken, the Hôtel Jungfrau, keptby Meyer, is situated on the Höheweg, a wide promenade between doublerows of chestnut-trees that vaguely reminded Tar-tarin of the belovedTour de Ville of his native town, minus the sun, the grasshoppers, andthe dust; for during his week's sojourn at Interlaken the rain had neverceased to fall. 

He occupied a very fine chamber with a balcony on the first floor, andtrimmed his beard in the morning before a little hand-glass hanging tothe window, an old habit of his when travelling. The first object thatdaily struck his eyes beyond the fields of grass and corn, the nurserygardens, and an amphitheatre of solemn verdure in rising stages, wasthe Jungfrau, lifting from the clouds her summit, like a horn, white andpure with unbroken snow, to which was daily clinging a furtive ray ofthe still invisible rising sun. Then between the white and rosy Alpand the Alpinist a little dialogue took place regularly, which was notwithout its grandeur. 

"Tartarin, are you coming?" asked the Jung-frau sternly. 

"Here, here... " replied the hero, his thumb under his nose and finishinghis beard as fast as possible. Then he would hastily take down hisascensionist outfit and, swearing at himself, put it on. 

"_Coquin de sort!_ there's no name for it... "

But a soft voice rose, demure and clear among the myrtles in the borderbeneath his window. 

"Good-morning, " said Sonia, as he appeared upon the balcony, "the landauis ready... Come, make haste, lazy man... "

"I 'm coming, I 'm coming... "

In a trice he had changed his thick flannel shirt for linen of thefinest quality, his mountain knickerbockers for a suit of serpent-greenthat turned the heads of all the women in Tarascon at the Sundayconcerts. 

The horses of the landau were pawing before the door; Sonia was alreadyinstalled beside Boris, paler, more emaciated day by day in spite ofthe beneficent climate of Interlaken. But, regularly, at the moment ofstarting, Tartarin was fated to see two forms arise from a bench onthe promenade and approach him with the heavy rolling step of mountainbears; these were Rodolphe Kaufmann and Christian Inebnit, two famousGrindelwald guides, engaged by Tartarin for the ascension of theJungfrau, who came every morning to ascertain if their monsieur wereready to start. 

The apparition of these two men, in their iron-clamped shoes and fustianjackets worn threadbare on the back and shoulder by knapsacks and ropes, their naïve and serious faces, and the four words of French which theymanaged to splutter as they twisted their broad-brimmed hats, were apositive torture to Tartarin. In vain he said to them: "Don't troubleyourselves to come; I 'll send for you... "

Every day he found them in the same place and got rid of them by a largecoin proportioned to the enormity of his remorse. Enchanted withthis method of "doing the Jungfrau, " the mountaineers pocketed their_trinkgeld_ gravely, and took, with resigned step, the path to theirnative village, leaving Tartarin confused and despairing at his ownweakness. Then the broad open air, the flowering plains reflected in thelimpid pupils of Sonia's eyes, the touch of her little foot against hisboot in the carriage... The devil take that Jungfrau! The hero thoughtonly of his love, or rather of the mission he had given himself tobring back into the right path that poor little Sonia, so unconsciouslycriminal, cast by sisterly devotion outside of the law, and outside ofhuman nature. 

This was the motive that kept him at Interlaken, in the same hotel asthe Wassiliefs. At his age, with his air of a good papa, he certainlycould not dream of making that poor child love him, but he saw her sosweet, so brave, so generous to all the unfortunates of her party, sodevoted to that brother whom the mines of Siberia had sent back to her, his body eaten with ulcers, poisoned with verdigris, and he himselfcondemned to death by phthisis more surely than by any court. There wasenough in all that to touch a man!

Tartarin proposed to take them to Tarascon and settle them in a villafull of sun at the gates of the town, that good little town where itnever rains and where life is spent in fêtes and song. And with thathe grew excited, rattled a tambourine air on the crown of his hat, andtrolled out the gay native chorus of the farandole dance:

 Lagadigadeoù La Tarasque, la Tarasque, Lagadigadeoù La Tarasque de Casteoù. 

But while a satirical smile pinched still closer the lips of the sickman, Sonia shook her head. Neither fêtes nor sun for her so long as theRussians groaned beneath the yoke of the tyrant. As soon as her brotherwas well--her despairing eyes said another thing--nothing could preventher from returning up there to suffer and die in the sacred cause. 

"But, _coquin de bon sort!_" cried Tartarin, "if you blow up one tyrantthere 'll come another... You will have it all to do over again... Andthe years will go by, _vé!_ the days for happiness and love... " His wayof saying love--_amour_--à la Tarasconese, with three r's in it and hiseyes starting out of his head, amused the young girl; then, seriousonce more, she declared she would never love any man but the one whodelivered her country. Yes, that man, were he as ugly as Bolibine, morerustic and common than Manilof, she was ready to give herself wholly tohim, to live at his side, a free gift, as long as her youth lasted andthe man wished for her. 

"Free gift!" the term used by Nihilists to express those illegal unionsthey contract among themselves by reciprocal consent. And of suchprimitive marriage Sonia spoke tranquilly with her virgin air before theTarasconese, who, worthy bourgeois, peaceful elector, was now readyto spend his days beside that adorable girl in the said state of "freegift" if she had not added those murderous and abominable conditions. 

While they were conversing of these extremely delicate matters, thefields, the lakes, the forests, the mountains lay spread before them, and always at each new turn, through the cool mist of that perpetualshower which accompanied our hero on all his excursions, the Jungfrauraised her white crest, as if to poison by remorse those delicioushours. They returned to breakfast at a vast _table d'hôte_ where theRices and Prunes continued their silent hostilities, to which Tartarinwas wholly indifferent, seated by Sonia, watching that Boris had no openwindow at his back, assiduous, paternal, exhibiting all his seductionsas man of the world and his domestic qualities as an excellentcabbage-rabbit. 

After this, he took tea with the Russians in their little salon openingon a tiny garden at the end of the terrace. Another exquisite hour forTartarin of intimate chat in a low voice while Boris slept on a sofa. The hot water bubbled in the samovar; a perfume of moist flowers slippedthrough the half-opened door with the blue reflection of the solanumsthat were clustering about it. A little more sun, more warmth, and herewas his dream realized, his pretty Russian installed beside him, takingcare of the garden of the baobab. 

Suddenly Sonia gave a jump. 

"Two o'clock!.. And the letters?"

"I'm going for them, " said the good Tartarin, and, merely from the tonesof his voice and the resolute, theatrical gesture with which he buttonedhis coat and seized his cane, any one would have guessed the gravity ofthe action, apparently so simple, of going to the post-office to fetchthe Wassilief letters. 

Closely watched by the local authorities and the Russian police, allNihilists, but especially their leaders, are compelled to take certainprecautions, such as having their letters and papers addressed _posterestante_ to simple initials. 

Since their installation at Interlaken, Boris being scarcely able todrag himself about, Tartarin, to spare Sonia the annoyance of waitingin line before the post-office wicket exposed to inquisitive eyes, hadtaken upon himself the risks and perils of this daily nuisance. Thepost-office is not more than ten minutes' walk from the hotel, in a wideand noisy street at the end of a promenade lined with cafés, breweries, shops for the tourists displaying alpenstocks, gaiters, straps, opera-glasses, smoked glasses, flasks, travelling-bags, all of whicharticles seemed placed there expressly to shame the renegade Alpinist. Tourists were defiling in caravans, with horses, guides, mules, veilsgreen and blue, and a tintinnabulation of canteens as the animalsambled, the ice-picks marking each step on the cobble-stones. But thisfestive scene, hourly renewed, left Tartarin indifferent. He never evenfelt the fresh north wind with a touch of snow coming in gusts from themountains, so intent was he on baffling the spies whom he supposed to beupon his traces. 

The foremost soldier of a vanguard, the sharpshooter skirting thewalls of an enemy's town, never advanced with more mistrust than theTaras-conese hero while crossing the short distance between the hoteland the post-office. At the slightest heel-tap sounding behind his own, he stopped, looked attentively at the photographs in the windows, orfingered an English or German book lying on a stall, to oblige thepolice spy to pass him. Or else he turned suddenly round, to stare withferocious eyes at a stout servant-girl going to market, or some harmlesstourist, a _table d'hôte_ Prune, who, taking him for a madman, turnedoff, alarmed, from the sidewalk to avoid him. 

When he reached the office, where the wickets open, rather oddly, into the street itself, Tartarin passed and repassed, to observe thesurrounding physiognomies before he himself approached: then, suddenlydarting forward, he inserted his whole head and shoulders into theopening, muttered a few indistinct syllables (which they always made himrepeat, to his great despair), and, possessor at last of the mysterioustrust, he returned to the hotel by a great détour on the kitchen side, his hand in his pocket clutching the package of letters and papers, prepared to tear up and swallow everything at the first alarm. 

Manilof and Bolibine were usually awaiting his return with theWassiliefs. They did not lodge in the hotel, out of prudence andeconomy. Bolibine had found work in a printing-office, and Manilof, avery clever cabinetmaker, was employed by a builder. Tartarin did notlike them: one annoyed him by his grimaces and his jeering airs; theother kept looking at him savagely. Besides, they took too much space inSonia's heart. 

"He is a hero!" she said of Bolibine; and she told how for threeyears he had printed all alone, in the very heart of St. Petersburg, arevolutionary paper. Three years without ever leaving his upper room, orshowing himself at a window, sleeping at night in a great cupboard builtin the wall, where the woman who lodged him locked him up till morningwith his clandestine press. 

And then, that life of Manilof, spent for six months in the subterraneanpassages beneath the Winter Palace, watching his opportunity, sleepingat night on his provision of dynamite, which resulted in giving himfrightful headaches, and nervous troubles; all this, aggravated byperpetual anxiety, sudden irruptions of the police, vaguely informedthat something was plotting, and coming, suddenly and unexpectedly, to surprise the workmen employed at the Palace. On one of the rareoccasions when Manilof came out of the mine, he met on the Place del'Amirauté a delegate of the Revolutionary Committee, who asked him in alow voice, as he walked along:

"Is it finished?"

"No, not yet... " said the other, scarcely moving his lips. At last, on an evening in February, to the same question in the same words heanswered, with the greatest calmness:

"It is finished... "

And almost immediately a horrible uproar confirmed his words, all thelights of the palace went out suddenly, the place was plunged intocomplete obscurity, rent by cries of agony and terror, the blowing ofbugles, the galloping of soldiers, and firemen tearing along with theirtrucks. 

Here Sonia interrupted her tale:

"Is it not horrible, so many human lives sacrificed, such efforts, suchcourage, such wasted intelligence?.. No, no, it is a bad means, thesebutcheries in the mass... He who should be killed always escapes... Thetrue way, the most humane, would be to seek the czar himself as you seekthe lion, fully determined, fully armed, post yourself at a window orthe door of a carriage... And, when he passes..... "

"_Bé!_ yes, _certainemain_... " responded Tartarin embarrassed, andpretending not to seize her meaning; then, suddenly, he would launchinto a philosophical, humanitarian discussion with one of the numerousassistants. For Bolibine and Manilof were not the only visitors to theWassiliefs. Every day new faces appeared of young people, men or women, with the cut of poor students; elated teachers, blond and rosy, withthe self-willed forehead and the childlike ferocity of Sonia; outlawedexiles, some of them already condemned to death, which lessened in noway their youthful expansiveness. 

They laughed, they talked openly, and as most of them spoke French, Tartarin was soon at his ease. They called him "uncle, " conscious ofsomething childlike and artless about him that they liked. Perhaps hewas over-ready with his hunting tales; turning up his sleeve to hisbiceps in order to show the scar of a blow from a panther's claws, ormaking his hearers feel beneath his beard the holes left there by thefangs of a lion; perhaps also he became too rapidly familiar with thesepersons, catching them round the waist, leaning on their shoulders, calling them by their Christian names after five minutes' intercourse:

"Listen, Dmitri... " "You know me, Fédor Ivanovich... " They knew him onlysince yesterday, in any case; but they liked him all the same forhis jovial frankness, his amiable, trustful air, and his readiness toplease. They read their letters before him, planned their plots, and told their passwords to foil the police: a whole atmosphereof conspiracy which amused the imagination of the Tarasconese heroimmensely: so that, however opposed by nature to acts of violence, hecould not help, at times, discussing their homicidal plans, approving, criticising, and giving advice dictated by the experience of a greatleader who has trod the path of war, trained to the handling of allweapons, and to hand-to-hand conflicts with wild beasts. 

One day, when they told in his presence of the murder of a policeman, stabbed by a Nihilist at the theatre, Tartarin showed them how badly theblow had been struck, and gave them a lesson in knifing. 

"Like this, _vé!_ from the top down. Then there's no risk of woundingyourself... "

And, excited by his own imitation:

"Let's suppose, _té!_ that I hold your despot between four eyes in aboar-hunt He is over there, where you are, Fédor, and I'm here, near this round table, each of us with our hunting-knife... Come on, monseigneur, we 'll have it out now... "

Planting himself in the middle of the salon, gathering his sturdy legsunder him for a spring, and snorting like a woodchopper, he mimicked areal fight, ending by his cry of triumph as he plunged the weapon tothe hilt, from the top down, _coquin de sort!_ into the bowels of hisadversary. 

"That's how it ought to be done, my little fellows!"

But what subsequent remorse! what anguish when, escaping from themagnetism of Sonia's blue eyes, he found himself alone, in his nightcap, alone with his reflections and his nightly glass of _eau sucrée!_

_Différemment_, what was he meddling with? The czar was not his czar, decidedly, and all these matters didn't concern him in the least... Anddon't you see that some of these days he would be captured, extraditedand delivered over to Muscovite justice... _Boufre!_ they don't joke, those Cossacks... And in the obscurity of his hotel chamber, with thathorrible imaginative faculty which the horizontal position increases, there developed before him--like one of those unfolding pictures givento him in childhood--the various and terrible punishments to whichhe should be subjected: Tartarin in the verdigris mines, like Boris, working in water to his belly, his body ulcerated, poisoned. Heescapes, he hides amid forests laden with snow, pursued by Tartars andbloodhounds trained to hunt men. Exhausted with cold and hunger, he isretaken and finally hung between two thieves, embraced by a pope withgreasy hair smelling of brandy and seal-oil; while away down there, atTarascon in the sunshine, the band playing of a fine Sunday, the crowd, the ungrateful crowd, are installing a radiant Costecalde in the chairof the P. C. A. 

It was during the agony of one of these dreadful dreams that he utteredhis cry of distress, "Help, help, Bézuquet!" and sent to the apothecarythat confidential letter, all moist with the sweat of his nightmare. ButSonia's pretty "Good morning" beneath his window sufficed to cast himback into the weaknesses of indecision. 

One evening, returning from the Kursaal to the hotel with the Wassiliefsand Bolibine, after two hours of intoxicating music, the unfortunate manforgot all prudence, and the "Sonia, I love you, " which he had so longrestrained, was uttered as he pressed the arm that rested on his own. She was not agitated. Perfectly pale, she gazed at him under the gasof the portico on which they had paused: "Then deserve me... " she said, with a pretty enigmatical smile, a smile that gleamed upon her delicatewhite teeth. Tartarin was about to reply, to bind himself by an oath tosome criminal madness when the porter of the hotel came up to him:

"There are persons waiting for you, upstairs... Some gentlemen... Theywant you. "

"Want me!.. _Outre!_.. What for?" And No. 1 of his folding seriesappeared before him: Tartarin captured, extradited... Of course he wasfrightened, but his attitude was heroic. Quickly detaching himself fromSonia: "Fly, save yourself!" he said to her in a smothered voice. Thenhe mounted the stairs as if to the scaffold, his head high, his eyesproud, but so disturbed in mind that he was forced to cling to thebaluster. 

As he entered the corridor, he saw persons grouped at the farther endof it before his door, looking through the keyhole, rapping, and callingout: "Hey! Tartarin... "

He made two steps forward, and said, with parched lips: "Is it I whomyou are seeking, messieurs?"

"_Te! pardi_, yes, my president!. "

And a little old man, alert and wiry, dressed in gray, and apparentlybringing on his coat, his hat, his gaiters and his long and pendentmoustache all the dust of his native town, fell upon the neck of thehero and rubbed against his smooth fat cheeks the withered leathery skinof the retired captain of equipment. 

"Bravida!.. Not possible!.. Excourbaniès too!.. And who is that overthere?.. "

A bleating answered: "Dear ma-a-aster!.. " and the pupil advanced, banging against the wall a sort of long fishing-rod with a packet at oneend wrapped in gray paper, and oilcloth tied round it with string. 

"Hey! _vè!_ why it's Pascalon... Embrace me, little one... What's thatyou are carrying?.. Put it down... "

"The paper... Take off the paper!.. " whispered Bravida. The youth undidthe roll with a rapid hand and the Tarasconese banner was displayed tothe eyes of the amazed Tartarin. 

The delegates took off their hats. 

"President"--the voice of Bravida trembled solemnly--"you asked for thebanner and we have brought it, _té!_"

The president opened a pair of eyes as round as apples: "I! I asked forit?"

"What! you did not ask for it? Bézuquet said so. 

"Yes, yes, _certainemain_... " said Tartarin, suddenly enlightened bythe mention of Bézuquet. He understood all and guessed the rest, and, tenderly moved by the ingenious lie of the apothecary to recall him toa sense of duty and honour, he choked, and stammered in his short beard:"Ah! my children, how kind you are! What good you have done me!"

"_Vive le présidain!_" yelped Pascalon, brandishing the oriflamme. Excourbaniès' gong responded, rolling its war-cry (" Ha! ha! ha! _fendé brut_.. ") to the very cellars of the hotel. Doors opened, inquisitiveheads protruded on every floor and then disappeared, alarmed, beforethat standard and the dark and hairy men who were roaring singularwords and tossing their arms in the air. Never had the peaceable HôtelJungfrau been subjected to such a racket. 

"Come into my room, " said Tartarin, rather disconcerted. He was feelingabout in the darkness to find matches when an authoritative rap on thedoor made it open of itself to admit the consequential, yellow, andpuffy face of the innkeeper Meyer. He was about to enter, but stoppedshort before the darkness of the room, and said with closed teeth:

"Try to keep quiet... Or I 'll have you taken up by the police... "

A grunt as of wild bulls issued from the shadow at that brutal term"taken up. " The hotel-keeper recoiled one step, but added: "It is knownwho you are; they have their eye upon you; for my part, I don't want anymore such persons in my house!.. "

"Monsieur Meyer, " said Tartarin, gently, politely, but very firmly... "Send me my bill... These gentlemen and myself start to-morrow morningfor the Jungfrau. "

O native soil! O little country within a great one! by only hearing theTarasconese accent, quivering still with the air of that beloved landbeneath the azure folds of its banner, behold Tartarin, delivered fromlove and its snares and restored to his friends, his mission, his glory. 

And now, _zou!_

IX. 

 At the "Faithful Chamois. "

The next day it was charming, that trip on foot from Interlaken toGrindelwald, where they were, in passing, to take guides for the LittleScheideck; charming, that triumphal march of the P. C. A. , restored tohis trappings and mountain habiliments, leaning on one side on the leanlittle shoulder of Commander Bravida, and on the other, the robust armof Excourbaniès, proud, both of them, to be nearest to him, tosupport their dear president, to carry his ice-axe, his knapsack, hisalpenstock, while sometimes before, sometimes behind or on their flanksthe fanatical Pascalon gambolled like a puppy, his banner duly rolled upinto a package to avoid the tumultuous scenes of the night before. 

The gayety of his companions, the sense of duty accomplished, theJungfrau all white upon the sky, over there, like a vapour--nothingshort of all this could have made the hero forget what he left behindhim, for ever and ever it may be, and without farewell. However, at thelast houses of Interlaken his eyelids swelled and, still walking on, hepoured out his feelings in turn into the bosom of Excourbanîès: "Listen, Spiridion, " or that of Bravida: "You know me, Placide... " For, by anirony on nature, that indomitable warrior was called Placide, and thatrough buffalo, with all his instincts material, Spiridion. 

Unhappily, the Tarasconese race, more gallant than sentimental, nevertakes its love-affairs very seriously. "Whoso loses a woman and tensous, is to be pitied about the money... " replied the sententiousPlacide to Tartarin's tale, and Spiridion thought exactly like him. Asfor the innocent Pascalon, he was horribly afraid of women, and reddenedto the ears when the name of the Little Scheideck was uttered beforehim, thinking some lady of flimsy morals was referred to. The poor loverwas therefore reduced to keep his confidences to himself, and consolehimself alone--which, after all, is the surest way. 

But what grief could have resisted the attractions of the way throughthat narrow, deep and sombre valley, where they walked on the banks ofa winding river all white with foam, rumbling with an echo like thunderamong the pine-woods which skirted both its shores. 

The Tarasconese delegation, their heads in the air, advanced with a sortof religious awe and admiration, like the comrades of Sinbad the Sailorwhen they stood before the mangoes, the cotton-trees, and all the giantflora of the Indian coasts. Knowing nothing but their own little baldand stony mountains they had never imagined there could be so many treestogether or such tall ones. 

"That is nothing, as yet... Wait till you see the Jungfrau, " said the P. C. A. , who enjoyed their amazement and felt himself magnified in theireyes. 

At the same time, as if to brighten the scene and humanize its solemnnote, cavalcades went by them, great landaus going at full speed, withveils floating from the doorways where curious heads leaned out to lookat the delegation pressing round its president. From point to pointalong the roadside were booths spread with knick-knacks of carved wood, while young girls, stiff in their laced bodices, their striped skirtsand broad-brimmed straw hats, were offering bunches of strawberries andedelweiss. Occasionally, an Alpine horn sent among the mountains itsmelancholy ritornello, swelling, echoing from gorge to gorge, and slowlydiminishing, like a cloud that dissolves into vapour. 

"'T is fine, 't is like an organ, " murmured Pascalon, his eyesmoist, in ecstasy, like the stained-glass saint of a church window. Excourbaniès roared, undiscouraged, and the echoes repeated, till sightand sound were lost, his Tarasconese intonations: "Ha! ha! ha! _fen débrut!_"

But people grow weary after marching for two hours through the same sortof decorative scene, however well it may be organized, green on blue, glaciers in the distance, and all things sonorous as a musical clock. The dash of the torrents, the singers in triplets, the sellers ofcarved objects, the little flower-girls, soon became intolerable to ourfriends, --above all, the dampness, the steam rising in this species oftunnel, the soaked soil full of water-plants, where never had the sunpenetrated. 

"It is enough to give one a pleurisy, " said Bravida, turning up thecollar of his coat. Then weariness set in, hunger, ill-humour. Theycould find no inn; and presently Excourbaniès and Bravida, havingstuffed themselves with strawberries, began to suffer cruelly. Pascalonhimself, that angel, bearing not only the banner, but the ice-axe, theknapsack, the alpenstock, of which the others had rid themselves baselyupon him, even Pascalon had lost his gayety and ceased his livelygambolling. 

At a turn of the road, after they had just crossed the Lutschine by oneof those covered bridges that are found in regions of deep snow, a loudblast on a horn greeted them. 

"Ah! _vaï_, enough!.. Enough!" howled the exasperated delegation. 

The man, a giant, ensconced by the roadside, let go an enormoustrumpet of pine wood reaching to the ground and ending there ina percussion-box, which gave to this prehistoric instrument thesonorousness of a piece of artillery. 

"Ask him if he knows of an inn, " said the president to Excourbaniès, who, with enormous cheek and a small pocket dictionary undertook, now that they were in German Switzerland, to serve the delegation asinterpreter. But before he could pull out his dictionary the man repliedin very good French:

"An inn, messieurs? Why certainly... The 'Faithful Chamois' is close by;allow me to show you the place. "

On the way, he told them he had lived in Paris for several years, ascommissionnaire at the corner of the rue Vivienne. 

"Another employé of the Company, _parbleu!_" thought Tartarin, leavinghis friends to be surprised. However, Bompard's comrade was very useful, for, in spite of its French sign, _Le Chamois Fidèle_ the people of the"Faithful Chamois" could speak nothing but a horrible German patois. 

Presently, the Tarasconese delegation, seated around an enormous potatoomelet, recovered both the health and the good-humour as essentialto Southerners as the sun of their skies. They drank deep, they atesolidly. After many toasts to the president and his coming ascension, Tartarin, who had puzzled over the tavern-sign ever since his arrival, inquired of the horn-player, who was breaking a crust in a corner of theroom:

"So you have chamois here, it seems?.. I thought there were none left inSwitzerland. "

The man winked:

"There are not many, but enough to let you see them now and then. "

"Shoot them, is what he wants, _vé_" said Pas-calon, full of enthusiasm;"never did the president miss a shot!"

Tartarin regretted that he had not brought his carbine. 

"Wait a minute, and I 'll speak to the landlord. "

It so happened that the landlord was an old chamois hunter; he offeredhis gun, his powder, his buck-shot, and even himself as guide to a haunthe knew. 

"Forward, _zou!_" cried Tartarin, granting to his happy Alpinists theopportunity to show off the prowess of their chief. It was only a slightdelay, after all; the Jungfrau lost nothing by waiting. 

Leaving the inn at the back, they had only to walk through an orchard, no bigger than the garden of a station-master, before they foundthemselves on a mountain, gashed with great crevasses, among thefir-trees and underbrush. 

The innkeeper took the advance, and the Taras-conese presently saw himfar up the height, waving his arms and throwing stones, no doubt torouse the chamois. They rejoined him with much pain and difficulty overthat rocky slope, hard especially to persons who had just been eatingand were as little used to climbing as these good Alpinists of Tarascon. The air was heavy, moreover, with a tempest breath that was slowlyrolling the clouds along the summits above their heads. 

"_Boufre!_" groaned Bravida. 

Excourbaniès growled: "_Outre!_"

"What shall I be made to say!" added the gentle, bleating Pascalon. 

But the guide having, by a violent gesture, ordered them to hold theirtongues, and not to stir, Tartarin remarked, "Never speak under arms, "with a sternness that rebuked every one, although the president alonehad a weapon. They stood stock still, holding their breaths. Suddenly, Pas-calon cried out:

"_Vé _ the chamois, _vé_.. "

About three hundred feet above them, the upright horns, the light buffcoat and the four feet gathered together of the pretty creature stooddefined like a carved image at the edge of the rock, looking at themfearlessly. Tartarin brought his piece to his shoulder methodically, ashis habit was, and was just about to fire when the chamois disappeared. 

"It is your fault, " said the Commander to Pascalon... "you whistled... And that frightened him. "

"I whistled!.. I?"

"Then it was Spiridion... "

"Ah, _vaï!_ never in my life. "

Nevertheless, they had all heard a whistle, strident, prolonged. Thepresident settled the question by relating how the chamois, at theapproach of enemies, gives a sharp danger signal through the nostrils. That devil of a Tartarin knew everything about this kind of hunt, asabout all others!

At the call of their guide they started again; but the acclivity becamesteeper and steeper, the rocks more ragged, with bogs between them toright and left. Tartarin kept the lead, turning constantly to help thedelegates, holding out his hand or his carbine: "Your hand, your hand, if you don't mind, " cried honest Bravida, who was very much afraid ofloaded weapons. 

Another sign of the guide, another stop of the delegation, their nosesin the air. 

"I felt a drop!" murmured the Commander, very uneasy. At the sameinstant the thunder growled, but louder than the thunder roared thevoice of Excourbaniès: "Fire, Tartarin!" and the chamois bounded pastthem, crossing the ravine like a golden flash, too quickly for Tartarinto take aim, but not so fast that they did not hear that whistle of hisnostrils. 

"I 'll have him yet, _coquin de sort!_" cried the president, but thedelegates protested. Excourbaniès, becoming suddenly very sour, demandedif he had sworn to exterminate them. 

"Dear ma-a-aster, " bleated Pascalon, timidly, "I have heard say thatchamois if you corner them in abysses turn at bay against the hunter andare very dangerous. "

"Then don't let us corner him!" said Bravida hastily. 

Tartarin called them milksops. But while they were arguing, suddenly, abruptly, they all disappeared from one another's gaze in a warm thickvapour that smelt of sulphur, through which they sought each other, calling:

"Hey! Tartarin. "

"Are you there, Placide?"

"Ma-a-as-ter!"

"Keep cool! Keep cool!"

A regular panic. Then a gust of wind broke through the mist and whirledit away like a torn veil clinging to the briers, through which a zigzagflash of lightning fell at their feet with a frightful clap of thunder. "My cap!" cried Spiridion, as the tempest bared his head, its hairserect and crackling with electric sparks. They were in the very heart ofthe storm, the forge itself of Vulcan. Bravida was the first to fly, atfull speed, the rest of the delegation flew behind him, when a cry fromthe president, who thought of everything, stopped them:

"Thunder!.. Beware of the thunder!.. "

At any rate, outside of the very real danger of which he warned them, there was no possibility of running on those steep and gullied slopes, now transformed into torrents, into cascades, by the pouring rain. Thereturn was awful, by slow steps under that crazy cliff, amid the sharp, short flashes of lightning followed by explosions, slipping, falling, and forced at times to halt. Pascalon crossed himself and invokedaloud, as at Tarascon: "Sainte Marthe and Sainte Hélène, SainteMarie-Madeleine, " while Excourbaniès swore: "_Coquin de sort!_" andBravida, the rearguard, looked back in trepidation:

"What the devil is that behind us?.. It is galloping... It iswhistling... There, it has stopped... "

The idea of a furious chamois flinging itself upon its hunters was inthe mind of the old warrior. In a low voice, in order not to alarm theothers, he communicated his fears to Tartarin, who bravely took hisplace as the rearguard and marched along, soaked to the skin, his headhigh, with that mute determination which is given by the imminence ofdanger. But when he reached the inn and saw his dear Alpinists undershelter, drying their wet things, which smoked around a huge porcelainstove in a first floor chamber, to which rose an odour of grog alreadyordered, the president shivered and said, looking very pale: "I believeI have taken cold. "

"Taken cold!" No question now of starting again; the delegation askedonly for rest Quick, a bed was warmed, they hurried the hot winegrog, and after his second glass the president felt throughout hiscomfort-loving body a warmth, a tingling that augured well. Two pillowsat his back, a "_plumeau_" on his feet, his muffler round his head, heexperienced a delightful sense of well-being in listening to the roaringof the storm, inhaling that good pine odour of the rustic little roomwith its wooden walls and leaden panes, and in looking at his dearAlpinists, gathered, glass in hand, around his bed in the anomalouscharacter given to their Gallic, Roman or Saracenic types by thecounterpanes, curtains, and carpets in which they were bundled whiletheir own clothes steamed before the stove. Forgetful of himself, hequestioned each of them in a sympathetic voice:

"Are you well, Placide?.. Spiridion, you seemed to be suffering justnow?.. "

No, Spiridion suffered no longer, all that had passed away on seeing thepresident so ill. Bravida, who adapted moral truths to the proverbsof his nation, added cynically: "_Neighbour's ill comforts, and evencures_. " Then they talked of their hunt, exciting one another with therecollection of certain dangerous episodes, such as the moment when theanimal turned upon them furiously; and without complicity of lying, in fact, most ingenuously, they fabricated the fable they afterwardsrelated on their return to Tarascon. 

Suddenly, Pascalon, who had been sent in search of another supply ofgrog, reappeared in terror, one arm out of the blue-flowered curtainthat he gathered about him with the chaste gesture of a Polyeucte. He was more than a second before he could articulate, in a whisper, breathlessly: "The chamois!.. "

"Well, what of the chamois?.. "

"He's down there, in the kitchen... Warming himself... "

"Ah! _vaï_... "

"You are joking... "

"Suppose you go and see, Placide. "

Bravida hesitated. Excourbaniès descended on the tips of his toes, but returned almost immediately, his face convulsed... More and moreastounding!.. The chamois was drinking grog. 

They certainly owed it to him, poor beast, after the wild run he hadbeen made to take on the mountain, dispatched and recalled by hismaster, who, as a usual thing, put him through his evolutions in thehouse, to show to tourists how easily a chamois could be trained. 

"It is overwhelming!" said Bravida, making no further effort atcomprehension; as for Tartarin, he dragged the muffler over his eyeslike a nightcap to hide from the delegates the soft hilarity thatovercame him at encountering wherever he went the dodges and theperformers of Bompard's Switzerland. 

X. 

 The ascension of the Jungfrau. Vé! the oxen. The Kennedy crampons will not work. Nor the reedlamp either. Apparition of masked men at the chalet of the Alpine Club. The president in a crevasse. On the summit. Tartarin becomes a god. 

Great influx, that morning, to the Hôtel Bellevue on the LittleScheideck. In spite of the rain and the squalls, tables had beenlaid outside in the shelter of the veranda, amid a great display ofalpenstocks, flasks, telescopes, cuckoo clocks in carved wood, sothat tourists could, while breakfasting, contemplate at a depth of sixthousand feet before them the wonderful valley of Grindel-wald on theleft, that of Lauterbrunnen on the right, and opposite, within gunshotas it seemed, the immaculate, grandiose slopes of the Jungfrau, its_névés_, glaciers, all that reverberating whiteness which illumines theair about it, making glasses more transparent, and linen whiter. 

But now, for a time, general attention was attracted to a noisy, beardedcaravan, which had just arrived on horse, mule, and donkey-back, also ina _chaise à porteurs_, who had prepared themselves to climb the mountainby a copious breakfast, and were now in a state of hilarity, theracket of which contrasted with the bored and solemn airs of the verydistinguished Rices and Prunes collected on the Scheideck, such as: LordChipendale, the Belgian senator and his family, the Austro-Hungariandiplomat, and several others. It would certainly have been supposedthat the whole party of these bearded men sitting together at tablewere about to attempt the ascension, for one and all were busy withpreparations for departure, rising, rushing about to give directions tothe guides, inspecting the provisions, and calling to each other fromend to end of the terrace in stentorian tones. 

"Hey! Placide, _vé!_ the cooking-pan, see if it is in the knapsack!.. Don't forget the reed-lamp, _au mouain_. "

Not until the actual departure took place was it seen that, of all thecaravan, only one was to make the ascension: but which one?

"Children, are we ready?" said the good Tar-tarin in a joyous, triumphant voice, in which not a shade of anxiety trembled at thepossible dangers of the trip--his last doubt as to the Company'smanipulation of Switzerland being dissipated that very morning beforethe two glaciers of Grindel-wald each protected by a wicket and aturnstile, with this inscription "Entrance to the glacier: one francfifty. "

He could, therefore, enjoy without anxiety this departure in apotheosis, the joy of feeling himself looked at, envied, admired by those boldlittle misses in boys' caps who laughed at him so prettily on theRigi-Kulm, and were now enthusiastically comparing his short person withthe enormous mountain he was about to climb. One drew his portraitin her album, another sought the honour of touching his alpenstock. "Tchemppegne!.. Tchemppegne!.. " called out of a sudden a tall, funerealEnglishman with a brick-coloured skin, coming up to him, bottle andglass in hand. Then, after obliging the hero to drink with him:

"Lord Chipendale, sir... And you?"

"Tartarin of Tarascon. "

"Oh! yes... Tartarine... Capital name for a horse, " said the lord, whomust have been one of those great turfmen across the Channel. 

The Austro-Hungarian diplomat also came to press the Alpinist's handbetween his mittens, remembering vaguely to have seen him somewhere. "Enchanted!.. Enchanted!.. " he enunciated several times, and then, notknowing how to get out of it, he added: "My compliments to madame... "his social formula for cutting short presentations. 

But the guides were impatient; they must reach before nightfall the hutof the Alpine Club, where they were to sleep for the first stage, andthere was not a minute to lose. Tartarin felt it, saluted all with acircular gesture, smiled at the malicious misses, and then, in a voiceof thunder, commanded:

"Pascalon, the banner!"

It waved to the breeze; the Southerners took off their hats, for theylove theatricals at Tarascon; and at the cry, a score of times repeated:"Long live the president!.. Long live Tartarin!.. Ah! ah!.. _fen débrut!_.. " the column moved off, the two guides in front carrying theknapsack, the provisions, and a supply of wood; then came Pascalonbearing the oriflamme, and lastly the P. C. A. With the delegates whoproposed to accompany him as far as the glacier of the Guggi. 

Thus deployed in procession, bearing its flapping flag along the soddenway beneath those barren or snowy crests, the cortège vaguely recalledthe funeral marches of an All Souls' day in the country. 

Suddenly the Commander cried out, alarmed: "_Vé!_ those oxen!"

Some cattle were now seen browsing the short grass in the hollows ofthe ground. The former captain of equipment had a nervous and quiteinsurmountable terror of those animals, and as he could not be leftalone the delegation was forced to stop. Pascalon transmitted thestandard to the guides. Then, with a last embrace, hasty injunctions, and one eye on the cows:

"Adieu, adieu, _qué!_"

"No imprudence, _au mouain_... " they parted. As for proposing to thepresident to go up with him, no one even thought of it; 'twas so high, _boufre!_ And the nearer they came to it the higher it grew, the abysseswere more abysmal, the peaks bristled up in a white chaos, which lookedto be insurmountable. It was better to look at the ascension from theScheideck. 

In all his life, naturally, the president of the Club of the Alpineshad never set foot on a glacier. There is nothing of that sort on themountainettes of Tarascon, little hills as balmy and dry as a packet oflavender; and yet the approaches to the Guggi gave him the impression ofhaving already seen them, and wakened recollections of hunts in Provenceat the end of the Camargue, near to the sea. The same turf alwaysgetting shorter and parched, as if seared by fire. Here and there werepuddles of water, infiltrations of the ground betrayed by puny reeds, then came the moraine, like a sandy dune full of broken shells andcinders, and, far at the end, the glacier, with its blue-greenwaves crested with white and rounded in form, a silent, congealedground-swell. The wind which came athwart it, whistling and strong, hadthe same biting, salubrious freshness as his own sea-breeze. 

"No, thank you... I have my crampons... " said Tartarin to the guide, who offered him woollen socks to draw on over his boots; "Kennedycrampons... Perfected... Very convenient... " He shouted, as if to a deafperson, in order to make himself understood by Christian Inebnit, whoknew no more French than his comrade Kaufmann; and then the P. C. A. Sat down upon the moraine and strapped on a species of sandal with threeenormous and very strong iron spikes. He had practised them a hundredtimes, these Kennedy crampons, manoeuvring them in the garden of thebaobab; nevertheless, the present effect was unexpected. Beneath theweight of the hero the spikes were driven into the ice with such forcethat all efforts to withdraw them were vain. Behold him, therefore, nailed to the glacier, sweating, swearing, making with arms andalpenstock most desperate gymnastics and reduced finally to shouting forhis guides, who had gone forward, convinced that they had to do with anexperienced Alpinist. 

Under the impossibility of uprooting him, they undid the straps, and, the crampons, abandoned in the ice, being replaced by a pair of knittedsocks, the president continued his way, not without much difficulty andfatigue. Unskilful in holding his stick, his legs stumbled over it, thenits iron point skated and dragged him along if he leaned upon it tooheavily. He tried the ice-axe--still harder to manoeuvre, the swell ofthe glacier increasing by degrees, and pressing up, one above another, its motionless waves with all the appearance of a furious and petrifiedtempest. 

Apparent immobility only, for hollow crackings, subterranean gurgles, enormous masses of ice displacing themselves slowly, as if moved by themachinery of a stage, indicated the inward life of this frozen mass andits treacherous elements. To the eyes of our Alpinist, wherever he casthis axe crevasses were opening, bottomless pits, where masses of icein fragments rolled indefinitely. The hero fell repeatedly; once to hismiddle in one of those greenish gullies, where his broad shoulders alonekept him from going to the bottom. 

On seeing him so clumsy, and yet so tranquil, so sure of himself, laughing, singing, gesticulating, as he did while breakfasting, theguides imagined that Swiss champagne had made an impression upon him. What else could they suppose of the president of an Alpine Club, arenowned ascensionist, of whom his friends spoke only with "Ahs!" andexultant gestures. After taking him each by the arm with the respectfulfirmness of policemen putting into a carriage an overcome heir to atitle, they endeavoured, by the help of monosyllables and gestures, torouse his mind to a sense of the dangers of the route, the necessityof reaching the hut before nightfall, with threats of crevasses, cold, avalanches. Finally, with the point of their ice-picks they showed himthe enormous accumulation of ice, of _névé_ not yet transformed intoglacier rising before them to the zenith in blinding repetition. 

But the worthy Tartarin laughed at all that: "Ha! _vaï!_ crevasses!.. Ha! _vaï!_ those avalanches!.. " and he burst out laughing, winked hiseye, and prodded their sides with his elbows to let them know they couldnot fool him, for _he_ was in the secret of the comedy. 

The guides at last ended by making merry with the Tarasconese songs, andwhen they rested a moment on a solid block to let their monsieur get hisbreath, they yodelled in the Swiss way, though not too loudly, for fearof avalanches, nor very long, for time was getting on. They knew thecoming of night by the sharper cold, but especially by the singularchange in hue of these snows and ice-packs, heaped-up, overhanging, which always keep, even under misty skies, a rainbow tinge of colouruntil the daylight fades, rising higher and higher to the vanishingsummits, where the snows take on the livid, spectral tints of the lunaruniverse. Pallor, petrifaction, silence, death itself. And the goodTartarin, so warm, so living, was beginning to lose his liveliness whenthe distant cry of a bird, the note of a "snow partridge" brought backbefore his eyes a baked landscape, a copper-coloured setting sun, anda band of Taras-conese sportsmen, mopping their faces, seated on theirempty game-bags, in the slender shade of an olive-tree. The recollectionwas a comfort to him. 

At the same moment Kaufmann pointed to something that looked like afaggot of wood on the snow. 'T was the hut. It seemed as if they couldget to it in a few strides, but, in point of fact, it took a goodhalf-hour's walking. One of the guides went on ahead to light the fire. Darkness had now come on; the north wind rattled on the cadaverous way, and Tartarin, no longer paying attention to anything, supported by thestout arm of the mountaineer, stumbled and bounded along without a drythread on him in spite of the falling temperature. All of a sudden aflame shot up before him, together with an appetizing smell of onionsoup. 

They were there. 

Nothing can be more rudimentary than these halting-places established onthe mountains by the Alpine Club of Switzerland. A single room, in whichan inclined plane of hard wood serves as a bed and takes up nearly allthe space, leaving but little for the stove and the long table, screwedto the floor like the benches that are round it. The table was alreadylaid; three bowls, pewter spoons, the reed-lamp to heat the coffee, twocans of Chicago preserved meats already opened. Tartarin thought thedinner delicious although the fumes of the onion soup infected theatmosphere, and the famous spirit-lamp, which ought to have made itspint of coffee in three minutes, refused to perform its functions. 

At the dessert he sang; that was his only means of conversing with hisguides. He sang them the airs of his native land: _La Tarasque_, and_Les Filles d'Avignon_. To which the guides responded with local songsin German patois: _Mi Vater isch en Appenzeller... Aou... Aou_... Worthyfellows with hard, weather-beaten features as if cut from the rock, beards in the hollows that looked like moss and those clear eyes, usedto great spaces, like the eyes of sailors. The same sensation of the seaand the open, which he had felt just now on approaching Guggi, Tartarinagain felt here, in presence of these mariners of the glacier in thisclose cabin, low and smoky, the regular forecastle of a ship; in thedripping of the snow from the roof as it melted with the warmth; in thegreat gusts of wind, shaking everything, cracking the boards, flutteringthe flame of the lamp, and falling abruptly into vast, unnaturalsilence, like the end of the world. 

They had just finished dinner when heavy steps upon the ringing pathand voices were heard approaching. Violent blows with the butt end ofsome weapon shook the door. Tartarin, greatly excited, looked at hisguides... A nocturnal attack on these heights!.. The blows redoubled. "Who goes there?" cried the hero, jumping for his ice-axe; but alreadythe hut was invaded by two gigantic Yankees, in white linen masks, theirclothing soaked with snow and sweat, and behind them guides, porters, awhole caravan, on its return from ascending the Jungfrau. 

"You are welcome, milords, " said Tartarin, with a liberal, dispensinggesture, of which the milords showed not the slightest need in makingthemselves free of everything. In a trice the table was surrounded, thedishes removed, the bowls and spoons rinsed in hot water for the use ofthe new arrivals (according to established custom in Alpine huts); theboots of the milords smoked before the stove, while they themselves, bare-footed, their feet wrapped in straw, were sprawling at their easebefore a fresh onion soup. 

Father and son, these two Americans; two red-haired giants, with headsof pioneers, hard and self-reliant. One of them, the elder, had twodilated eyes, almost white, in a bloated, sun-burned, fissured face, and presently, by the hesitating way in which he groped for his bowl andspoon, and the care with which his son looked after him, Tartarin becameaware that this was the famous blind Alpinist of whom he had been told, not believing the tale, at the Hôtel Bellevue; a celebrated climber inhis youth, who now, in spite of his sixty years and his infirmity, was going over with his son the scenes of his former exploits. He hadalready done the Wetterhorn and the Jungfrau, and was intending toattack the Matterhorn and the Mont Blanc, declaring that the airupon summits, that glacial breath with its taste of snow, caused himinexpressible joy, and a perfect recall of his lost vigour. 

"_Différemment_, " asked Tartarin of one of the porters, for the Yankeeswere not communicative, and answered only by a "yes" or a "no" to allhis advances "_différemment_ inasmuch as he can't see, how does hemanage at the dangerous places?"

"Oh! he has got the mountaineer's foot; besides, his son watches overhim, and places his heels... And it is a fact that he has never had anaccident. "

"All the more because accidents in Switzerland are never very terrible, _qué?_" With a comprehending smile to the puzzled porter, Tartarin, more and more convinced that the "whole thing was _blague_, " stretchedhimself out on the plank rolled in his blanket, the muffler up to hiseyes, and went to sleep, in spite of the light, the noise, the smoke ofthe pipes and the smell of the onion soup... 

"Mossié!.. Mossié!.. "

One of his guides was shaking him for departure, while the other pouredboiling coffee into the bowls. A few oaths and the groans of sleeperswhom Tartarin crushed on his way to the table, and then to the door. Abruptly he found himself outside, stung by the cold, dazzled by thefairy-like reflections of the moon upon that white expanse, thosemotionless congealed cascades, where the shadow of the peaks, the_aiguilles_, the _séracs_, were sharply defined in the densest black. Nolonger the sparkling chaos of the afternoon, nor the livid rising upwardof the gray tints of evening, but a strange irregular city of darksomealleys, mysterious passages, doubtful corners between marble monumentsand crumbling ruins--a dead city, with broad desert spaces. 

Two o'clock! By walking well they could be at the top by mid-day. "_Zou!_" said the P. C. A. , very lively, and dashing forward, as ifto the assault. But his guides stopped him. They must be roped for thedangerous passages. 

"Ah! _vaï_, roped!.. Very good, if that amuses you. "

Christian Inebnit took the lead, leaving twelve feet of rope betweenhimself and Tartarin, who was separated by the same length from thesecond guide who carried the provisions and the banner. The hero kepthis footing better than he did the day before; and confidence in theCompany must indeed have been strong, for he did not take seriously thedifficulties of the path--if we can call a path the terrible ridge ofice along which they now advanced with precaution, a ridge but a fewfeet wide and so slippery that Christian was forced to cut steps withhis ice-axe. 

The line of the ridge sparkled between two depths of abysses on eitherside. But if you think that Tartarin was frightened, not at all!Scarcely did he feel the little quiver of the cuticle of a freemasonnovice when subjected to his opening test. He placed his feet mostprecisely in the holes which the first guide cut for them, doing allthat he saw the guide do, as tranquil as he was in the garden of thebaobab when he practised around the margin of the pond, to the terror ofthe goldfish. At one place the ridge became so narrow that he wasforced to sit astride of it, and while they went slowly forward, helpingthemselves with their hands, a loud detonation echoed up, on theirright, from beneath them. "Avalanche!" said Inebnit, keeping motionlesstill the repercussion of the echoes, numerous, grandiose, filling thesky, died away at last in a long roll of thunder in the far distance, where the final detonation was lost. After which, silence once morecovered all as with a winding-sheet. 

The ridge passed, they went up a _névé_ the slope of which was rathergentle but its length interminable. They had been climbing nearly anhour when a slender pink line began to define the summits far, farabove their heads. It was the dawn, thus announcing itself. Like a trueSoutherner, enemy to shade, Tartarin trolled out his liveliest song:

 Grand souleu de la Provenço Gai compaire dou mistrau--

A violent shake of the rope from before and behind stopped him short inthe middle of his couplet. "Hush... Hush... " said Inebnit, pointingwith his ice-axe to the threatening line of gigantic _séracs_ on theirtottering foundations which the slightest jar might send thundering downthe steep. But Tartarin knew what _that_ meant; he was not the man toply with any such tales, and he went on singing in a resounding voice:

 Tu qu 'escoulès la Duranço Commo un flot dé vin de Crau. 

The guides, seeing that they could not silence their crazy singer, madea great détour to get away from the _séracs_, and presently were stoppedby an enormous crevasse, the glaucous green sides of which were lighted, far down their depths, by the first furtive rays of the dawn. What iscalled in Switzerland "a snow bridge" spanned it; but so slight was it, so fragile, that they had scarcely advanced a step before it crumbledaway in a cloud of white dust, dragging down the leading guide andTartarin, hanging to the rope which Rodolphe Kaufmann, the rear guide, was alone left to hold, clinging with all the strength of his mountainvigour to his pick-axe, driven deeply into the ice. But although he wasable to hold the two men suspended in the gulf he had not enough forceto draw them up and he remained, crouching on the snow, his teethclenched, his muscles straining, and too far from the crevasse to seewhat was happening. 

Stunned at first by the fall, and blinded by snow, Tartarin waved hisarms and legs at random, like a puppet out of order; then, drawinghimself up by means of the rope, he hung suspended over the abyss, hisnose against its icy side, which his breath polished, in the attitude ofa plumber in the act of soldering a waste-pipe. He saw the sky above himgrowing paler and the stars disappearing; below he could fathom the gulfand its opaque shadows, from which rose a chilling breath. 

Nevertheless, his first bewilderment over, he recovered hisself-possession and his fine good-humour. 

"Hey! up there! _père_ Kaufmann, don't leave us to mildew here, _qué!_there 's a draught all round, and besides, this cursed rope is cuttingour loins. "

Kaufmann was unable to answer; to have unclenched his teeth would havelessened his strength. But Inebnit shouted from below:

"Mossié... Mossié... Ice-axe... " for his own had been lost in the fall;and, the heavy implement being now passed from the hands of Tartarin tothose of the guide (with difficulty, owing to the space that separatedthe two hanged ones), the mountaineer used it to make notches in theice-wall before him, into which he could fasten both hands and feet. 

The weight of the rope being thus lessened by at least one-half, Rodolphe Kaufmann, with carefully calculated vigour and infiniteprecautions, began to draw up the president, whose Tarasconese capappeared at last at the edge of the crevasse. Inebnit followed him inturn and the two mountaineers met again with that effusion of briefwords which, in persons of limited elocution, follows great dangers. Both were trembling with their effort, and Tartarin passed them hisflask of kirsch to steady their legs. He himself was nimble and calm, and while he shook himself free of snow he hummed his song under thenose of his wondering guides, beating time with his foot to the measure:

"_Brav... Brav... Franzose_... " said Kaufmann, tapping him on theshoulder; to which Tartarin answered with his fine laugh:

"You rogue! I knew very well there was no danger... "

Never within the memory of guides was there seen such an Alpinist. 

They started again, climbing perpendicularly a sort of gigantic wall ofice some thousand feet high, in which they were forced to cut steps asthey went along, which took much time. The man of Tarascon began tofeel his strength give way under the brilliant sun which flooded thewhiteness of the landscape and was all the more fatiguing to hiseyes because he had dropped his green spectacles into the crevasse. Presently, a dreadful sense of weakness seized him, that mountainsickness which produces the same effects as sea-sickness. Exhausted, hishead empty, his legs flaccid, he stumbled and lost his feet, so thatthe guides were forced to grasp him, one on each side, supporting andhoisting him to the top of that wall of ice. Scarcely three hundred feetnow separated them from the summit of the Jungfrau; but although thesnow was hard and bore them, and the path much easier, this last stagetook an almost interminable time, the fatigue and the suffocation of theP. C. A. Increasing all the while. 

Suddenly the mountaineers loosed their hold upon him, and waving theircaps began to yodel in a transport of joy. They were there! This spot inimmaculate space, this white crest, somewhat rounded, was the goal, andfor that good Tartarin the end of the somnambulic torpor in which he hadwandered for an hour or more. 

"Scheideck! Scheideck!" shouted the guides, showing him far, far below, on a verdant plateau emerging from the mists of the valley, the HôtelBellevue about the size of a thimble. 

Thence to where they stood lay a wondrous panorama, an ascent of fieldsof gilded snow, oranged by the sun, or else of a deep, cold blue, a piling up of mounds of ice, fantastically structured into towers, _flèches, aiguilles, arêtes_, and gigantic heaps, under which one couldwell believe that the lost megatherium or mastodon lay sleeping. All thetints of the rainbow played there and met in the bed of vast glaciersrolling down their immovable cascades, crossed by other little frozentorrents, the surfaces of which the sun's warmth liquefied, making themsmoother and more glittering. But, at the great height at which theystood, all this sparkling brilliance calmed itself; a light floated, cold, ecliptic, which made Tartarin shudder even more than the sense ofsilence and solitude in that white desert with its mysterious recesses. 

A little smoke, with hollow detonations, rose from the hotel. They wereseen, a cannon was fired in their honour, and the thought that theywere being looked at, that his Alpinists were there, and the misses, theillustrious Prunes and Rices, all with their opera-glasses levelled upto him, recalled Tartarin to a sense of the grandeur of his mission. Hetore thee, O Tarasconese banner! from the hands of the guide, waved theetwice or thrice, and then, plunging the handle of his ice-axe deep intothe snow, he seated himself upon the iron of the pick, banner in hand, superb, facing the public. And there--unknown to himself--by one ofthose spectral reflections frequent upon summits, taken between the sunand the mists that rose behind him, a gigantic Tartarin was outlined onthe sky, broader, dumpier, his beard bristling beyond the muffler, likeone of those Scandinavian gods enthroned, as the legend has it, amongthe clouds. 

XI. 

 En route for Tarascon. The Lake of Geneva. Tartarin proposes a visit to the dungeon of Bonnivard. Short dialogue amid the roses. The whole band under lock and key. The unfortunate Bonnivard. Where the rope made at Avignon was found. 

As a result of the ascension, Tartarin's nose peeled, pimpled, andhis cheeks cracked. He kept to his room in the Hôtel Bellevue for fivedays--five days of salves and compresses, the sticky unsavourinessand ennui of which he endeavoured to elude by playing cards with thedelegates or dictating to them a long, circumstantial account of hisexpedition, to be read in session, before the Club of the Alpines andpublished in the _Forum_. Then, as the general lumbago had disappearedand nothing remained upon the noble countenance of the P. C. A. But afew blisters, sloughs and chilblains on a fine complexion of Etruscanpottery, the delegation and its president set out for Tarascon, viaGeneva. 

Let me omit the episodes of that journey, the alarm cast by the Southernband into narrow railway carriages, steamers, _tables d'hôte_, byits songs, its shouts, its overflowing hilarity, its banner, and itsalpenstocks; for since the ascension of the P. C. A. They had allsupplied themselves with those mountain sticks, on which the namesof celebrated climbs were inscribed, burnt in, together with popularverses. 

Montreux!

Here the delegates, at the suggestion of their master, decided to haltfor two or three days in order to visit the famous shores of Lake Leman, Chillon especially, and its legendary dungeon, where the great patriotBonnivard languished, and which Byron and Delacroix have immortalized. 

At heart, Tartarin cared little for Bonnivard, his adventure withWilliam Tell having enlightened him about Swiss legends; but in passingthrough Interlaken he had heard that Sonia had gone to Montreux withher brother, whose health was much worse, and this invention of anhistorical pilgrimage was only a pretext to meet the young girl again, and, who knows? persuade her perhaps to follow him to Tarascon. 

Let it be fully understood, however, that his companions believed, with the best faith in the world, that they were on their way to renderhomage to a great Genevese citizen whose history the P. C. A. Hadrelated to them; in fact, with their native taste for theatricalmanifestations they were desirous, as soon as they landed at Montreux, of forming in line, banner displayed and marching at once to Chillonwith repeated cries of "Vive Bonnivard!" The president was forced tocalm them: "Breakfast first, " he said, "and after that we 'll seeabout it. " So they filled the omnibus of some Pension Müller or other, situated, with many of its kind, close to the landing. 

"_Vé!_ that gendarme, how he looks at us, " said Pascalon, the last toget in, with the banner, always very troublesome to install. "True, "said Bravida, uneasily; "what does he want of us, that gendarme? Whydoes he examine us like that?"

"He recognizes me, _pardi!_" said the worthy Tartarin modestly; and hesmiled upon the soldier of the Vaudois police, whose long blue hoodedcoat followed perseveringly behind the omnibus as it threaded its wayamong the poplars on the shore. 

It was market-day at Montreux. Rows of little booths were open to thewinds of the lake, displaying fruit, vegetables, laces very cheap, andthat white jewellery, looking like manufactured snow or pearls of ice, with which the Swiss women ornament their costumes. With all this weremingled the bustle of the little port, the jostling of a whole flotillaof gayly painted pleasure-boats, the transshipment of casks and sacksfrom large brigantines with lateen sails, the hoarse cries, the bellsof the steamers, the stir among the cafés, the breweries, the traffic ofthe florists and the second-hand dealers who lined the quay. If a ray ofsun had fallen upon the scene, one might have thought one's self on themarina of a Mediterranean resort between Mentone and Bordighera. But sunwas lacking, and the Tarasconese gazed at the pretty landscape through awatery vapour that rose from the azure lake, climbed the steep path andthe pebbly little streets, and joined, above the houses, other clouds, black and gray that were clinging about the sombre verdure of themountain, big with rain. 

"_Coquin de sort!_ I'm not a lacustrian, " said Spiridion Excourbaniès, wiping the glass of the window to look at the perspective of glaciersand white vapours that closed the horizon in front of him... 

"Nor I, either, " sighed Pascalon, "this fog, this stagnant water... Makes me want to cry. "

Bravida complained also, in dread of his sciatic gout. 

Tartarin reproved them sternly. Was it nothing to be able to relate, on their return, that they had seen the dungeon of Bonnivard, inscribedtheir names on its historic walls beside the signatures of Rousseau, Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Eugène Sue? Suddenly, in the middle ofhis tirade, the president interrupted himself and changed colour... Hehad just caught sight of a little round hat on a coil of blond hair. Without stopping the omnibus, the pace of which had slackened in goingup hill, he sprang out, calling back to the stupefied Alpinists: "Go onto the hotel... "

"Sonia!.. Sonia!.. "

He feared that he might not be able to catch her, she walked so rapidly, the delicate silhouette of her shadow falling on the macadam of theroad. She turned at his call and waited for him. "Ah! is it you?" shesaid; and as soon as they had shaken hands she walked on. He fell intostep beside her, much out of breath, and began to excuse himself forhaving left her so abruptly... Arrival of friends... Necessity ofmaking the ascension (of which his face was still bearing traces)... She listened without a word, hastening her pace, her eyes strained andfixed. Looking at her profile, she seemed to him paler, her features nolonger soft with childlike innocence, but hard, a something resoluteon them which till now had existed only in her voice and her imperiouswill; and yet her youthful grace was there, and the gold of her wavinghair. 

"And Boris, how is he?" asked Tartarin, rather discomfited by hersilence and coldness, which began to affect him. 

"Boris?.. " she quivered: "Ah! true, you do not know... Well then! come, come... "

They followed a country lane leading past vineyards sloping to thelake, and villas with gardens, and elegant terraces laden with clematis, blooming with roses, petunias, and myrtles in pots. Now and then theymet some foreigner with haggard cheeks and melancholy glance, walkingslowly and feebly, like the many whom one meets at Mentone and Monaco;only, away down yonder the sunshine laps round all, absorbs all, whilebeneath this lowering cloudy sky suffering is more apparent, though theflowers seem fresher. 

"Enter, " said Sonia, pushing open the railed iron door of a white marblefaçade on which were Russian words in gilded letters. 

At first Tartarin did not understand where he was. A little garden wasbefore him with gravelled paths very carefully kept, and quantities ofclimbing roses hanging among the green of the trees, and bearing greatclusters of white and yellow blooms, which filled the narrow spacewith their fragrance and glow. Among these garlands, this lovelyefflorescence, a few stones were standing or lying with dates and names;the newest of which bore the words, carved on its surface:

 "Boris Wassilief. 22 years. "

He had been there a few days, dying almost as soon as they arrived atMontreux; and in this cemetery of foreigners the exile had found a sortof country among other Russians and Poles and Swedes, buried beneath theroses, consumptives of cold climates sent to this Northern Nice, becausethe Southern sun would be for them too violent, the transition tooabrupt. 

They stood for a moment motionless and mute before the whiteness of thatnew stone lying on the blackness of the fresh-turned earth; the younggirl, with her head bent down, inhaling the breath of the roses, andcalming, as she stood, her reddened eyes. 

"Poor little girl!" said Tartarin with emotion, taking in his strongrough hands the tips of Sonia's fingers. "And you? what will you donow?"

She looked him full in the face with dry and shining eyes in which thetears no longer trembled. 

"I? I leave within an hour. "

"You are going?.. "

"Bolibine is already in St. Petersburg... Manilof is waiting for meto cross the frontier... I return to the work. We shall be heard from. "Then, in a low voice, she added with a half-smile, planting her blueglance full into that of Tartarin, which avoided it: "He who loves mefollows me. "

Ah! _vaï_, follow her! The little fanatic frightened him. Besides, thisfunereal scene had cooled his love. Still, he ought not to appear toback down like a scoundrel. So, with his hand on his heart and thegesture of an Abencerrage, the hero began: "You know me, Sonia... "

She did not need to hear more. 

"Gabbler!" she said, shrugging her shoulders. And she walked away, erectand proud, beneath the roses, without once turning round... Gabbler!.. Not one word more, but the intonation was so contemptuous that theworthy Tartarin blushed beneath his beard, and looked about to see ifthey had been quite alone in the garden so that no one had overheardher. 

Among our Tarasconese, fortunately, impressions do not last long. Fiveminutes later Tartarin was going up the terraces of Montreux with alively step in quest of the Pension Müller and his Alpinists, who mustcertainly be waiting breakfast for him; and his whole person breathed arelief, a joy at getting rid finally of that dangerous acquaintance. As he walked along he emphasized with many energetic nods the eloquentexplanations which Sonia would not wait to hear, but which he gave tohimself mentally: _Bé!_.. Yes, despotism certainly... He didn't denythat... But from that to action, _boufre!_.. And then, to make it hisprofession to shoot despots!.. Why, if all oppressed peoples applied tohim--just as the Arabs did to Bombonnel whenever a panther roamed roundtheir village--he couldn't suffice for them all, never!

At this moment a hired carriage coming down the hill at full speed cutshort his monologue. He had scarcely time to jump upon the sidewalk witha "Take care, you brute!" when his cry of anger was changed to one ofstupefaction: "_Quès aco!.. Boudiou!_.. Not possible!.. "

I give you a thousand guesses to say what he saw in that old landau... 

The delegation! the full delegation, Bravida, Pascalon, Excourbaniès, piled upon the back seat, pale, horror-stricken, ghastly, and twogendarmes in front of them, muskets in hand! The sight of all thoseprofiles, motionless and mute, visible through the narrow frame of thecarriage window, was like a nightmare. Nailed to the ground, asformerly on the ice by his Kennedy crampons, Tartarin was gazing at thatfantastic vehicle flying along at a gallop, followed at full speed by aflock of schoolboys, their atlases swinging on their backs, when avoice shouted in his ears: "And here's the fourth!.. " At the same timeclutched, garotted, bound, he, too, was hoisted into a _locati_ withgendarmes, among them an officer armed with a gigantic cavalry sabre, which he held straight up from between his knees, the point of ittouching the roof of the vehicle. 

Tartarin wanted to speak, to explain. Evidently there must be somemistake... He told his name, his nation, demanded his consul, andnamed a seller of Swiss honey, Ichener, whom he had met at the fair atBeaucaire. Then, on the persistent silence of his captors, he bethoughthim that this might be another bit of machinery in Bompard's fairyland;so, addressing the officer, he said with sly air: "For fun, _qué!_.. Ha!_vaï_, you rogue, I know very well it is all a joke. "

"Not another word, or I'll gag you, " said the officer, rolling terribleeyes as if he meant to spit him on his sabre. 

The other kept quiet, and stirred no more, but gazed through the door atthe lake, the tall mountains of a humid green, the hotels and pensionswith variegated roofs and gilded signs visible for miles, and on theslopes, as at the Rigi, a coming and going of market and provisionbaskets, and (like the Rigi again) a comical little railway, a dangerousmechanical plaything crawling up the height to Glion, and--to completethe resemblance to _Regina Montium_--a pouring, beating rain, anexchange of water and mist from the sky to Leman and Leman to the sky, the clouds descending till they touched the waves. 

The vehicle crossed a drawbridge between a cluster of little shops of"chamoiseries, " penknives, corkscrews, pocket-combs, etc. , and stoppedin the courtyard of an old castle overgrown with weeds, flanked by tworound pepper-pot towers with black balconies guarded by parapets andsupported by beams. Where was he? Tartarin learned where when he heardthe officer of gendarmerie discussing the matter with the concierge ofthe castle, a fat man in a Greek cap who was jangling a bunch of rustykeys. 

"Solitary confinement... But I haven't a place for him. The others havetaken all... Unless we put him in Bonnivard's dungeon. "

"Yes, put him in Bonnivard's dungeon; that's good enough for him, "ordered the captain; and it was done as he said. 

This Castle of Chillon, about which the P. C. A. Had never for two daysceased to discourse to his dear Alpinists, and in which, by the irony offate, he found himself suddenly incarcerated without knowing why, is oneof the most frequented historical monuments in Switzerland. Afterhaving served as a summer residence to the Dukes of Savoie, then as astate-prison, afterwards as an arsenal for arms and munitions, itis to-day the mere pretext for an excursion, like the Rigi and theTellsplatte. It still contains, however, a post of gendarmerie and a"violon, " that is, a cell for drunkards and the naughty boys of theneighbourhood; but they are so rare in the peaceable Canton of Vaud thatthe "violon" is always empty and the concierge uses it as a receptacleto store his wood for winter. Therefore the arrival of all theseprisoners had put him out of temper, especially at the thought that hecould no longer take visitors to see the famous dungeon, which at thisseason of the year is the chief profit of the place. 

Furious, he showed the way to Tartarin, who followed him without thecourage to make the slightest resistance. A few crumbling steps, a dampcorridor smelling like a cellar, a door thick as a wall with enormoushinges, and there they were, in a vast subterranean vault, with earthenfloor and heavy Roman pillars in which were still the iron rings towhich prisoners of state had been chained. A dim light fell, tremulouswith the shimmer of the lake, through narrow slits in the wall, whichscarcely showed more than a scrap of the sky. 

"Here you are at home, " said the jailer. "Be careful you don't go to thefarther end: the pit is there... "

Tartarin recoiled, horrified:--

"The pit! _Boudiou!_"

"What do you expect, my lad? I am ordered to put you in Bonnivard'sdungeon... I have put you in Bonnivard's dungeon... Now, if you havethe means, you can be furnished with certain comforts, for instance, amattress and coverlet for the night. "

"Something to eat, in the first place, " said Tartarin, from whom, veryluckily, they had not taken his purse. 

The concierge returned with a fresh roll, beer, and a sausage, greedilydevoured by the new prisoner of Chillon, fasting since the night beforeand hollow with fatigue and emotion. While he ate on his stone benchin the gleam of his vent-hole window, the jailer examined him with agood-natured eye. 

"Faith, " said he, "I don't know what you have done, nor why they shouldtreat you so severely... "

"Nor I either, _coquin de sort!_ I know nothing about it, " saidTartarin, with his mouth full. 

"Well, it is very certain that you don't look like a bad man, and, surely, you would n't hinder a poor father of a family from earninghis living, would you?.. Now, see here!.. I have got, up above there, awhole party of people who have come to see Bonnivard's dungeon... If youwould promise me to keep quiet, and not try to run away... "

The worthy Tartarin bound himself by an oath; and five minutes later hebeheld his dungeon invaded by his old acquaintances on the Rigi-Kulmand the Tellsplatte, that jackass Schwan-thaler, the ineptissimusAstier-Réhu, the member of the Jockey-Club with his niece (h'm! h'm!.. )and all the travellers on Cook's Circular. Ashamed, dreading to berecognized, the unfortunate man concealed himself behind pillars, getting farther and farther away as the troop of tourists advanced, preceded by the concierge and his homily, delivered in a doleful voice:"Here is where the unfortunate Bonnivard, etc... "

They advanced slowly, retarded by discussions between the two _savants_, quarrelling as usual and ready to jump at each other's throats; theone waving his campstool, the other his travelling-bag in fantasticattitudes, which the twilight from the window-slits lengthened upon thevaulted roof. 

By dint of retreating, Tartarin presently found himself close to thehole of the pit, a black pit open to the level of the soil, emitting thebreath of ages, malarious and glacial. Frightened, he stopped short, and curled himself into a corner, his cap over his eyes. But the dampsaltpetre of the walls affected him, and suddenly a stentorian sneeze, which made the tourists recoil, gave notice of his presence. 

"_Tiens_, there's Bonnivard!.. " cried the bold little Parisian womanin a Directory hat whom the gentleman from the Jockey-Club called hisniece. 

The Tarasconese hero did not allow himself to be disconcerted. 

"They are really very curious, these pits, " he said, in the most naturaltone in the world, as if he was visiting the dungeon, like them, forpleasure; and so saying, he mingled with the other travellers, who smiled at recognizing the Alpinist of the Rigi-Kulm, the merryinstigator of the famous ball. 

"_Hi!_ mossié... Ballir... Dantsir!.. "

The comical silhouette of the little fairy Schwan-thaler rose up beforehim ready to seize him for a country dance. A fine mood he was in nowfor dancing! But not knowing how to rid himself of that determinedlittle scrap of a woman, he offered his arm and gallantly showed herhis dungeon, the ring to which the captive was chained, the trace of hissteps on the stone round that pillar; and never, hearing him conversewith such ease, did the good lady even dream that he too was a prisonerof state, a victim of the injustice and the wickedness of men. Terrible, however, was the departure, when the unfortunate Bonnivard, havingconducted his partner to the door, took leave of her with the smile of aman of the world: "No, thank you, _vé!_.. I stay a few moments longer. "Thereupon he bowed, and the jailer, who had his eye upon him, locked andbolted the door, to the stupefaction of everybody. 

What a degradation! He perspired with anguish, unhappy man, whilelistening to the exclamations of the tourists as they walked away. Fortunately, the anguish was not renewed. No more tourists arrived thatday on account of the bad weather. A terrible wind blew through therotten boards, moans came up from the pit as from victims ill-buried, and the wash of the lake, swollen with rain, beat against the walls tothe level of the window-slits and spattered its water upon thecaptive. At intervals the bell of a passing steamer, the clack of itspaddle-wheels cut short the reflections of poor Tartarin, as evening, gray and gloomy, fell into the dungeon and seemed to enlarge it. 

How explain this arrest, this imprisonment in the ill-omened place?Costecalde, perhaps... Electioneering manoeuvre at the last hour?.. Or, could it be that the Russian police, warned of his very imprudentlanguage, his liaison with Sonia, had asked for his extradition? But ifso, why arrest the delegates?.. What blame could attach to those poorunfortunates, whose terror and despair he imagined, although they werenot, like him, in Bonnivard's dungeon, beneath those granite arches, where, since night had fallen, roamed monstrous rats, cockroaches, silent spiders with hairy, crooked legs. 

But see what it is to possess a good conscience! In spite of rats, cold, spiders, and beetles, the great Tartarin found in the horror of thatstate-prison, haunted by the shades of martyrs, the same solid andsonorous sleep, mouth open, fists closed, which came to him, betweenthe abysses and heaven, in the hut of the Alpine Club. He fancied he wasdreaming when he heard his jailer say in the morning:--

"Get up; the prefect of the district is here... He has come to examineyou... " Adding, with a certain respect, "To bring the prefect out inthis way... Why, you must be a famous scoundrel. "

Scoundrel! no--but you may look like one, after spending the night in adamp and dusty dungeon without having a chance to make a toilet, howeverlimited. And when, in the former stable of the castle transformed into aguardroom with muskets in racks along the walls, --when, I say, Tartarin, after a reassuring glance at his Alpinists seated between two gendarmes, appeared before the prefect of the district, he felt his disreputableappearance in presence of that correct and solemn magistrate with thecarefully trimmed beard, who said to him sternly:--

"You call yourself Manilof, do you not?.. Russian subject... Incendiaryat St. Petersburg, refugee and murderer in Switzerland. "

"Never in my life... It is all a mistake, an error... "

"Silence, or I 'll gag you... " interrupted the captain. 

The immaculate prefect continued: "To put an end to your denials... Doyou know this rope?"

His rope! _coquin de sort!_ His rope, woven with iron, made at Avignon. He lowered his head, to the stupefaction of the delegates, and said: "Iknow it. "

"With this rope a man has been hung in the Canton of Unterwald... "

Tartarin, with a shudder, swore that he had nothing to do with it. 

"We shall see!"

The Italian tenor was now introduced, --in other words, the police spywhom the Nihilists had hung to the branch of an oak-tree on the Brünig, but whose life was miraculously saved by wood-choppers. 

The spy looked at Tartarin. "That is not the man, " he said; then at thedelegates, "Nor they, either... A mistake has been made. "

The prefect, furious, turned to Tartarin. "Then, what are you doinghere?" he asked. 

"That is what I ask myself, _vé!_.. " replied the president, with theaplomb of innocence. 

After a short explanation the Alpinists of Tarascon, restored toliberty, departed from the Castle of Chillon, where none have ever feltits oppressive and romantic melancholy more than they. They stopped atthe Pension Müller to get their luggage and banner, and to pay for thebreakfast of the day before which they had not had time to eat; thenthey started for Geneva by the train. It rained. Through the streamingwindows they read the names of stations of aristocratic villeggiatura:Clarens, Vevey, Lausanne; red chalets, little gardens of rare shrubspassed them under a misty veil, the branches of the trees, the turretson the roofs, the galleries of the hotels all dripping. 

Installed in one corner of a long railway carriage, on two seats facingeach other, the Alpinists had a downcast and discomfited appearance. Bravida, very sour, complained of aches, and repeatedly asked Tartarinwith savage irony: "Eh _bé!_you've seen it now, that dungeon ofBonnivard's that you were so set on seeing... I think you have seen it, _qué?_" Excourbaniès, voiceless for the first time in his life, gazedpiteously at the lake which escorted them the whole way: "Water! morewater, _Boudiou!_.. After this, I 'll never in my life take anotherbath. "

Stupefied by a terror which still lasts, Pascalon, the banner betweenhis legs, sat back in his seat, looking to right and left like a harefearful of being caught again... And Tartarin?.. Oh! he, ever dignifiedand calm, he was diverting himself by reading the Southern newspapers, apackage of which had been sent to the Pension Müller, all of them havingreproduced from the _Forum_ the account of his ascension, the same hehad himself dictated, but enlarged, magnified, and embellished withineffable laudations. Suddenly the hero gave a cry, a formidable cry, which resounded to the end of the carriage. All the travellers sat upexcitedly, expecting an accident. It was simply an item in the _Forum_, which Tartarin now read to his Alpinists:--

"Listen to this: 'Rumour has it that V. P. C. A. Costecalde, thoughscarcely recovered from the jaundice which kept him in bed for somedays, is about to start for the ascension of Mont Blanc; to climb higherthan Tartarin!.. ' Oh! the villain... He wants to ruin the effect of myJung-frau... Well, well! wait a bit; I 'll blow you out of water, youand your mountain... Chamounix is only a few hours from Geneva; I'll doMont Blanc before him! Will you come, my children?"

Bravida protested. _Outre!_ he had had enough of adventures. 

"Enough and more than enough... " howled Excourbaniès, in his almostextinct voice. 

"And you, Pascalon?" asked Tartarin, gently. 

The pupil dared not raise his eyes:--

"Ma-a-aster... " He, too, abandoned him!

"Very good, " said the hero, solemnly and angrily. "I will go alone; allthe honour will be mine... _Zou!_ give me back the banner... "

XII. 

 Hôtel Baltet at Chamonix. "I smell garlic!" The use of rope in Alpine climbing. "Shake hands. " A pupil of Schopenhauer. At the hut on the Grands-Mulets. "Tartarin, I must speak to you. "

Nine o'clock was ringing from the belfry at Chamonix of a cold nightshivering with the north wind and rain; the black streets, the darkenedhouses (except, here and there, the façades and courtyards of hotelswhere the gas was still burning) made the surroundings still more gloomyunder the vague reflection of the snow of the mountains, white as aplanet on the night of the sky. 

At the Hôtel Baltet, one of the best and most frequented inns of thisAlpine village, the numerous travellers and boarders had disappeared oneby one, weary with the excursions of the day, until no one was left inthe grand salon but one English traveller playing silently at backgammonwith his wife, his innumerable daughters, in brown-holland aprons withbibs, engaged in copying notices of an approaching evangelical service, and a young Swede sitting before the fireplace, in which was a good fireof blazing logs. The latter was pale, hollow-cheeked, and gazed at theflame with a gloomy air as he drank his grog of kirsch and seltzer. From time to time some belated traveller crossed the salon, with soakedgaiters and streaming mackintosh, looked at the great barometer hangingto the wall, tapped it, consulted the mercury as to the weather of thefollowing day, and went off to bed in consternation. Not a word;no other manifestations of life than the crackling of the fire, thepattering on the panes, and the angry roll of the Arve under the archesof its wooden bridge, a few yards distant from the hotel. 

Suddenly the door of the salon opened, a porter in a silver-laced coatcame in, carrying valises and rugs, with four shivering Alpinists behindhim, dazzled by the sudden change from icy darkness into warmth andlight. 

"_Boudiou!_ what weather!.. "

"Something to eat, _zou!_"

"Warm the beds, _que!_"

They all talked at once from the depths of their mufflers and ear-pads, and it was hard to know which to obey, when a short stout man, whom theothers called "_présidain_" enforced silence by shouting more loudlythan they. 

"In the first place, give me the visitors' book, " he ordered. Turning itover with a numbed hand, he read aloud the names of all who had been atthe hotel for the last week: "'Doctor Schwanthaler and madame. ' Again!.. 'Astier-Réhu of the French Academy... '" He deciphered thus two or threepages, turning pale when he thought he saw the name he was in searchof. Then, at the end, flinging the book on the table with a laugh oftriumph, the squat man made a boyish gambol quite extraordinary in oneof his bulky shape: "He is not here, _vé!_ he has n't come... And yethe must have stopped here if he had... Done for! Coste-calde... Lagadigadeou!.. Quick! to our suppers, children!.. "And the worthyTartarin, having bowed to the ladies, marched to the dining-room, followed by the famished and tumultuous delegation. 

Ah, yes! the delegation, all of them, even Bravida himself... Is itpossible? come now!.. But--just think what would be said of them downthere in Tarascon, if they returned without Tartarin? They each feltthis. And, at the moment of separation in the station at Geneva, thebuffet witnessed a pathetic scene of tears, embraces, heartrendingadieus to the banner; as the result of which adieus the whole companypiled itself into the landau which Tartarin had chartered to take him toChamonix. A glorious route, which they did with their eyes shut, wrappedin their rugs and filling the carriage with sonorous snores, unmindfulof the wonderful landscape, which, from Sallanches, was unrolling beforethem in a mist of blue rain: ravines, forests, foaming waterfalls, with the crest of Mont Blanc above the clouds, visible or vanishing, according to the lay of the land in the valley they were crossing. Tiredof that sort of natural beauty, our Tarasconese friends thought onlyof making up for the wretched night they had spent behind the boltsof Chillon. And even now, at the farther end of the long, deserteddining-room of the Hôtel Baltet, when served with the warmed-over soupand _entrées_ of the _table d'hôte_, they ate voraciously, withoutsaying a word, eager only to get to bed. All of a sudden, Excourbaniès, who was swallowing his food like a somnambulist, came out of his plate, and sniffing the air about him, remarked: "I smell garlic!.. "

"True, I smell it, " said Bravida. And the whole party, revived by thisreminder of home, these fumes of the national dishes, which Tartarin, at least, had not inhaled for so long, turned round in their chairswith gluttonous anxiety. The odour came from the other end of thedining-room, from a little room where some one was supping apart, apersonage of importance, no doubt, for the white cap of the head cookwas constantly appearing at the wicket that opened into the kitchen ashe passed to the girl in waiting certain little covered dishes which sheconveyed to the inner apartment. 

"Some one from the South, that's certain, " murmured the gentle Pascalon;and the president, becoming ghastly at the idea of Costecalde, saidcommandingly:--

"Go and see, Spiridion... And bring us word who it is... "

A loud roar of laughter came from that little apartment as soon as thebrave "gong" entered it, at the order of his chief; and he presentlyreturned, leading by the hand a tall devil with a big nose, amischievous eye, and a napkin under his chin, like the gastronomichorse. 

"_Vi!_ Bompard... "

"_Té!_ the Impostor... "

"_Hé!_ Gonzague... How are you?"

"_Différemment_, messieurs: your most obedient... " said the courier, shaking hands with all, and sitting down at the table of the Tarasconeseto share with them a dish of mushrooms with garlic prepared by _mère_Baltet, who, together with her husband had a horror of the cooking forthe _table d'hôte_. 

Was it the national concoction, or the joy of meeting a compatriot, thatdelightful Bompard with his inexhaustible imagination? Certain itis that weariness and the desire to sleep took wings, champagne wasuncorked, and, with moustachios all messy with froth, they laughed andshouted and gesticulated, clasping one another round the body effusivelyhappy. 

"I'll not leave you now, _vé!_" said Bompard. "My Peruvians have gone... I am free... "

"Free!.. Then to-morrow you and I will ascend Mont Blanc. "

"Ah! you do Mont Blanc to-morrow?" said Bompard, without enthusiasm. 

"Yes, I knock out Costecalde... When he gets here, _uit!_.. No Mont Blancfor him... You'll go, _qué_, Gonzague?"

"I 'll go... I 'll go... That is, if the weather permits... The fact is, that the mountain is not always suitable at this season. "

"Ah! _vaï_! not suitable indeed!.. " exclaimed Tartarin, crinkling up hiseyes by a meaning laugh which Bompard seemed not to understand. 

"Let us go into the salon for our coffee... We 'll consult _père_Baltet. He knows all about it, he 's an old guide who has made theascension twenty-seven times. "

All the delegates cried out: "Twenty-seven times! _Boufre!_"

"Bompard always exaggerates, " said the P. C. A. Severely, but notwithout a touch of envy. 

In the salon they found the daughters of the minister still bendingover their notices, while the father and mother were asleep at theirbackgammon, and the tall Swede was stirring his seltzer grog withthe same disheartened gesture. But the invasion of the TarasconeseAlpinists, warmed by champagne, caused, as may well be supposed, somedistraction of mind to the young conventiclers. Never had those charmingyoung persons seen coffee taken with such rollings of the eyes andpantomimic action. 

"Sugar, Tartarin?"

"Of course not, commander... You know very well... Since Africa!.. "

"True; excuse me... _Té!_ here comes M. Baltet. "

"Sit down there, _qué_. Monsieur Baltet. "

"Vive Monsieur Baltet!.. Ha! ha! _fen dé brut_. "

Surrounded, captured by all these men whom he had never seen before inhis life, _père_ Baltet smiled with a tranquil air. A robust Savoyard, tall and broad, with a round back and slow walk, a heavy face, close-shaven, enlivened by two shrewd eyes, that were still young, contrasting oddly with his baldness, caused by chills at dawn upon themountain. 

"These gentlemen wish to ascend Mont Blanc?" he said, gauging theTarasconese Alpinists with a glance both humble and sarcastic. Tartarinwas about to reply, but Bompard forestalled him:-- "Isn't the seasontoo far advanced?" "Why, no, " replied the former guide. "Here's aSwedish gentleman who goes up to-morrow, and I am expecting at the endof this week two American gentlemen to make the ascent; and one of themis blind. "

"I know. I met them on the Guggi. " "Ah! monsieur has been upon theGuggi?" "Yes, a week ago, in doing the Jungfrau. " Here a quiver amongthe evangelical conventiclers; all pens stopped, and heads were raisedin the direction of Tartarin, who, to the eyes of these Englishmaidens, resolute climbers, expert in all sports, acquired considerableauthority. He had gone up the Jungfrau!

"A fine thing!" said _père_ Baltet, considering the P. C. A. With someastonishment; while Pascalon, intimidated by the ladies and blushing andstuttering, murmured softly:--

"Ma-a-aster, tell them the... The... Thing... Crevasse. "

The president smiled. "Child!.. " he said: but, all the same, he beganthe tale of his fall; first with a careless, indifferent air, and thenwith startled motions, jigglings at the end of the rope over theabyss, hands outstretched and appealing. The young ladies quivered, anddevoured him with those cold English eyes, those eyes that open round. 

In the silence that followed, rose the voice of Bompard:--

"On Chimborazo we never roped one another to cross crevasses. "

The delegates looked at one another. As a tarasconade that remarksurpassed them all. 

"Oh, _that_ Bompard, _pas mouain_... " murmured Pascalon, with ingenuousadmiration. 

But père Baltet, taking Chimborazo seriously, protested against thepractice of not roping. According to him, no ascension over ice waspossible without a rope, a good rope of Manila hemp; then, if oneslipped, the others could hold him. 

"Unless the rope breaks, Monsieur Baltet, " said Tartarin, rememberingthe catastrophe on the Matterhorn. 

But the landlord, weighing his words, replied:

"The rope did not break on the Matterhorn... The rear guide cut it witha blow of his axe... "

As Tartarin expressed indignation, --

"Beg pardon, monsieur, but the guide had a right to do it... He sawthe impossibility of holding back those who had fallen, and he detachedhimself from them to save his life, that of his son, and of thetraveller they were accompanying... Without his action seven personswould have lost their lives instead of four. "

Then a discussion began. Tartarin thought that in letting yourself beroped in file you were bound in honour to live and die together; andgrowing excited, especially in presence of ladies, he backed his opinionby facts and by persons present: "Tomorrow, _té!_ to-morrow, in ropingmyself to Bom-pard, it is not a simple precaution that I shall take, it is an oath before God and man to be one with my companion and to diesooner than return without him, _coquin de sort!_"

"I accept the oath for myself, as for you, Tar-tarin... " cried Bompardfrom the other side of the round table. 

Exciting moment!

The minister, electrified, rose, came to the hero and inflicted upon hima pump-handle exercise of the hand that was truly English. His wife didlikewise, then all the young ladies continued the _shake hands_ withenough vigour to have brought water to the fifth floor of the house. Thedelegates, I ought to mention, were less enthusiastic. 

"Eh, _bé!_ as for me, " said Bravida, "I am of M. Baltet's opinion. Inmatters of this kind, each man should look to his own skin, _pardi!_ andI understand that cut of the axe perfectly. "

"You amaze me, Placide, " said Tartarin, severely; adding in a low voice:"Behave yourself! England is watching us. "

The old captain, who certainly had kept a root of bitterness inhis heart ever since the excursion to Chillon, made a gesture thatsignified: "I don't care _that_ for England... " and might perhaps havedrawn upon himself a sharp rebuke from the president, irritated at somuch cynicism, but at this moment the young man with the heart-brokenlook, filled to the full with grog and melancholy, brought his extremelybad French into the conversation. He thought, he said, that theguide was right to cut the rope: to deliver from existence those fourunfortunate men, still young, condemned to live for many years longer;to send them, by a mere gesture, to peace, to nothingness, --what a nobleand generous action!

Tartarin exclaimed against it:--

"Pooh! young man, at your age, to talk of life with such aversion, suchanger... What has life done to you?"

"Nothing; it bores me. " He had studied philosophy at Christiania, andsince then, won to the ideas of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, he had foundexistence dreary, inept, chaotic. On the verge of suicide he shut hisbooks, at the entreaty of his parents, and started to travel, strikingeverywhere against the same distress, the gloomy wretchedness of thislife. Tartarin and his friends, he said, seemed to him the only beingscontent to live that he had ever met with. 

The worthy P. C. A. Began to laugh. "It is all race, young man. Everybody feels like that in Tarascon. That's the land of the good God. From morning till night we laugh and sing, and the rest of the time wedance the farandole... Like this... _té!_" So saying, he cut a doubleshuffle with the grace and lightness of a big cockchafer trying itswings. 

But the delegates had not the steel nerves nor the indefatigable spiritof their chief. Excour-baniès growled out: "He 'll keep us here tillmidnight. " But Bravida jumped up, furious. "Let us go to bed, _vé!_I can't stand my sciatica... " Tartarin consented, remembering theascension on the morrow; and the Tarasconese, candlesticks in hand, wentup the broad staircase of granite that led to the chambers, while Baltetwent to see about provisions and hire the mules and guides. 

"_Té!_ it is snowing... "

Those were the first words of the worthy Tartarin when he woke in themorning and saw his windows covered with frost and his bedroom inundatedwith white reflections. But when he hooked his little mirror as usualto the window-fastening, he understood his mistake, and saw that MontBlanc, sparkling before him in the splendid sunshine, was the cause ofthat light. He opened his window to the breeze of the glacier, keen andrefreshing, bringing with it the sound of the cattle-bells as theherds followed the long, lowing sound of the shepherd's horn. Somethingfortifying, pastoral, filled the atmosphere such as he had never beforebreathed in Switzerland. 

Below, an assemblage of guides and porters awaited him. The Swede wasalready mounted upon his mule, and among the spectators, who formed acircle, was the minister's family, all those active young ladies, theirhair in early morning style, who had come for another "shake hands" withthe hero who had haunted their dreams. 

"Splendid weather! make haste!.. " cried the landlord, whose skull wasgleaming in the sunshine like a pebble. But though Tartarin himselfmight hasten, it was not so easy a matter to rouse from sleep his dearAlpinists, who intended to accompany him as far as the Pierre-Pointue, where the mule-path ends. Neither prayers nor arguments could persuadethe Commander to get out of bed. With his cotton nightcap over hisears and his face to the wall, he contented himself with replying toTartarin's objurgations by a cynical Tarasconese proverb: "Whoso has thecredit of getting up early may sleep until midday... " As for Bom-pard, he kept repeating, the whole time, "Ah, _vaï_, Mont Blanc... What ahumbug... " Nor did they rise until the P. C. A. Had issued a formalorder. 

At last, however, the caravan started, and passed through the littlestreets in very imposing array: Pascalon on the leading mule, bannerunfurled; and last in file, grave as a mandarin amid the guidesand porters on either side his mule, came the worthy Tartarin, morestupendously Alpinist than ever, wearing a pair of new spectacleswith smoked and convex glasses, and his famous rope made at Avignon, recovered--we know at what cost. 

Very much looked at, almost as much as the banner, he was jubilantunder his dignified mask, enjoyed the picturesqueness of these Savoyardvillage streets, so different from the too neat, too varnished Swissvillage, looking like a new toy; he enjoyed the contrast of these hovelsscarcely rising above the ground, where the stable fills the largestspace, with the grand and sumptuous hotels five storeys high, theglittering signs of which were as much out of keeping with the hovelsas the gold-laced cap of the porter and the pumps and black coats of thewaiters with the Savoyard head-gear, the fustian jackets, the felt hatsof the charcoal-burners with their broad wings. 

On the square were landaus with the horses taken out, manure-carts sideby side with travelling-carriages, and a troop of pigs idling in the sunbefore the post-office, from which issued an Englishman in a white linencap, with a package of letters and a copy of _The Times_, which he readas he walked along, before he opened his correspondence. The cavalcadeof the Tarasconese passed all this, accompanied by the scuffling ofmules, the war-cry of Excourbaniès (to whom the sun had restored the useof his gong), the pastoral chimes on the neighbouring slopes, and thedash of the river, gushing from the glacier in a torrent all white andsparkling, as if it bore upon its breast both sun and snow. 

On leaving the village Bompard rode his mule beside that of thepresident, and said to the latter; rolling his eyes in a mostextraordinary manner: "Tartarin, I _must_ speak to you... "

"Presently... " said the P. C. A. , then engaged in a philosophicaldiscussion with the young Swede, whose black pessimism he wasendeavouring to correct by the marvellous spectacle around them, thosepastures with great zones of light and shade, those forests of sombregreen crested with the whiteness of the dazzling _névés_. 

After two attempts to speak to the president, Bompard was forced to giveit up. The Arve having been crossed by a little bridge, the caravannow entered one of those narrow, zigzag roads among the firs wherethe mules, one by one, follow with their fantastic sabots all thesinuosities of the ravines, and our tourists had their attention fullyoccupied in keeping their equilibrium by the help of many an "_Outre!.. Boufre!_.. Gently, gently!.. " with which they guided their beasts. 

At the chalet of the Pierre-Pointue, where Pas-calon and Excourbanièswere to wait the return of the excursionists, Tartarin, much occupied inordering breakfast and in looking after porters and guides, still paidno attention to Bompard's whisperings. But--singular fact, which was notremarked until later--in spite of the fine weather, the good wine, and that purified atmosphere of ten thousand feet above sea-level, the breakfast was melancholy. While they heard the guides laughing andmaking merry apart, the table of the Taras-conese was silent except forthe rattle of glasses and the clatter of the heavy plates and covers onthe white wood. Was it the presence of that morose Swede, or the visibleuneasiness of Bompard, or some presentiment? At any rate, the party setforth, sad as a battalion without its band, towards the glacier of theBossons, where the true ascent begins. 

On setting foot upon the ice, Tartarin could not help smiling at therecollection of the Guggi and his perfected crampons. What a differencebetween the neophyte he then was and the first-class Alpinist he felt hehad become! Steady on his heavy boots, which the porter of the hotel hadironed that very morning with four stout nails, expert in wieldinghis ice-axe, he scarcely needed the hand of a guide, and then less tosupport him than to show him the way. The smoked glasses moderated thereflections of the glacier, which a recent avalanche had powdered withfresh snow, and through which little spaces of a glaucous greenshowed themselves here and there, slippery and treacherous. Very calm, confident through experience that there was not the slightest danger, Tartarin walked along the verge of the crevasses with their smooth, iridescent sides stretching downward indefinitely, and made his wayamong the _séracs_, solely intent on keeping up with the Swedishstudent, an intrepid walker, whose long gaiters with their silverbuckles marched, thin and lank, beside his alpenstock, which looked likea third leg. Their philosophical discussion continuing, in spite of thedifficulties of the way, a good stout voice, familiar and panting, couldbe heard in the frozen space, sonorous as the swell of a river: "Youknow me, Otto... "

Bompard all this time was undergoing misadventures. Firmly convinced, upto that very morning, that Tartarin would never go to the length of hisvaunting, and would no more ascend Mont Blanc than he had the Jungfrau, the luckless courier had dressed himself as usual, without nailing hisboots, or even utilizing his famous invention for shoeing the feet ofsoldiers, and without so much as his alpenstock, the mountaineers of theChimborazo never using them. Armed only with a little switch, quite inkeeping with the blue ribbon of his hat and his ulster, this approach tothe glacier terrified him, for, in spite of his tales, it is, ofcourse, well understood that the Impostor had never in his life made anascension. He was somewhat reassured, however, on seeing from the top ofthe moraine with what facility Tartarin made his way on the ice; and heresolved to follow him as far as the hut on the Grands-Mulets, where itwas intended to pass the night. He did not get there without difficulty. His first step laid him flat on his back; at the second he fell forwardon his hands and knees: "No, thank you, I did it on purpose, " he said tothe guides who endeavoured to pick him up. "American fashion, _vé!_.. Asthey do on the Chimborazo. " That position seeming to be convenient, he kept it, creeping on four paws, his hat pushed back, and his ulstersweeping the ice like the pelt of a gray bear; very calm, withal, andrelating to those about him that in the Cordilleras of the Andes he hadscaled a mountain thirty thousand feet high. He did not say how muchtime it took him, but it must have been long, judging by this stage tothe Grands-Mulets, where he arrived an hour after Tartarin, a disgustingmass of muddy snow, with frozen hands in his knitted gloves. 

In comparison with the hut on the Guggi, that which the commune ofChamonix has built on the Grands-Mulets is really comfortable. WhenBompard entered the kitchen, where a grand wood-fire was blazing, hefound Tartarin and the Swedish student drying their boots, while thehut-keeper, a shrivelled old fellow with long white hair that fell inmeshes, exhibited the treasures of his little museum. 

Of evil augury, this museum is a reminder of all the catastrophes knownto have taken place on the Mont Blanc for the forty years that theold man had kept the inn, and as he took them from their show-case, herelated the lamentable origin of each of them... This piece of cloth andthose waistcoat buttons were the memorial of a Russian _savant_, hurledby a hurricane upon the Brenva glacier... These jaw teeth were all thatremained of one of the guides of a famous caravan of eleven travellersand porters who disappeared forever in a _tourmente_ of snow... In thefading light and the pale reflection of the _névés_ against the window, the production of these mortuary relics, these monotonous recitals, hadsomething very poignant about them, and all the more because the old mansoftened his quavering voice at pathetic items, and even shed tears ondisplaying a scrap of green veil worn by an English lady rolled down byan avalanche in 1827. 

In vain Tartarin reassured himself by dates, convinced that in thoseearly days the Company had not yet organized the ascensions withoutdanger; this Savoyard _vocero_ oppressed his heart, and he went to thedoorway for a moment to breathe. 

Night had fallen, engulfing the depths. The Bossons stood out, livid, and very close; while the Mont Blanc reared its summit, still rosy, still caressed by the departed sun. The Southerner was recovering hisserenity from this smile of nature when the shadow of Bompard rosebehind him. 

"Is that you, Gonzague... As you see, I am getting the good of theair... He annoyed me, that old fellow, with his stories. "

"Tartarin, " said Bompard, squeezing the arm of the P. C. A. Till henearly ground it, "I hope that this is enough, and that you are going toput an end to this ridiculous expedition. "

The great man opened wide a pair of astonished eyes. 

"What stuff are you talking to me now?"

Whereupon Bompard made a terrible picture of the thousand deaths thatawaited him; crevasses, avalanches, hurricanes, whirlwinds... 

Tartarin interrupted him:--

"Ah! _vaï_, you rogue; and the Company? Isn't Mont Blanc managed likethe rest?"

"Managed?. The Company?.. " said Bompard, bewildered, remembering nothingwhatever of his tarasconade, which Tartarin now repeated to him word forword--Switzerland a vast Association, lease of the mountains, machineryof the crevasses; on which the former courier burst out laughing. 

"What! you really believed me?.. Why, that was a _galéjade_ a fib... Among us Taras-conese you ought surely to know what talking means... "

"Then, " asked Tartarin, with much emotion, "the Jungfrau was not_prepared?_"

"Of course not. "

"And if the rope had broken?.. "

"Ah! my poor friend... "

The hero closed his eyes, pale with retrospective terror, and for onemoment he hesitated... This landscape of polar cataclysm, cold, gloomy, yawning with gulfs... Those laments of the old hut-man still weepingin his ears... _Outre!_ what will they make me do?.. Then, suddenly, he thought of the _folk_ at Tarascon, of the banner to be unfurled"up there, " and he said to himself that with good guides and a trustycompanion like Bompard... He had done the Jungfrau... Why should n't hedo Mont Blanc?

Laying his large hand on the shoulder of his friend, he began in avirile voice:--

"Listen to me, Gonzague... "

XIII. 

 The catastrophe. 

On a dark, dark night, moonless, starless, skyless, on the tremblingwhiteness of a vast ledge of snow, slowly a long rope unrolled itself, to which were attached in file certain timorous and very small shades, preceded, at the distance of a hundred feet, by a lantern casting a redlight along the way. Blows of an ice-axe ringing on the hard snow, theroll of the ice blocks thus detached, alone broke the silence of the_névé_ on which the steps of the caravan made no sound. From minute tominute, a cry, a smothered groan, the fall of a body on the ice, andthen immediately a strong voice sounding from the end of the rope: "Gogently, Gonzague, and don't fall. " For poor Bompard had made up his mindto follow his friend Tartarin to the summit of Mont Blanc. Since two inthe morning--it was now four by the president's repeater--the haplesscourier had groped along, a galley slave on the chain, dragged, pushed, vacillating, balking, compelled to restrain the varied exclamationsextorted from him by his mishaps, for an avalanche was on the watch, andthe slightest concussion, a mere vibration of the crystalline air, mightsend down its masses of snow and ice. To suffer in silence! what tortureto a native of Tarascon!

But the caravan halted. Tartarin asked why. A discussion in low voicewas heard; animated whisperings: "It is your companion who won't comeon, " said the Swedish student. The order of march was broken; the humanchaplet returned upon itself, and they found themselves all at the edgeof a vast crevasse, called by the mountaineers a _roture_. Precedingones they had crossed by means of a ladder, over which they crawledon their hands and knees; here the crevasse was much wider and theice-cliff rose on the other side to a height of eighty or a hundredfeet. It was necessary to descend to the bottom of the gully, whichgrew smaller as it went down, by means of steps cut in the ice, andto reascend in the same way on the other side. But Bompard obstinatelyrefused to do so. 

Leaning over the abyss, which the shadows represented as bottomless, hewatched through the damp vapour the movements of the little lantern bywhich the guides below were preparing the way. Tartarin, none too easyhimself, warmed his own courage by exhorting his friend: "Come now, Gonzague, _zou!_" and then in a lower voice coaxed him to honour, invoked the banner, Tarascon, the Club... 

"Ah! _vaï_, the Club indeed!.. I don't belong to it, " replied the other, cynically. 

Then Tartarin explained to him where to set his feet, and assured himthat nothing was easier. 

"For you, perhaps, but not for me... " "But you said you had a habit ofit... " "_Bé!_ yes! habit, of course... Which habit? I have so many... Habit of smoking, sleeping... " "And lying, especially, " interrupted thepresident. 

"Exaggerating--come now!" said Bompard, not the least in the worldannoyed. 

However, after much hesitation, the threat of leaving him there allalone decided him to go slowly, deliberately, down that terriblemiller's ladder... The going up was more difficult, for the other facewas nearly perpendicular, smooth as marble, and higher than King Rene'stower at Tarascon. From below, the winking light of the guides going up, looked like a glow-worm on the march. He was forced to follow, however, for the snow beneath his feet was not solid, and gurgling sounds ofcirculating water heard round a fissure told of more than could be seenat the foot of that wall of ice, of depths that were sending upward thechilling breath of subterranean abysses. 

"Go gently, Gonzague, for fear of falling... " That phrase, whichTartarin uttered with tender intonations, almost supplicating, borrowed a solemn signification from the respective positions of theascensionists, clinging with feet and hands one above the other to thewall, bound by the rope and the similarity of their movements, so thatthe fall or the awkwardness of one put all in danger. And what danger!_coquin de sort!_ It sufficed to hear fragments of the ice-wall boundingand dashing downward with the echo of their fall to imagine the openjaws of the monster watching there below to snap you up at the leastfalse step. 

But what is this?.. Lo, the tall Swede, next above Tartarin, has stoppedand touches with his iron heels the cap of the P. C. A. In vain theguides called: "Forward!.. " And the president: "Go on, young man!.. "He did not stir. Stretched at full length, clinging to the ice withcareless hand, the Swede leaned down, the glimmering dawn touching hisscanty beard and giving light to the singular expression of his dilatedeyes, while he made a sign to Tartarin:--

"What a fall, hey? if one let go... "

"_Outre!_ I should say so... You would drag us all down... Go on!"

The other remained motionless. 

"A fine chance to be done with life, to return into chaos through thebowels of the earth, and roll from fissure to fissure like that bitof ice which I kick with my foot... " And he leaned over frightfullyto watch the fragment bounding downward and echoing endlessly in theblackness. 

"Take care!.. " cried Tartarin, livid with terror. Then, desperatelyclinging to the oozing wall, he resumed, with hot ardour, his argumentof the night before in favour of existence. "There's _good_ in it... What the deuce!.. At your age, a fine young fellow like you... Don't youbelieve in love, _qué!_"

No, the Swede did not believe in it. Ideal love is a poet's lie; theother, only a need he had never felt... 

"_Bé!_ yes! _bé!_ yes!.. It is true poets lie, they always say more thanthere is; but for all that, she is nice, the _femellan_--that's whatthey call women in our parts. Besides, there's children, pretty littledarlings that look like us. "

"Children! a source of grief. Ever since she had them my mother has donenothing but weep. "

"Listen, Otto, you know me, my good friend... "

And with all the valorous ardour of his soul Tartarin exhausted himselfto revive and rub to life at that distance this victim of Schopenhauerand of Hartmann, two rascals he'd like to catch at the corner of awood, _coquin de sort!_ and make them pay for all the harm they had doneto youth... 

Represent to yourselves during this discussion the high wall offreezing, glaucous, streaming ice touched by a pallid ray of light, and that string of human beings glued to it in echelon, with ill-omenedrumblings rising from the yawning depth, together with the curses of theguides and their threats to detach and abandon the travellers. Tartarin, seeing that no argument could convince the madman or clear off hisvertigo of death, suggested to him the idea of throwing himself fromthe highest peak of the Mont Blanc... That indeed! _that_ would beworth doing, up there! A fine end among the elements... But here, at thebottom of a cave... Ah! _vaï_, what a blunder!.. And he put such toneinto his words, brusque and yet persuasive, such conviction, that theSwede allowed himself to be conquered, and there they were, at last, oneby one, at the top of that terrible _roture_. 

They were now unroped, and a halt was called for a bite and sup. Itwas daylight; a cold wan light among a circle of peaks and shafts, overtopped by the Mont Blanc, still thousands of feet above them. Theguides were apart, gesticulating and consulting, with many shakings ofthe head. Seated on the white ground, heavy and huddled up, their roundbacks in their brown jackets, they looked like marmots getting ready tohibernate. Bompard and Tartarin, uneasy, shocked, left the young Swedeto eat alone, and came up to the guides just as their leader was sayingwith a grave air:--

"He is smoking his pipe; there's no denying it. "

"Who is smoking his pipe?" asked Tartarin. 

"Mont Blanc, monsieur; look there... "

And the guide pointed to the extreme top of the highest peak, where, like a plume, a white vapour floated toward Italy. 

"_Et autremain_, my good friend, when the Mont Blanc smokes his pipe, what does that mean?"

"It means, monsieur, that there is a terrible wind on the summit, anda snow-storm which will be down upon us before long. And I tell you, that's dangerous. "

"Let us go back, " said Bompard, turning green; and Tartarin added:--

"Yes, yes, certainly; no false vanity, of course. "

But here the Swedish student interfered. He had paid his money to betaken to the top of Mont Blanc, and nothing should prevent his gettingthere. He would go alone, if no one would accompany him. "Cowards!cowards!" he added, turning to the guides; and he uttered the insult inthe same ghostly voice with which he had roused himself just before tosuicide. 

"You shall see if we are cowards... Fasten to the rope and forward!"cried the head guide. This time, it was Bompard who protestedenergetically. He had had enough, and he wanted to be taken back. Tartarin supported him vigorously. 

"You see very well that that young man is insane... " he said, pointingto the Swede, who had already started with great strides through theheavy snow-flakes which the wind was beginning to whirl on all sides. But nothing could stop the men who had just been called cowards. Themarmots were now wide-awake and heroic. Tartarin could not even obtaina conductor to take him back with Bompard to the Grands-Mulets. Besides, the way was very easy; three hours' march, counting a detour of twentyminutes to get round that _roture_, if they were afraid to go through italone. 

"_Outre!_ yes, we are afraid of it... " said Bompard, without theslightest shame; and the two parties separated. 

Bompard and the P. C. A. Were now alone. They advanced with caution onthe snowy desert, fastened to a rope: Tartarin first, feeling his waygravely with his ice-axe; filled with a sense of responsibility andfinding relief in it. 

"Courage! keep cool!.. We shall get out of it all right, " he called toBompard repeatedly. It is thus that an officer in battle, seeking todrive away his own fear, brandishes his sword and shouts to his men:"Forward! _s. N. De D_!.. All balls don't kill. "

At last, here they were at the end of that horrible crevasse. From thereto the hut there were no great obstacles; but the wind blew, and blindedthem with snowy whirlwinds. Further advance was impossible for fear oflosing their way. 

"Let us stop here for a moment, " said Tartarin. A gigantic _sérac_ ofice offered them a hollow at its base. Into it they crept, spreadingdown the india-rubber rug of the president and opening a flask of rum, the sole article of provision left them by the guides. A little warmthand comfort followed thereon, while the blows of the ice-axes, gettingfainter and fainter up the height, told them of the progress of theexpedition. They echoed in the heart of the P. C. A. Like a pang ofregret for not having done the Mont Blanc to the summit. 

"Who 'll know it?" returned Bompard, cynically. "The porters kept thebanner, and Chamonix will believe it is you. "

"You are right, " cried Tartarin, in a tone of conviction; "the honour ofTarascon is safe... "

But the elements grew furious, the north-wind a hurricane, the snow flewin volumes. Both were silent, haunted by sinister ideas; they rememberedthose ill-omened relics in the glass case of the old inn-keeper, hislaments, the legend of that American tourist found petrified with coldand hunger, holding in his stiffened hand a note-book, in which hisagonies were written down even to the last convulsion, which made thepencil slip and the signature uneven. 

"Have you a note-book, Gonzague?"

And the other, comprehending without further explanation:--

"Ha! _vaï_, a note-book!.. If you think I am going to let myself dielike that American!.. Quick, let's get on! come out of this. "

"Impossible... At the first step we should be blown like straws andpitched into some abyss. "

"Well then, we had better shout; the Grands-Mulets is not far off... "And Bompard, on his knees, in the attitude of a cow at pasture, lowing, roared out, "Help! help! help!.. "

"To arms!" shouted Tartarin, in his most sonorous chest voice, which thegrotto repercussioned in thunder. 

Bompard seized his arm: "Horrors! the _sérac!_".. Positively the wholeblock was trembling; another shout and that mass of accumulated icicleswould be down upon their heads. They stopped, rigid, motionless, wrappedin a horrid silence, presently broken by a distant rolling sound, comingnearer, increasing, spreading to the horizon, and dying at last fardown, from gulf to gulf. 

"Poor souls!" murmured Tartarin, thinking of the Swede and his guidescaught, no doubt, and swept away by the avalanche. 

Bompard shook his head: "We are scarcely better off than they, " he said. 

And truly, their situation was alarming; but they did not dare to stirfrom their icy grotto, nor to risk even their heads outside in thesquall. 

To complete the oppression of their hearts, from the depths of thevalley rose the howling of a dog, baying at death. Suddenly Tartarin, with swollen eyes, his lips quivering, grasped the hands of hiscompanion, and looking at him gently, said:--

"Forgive me, Gonzague, yes, yes, forgive me. I was rough to you justnow; I treated you as a liar... "

"Ah! _vaï_. What harm did that do me?"

"I had less right than any man to do so, for I have lied a great dealmyself, and at this supreme moment I feel the need to open my heart, tofree my bosom, to publicly confess my imposture... "

"Imposture, you?"

"Listen to me, my friend... In the first place, I never killed a lion. "

"I am not surprised at that, " said Bompard, composedly. "But why do youworry yourself for such a trifle?.. It is our sun that does it... We areborn to lies... _Vé!_ look at me... Did I ever tell the truth since Icame into the world? As soon as I open my mouth my South gets up into myhead like a fit. The people I talk about I never knew; the countries, I 've never set foot in them; and all that makes such a tissue ofinventions that I can't unravel it myself any longer. "

"That's imagination, _péchère!_" sighed Tartarin; "we are liars ofimagination. "

"And such lies never do any harm to any one; whereas a malicious, envious man, like Coste-calde... "

"Don't ever speak to me of that wretch, " interrupted the P. C. A. ; then, seized with a sudden attack of wrath, he shouted: "_Coquin de bonsorti_ it is, all the same, rather vexing... " He stopped, at a terrifiedgesture from Bompard, "Ah! yes, true... The _sérac_;" and, forcedto lower his tone and mutter his rage, poor Tartarin continued hisimprecations in a whisper, with a comical and amazing dislocation of themouth, --"yes, vexing to die in the flower of one's age through thefault of a scoundrel who at this very moment is taking his coffee on thePromenade!.. "

But while he thus fulminated, a clear spot began to show itself, littleby little, in the sky. It snowed no more, it blew no more; and bluedashes tore away the gray of the sky. Quick, quick, _en route_; and oncemore fastened to the same rope, Tartarin, who took the lead as before, turned round, put a finger on his lips, and said:--

"You know, Gonzague, that all we have just been saying is betweenourselves. "

"_Té! pardi_... "

Full of ardour, they started, plunging to their knees in the fresh snow, which had buried in its immaculate cotton-wool all the traces of thecaravan; consequently Tartarin was forced to consult his compassevery five minutes. But that Taras-conese compass, accustomed to warmclimates, had been numb with cold ever since its arrival in Switzerland. The needle whirled to all four quarters, agitated, hesitating; thereforethey determined to march straight before them, expecting to see theblack rocks of the Grands-Mulets rise suddenly from the uniform silentwhiteness of the slope, the peaks, the turrets, and _aiguilles_that surrounded, dazzled, and also terrified them, for who knew whatdangerous crevasses it concealed beneath their feet?

"Keep cool, Gonzague, keep cool!"

"That 's just what I can't do, " responded Bom-pard, in a lamentablevoice. And he moaned: "_Aïe_, my foot!.. _aïe_, my leg!.. We are lost;never shall we get there... "

They had walked for over two hours when, about the middle of a field ofsnow very difficult to climb, Bompard called out, quite terrified:--

"Tartarin, we are going _up!_"

"Eh! _parbleu!_ I know that well enough, " returned the P. C. A. , almostlosing his serenity. 

"But according to my ideas, we ought to be going down. "

"_Be!_ yes! but how can I help it? Let's go on to the top, at any rate;it may go down on the other side. "

It went down certainly--and terribly, by a succession of _névés_ andglaciers, and quite at the end of this dazzling scene of dangerouswhiteness a little hut was seen upon a rock at a depth which seemed tothem unattainable. It was a haven that they must reach before nightfall, inasmuch as they had evidently lost the way to the Grands-Mulets, but atwhat cost! what efforts! what dangers, perhaps!

"Above all, don't let go of me, Gonzague, _qué!_.. "

"Nor you either, Tartarin. "

They exchanged these requests without seeing each other, being separatedby a ridge behind which Tartarin disappeared, being in advance andbeginning to descend, while the other was going up, slowly and interror. They spoke no more, concentrating all their forces, fearful of afalse step, a slip. Suddenly, when Bompard was within three feet ofthe crest, he heard a dreadful cry from his companion, and at the sameinstant, the rope tightened with a violent, irregular jerk... He triedto resist, to hold fast himself and save his friend from the abyss. Butthe rope was old, no doubt, for it parted, suddenly, under his efforts. 

"_Outre!_"

"_Boufre!_"

The two cries crossed each other, awful, heartrending, echoing throughthe silence and solitude, then a frightful stillness, the stillness ofdeath that nothing more could trouble in that waste of eternal snows. 

Towards evening a man who vaguely resembled Bompard, a spectre with itshair on end, muddy, soaked, arrived at the inn of the Grands-Mulets, where they rubbed him, warmed him, and put him to bed, before he couldutter other words than these--choked with tears, and his hands raised toheaven: "Tartarin... Lost!.. Broken rope... " At last, however, they wereable to make out the great misfortune which had happened. 

While the old hut-man was lamenting and adding another chapter to thehorrors of the mountain, hoping for fresh ossuary relics for his charnelglass-case, the Swedish youth and his guides, who had returned fromtheir expedition, set off in search of the hapless Tartarin with ropes, ladders, in short a whole life-saving outfit, alas! unavailing... Bompard, rendered half idiotic, could give no precise indications asto the drama, nor as to the spot where it happened. They found nothingexcept, on the Dôme du Goûter, one piece of rope which was caught in acleft of the ice. But that piece of rope, very singular thing! was cutat both ends, as with some sharp instrument; the Chambéry newspapersgave a facsimile of it, which proved the fact. 

Finally, after eight days of the most conscientious search, and when theconviction became irresistible that the poor president would never befound, that he was lost beyond recall, the despairing delegates startedfor Tarascon, taking with them the unhappy Bompard, whose shaken brainwas a visible result of the terrible shock. 

"Do not talk to me about it, " he replied when questioned as to theaccident, "never speak to me about it again!"

Undoubtedly the White Mountain could reckon one victim the more--andwhat a victim!

XIV. 

 Epilogue. 

A REGION more impressionable than Tarascon was never seen under thesun of any land. At times, of a fine festal Sunday, all the town out, tambourines a-going, the Promenade swarming, tumultuous, enamelledwith red and green petticoats, Arlesian neckerchiefs, and, on bigmulti-coloured posters, the announcement of wrestling-matches for menand lads, races of Camargue bulls, etc. , it is all-sufficient for somewag to call out: "Mad dog!" or "Cattle loose!" and everybody runs, jostles, men and women fright themselves out of their wits, doors arelocked and bolted, shutters clang as with a storm, and behold Tarascon, deserted, mute, not a cat, not a sound, even the grasshoppers themselveslying low and attentive. 

This was its aspect on a certain morning, which, however, was neither afête-day nor a Sunday; the shops closed, houses dead, squares and alleysseemingly enlarged by silence and solitude. _Vasta silentio_, saysTacitus, describing Rome at the funeral of Germanicus; and that citationof his mourning Rome applies all the better to Tarascon, because afuneral service for the soul of Tartarin was being said at this momentin the cathedral, where the population _en masse_ wept for its hero, its god, its invincible leader with double muscles, left lying among theglaciers of Mont Blanc. 

Now, while the death-knell dropped its heavy notes along the silentstreets, Mile. Tournatoire, the doctor's sister, whose ailments kepther always at home, was sitting in her big armchair close to the window, looking out into the street and listening to the bells. The house of theTournatoires was on the road to Avignon, very nearly opposite to thatof Tartarin; and the sight of that illustrious home to which its masterwould return no more, that garden gate forever closed, all, even theboxes of the little shoe-blacks drawn up in line near the entrance, swelled the heart of the poor spinster, consumed for more than thirtyyears with a secret passion for the Tarasconese hero. Oh, mystery of theheart of an old maid! It was her joy to watch him pass at his regularhours and to ask herself: "Where is he going?.. " to observe thepermutations of his toilet, whether he was clothed as an Alpinist ordressed in his suit of serpent-green. And now! she would see him nomore! even the consolation of praying for his soul with all the otherladies of the town was denied her. 

Suddenly the long white horse head of Mile. Tournatoire colouredfaintly; her faded eyes with a pink rim dilated in a remarkable manner, while her thin hand with its prominent veins made the sign of thecross.. He! it _was_ he, slipping along by the wall on the other side ofthe paved road... At first she thought it an hallucinating apparition... No, Tartarin himself, in flesh and blood, only paler, pitiable, ragged, was creeping along that wall like a beggar or a thief. But in order toexplain his furtive presence in Tarascon, it is necessary to return tothe Mont Blanc and the Dôme du Goûter at the precise instant when, thetwo friends being each on either side of the ridge, Bompard felt therope that bound them violently jerked as if by the fall of a body. 

In reality, the rope was only caught in a cleft of the ice; butTartarin, feeling the same jerk, believed, he too, that his companionwas rolling down and dragging him with him. Then, at that suprememoment--good heavens! how shall I tell it?--in that agony of fear, both, at the same instant, forgetting their solemn vow at the HôtelBaltet, with the same impulse, the same instinctive action, cut therope, --Bompard with his knife, Tartarin with his axe; then, horrified attheir crime, convinced, each of them, that he had sacrificed his friend, they fled in opposite directions. 

When the spectre of Bompard appeared at the Grands-Mulets, that ofTartarin was arriving at the tavern of the Avesailles. How, by whatmiracle? after what slips, what falls? Mont Blanc alone could tell. The poor P. C. A. Remained for two days in a state of complete apathy, unable to utter a single sound. As soon as he was fit to move they tookhim down to Courmayeur, the Italian Chamonix. At the hotel where hestopped to recover his strength, there was talk of nothing but thefrightful catastrophe on Mont Blanc, a perfect pendant to that on theMatterhorn: another Alpinist engulfed by the breaking of the rope. 

In his conviction that this meant Bompard, Tartarin, torn by remorse, dared not rejoin the delegation, or return to his own town. He saw, inadvance, on every lip, in every eye, the question: "Cain, what hast thoudone with thy brother?.. " Nevertheless, the lack of money, deficiencyof linen, the frosts of September which were beginning to thin thehostelries, obliged him to set out for home. After all, no one had seenhim commit the crime... Nothing hindered him from inventing some tale, no matter what... And so (the amusements of the journey lending theiraid), he began to feel better. But when, on approaching Tarascon, hesaw, iridescent beneath the azure heavens, the fine sky-line of theAlpines, all, all grasped him once more; shame, remorse, the fear ofjustice, and, to avoid the notoriety of arriving at the station, he leftthe train at the preceding stopping-place. 

Ah! that beautiful Tarasconese highroad, all white and creaking withdust, without other shade than the telegraph poles and their wires, erected along the triumphal way he had so often trod at the head of hisAlpinists and the sportsmen of caps. Would they now have known him, he, the valiant, the jauntily attired, in his ragged and filthy clothes, with that furtive eye of a tramp looking out for gendarmes? Theatmosphere was burning, though the season was late, and the watermelonwhich he bought of a marketman seemed to him delicious as he ate itin the scanty shade of the barrow, while the peasant exhaled his wrathagainst the housekeepers of Tarascon, all of them absent from marketthat morning "on account of a black mass being sung for a man of thetown who was lost in a hole, over there in the Swiss mountains... _Té!_how the bells rang... You can hear 'em from here... "

No longer any doubt. For Bompard were those lugubrious chimes of death, which a warm breeze wafted through the country solitudes. 

What an accompaniment of the return of the great Tartarin to his nativetown!

For one moment, one, when the gate of the little garden hurriedly openedand closed behind him and Tartarin found himself at home, when he sawthe little paths with their borders so neatly raked, the basin, thefountain, the gold fish (squirming as the gravel creaked beneath hisfeet), and the baobab giant in its mignonette pot, the comfort of thatcabbage-rabbit burrow wrapped him like a security after all his dangersand adversities... But the bells, those cursed bells, tolled louder thanever; their black heavy notes fell plumb upon his heart and crushed itagain. In funereal fashion they were saying to him: "Cain, what hastthou done with thy brother? Tartarin, where is Bompard?" Then, withoutcourage to take one step, he sat down upon the hot coping of the littlebasin and stayed there, broken down, annihilated, to the great agitationof the gold fish. 

The bells no longer toll. The porch of the cathedral, lately soresounding, is restored to the mutterings of the beggarwoman sittingby the door, and to the cold immovability of its stone saints. Thereligious ceremony is over; all Taras-con has gone to the Club of theAlpines, where, in solemn session, Bompard is to tell the tale of thecatastrophe and relate the last moments of the P. C. A. Besides themembers of the Club, many privileged persons of the army, clergy, nobility, and higher commerce have taken seats in the hall ofconference, the windows of which, wide open, allow the city band, installed below on the portico, to mingle a few heroic or plaintivenotes with the remarks of the gentlemen. An enormous crowd, pressingaround the musicians, is standing on the tips of its toes and stretchingits necks in hopes to catch a fragment of what is said in session. Butthe windows are too high, and no one would have any idea of whatwas going on without the help of two or three urchins perched in thebranches of a tall linden who fling down scraps of information as theyare wont to fling cherries from a tree:

"_Vé_, there's Costecalde, trying to cry. Ha! the beggar! he's got thearmchair now... And that poor Bézuquet, how he blows his nose! and hiseyes are all red!.. _Té!_ they've put crape on the banner... There'sBompard, coming to the table with the three delegates... He has laidsomething down on the desk... He's speaking now... It must be fine! Theyare all crying... "

In truth, the grief became general as Bompard advanced in his narrative. Ah! memory had come back to him--imagination also. After picturinghimself and his illustrious companion alone on the summit of Mont Blanc, without guides (who had all refused to follow them on account of thebad weather), alone with the banner, unfurled for five minutes onthe highest peak of Europe, he recounted, and with what emotion! theperilous descent and fall; Tartarin rolling to the bottom of a crevasse, and he, Bompard, fastening himself to a rope two hundred feet long inorder to explore that gulf to its very depths. 

"More than twenty times, gentlemen--what am I saying? more thanninety times I sounded that icy abyss without being able to reach ourunfortunate _présidain_ whose fall, however, I was able to prove bycertain fragments left clinging in the crevices of the ice... "

So saying, he spread upon the table-cloth a fragment of a tooth, somehairs from a beard, a morsel of waistcoat, and one suspender buckle;almost the whole ossuary of the Grands-Mulets. 

In presence of such an exhibition the sorrowful emotions of the assemblycould not be restrained; even the hardest hearts, the partisans ofCostecalde, and the gravest personages--Cambalalette, the notary, thedoctor, Tournatoire--shed tears as big as the stopper of a water-bottle. The invited ladies uttered heart-rending cries, smothered, however, bythe sobbing howls of Excourbaniès and the bleatings of Pascalon, whilethe funeral march of the drums and trumpets played a slow and lugubriousbass. 

Then, when he saw the emotion, the nervous excitement at its height, Bompard ended his tale with a grand gesture of pity toward the scrapsand the buckles, as he said:--

"And there, gentlemen and dear fellow-citizens, there is all that Irecovered of our illustrious and beloved president... The remainder theglacier will restore to us in forty years... "

He was about to explain, for ignorant persons, the recent discoveriesas to the slow but regular movement of glaciers, when the squeaking ofa door opening at the other end of the room interrupted him; some oneentered, paler than one of Home's apparitions, directly in front of theorator. 

"_Vé!_ Tartarin!.. "

"_Té!_ Gonzague!.. "

And this race is so singular, so ready to believe all improbable tales, all audacious and easily refuted lies, that the arrival of the great manwhose remains were still lying on the table caused only a very moderateamazement in the assembly. 

"It is a misunderstanding, that's all, " said Tartarin, comforted, beaming, his hand on the shoulder of the man whom he thought he hadkilled. "I did Mont Blanc on both sides. Went up one way and came downthe other; and that is why I was thought to have disappeared. "

He did not mention that he had come down on his back. 

"That damned Bompard!" said Bézuquet; "all the same, he harrowed us upwith his tale... " And they laughed and clasped hands, while the drumsand trumpets, which they vainly tried to silence, went madly on withTartarin's funeral march. 

"_Vé!_ Costecalde, just see how yellow he is!.. " murmured Pascalon toBravida, pointing to the gunsmith as he rose to yield the chair to therightful president, whose good face beamed, Bravida, always sententious, said in a low voice as he looked at the fallen Costecalde returningto his subaltern rank: "The fate of the Abbé Mandaire, from being therector he now is _vicaire!_"

And the session went on.