tartar on the alps

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Tartarin On TheAlps

Alphonse Daudet

W o r k r e r o d

u c e d w i t h n o

e d i t o r i a l r e s

o n s i b i l i t



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I

Apparition on the Rigi-Kulm. Who is it? What wasaid around

a table of six hundred covers. Rice and Prunes, Animprovised ball. The Unknown signs his name on

the hotel

register, P. C. A.On the 10th of August, 1880, at that fabled houof the setting sun so vaunted by the guidebooks Joanne and Baedeker, an hermetic yellow

fog, complicated with a flurry of snow in whitspirals, enveloped the summit of the Rigi (Rgina monhum) and its gigantic hotel, extraordnary to behold on the arid waste of thosheights,—that Rigi-Kulm, glassed-in like a con

servatory, massive as a citadel, where alight foa night and a day a flock of tourists, worshippers of the sun.



While awaiting the second dinner-gong, thtransient inmates of the vast and gorgeoucaravansary, half frozen in their chamber

above, or gasping on the divans of the readingrooms in the damp heat of lighted furnacewere gazing, in default of the promised splendours, at the whirling white atoms and thlighting of the great lamps on the portico, th

double glasses of which were creaking in thwind.

To climb so high, to come from all four cornerof the earth to see that... Oh, Baedeker!..

Suddenly, something emerged from the foand advanced toward the hotel with a rattlinof metal, an exaggeration of motions, caused b

strange accessories.At a distance of twenty feet through the fog thtorpid tourists, their noses against the panethe misses with curious little heads trimmed lik



those of boys, took this apparition for a cowand then for a tinker bearing his utensils.

Ten feet nearer the apparition changed againshowing a crossbow on the shoulder, and thvisored cap of an archer of the middle agewith the visor lowered, an object even morunlikely to meet with on these heights than

strayed cow or an ambulating tinker.On the portico the archer was no longer anything but a fat, squat, broad-backed man, whstopped to get breath and to shake the snow

from his leggings, made like his cap of yellowcloth, and from his knitted comforter, whicallowed scarcely more of his face to be seethan a few tufts of grizzling beard and a pair o

enormous green spectacles made as convex athe glass of a stereoscope. An alpenstock, knapsack, coil of rope worn in saltire, crampons aniron hooks hanging to the belt of an Englisblouse with broad pleats, completed the accou

trement of this perfect Alpinist.



On the desolate summits of Mont Blanc or thFinsteraarhorn this clambering apparel woulhave seemed very natural, but on the Rig

Kulm ten 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

and mud.For a moment he gazed at the hotel and its surounding buildings, seemingly stupefied afinding, two thousand and more yards abov

the sea, a building of such importance, glazegalleries, colonnades, seven storeys of windows, and a broad portico stretching away between two rows of globe-lamps which gave t

this mountain-summit the aspect of the Placde l'Opéra of a winter's evening.

But, surprised as he may have been, the peopin the hotel were more surprised still, an

when he entered the immense antechamber a



inquisitive hustling took place in the doorwayof all the salons: gentlemen armed with biliard-cues, others with open newspapers, ladie

still holding their book or their work presseforward, while in the background, on the landing of the staircase, heads leaned over the bauster and between the chains of the lift.

The man said aloud, in a powerful deep basvoice, the chest voice of the South, resoundinlike cymbals:—

"Coquin de bon sort! what an atmosphere!"

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

He was suffocating.

The dazzle of the lights, the heat of the gas anfurnace, in contrast with the cold darkness wihout, and this sumptuous display, these loftceilings, these porters bedizened with Regin



Montium in letters of gold on their naval capthe white cravats of the waiters and the battaion of Swiss girls in their native costumes com

ing forward at sound of the gong, all thesthings bewildered him for a second—but onlone.

He felt himself looked at and instantly recov

ered his self-possession, like a comedian facina full house.

"Monsieur desires..?"

This was the manager of the hotel, making thinquiry with the tips of his teeth, a very dashing manager, striped jacket, silken whiskerthe head of a lady's dressmaker.

The Alpinist, not disturbed, asked for a room"A good little room, au mouain?" perfectly aease with that majestic manager, as if with former schoolmate.



But he came near being angry when a Bernesservant-girl, advancing, candle in hand, anstiff in her gilt stomacher and puffed musli

sleeves, inquired if Monsieur would be pleaseto take the lift. The proposal to commit a crimwould not have made him more indignant.

"A lift! he!.. for him!.." And his cry, his gestur

set all his metals rattling.Quickly appeased, however, he said to the maden, in an amiable tone: "Pedibusse cum jambissmy pretty little cat..." And he went up behin

her, his broad back filling the stairway, partinthe persons he met on his way, while throughout the hotel the clamorous questions ran"Who is he? What's this?" muttered in the d

vers languages of all four quarters of the globThen the second dinner-gong sounded, annobody thought any longer of this extraordnary personage.



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

Six hundred covers around an immense horsshoe table, where tall, shallow dishes of ricand of prunes, alternating in long files witgreen plants, reflected in their dark or tranparent sauces the flame of the candles in th

chandeliers and the gilding of the panelled ceiing.

As in all Swiss tables d'hôte, rice and prunedivided the dinner into two rival factions, an

merely by the looks of hatred or of hankerincast upon those dishes it was easy to tell twhich party the guests belonged. The Ricewere known by their anaemic pallor, th

Prunes by their congested skins.That evening the latter were the most numeous, counting among them several importanpersonalities, European celebrities, such as th

great historian Astier-Réhu, of the Frenc



Academy, Baron von Stolz, an old AustroHungarian diplomat, Lord Chipendale (?), member of the Jockey-Club and his niece (h'm

h'm!), the illustrious doctor-professor Schwanthaler, from the University of Bonn, a Peruviageneral with eight young daughters.

To these the Rices could only oppose as

picket-guard a Belgian senator and his familyMme. Schwanthaler, the professor's wife, anan Italian tenor, returning from Russia, whdisplayed his cuffs, with buttons as big as saucers, upon the tablecloth.

It was these opposing currents which no doubcaused the stiffness and embarrassment of thcompany. How else explain the silence of s

hundred half-frozen, scowling, distrustful pesons, and the sovereign contempt they appeared to affect for one another? A superficiaobserver might perhaps have attributed thstiffness to stupid Anglo-Saxon haughtines



which, nowadays, gives the tone in all countries to the travelling world.

No! no! Beings with human faces are not borto hate one another thus at first sight, to despiseach other with their very noses, lips, and eyefor lack of a previous introduction. There mube another cause.

Rice and Prunes, I tell you. There you have thexplanation of the gloomy silence weighinupon this dinner at the Rigi-Kulm, which, considering the number and international variet

of the guests, ought to have been lively, tumutuous, such as we imagine the repasts at thfoot of the Tower of Babel to have been.

The Alpinist entered the room, a little ove

come by this refectory of monks, apparentldoing penance beneath the glare of chandelierhe coughed noisily without any one taking notice of him, and seated himself in his place o

last-comer at the end of the room. Divested o



his accoutrements, he was now a tourist likany other, but of aspect more amiable, baldbarrel-bellied, his beard pointed and bunchy

his nose majestic, his eyebrows thick and ferocious, overhanging the glance of a downrighgood fellow.

Rice or Prunes? No one knew as yet.

Hardly was he installed before he became uneasy, and leaving his place with an alarminbound: "Ouf! what a draught!" he said aloud, ahe sprang to an empty chair with its back lai

over on the table.

He was stopped by the Swiss maid on duty—from the canton of Uri, that one—silver chainand white muslin chemisette.

"Monsieur, this place is engaged..."

Then a young lady, seated next to the chair, owhom the Alpinist could see only her blon



hair rising from the whiteness of virgin snowsaid, without turning round, and with a foreigaccent:

"That place is free; my brother is ill, and winot be down."

"Ill?.." said the Alpinist, seating himself, wit

an anxious, almost affectionate manner... "IlNot dangerously, au moins."

He said au mouain, and the word recurred in ahis remarks, with other vocable parasites, suc

as hé, que, téy zou, vé, vaï, et autrement, différemment, etc., still further emphasized by a Southern accent, displeasing, apparently, to thyoung lady, for she answered with a glaciglance of a black blue, the blue of an abyss.

His neighbour on the right had nothing encouraging about him either; this was the Italiatenor, a gay bird with a low forehead, oily pupils, and the moustache of a matador, which h



twirled with nervous fingers at being thuseparated from his pretty neighbour. But thgood Alpinist had a habit of talking as he ate;

was necessary for his health."Vé! the pretty buttons..." he said to himselaloud, eying the cuffs of his neighbour. "Noteof music, inlaid in jasper—why, the effect

charmain!.."His metallic voice rang on the silence, bufound no echo.

"Surely monsieur is a singer, que?""Non capisco," growled the Italian into his moutache.

For a moment the man resigned himself to dvour without uttering a word, but the morsechoked him. At last, as his opposite neighbouthe Austro-Hungarian diplomat, endeavoureto reach the mustard-pot with the tips of h



shaky old fingers, covered with mittens, hpassed it to him obligingly. "Happy to servyou, Monsieur le baron," for he had heard som

one call him so.Unfortunately, poor M. de Stoltz, in spite of hshrewd and knowing air contracted in diplomatic juggling, had now lost both words an

ideas, and was travelling among the mountainfor the special purpose of recovering them. Hopened his eyes wide upon that unknown facand shut them again without a word. It woulhave taken ten old diplomats of his presenintellectual force to have constructed in common a formula of thanks.

At this fresh failure the Alpinist made a terrib

grimace, and the abrupt manner in which hseized the bottle standing near him might havmade one fear he was about to cleave the aready cracked head of the diplomatist Not so! was only to offer wine to his pretty neighbou

who did not hear him, being absorbed by



semi-whispered conversation in a soft anlively foreign warble with two young meseated next to her. She bent to them, and grew

animated. Little frizzles of hair were seen shining in the light against a dainty, transparenrosy ear... Polish, Russian, Norwegian?.. fromthe North certainly; and a pretty song of thosdistant lands coming to his lips, the man of th

South began tranquilly 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 thoughhim mad. He coloured, subsided into his platand did not issue again except to repulse v

hemently one of the sacred compote-dishes thwas handed to him.

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

This was too much.A grating of chairs was heard. The academcian, Lord Chipendale (?), the Bonn professoand other notabilities rose, and left the room a

if protesting.The Rices followed almost immediately, on seetog the second compote-dish rejected as violently as the first.

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

All withdrew; and it was truly glacial, that slent defile of scornful noses and mouths wit

their corners disdainfully turned down at th



luckless man, who was left alone in the vagorgeous dining-room, engaged in sopping hbread in his wine after the fashion of his coun

try, crushed beneath the weight of universdisdain.

My friends, let us never despise any one. Contempt is the resource of parvenus, prigs, ugl

folk, and fools; it is the mask behind which nonentity shelters itself, and sometimes blackguardism; it dispenses with mind, judgmenand good-will. All humpbacked persons arcontemptuous; all crooked noses wrinkle witdisdain when they see a straight one.

He knew that, this worthy Alpinist. Havinpassed, by several years, his "fortieth," tha

landing on the fourth storey where man dicovers and picks up the magic key which openlife to its recesses, and reveals its monotonouand deceptive labyrinth; conscious, moreoveof his value, of the importance of his mission

and of the great name he bore, he cared nothin



for the opinion of such persons as these. Hknew that he need only name himself and crout "'Tis I..." to change to grovelling respe

those haughty lips; but he found his incognitamusing.

He suffered only at not being able to talk, tmake a noise, unbosom himself, press hand

lean familiarly on shoulders, and call men btheir Christian names. That is what oppressehim on the Rigi-Kulm.

Oh! above all, not being able to speak.

"I shall have dyspepsia as sure as fate," said thpoor devil, wandering about the hotel and noknowing what to do with himself.

He entered a café, vast and deserted as church on a week day, called the waiter, "Mgood friend," and ordered "a mocha withousugar, que'." And as the waiter did not ask"Why no sugar?" the Alpinist added quickly



"'Tis a habit I acquired in Africa, at the perioof my great hunts."

He was about to recount them, but the waitehad fled on his phantom slippers to Lord Chpendale, stranded, full length, upon a sofa ancrying, in mournful tones: "Tchempègnetchempègne!.." The cork flew with its silly no

se, and nothing more was heard save the gusof wind in the monumental chimney and thhissing click of the snow against the panes.

Very dismal too was the reading-room; all th

journals in hand, hundreds of heads bent dowaround the long green tables beneath the refletors. From time to time a yawn, a cough, thrustle of a turned leaf; and soaring high abov

the calm of this hall of study, erect and motionless, their backs to the stove, both solemand both smelling equally musty, were the twpontiffs of official history, Astier-Réhu anSchwanthaler, whom a singular fatality ha

brought face to face on the summit of the Rig



after thirty years of insults and of rending eacother to shreds in explanatory notes referring t"Schwanthaler, jackass," "vir ineptissimus, As

ier-Réhu."You can imagine the reception which thkindly Alpinist received on drawing up a chafor a bit of instructive conversation in tha

chimney corner. From the height of these twcaryatides there fell upon him suddenly one othose currents of air of which he was so afraidHe rose, paced the hall, as much to warm himself as to recover self-confidence, and openethe bookcase. A few English novels lay scatered about in company with several heavBibles and tattered volumes of the Alpine ClubHe took up one of the latter, and carried it o

to read in bed, but was forced to leave it at thdoor, the rules not allowing the transference othe library to the chambers.

Then, still continuing to wander about, he ope

ned the door of the billiard-room, where th



Italian tenor, playing alone, was producineffects of torso and cuffs for the edification otheir pretty neighbour, seated on a divan, b

tween the two young men, to whom she wareading a letter. On the entrance of the Alpinishe stopped, and one of the young men rosthe taller, a sort of moujik, a dog-man, withairy paws, and long, straight, shining blac

hair joining an unkempt beard. He made twsteps in the direction of the new-comer, lookeat him provocatively, and so fiercely that thworthy Alpinist, without demanding an expla

nation, made a prudent and judicious half-turto the right.

"Différemment, they are not affable, these Norherners," he said aloud; and he shut the doo

noisily, to prove to that savage that he was noafraid of him.

The salon remained as a last refuge; he wenthere... Coquin de sort!... The morgue, my goo

friends, the morgue of the Saint-Bernard wher



the monks expose the frozen bodies found beneath the snows in the various attitudes iwhich congealing death has stiffened them, ca

alone describe that salon of the Rigi-Kulm.All those numbed, mute women, in groupupon the circular sofas, or isolated and falleinto chairs here and there; all those misses, mo

tionless be-. neath the lamps on the round tables, still holding in their hands the book or thwork they were employed on when the colcongealed them. Among them were the daughters of the general, eight little Peruvians witsaffron skins, their features convulsed, thvivid ribbons on their gowns contrasting witthe dead-leaf tones of English fashions; poolittle sunny-climes, easy to imagine as laughin

and frolicking beneath their cocoa-trees annow more distressing to behold than the rest itheir glacial, mute condition. In the background, before the piano, was the death-masof the old diplomat, his mittened hands restin



inert upon the keyboard, the yellowing tones owhich were reflected on his face.

Betrayed by his strength and his memory, loin a polka of his own composition, beginning again and again, unable to remember its conclusion, the unfortunate Stoltz had gone tsleep while playing, and with him all the ladie

on the Rigi, nodding, as they slumbered, romantic curls, or those peculiar lace caps, ishape like the crust of a vol-au-vent, that English dames affect, and which seem to be part othe canf of travelling.

The entrance of the Alpinist did not awakethem, and he himself had dropped upon a dvan, overcome by such icy discouragemen

when the sound of vigorous, joyous chordburst from the vestibule; where three "muscos," harp, flute, and violin, ambulating minstrels with pitiful faces, and long overcoaflapping their legs, who infest the Swiss hoste

ries, had just arrived with their instruments.



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

"Zou! bravo!.. forward, music!"

And off he went, opening the great doors, feing the musicians, soaking them with champagne, drunk himself without drinking a drop

solely with the music which brought him bacto life. He mimicked the piston, he mimickethe harp, he snapped his fingers over his headand rolled his eyes and danced his steps, to thutter stupefaction of the tourists running i

from all sides at the racket. Then suddenly, athe exhilarated musicos struck up a Strauswaltz with the fury of true tziganes, the Alpinist, perceiving in the doorway the wife of Pro

fessor Schwanthaler, a rotund little Vienneswith mischievous eyes, still youthful in spite oher powdered gray hair, he sprang up hecaught her by the waist, and whirled her intthe room, crying put to the others; "Come on

come on! let us waltz!"



The impetus was given, the hotel thawed antwirled, carried off its centre. People danced ithe vestibule, in the salon, round the long gree

table of the reading-room. 'Twas that devil of man who set fire to ice. He, however, danceno more, being out of breath at the end of couple of turns; but he guided his ball, urgethe musicians, coupled the dancers, cast int

the arms of the Bonn professor an elderly Englishwoman; and into those of the austere Asier-Réhu the friskiest of the Peruvian damselResistance was impossible. From that terrib

Alpinist issued I know not what mysteriouaura which lightened and buoyed up everone. And zou! zou! zou! No more contempt andisdain. Neither Rice nor Prunes, only waltzerPresently the madness spread; it reached th

upper storeys, and up through the well of thstaircase could be seen to the sixth-floor landing the heavy and high-coloured skirts of thSwiss maids on duty, twirling with the stiffnesof automatons before a musical chalet.



Ah! the wind may blow without and shake thlamp-posts, make the telegraph wires groanand whirl the snow in spirals across that deso

late summit Within all are warm, all are comforted, and remain so for that one night.

"Différemment, I must go to bed, myselfthought the worthy Alpinist, a prudent man

coming from a country where every one packand unpacks himself rapidly. Laughing in hgrizzled beard, he slipped away, covertly ecaping Madame Schwanthaler, who was seeking to hook him again ever since that initiwaltz.

He took his key and his bedroom candle; thenon the first landing, he paused a moment t

enjoy his work and to look at the mass of congealed ones whom he had forced to thaw anamuse themselves.



A Swiss maid approached him all breathlesfrom the waltz, and said, presenting a pen anthe hotel register:—

"Might I venture to ask tmossié to be so good ato sign his name?"

He hesitated a moment. Should he, or shoul

he not preserve his incognito?After all, what matter! Supposing that the newof his presence on the Rigi should reach dowthere, no one would know what he had come t

do in Switzerland. And besides, it would be sdroll to see, to-morrow morning, the stupor othose "Inglichemans" when they should learthe truth... For that Swiss girl, of course, woulnot hold her tongue... What surprise, what ex

citement throughout the hotel!..

"Was it really he?.. he?.. himself?.." These refletions, rapid and vibrant, passed through hhead like the notes of a violin in an orchestr



He took the pen, and with careless hand hsigned, beneath Schwanthaler, Astier-Réhuand other notabilities, the name that eclipse

them all, his name; then he went to his roomwithout so much as glancing round to see theffect, 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 thleast dazzled. She did not know what P. C. Asignified, nor had she ever heard of "Dardarin

Barbarian, Vaï!



II.

Tarascon, five minutes' stop! The Club of thAlpines.

Explanation of P. C. A. Rabbits of warreand cabbage

rabbits. This is my last will and testamen

The Sirop decadavre. First ascension, Tartarin takes ouhis spectacles.

When that name "Tarascon" sounds trumpe

like along the track of the Paris-LyonMediterranean, in the limpid, vibrant blue of Provençal sky, inquisitive heads are visible aall the doors of the express train, and from cariage to carriage the travellers say to each othe

"Ah! here is Tarascon!.. Now, for a look at Trascon."

What they can see of it is, nevertheless, nothinmore than a very ordinary, quiet, clean litt



town with towers, roofs, and a bridge acrosthe Rhone. But the Tarasconese sun and imarvellous effects of mirage, so fruitful in su

prises, inventions, delirious absurdities, thjoyous little populace, not much larger than chick-pea, which reflects and sums up in itsethe instincts of the whole French South, livelyrestless, gabbling, exaggerated, comical, im

pressionable—that is what the people on thexpress-train look out for as they pass, and it that which has made the popularity of the place.

In memorable pages, which modesty prevenhim from mentioning more explicitly, the historiographer of Tarascon essayed, once upon time, to depict the happy days of the litt

town, leading its club life, singing its romantsongs (each his own) and, for want of real gme, organizing curious cap-hunts. Then, wahaving come and the dark times, Tarascon bcame known by its heroic defence, its torpe



doed esplanade, the club and the Café de lComédie, both made impregnable; all the inhabitants enrolled in guerilla companies, the

breasts braided with death's head and crosbones, all beards grown, and such a display obattle-axes, boarding cutlasses, and Americarevolvers that the unfortunate inhabitants ended by frightening themselves and no longe

daring to approach one another in the streets.

Many years have passed since the war, many worthless almanac has been put in the fire, buTarascon has never forgotten; and, renouncinthe futile amusements of other days, it thinks onothing now but how to make blood and mucle for the service of future revenge. Societiefor pistol-shooting and gymnastics, costume

and equipped, all having band and bannerarmouries, boxing-gloves, single-sticks, lisshoes; foot races and flat-hand fights betweepersons in the best society; these things havtaken the place of the former cap-hunts and th



platonic cynegetical discussions in the shop othe gunsmith Costecalde.

And finally the club, the old club itself, abjurinbouillotte and bézique, is now transformed inta "Club Alpin" under the patronage of the famous Alpine Club of London, which has borneven to India the fame of its climbers. With th

difference, that the Tarasconese, instead of expatriating themselves on foreign summits, arcontent with those they have in hand, or ratheunderfoot, at the gates of their town.

"The Alps of Tarascon?" you ask. No; but thAlpines, that chain of mountainettes, redolenof thyme and lavender, not very dangerounor yet very high (five to six hundred feet abo

ve sea-level), which make an horizon of bluwaves along the Provençal roads and are decorated by the local imagination with the fabulous and characteristic names of: Mount Terrble; The End of the World; The Peak of the G

ants, etc.



'T is a pleasure to see, of a Sunday morning, thgaitered Tarasconese, pickaxe in hand, knapsack and tent on their backs, starting off, bugle

in advance, for ascensions, of which the Forumthe local journal, gives full account with a dscriptive luxury and wealth of epithets—abysses, gulfs, terrifying gorges—as if the saiascension were among the Himalayas. You ca

well believe that from this exercise the aborignes have acquired fresh strength and the "double muscles" heretofore reserved to the onlTartarin, the good, the brave, the heroic Ta

tarin.If Tarascon epitomizes the South, Tartarin eptomizes Tarascon. He is not only the first citzen of the town, he is its soul, its genius, he ha

all its finest whimseys. We know his formeexploits, his triumphs as a singer (oh! that duof "Robert le Diable" in Bézuquet's pharmacy!and the amazing odyssey of his lion-huntfrom which he returned with that splendid ca



mel, the last in Algeria, since deceased, ladewith honours and preserved in skeleton at thtown museum among other Tarasconese cur

osities.Tartarin himself has not degenerated; teeth stigood and eyes good, in spite of his fifties; stithat amazing imagination which brings neare

and enlarges all objects with the power of telescope. He remains the same man as he owhom the brave Commander Bravida used tsay: "He's a lapin..."

Or, rather, two lapins! For in Tartarin, as in athe Tarasconese, there is a warren race and cabbage race, very clearly accentuated: the roving rabbit of the warren, adventurous, head

long; and the cabbage-rabbit, homekeepincoddling, nervously afraid of fatigue, odraughts, and of any and all accidents that malead to death.



We know that this prudence did not prevenhim from showing himself brave and even heroic on occasion; but it is permissible to as

what he was doing on the Rigi (Regina Montium) at his age, when he had so dearly boughthe right to rest and comfort.

To that inquiry the infamous Costecalde ca

alone reply.Costecalde, gunsmith by trade, represents type that is rather rare in Tarascon. Envy, basmalignant envy, is visible in the wicked curv

of his thin lips, and a species of yellow bilproceeding from his liver in puffs, suffuses hbroad, clean-shaven, regular face, with its suface dented as if by a hammer, like an ancien

coin of Tiberius or Caracalla. Envy with him a disease, which he makes no attempt to hidand, with the fine Tarasconese temperamenthat overlays everything, he sometimes says ispeaking of his infirmity: "You don't know how

that hurts me..."



Naturally the curse of Costecalde is Tartarin. Smuch fame for a single man! He everywheralways he! And slowly, subterraneously, like

worm within the gilded wood of an idol, hsaps from below for the last twenty years thatriumphant renown, and gnaws it, and hollowit. When, in the evening, at the club, Tartarirelates his encounters with lions and his wan

derings in the great Sahara, Costecalde sits bwith mute little laughs, and incredulous shakeof the head.

"But the skins, au mouain, Costecalde... thoslions' skins he sent us, which are there, in thsalon of the club?.."

"Té! pardi... Do you suppose there are no furr

ers in Algeria?..""But the marks of the balls, all round, in thheads?"



"Et autremain, did n't we ourselves in the dayof the cap-hunts see ragged caps torn with bulets at the hatters' for sale to clumsy shots?"

No doubt the long established fame of Tartarias a slayer of wild beasts resisted these attackbut the Alpinist in himself was open to critcism, and Costecalde did not deprive himself o

the opportunity, being furious that a mashould be elected as president of the "Club othe Alpines" whom age had visibly oveweighted and whose liking, acquired in Algeria, for Turkish slippers and flowing garmenpredisposed to laziness.

In fact, Tartarin seldom took part in the ascensions; he was satisfied to accompany them wit

votive wishes, and to read in full session, witrolling eyes, and intonations that turned thladies pale, the tragic narratives of the expedtions.



Costecalde, on the contrary, wiry, vigorou"Cock-leg," as they called him, was always thforemost climber; he had done the Alpines, on

by one, planting on their summits inaccessibthe banner of the Club, La Tarasque, starred isilver. Nevertheless, he was only vicepresident, V. P. C. A. But he manipulated thplace so well that evidently, at the coming ele

tions, Tartarin would be made to skip.

Warned by his faithfuls—Bézuquet the apothcary, Excourbaniès, the brave Commander Bravida—the hero was at first possessed by blacdisgust, by that indignant rancour which ingratitude and injustice arouse in the noblesoul. He wanted to quit everything, to expatrate himself, to cross the bridge and go and liv

in Beaucaire, among the Volsci; after that, hgrew calmer.

To quit his little house, his garden, his belovehabits, to renounce his chair as president of th

Club of the Alpines, founded by himself, t



resign that majestic P. C. A. which adorned andistinguished his cards, his letter-paper, aneven the lining of his hat! Not possible, v

Suddenly there came into his head an electrifying idea...

In a word, the exploits of Costecalde were limited to excursions among the Alpines. Wh

should not Tartarin, during the three monththat still intervened before the elections, whshould he not attempt some grandiose adventure? plant, for instance, the standard of thClub on the highest peak of Europe, the Jungfrau or the Mont Blanc?

What triumph on his return! what a slap in thface to Costecalde when the Forum should pub

lish an account of the ascension! Who wouldare to dispute his presidency after that?

Immediately he set to work; sent secretly tParis for quantities of works on Alpine adven

ture: Whymper's "Scrambles," Tyndall's "Gla



ciers," the "Mont-Blanc" of Stephen d'Arve, reports of the Alpine Club, English and Swiscramming his head with a mass of mountain

eering terms—chimneys, couloirs, moulinnévés, séracs, moraines, rotures—withouknowing very well what they meant.

At night, his dreams were fearful with interm

nable slides and sudden falls into bottomlescrevasses. Avalanches rolled him down, icarêtes caught his body on the descent; and lonafter his waking and the chocolate he alwaytook in bed, the agony and the oppression othat nightmare clung to him. But all this did nohinder him, once afoot, from devoting his whole morning to the most laborious training execises.

Around Tarascon is a promenade planted wittrees which, in the local dictionary, is called th"Tour de Ville." Every Sunday afternoon, thTarasconese, who, in spite of their imagination

are a people of routine, make the tour of the



town, and always in the same direction. Tatarin now exercised himself by making it eightimes, ten times, of a morning, and often r

versed the way. He walked, his hands behinhis back, with short-mountain-steps, both slowand sure, till the shopkeepers, alarmed by thinfraction of local habits, were lost in suppostions of all possible kinds.

At home, in his exotic garden, he practised thart of leaping crevasses, by jumping over thbasin in which a few gold-fish were swimminabout among the water-weeds. On two occasions he fell in, and was forced to change hclothes. Such mishaps inspired him only thmore, and, being subject to vertigo, he practisewalking on the narrow masonry round the ed

ge of the water, to the terror of his old servanwoman, who understood nothing of these peformances.

During this time, he ordered, in Avignon, from

an excellent locksmith, crampons of the Whym



per pattern, and a Kennedy ice-axe; also hprocured himself a reed-wick lamp, two impermeable coverlets, and two hundred feet o

rope of his own invention, woven with irowire.

The arrival of these different articles from Avgnon, the mysterious goings and coming

which their construction required, puzzled thTaras-conese much, and it was generally saiabout town: "The president is preparing a stroke." But what? Something grand, you may bsure, for, in the beautiful words of the bravand sententious Commander Bravida, retirecaptain of equipment, who never spoke excepin apothegms: "Eagles hunt no flies."

With his closest intimates Tartarin remaineimpenetrable. Only, at the sessions of the Clubthey noticed the quivering of his voice and thlightning flash of his eyes whenever he addressed Costecalde—the indirect cause of th

new expedition, the dangers and fatigues o



which became more pronounced to his minthe nearer he approached it. The unfortunatman did not attempt to disguise them; in fa

he took so black a view of the matter that hthought it indispensable to set his affairs iorder, to write those last wishes, the expressioof which is so trying to the Tarasconese, loverof life, that most of them die intestate.

On a radiant morning in June, beneath a cloudless arched and splendid sky, the door of hstudy open upon the neat little garden with igravelled paths, where the exotic plants streched forth their motionless lilac shadows, whre the fountain tinkled its silvery note 'mid thmerry shouts of the Savoyards, playing at mables before the gate, behold Tartarin! in Turkis

slippers, wide flannel under-garments, easy ibody, his pipe at hand, reading aloud as hwrote the words:—

"This is my last will and testament."



Ha! one may have one's heart in the right placand solidly hooked there, but these are crumoments. Nevertheless, neither his hand no

his voice trembled while he distributed amonhis fellow-citizens all the ethnographical richepiled in his little home, carefully dusted anpreserved in immaculate order.

"To the Club of the Alpines, my baobab (arbogigantea) to stand on the chimney-piece of thhall of sessions;"

To Bravida, his carbines, revolvers, huntin

knives, Malay krishes, tomahawks, and othemurderous weapons;

To Excourbaniès, all his pipes, calumets, naghilés, and pipelets for smoking kif and opium

To Costecalde—yes, Costecalde himself had hlegacy—the famous poisoned arrows (Do notouch).



Perhaps beneath this gift was the secret hopthat the traitor would touch and die; but nothing of the kind was exhaled by the will, whic

closed with the following words, of a divinmeekness:

"I beg my dear Alpinists not to forget their president... I wish them to forgive my enemy as

have forgiven him, although it is he who hacaused my death..."

Here Tartarin was forced to stop, blinded by flood of tears. For a minute he beheld himse

crushed, lying in fragments at the foot of a higmountain, his shapeless remains gathered up ia barrow, and brought back to Tarascon. Ohthe power of that Provençal imagination! h

was present at his own funeral; he heard thlugubrious chants, and the talk above his grav"Poor Tartarin, péchère!" and, mingling with thcrowd of his faithful friends, he wept for himself.



But immediately after, the sight of the sustreaming into his study and glittering on thweapons and pipes in their usual order, th

song of that thread of a fountain in the middof the garden recalled him to the actual state othings. Différemment, why die? Why go, evenWho obliged him? What foolish vanity! Risk hlife for a presidential chair and three letters!..

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

Once more had the warren Tartarin triumphe

over the cabbage Tartarin. It could be said othe Tarasconese hero, as was said of Turenn"His body was not always willing to go intbattle, but his will led him there in spite of himself."



The evening of that same day, as the last strokof ten was sounding from the tower of thtown-hall, the streets being already deserted,

man, after brusquely slamming a door, glidealong through the darkened town, where nothing lighted the fronts of the houses, save thhanging-lamps of the streets and the pink angreen bottles of the pharmacy Bézuquet, whic

projected their reflections on the pavementogether with a silhouette of the apothecarhimself resting his elbows on his desk ansound asleep on the Codex;—a little nap, whic

he took every evening from nine to ten, to makhimself, so he said, the fresher at night for thoswho might need his services. That, betweeourselves, was a mere tarasconade, for no onever waked him at night, in fact he himself ha

cut the bell-wire, in order that he might sleemore tranquilly.

Suddenly Tartarin entered, loaded with rugcarpet-bag in hand, and so pale, so discom



posed, that the apothecary, with that fiery locimagination from which the pharmacy was npreservative, jumped to the conclusion of som

alarming misadventure and was terrified. "Unhappy man!" he cried, "what is it?.. you are posoned?.. Quick! quick! some ipeca..."

And he sprang forward, bustling among h

bottles. To stop him, Tartarin was forced tcatch him round the waist. "Listen to me, qudiable!" and his voice grated with the vexatioof an actor whose entrance has been made tmiss fire. As soon as the apothecary was rendered motionless behind the counter by an irowrist, Tartarin said in a low voice:—

"Are we alone, Bézuquet?"

"Bé ! yes," ejaculated the other, looking about ivague alarm... "Pascalon has gone to bed." Pascalon was his pupil.] "Mamma too; why dyou ask?"



"Shut the shutters," commanded Tartarin, wihout replying; "we might be seen from without."

Bézuquet obeyed, trembling. An old bacheloliving with his mother, whom he never quittedhe had all the gentleness and timidity of a gircontrasting oddly with his swarthy skin, h

hairy lips, his great hooked nose above a spreading moustache; in short, the head of an Algeine pirate before the conquest. These antitheseare frequent in Tarascon, where heads have tomuch character, Roman or Saracen, heads witthe expression of models for a school of designbut quite out of place in bourgeois tradeamong the manners and customs of a littltown.

For instance, Excourbaniès, who has all the aof a conquistador , companion of Pizarro, rolflaming eyes in selling haberdashery to inducthe purchase of two sous' worth of thread. An

Bézuquet, labelling liquorice and sirupus gum



mi, resembles an old sea-rover of the Barbarcoast.

When the shutters were put up and secured biron bolts and transversal bars, "Listen, Ferdnand..." said Tartarin, who was fond of callinpeople by their Christian names. And therupon he unbosomed himself, emptied his hea

full of bitterness at the ingratitude of his compatriots, related the manoeuvres of "Cock-legthe trick about to be played upon him at thcoming elections, and the manner in which hexpected to parry the blow.

Before all else, the matter must be kept versecret; it must not be revealed until the momenwhen success was assured, unless some unfore

seen accident, one of those frightful catastrophes—"Hey, Bézuquet! don't whistle in thaway when I talk to you."

This was one of the apothecary's ridiculou

habits. Not talkative by nature (a negative qua



ity seldom met with in Tarascon, and whicwon him this confidence of the president), hthick lips, always in the form of an O, had

habit of perpetually whistling that gave him aappearance of laughing in the nose of thworld, even on the gravest occasions.

So that, while the hero made allusion to h

possible death, saying, as he laid upon thcounter a large sealed envelope, "This is my lawill and testament, Bézuquet; it is you whomhave chosen as testamentary executor..." "Huihui... hui..." whistled the apothecary, carrieaway by his mania, while at heart he was deply moved and fully conscious of the grandeuof his rôle.

Then, the hour of departure being at hand, hdesired to drink to the enterprise, "somethingood, qué? a glass of the elixir of Garus, heyAfter several closets had been opened and seached, he remembered that mamma had th

keys of the Garus. To get them it would be ne



essary to awaken her and tell who was therThe elixir was therefore changed to a glass othe sirop de Calabre, a summer drink, inoffensiv

and modest, which Bézuquet invented, advetising it in the Forum as follows: Sirop de Calabrten sous a bottle, including the glass (verre). "Sirode Cadavre, including the worms (vers)," saithat infernal Costecalde, who spat upon all su

cess. But, after all, that horrid play upon wordonly served to swell the sale, and the Taraconese to this day delight in their sirop de cdavre.

Libations made and a few last words exchanged, they embraced, Bézuquet whistling ausual in his moustache, adown which rollegreat tears.

"Adieu, au mouain"... said Tartarin in a rougtone, feeling that he was about to weep himseland as the shutter of the door had been lowerethe hero was compelled to creep out of th

pharmacy on his hands and knees.



This was one of the trials of the journey nowabout to begin.

Three days later he landed in Vitznau at thfoot of the Rigi. As the mountain for his débuthe Rigi had attracted him by its low altitud(5900 feet, about ten times that of Mount Terrble, the highest of the Alpines) and also on a

count of the splendid panorama to be seefrom the summit—the Bernese Alps marshallein line, all white and rosy, around the lakeawaiting the moment when the great ascensionist should cast his ice-axe upon one othem.

Certain of being recognized on the way anperhaps followed—'t was a foible of his to be

lieve that throughout all France his fame was agreat and popular as it was at Tarascon—hhad made a great détour before entering Swizerland and did not don his accoutrements until after he had crossed the frontier. Luckily fo



him; for never could his armament have beecontained in one French railway-carriage.

But, however convenient the Swiss comparments might be, the Alpinist, hampered witutensils to which he was not, as yet, accutomed, crushed toe-nails with his cramponharpooned travellers who came in his way wit

the point of his alpenstock, and wherever hwent, in the stations, the steamers, and the hotel salons, he excited as much amazement as hdid maledictions, avoidance, and angry lookwhich he could not explain to himself thoughis affectionate and communicative nature sufered from them. To complete his discomforthe sky was always gray, with flocks of cloudand a driving rain.

It rained at Bâle, on the little white housewashed and rewashed by the hands of a maiand the waters of heaven. It rained at Lucernon the quay where the trunks and boxes ap

peared to be saved, as it were, from shipwreck



and when he arrived at the station of Vitznauon the shore of the lake of the Four-Cantonthe same deluge was descending on the ve

dant slopes of the Rigi, straddled by inkclouds and striped with torrents that leapefrom rock to rock in cascades of misty sleebringing down as they came the loose stoneand the pine-needles. Never had Tartarin see

so much water.

He entered an inn and ordered a café au lawith honey and butter, the only really goothings he had as yet tasted during his journeyThen, reinvigorated, and his beard sticky withoney, cleaned on a corner of his napkin, hprepared to attempt his first ascension.

"Et autremain" he asked, as he shifted his knapsack, "how long does it take to ascend the Rgi?"



tions, justified by the little cemetery of Vitzgauthe white tombs of which lay huddled togetheat the foot of the slope, like linen spread out t

bleach in the yard of a wash-house. Evidentlthe cemetery is there by way of precaution, sthat, in case of accident, the travellers may droon the very spot.

"I'll go afoot," the valiant Tarasconese said thimself; "'twill exercise me... zou!"

And he started, wholly preoccupied with manoeuvring his alpenstock in presence of th

staff of the hotel, collected about the door anshouting directions to him about the path, twhich he did not listen. He first followed aascending road, paved with large irregula

pointed stones like a lane at the South, anbordered with wooden gutters to carry off thrains.

To right and left were great orchards, fields o

rank, lush grass crossed by the same woode



conduits for irrigation through hollowed trunkof trees. All this made a constant rippling fromtop to bottom of the mountain, and every tim

that the ice-axe of the Alpinist became hookeas he walked along in the lower branches of aoak or a walnut-tree, his cap crackled as if beneath the nozzle of a watering-pot.

"Diou! what a lot of water!" sighed the man othe South. But it was much worse when thpebbly path abruptly ceased and he was forceto puddle along in the torrent or jump fromrock to rock to save his gaiters. Then a showejoined in, penetrating, steady, and seeming tget colder the higher he went. When he stopped to recover breath he could hear nothinelse than a vast noise of waters in which h

seemed to be sunk, and he saw, as he turneround, the clouds descending into the lake idelicate long filaments of spun glass througwhich the chalets of Vitznau shone like freshlvarnished toys.



Men and children passed him with lowereheads and backs bent beneath hods of whitewood, containing provisions for some villa o

pension, the balconies of which could be distinguished on the slopes. "Rigi-Kulm?" asked Tatarin, to be sure he was heading in the righdirection. But his extraordinary equipmenespecially, that knitted muffler which maske

his face, cast terror along the way, and awhom he addressed only opened their eyewide and hastened their steps without replying.

Soon these encounters became rare. The lahuman being whom he saw was an old womawashing her linen in the hollowed trunk of tree under the shelter of an enormous red um

brella, planted in the ground."Rigi-Kulm?" asked the Alpinist.

The old woman raised an idiotic, cadaverou

face, with a goitre swaying upon her throat a



large as the rustic bell of a Swiss cow. Thenafter gazing at him for a long time, she waseized with inextinguishable laughter, whic

stretched her mouth from ear to ear, wrinkleup the corners of her little eyes, and every timshe opened them the sight of Tartarin, plantebefore her with his ice-axe on his shoulder, rdoubled her joy.

"Tron de l'air!" growled the Tarasconese, "luckfor her that she's a woman..." Snorting witanger, he continued his way and lost it in a pne-wood, where his boots slipped on the oozing moss.

Beyond this point the landscape changed. Nmore paths, or trees, or pastures. Gloomy, de

nuded slopes, great boulders of rock which hscaled on his knees for fear of falling; sloughfull of yellow mud, which he crossed slowlyfeeling before him with his alpenstock and lifing his feet like a knife-grinder. At every mo

ment he looked at the compass hanging to h



broad watch-ribbon; but whether it were thaltitude or the variations of the temperaturthe needle seemed untrue. And how could h

find his bearings in a thick yellow fog that hindered him from seeing ten steps about him—steps that were now, within a moment, coverewith an icy glaze that made the ascent mordifficult.

Suddenly he stopped; the ground whitenevaguely before him... Look out for your eyes!..

He had come to the region of snows...

Immediately he pulled out his spectacles, toothem from their case, and settled them securelon his nose. The moment was a solemn onSlightly agitated, yet proud all the same, it see

med to Tar-tarin that in one bound he had rise3000 feet toward the summits and his greatedangers.



He now advanced with more precaution, dreaming of crevasses and fissures such as thbooks tell of, and cursing in the depths of h

heart those people at the inn who advised himto mount straight and take no guide. After alperhaps he had mistaken the mountain! Morthan six hours had he tramped, and the Rigrequired only three. The wind blew, a chillin

wind that whirled the snow in that crepusculafog.

Night was about to overtake him. Where find hut? or even a projecting rock to shelter himAll of a sudden, he saw before his nose on tharid, naked plain a species of wooden chalebearing, on a long placard in gigantic type, these letters, which he deciphered with difficulty

PHO... TO... GRA... PHIE DU RI... GI KULMAt the same instant the vast hotel with its threhundred windows loomed up before him between the great lamp-posts, the globes of whicwere now being lighted in the fog.



III.

An alarm on the Rigi. "Keep cool! Kee

cool!" The Alpinehorn. What Tartarin saw, on awaking, in hlooking-glass,

Perplexity. A guide is ordered by telephone

"Quès aco?.. Quî vive?" cried Tartarin, ears aleand eyes straining hard into the darkness.

Feet were running through the hotel, doorwere slamming, breathless voices were cryin

"Make haste! make haste!.." while without waringing what seemed to be a trumpet-call, aflashes of flame illumined both panes and cutains.

Fire!..



Here was a man, at last!..

Tartarin ran to him waving his arms: "AhMonsieur le baron, what a disaster!.. Do yoknow about it?.. Where is it?.. How did it tke?.."

"Who? What?" stuttered the terrified baron, no

understanding."Why, the fire..."

"What fire?.."

The poor man's countenance was so inexpressibly vacant and stupid that Tartarin abandoned him and rushed away abruptly t"organize help..."

"Help!" repeated the baron, and after him fouor five waiters, sound asleep on their feet in thantechamber, looked at one another completelbewildered and echoed, "Help!.."



At the first step that Tartarin made out-odoors he saw his error. Not the slightest conflagration! Only savage cold, and pitchy darknes

scarcely lighted by the resinous torches thawere being carried hither and thither, castinon the snow long, blood-coloured traces.

On the steps of the portico, a performer on th

Alpine horn was bellowing his modulatemoan, that monotonous rànz des vaches on threnotes, with which the Rigi-Kulm is wont twaken the worshippers of the sun and announce to them the rising of their star.

It is said that it shows itself, sometimes, on riing, at the extreme top of the mountain behinthe hotel. To get his bearings, Tartarin had onl

to follow the long peal of the misses' laughtewhich now went past him. But he walked morslowly, still full of sleep and his legs heavwith his six hours' climb.



"Is that you, Manilof?.." said a clear voice fromthe darkness, the voice of a woman. "Help meI have lost my shoe."

He recognized at once the foreign warble of hpretty little neighbour at the dinner-table, whose delicate silhouette he now saw in the firpale gleam of the coming sun.

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

She gave a little cry of surprise and alarm a

she made a recoiling gesture that Tartarin dinot perceive, having already stooped to feabout the short and crackling grass arounthem.

"Té, pardi! here it is!" he cried joyfully. He shoothe dainty shoe which the snow had powderedand putting a knee to earth, most gallantly ithe snow and the dampness, he asked, for a



reward, the honour of replacing it on Cindeella's foot.

She, more repellent than in the tale, repliewith a very curt "no;" and endeavoured, bhopping on one foot, to reinstate her silk stocking in its little bronze shoe; but in that shcould never have succeeded without the help o

the hero, who was greatly moved by feeling foan instant that delicate hand upon his shoulde

"You have good eyes," she said, by way othanks as they now walked side by side, an

feeling their way.

"The habit of watching for game, mademoselle."

"Ah! you are a sportsman?"

She said it with an incredulous, satirical, accenTartarin had only to name himself in order tconvince her, but, like the bearers of all illustr



ous names, he preferred discretion, coquetrySo, wishing to graduate 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..." uttereTartarin, thinking to dazzle her.

"Do you find many on the Rigi?"

Always gallant, and ready in reply, Tartariwas about to say that on the Rigi he had so famet none but gazelles, when his answer wasuddenly cut short by the appearance of twshadows, who called out:—

"Sonia!.. Sonia!.."



He made a few steps in the direction the grouhad taken, hearing a confused murmur, witcoughs and sneezes, of the clustering touris

waiting impatiently for the rising of the sunthe most vigorous among them having climbeto a little belvedere, the steps of which, waddewith snow, could be whitely distinguished ithe vanishing darkness.

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

Slight as a ray through a shutter, this gleamnevertheless, enlarged the horizon, but, at thsame moment a fog, opaque and yellow, ros

from the valley, a steam that grew more thickmore penetrating as the day advanced. 'T wasveil between the scene and the spectators.

All hope was now renounced of the gigant

effects predicted in the guide-books. On th



other hand, the heteroclite array of the dancerof the night before, torn from their slumberappeared in fantastic and ridiculous outlin

like the shades of a magic lantern; shawls, rugand even bed-quilts wrapped around themUnder varied headgear, nightcaps of silk ocotton, broad-brimmed female hats, turbanfur caps with ear-pads, were haggard face

swollen faces, heads of shipwrecked beings caupon a desert island in mid-ocean, watching foa sail in the offing with staring eyes.

But nothing—everlastingly nothing!

Nevertheless, certain among them strove, in gush of good-will, to distinguish the surrounding summits, and, on the top of the belveder

could be heard the clucking of the Peruviafamily, pressing around a big devil, wrapped this feet in a checked ulster, who was pointinout imperturbably, the invisible panorama othe Bernese Alps, naming in a loud voice th

peaks that were lost in the fog.



"You see on the left the Finsteraarhorn, thirteethousand seven hundred and ninety-five fehigh... the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, th

Monk, the Jungfrau, the elegant proportions owhich I especially point out to these 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 thSouth, distinguishable from afar like garlic; bu

quite preoccupied in finding again his fair Unknown, he did not pause, and continued tinspect the groups—without result. She muhave reentered the hotel, as they all did now

weary with standing about, shivering, to npurpose, so that presently no one remained othe cold and desolate plateau of that gray dawbut Tartarin and the Alpine horn-player, whcontinued to blow a melancholy note throug

his huge instrument, like a dog baying th



He was a short old man, with a long beardwearing a Tyrolese hat adorned with greewoollen tassels that hung down upon his bac

and, in letters of gold, the words (common tall the hats and caps in the service of the hoteRegina Montium. Tartarin went up to give himpourboire, as he had seen all the other tourisdo. "Let us go to bed again, my old friend," h

said, tapping him on the shoulder with Taraconese familiarity. "A fine humbug, qué! thsunrise on the Rigi."

The old man continued to blow into his hornconcluding his ritornelle in three notes with mute laugh that wrinkled the corners of heyes and shook the green glands of his headgear.

Tartarin, in spite of all, did not regret his nighThat meeting with the pretty blonde repaid himfor his loss of sleep, for, though nigh upon fiftyhe still had a warm heart, a romantic imagin

tion, a glowing hearthstone of life. Returning t



bed, and shutting his eyes to make himself gto sleep, he fancied he felt in his hand that dainty little shoe, and heard again the gentle call o

the fair young girl: "Is it you, Manilof?"Sonia... what a pretty name!.. She was certainlRussian; and those young men were travellinwith her; friends of her brother, no doubt.

Then all grew hazy; the pretty face in its goldecurls joined the other floating visions,—Rigslopes, cascades like plumes of feathers,—ansoon the heroic breathing of the great man, so

norous and rhythmical, filled the little roomand the greater part of the long corridor...

The next morning, before descending at thfirst gong for breakfast, Tartarin was about t

make sure that his beard was well brushed, anthat he himself did not look too badly in hAlpine costume, when, all of a sudden, he quvered. Before him, open, and gummed to h



looking-glass by two wafers, was an anonymous letter, containing the following threats:—

"Devil of a Frenchman, your queer old clothes do noconceal you. You are forgiven once more for thattempt; but if you cross our path again, beware!"

Bewildered, he read this two or three time

over without understanding it. Of whom, owhat must he beware? How came that lettethere? Evidently during his sleep; for he did nosee it on returning from his auroral promenadHe rang for the maid on duty; a fat, white fac

all pitted with the small-pox, a perfect gruyèrcheese, from which nothing intelligible coulbe drawn, except that she was of "bon familleand never entered the rooms of the gentlemeunless they were there.

"A queer thing, au mouain," thought Tartarinturning and returning the letter, and much impressed by it. For a moment the name of Coste

calde crossed his mind,—Costecalde, informe



of his projects of ascension, and endeavourinto prevent them by manoeuvres and threatOn reflection, this appeared to him unlikely

and he ended by persuading himself that thletter was a joke... perhaps those little missewho had laughed at him so heartily... they arso free, those English and American youngirls!

The second breakfast gong sounded. He put thletter in his pocket: "After all, we'll soon see..and the formidable grimace with which he acompanied that reflection showed the heroismof his soul.

Fresh surprise when he sat down to table. Instead of his pretty neighbour, "whom Love ha

curled with gold," he perceived the vulturthroat of an old Englishwoman, whose lonlappets swept the cloth. It was rumoured abouhim that the young lady and her companionhad left the hotel by one of the early mornin

trains.



"'Cri nom! I'm fooled..." exclaimed aloud thItalian tenor, who, the evening before, had srudely signified to Tartarin that he could no

speak French. He must have learned it in a single night! The tenor rose, threw down his napkin, and hurried away, leaving the Southernecompletely nonplussed.

Of all the guests of the night before, none nowremained but himself. That is always so on thRigi-Kulm; no one stays there more than twenty-four hours. In other respects the scene wainvariably the same; the compote-dishes in filedivided the factions. But on this particular moning the Rices triumphed by a great majorityreinforced by certain illustrious personageand the Prunes did not, as they say, have it a

their own way.Tartarin, without taking sides with one or thother, went up to his room before the desserbuckled his bag, and asked for his bill. He ha



had enough of Regina Montium and its dreartable d'hôte of deaf mutes.

Abruptly recalled to his Alpine madness by thtouch of his ice-axe, his crampons, and the ropin which he rewound himself, he burned tattack a real mountain, a summit deprived of lift and a photographer. He hesitated betwee

the Finsteraarhorn, as being the highest, anthe Jungfrau, whose pretty name of virginwhiteness made him think more than once othe little Russian.

Ruminating on these alternatives while themade out his bill, he amused himself in thvast, lugubrious, silent hall of the hotel by looking at the coloured photographs hanging to th

walls, representing glaciers, snowy slopes, famous and perilous mountain passes: here, werascensionists in file, like ants on a quest, creeping along an icy arête sharply defined and blufarther on was a deep crevasse, with glaucou

sides, over which was thrown a ladder, and



lady crossing it on her knees, with an abbé afteher raising his cassock.

The Alpinist of Tarascon, both hands on his iceaxe, had never, as yet, had an idea of such diffculties; he would have to meet them, pamouain!..

Suddenly he paled fearfully.In a black frame, an engraving from the famoudrawing of Gustave Doré, reproducing the catastrophe on the Matterhorn, met his eye. Fou

human bodies on the flat of their backs or stomachs were coming headlong down the almoperpendicular slope of a névé , with extendearms and clutching hands, seeking the brokerope which held this string of lives, and onl

served to drag them down to death in the guwhere the mass was to fall pell-mell, with ropes, axes, veils, and all the gay outfit of Alpinascension, grown suddenly tragic.



"Awful!" cried Tartarin, speaking aloud in hhorror.

A very civil maître d'hôtel heard the exclamation, and thought best to reassure him. Accdents of that nature, he said, were becominvery rare: the essential thing was to commit nimprudence and, above all, to procure goo

guides.Tartarin asked if he could be told of one ther"with confidence..." Not that he himself had anfear, but it was always best to have a sure man

The waiter reflected, with an important aitwirling his moustache. "With confidence?.. Ahif monsieur had only spoken sooner; we had man here this morning who was just the thing

the courier of that Peruvian family..."

"He understands the mountain?" said Tartarinwith a knowing air.



"Oh, yes, monsieur, all the mountains, in Swizerland, Savoie, Tyrol, India, in fact, the whoworld; he has done them all, he knows them a

he can tell you all about them, and that's somthing!.. I think he might easily be inducedWith a man like that a child could go anywherwithout danger."

"Where is he? How could I find him?""At the Kaltbad, monsieur, preparing the roomfor his party... I could telephone to him."

A telephone! on the Rigi!That was the climax. But Tartarin could no longer be amazed.

Five minutes later the man returned bringinan answer.

The courier of the Peruvian party had just stated for the Tellsplatte, where he would ce

tainly pass the night.



The Tellsplatte is a memorial chapel, to whicpilgrimages are made in honour of WilliamTell. Some persons go there to see the mur

pictures which a famous painter of Bâle halately executed in the chapel...

As it only took by boat an hour or an hour ana half to reach the place, Tartarin did not hes

tate. It would make him lose a day, but howed it to himself to render that homage tWilliam Tell, for whom he had always felt peculiar predilection. And, besides, what chance if he could there pick up this marvellouguide and induce him to do the Jungfrau withim.Forward, zou!

He paid his bill, in which the setting and th

rising sun were reckoned as extras, also thcandles and the attendance. Then, still preceded by the rattle of his metals, which sowesurprise and terror on his way, he went to th

railway station, because to descend the Rigi a



he had ascended it, on foot, would have beelost time, and, really, it was doing too muchonour to that very artificial mountain.

IV.

On the boat. It rains. The Tarasconese hersalutes the

Ashes. The truth about William Tell. Disillusion. Tartarinof Tarascon never existed. "Té! Bompard."

He had left the snows of the Rigi-Kulm; dowbelow, on the lake, he returned to rain, finclose, misty, a vapour of water through whicthe mountains stumped themselves in, graduaing in the distance to the form of clouds.



The "Föhn" whistled, raising white caps on thlake where the gulls, flying low, seemed bornupon the waves; one might have thought one

self on the open ocean.Tartarin recalled to mind his departure fromthe port of Marseilles, fifteen years earliewhen he started to hunt the lion—that spotles

sky, dazzling with silvery light, that sea sblue, blue as the water of dye-works, blowback by the mistral in sparkling white salincrystals, the bugles of the forts and the bells oall the steeples echoing joy, rapture, sun—thfairy world of a first journey.

What a contrast to this black dripping wharalmost deserted, on which were seen, throug

the mist as through a sheet of oiled paper, a fewpassengers wrapped in ulsters and formlesindia-rubber garments, and the helmsman standing motionless, muffled in his hooded cloakhis manner grave and sibylline, behind th

notice printed in three languages:—



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

Very useless caution, for nobody spoke oboard the "Winkelried," neither on deck, nor ithe first and second saloons crowded with lugubrious-looking passengers, sleeping, readinyawning, pell-mell, with their smaller packagescattered on the seats—the sort of scene w

imagine that a batch of exiles on the morninafter a coup-d'État might present.

From time to time the hoarse bellow of thsteam-pipe announced the arrival of the boat a

a stopping-place. A noise of steps, and of baggage dragged about the deck. The shore, looming through the fog, came nearer and showeits slopes of a sombre green, its villas shiverin

amid inundated groves, files of poplars flanking the muddy roads along which sumptuouhotels were formed in line with their names iletters of gold upon their façades, Hôtel MeyeMüller, du Lac, etc., where heads, bored wit



existence, made themselves visible behind thstreaming window-panes.

The wharf was reached, the passengers disembarked and went upward, all equally muddysoaked, and silent. 'Twas a coming and going oumbrellas and omnibuses, quickly vanishingThen a great beating of the wheels, churning u

the water with their paddles, and the shorretreated, becoming once more a misty landscape with its pensions Meyer, Müller, du Laetc., the windows of which, opened for an instant, gave fluttering handkerchiefs to viewfrom every floor, and outstretched arms thaseemed to say: "Mercy! pity! take us, take us... you only knew!.."

At times the "Winkelried" crossed on its wasome other steamer with its name in black leters on its white paddle-box: "Germania.""Guillaume Tell"... The same lugubrious deckthe same refracting caoutchoucs, the same mo

lamentable pleasure trip as that of the othe



phantom vessel going its different way, and thsame heart-broken glances exchanged fromdeck to deck.

And to say that those people travelled for enjoyment! and that all those boarders in the Hôtels du Lac, Meyer, and Müller were captivefor pleasure!

Here, as on the Rigi-Kulm, the thing that abovall suffocated Tartarin, agonized him, frozhim, even more than the cold rain and thmurky sky, was the utter impossibility of talk

ing. True, he had again met faces that hknew—the member of the Jockey Club with hniece (h'm! h'm!..), the academician AstieRéhu, and the Bonn Professor Schwanthale

those two implacable enemies condemned tlive side by side for a month manacled to thitinerary of a Cook's Circular, and others. Bunone of these illustrious Prunes would recognize the Tarasconese Alpinist, although h

mountain muffler, his metal utensils, his rope



in saltire, distinguished him from others, anmarked him in a manner that was quite peculiar. They all seemed ashamed of the night be

fore, and the inexplicable impulse communcated to them by the fiery ardour of that faman.

Mme. Schwanthaler, alone, approached he

partner, with the rosy, laughing face of plump little fairy, and taking her skirt in hetwo fingers as if to suggest a minuet. "Ballirdantsir... very choli..." remarked the good ladyWas this a memory that she evoked, or a temptation that she offered? At any rate, as she dinot let go of him, Tartarin, to escape her pertnacity, went up on deck, preferring to be soaked to the skin rather than be made ridiculous

And it rained!.. and the sky was dirty!.. Tcomplete his gloom, a whole squad of the Savation Army, who had come aboard at Beckenried, a dozen stout girls with stolid faces, i

navy-blue gowns and Greenaway bonnets, we



re grouped under three enormous scarlet umbrellas, and were singing verses, accompanieon the accordion by a man, a sort of David-la

Gamme, tall and fleshless with crazy eyes. Thse sharp, flat, discordant voices, like the cry ogulls, rolled dragging, drawling through thrain and the black smoke of the engine whicthe wind beat down upon the deck. Never ha

Tartarin heard anything so lamentable.

At Brünnen the squad landed, leaving the pokets of the other travellers swollen with pioulittle tracts; and almost immediately after thsongs and the accordion of these poor larvaceased, the sky began to clear and patches oblue were seen.

They now entered the lake of Uri, closed in andarkened by lofty, untrodden mountains, anthe tourists pointed out to each other, on thright at the foot of the Seelisberg, the field oGrütli, where Melchtal, Fürst, and Stauffache

made oath to deliver their country.



Tartarin, with much emotion, took off his cappaying no attention to environing amazemenand waved it in the air three times, to do hon

our to the ashes of those heroes. A few of thpassengers mistook his purpose, and politelreturned his bow.

The engine at last gave a hoarse roar, its ech

repercussioning from cliff to cliff of the narrowspace. The notice hung out on deck before eacnew landing-place (as they do at public balls tvary the country dances) announced the Tellplatte.

They arrived.

The chapel is situated just five minutes' walfrom the landing, at the edge of the lake, on th

very rock to which William Tell sprang, durinthe tempest, from Gessler's boat. It was to Tatarin a most delightful emotion to tread, as hfollowed the travellers of the Circular Coo

along the lakeside, that historic soil, to reca



and live again the principal episodes of thgreat drama which he knew as he did his owlife.

From his earliest years, William Tell had beehis type. When, in the Bézuquet pharmacythey played the game of preference, each peson writing secretly on folded slips the poe

the tree, the odour, the hero, the woman hpreferred, one of the papers invariably rathus:—

"Tree preferred? ........... the baobab.

Odour? ..................... gunpowder.Writer? .................... Fenimore Cooper.What I would prefer to be .. William Tell."

And every voice in the pharmacy cried ou

"That's Tartarin!"Imagine, therefore, how happy he was and howhis heart was beating as he stood before thamemorial chapel raised to a hero by the grat

tude of a whole people. It seemed to him tha



William Tell in person, still dripping with thwaters of the lake, his crossbow and his arrowin hand, was about to open the door to him.

"No entrance... I am at work... This is not thday..." cried a loud voice from within, madlouder 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 scaffolding, appeared a half-length of the painter in working-blouse, palette in hand.

"My famulus will come down and open to youmessieurs," he said with respectful intonations

"I was sure of it, pardi!" thought Tartarin; "I ha

only to name myself."



However, he had the good taste to stand asidmodestly, and only entered after all the others

The painter, superb fellow, with the gildedruddy head of an artist of the Renaissance, rceived his visitors on the wooden steps whicled to the temporary staging put up for thpurpose of painting the roof. The frescos, rep

resenting the principal episodes in the life oWilliam Tell, were finished, all but one, namely: the scene of the apple in the market-place oAltorf. On this he was now at work, and hyoung famulus, as he called him, feet and legbare under a toga of the middle ages, and hhair archangelically arranged, was posing athe son of William Tell.

All these archaic personages, red, green, yelow, blue, made taller than nature in narrowstreets and under the posterns of the periodintended, of course, to be seen at a distancimpressed the spectators rather sadly. How



ever, they were there to admire, and they admired. Besides, none of them knew anything.

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

And Schwanthaler, a camp-stool under his armnot willing to be behindhand, quoted two ve

ses of Schiller, most of it remaining in his flowing beard. Then the ladies exclaimed, and for time nothing was heard but:—

"Schön!.. schön..."

"Yes... lovely..."

"Exquisite! delicious!.."

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

Abruptly a voice broke forth, rending with thring of a trumpet that composed silence.



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

Imagine the stupor of the painter in presence othis exorbitant Alpinist, who, alpenstock ihand and ice-axe on his shoulder, risking thannihilation of somebody at each of his manevolutions, was demonstrating to him by A +

that the motions of his William Tell were nocorrect.

"I know what I am talking about, au mouain...beg you to believe it..."

"Who are you?"

"Who am I!" exclaimed the Alpinist, now thooughly vexed... So it was not to him that th

door was opened; and drawing himself up hsaid: "Go ask my name of the panthers of thZaccar, of the lions of Atlas... they will answeyou, perhaps."



The company recoiled; there was generalarm.

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

"Look at me, té!"

Falling into position with a thud of his heethat made the planks beneath them smoke, Tatarin, shouldering his ice-axe like a crossbowstood rigid.

"Superb! He's right... Don't stir..."Then to the famulus: "Quick! a block, charcoal!.

The fact is, the Tarasconese hero was somthing worth painting,—squat, roundshouldered, head bent forward, the muffleround his chin like a strap, and his flaming litle eye taking aim at the terrified famulus.



Imagination, O magic power!.. He thought himself on the marketplace of Altorf, in front of hown child, he, who had never had any; an a

row in his bow, another in his belt to pierce thheart of the tyrant. His conviction became sstrong that it conveyed itself to others.

"'T is William Tell himself!.." said the painte

crouched on a stool and driving his sketch wita feverish hand. "Ah! monsieur, why did I noknow you earlier? What a model you woulhave been for me!.."

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

Yes, it was just so that the artist imagined hhero.

"The head, too?"

"Oh! the head, that's no matter..." and the painter stepped back to look at his sketch. "Yes,



virile mask, energetic, just what I wanted—inasmuch as nobody knows anything abouWilliam Tell, who probably never existed."

Tartarin dropped the cross-bow from stupefation.

"Outre! {*}.. Never existed!.. What is that yo

are saying?"* "Outre" and "boufre" are Tarasconese oath

of mysteriousetymology.

"Ask these gentlemen..."Astier-Réhu, solemn, his three chins in his whte cravat, said: "That is a Danish legend."

"Icelandic.." affirmed Schwanthaler, no lesmajestic.

"Saxo Grammaticus relates that a valiant archenamed Tobé or Paltanoke..."



"Es ist in der Vilkinasaga geschrieben..."

Both together:—

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

With staring eyes and arms extended, neithelooking at nor comprehending each other, theboth talked at once, as if on a rostrum, in thdoctoral, despotic tones of professors certain onever being refuted; until, getting angry, the

only shouted names: "Justinger of Berne!.. Jeaof Winterthur!.."

Little by little, the discussion became generaexcited, and furious among the visitors. Um

brellas, camp-stools, and valises were brandished; the unhappy artist, trembling for thsafety of his scaffolding, went from one to another imploring peace. When the tempest ha

abated, he returned to his sketch and looked fo



his mysterious model, for him whose name thpanthers of the Zaccar and the lions of Atlacould alone pronounce; but he was nowhere t

be seen; the Alpinist had disappeared.At that moment he was clambering with furous strides up a little path among beeches anbirches that led to the Hôtel Tellsplatte, wher

the courier of the Peruvian family was to pasthe night; and under the shock of his deceptiohe was talking to himself in a loud voice anramming his alpenstock furiously into the sodden ground:—

Never existed! William Tell! William Tell myth! And it was a painter charged with thduty of decorating the Tellsplatte who said tha

calmly. He hated him as if for a sacrilege; hhated those learned men, and this denyingdemolishing impious age, which respects nothing, neither fame nor grandeur—coquin de sort!



And so, two hundred, three hundred yearhence, when Tartarin was spoken of therwould always be Astier-Réhus and Professo

Schwanthalers to deny that he ever existed—Provençal myth! a Barbary legend!.. He stopped, choking with indignation and his rapiclimb, and seated himself on a rustic bench.

From there he could see the lake between thbranches, and the white walls of the chapel lika new mausoleum. A roaring of steam and thbustle of getting to the wharf announced tharrival of fresh visitors. They collected on thbank, guide-books in hand, and then advancewith thoughtful gestures and extended armevidently relating the "legend." Suddenly, by aabrupt revulsion of ideas, the comicality of th

whole thing struck him.He pictured to himself all historical Switzeland living upon this imaginary hero; raisinstatues and chapels in his honour on the littl

squares of the little towns, and placing monu



ments in the museums of the great ones; organizing patriotic fêtes, to which everybody ruhed, banners displayed, from all the canton

with banquets, toasts, speeches, hurrahs, songand tears swelling all breasts, and this for great patriot, whom everybody knew had nver existed.

Talk of Tarascon indeed! There's a tarasconadfor you, the like of which was never inventedown there!

His good-humour quite restored, Tartarin in

few sturdy strides struck the highroad to Flulen, at the side of which the Hôtel Tellsplatspreads out its long façade. While awaiting thdinner-bell the guests were walking about i

front of a cascade over rock-work on the gulied road, where landaus were drawn up, thepoles on the ground among puddles of water iwhich was reflected a copper-coloured sun.



Tartarin inquired for his man. They told him hwas dining. "Then take me to him, zou!" anthis was said with such authority that in spit

of the respectful repugnance shown to disturbing so important a personage, a maid-servanconducted the Alpinist through the whole hotel, where his advent created some amazemento the invaluable courier who was dining alon

in a little room that looked upon the couryard.

"Monsieur," said Tartarin as he entered, his iceaxe on his shoulder, "excuse me if..."

He stopped stupefied, and the courier, tallank, his napkin at his chin, in the savoursteam of a plateful of hot soup, let fall h

spoon."Vé! Monsieur Tartarin..."

"Té! Bompard."



It was Bompard, former manager of the Club,good fellow, but afflicted with a fabulous imagination which rendered him incapable of tel

ing a word of truth, and had caused him to bnicknamed in Tarascon "The Impostor."

Called an impostor in Tarascon! you can judgwhat he must have been. And this was the in

comparable guide, the climber of the Alps, thHimalayas, the Mountains of the Moon.

"Oh! now, then, I understand," ejaculated Tatarin, rather nonplussed; but, even so, joyful t

see a face from home and to hear once morthat dear, delicious accent of the Cours.

"Différemment, Monsieur Tartarin, you 'll dinwith me, qué?"

Tartarin hastened to accept, delighted at thpleasure of sitting down at a private table opposite to a friend, without the very smallelitigious compote-dish between them, to be ab



to hobnob, to talk as he ate, and to eat goothings, carefully cooked and fresh; for courierare admirably treated by innkeepers, and se

ved apart with all the best wines and the extrdainties.

Many were the au mouains, pas mouains, andifféremments.

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

"Hey! parfaitemain... I was making those youn

ladies admire... Fine, isn't it, sunrise on thAlps?"

"Superb!" cried Tartarin, at first without convition and merely to avoid contradicting him, bu

caught the next minute; and after that it wareally bewildering to hear those two Taraconese enthusiasts lauding the splendours thehad found on the Rigi. It was Joanne cappinBaedeker.



Then, as the meal went on, the conversatiobecame more intimate, full of confidences aneffusive protestations, which brought real tear

to their Provençal eyes, lively, brilliant eyebut keeping always in their facile emotion little corner of jest and satire. In that alone dithe two friends resemble each other; for in peson one was as lean, tanned, weatherbeaten

seamed with the wrinkles special to the grimaces of his profession, as the other was shorstocky, sleek-skinned, and sound-blooded.

He had seen all, that poor Bompard, since hexodus from the Club. That insatiable imagination of his which prevented him from ever staying in one place had kept him wandering undeso many suns, and through such diverse fo

tunes. He related his adventures, and counteup the fine occasions to enrich himself whichad snapped, there! in his fingers—such as hlast invention for saving the war-budget thcost of boots and shoes... "Do you know how?



Oh, moun Diou! it is very simple... by shoeinthe 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 ministrthey did not even answer me... Ah! my pooMonsieur Tartarin, I have had my bad moments, I have eaten the bread of poverty beforI entered the service of the Company..."

"Company! what Company?"

Bompard lowered his voice discreetly.

"Hush! presently, not here..." Then returning this natural tones, "Et autremain, you people aTarascon, what are you all doing? You havenyet told me what brings you to our mountains..."



It was now for Tartarin to pour himself ouWithout anger, but with that melancholy odeclining years, that ennui which attacks a

they grow elderly great artists, beautiful women, and all conquerors of peoples and hearthe told of the defection of his compatriots, thplot laid against him to deprive him of the prsidency, the decision he had come to to do so

me act of heroism, a great ascension, the Taraconese banner borne higher than it had evebefore been planted; in short, to prove to thAlpinists of Tarascon that he was still worthy

still worthy of... Emotion overcame him, he waforced to keep silence... Then he added:—

"You know me, Gonzague..." and nothing caever render the effusion, the caressing charm

with which he uttered that troubadouresquChristian name of the courier. It was like onway of pressing his hands, of coming nearer this heart... "You know me, que! You know ifbalked when the question came up of marchin



upon the lion; and during the war, when worganized together the defences of the Club..."

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

"Well, my good fellow, what the lions, what thKrupp cannon could never do, the Alps hav

accomplished... I am afraid.""Don't say that, Tartarin!"

"Why not?" said the hero, with great gentle

ness... "I say it, because it is so..."And tranquilly, without posing, he acknowedged the impression made upon him bDoré's drawing of that catastrophe on th

Matterhorn, which was ever before his eyes. Hfeared those perils, and being told of aextraordinary guide, capable of avoiding themhe resolved to seek him out and confide in him



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

"Hé! yes," replied Bompard, smiling... "Only,never did all that I related."

"That's understood," assented Tartarin.

And the other added in a whisper:—

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

It was getting dark; a warm damp breeze warolling up black clouds upon the sky, where thsetting sun had left behind it a vague gray mis

They went along the shore in the direction oFluelen, crossing the mute shadows of hungrtourists returning to the hotel; shadows themselves, and not speaking until they reached tunnel through which the road is cut, openinat intervals to little terraces overhanging th

lake.



"Let us stop here," pealed forth the hollow voce of Bompard, which resounded under thvaulted roof like a cannon-shot. There, seate

on the parapet, they contemplated that admirable view of the lake, the downward rush of thfir-trees and beeches pressing blackly togethein the foreground, and farther on, the highemountains with waving summits, and farthe

still, others of a bluish-gray confusion as oclouds, in the midst of which lay, though scacely visible, the long white trail of a glaciewinding through the hollows and suddenl

illumined with irised fire, yellow, red, angreen. They were exhibiting the mountain witBengal lights!

From Fluelen the rockets rose, scattering the

multicoloured stars; Venetian lanterns wenand came in boats that remained invisible whibearing bands of music and pleasure-seekers.



A fairylike decoration seen through the framcold and architectural, of the granite walls othe tunnel.

"What a queer country, pas mouain, this Swizerland..." cried Tartarin.

Bompard burst out laughing.

"Ah! vaï , Switzerland!.. In the first place, theris no Switzerland."

V.

Confidences in a tunnel."Switzerland, in our day, vé! Monsieur Tatarin, is nothing more than a vast Kursaal, opefrom June to September, a panoramic casino

where people come from all four quarters of th



globe to amuse themselves, and which is manipulated and managed by a Company richisime by hundreds of thousands of million

which has its offices in London and Geneva. costs money, you may be sure, to lease anbrush up and trick out all this territory, lakeforests, mountains, cascades, and to keep whole people of employés, supernumerarie

and what not, and set up miraculous hotels othe highest summits, with gas, telegraphs, telephones..."

"That, at least, is true," said Tartarin, thinkinaloud, and remembering the Rigi.

"True!.. But you have seen nothing yet... Go othrough the country and you 'll not find on

corner that is n't engineered and machineworked like the under stage of the Opera,—cascades lighted à giorno, turnstiles at the entrance to the glaciers, and loads of railwayhydraulic and funicular, for ascensions. To b

sure, the Company, in view of its clients th



English and American climbers, keeps up othe noted mountains, Jungfrau, Monk, Finsteraarhorn, an appearance of danger and deso

lation, though in reality there is no more risthere than elsewhere..."

"But the crevasses, my good fellow, those horible crevasses... Suppose one falls into them?"

"You fall on snow, Monsieur Tartarin, and yodon't hurt yourself, and there is always at thbottom a porter, a hunter, at any rate some onwho picks you up, shakes and brushes you

and asks graciously: 'Has monsieur any baggage?'"

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

Bompard redoubled in gravity.

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



Silence fell for a moment under the tunnel, thsurroundings of which were quieting downNo more varied fireworks, Bengal lights, o

boats on the water; but the moon had risen anmade another conventional landscape, bluishliquides-cent, with masses of impenetrabshadow...

Tartarin hesitated to believe his companion ohis word. Nevertheless, he reflected on the extraordinary things he had seen in four days—the sun on the Rigi, the farce of William Tell—and Bompard's inventions seemed to him athe more probable because in every Taraconese the braggart is leashed with a gull.

"Différemment, my good friend, how do yo

explain certain awful catastrophes... that of thMatterhorn, for instance?.."

"It is sixteen years since that happened; thCompany was not then constituted, Monsieu

Tartarin."



"But last year, the accident on the Wetterhorntwo guides buried with their travellers!.."

"Must, sometimes, té, pardi!.. you understandwhets the Alpinists... The English won't comto mountains now where heads are not brokeThe Wetterhorn had been running down fosome time, but after that little item in the pa

pers the receipts went up at once.""Then the two guides?.."

"They are just as safe as the travellers; only the

are kept out of sight, supported in foreigparts, for six months... A puff like that cosdear, but the Company is rich enough to afforit."

"Listen to me, Gonzague..."

Tartarin had risen, one hand on Bompardshoulder.



"You would not wish to have any misfortunhappen to me, que?.. Well, then! speak to mfrankly... you know my capacities as an Alpin

ist; they are moderate.""Very moderate, that's true."

"Do you think, nevertheless, that I could, with

out too much danger, undertake the ascensioof the Jungfrau?"

"I 'll answer for it, my head in the fire, Monsieur Tartarin... You have only to trust to you

guide, vé!""And if I turn giddy?"

"Shut your eyes."

"And if I slip?"

"Let yourself go... just as they do on the stagesort of trap-doors... there 's no risk..."



"Ah! if I could have you there to tell me all thato keep repeating it to me... Look here, mgood fellow, make an effort, and come wit

me."Bompard desired nothing better, pécaïré! but hhad those Peruvians on his hands for the rest othe season; and, replying to his old friend, wh

expressed surprise at seeing him accept thfunctions of a courier, a subaltern,—

"I could n't help myself, Monsieur Tartarin," hsaid. "It is in our engagement. The Compan

has the right to employ us as it pleases."

On which he began to count upon his fingerhis varied avatars during the last three yearsguide in the Oberland, performer on the Alpin

horn, chamois-hunter, veteran soldier of Chales X., Protestant pastor on the heights...

"Quès aco?" demanded Tartarin, astonished.



"Bé! yes," replied the other, composedly. "Wheyou travel in German Switzerland you will sepastors preaching on giddy heights, standin

on rocks or rustic pulpits of the trunks of treeA few shepherds and cheese-makers, their leaher caps in their hands, and women with theheads dressed up in the costume of the cantogroup themselves about in picturesque att

tudes; the scenery is pretty, the pastures greenor the harvest just over, cascades to the roadand flocks with their bells ringing every noton the mountain. All that, vé that's decorativ

suggestive. Only, none but the employés of thCompany, guides, pastors, couriers, hotekeepers are in the secret, and it is their interenot to let it get wind, for fear of startling thclients."

The Alpinist was dumfounded, silent—in himthe acme of stupefaction. In his heart, whatevedoubt he may have had as to Bompard's veraity, he felt himself comforted and calmed as tAlpine ascensions, and presently the conversa



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

"Manilof," corrected Bompard.

"Do you know him?.. Between you and me,think that Manilof had a spite against me abou

a little Russian girl...""Yes, Sonia... "murmured Bompard.

"Do you know her too? Ah! my friend, a pear

a pretty little gray partridge!""Sonia Wassilief... It was she who killed witone shot of her revolver in the open that General Felianine, the president of the Council o

War which condemned her brother to perpeual exile."

Sonia an assassin? that child, that little blonfairy!.. Tartarin could not believe it. But Bom

pard gave precise particulars and details of th



affair—which, indeed, is very well known. Sonia had lived for the last two years in Zurichwhere her brother Boris, having escaped from

Siberia, joined her, his lungs gone; and durinthe summers she took him for better air to thmountains. Bompard had often met them, atended by friends who were all exiles, conspirators. The Wassiliefs, very intelligent, very ene

getic, and still possessed of some fortune, werat the head of the Nihilist party, with Bolibinthe man who murdered the prefect of policand this very Manilof, who blew up the Winte

Palace last year."Boufre!" exclaimed Tartarin, "one meets witqueer neighbours on the Rigi."

But here's another thing. Bompard took it inthis head that Tartarin's letter came from thesyoung people; it was just like their Nihilist proceedings. The czar, every morning, found wanings in his study, under his napkin...



cally Italian tenor... undoubtedly a spy... Diféremment, what must I do?"

"Above all things, never put yourself in thway of those people again; now that they havwarned you they will do you harm..."

"Ha! vaï! harm!.. The first one that comes nea

me I shall cleave his head with my ice-axe."And in the gloom of the tunnel the eyes of thTarasconese hero glared. But Bompard, lesconfident than he, knew well that the hatred o

Nihilists is terrible; it attacks from below, undermines, and plots. It is all very well to be lapin like the president, but you had better beware of that inn bed you sleep in, and the chayou sit upon, and the rail of the steamboa

which will give way suddenly and drop you tdeath. And think of the cooking-dishes prepared, the glass rubbed over with invisible poson!



"Beware of the kirsch in your flask, and thfrothing milk that cow-man in sabots bringyou. They stop at nothing, I tell you."

"If so, what's to be done! I'm doomed!" groaneTartarin; then, grasping the hand of his companion:—

"Advise me, Gonzague."After a moment's reflection, Bompard traceout to him a programme. To leave the next dayearly, cross the lake and the Brünig pass, an

sleep at Interlaken. The next day, to Grindewald and the Little Scheideck. And the daafter, the JUNGFRAU! After that, home to Tarascon, without losing an hour, or looking back

"I 'll start to-morrow, Gonzague..." declared thhero, in a virile voice, with a look of terror athe mysterious horizon, now dim in the darkness, and at the lake which seemed to him t



harbour all treachery beneath the glassy calmof its pale reflections.

VI.

The Brünig pass. Tartarin falls into the handof Nihilists,

Disappearance of an Italian tenor and a rop

made atAvignon, Fresh exploits of the capsportsman. Pan! pan!

"Get in! get in!"

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

This was said at the extreme end of the lake othe Four Cantons, on that shore at Alpnach



damp and soggy as a delta, where the poscarriages wait in line to convey tourists leavinthe boat to cross the Brünig.

A fine rain like needle-points had been fallinsince morning; and the worthy Tartarin, hampered by his armament, hustled by the porterand the custom-house officials, ran from ca

riage to carriage, sonorous and lumbering athat orchestra-man one sees at fairs, whose evry movement sets a-going triangles, big drumChinese bells, and cymbals. At all the doors thsame cry of terror, the same crabbed "Fullgrowled in all dialects, the same swelling-out obodies and garments to take as much room apossible and prevent the entrance of so dangeous and resounding a companion.

The unfortunate Alpinist puffed, sweated, anreplied with "Coquin de bon sort!" and despaiing gestures to the impatient clamour of thconvoy: "En route!.. All right!.. Andiamo

Vorwarts!.." The horses pawed, the driver



swore. Finally, the manager of the post-route, tall, ruddy fellow in a tunic and flat cap, intefered himself, and opening forcibly the door o

a landau, the top of which was half up, he puhed in Tartarin, hoisting him like a bundle, anthen stood, majestically, with outstretchehand for his trinkgeld.

Humiliated, furious with the people in the cariage who were forced to accept him manu miltari, Tartarin affected not to look at themrammed his porte-monnaie back into his poket, wedged his ice-axe on one side of him witill-humoured motions and an air of determinebrutality, as if he were a passenger by the Dover steamer landing at Calais.

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

He raised his eyes, and sat horrified, terrifiebefore the pretty, round and rosy face of Soni

seated directly in front of him, beneath th



of the Cossack beside him with his alpenstockthen, on reflection, he felt it was more prudento refrain. Evidently, these people would no

attempt their scheme till farther on, in regionuninhabited, and before that, there might commeans of getting out. Besides, their intentionno longer seemed to him quite so malevolenSonia smiled gently upon him from her prett

turquoise eyes, the pale young man lookepleasantly at him, and Manilof, visibly mildemoved obligingly aside and helped him to puhis bag between them. Had they discovere

their mistake by reading on the register of thRigi-Kulm the illustrious name of Tartarin?He wished to make sure, and, familiarly, goodhumouredly, he began:—

"Enchanted with this meeting, beautiful younlady... only, permit me to introduce myselfyou are ignorant with whom you have to dvé! whereas, I am perfectly aware who you are



"Hush!" said the little Sonia, still smiling, bupointing with her gloved finger to the seat beside the driver, where sat the tenor with h

sleeve-buttons, and another young Russiansheltering themselves under the same umbrelland laughing and talking in Italian.

Between the police and the Nihilists, Tartari

did not hesitate."Do you know that man, au mouain?" he said ia low voice, putting his head quite close to Sonia's fresh cheeks, and seeing himself in he

clear eyes, which suddenly turned hard ansavage as she answered "yes," with a snap otheir lids.

The hero shuddered, but as one shudders at th

theatre, with that delightful creeping of thepidermis which takes you when the actiobecomes Corsican, and you settle yourself iyour seat to see and to listen more attentively

Personally out of the affair, delivered from th



mortal terrors which had haunted him all nighand prevented him from swallowing his usuSwiss coffee, honey, and butter, he breathe

with free lungs, thought life good, and this littRussian irresistibly pleasing in her travellinhat, her jersey close to the throat, tight to tharms, and moulding her slender figure of pefect elegance. And such a child! Child in th

candour of her laugh, in the down upon hecheeks, in the pretty grace with which shspread her shawl upon the knees of her poobrother. "Are you comfortable?.." "You are no

cold?" How could any one suppose that litthand, so delicate beneath its chamois glovhad had the physical force and the moral couage to kill a man?

Nor did the others of the party seem ferociouall had the same ingenuous laugh, rather constrained and sad on the drawn lips of the pooinvalid, and noisy in Manilof, who, very younbehind his bushy beard, gave way to explo



sions of mirth like a schoolboy in his holidaybursts of a gayety that was really exuberant.

The third companion, whom they called Bolbine, and who talked on the box with the tenoamused himself much and was constantly turning back to translate to his friends the Italianadventures, his successes at the Petersburg Op

era, his bonnes fortunes, the sleeve-buttons thladies had subscribed to present to him on hdeparture, extraordinary buttons, with, threnotes of music engraved thereon, la do ré (l'adoré), which professional pun, repeated in thlandau, caused such delight, the tenor himseswelling up with pride and twirling his moutache with so silly and conquering a look aSonia, that Tartarin began to ask himse

whether, after all, they were not mere touristand he a genuine tenor.

Meantime the carriages, going at a good pacrolled over bridges, skirted little lakes and flo

wery meads, and fine vineyards running wit



water and deserted; for it was Sunday, and athe peasants whom they met wore their gacostumes, the women with long braids of ha

hanging down their backs and silver chainletThey began at last to mount the road in zigzagamong forests of oak and beech; little by littthe marvellous horizon displayed itself on thleft; at each turn of the zigzag, rivers, valley

with their spires pointing upward came intview, and far away in the distance, the hoarhead of the Finsteraarhorn, whitening beneatan invisible sun.

Soon the road became gloomy, the aspect savage. On one side, heavy shadows, a chaos otrees, twisted and gnarled on a steep slopdown which foamed a torrent noisily; to righ

an enormous rock overhanging the road anbristling with branches that sprouted from ifissures.



They laughed no more in the landau; but theall admired, raising their heads and trying tsee the summit of this tunnel of granite.

"The forests of Atlas!.. I seem to see themagain..." said Tartarin, gravely, and then, as thremark passed unnoticed, he added: "Withouthe lion's roar, however."

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

Heard the lion, he!.. Then, with an indulgensmile: "I am Tartarin of Tarascon, mademo

selle..."And just see what such barbarians are! Hmight have said, "My name is Dupont;" would have been exactly the same thing t

them. They were ignorant of the name of Tatarin!

Nevertheless, he was not angry, and he answered the young lady, who wished to know



the lion's roar had frightened him: "No, mademoiselle... My camel trembled between mlegs, but I looked to my priming as tranquill

as before a herd of cows... At a distance thecry is much the same, like this, té!"

To give Sonia an exact impression of the thinghe bellowed in his most sonorous voice a fo

midable "Meuh..." which swelled, spread, echoed and reechoed against the rock. The horsereared; in all the carriages the travellers spranup alarmed, looking round for the accident, thcause of such an uproar; but recognizing thAlpinist, whose head and overwhelming accoutrements could be seen in the uncovered half othe landau, they asked themselves once mor"Who is that animal?"

He, very calm, continued to give details: wheto attack the beast, where to strike him, how tdespatch him, and about the diamond sight haffixed to his carbines to enable him to aim co

rectly in the darkness. The young girl listene



to him, leaning forward with a little panting othe nostrils, in deep attention.

"They say that Bombonnel still hunts; do yoknow him?" asked the brother.

"Yes," replied Tartarin, without enthusiasm"He is not a clumsy fellow, but we have bette

than he."A word to the wise! Then in a melancholy ton"Pas mouain, they give us strong emotions, theshunts of the great carnivora. When we hav

them no longer life seems empty; we do noknow how to fill it."

Here Manilof, who understood French withouspeaking it, and seemed to be listening to Ta

tarin very intently, his peasant foreheaslashed with the wrinkle of a great scar, said few words, laughing, to his friends.



"Manilof says we are all of the same brothehood," explained Sonia to Tartarin... "We hunlike you, the great wild beasts."

"Té! yes, pardi... wolves, white bears..."

"Yes, wolves, white bears, and other noxiouanimals..."

And the laughing began again, noisy, intermnable, but in a sharp, ferocious key this timlaughs that showed their teeth and remindeTartarin in what sad and singular company h

was travelling.Suddenly the carriages stopped. The road became steeper and made at this spot a long cicuit to reach the top of the Brünig pass, whic

could also be reached on foot in twenty minutes less time through a noble forest of bircheIn spite of the rain in the morning, making thearth sodden and slippery, the tourists nearl



all left the carriages and started, single filalong the narrow path called a schlittage.

From Tartarin's landau, the last in line, all thmen got out; but Sonia, thinking the path tomuddy, settled herself back in the carriage, anas the Alpinist was getting out with the rest, little delayed by his equipments, she said t

him in a low voice: "Stay! keep me company..in such a coaxing way! The poor man, quiovercome, began immediately to forge a romance, as delightful as it was improbablwhich made his old heart beat and throb.

He was quickly undeceived when he saw thyoung girl leaning anxiously forward to watcBolibine and the Italian, who were talking ea

gerly together at the opening of the path, Manlof and Boris having already gone forward. Thso-called tenor hesitated. An instinct seemed twarn him not to risk himself alone in companwith those three men. He decided at last to g

on, and Sonia looked at him as he mounted th



path, all the while stroking her cheek with bouquet of purple cyclamen, those mountaiviolets, the leaf of which is lined with the sam

fresh colour as the flowers.The landau proceeded slowly. The driver godown to walk in front with other comradeand the convoy of more than fifteen empty ve

hicles, drawn nearer together by the steepnesof the road, rolled silently along. Tartaringreatly agitated, and foreboding somethinsinister, dared not look at his companion, smuch did he fear that a word or a look mighcompel him to be an actor in the drama he feimpending. But Sonia was paying no attentioto him; her eyes were rather fixed, and she dinot cease caressing the down of her skin me

chanically with the flowers."So," she said at length, "so you know who ware, I and my friends... Well, what do you thinof us? What do Frenchmen think of us?"



The hero turned pale, then red. He was desious of not offending by rash or imprudenwords such vindictive beings; on the othe

hand, how consort with murderers? He got ouof it by a metaphor:—

"Différemment, mademoiselle, you were tellinme just now that we belonged to the same bro

herhood, hunters of hydras and monsters, depots and carnivora... It is therefore to a companion of St. Hubert that I now make answerMy sentiment is that, even against wild beaswe should use loyal weapons... Our Jules Gérard, a famous lion-slayer, employed explosivballs. I myself have never given in to that, I dnot use them... When I hunted the lion or thpanther I planted myself before the beast, fac

to face, with a good double-barrelled carbinand 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 admration, thinking aloud:—

"That must certainly be the surest way."

A sudden rending of the branches and the underbrush, and the thicket parted above them, squickly and in so feline a way that Tartarin, hhead now full of hunting adventures, mighhave thought himself still on the watch in thZaccar. But Manilof sprang from the slope, no

selessly, and close to the carriage. His smalcunning eyes were shining in a face that waflayed by the briers; his beard and his long lanhair were streaming with water from the branches. Breathless, holding with his coarse, hair

hands to the doorway, he spoke in Russian tSonia, who turned instantly to Tartarin ansaid in a curt voice:—

"Your rope... quick..."



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

"Quick, quick... you shall have it again in haan hour."

Offering no other explanation, she helped himwith her little gloved hands to divest himself ohis famous rope made in Avignon. Manilo

took the coil, grunting with joy; in two boundhe sprang, with the elasticity of a wild-cat, intthe thicket and disappeared.

"What has happened? What are they going t

do?.. He looked ferocious..." murmured Tataric not daring to utter his whole thought.

Ferocious, Manilof! Ah! how plain it was he dinot know him. No human being was ever be

ter, gentler, more compassionate; and to showTartarin a trait of that exceptionally kind nature, Sonia, with her clear, blue glance, told himhow her friend, having executed a dangeroumandate of the Revolutionary Committee an



jumped into the sledge which awaited him foescape, had threatened the driver to get oucost what it might, if he persisted in whippin

the horse whose fleetness alone could save himTartarin thought the act worthy of antiquityThen, having reflected on all the human livesacrificed by that same Manilof, as conscience

less as an earthquake or a volcano in eruptionwho yet would not let others hurt an animal ihis presence, he questioned the young girl witan ingenuous air:—

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

"Too many," replied Sonia, sadly; "and the onlone that ought to have died escaped."

She remained silent, as if displeased, looking spretty, her head lowered, with her long aubureyelashes sweeping her pale rose cheeks. Tatarin, angry with himself for having pained he



was caught once more by that charm of youtand freshness which the strange little creaturshed around her.

"So, monsieur, the war that we are makinseems to you unjust, inhuman?" She said it qute close to him in a caress, as it were, of hebreath and her eye; the hero felt himself weak

ening..."You do not see that all means are good anlegitimate to deliver a people who groan ansuffocate?.."

"No doubt, no doubt..."

The young girl, growing more insistent as Tatarin weakened, went on:—

"You spoke just now of a void to be filled; doeit not seem to you more noble, more interestinto risk your life for a great cause than to risk in slaying lions or scaling glaciers?"



"The fact is," said Tartarin, intoxicated, losinhis head and mad with an irresistible desire ttake and kiss that ardent, persuasive little han

which she laid upon his arm, as she had dononce before, up there, on the Rigi when he puon her shoe. Finally, unable to resist, and seizing the little gloved hand between both hown,—

"Listen, Sonia," he said, in a good hearty voicpaternal and familiar... "Listen, Sonia..."

A sudden stop of the landau interrupted him

They had reached the summit of the Brünitravellers and drivers were getting into thecarriages to catch up lost time and reach, at gallop, the next village where the convoy wa

to breakfast and relay. The three Russians tootheir places, but that of the Italian tenor rmained unoccupied.

"That gentleman got into one of the first ca

riages," said Boris to the driver, who aske



about him; then, addressing Tartarin, whosuneasiness was visible:—

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

Thereupon, fresh laughter in the landau, anthe resumption for poor Tartarin of horrid pe

plexity, not knowing what to think or believe ipresence of the good-humour and ingenuoucountenances of the suspected assassins. Soniwhile wrapping up her invalid in cloaks anplaids, for the air on the summit was all th

keener from the rapidity with which the cariages were now driven, related in Russian heconversation with Tartarin, uttering his panpan! with a pretty intonation which her com

panions repeated after her, two of them admiing the hero, while Manilof shook his head incredulously.

The relay!



This was on the market-place of a large villagat an old tavern with a worm-eaten woodebalcony, and a sign hanging to a rusty iro

bracket. The file of vehicles stopped, and whithe horses were being unharnessed the hungrtourists jumped hurriedly down and rusheinto a room on the lower floor, painted greeand smelling of mildew, where the table wa

laid for twenty guests. Sixty had arrived, anfor five minutes nothing could be heard but frightful tumult, cries, and a vehement altercation between the Rices and the Prunes aroun

the compote-dishes, to the great alarm of thtavern-keeper, who lost his head (as if daily, athe same hour, the same post-carriages did nopass) and bustled about his servants, also sezed with chronic bewilderment—excellen

method of serving only half the dishes callefor by the carte, and of giving change in a wathat made the white sous of Switzerland counfor fifty centimes. "Suppose we dine in the cariage," said Sonia, I annoyed by such confusion



and as no one had time to pay attention to themthe young men themselves did the waitingManilof returned with a cold leg of mutton

Bolibine with a long loaf of bread and sausagebut the best forager was Tartarin. Certainly thopportunity to get away from his companionin the bustle of relay ing was a fine one; hmight at least have assured himself that th

Italian had reappeared; but he never oncthought of it, being solely preoccupied witSonia's breakfast, and in showing Manilof anthe others how a Tarasconese can manage ma

ters.When he stepped down the portico of the hotegravely, with fixed eyes, bearing in his robuhands a large tray laden with plates, napkin

assorted food, and Swiss champagne in its gilnecked bottles, Sonia clapped her hands, ancongratulated him.

"How did you manage it?" she said.



"I don't know... somehow, té!.. We are all likthat in Tarascon."

Oh! those happy minutes! That pleasant breakfast opposite to Sonia, almost on his knees, thvillage market-place, like the scene of an opeetta, with clumps of green trees, beneath whicsparkled the gold ornaments and the musli

sleeves of the Swiss girls, walking about, twand two, like dolls!

How good the bread tasted! what savoury sausages! The heavens themselves took part in th

scene, and were soft, veiled, clement; it rainedof course, but so gently, the drops so rarthough just enough to temper the Swiss champagne, always dangerous to Southern heads.

Under the veranda of the hotel, a Tyroliaquartette, two giants and two female dwarfs iresplendent and heavy rags, looking as if thehad escaped from the failure of a theatre at

fair, were mingling their throat notes: "aou



aou..." with the clinking of plates and glasseThey were ugly, stupid, motionless, straininthe cords of their skinny necks. Tartari

thought them delightful, and gave them handful of sous, to the great amazement of thvillagers who surrounded the unhorsed landau.

"Vife la Vranze!" quavered a voice in the crowdfrom which issued a tall old man, clothed in singular blue coat with silver buttons, the skirof which swept the ground; on his head was gigantic shako, in form like a bucket of sauekraut, and so weighted by its enormous plumthat the old man was forced to balance himsewith his arms as he walked, like an acrobat.

"Old soldier... Charles X..."Tartarin, fresh from Bompard's revelationbegan to laugh, and said in a low voice with wink of his eye:—



"Up to that, old fellow..." But even so, he gavhim a white sou and poured him out a bumpewhich the old man accepted, laughing, an

winking himself, though without knowinwhy. Then, dislodging from a corner of hmouth an enormous china pipe, he raised hglass and drank "to the company," which confirmed Tartarin in his opinion that here was

colleague of Bompard.

No matter! one toast deserved another. Sstanding up in the carriage, his glass held highhis voice strong, Tartarin brought tears to heyes by drinking, first: To France, my countrynext to hospitable Switzerland, which he wahappy to honour publicly and thank for thgenerous welcome she affords to the van

quished, to the exiled of all lands. Then, loweing his voice and inclining his glass to the companions of his journey, he wished them a quicreturn to their country, restoration to their family, safe friends, honourable careers, and an en



The answer was given at once. His toast endedTartarin had just sat down when a sudden shoa second, then a third, fired close to the tavern

brought him again to his feet, ears straininand nostrils scenting powder.

"Who fired?.. where is it?.. what is happening?.."

In his inventive noddle a whole drama waalready defiling; attack on the convoy by armebands; opportunity given him to defend thhonour and life of that charming young lady

But no! the discharges only came from thStand, where the youths of the village practisat a mark every Sunday. As the horses were noyet harnessed, Tartarin, as if carelessly, pro

posed to go and look at them. He had his ideand Sonia had hers in accepting the proposaGuided by the old soldier of Charles X. wobbling under his shako, they crossed the markeplace, opening the ranks of the crowd, wh

followed them with curiosity.



Beneath its thatched roof and its square uprights of pine wood the Stand resembled one oour own pistol-galleries at a fair, with this di

ference, that the amateurs brought their owweapons, breech-loading muskets of the oldepattern, which they managed, however, witsome adroitness. Tar-tarin, his arms crossedobserved the shots, criticised them aloud, gav

his advice, but did not fire himself. The Rusians watched him, making signs to each other

"Pan!.. pan!.." sneered Bolibine, making thgesture of taking aim and mimicking Tartarinaccent. Tartarin turned round very red, answelling with anger.

"Parfaitemain, young man... Pan!.. pan!.. and a

often as you like."The time to load an old double-barrelled cabine which must have served several genertions of chamois hunters, and—pan!.. pan!.. T

done. Both balls are in the bull's-eye. Hurrah



of admiration burst forth on all sides. Sontriumphed. Bolibine laughed no more.

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

The Stand did not suffice him; he looked aboufor another target, and the crowd recoiled ala

med from this strange Alpinist, thick-set, savage-looking and carbine in hand, when theheard him propose to the old guard of CharleX. to break his pipe between his teeth at fiftpaces. The old fellow howled in terror an

plunged into the crowd, his trembling plumremaining visible above their serried headNone the less, Tartarin felt that he must put somewhere, that ball. "Té! pardi! as we did

Tarascon!.." And the former cap-hunter pitchehis headgear high into the air with all thstrength of his double muscles, shot it on thfly, and pierced it. "Bravo!" cried Sonia, stickininto the small hole made by the ball the bou



quet of cyclamen with which she had strokeher cheek.

With that charming trophy in his cap Tartarireturned to the landau. The trumpet soundedthe convoy started, the horses went rapidldown to Brienz along that marvellous cornichroad, blasted in the side of the rock, separate

from an abyss of over a thousand feet by singstones a couple of yards apart. But Tartarin wano longer conscious of danger; no longer did hlook at the scenery—that Meyringen valleyseen through a light veil of mist, with its rivein straight lines, the lake, the villages massinthemselves in the distance, and that whole horizon of mountains, of glaciers, blending atimes with the clouds, displaced by the turns o

the road, lost apparently, and then returninlike the shifting scenes of a stage.

Softened by tender thoughts, the hero admirethe sweet child before him, reflecting that glor

is only a semi-happiness, that 'tis sad to grow



old all alone in your greatness, like Moses, anthat this fragile flower of the North tranplanted into the little garden at Tarascon woul

brighten its monotony, and be sweeter to seand breathe than that everlasting baobab, arbogigantea, diminutively confined in the mignonette pot. With her childlike eyes, and her broabrow, thoughtful and self-willed, Sonia looke

at him, and she, too, dreamed—but who knowwhat the young girls dream of?

VII.

The nights at Tarascon, Where is he? Anxety. The

grasshoppers on the promenade call for Tatarin. Martyrdom



of a great Tarasconese saint. The Club of thAlpines. What

was happening at the pharmacy. "Help

help! Bêzuquet!""A letter, Monsieur Bêzuquet!.. Comes fromSwitzerland, vé!.. Switzerland!" cried the posman joyously, from the other end of the littl

square, waving something in the air, and hurying along in the coming darkness.

The apothecary, who took the air, as they sayof an evening before his door in his shir

sleeves, gave a jump, seized the letter with feverish hands and carried it into his lair amonthe varied odours of elixirs and dried herbs, budid not open it till the postman had departedrefreshed by a glass of that delicious sirop d

cadavre in recompense for what he brought.

Fifteen days had Bêzuquet expected it, this leter from Switzerland, fifteen days of agonizewatching! And here it was. Merely from look



ing at the cramped and resolute little writinon the envelope, the postmark "Interlaken" anthe broad purple stamp of the "Hôtel Jungfrau

kept by Meyer," the tears filled his eyes, and thheavy moustache of the Barbary corsathrough which whispered softly the idle whitle of a kindly soul, quivered.

"Confidential. Destroy when read." Those wordwritten large at the head of the page, in the telegraphic style of the pharmacopoeia ("externuse; shake before using") troubled him to thpoint of making him read aloud, as one does ia bad dream: "Fearful things are happening me..." In the salon beside the pharmacy whershe was taking her little nap after supper, MmBézuquet, mère, might hear him, or the pup

whose pestle was pounding its regular blows ithe big marble mortar of the laboratory. Bézuquet continued his reading in a low voice, beginning it over again two or three times, verpale, his hair literally standing on end. Then



with a rapid look about him, cra cra... and thletter in a thousand scraps went into the wastpaper basket; but there it might be found, an

pieced together, and as he was stooping to gaher up the fragments a quavering voice calleto him:

"Vé! Ferdinand, are you there?" "Yes, mamma

replied the unlucky corsair, curdling with feathe whole of his long body on its hands anknees beneath the desk. "What are you doinmy treasure?" "I am... h'm, I am making MilTournatoire's eye-salve."

Mamma went to sleep again, the pupil's pestlsuspended for a moment, began once more islow clock movement, while Bézuquet walke

up and down before his door in the desertelittle square, turning pink or green according ahe passed before one or other of his bottleFrom time to time he threw up his arms, utteing disjointed words: "Unhappy man!.. lost

fatal love... how can we extricate him?" and, i



spite of his trouble of mind, accompanyinwith a lively whistle the bugle "taps" of a dragoon regiment echoing among the plane-tree

of the Tour de Ville."Hé! good night, Bézuquet," said a shadow hurying along in the ash-coloured twilight.

"Where are you going, Pégoulade?""To the Club, pardi!.. Night session... they argoing to discuss Tartarin and the presidencyYou ought to come."

"Té! yes, I 'll come..." said the apothecary vehemently, a providential idea darting through hmind. He went in, put on his frock-coat, felt iits pocket to assure himself that his latchke

was there, and also the American tomahawkwithout which no Tarasconese whatsoevewould risk himself in the streets after "tapsThen he called: "Pascalon!.. Pascalon!.." but notoo loudly, for fear of waking the old lady.



Almost a child, though bald, wearing all hhair in his curly blond beard, Pascalon the pupil had the ardent soul of a partizan, a dom

like forehead, the eyes of crazy goat, and on hchubby cheeks the delicate tints of a shiny cruty Beaucaire roll. On all the grand Alpine excursions it was to him that the Club entrusteits banner, and his childish soul had vowed t

the P. C. A. a fanatical worship, the burningsilent adoration of a taper consuming itself before an altar in the Easter season.

"Pascalon," said the apothecary in a low voicand so close to him that the bristle of his moutache pricked his ear. "I have news of TartarinIt is heart-breaking..."

Seeing him turn pale, he added:"Courage, child! all can be repaired... Différemment I confide to you the pharmacy... If any onasks you for arsenic, don't give it; opium, don

give that either, nor rhubarb... don't give any



thing. If I am not in by ten o'clock, lock the dooand go to bed."

With intrepid step, he plunged into the darkness, not once looking back, which allowePascalon to spring at the waste-paper basketurn it over and over with feverish eager handand finally tip out its contents on the leather o

the desk to see if no scrap remained of the myterious letter brought by the postman.

To those who know Tarasconese excitability, is easy to imagine the frantic condition of th

little town after Tartarin's abrupt disappeaance. Et autrement, pas moins, différemment, thelost their heads, all the more because it was thmiddle of August and their brains boiled in th

sun till their skulls were fit to crack. From moning till night they talked of nothing else; thaone name "Tartarin" alone was heard on thpinched lips of the elderly ladies in hoods, ithe rosy mouths of grisettes, their hair tied u

with velvet ribbons:



"Tartarin, Tartarin..." Even among the plantrees on the Promenade, heavy with white dusdistracted grasshoppers, vibrating in the sun

light, seemed to strangle with those two sonorous syllables: "Tar.. tar.. tar.. tar.. tar..."

As no one knew anything, naturally every onwas well-informed and gave explanations o

the departure of the president. Extravaganversions appeared. According to some, he haentered La Trappe; he had eloped with the Dugazon; others declared he had gone to the Isleto found a colony to be called Port-Tarascon, oelse to roam Central Africa in search of Livingstone.

"Ah! vaï! Livingstone!.. Why he has been dea

these two years."But Tarasconese imagination defies all hints otime and space. And the curious thing is thathese ideas of La Trappe, colonization, distan

travel, were Tartarin's own ideas, dreams o



that sleeper awake, communicated in past dayto his intimate friends, who now, not knowinwhat to think, and vexed in their hearts at no

being duly informed, affected toward the public the greatest reserve and behaved to one another with a sly air of private understandinExcourbaniès suspected Bravida of being in thsecret; Bravida, on his side, thought: "Bézuqu

knows the truth; he looks about him like a dowith a bone."

True it was that the apothecary suffered a thousand deaths from this hair-shirt of a secrewhich cut him, skinned him, turned him paand red in the same minute and caused him tsquint continually. Remember that he belongeto Tarascon, unfortunate man, and say if, in a

martyrology, you can find so terrible a torturas this—the torture of Saint Bézuquet, whknew a secret and could not tell it.

This is why, on that particular evening, in spit

of the terrifying news he had just received, h



step had something, I hardly know what, freemore buoyant, as he went to the session of thClub. Enfin!.. He was now to speak, to un

bosom himself, to tell that which weighed sheavily upon him; and in his haste to unloahis breast he cast a few half words as he wenalong to the loiterers on the Promenade. Thday had been so hot, that in spite of the un

usual hour (a quarter to eight on the clock of thtown hall!) and the terrifying darkness, quite crowd of reckless persons, bourgeois familiegetting the good of the air while that of the

houses evaporated, bands of five or six sewingwomen, rambling along in an undulating linof chatter and laughter, were abroad. In evergroup they were talking of Tartarin.

"Et autrement, Monsieur Bézuquet, still no leter?" they asked of the apothecary, stoppinhim on his way.

"Yes, yes, my friends, yes, there is... Read th

Forum to-morrow morning..."



He hastened his steps, but they followed himfastened on him, and along the Promenade rosa murmuring sound, the bleating of a flock

which gathered beneath the windows of thClub, left wide open in great squares of light.

The sessions were held in the bouillotte roomwhere the long table covered with green clot

served as a desk. At the centre, the presidentiarm-chair, with P. C. A. embroidered on thback of it; at one end, humbly, the armless chaof the secretary. Behind, the banner of the Clubdraped above a long glazed map in relief, owhich the Alpines stood up with their respetive names and altitudes. Alpenstocks ohonour, inlaid with ivory, stacked like billiarcues, ornamented the corners, and a glass-cas

displayed curiosities, crystals, silepetrifactions, two porcupines and salamander, collected on the mountains.

In Tartarin's absence, Costecalde, rejuvenate

and radiant, occupied the presidential arm



chair; the armless chair was for Excourbanièwho fulfilled the functions of secretary; but thdevil of a man, frizzled, hairy, bearded, wa

incessantly in need of noise, motion, activitwhich hindered his sedentary employments. Athe smallest pretext, he threw out his arms anlegs, uttered fearful howls and "Ha! ha! has!" oferocious, exuberant joy which always ende

with a war-cry in the Tarasconese patois: "Fedé brut... let us make a noise "... He was calle"the gong" on account of his metallic voicwhich cracked the ears of his friends with i

ceaseless explosions.Here and there, on a horsehair divan that raround the room were the members of the committee.

In the first row, sat the former captain oequipment, Bravida, whom all Tarascon callethe Commander; a very small man, clean as new penny, who redeemed his childish figur



by making himself as moustached and savagehead as Vercingétorix.

Next came the long, hollow, sickly face of Pégoulade, the collector, last survivor of thwreck of the "Medusa." Within the memory oman, Tarascon has never been without a lasurvivor of the wreck of the "Medusa." At on

time they even numbered three, who treateone another mutually as impostors, and nevecon~ sented to meet in the same room. Of thesthree the only true one was Pégoulade. Settinsail with his parents on the "Medusa," he mewith the fatal disaster when six months old,—which did not prevent him from relating thevent, de visu, in its smallest details, faminboats, raft, and how he had taken the captain

who was selfishly saving himself, by the throa"To your duty, wretch!.. "At six months oldoutre!... Wearisome, to tell the truth, with thaeternal tale which everybody was sick of for thlast fifty years; but he took it as a pretext t



assume a melancholy air, detached from lif"After what I have seen!" he would say—verunjustly, because it was to that he owed h

post as collector and kept it 'under all adminstrations.

Near him sat the brothers Rognonas, twins ansexagenarians, who never parted, but alway

quarrelled and said the most monstrous thingto each other; their two old heads, defaced, coroded, irregular, and ever looking in opposidirections out of antipathy, were so alike thathey might have figured in a collection of coinwith IANVS BIFRONS on the exergue.

Here and there, were Judge Bédaride, Barjavthe lawyer, the notary Cambalalette, and th

terrible Doctor Tournatoire, of whom Bravidremarked that he could draw blood from a radish.

In consequence of the great heat, increased b

the gas, these gentlemen held the session i



their shirt-sleeves, which detracted much fromthe solemnity of the occasion. It is true that thmeeting was a very small one; and the infa

mous Costecalde was anxious to profit by thacircumstance to fix the earliest possible date fothe elections without awaiting Tartarin's returnConfident in this manoeuvre, he was enjoyinhis triumph in advance, and when, after th

reading of the minutes by Excourbaniès, hrose to insinuate his scheme, an infernal smicurled up the corners of his thin lips.

"Distrust the man who smiles before hspeaks," murmured the Commander.

Costecalde, not flinching, and winking witone eye at the faithful Tournatoire, began in

spiteful voice:—"Gentlemen, the extraordinary conduct of oupresident, the uncertainty in which he leaveus..."



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

Bézuquet, quivering, planted himself squarelbefore the table; but conscious that his attitudwas anti-parliamentary, he changed his tonand, raising one hand according to usage, hasked for the floor, to make an urgent communication.

"Speak! Speak!"

Costecalde, very yellow, his throat tightenedgave him the floor by a motion of his head

Then, and not till then, Bézuquet spoke:"Tartarin is at the foot of the Jungfrau... he about to make the ascent... he desires to takwith him our banner..."

Silence; broken by the heavy breathing ochests; then a loud hurrah, bravos, stamping othe feet, above which rose the gong of Excoubaniès uttering his war-cry "Ha! ha! ha! fen d



brut!" to which the anxious crowd without responded.

Costecalde, getting more and more yellow, tinkled the presidential bell desperately. Bézuquat last was allowed to continue, mopping hforehead and puffing as if he had just mountefive pairs of stairs.

Différemment, the banner that their presidenrequested in order to plant it on virgin heightshould it be wrapped up, packed up, and senby express like an ordinary trunk?..

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

Would it not be better to appoint a delegation—draw lots for three members of the com

mittee?..

He was not allowed to finish. The time to sazou! and Bézuquet's proposition was voted bacclamation, and the names of three delegate



drawn in the following order: 1, Bravida; Pégoulade; 3, the apothecary.

No. 2, protested. The long journey frightenehim, so feeble and ill as he was, péchèrel evesince that terrible event of the "Medusa."

"I 'll go for you, Pégoulade," roared Excou

baniès, telegraphing with all his limbs. As foBézuquet, he could not leave the pharmacy, thsafety of the town depended on him. One imprudence of the pupil, and all Tarascon mighbe poisoned, decimated:

"Outre!" cried the whole committee, agreeing aone man.

Certainly the apothecary could not go himsel

but he could send Fascalon; Pascalon coultake charge of the banner. That was his busness. Thereupon, fresh exclamations, furtheexplosions of the gong, and on the Promenadsuch a popular tempest that Excourbaniès wa



forced to show himself and address the crowabove its roarings, which his matchless voicsoon mastered.

"My friends, Tartarin is found. He is about tcover himself with glory."

Without adding more than "Vive Tartarin!" an

his war-cry, given with all the force of hlungs, he stood for a moment enjoying the tremendous clamour of the crowd below, rollinand hustling confusedly in clouds of dust, whle from the branches of the trees the grasshop

pers added their queer little rattle as if it werbroad day.

Hearing all this, Costecalde, who had gone to window with the rest, returned, staggering, t

his arm-chair.

"Vé! Costecalde," said some one. "What's thmatter with him?.. Look how yellow he is!"



They sprang to him; already the terrible Tounatoire had whipped out his lancet: but thgunsmith, writhing in distress, made a horrib

grimace, and said ingenuously:"Nothing... nothing... let me alone... I knowwhat it is... it is envy."

Poor Costecalde, he seemed to suffer much.While these things were happening, at the oher end of the Tour de Ville, in the pharmacyBézuquet's pupil, seated before his master

desk, was patiently patching and gummintogether the fragments of Tartarin's letter ovelooked by the apothecary at the bottom of thbasket. But numerous bits were lacking in threconstruction, for here is the singular and sin

ister enigma spread out before him, not unlika map of Central Africa, with voids and spaceof terra incognita, which the artless standardbearer explored in a state of terrified imagina

tion:



mad with love reed-wick lam

preserves of Chicago.

cannot tear myselfNihilistto death condition

abom in exchangefor her

You know me, Ferdiknow my liberal ideas,

but from there to tzariciderrible consequences

Siberia hung adore herAh! press thy loyal hand

Tar Tar



He occupied a very fine chamber with a bacony on the first floor, and trimmed his bearin the morning before a little hand-glas

hanging to the window, an old habit of hwhen travelling. The first object that dailstruck his eyes beyond the fields of grass ancorn, the nursery gardens, and an amphitheatrof solemn verdure in rising stages, was th

Jungfrau, lifting from the clouds her summilike a horn, white and pure with unbrokesnow, to which was daily clinging a furtive raof the still invisible rising sun. Then betwee

the white and rosy Alp and the Alpinist a littdialogue took place regularly, which was nowithout its grandeur."Tartarin, are you coming?" asked the Jung-frasternly.

"Here, here..." replied the hero, his thumb under his nose and finishing his beard as fast apossible. Then he would hastily take down hascensionist outfit and, swearing at himself, pu

it on.



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

But a soft voice rose, demure and clear amonthe myrtles in the border beneath his window.

"Good-morning," said Sonia, as he appeareupon the balcony, "the landau is ready... Commake haste, lazy man..."

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

In a trice he had changed his thick flannel shifor linen of the finest quality, his mountai

knickerbockers for a suit of serpent-green thaturned the heads of all the women in Tarascoat the Sunday concerts.

The horses of the landau were pawing befor

the door; Sonia was already installed besidBoris, paler, more emaciated day by day in spte of the beneficent climate of Interlaken. Buregularly, at the moment of starting, Tartariwas fated to see two forms arise from a benc



on the promenade and approach him with thheavy rolling step of mountain bears; theswere Rodolphe Kaufmann and Christian Ineb

nit, two famous Grindelwald guides, engageby Tartarin for the ascension of the Jungfrauwho came every morning to ascertain if themonsieur were ready to start.

The apparition of these two men, in their ironclamped shoes and fustian jackets worn threadbare on the back and shoulder by knapsackand ropes, their naïve and serious faces, anthe four words of French which they manageto splutter as they twisted their broad-brimmehats, were a positive torture to Tartarin. In vaihe said to them: "Don't trouble yourselves tcome; I 'll send for you..."

Every day he found them in the same place angot rid of them by a large coin proportioned tthe enormity of his remorse. Enchanted witthis method of "doing the Jungfrau," the moun

taineers pocketed their trinkgeld gravely, an



took, with resigned step, the path to their native village, leaving Tartarin confused and dspairing at his own weakness. Then the broa

open air, the flowering plains reflected in thlimpid pupils of Sonia's eyes, the touch of helittle foot against his boot in the carriage... Thdevil take that Jungfrau! The hero thought onlof his love, or rather of the mission he had g

ven himself to bring back into the right patthat poor little Sonia, so unconsciously crimnal, cast by sisterly devotion outside of the lawand outside of human nature.

This was the motive that kept him at Interlaken, in the same hotel as the Wassiliefs. At hage, with his air of a good papa, he certainlcould not dream of making that poor child lov

him, but he saw her so sweet, so brave, so generous to all the unfortunates of her party, sdevoted to that brother whom the mines oSiberia had sent back to her, his body eatewith ulcers, poisoned with verdigris, and h



himself condemned to death by phthisis morsurely than by any court. There was enough iall that to touch a man!

Tartarin proposed to take them to Tarascon ansettle them in a villa full of sun at the gates othe town, that good little town where it neverains and where life is spent in fêtes and son

And with that he grew excited, rattled a tambourine air on the crown of his hat, and trolleout the gay native chorus of the farandole dance:

LagadigadeoùLa Tarasque, la Tarasque,Lagadigadeoù

La Tarasque de Casteoù.

But while a satirical smile pinched still closethe lips of the sick man, Sonia shook her headNeither fêtes nor sun for her so long as the Rusians groaned beneath the yoke of the tyranAs soon as her brother was well—her despai

ing eyes said another thing—nothing coul



prevent her from returning up there to suffeand die in the sacred cause.

"But, coquin de bon sort!" cried Tartarin, "if yoblow up one tyrant there 'll come another... Yowill have it all to do over again... And the yearwill go by, vé! the days for happiness and love..." His way of saying love—amour —à la T

rasconese, with three r's in it and his eyes staring out of his head, amused the young girthen, serious once more, she declared shwould never love any man but the one whdelivered her country. Yes, that man, were has ugly as Bolibine, more rustic and commothan Manilof, she was ready to give hersewholly to him, to live at his side, a free gift, along as her youth lasted and the man wishe

for her."Free gift!" the term used by Nihilists to expresthose illegal unions they contract among themselves by reciprocal consent. And of such pr

mitive marriage Sonia spoke tranquilly wit



her virgin air before the Tarasconese, whoworthy bourgeois, peaceful elector, was nowready to spend his days beside that adorab

girl in the said state of "free gift" if she had noadded those murderous and abominable condtions.

While they were conversing of these extremel

delicate matters, the fields, the lakes, the foests, the mountains lay spread before them, analways at each new turn, through the cool miof that perpetual shower which accompanieour hero on all his excursions, the Jungfraraised her white crest, as if to poison by rmorse those delicious hours. They returned tbreakfast at a vast table d'hôte where the Riceand Prunes continued their silent hostilities, t

which Tartarin was wholly indifferent, seateby Sonia, watching that Boris had no opewindow at his back, assiduous, paternal, exhibiting all his seductions as man of the world an



his domestic qualities as an excellent cabbagerabbit.

After this, he took tea with the Russians in thelittle salon opening on a tiny garden at the enof the terrace. Another exquisite hour for Tatarin of intimate chat in a low voice while Borslept on a sofa. The hot water bubbled in th

samovar; a perfume of moist flowers slippethrough the half-opened door with the blureflection of the solanums that were clusterinabout it. A little more sun, more warmth, anhere was his dream realized, his pretty Russiainstalled beside him, taking care of the gardeof the baobab.

Suddenly Sonia gave a jump.

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

"I'm going for them," said the good Tartarinand, merely from the tones of his voice and thresolute, theatrical gesture with which he bu



toned his coat and seized his cane, any onwould have guessed the gravity of the actionapparently so simple, of going to the post-offic

to fetch the Wassilief letters.Closely watched by the local authorities anthe Russian police, all Nihilists, but especialltheir leaders, are compelled to take certain pr

cautions, such as having their letters and papers addressed poste restante to simple initials.

Since their installation at Interlaken, Boris beinscarcely able to drag himself about, Tartarin, t

spare Sonia the annoyance of waiting in linbefore the post-office wicket exposed to inquistive eyes, had taken upon himself the risks anperils of this daily nuisance. The post-office

not more than ten minutes' walk from the hotein a wide and noisy street at the end of a promenade lined with cafés, breweries, shops fothe tourists displaying alpenstocks, gaiterstraps, opera-glasses, smoked glasses, flask

travelling-bags, all of which articles seeme



placed there expressly to shame the renegadAlpinist. Tourists were defiling in caravanwith horses, guides, mules, veils green an

blue, and a tintinnabulation of canteens as thanimals ambled, the ice-picks marking eacstep on the cobble-stones. But this festive scenhourly renewed, left Tartarin indifferent. Hnever even felt the fresh north wind with

touch of snow coming in gusts from the mountains, so intent was he on baffling the spiewhom he supposed to be upon his traces.

The foremost soldier of a vanguard, the sharpshooter skirting the walls of an enemy's townnever advanced with more mistrust than thTaras-conese hero while crossing the short ditance between the hotel and the post-office. A

the slightest heel-tap sounding behind his ownhe stopped, looked attentively at the photographs in the windows, or fingered an Englisor German book lying on a stall, to oblige thpolice spy to pass him. Or else he turned sud



in the hotel, out of prudence and economyBolibine had found work in a printing-officand Manilof, a very clever cabinetmaker, wa

employed by a builder. Tartarin did not likthem: one annoyed him by his grimaces and hjeering airs; the other kept looking at him savagely. Besides, they took too much space iSonia's heart.

"He is a hero!" she said of Bolibine; and she tolhow for three years he had printed all alone, ithe very heart of St. Petersburg, a revolutionarpaper. Three years without ever leaving hupper room, or showing himself at a windowsleeping at night in a great cupboard built ithe wall, where the woman who lodged himlocked him up till morning with his clandestin

press.And then, that life of Manilof, spent for smonths in the subterranean passages beneatthe Winter Palace, watching his opportunity

sleeping at night on his provision of dynamit



which resulted in giving him frightful headaches, and nervous troubles; all this, aggravated by perpetual anxiety, sudden irruption

of the police, vaguely informed that somethinwas plotting, and coming, suddenly and unexpectedly, to surprise the workmen employed athe Palace. On one of the rare occasions wheManilof came out of the mine, he met on th

Place de l'Amirauté a delegate of the Revolutionary Committee, who asked him in a lowvoice, as he walked along:

"Is it finished?"

"No, not yet..." said the other, scarcely movinhis lips. At last, on an evening in February, tthe same question in the same words he an

swered, with the greatest calmness:"It is finished..."

And almost immediately a horrible uproar confirmed his words, all the lights of the palac



went out suddenly, the place was plunged intcomplete obscurity, rent by cries of agony anterror, the blowing of bugles, the galloping o

soldiers, and firemen tearing along with thetrucks.

Here Sonia interrupted her tale:

"Is it not horrible, so many human lives sacrficed, such efforts, such courage, such wasteintelligence?.. No, no, it is a bad means, thesbutcheries in the mass... He who should be klled always escapes... The true way, the mo

humane, would be to seek the czar himself ayou seek the lion, fully determined, fully amed, post yourself at a window or the door ofcarriage... and, when he passes....."

"Bé! yes, certainemain..." responded Tartariembarrassed, and pretending not to seize hemeaning; then, suddenly, he would launch inta philosophical, humanitarian discussion wit

one of the numerous assistants. For Bolibin



and Manilof were not the only visitors to thWassiliefs. Every day new faces appeared oyoung people, men or women, with the cut o

poor students; elated teachers, blond and rosywith the self-willed forehead and the childlikferocity of Sonia; outlawed exiles, some of themalready condemned to death, which lessened ino way their youthful expansiveness.

They laughed, they talked openly, and as moof them spoke French, Tartarin was soon at hease. They called him "uncle," conscious of something childlike and artless about him thathey liked. Perhaps he was over-ready with hhunting tales; turning up his sleeve to his bceps in order to show the scar of a blow from panther's claws, or making his hearers feel be

neath his beard the holes left there by the fangof a lion; perhaps also he became too rapidlfamiliar with these persons, catching themround the waist, leaning on their shoulder



calling them by their Christian names after fivminutes' intercourse:

"Listen, Dmitri..." "You know me, Fédor Ivanovich..." They knew him only since yesterday, iany case; but they liked him all the same for hjovial frankness, his amiable, trustful air, anhis readiness to please. They read their letter

before him, planned their plots, and told thepasswords to foil the police: a whole atmophere of conspiracy which amused thimagination of the Tarasconese herimmensely: so that, however opposed bnature to acts of violence, he could not help, atimes, discussing their homicidal planapproving, criticising, and giving advicdictated by the experience of a great leader wh

has trod the path of war, trained to thhandling of all weapons, and to hand-to-hanconflicts with wild beasts.One day, when they told in his presence of thmurder of a policeman, stabbed by a Nihilist a

the theatre, Tartarin showed them how badl



the blow had been struck, and gave them a leson in knifing.

"Like this, vé! from the top down. Then thereno risk of wounding yourself..."

And, excited by his own imitation:

"Let's suppose, té! that I hold your despot btween four eyes in a boar-hunt He is over therwhere you are, Fédor, and I'm here, near thround table, each of us with our huntingknife... Come on, monseigneur, we 'll have

out now..."Planting himself in the middle of the salongathering his sturdy legs under him for spring, and snorting like a woodchopper, h

mimicked a real fight, ending by his cry of trumph as he plunged the weapon to the hilfrom the top down, coquin de sort! into the bowels of his adversary.



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

But what subsequent remorse! what anguiswhen, escaping from the magnetism of Soniablue eyes, he found himself alone, in his nighcap, alone with his reflections and his nightlglass of eau sucrée!

Différemment, what was he meddling with? Thczar was not his czar, decidedly, and all thesmatters didn't concern him in the least... Andon't you see that some of these days he woul

be captured, extradited and delivered over tMuscovite justice... Boufre! they don't joke, those Cossacks... And in the obscurity of his hotchamber, with that horrible imaginative facult

which the horizontal position increases, therdeveloped before him—like one of those unfolding pictures given to him in childhood—thvarious and terrible punishments to which hshould be subjected: Tartarin in the verdigr

mines, like Boris, working in water to his belly



his body ulcerated, poisoned. He escapes, hhides amid forests laden with snow, pursueby Tartars and bloodhounds trained to hun

men. Exhausted with cold and hunger, he retaken and finally hung between two thieveembraced by a pope with greasy hair smellinof brandy and seal-oil; while away down therat Tarascon in the sunshine, the band playin

of a fine Sunday, the crowd, the ungratefucrowd, are installing a radiant Costecalde in thchair of the P. C. A.

It was during the agony of one of these dreadful dreams that he uttered his cry of distres"Help, help, Bézuquet!" and sent to the apothcary that confidential letter, all moist with thsweat of his nightmare. But Sonia's prett

"Good morning" beneath his window sufficeto cast him back into the weaknesses of indecsion.

One evening, returning from the Kursaal to th

hotel with the Wassiliefs and Bolibine, after tw



hours of intoxicating music, the unfortunatman forgot all prudence, and the "Sonia, I lovyou," which he had so long restrained, was u

tered as he pressed the arm that rested on hown. She was not agitated. Perfectly pale, shgazed at him under the gas of the portico owhich they had paused: "Then deserve me..she said, with a pretty enigmatical smile, a sm

le that gleamed upon her delicate white teethTartarin was about to reply, to bind himself ban oath to some criminal madness when thporter of the hotel came up to him:

"There are persons waiting for you, upstairssome gentlemen... They want you."

"Want me!.. Outre!.. What for?" And No. 1 o

his folding series appeared before him: Tartaricaptured, extradited... Of course he was frighened, but his attitude was heroic. Quickly detaching himself from Sonia: "Fly, save yourselfhe said to her in a smothered voice. Then h

mounted the stairs as if to the scaffold, his hea



high, his eyes proud, but so disturbed in minthat he was forced to cling to the baluster.

As he entered the corridor, he saw persongrouped at the farther end of it before his doolooking through the keyhole, rapping, and caling out: "Hey! Tartarin..."

He made two steps forward, and said, witparched lips: "Is it I whom you are seekinmessieurs?"

"Te! pardi, yes, my president!."

And a little old man, alert and wiry, dressed igray, and apparently bringing on his coat, hhat, his gaiters and his long and pendent moutache all the dust of his native town, fell upo

the neck of the hero and rubbed against hsmooth fat cheeks the withered leathery skin othe retired captain of equipment.



"Bravida!.. not possible!.. Excourbaniès tooand who is that over there?.."

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

"Hey! vè! why it's Pascalon... Embrace me, littone... What's that you are carrying?.. Put down..."

"The paper... take off the paper!.." whispereBravida. The youth undid the roll with a rapihand and the Tarasconese banner was diplayed to the eyes of the amazed Tartarin.

The delegates took off their hats.

"President"—the voice of Bravida tremblesolemnly—"you asked for the banner and whave brought it, té!"



The president opened a pair of eyes as round aapples: "I! I asked for it?"

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

"Yes, yes, certainemain..." said Tartarin, suddenly enlightened by the mention of BézuqueHe understood all and guessed the rest, and

tenderly moved by the ingenious lie of thapothecary to recall him to a sense of duty anhonour, he choked, and stammered in his shobeard: "Ah! my children, how kind you arWhat good you have done me!"

"Vive le présidain!" yelped Pascalon, brandishinthe oriflamme. Excourbaniès' gong respondedrolling its war-cry (" Ha! ha! ha! fen dé brut..") tthe very cellars of the hotel. Doors opened, in

quisitive heads protruded on every floor anthen disappeared, alarmed, before that standard and the dark and hairy men who werroaring singular words and tossing their arm



in the air. Never had the peaceable Hôtel Jungfrau been subjected to such a racket.

"Come into my room," said Tartarin, rathedisconcerted. He was feeling about in the darkness to find matches when an authoritative raon the door made it open of itself to admit thconsequential, yellow, and puffy face of th

innkeeper Meyer. He was about to enter, bustopped short before the darkness of the roomand said with closed teeth:

"Try to keep quiet... or I 'll have you taken u

by the police..."

A grunt as of wild bulls issued from the shdow at that brutal term "taken up." The hotekeeper recoiled one step, but added: "It

known who you are; they have their eye upoyou; for my part, I don't want any more sucpersons in my house!.."



"Monsieur Meyer," said Tartarin, gently, politely, but very firmly... "Send me my billThese gentlemen and myself start to-morrow

morning for the Jungfrau."O native soil! O little country within a greaone! by only hearing the Tarasconese accenquivering still with the air of that beloved lan

beneath the azure folds of its banner, beholTartarin, delivered from love and its snares anrestored to his friends, his mission, his glory.

And now, zou!

IX.

At the "Faithful Chamois."



The next day it was charming, that trip on foofrom Interlaken to Grindelwald, where thewere, in passing, to take guides for the Littl

Scheideck; charming, that triumphal march othe P. C. A., restored to his trappings anmountain habiliments, leaning on one side othe lean little shoulder of Commander Bravidand on the other, the robust arm of Excou

baniès, proud, both of them, to be nearest thim, to support their dear president, to carrhis ice-axe, his knapsack, his alpenstock, whisometimes before, sometimes behind or o

their flanks the fanatical Pascalon gambollelike a puppy, his banner duly rolled up into package to avoid the tumultuous scenes of thnight before.

The gayety of his companions, the sense of duty accomplished, the Jungfrau all white upothe sky, over there, like a vapour—nothinshort of all this could have made the hero foget what he left behind him, for ever and ever



may be, and without farewell. However, at thlast houses of Interlaken his eyelids swelleand, still walking on, he poured out his feeling

in turn into the bosom of Excourbanîès: "ListenSpiridion," or that of Bravida: "You know mPlacide..." For, by an irony on nature, that indomitable warrior was called Placide, and tharough buffalo, with all his instincts materia

Spiridion.

Unhappily, the Tarasconese race, more gallanthan sentimental, never takes its love-affairvery seriously. "Whoso loses a woman and tesous, is to be pitied about the money..." repliethe sententious Placide to Tartarin's tale, anSpiridion thought exactly like him. As for thinnocent Pascalon, he was horribly afraid o

women, and reddened to the ears when thname of the Little Scheideck was uttered beforhim, thinking some lady of flimsy morals wareferred to. The poor lover was therefore reduced to keep his confidences to himself, an



console himself alone—which, after all, is thsurest way.

But what grief could have resisted the attractions of the way through that narrow, deep ansombre valley, where they walked on the bankof a winding river all white with foam, rumbling with an echo like thunder among the p

ne-woods which skirted both its shores.The Tarasconese delegation, their heads in thair, advanced with a sort of religious awe anadmiration, like the comrades of Sinbad th

Sailor when they stood before the mangoes, thcotton-trees, and all the giant flora of the Indiacoasts. Knowing nothing but their own littbald and stony mountains they had never ima

gined there could be so many trees together osuch tall ones.

"That is nothing, as yet... wait till you see thJungfrau," said the P. C. A., who enjoyed the



amazement and felt himself magnified in theeyes.

At the same time, as if to brighten the scene anhumanize its solemn note, cavalcades went bthem, great landaus going at full speed, witveils floating from the doorways where curiouheads leaned out to look at the delegation pre

sing round its president. From point to poinalong the roadside were booths spread witknick-knacks of carved wood, while youngirls, stiff in their laced bodices, their stripeskirts and broad-brimmed straw hats, weroffering bunches of strawberries and edelweisOccasionally, an Alpine horn sent among thmountains its melancholy ritornello, swellingechoing from gorge to gorge, and slowly d

minishing, like a cloud that dissolves into vapour.

"'T is fine, 't is like an organ," murmured Pasclon, his eyes moist, in ecstasy, like the stained

glass saint of a church window. Excourbaniè



roared, undiscouraged, and the echoes rpeated, till sight and sound were lost, his Tarasconese intonations: "Ha! ha! ha! fen dé brut!"

But people grow weary after marching for twhours through the same sort of decorative scene, however well it may be organized, green oblue, glaciers in the distance, and all thing

sonorous as a musical clock. The dash of thtorrents, the singers in triplets, the sellers ocarved objects, the little flower-girls, soon became intolerable to our friends,—above all, thdampness, the steam rising in this species otunnel, the soaked soil full of water-plantwhere never had the sun penetrated.

"It is enough to give one a pleurisy," said Br

vida, turning up the collar of his coat. Theweariness set in, hunger, ill-humour. Thecould find no inn; and presently Excourbanièand Bravida, having stuffed themselves witstrawberries, began to suffer cruelly. Pascalo

himself, that angel, bearing not only the ban



ner, but the ice-axe, the knapsack, the alpenstock, of which the others had rid themselvebasely upon him, even Pascalon had lost h

gayety and ceased his lively gambolling.At a turn of the road, after they had just crossethe Lutschine by one of those covered bridgethat are found in regions of deep snow, a lou

blast on a horn greeted them."Ah! vaï , enough!.. enough!" howled the exaperated delegation.

The man, a giant, ensconced by the roadside, lgo an enormous trumpet of pine wood reaching to the ground and ending there in a percusion-box, which gave to this prehistoric instrument the sonorousness of a piece of artillery.

"Ask him if he knows of an inn," said the presdent to Excourbaniès, who, with enormoucheek and a small pocket dictionary undertooknow that they were in German Switzerland, t



serve the delegation as interpreter. But beforhe could pull out his dictionary the man repliein very good French:

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

On the way, he told them he had lived in Parfor several years, as commissionnaire at thcorner of the rue Vivienne.

"Another employé of the Company, parbleu

thought Tartarin, leaving his friends to be suprised. However, Bompard's comrade was veruseful, for, in spite of its French sign, Le Chamois Fidèle the people of the "Faithful Chamoicould speak nothing but a horrible Germa

patois.

Presently, the Tarasconese delegation, seatearound an enormous potato omelet, recovereboth the health and the good-humour as essen



tial to Southerners as the sun of their skieThey drank deep, they ate solidly. After mantoasts to the president and his coming ascen

sion, Tartarin, who had puzzled over the tavern-sign ever since his arrival, inquired of thhorn-player, who was breaking a crust in a coner of the room:

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

The man winked:

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

"Shoot them, is what he wants, vé " said Pacalon, full of enthusiasm; "never did the pres

dent miss a shot!"

Tartarin regretted that he had not brought hcarbine.

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



It so happened that the landlord was an olchamois hunter; he offered his gun, his powdehis buck-shot, and even himself as guide to

haunt he knew."Forward, zou!" cried Tartarin, granting to hhappy Alpinists the opportunity to show othe prowess of their chief. It was only a sligh

delay, after all; the Jungfrau lost nothing bwaiting.

Leaving the inn at the back, they had only twalk through an orchard, no bigger than th

garden of a station-master, before they founthemselves on a mountain, gashed with grecrevasses, among the fir-trees and underbrush

The innkeeper took the advance, and the Tara

conese presently saw him far up the heighwaving his arms and throwing stones, no doubto rouse the chamois. They rejoined him witmuch pain and difficulty over that rocky slop

hard especially to persons who had just bee



eating and were as little used to climbing athese good Alpinists of Tarascon. The air waheavy, moreover, with a tempest breath th

was slowly rolling the clouds along the summits above their heads.

"Boufre!" groaned Bravida.

Excourbaniès growled: "Outre!""What shall I be made to say!" added the gentlbleating Pascalon.

But the guide having, by a violent gesture, odered them to hold their tongues, and not tstir, Tartarin remarked, "Never speak undearms," with a sternness that rebuked every onalthough the president alone had a weapon

They stood stock still, holding their breathSuddenly, Pas-calon cried out:

"Vé the chamois, vé .."



About three hundred feet above them, the upright horns, the light buff coat and the four feegathered together of the pretty creature stoo

defined like a carved image at the edge of throck, looking at them fearlessly. Tartaribrought his piece to his shoulder methodicallyas his habit was, and was just about to firwhen 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, strdent, prolonged. The president settled thquestion by relating how the chamois, at thapproach of enemies, gives a sharp danger signal through the nostrils. That devil of a Tartari



knew everything about this kind of hunt, aabout all others!

At the call of their guide they started again; buthe acclivity became steeper and steeper, throcks more ragged, with bogs between them tright and left. Tartarin kept the lead, turninconstantly to help the delegates, holding out h

hand or his carbine: "Your hand, your hand, you don't mind," cried honest Bravida, whwas very much afraid of loaded weapons.

Another sign of the guide, another stop of th

delegation, their noses in the air.

"I felt a drop!" murmured the Commandevery uneasy. At the same instant the thundegrowled, but louder than the thunder roare

the voice of Excourbaniès: "Fire, Tartarin!" anthe chamois bounded past them, crossing thravine like a golden flash, too quickly for Tatarin to take aim, but not so fast that they di

not hear that whistle of his nostrils.



"I 'll have him yet, coquin de sort!" cried the president, but the delegates protested. Excoubaniès, becoming suddenly very sour, deman

ded if he had sworn to exterminate them."Dear ma-a-aster," bleated Pascalon, timidly, have heard say that chamois if you corner themin abysses turn at bay against the hunter an

are very dangerous.""Then don't let us corner him!" said Bravidhastily.

Tartarin called them milksops. But while thewere arguing, suddenly, abruptly, they all diappeared from one another's gaze in a warmthick vapour that smelt of sulphur, througwhich 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 brokthrough the mist and whirled it away like torn veil clinging to the briers, through whichzigzag flash of lightning fell at their feet with frightful clap of thunder. "My cap!" cried Spirdion, as the tempest bared his head, its hair

erect and crackling with electric sparks. Thewere in the very heart of the storm, the forgitself of Vulcan. Bravida was the first to fly, afull speed, the rest of the delegation flew behind him, when a cry from the president, whthought of everything, stopped them:

"Thunder!.. beware of the thunder!.."

At any rate, outside of the very real danger o

which he warned them, there was no possibiity of running on those steep and gullieslopes, now transformed into torrents, into cacades, by the pouring rain. The return was aw

ful, by slow steps under that crazy cliff, ami



the sharp, short flashes of lightning followed bexplosions, slipping, falling, and forced at timeto halt. Pascalon crossed himself and invoke

aloud, as at Tarascon: "Sainte Marthe and Sainte Hélène, Sainte Marie-Madeleine," while Excourbaniès swore: "Coquin de sort!" and Bravidthe rearguard, looked back in trepidation:

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

The idea of a furious chamois flinging itseupon its hunters was in the mind of the ol

warrior. In a low voice, in order not to alarmthe others, he communicated his fears to Tatarin, who bravely took his place as the reaguard and marched along, soaked to the skin

his head high, with that mute determinatiowhich is given by the imminence of danger. Buwhen he reached the inn and saw his dear Alpinists under shelter, drying their wet thingwhich smoked around a huge porcelain stov

in a first floor chamber, to which rose an odou



of grog already ordered, the president shivereand said, looking very pale: "I believe I havtaken cold."

"Taken cold!" No question now of startinagain; the delegation asked only for rest Quicka bed was warmed, they hurried the hot wingrog, and after his second glass the presiden

felt throughout his comfort-loving body warmth, a tingling that augured well. Two pilows at his back, a " plumeau" on his feet, hmuffler round his head, he experienced a delightful sense of well-being in listening to throaring of the storm, inhaling that good pinodour of the rustic little room with its woodewalls and leaden panes, and in looking at hdear Alpinists, gathered, glass in hand, aroun

his bed in the anomalous character given ttheir Gallic, Roman or Saracenic types by thcounterpanes, curtains, and carpets in whicthey were bundled while their own clothesteamed before the stove. Forgetful of himsel



he questioned each of them in a sympathetvoice:

"Are you well, Placide?.. Spiridion, you seemeto be suffering just now?.."

No, Spiridion suffered no longer, all that hapassed away on seeing the president so ill. Bra

vida, who adapted moral truths to the proverbof his nation, added cynically: "Neighbour's icomforts, and even cures." Then they talked otheir hunt, exciting one another with the recolection of certain dangerous episodes, such a

the moment when the animal turned upothem furiously; and without complicity of lying, in fact, most ingenuously, they fabricatethe fable they afterwards related on their retur

to Tarascon.Suddenly, Pascalon, who had been sent isearch of another supply of grog, reappeared iterror, one arm out of the blue-flowered curtai

that he gathered about him with the chaste ge



ture of a Polyeucte. He was more than a seconbefore he could articulate, in a whisper, breathlessly: "The chamois!.."

"Well, what of the chamois?.."

"He's down there, in the kitchen... warminhimself..."

"Ah! vaï ..."

"You are joking..."

"Suppose you go and see, Placide."

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

They certainly owed it to him, poor beast, aftethe wild run he had been made to take on thmountain, dispatched and recalled by his ma

ter, who, as a usual thing, put him through h



evolutions in the house, to show to tourishow easily a chamois could be trained.

"It is overwhelming!" said Bravida, making nfurther effort at comprehension; as for Tartarinhe dragged the muffler over his eyes like nightcap to hide from the delegates the sohilarity that overcame him at encounterin

wherever he went the dodges and the performers of Bompard's Switzerland.

X.

The ascension of the Jungfrau. Vé! the oxenThe Kennedycrampons will not work. Nor the reedlam

either. Apparition



of masked men at the chalet of the AlpinClub. The

president in a crevasse. On the summit. Ta

tarin becomes agod.

Great influx, that morning, to the Hôtel Bellevue on the Little Scheideck. In spite of the rai

and the squalls, tables had been laid outside ithe shelter of the veranda, amid a great displaof alpenstocks, flasks, telescopes, cuckoo clockin carved wood, so that tourists could, whilbreakfasting, contemplate at a depth of si

thousand feet before them the wonderful valleof Grindel-wald on the left, that of Lauterbrunnen on the right, and opposite, within gunshoas it seemed, the immaculate, grandiose slopeof the Jungfrau, its névés, glaciers, all that rverberating whiteness which illumines the aabout it, making glasses more transparent, anlinen whiter.



But now, for a time, general attention was atracted to a noisy, bearded caravan, which hajust arrived on horse, mule, and donkey-back

also in a chaise à porteurs, who had preparethemselves to climb the mountain by a copioubreakfast, and were now in a state of hilaritythe racket of which contrasted with the boreand solemn airs of the very distinguished Rice

and Prunes collected on the Scheideck, such aLord Chipendale, the Belgian senator and hfamily, the Austro-Hungarian diplomat, anseveral others. It would certainly have bee

supposed that the whole party of these beardemen sitting together at table were about to atempt the ascension, for one and all were buswith preparations for departure, rising, rushinabout to give directions to the guides, inspec

ing the provisions, and calling to each othefrom end to end of the terrace in stentorian tones.



"Hey! Placide, vé! the cooking-pan, see if it is ithe knapsack!.. Don't forget the reed-lamp, amouain."

Not until the actual departure took place was seen that, of all the caravan, only one was tmake the ascension: but which one?

"Children, are we ready?" said the good Tatarin in a joyous, triumphant voice, in whicnot a shade of anxiety trembled at the possibdangers of the trip—his last doubt as to thCompany's manipulation of Switzerland bein

dissipated that very morning before the twglaciers of Grindel-wald each protected by wicket and a turnstile, with this inscriptio"Entrance to the glacier: one franc fifty."

He could, therefore, enjoy without anxiety thdeparture in apotheosis, the joy of feeling himself looked at, envied, admired by those bollittle misses in boys' caps who laughed at him

so prettily on the Rigi-Kulm, and were now



enthusiastically comparing his short persowith the enormous mountain he was about tclimb. One drew his portrait in her album, an

other sought the honour of touching his alpenstock. "Tchemppegne!.. Tchemppegne!.." calleout of a sudden a tall, funereal Englishmawith a brick-coloured skin, coming up to himbottle and glass in hand. Then, after obligin

the hero to drink with him:

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

"Tartarin of Tarascon."

"Oh! yes... Tartarine... Capital name for a hose," said the lord, who must have been one othose great turfmen across the Channel.

The Austro-Hungarian diplomat also came tpress the Alpinist's hand between his mittenremembering vaguely to have seen him somwhere. "Enchanted!.. enchanted!.." he enuncated several times, and then, not knowing how



to get out of it, he added: "My compliments tmadame..." his social formula for cutting shopresentations.

But the guides were impatient; they must reacbefore nightfall the hut of the Alpine Clubwhere they were to sleep for the first stage, anthere was not a minute to lose. Tartarin felt i

saluted all with a circular gesture, smiled at thmalicious misses, and then, in a voice of thunder, commanded:

"Pascalon, the banner!"

It waved to the breeze; the Southerners took otheir hats, for they love theatricals at Tarasconand at the cry, a score of times repeated: "Lonlive the president!.. Long live Tartarin!.. Ah

ah!.. fen dé brut!.." the column moved off, thtwo guides in front carrying the knapsack, thprovisions, and a supply of wood; then camPascalon bearing the oriflamme, and lastly th

P. C. A. with the delegates who proposed t



accompany him as far as the glacier of the Guggi.

Thus deployed in procession, bearing its flapping flag along the sodden way beneath thosbarren or snowy crests, the cortège vaguelrecalled the funeral marches of an All Soulday in the country.

Suddenly the Commander cried out, alarmed"Vé! those oxen!"

Some cattle were now seen browsing the sho

grass in the hollows of the ground. The formecaptain of equipment had a nervous and quiinsurmountable terror of those animals, and ahe could not be left alone the delegation waforced to stop. Pascalon transmitted the stan

dard to the guides. Then, with a last embrachasty injunctions, and one eye on the cows:

"Adieu, adieu, qué!"



"No imprudence, au mouain..." they parted. Afor proposing to the president to go up withim, no one even thought of it; 'twas so high

boufre! And the nearer they came to it the higher it grew, the abysses were more abysmal, thpeaks bristled up in a white chaos, which looked to be insurmountable. It was better to looat the ascension from the Scheideck.

In all his life, naturally, the president of thClub of the Alpines had never set foot on a glacier. There is nothing of that sort on the mountainettes of Tarascon, little hills as balmy andry as a packet of lavender; and yet the approaches to the Guggi gave him the impressioof having already seen them, and wakenerecollections of hunts in Provence at the end o

the Camargue, near to the sea. The same tualways getting shorter and parched, as if seareby fire. Here and there were puddles of wateinfiltrations of the ground betrayed by punreeds, then came the moraine, like a sandy du



ne full of broken shells and cinders, and, far the end, the glacier, with its blue-green wavecrested with white and rounded in form, a s

lent, congealed ground-swell. The wind whiccame athwart it, whistling and strong, had thsame biting, salubrious freshness as his owsea-breeze.

"No, thank you... I have my crampons..." saiTartarin to the guide, who offered him woollesocks to draw on over his boots; "Kennedcrampons... perfected... very convenient..." Hshouted, as if to a deaf person, in order to makhimself understood by Christian Inebnit, whknew no more French than his comrade Kaumann; and then the P. C. A. sat down upon thmoraine and strapped on a species of sand

with three enormous and very strong iron spkes. He had practised them a hundred timethese Kennedy crampons, manoeuvring themin the garden of the baobab; nevertheless, thpresent effect was unexpected. Beneath th



waves with all the appearance of a furious anpetrified tempest.

Apparent immobility only, for hollow crackings, subterranean gurgles, enormous masseof ice displacing themselves slowly, as if moved by the machinery of a stage, indicated thinward life of this frozen mass and its treache

ous elements. To the eyes of our Alpiniswherever he cast his axe crevasses were opening, bottomless pits, where masses of ice ifragments rolled indefinitely. The hero fell repeatedly; once to his middle in one of thosgreenish gullies, where his broad shoulderalone kept him from going to the bottom.

On seeing him so clumsy, and yet so tranqu

so sure of himself, laughing, singing, gesticulaing, as he did while breakfasting, the guideimagined that Swiss champagne had made aimpression upon him. What else could thesuppose of the president of an Alpine Club,

renowned ascensionist, of whom his friend



spoke only with "Ahs!" and exultant gestureAfter taking him each by the arm with the respectful firmness of policemen putting into

carriage an overcome heir to a title, they endeavoured, by the help of monosyllables angestures, to rouse his mind to a sense of thdangers of the route, the necessity of reachinthe hut before nightfall, with threats of cr

vasses, cold, avalanches. Finally, with the poinof their ice-picks they showed him the enomous accumulation of ice, of névé not yet tranformed into glacier rising before them to th

zenith in blinding repetition.But the worthy Tartarin laughed at all tha"Ha! vaï! crevasses!.. Ha! vaï! those avalanches!.." and he burst out laughing, winke

his eye, and prodded their sides with helbows to let them know they could not foohim, for he was in the secret of the comedy.

The guides at last ended by making merry wit

the Tarasconese songs, and when they rested



moment on a solid block to let their monsieuget his breath, they yodelled in the Swiss waythough not too loudly, for fear of avalanche

nor very long, for time was getting on. Theknew the coming of night by the sharper coldbut especially by the singular change in hue othese snows and ice-packs, heaped-up, ovehanging, which always keep, even under mist

skies, a rainbow tinge of colour until the daylight fades, rising higher and higher to the vanishing summits, where the snows take on thlivid, spectral tints of the lunar universe. Pallo

petrifaction, silence, death itself. And the gooTartarin, so warm, so living, was beginning tlose his liveliness when the distant cry of a brd, the note of a "snow partridge" brought bacbefore his eyes a baked landscape, a coppe

coloured setting sun, and a band of Tarasconese sportsmen, mopping their faces, seateon their empty game-bags, in the slender shadof an olive-tree. The recollection was a comfoto him.



screwed to the floor like the benches that arround it. The table was already laid; threbowls, pewter spoons, the reed-lamp to hea

the coffee, two cans of Chicago preservemeats already opened. Tartarin thought thdinner delicious although the fumes of the onion soup infected the atmosphere, and the famous spirit-lamp, which ought to have mad

its pint of coffee in three minutes, refused tperform its functions.

At the dessert he sang; that was his only meanof conversing with his guides. He sang themthe airs of his native land: La Tarasque, and LFilles d'Avignon. To which the guides rsponded with local songs in German patois: MVater isch en Appenzeller... aou... aou... Worth

fellows with hard, weather-beaten features as cut from the rock, beards in the hollows thalooked like moss and those clear eyes, used tgreat spaces, like the eyes of sailors. The samsensation of the sea and the open, which he ha



felt just now on approaching Guggi, Tartariagain felt here, in presence of these mariners othe glacier in this close cabin, low and smoky

the regular forecastle of a ship; in the drippinof the snow from the roof as it melted with thwarmth; in the great gusts of wind, shakineverything, cracking the boards, fluttering thflame of the lamp, and falling abruptly int

vast, unnatural silence, like the end of thworld.

They had just finished dinner when heavsteps upon the ringing path and voices werheard approaching. Violent blows with the buend of some weapon shook the door. Tartaringreatly excited, looked at his guides... A noturnal attack on these heights!.. The blows re

doubled. "Who goes there?" cried the herjumping for his ice-axe; but already the hut wainvaded by two gigantic Yankees, in white lnen masks, their clothing soaked with snowand sweat, and behind them guides, porters,



whole caravan, on its return from ascending thJungfrau.

"You are welcome, milords," said Tartarin, wita liberal, dispensing gesture, of which the mlords showed not the slightest need in makinthemselves free of everything. In a trice thtable was surrounded, the dishes removed, th

bowls and spoons rinsed in hot water for thuse of the new arrivals (according to established custom in Alpine huts); the boots of thmilords smoked before the stove, while thethemselves, bare-footed, their feet wrapped istraw, were sprawling at their ease before fresh onion soup.

Father and son, these two Americans; two red

haired giants, with heads of pioneers, hard anself-reliant. One of them, the elder, had twdilated eyes, almost white, in a bloated, sunburned, fissured face, and presently, by thhesitating way in which he groped for his bow

and spoon, and the care with which his so



looked after him, Tartarin became aware thathis was the famous blind Alpinist of whom hhad been told, not believing the tale, at the Hô

tel Bellevue; a celebrated climber in his youthwho now, in spite of his sixty years and hinfirmity, was going over with his son thscenes of his former exploits. He had alreaddone the Wetterhorn and the Jungfrau, and wa

intending to attack the Matterhorn and thMont Blanc, declaring that the air upon summits, that glacial breath with its taste of snowcaused him inexpressible joy, and a perfect re

call of his lost vigour."Différemment," asked Tartarin of one of thporters, for the Yankees were not communicative, and answered only by a "yes" or a "no" t

all his advances "différemment inasmuch as hcan't see, how does he manage at the dangerouplaces?"

"Oh! he has got the mountaineer's foot; beside

his son watches over him, and places his heels



And it is a fact that he has never had an accdent."

"All the more because accidents in Switzerlanare never very terrible, qué?" With a comprhending smile to the puzzled porter, Tartarinmore and more convinced that the "whole thinwas blague," stretched himself out on the plan

rolled in his blanket, the muffler up to his eyeand went to sleep, in spite of the light, the nose, the smoke of the pipes and the smell of thonion soup...

"Mossié!.. Mossié!.."

One of his guides was shaking him for depature, while the other poured boiling coffee intthe bowls. A few oaths and the groans of sleep

ers whom Tartarin crushed on his way to thtable, and then to the door. Abruptly he founhimself outside, stung by the cold, dazzled bthe fairy-like reflections of the moon upon tha

white expanse, those motionless congealed ca



cades, where the shadow of the peaks, the aguilles, the séracs, were sharply defined in thdensest black. No longer the sparkling chaos o

the afternoon, nor the livid rising upward othe gray tints of evening, but a strange irregulacity of darksome alleys, mysterious passagedoubtful corners between marble monumenand crumbling ruins—a dead city, with broa

desert spaces.

Two o'clock! By walking well they could be the top by mid-day. "Zou!" said the P. C. Avery lively, and dashing forward, as if to thassault. But his guides stopped him. They mube roped for the dangerous passages.

"Ah! vaï , roped!.. Very good, if that amuse

you."Christian Inebnit took the lead, leaving twelvfeet of rope between himself and Tartarin, whwas separated by the same length from the se

ond guide who carried the provisions and th



banner. The hero kept his footing better than hdid the day before; and confidence in the Company must indeed have been strong, for he di

not take seriously the difficulties of the path—we can call a path the terrible ridge of ice alonwhich they now advanced with precaution, ridge but a few feet wide and so slippery thaChristian was forced to cut steps with his ice

axe.

The line of the ridge sparkled between twdepths of abysses on either side. But if yothink that Tartarin was frightened, not at alScarcely did he feel the little quiver of the cutcle of a freemason novice when subjected to hopening test. He placed his feet most preciselin the holes which the first guide cut for them

doing all that he saw the guide do, as tranquas he was in the garden of the baobab when hpractised around the margin of the pond, to thterror of the goldfish. At one place the ridgbecame so narrow that he was forced to sit a



A violent shake of the rope from before anbehind stopped him short in the middle of hcouplet. "Hush... Hush..." said Inebnit, pointin

with his ice-axe to the threatening line of gigantic séracs on their tottering foundations whicthe slightest jar might send thundering dowthe steep. But Tartarin knew what that meanhe was not the man to ply with any such tale

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 silenctheir crazy singer, made a great détour to geaway from the séracs, and presently were stopped by an enormous crevasse, the glaucougreen sides of which were lighted, far dow

their depths, by the first furtive rays of thdawn. What is called in Switzerland "a snowbridge" spanned it; but so slight was it, so fragile, that they had scarcely advanced a step before it crumbled away in a cloud of white dus



dragging down the leading guide and Tartarinhanging to the rope which Rodolphe Kaumann, the rear guide, was alone left to hold

clinging with all the strength of his mountaivigour to his pick-axe, driven deeply into thice. But although he was able to hold the twmen suspended in the gulf he had not enougforce to draw them up and he remained, crou

ching on the snow, his teeth clenched, his mucles straining, and too far from the crevasse tsee what was happening.

Stunned at first by the fall, and blinded bsnow, Tartarin waved his arms and legs at random, like a puppet out of order; then, drawinhimself up by means of the rope, he hung supended over the abyss, his nose against its ic

side, which his breath polished, in the attitudof a plumber in the act of soldering a wastepipe. He saw the sky above him growing paleand the stars disappearing; below he could fa



hom the gulf and its opaque shadows, fromwhich rose a chilling breath.

Nevertheless, his first bewilderment over, hrecovered his self-possession and his fine goodhumour.

"Hey! up there! père Kaufmann, don't leave u

to mildew here, qué! there 's a draught around, and besides, this cursed rope is cuttinour loins."

Kaufmann was unable to answer; to have un

clenched his teeth would have lessened hstrength. But Inebnit shouted from below:

"Mossié... Mossié... ice-axe..." for his own habeen lost in the fall; and, the heavy implemen

being now passed from the hands of Tartarin tthose of the guide (with difficulty, owing to thspace that separated the two hanged ones), thmountaineer used it to make notches in the ice



wall before him, into which he could fasteboth hands and feet.

The weight of the rope being thus lessened bat least one-half, Rodolphe Kaufmann, witcarefully calculated vigour and infinite precautions, began to draw up the president, whosTarasconese cap appeared at last at the edge o

the crevasse. Inebnit followed him in turn anthe two mountaineers met again with that effusion of brief words which, in persons of limiteelocution, follows great dangers. Both wertrembling with their effort, and Tartarin passethem his flask of kirsch to steady their legs. Hhimself was nimble and calm, and while hshook himself free of snow he hummed hsong under the nose of his wondering guide

beating time with his foot to the measure:"Brav... brav... Franzose..." said Kaufmann, tapping him on the shoulder; to which Tartarianswered with his fine laugh:



"You rogue! I knew very well there was ndanger..."

Never within the memory of guides was therseen such an Alpinist.

They started again, climbing perpendicularly sort of gigantic wall of ice some thousand fe

high, in which they were forced to cut steps athey went along, which took much time. Thman of Tarascon began to feel his strength givway under the brilliant sun which flooded thwhiteness of the landscape and was all the mo

re fatiguing to his eyes because he had droppehis green spectacles into the crevasse. Presentlya dreadful sense of weakness seized him, thamountain sickness which produces the sam

effects as sea-sickness. Exhausted, his heaempty, his legs flaccid, he stumbled and lost hfeet, so that the guides were forced to grashim, one on each side, supporting and hoistinhim to the top of that wall of ice. Scarcely thre

hundred feet now separated them from th



summit of the Jungfrau; but although the snowwas hard and bore them, and the path muceasier, this last stage took an almost intermin

ble time, the fatigue and the suffocation of thP. C. A. increasing all the while.

Suddenly the mountaineers loosed their holupon him, and waving their caps began to yo

del in a transport of joy. They were there! Thspot in immaculate space, this white crest, somewhat rounded, was the goal, and for thagood Tartarin the end of the somnambulic topor in which he had wandered for an hour omore.

"Scheideck! Scheideck!" shouted the guideshowing him far, far below, on a verdant pla

teau emerging from the mists of the valley, thHôtel Bellevue about the size of a thimble.

Thence to where they stood lay a wondroupanorama, an ascent of fields of gilded snow

oranged by the sun, or else of a deep, cold blu



a piling up of mounds of ice, fantastically strutured into towers, flèches, aiguilles, arêtes, angigantic heaps, under which one could we

believe that the lost megatherium or mastodolay sleeping. All the tints of the rainbow playethere and met in the bed of vast glaciers rollindown their immovable cascades, crossed bother little frozen torrents, the surfaces o

which the sun's warmth liquefied, makinthem smoother and more glittering. But, at thgreat height at which they stood, all this spakling brilliance calmed itself; a light floated

cold, ecliptic, which made Tartarin shuddeeven more than the sense of silence and soltude in that white desert with its mysteriourecesses.

A little smoke, with hollow detonations, rosfrom the hotel. They were seen, a cannon wafired in their honour, and the thought that thewere being looked at, that his Alpinists werthere, and the misses, the illustrious Prunes an



Rices, all with their opera-glasses levelled up thim, recalled Tartarin to a sense of the grandeur of his mission. He tore thee, O Tara

conese banner! from the hands of the guidwaved thee twice or thrice, and then, plunginthe handle of his ice-axe deep into the snow, hseated himself upon the iron of the pick, bannein hand, superb, facing the public. And there—

unknown to himself—by one of those spectrreflections frequent upon summits, taken between the sun and the mists that rose behinhim, a gigantic Tartarin was outlined on th

sky, broader, dumpier, his beard bristling beyond the muffler, like one of those Scandinavian gods enthroned, as the legend has iamong the clouds.



XI.

En route for Tarascon. The Lake of GenevTartarin proposes

a visit to the dungeon of Bonnivard. Shodialogue amid the

roses. The whole band under lock and key

The unfortunateBonnivard. Where the rope made at Avgnon was found.

As a result of the ascension, Tartarin's nos

peeled, pimpled, and his cheeks cracked. Hkept to his room in the Hôtel Bellevue for fivdays—five days of salves and compresses, thsticky unsavouriness and ennui of which hendeavoured to elude by playing cards wit

the delegates or dictating to them a long, cicumstantial account of his expedition, to bread in session, before the Club of the Alpineand published in the Forum. Then, as the gen

eral lumbago had disappeared and nothin



remained upon the noble countenance of the PC. A. but a few blisters, sloughs and chilblainon a fine complexion of Etruscan pottery, th

delegation and its president set out for Taracon, via Geneva.

Let me omit the episodes of that journey, thalarm cast by the Southern band into narrow

railway carriages, steamers, tables d'hôte, by isongs, its shouts, its overflowing hilarity, ibanner, and its alpenstocks; for since the ascension of the P. C. A. they had all supplied themselves with those mountain sticks, on which thnames of celebrated climbs were inscribedburnt in, together with popular verses.

Montreux!

Here the delegates, at the suggestion of themaster, decided to halt for two or three days iorder to visit the famous shores of Lake LemanChillon especially, and its legendary dungeon

where the great patriot Bonnivard languished



and which Byron and Delacroix have immortaized.

At heart, Tartarin cared little for Bonnivard, hadventure with William Tell having enlighened him about Swiss legends; but in passinthrough Interlaken he had heard that Sonia hagone to Montreux with her brother, whos

health was much worse, and this invention oan historical pilgrimage was only a pretext tmeet the young girl again, and, who knowspersuade her perhaps to follow him to Taracon.

Let it be fully understood, however, that hcompanions believed, with the best faith in thworld, that they were on their way to rende

homage to a great Genevese citizen whose hitory the P. C. A. had related to them; in facwith their native taste for theatrical manifestations they were desirous, as soon as they landed at Montreux, of forming in line, banne

displayed and marching at once to Chillon wit



repeated cries of "Vive Bonnivard!" The presdent was forced to calm them: "Breakfast firsthe said, "and after that we 'll see about it." S

they filled the omnibus of some Pension Mülleor other, situated, with many of its kind, closto the landing.

"Vé! that gendarme, how he looks at us," sai

Pascalon, the last to get in, with the bannealways very troublesome to install. "True," saiBravida, uneasily; "what does he want of uthat gendarme? Why does he examine us likthat?"

"He recognizes me, pardi!" said the worthy Tatarin modestly; and he smiled upon the soldieof the Vaudois police, whose long blue hoode

coat followed perseveringly behind the omnbus as it threaded its way among the poplaron the shore.

It was market-day at Montreux. Rows of littl

booths were open to the winds of the lake, di



playing fruit, vegetables, laces very cheap, anthat white jewellery, looking like manufacturesnow or pearls of ice, with which the Swis

women ornament their costumes. With all thwere mingled the bustle of the little port, thjostling of a whole flotilla of gayly paintepleasure-boats, the transshipment of casks ansacks from large brigantines with lateen sail

the hoarse cries, the bells of the steamers, thstir among the cafés, the breweries, the traffic othe florists and the second-hand dealers whlined the quay. If a ray of sun had fallen upo

the scene, one might have thought one's self othe marina of a Mediterranean resort betweeMentone and Bordighera. But sun was lackinand the Tarasconese gazed at the pretty landscape through a watery vapour that rose from

the azure lake, climbed the steep path and thpebbly little streets, and joined, above the houses, other clouds, black and gray that werclinging about the sombre verdure of thmountain, big with rain.



"Coquin de sort! I'm not a lacustrian," said Spirdion Excourbaniès, wiping the glass of thwindow to look at the perspective of glacier

and white vapours that closed the horizon ifront of him...

"Nor I, either," sighed Pascalon, "this fog, thstagnant water... makes me want to cry."

Bravida complained also, in dread of his sciatgout.

Tartarin reproved them sternly. Was it nothin

to be able to relate, on their return, that thehad seen the dungeon of Bonnivard, inscribetheir names on its historic walls beside the signatures of Rousseau, Byron, Victor HugGeorge Sand, Eugène Sue? Suddenly, in th

middle of his tirade, the president interruptehimself and changed colour... He had jucaught sight of a little round hat on a coil oblond hair. Without stopping the omnibus, th

pace of which had slackened in going up hil



he sprang out, calling back to the stupefieAlpinists: "Go on to the hotel..."

"Sonia!.. Sonia!.."

He feared that he might not be able to catcher, she walked so rapidly, the delicate silhouette of her shadow falling on the macadam o

the road. She turned at his call and waited fohim. "Ah! is it you?" she said; and as soon athey had shaken hands she walked on. He feinto step beside her, much out of breath, anbegan to excuse himself for having left her s

abruptly... arrival of friends... necessity of making the ascension (of which his face was stibearing traces)... She listened without a wordhastening her pace, her eyes strained and fixed

Looking at her profile, she seemed to him paleher features no longer soft with childlike innocence, but hard, a something resolute on themwhich till now had existed only in her voicand her imperious will; and yet her youthfu



grace was there, and the gold of her wavinhair.

"And Boris, how is he?" asked Tartarin, rathediscomfited by her silence and coldness, whicbegan to affect him.

"Boris?.." she quivered: "Ah! true, you do no

know... Well then! come, come..."They followed a country lane leading past vneyards sloping to the lake, and villas witgardens, and elegant terraces laden with clema

tis, blooming with roses, petunias, and myrtlein pots. Now and then they met some foreignewith haggard cheeks and melancholy glancwalking slowly and feebly, like the manwhom one meets at Mentone and Monaco; on

ly, away down yonder the sunshine laps rounall, absorbs all, while beneath this lowerincloudy sky suffering is more apparent, thougthe flowers seem fresher.



"Enter," said Sonia, pushing open the raileiron door of a white marble façade on whicwere Russian words in gilded letters.

At first Tartarin did not understand where hwas. A little garden was before him with gravelled paths very carefully kept, and quantitieof climbing roses hanging among the green o

the trees, and bearing great clusters of whitand yellow blooms, which filled the narrowspace with their fragrance and glow. Amonthese garlands, this lovely efflorescence, a fewstones were standing or lying with dates annames; the newest of which bore the wordcarved on its surface:

"Boris Wassilief.22 years."

He had been there a few days, dying almost asoon as they arrived at Montreux; and in thcemetery of foreigners the exile had found sort of country among other Russians and Pole

and Swedes, buried beneath the roses, con



sumptives of cold climates sent to this Northern Nice, because the Southern sun would bfor them too violent, the transition too abrupt.

They stood for a moment motionless and mutbefore the whiteness of that new stone lying othe blackness of the fresh-turned earth; thyoung girl, with her head bent down, inhalin

the breath of the roses, and calming, as shstood, her reddened eyes.

"Poor little girl!" said Tartarin with emotiontaking in his strong rough hands the tips o

Sonia's fingers. "And you? what will you dnow?"

She looked him full in the face with dry anshining eyes in which the tears no longer trem

bled.

"I? I leave within an hour."

"You are going?.."



"Bolibine is already in St. Petersburg... Manilois waiting for me to cross the frontier... I returto the work. We shall be heard from." Then, in

low voice, she added with a half-smile, planing her blue glance full into that of Tartarinwhich avoided it: "He who loves me followme."

Ah! vaï , follow her! The little fanatic frightenehim. Besides, this funereal scene had cooled hlove. Still, he ought not to appear to back dowlike a scoundrel. So, with his hand on his heaand the gesture of an Abencerrage, the herbegan: "You know me, Sonia..."

She did not need to hear more.

"Gabbler!" she said, shrugging her shoulder

And she walked away, erect and proud, beneath the roses, without once turning roundGabbler!.. not one word more, but the intonation was so contemptuous that the worthy Ta

tarin blushed beneath his beard, and looke



about to see if they had been quite alone in thgarden so that no one had overheard her.

Among our Tarasconese, fortunately, impresions do not last long. Five minutes later Tatarin was going up the terraces of Montreuwith a lively step in quest of the Pension Mülleand his Alpinists, who must certainly b

waiting breakfast for him; and his whoperson breathed a relief, a joy at getting rifinally of that dangerous acquaintance. As hwalked along he emphasized with manenergetic nods the eloquent explanations whicSonia would not wait to hear, but which hgave to himself mentally: Bé!.. yes, despotismcertainly... He didn't deny that... but from thato action, boufre!.. And then, to make it h

profession to shoot despots!.. Why, if aoppressed peoples applied to him—just as thArabs did to Bombonnel whenever a pantheroamed round their village—he couldn't sufficfor them all, never!



At this moment a hired carriage coming dowthe hill at full speed cut short his monologuHe had scarcely time to jump upon the side

walk with a "Take care, you brute!" when hcry of anger was changed to one of stupefation: "Quès aco!.. Boudiou!.. Not possible!.."

I give you a thousand guesses to say what h

saw in that old landau...The delegation! the full delegation, BravidPascalon, Excourbaniès, piled upon the bacseat, pale, horror-stricken, ghastly, and tw

gendarmes in front of them, muskets in handThe sight of all those profiles, motionless anmute, visible through the narrow frame of thcarriage window, was like a nightmare. Naile

to the ground, as formerly on the ice by hKennedy crampons, Tartarin was gazing at thafantastic vehicle flying along at a gallop, folowed at full speed by a flock of schoolboytheir atlases swinging on their backs, when

voice shouted in his ears: "And here's th



fourth!.." At the same time clutched, garottedbound, he, too, was hoisted into a locati witgendarmes, among them an officer armed wit

a gigantic cavalry sabre, which he held straighup from between his knees, the point of touching the roof of the vehicle.

Tartarin wanted to speak, to explain. Evidentl

there must be some mistake... He told his namhis nation, demanded his consul, and named seller of Swiss honey, Ichener, whom he hamet at the fair at Beaucaire. Then, on the persitent silence of his captors, he bethought himthat this might be another bit of machinery iBompard's fairyland; so, addressing the officehe said with sly air: "For fun, qué!.. ha! vaï , yorogue, I know very well it is all a joke."

"Not another word, or I'll gag you," said thofficer, rolling terrible eyes as if he meant tspit him on his sabre.



The other kept quiet, and stirred no more, bugazed through the door at the lake, the tamountains of a humid green, the hotels an

pensions with variegated roofs and gildesigns visible for miles, and on the slopes, as the Rigi, a coming and going of market anprovision baskets, and (like the Rigi again) comical little railway, a dangerous mechanic

plaything crawling up the height to Glionand—to complete the resemblance to ReginMontium—a pouring, beating rain, an exchangof water and mist from the sky to Leman an

Leman to the sky, the clouds descending tithey touched the waves.

The vehicle crossed a drawbridge between cluster of little shops of "chamoiseries," pen

knives, corkscrews, pocket-combs, etc., anstopped in the courtyard of an old castle ovegrown with weeds, flanked by two round pepper-pot towers with black balconies guarded bparapets and supported by beams. Where wa



he? Tartarin learned where when he heard thofficer of gendarmerie discussing the mattewith the concierge of the castle, a fat man in

Greek cap who was jangling a bunch of rustkeys.

"Solitary confinement... but I haven't a place fohim. The others have taken all... unless we pu

him in Bonnivard's dungeon.""Yes, put him in Bonnivard's dungeon; thatgood enough for him," ordered the captain; anit was done as he said.

This Castle of Chillon, about which the P. C. Ahad never for two days ceased to discourse this dear Alpinists, and in which, by the irony ofate, he found himself suddenly incarcerate

without knowing why, is one of the most frquented historical monuments in SwitzerlandAfter having served as a summer residence tthe Dukes of Savoie, then as a state-prison, a

terwards as an arsenal for arms and munition



it is to-day the mere pretext for an excursionlike the Rigi and the Tellsplatte. It still containhowever, a post of gendarmerie and a "violon

that is, a cell for drunkards and the naughtboys of the neighbourhood; but they are so rarin the peaceable Canton of Vaud that the "violon" is always empty and the concierge uses as a receptacle to store his wood for winte

Therefore the arrival of all these prisoners haput him out of temper, especially at the thoughthat he could no longer take visitors to see thfamous dungeon, which at this season of th

year is the chief profit of the place.Furious, he showed the way to Tartarin, whfollowed him without the courage to make thslightest resistance. A few crumbling steps,

damp corridor smelling like a cellar, a doothick as a wall with enormous hinges, and therthey were, in a vast subterranean vault, witearthen floor and heavy Roman pillars in whicwere still the iron rings to which prisoners o



state had been chained. A dim light fell, tremulous with the shimmer of the lake, through narow slits in the wall, which scarcely showe

more than a scrap of the sky."Here you are at home," said the jailer. "Be carful you don't go to the farther end: the pit there..."

Tartarin recoiled, horrified:—

"The pit! Boudiou!"

"What do you expect, my lad? I am ordered tput you in Bonnivard's dungeon... I have puyou in Bonnivard's dungeon... Now, if yohave the means, you can be furnished with cetain comforts, for instance, a mattress and cov

erlet for the night."

"Something to eat, in the first place," said Tatarin, from whom, very luckily, they had notaken his purse.



The concierge returned with a fresh roll, beeand a sausage, greedily devoured by the newprisoner of Chillon, fasting since the night be

fore and hollow with fatigue and emotionWhile he ate on his stone bench in the gleam ohis vent-hole window, the jailer examined himwith a good-natured eye.

"Faith," said he, "I don't know what you havdone, nor why they should treat you so severely..."

"Nor I either, coquin de sort! I know nothin

about it," said Tartarin, with his mouth full.

"Well, it is very certain that you don't look lika bad man, and, surely, you would n't hinderpoor father of a family from earning his living

would you?.. Now, see here!.. I have got, uabove there, a whole party of people who havcome to see Bonnivard's dungeon... If yowould promise me to keep quiet, and not try t

run away..."



The worthy Tartarin bound himself by an oathand five minutes later he beheld his dungeoinvaded by his old acquaintances on the Rig

Kulm and the Tellsplatte, that jackass Schwanthaler, the ineptissimus Astier-Réhu, the member of the Jockey-Club with his niece (h'mh'm!..) and all the travellers on Cook's CirculaAshamed, dreading to be recognized, the un

fortunate man concealed himself behind pillargetting farther and farther away as the troop otourists advanced, preceded by the conciergand his homily, delivered in a doleful voic

"Here is where the unfortunate Bonnivardetc..."

They advanced slowly, retarded by discussionbetween the two savants, quarrelling as usu

and ready to jump at each other's throats; thone waving his campstool, the other his traveling-bag in fantastic attitudes, which the twlight from the window-slits lengthened upothe vaulted roof.



By dint of retreating, Tartarin presently founhimself close to the hole of the pit, a black popen to the level of the soil, emitting the breat

of ages, malarious and glacial. Frightened, hstopped short, and curled himself into a cornehis cap over his eyes. But the damp saltpetre othe walls affected him, and suddenly a stentorian sneeze, which made the tourists recoi

gave notice of his presence.

"Tiens, there's Bonnivard!.." cried the bold littlParisian woman in a Directory hat whom thgentleman from the Jockey-Club called his niece.

The Tarasconese hero did not allow himself tbe disconcerted.

"They are really very curious, these pits," hsaid, in the most natural tone in the world, as he was visiting the dungeon, like them, fopleasure; and so saying, he mingled with th

other travellers, who smiled at recognizing th



Alpinist of the Rigi-Kulm, the merry instigatoof the famous ball.

"Hi! mossié... ballir... dantsir!.."

The comical silhouette of the little fairSchwan-thaler rose up before him ready to seze him for a country dance. A fine mood h

was in now for dancing! But not knowing howto rid himself of that determined little scrap oa woman, he offered his arm and gallantlshowed her his dungeon, the ring to which thcaptive was chained, the trace of his steps o

the stone round that pillar; and never, hearinhim converse with such ease, did the good ladeven dream that he too was a prisoner of stata victim of the injustice and the wickedness o

men. Terrible, however, was the departurwhen the unfortunate Bonnivard, having conducted his partner to the door, took leave of hewith the smile of a man of the world: "Nthank you, vé!.. I stay a few moments longer

Thereupon he bowed, and the jailer, who ha



his eye upon him, locked and bolted the dooto the stupefaction of everybody.

What a degradation! He perspired with anguish, unhappy man, while listening to thexclamations of the tourists as they walkeaway. Fortunately, the anguish was not renewed. No more tourists arrived that day o

account of the bad weather. A terrible winblew through the rotten boards, moans camup from the pit as from victims ill-buried, anthe wash of the lake, swollen with rain, beaagainst the walls to the level of the windowslits and spattered its water upon the captivAt intervals the bell of a passing steamer, thclack of its paddle-wheels cut short the refletions of poor Tartarin, as evening, gray an

gloomy, fell into the dungeon and seemed tenlarge it.

How explain this arrest, this imprisonment ithe ill-omened place? Costecalde, perhaps

electioneering manoeuvre at the last hour?.. O



could it be that the Russian police, warned ohis very imprudent language, his liaison witSonia, had asked for his extradition? But if s

why arrest the delegates?.. What blame coulattach to those poor unfortunates, whose terroand despair he imagined, although they wernot, like him, in Bonnivard's dungeon, beneatthose granite arches, where, since night ha

fallen, roamed monstrous rats, cockroachesilent spiders with hairy, crooked legs.

But see what it is to possess a good consciencIn spite of rats, cold, spiders, and beetles, thgreat Tartarin found in the horror of that stateprison, haunted by the shades of martyrs, thsame solid and sonorous sleep, mouth openfists closed, which came to him, between th

abysses and heaven, in the hut of the AlpinClub. He fancied he was dreaming when hheard his jailer say in the morning:—

"Get up; the prefect of the district is here... H

has come to examine you..." Adding, with



certain respect, "To bring the prefect out in thway... why, you must be a famous scoundrel."

Scoundrel! no—but you may look like one, ater spending the night in a damp and dustdungeon without having a chance to make toilet, however limited. And when, in the fomer stable of the castle transformed into

guardroom with muskets in racks along thwalls,—when, I say, Tartarin, after a reassuringlance at his Alpinists seated between twgendarmes, appeared before the prefect of thdistrict, he felt his disreputable appearance ipresence of that correct and solemn magistratwith the carefully trimmed beard, who said thim sternly:—

"You call yourself Manilof, do you not?.. Rusian subject... incendiary at 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 aend to your denials... Do you know this rope?"

His rope! coquin de sort! His rope, woven witiron, made at Avignon. He lowered his head, t

the stupefaction of the delegates, and said: know it."

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

Tartarin, with a shudder, swore that he hanothing to do with it.

"We shall see!"

The Italian tenor was now introduced,—in oher words, the police spy whom the Nihilishad hung to the branch of an oak-tree on thBrünig, but whose life was miraculously save

by wood-choppers.



The spy looked at Tartarin. "That is not thman," he said; then at the delegates, "Nor theyeither... A mistake has been made."

The prefect, furious, turned to Tartarin. "Thenwhat are you doing here?" he asked.

"That is what I ask myself, vé!.." replied th

president, with the aplomb of innocence.After a short explanation the Alpinists of Tarascon, restored to liberty, departed from thCastle of Chillon, where none have ever felt i

oppressive and romantic melancholy more thathey. They stopped at the Pension Müller to gtheir luggage and banner, and to pay for thbreakfast of the day before which they had nohad time to eat; then they started for Geneva b

the train. It rained. Through the streaminwindows they read the names of stations oaristocratic villeggiatura: Clarens, Vevey, Lausanne; red chalets, little gardens of rare shrub

passed them under a misty veil, the branches o



the trees, the turrets on the roofs, the gallerieof the hotels all dripping.

Installed in one corner of a long railway cariage, on two seats facing each other, thAlpinists had a downcast and discomfiteappearance. Bravida, very sour, complained oaches, and repeatedly asked Tartarin wit

savage irony: "Eh bé!you've seen it now, thdungeon of Bonnivard's that you were so set oseeing... I think you have seen it, quéExcourbaniès, voiceless for the first time in hlife, gazed piteously at the lake which escortethem the whole way: "Water! more wateBoudiou!.. after this, I 'll never in my life takanother bath."Stupefied by a terror which still lasts, Pascalon

the banner between his legs, sat back in hseat, looking to right and left like a hare fearfuof being caught again... And Tartarin?.. Oh! hever dignified and calm, he was diverting himself by reading the Southern newspapers,

package of which had been sent to the Pensio



Müller, all of them having reproduced from thForum the account of his ascension, the same hhad himself dictated, but enlarged, magnified

and embellished with ineffable laudations. Suddenly the hero gave a cry, a formidable crywhich resounded to the end of the carriage. Athe travellers sat up excitedly, expecting aaccident. 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. ACostecalde, though scarcely recovered from thjaundice which kept him in bed for some dayis about to start for the ascension of MonBlanc; to climb higher than Tartarin!..' Oh! thvillain... He wants to ruin the effect of my Jungfrau... Well, well! wait a bit; I 'll blow you out o

water, you and your mountain... Chamounix only a few hours from Geneva; I'll do MonBlanc before him! Will you come, my children?

Bravida protested. Outre! he had had enough o

adventures.



"Enough and more than enough..." howled Excourbaniès, in his almost extinct 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; all the honour will bmine... Zou! give me back the banner..."

XII.

Hôtel Baltet at Chamonix. "I smell garlicThe use of rope

in Alpine climbing. "Shake hands." A pupof Schopenhauer.



At the hut on the Grands-Mulets. "Tartarin,must speak to

you."

Nine o'clock was ringing from the belfry aChamonix of a cold night shivering with thnorth wind and rain; the black streets, the dakened houses (except, here and there, the fa

çades and courtyards of hotels where the gawas still burning) made the surroundings stimore gloomy under the vague reflection of thsnow of the mountains, white as a planet on thnight of the sky.

At the Hôtel Baltet, one of the best and mofrequented inns of this Alpine village, the numerous travellers and boarders had disappeared one by one, weary with the excursion

of the day, until no one was left in the gransalon but one English traveller playing silentlat backgammon with his wife, his innumerabdaughters, in brown-holland aprons with bib

engaged in copying notices of an approachin



evangelical service, and a young Swede sittinbefore the fireplace, in which was a good fire oblazing logs. The latter was pale, hollow

cheeked, and gazed at the flame with a gloomair as he drank his grog of kirsch and seltzeFrom time to time some belated traveller crosed the salon, with soaked gaiters and streaming mackintosh, looked at the great baromete

hanging to the wall, tapped it, consulted thmercury as to the weather of the following dayand went off to bed in consternation. Not word; no other manifestations of life than th

crackling of the fire, the pattering on the paneand the angry roll of the Arve under the archeof its wooden bridge, a few yards distant fromthe hotel.

Suddenly the door of the salon opened, a portein a silver-laced coat came in, carrying valiseand rugs, with four shivering Alpinists behinhim, dazzled by the sudden change from icdarkness into warmth and light.



"Boudiou! what weather!.."

"Something to eat, zou!"

"Warm the beds, que!"

They all talked at once from the depths of themufflers and ear-pads, and it was hard to knowwhich to obey, when a short stout man, whomthe others called " présidain" enforced silence bshouting more loudly than they.

"In the first place, give me the visitors' book

he ordered. Turning it over with a numbehand, he read aloud the names of all who habeen at the hotel for the last week: "'DoctoSchwanthaler and madame.' Again!.. 'AstieRéhu of the French Academy... '" He dec

phered thus two or three pages, turning pawhen he thought he saw the name he was isearch of. Then, at the end, flinging the book othe table with a laugh of triumph, the squman made a boyish gambol quite extraordinar



in one of his bulky shape: "He is not here, vé! hhas n't come... And yet he must have stoppehere if he had... Done for! Coste-calde... lagad

gadeou!.. quick! to our suppers, children"And the worthy Tartarin, having bowed to thladies, marched to the dining-room, followeby the famished and tumultuous delegation.

Ah, yes! the delegation, all of them, even Bravida himself... Is it possible? come now!.. But—just think what would be said of them dowthere in Tarascon, if they returned without Tatarin? They each felt this. And, at the momenof separation in the station at Geneva, the bufet witnessed a pathetic scene of tears, embraces, heartrending adieus to the banner; athe result of which adieus the whole compan

piled itself into the landau which Tartarin hachartered to take him to Chamonix. A gloriouroute, which they did with their eyes shuwrapped in their rugs and filling the carriagwith sonorous snores, unmindful of the won



derful landscape, which, from Sallanches, waunrolling before them in a mist of blue rainravines, forests, foaming waterfalls, with th

crest of Mont Blanc above the clouds, visible ovanishing, according to the lay of the land ithe valley they were crossing. Tired of that soof natural beauty, our Tarasconese friendthought only of making up for the wretche

night they had spent behind the bolts of Chilon. And even now, at the farther end of thlong, deserted dining-room of the Hôtel Baltewhen served with the warmed-over soup an

entrées of the table d'hôte, they ate voraciouslywithout saying a word, eager only to get to bedAll of a sudden, Excourbaniès, who was swalowing his food like a somnambulist, came ouof his plate, and sniffing the air about him, re

marked: "I smell garlic!.."

"True, I smell it," said Bravida. And the whoparty, revived by this reminder of home, thesfumes of the national dishes, which Tartarin, a



least, had not inhaled for so long, turned rounin their chairs with gluttonous anxiety. Thodour came from the other end of the dining

room, from a little room where some one wasupping apart, a personage of importance, ndoubt, for the white cap of the head cook waconstantly appearing at the wicket that openeinto the kitchen as he passed to the girl in wai

ing certain little covered dishes which she conveyed to the inner apartment.

"Some one from the South, that's certainmurmured the gentle Pascalon; and the presdent, becoming ghastly at the idea of Costecalde, said commandingly:—

"Go and see, Spiridion... and bring us wor

who it is..."A loud roar of laughter came from that littapartment as soon as the brave "gong" entereit, at the order of his chief; and he presentl

returned, leading by the hand a tall devil with



big nose, a mischievous eye, and a napkin under his chin, like the gastronomic horse.

"Vi! Bompard..."

"Té! the Impostor..."

"Hé! Gonzague... How are you?"

"Différemment, messieurs: your most obedient..said the courier, shaking hands with all, ansitting down at the table of the Tarasconese tshare with them a dish of mushrooms wit

garlic prepared by mère Baltet, who, togethewith her husband had a horror of the cookinfor the table d'hôte.

Was it the national concoction, or the joy o

meeting a compatriot, that delightful Bomparwith his inexhaustible imagination? Certain it that weariness and the desire to sleep toowings, champagne was uncorked, and, witmoustachios all messy with froth, they laughe



and shouted and gesticulated, clasping onanother round the body effusively happy.

"I'll not leave you now, vé!" said Bompard. "MPeruvians have gone... I am free..."

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

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

"Yes, I knock out Costecalde... When he ge

here, uit!.. No Mont Blanc for him... You'll gqué , Gonzague?"

"I 'll go... I 'll go... that is, if the weather pemits... The fact is, that the mountain is not a

ways suitable at this season.""Ah! vaï ! not suitable indeed!.." exclaimed Tatarin, crinkling up his eyes by a meaning laugwhich Bompard seemed not to understand.



"Let us go into the salon for our coffee... We consult père Baltet. He knows all about it, he an old guide who has made the ascensio

twenty-seven times."All the delegates cried out: "Twenty-seven tmes! Boufre!"

"Bompard always exaggerates," said the P. CA. severely, but not without a touch of envy.

In the salon they found the daughters of thminister still bending over their notices, whil

the father and mother were asleep at their backgammon, and the tall Swede was stirring hseltzer grog with the same disheartened geture. But the invasion of the Tarasconese Alpinists, warmed by champagne, caused, as ma

well be supposed, some distraction of mind tthe young conventiclers. Never had thoscharming young persons seen coffee taken witsuch rollings of the eyes and pantomimic a

tion.



"Sugar, Tartarin?"

"Of course not, commander... You know verwell... 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 whomhe had never seen before in his life, père Baltsmiled with a tranquil air. A robust Savoyardtall and broad, with a round back and slowwalk, a heavy face, close-shaven, enlivened btwo shrewd eyes, that were still young, contrasting oddly with his baldness, caused b

chills at dawn upon the mountain."These gentlemen wish to ascend Mont Blanche said, gauging the Tarasconese Alpinists wita glance both humble and sarcastic. Tartari

was about to reply, but Bompard forestalle



him:— "Isn't the season too far advanced"Why, no," replied the former guide. "Here's Swedish gentleman who goes up to-morrow

and I am expecting at the end of this week twAmerican gentlemen to make the ascent; anone of them is blind."

"I know. I met them on the Guggi." "Ah! mon

sieur has been upon the Guggi?" "Yes, a weeago, in doing the Jungfrau." Here a quiveamong the evangelical conventiclers; all penstopped, and heads were raised in the directioof Tartarin, who, to the eyes of these Englismaidens, resolute climbers, expert in all sportacquired considerable authority. He had gonup the Jungfrau!

"A fine thing!" said père Baltet, considering thP. C. A. with some astonishment; while Pascalon, intimidated by the ladies and blushing anstuttering, murmured softly:—



"Ma-a-aster, tell them the... the... thing... crevasse."

The president smiled. "Child!.." he said: but, athe same, he began the tale of his fall; first wita careless, indifferent air, and then with startlemotions, jigglings at the end of the rope ovethe abyss, hands outstretched and appealing

The young ladies quivered, and devoured himwith those cold English eyes, those eyes thaopen round.

In the silence that followed, rose the voice o

Bompard:—

"On Chimborazo we never roped one anotheto cross crevasses."

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

"Oh, that Bompard, pas mouain..." murmurePascalon, with ingenuous admiration.



But père Baltet, taking Chimborazo seriouslyprotested against the practice of not ropinAccording to him, no ascension over ice wa

possible without a rope, a good rope of Manihemp; then, if one slipped, the others coulhold him.

"Unless the rope breaks, Monsieur Baltet," sai

Tartarin, remembering the catastrophe on thMatterhorn.

But the landlord, weighing his words, replied:

"The rope did not break on the Matterhornthe rear guide cut it with a blow of his axe..."

As Tartarin expressed indignation,—

"Beg pardon, monsieur, but the guide had right to do it... He saw the impossibility of hoding back those who had fallen, and he detached himself from them to save his life, thaof his son, and of the traveller they were ac



companying... Without his action seven personwould have lost their lives instead of four."

Then a discussion began. Tartarin thought thain letting yourself be roped in file you werbound in honour to live and die together; angrowing excited, especially in presence of ladies, he backed his opinion by facts and by pe

sons present: "Tomorrow, té! to-morrow, iroping myself to Bom-pard, it is not a simpprecaution that I shall take, it is an oath beforGod and man to be one with my companioand to die sooner than return without him, cquin de sort!"

"I accept the oath for myself, as for you, Tatarin..." cried Bompard from the other side o

the round table.Exciting moment!

The minister, electrified, rose, came to the herand inflicted upon him a pump-handle exercis



of the hand that was truly English. His wife dilikewise, then all the young ladies continuethe shake hands with enough vigour to hav

brought water to the fifth floor of the housThe delegates, I ought to mention, were lesenthusiastic.

"Eh, bé! as for me," said Bravida, "I am of M

Baltet's opinion. In matters of this kind, eacman should look to his own skin, pardi! andunderstand that cut of the axe perfectly."

"You amaze me, Placide," said Tartarin, se

verely; adding in a low voice: "Behave yourselEngland is watching us."

The old captain, who certainly had kept a rooof bitterness in his heart ever since the excu

sion to Chillon, made a gesture that signified: don't care that for England..." and might pehaps have drawn upon himself a sharp rebukfrom the president, irritated at so much cyn

cism, but at this moment the young man wit



the heart-broken look, filled to the full witgrog and melancholy, brought his extremelbad French into the conversation. He though

he said, that the guide was right to cut the ropto deliver from existence those four unfortunatmen, still young, condemned to live for manyears longer; to send them, by a mere gesturto peace, to nothingness,—what a noble an

generous action!

Tartarin exclaimed against it:—

"Pooh! young man, at your age, to talk of lif

with such aversion, such anger... What has lifdone to you?"

"Nothing; it bores me." He had studied phlosophy at Christiania, and since then, won t

the ideas of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, hhad found existence dreary, inept, chaotic. Othe verge of suicide he shut his books, at thentreaty of his parents, and started to trave

striking everywhere against the same distres



the gloomy wretchedness of this life. Tartariand his friends, he said, seemed to him the onlbeings content to live that he had ever me

with.The worthy P. C. A. began to laugh. "It is arace, young man. Everybody feels like that iTarascon. That's the land of the good God

From morning till night we laugh and sing, anthe rest of the time we dance the farandolelike this... té!" So saying, he cut a double shuffwith the grace and lightness of a big cockchafetrying its wings.

But the delegates had not the steel nerves nothe indefatigable spirit of their chief. Excoubaniès growled out: "He 'll keep us here ti

midnight." But Bravida jumped up, furiou"Let us go to bed, vé! I can't stand my sciatica.Tartarin consented, remembering the ascensioon the morrow; and the Tarasconese, candlesticks in hand, went up the broad staircase o

granite that led to the chambers, while Balte



went to see about provisions and hire the muleand guides.

"Té! it is snowing..."

Those were the first words of the worthy Tatarin when he woke in the morning and saw hwindows covered with frost and his bedroom

inundated with white reflections. But when hhooked his little mirror as usual to the windowfastening, he understood his mistake, and sawthat Mont Blanc, sparkling before him in thsplendid sunshine, was the cause of that ligh

He opened his window to the breeze of thglacier, keen and refreshing, bringing with the sound of the cattle-bells as the herds folowed the long, lowing sound of the shepherd

horn. Something fortifying, pastoral, filled thatmosphere such as he had never before breahed in Switzerland.

Below, an assemblage of guides and porter

awaited him. The Swede was already mounte



upon his mule, and among the spectators, whformed a circle, was the minister's family, athose active young ladies, their hair in earl

morning style, who had come for another "shake hands" with the hero who had haunted thedreams.

"Splendid weather! make haste!.." cried th

landlord, whose skull was gleaming in the sunshine like a pebble. But though Tartarin himsemight hasten, it was not so easy a matter trouse from sleep his dear Alpinists, who intended to accompany him as far as the PierrePointue, where the mule-path ends. Neitheprayers nor arguments could persuade thCommander to get out of bed. With his cottonightcap over his ears and his face to the wal

he contented himself with replying to Tartarinobjurgations by a cynical Tarasconese proverb"Whoso has the credit of getting up early masleep until midday..." As for Bom-pard, he keprepeating, the whole time, "Ah, vaï , Mon



Blanc... what a humbug..." Nor did they risuntil the P. C. A. had issued a formal order.

At last, however, the caravan started, and pased through the little streets in very imposinarray: Pascalon on the leading mule, banneunfurled; and last in file, grave as a mandariamid the guides and porters on either side h

mule, came the worthy Tartarin, more stupendously Alpinist than ever, wearing a pair onew spectacles with smoked and convex glases, and his famous rope made at Avignonrecovered—we know at what cost.

Very much looked at, almost as much as thbanner, he was jubilant under his dignifiemask, enjoyed the picturesqueness of thes

Savoyard village streets, so different from thtoo neat, too varnished Swiss village, lookinlike a new toy; he enjoyed the contrast of theshovels scarcely rising above the ground, wherthe stable fills the largest space, with the gran

and sumptuous hotels five storeys high, th



glittering signs of which were as much out okeeping with the hovels as the gold-laced caof the porter and the pumps and black coats o

the waiters with the Savoyard head-gear, thfustian jackets, the felt hats of the charcoaburners with their broad wings.

On the square were landaus with the horse

taken out, manure-carts side by side with travelling-carriages, and a troop of pigs idling ithe sun before the post-office, from whicissued an Englishman in a white linen cap, wita package of letters and a copy of The Time

which he read as he walked along, before hopened his correspondence. The cavalcade othe Tarasconese passed all this, accompanieby the scuffling of mules, the war-cry o

Excourbaniès (to whom the sun had restorethe use of his gong), the pastoral chimes on thneighbouring slopes, and the dash of the rivegushing from the glacier in a torrent all whitand sparkling, as if it bore upon its breast bot

sun and snow.



On leaving the village Bompard rode his mubeside that of the president, and said to thlatter; rolling his eyes in a most extraordinar

manner: "Tartarin, I must speak to you...""Presently..." said the P. C. A., then engaged ia philosophical discussion with the young Swde, whose black pessimism he was endeavou

ing to correct by the marvellous spectacaround them, those pastures with great zoneof light and shade, those forests of sombrgreen crested with the whiteness of the dazzling névés.

After two attempts to speak to the presidenBompard was forced to give it up. The Arvhaving been crossed by a little bridge, the cara

van now entered one of those narrow, zigzaroads among the firs where the mules, one bone, follow with their fantastic sabots all thsinuosities of the ravines, and our tourists hatheir attention fully occupied in keeping the

equilibrium by the help of many an "Outre



Boufre!.. gently, gently!.." with which they guded their beasts.

At the chalet of the Pierre-Pointue, where Pacalon and Excourbaniès were to wait the returof the excursionists, Tartarin, much occupied iordering breakfast and in looking after porterand guides, still paid no attention to Bompard

whisperings. But—singular fact, which was noremarked until later—in spite of the fine weaher, the good wine, and that purified atmophere of ten thousand feet above sea-level, thbreakfast was melancholy. While they hearthe guides laughing and making merry aparthe table of the Taras-conese was silent excepfor the rattle of glasses and the clatter of thheavy plates and covers on the white wood

Was it the presence of that morose Swede, othe visible uneasiness of Bompard, or sompresentiment? At any rate, the party set forthsad as a battalion without its band, towards th



glacier of the Bossons, where the true ascenbegins.

On setting foot upon the ice, Tartarin could nohelp smiling at the recollection of the Guggand his perfected crampons. What a differencbetween the neophyte he then was and thfirst-class Alpinist he felt he had become! Stea

dy on his heavy boots, which the porter of thhotel had ironed that very morning with foustout nails, expert in wielding his ice-axe, hscarcely needed the hand of a guide, and theless to support him than to show him the wayThe smoked glasses moderated the reflectionof the glacier, which a recent avalanche hapowdered with fresh snow, and through whiclittle spaces of a glaucous green showed them

selves here and there, slippery and treacherouVery calm, confident through experience ththere was not the slightest danger, Tartariwalked along the verge of the crevasses wittheir smooth, iridescent sides stretchin



downward indefinitely, and made his waamong the séracs, solely intent on keeping uwith the Swedish student, an intrepid walke

whose long gaiters with their silver bucklemarched, thin and lank, beside his alpenstockwhich looked like a third leg. Their philosophcal discussion continuing, in spite of the diffculties of the way, a good stout voice, familia

and panting, could be heard in the frozen space, sonorous as the swell of a river: "You knowme, Otto..."

Bompard all this time was undergoing misadventures. Firmly convinced, up to that vermorning, that Tartarin would never go to thlength of his vaunting, and would no morascend Mont Blanc than he had the Jungfrau

the luckless courier had dressed himself ausual, without nailing his boots, or even utilizing his famous invention for shoeing the feet osoldiers, and without so much as his alpenstock, the mountaineers of the Chimboraz



never using them. Armed only with a littswitch, quite in keeping with the blue ribbon ohis hat and his ulster, this approach to the gla

cier terrified him, for, in spite of his tales, it iof course, well understood that the Impostohad never in his life made an ascension. He wasomewhat reassured, however, on seeing fromthe top of the moraine with what facility Ta

tarin made his way on the ice; and he resolveto follow him as far as the hut on the GrandMulets, where it was intended to pass thnight. He did not get there without difficulty

His first step laid him flat on his back; at thsecond he fell forward on his hands and knee"No, thank you, I did it on purpose," he said tthe guides who endeavoured to pick him up"American fashion, vé!.. as they do on th

Chimborazo." That position seeming to be convenient, he kept it, creeping on four paws, hhat pushed back, and his ulster sweeping thice like the pelt of a gray bear; very calm, wihal, and relating to those about him that in th



Cordilleras of the Andes he had scaled a mountain thirty thousand feet high. He did not sahow much time it took him, but it must hav

been long, judging by this stage to the GrandMulets, where he arrived an hour after Tatarin, a disgusting mass of muddy snow, witfrozen hands in his knitted gloves.

In comparison with the hut on the Guggi, thawhich the commune of Chamonix has built othe Grands-Mulets is really comfortable. WheBompard entered the kitchen, where a granwood-fire was blazing, he found Tartarin anthe Swedish student drying their boots, whithe hut-keeper, a shrivelled old fellow witlong white hair that fell in meshes, exhibitethe treasures of his little museum.

Of evil augury, this museum is a reminder oall the catastrophes known to have taken placon the Mont Blanc for the forty years that thold man had kept the inn, and as he took them

from their show-case, he related the lamentab



origin of each of them... This piece of cloth anthose waistcoat buttons were the memorial of Russian savant, hurled by a hurricane upon th

Brenva glacier... These jaw teeth were all thremained of one of the guides of a famous caravan of eleven travellers and porters who diappeared forever in a tourmente of snow... Ithe fading light and the pale reflection of thnévés against the window, the production othese mortuary relics, these monotonous recials, had something very poignant about themand all the more because the old man softene

his quavering voice at pathetic items, and eveshed tears on displaying a scrap of green veworn by an English lady rolled down by aavalanche in 1827.

In vain Tartarin reassured himself by dateconvinced that in those early days the Company had not yet organized the ascensionwithout danger; this Savoyard vocero oppresse



his heart, and he went to the doorway for moment to breathe.

Night had fallen, engulfing the depths. ThBossons stood out, livid, and very close; whithe Mont Blanc reared its summit, still rosystill caressed by the departed sun. The Southerner was recovering his serenity from th

smile of nature when the shadow of Bomparrose behind him.

"Is that you, Gonzague... As you see, I am geting the good of the air... He annoyed me, tha

old fellow, with his stories."

"Tartarin," said Bompard, squeezing the arm othe P. C. A. till he nearly ground it, "I hope ththis is enough, and that you are going to put a

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 othe thousand deaths that awaited him; crevasses, avalanches, hurricanes, whirlwinds...

Tartarin interrupted him:—

"Ah! vaï , you rogue; and the Company? IsnMont Blanc managed like the rest?"

"Managed?. the Company?.." said Bompardbewildered, remembering nothing whatever o

his tarasconade, which Tartarin now repeateto him word for word—Switzerland a vast Asociation, lease of the mountains, machinery othe crevasses; on which the former courieburst out laughing.

"What! you really believed me?.. Why, that waa galéjade a fib... Among us Taras-conese yoought 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 retrospetive terror, and for one moment he hesitatedThis landscape of polar cataclysm, cold, gloomy, yawning with gulfs... those laments of th

old hut-man still weeping in his ears... Outrwhat will they make me do?.. Then, suddenlyhe thought of the folk at Tarascon, of the banneto be unfurled "up there," and he said to himself that with good guides and a trusty com

panion like Bompard... He had done the Jungfrau... why should n't he do Mont Blanc?

Laying his large hand on the shoulder of hfriend, he began in a virile voice:—



"Listen to me, Gonzague..."

XIII.

The catastrophe.On a dark, dark night, moonless, starless, skyless, on the trembling whiteness of a vast ledgof snow, slowly a long rope unrolled itself, t

which were attached in file certain timorouand very small shades, preceded, at the ditance of a hundred feet, by a lantern casting red light along the way. Blows of an ice-axringing on the hard snow, the roll of the icblocks thus detached, alone broke the silence othe névé on which the steps of the caravamade no sound. From minute to minute, a crya smothered groan, the fall of a body on the ic

and then immediately a strong voice soundin



from the end of the rope: "Go gently, Gonzague, and don't fall." For poor Bompard hamade up his mind to follow his friend Tartari

to the summit of Mont Blanc. Since two in thmorning—it was now four by the presidentrepeater—the hapless courier had gropealong, a galley slave on the chain, draggedpushed, vacillating, balking, compelled to r

strain the varied exclamations extorted fromhim by his mishaps, for an avalanche was othe watch, and the slightest concussion, a mervibration of the crystalline air, might sen

down its masses of snow and ice. To suffer isilence! what torture to a native of Tarascon!

But the caravan halted. Tartarin asked why. discussion in low voice was heard; animate

whisperings: "It is your companion who woncome on," said the Swedish student. The ordeof march was broken; the human chaplet returned upon itself, and they found themselveall at the edge of a vast crevasse, called by th



mountaineers a roture. Preceding ones they hacrossed by means of a ladder, over which thecrawled on their hands and knees; here the cre

vasse was much wider and the ice-cliff rose othe other side to a height of eighty or a hundrefeet. It was necessary to descend to the bottomof the gully, which grew smaller as it wendown, by means of steps cut in the ice, and t

reascend in the same way on the other side. BuBompard obstinately refused to do so.

Leaning over the abyss, which the shadowrepresented as bottomless, he watched througthe damp vapour the movements of the littlantern by which the guides below were prparing the way. Tartarin, none too easy himselwarmed his own courage by exhorting h

friend: "Come now, Gonzague, zou!" and thein a lower voice coaxed him to honour, invokethe 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 hfeet, and assured him that nothing was easier.

"For you, perhaps, but not for me..." "But yosaid you had a habit of it..." "Bé! yes! habit, ocourse... which habit? I have so many... habit osmoking, sleeping..." "And lying, especiallyinterrupted the president.

"Exaggerating—come now!" said Bompard, nothe least in the world annoyed.

However, after much hesitation, the threat o

leaving him there all alone decided him to gslowly, deliberately, down that terrible millerladder... The going up was more difficult, fothe other face was nearly perpendiculasmooth as marble, and higher than King Rene

tower at Tarascon. From below, the winkinlight of the guides going up, looked like glow-worm on the march. He was forced tfollow, however, for the snow beneath his fee

was not solid, and gurgling sounds of circula



ing water heard round a fissure told of morthan could be seen at the foot of that wall of icof depths that were sending upward the chil

ing breath of subterranean abysses."Go gently, Gonzague, for fear of falling..." Thphrase, which Tartarin uttered with tender intonations, almost supplicating, borrowed a so

emn signification from the respective positionof the ascensionists, clinging with feet anhands one above the other to the wall, bounby the rope and the similarity of their movments, so that the fall or the awkwardness oone put all in danger. And what danger! coquide sort! It sufficed to hear fragments of the icewall bounding and dashing downward witthe echo of their fall to imagine the open jaw

of the monster watching there below to snayou up at the least false step.

But what is this?.. Lo, the tall Swede, next above Tartarin, has stopped and touches with h

iron heels the cap of the P. C. A. In vain th



guides called: "Forward!.." And the presiden"Go on, young man!.." He did not stir. Stretcheat full length, clinging to the ice with careles

hand, the Swede leaned down, the glimmerindawn touching his scanty beard and givinlight to the singular expression of his dilateeyes, while he made a sign to Tartarin:—

"What a fall, hey? if one let go...""Outre! I should say so... you would drag us adown... Go on!"

The other remained motionless."A fine chance to be done with life, to returinto chaos through the bowels of the earth, anroll from fissure to fissure like that bit of ic

which I kick with my foot..." And he leaneover frightfully to watch the fragment bounding downward and echoing endlessly in thblackness.



"Take care!.." cried Tartarin, livid with terroThen, desperately clinging to the oozing walhe resumed, with hot ardour, his argument o

the night before in favour of existence. "Theregood in it... What the deuce!.. At your age, a finyoung fellow like you... Don't you believe ilove, qué!"

No, the Swede did not believe in it. Ideal love a poet's lie; the other, only a need he had nevefelt...

"Bé! yes! bé! yes!.. It is true poets lie, they a

ways say more than there is; but for all that, shis nice, the femellan—that's what they call women in our parts. Besides, there's children, prety little darlings that look like us."

"Children! a source of grief. Ever since she hathem my mother has done nothing but weep."

"Listen, Otto, you know me, my good friend..."



And with all the valorous ardour of his souTartarin exhausted himself to revive and rub tlife at that distance this victim of Schopenhaue

and of Hartmann, two rascals he'd like to catcat the corner of a wood, coquin de sort! and make them pay for all the harm they had done tyouth...

Represent to yourselves during this discussiothe high wall of freezing, glaucous, streaminice touched by a pallid ray of light, and thastring of human beings glued to it in echelonwith ill-omened rumblings rising from thyawning depth, together with the curses of thguides and their threats to detach and abandothe travellers. Tartarin, seeing that no argumencould convince the madman or clear off h

vertigo of death, suggested to him the idea othrowing himself from the highest peak of thMont Blanc... That indeed! that would be wortdoing, up there! A fine end among the elements... But here, at the bottom of a cave... Ah



vaï , what a blunder!.. And he put such tone inthis words, brusque and yet persuasive, succonviction, that the Swede allowed himself t

be conquered, and there they were, at last, onby one, at the top of that terrible roture.

They were now unroped, and a halt was callefor a bite and sup. It was daylight; a cold wa

light among a circle of peaks and shafts, ovetopped by the Mont Blanc, still thousands ofeet above them. The guides were apart, geticulating and consulting, with many shakingof the head. Seated on the white ground, heavand huddled up, their round backs in thebrown jackets, they looked like marmots geting ready to hibernate. Bompard and Tartarinuneasy, shocked, left the young Swede to ea

alone, and came up to the guides just as theleader was saying with 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 thhighest peak, where, like a plume, a white vapour floated toward Italy.

"Et autremain, my good friend, when the MonBlanc smokes his pipe, what does that mean?"

"It means, monsieur, that there is a terriblwind on the summit, and a snow-storm whicwill be down upon us before long. And I teyou, that's dangerous."

"Let us go back," said Bompard, turning greenand Tartarin added:—

"Yes, yes, certainly; no false vanity, of course."

But here the Swedish student interfered. Hhad paid his money to be taken to the top oMont Blanc, and nothing should prevent hgetting there. He would go alone, if no on

would accompany him. "Cowards! cowards



he added, turning to the guides; and he utterethe insult in the same ghostly voice with whiche had roused himself just before to suicide.

"You shall see if we are cowards... Fasten to thrope and forward!" cried the head guide. Thtime, it was Bompard who protested energetcally. He had had enough, and he wanted to b

taken back. Tartarin supported him vigorously"You see very well that that young man is insane..." he said, pointing to the Swede, who haalready started with great strides through th

heavy snow-flakes which the wind was beginning to whirl on all sides. But nothing coulstop the men who had just been called cowardThe marmots were now wide-awake and he

roic. Tartarin could not even obtain a conductoto take him back with Bompard to the GrandMulets. Besides, the way was very easy; threhours' march, counting a detour of twentminutes to get round that roture, if they wer

afraid to go through it alone.



"Outre! yes, we are afraid of it..." said Bompardwithout the slightest shame; and the two paties separated.

Bompard and the P. C. A. were now alonThey advanced with caution on the snowy desert, fastened to a rope: Tartarin first, feeling hway gravely with his ice-axe; filled with a sens

of responsibility and finding relief in it."Courage! keep cool!.. We shall get out of it aright," he called to Bompard repeatedly. It thus that an officer in battle, seeking to driv

away his own fear, brandishes his sword anshouts to his men: "Forward! s. n. de D!.. aballs don't kill."

At last, here they were at the end of that horr

ble crevasse. From there to the hut there werno great obstacles; but the wind blew, anblinded them with snowy whirlwinds. Furtheadvance was impossible for fear of losing the

way.



"Let us stop here for a moment," said TartarinA gigantic sérac of ice offered them a hollow aits base. Into it they crept, spreading down th

india-rubber rug of the president and openingflask of rum, the sole article of provision lethem by the guides. A little warmth and comfort followed thereon, while the blows of thice-axes, getting fainter and fainter up th

height, told them of the progress of the expedtion. They echoed in the heart of the P. C. Alike a pang of regret for not having done thMont Blanc to the summit.

"Who 'll know it?" returned Bompard, cyncally. "The porters kept the banner, anChamonix will believe it is you."

"You are right," cried Tartarin, in a tone of conviction; "the honour of Tarascon is safe..."

But the elements grew furious, the north-wina hurricane, the snow flew in volumes. Bot

were silent, haunted by sinister ideas; they re



membered those ill-omened relics in the glascase of the old inn-keeper, his laments, the legend of that American tourist found petrifie

with cold and hunger, holding in his stiffenehand a note-book, in which his agonies werwritten down even to the last convulsionwhich made the pencil slip and the signaturuneven.

"Have you a note-book, Gonzague?"

And the other, comprehending without furtheexplanation:—

"Ha! vaï , a note-book!.. If you think I am gointo let myself die like that American!.. Quicklet's get on! come out of this."

"Impossible... At the first step we should bblown like straws and pitched into somabyss."



"Well then, we had better shout; the GrandMulets is not far off..." And Bompard, on hknees, in the attitude of a cow at pasture, low

ing, roared out, "Help! help! help!..""To arms!" shouted Tartarin, in his most sonorous chest voice, which the grotto repercusioned in thunder.

Bompard seized his arm: "Horrors! the sérac!Positively the whole block was trembling; another shout and that mass of accumulateicicles would be down upon their heads. The

stopped, rigid, motionless, wrapped in a horrisilence, presently broken by a distant rollinsound, coming nearer, increasing, spreading tthe horizon, and dying at last far down, from

gulf to gulf."Poor souls!" murmured Tartarin, thinking othe Swede and his guides caught, no douband swept away by the avalanche.



Bompard shook his head: "We are scarcely beter off than they," he said.

And truly, their situation was alarming; buthey did not dare to stir from their icy grottnor to risk even their heads outside in thsquall.

To complete the oppression of their heartfrom the depths of the valley rose the howlinof a dog, baying at death. Suddenly Tartarinwith swollen eyes, his lips quivering, graspethe hands of his companion, and looking at him

gently, said:—

"Forgive me, Gonzague, yes, yes, forgive me.was rough to you just now; I treated you as liar..."

"Ah! vaï . What harm did that do me?"

"I had less right than any man to do so, forhave lied a great deal myself, and at this su



preme moment I feel the need to open mheart, to free my bosom, to publicly confess mimposture..."

"Imposture, you?"

"Listen to me, my friend... In the first place,never killed a lion."

"I am not surprised at that," said Bompardcomposedly. "But why do you worry yoursefor such a trifle?.. It is our sun that does it... ware born to lies... Vé! look at me... Did I ever te

the truth since I came into the world? As sooas I open my mouth my South gets up into mhead like a fit. The people I talk about I neveknew; the countries, I 've never set foot in themand all that makes such a tissue of invention

that I can't unravel it myself any longer."

"That's imagination, péchère!" sighed Tartarin"we are liars of imagination."



"And such lies never do any harm to any onwhereas a malicious, envious man, like Costecalde..."

"Don't ever speak to me of that wretch," interupted the P. C. A.; then, seized with a suddeattack of wrath, he shouted: "Coquin de bon sorit is, all the same, rather vexing..." He stopped

at a terrified gesture from Bompard, "Ah! yetrue... the sérac;" and, forced to lower his tonand mutter his rage, poor Tartarin continuehis imprecations in a whisper, with a comicaand amazing dislocation of the mouth,—"yevexing to die in the flower of one's age througthe fault of a scoundrel who at this very moment is taking his coffee on the Promenade!.."

But while he thus fulminated, a clear spot began to show itself, little by little, in the sky. snowed no more, it blew no more; and bludashes tore away the gray of the sky. Quickquick, en route; and once more fastened to th

same rope, Tartarin, who took the lead as b



fore, turned round, put a finger on his lips, ansaid:—

"You know, Gonzague, that all we have jubeen saying is between ourselves."

"Té! pardi..."

Full of ardour, they started, plunging to theknees in the fresh snow, which had buried in iimmaculate cotton-wool all the traces of thcaravan; consequently Tartarin was forced tconsult his compass every five minutes. Bu

that Taras-conese compass, accustomed twarm climates, had been numb with cold evesince its arrival in Switzerland. The needwhirled to all four quarters, agitated, hesitaing; therefore they determined to marc

straight before them, expecting to see the blacrocks of the Grands-Mulets rise suddenly fromthe uniform silent whiteness of the slope, thpeaks, the turrets, and aiguilles that su

rounded, dazzled, and also terrified them, fo



who knew what dangerous crevasses it concealed beneath their feet?

"Keep cool, Gonzague, keep cool!"

"That 's just what I can't do," responded Bompard, in a lamentable voice. And he moaned" Aïe, my foot!.. aïe, my leg!.. we are lost; neve

shall we get there..."They had walked for over two hours whenabout the middle of a field of snow very diffcult to climb, Bompard called out, quite terr

fied:—"Tartarin, we are going up!"

"Eh! parbleu! I know that well enough," re

turned the P. C. A., almost losing 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 tthe top, at any rate; it may go down on the oher side."

It went down certainly—and terribly, by a sucession of névés and glaciers, and quite at thend of this dazzling scene of dangerous whiteness a little hut was seen upon a rock at a dept

which seemed to them unattainable. It was haven that they must reach before nightfalinasmuch as they had evidently lost the way tthe Grands-Mulets, but at what cost! what eforts! what dangers, perhaps!

"Above all, don't let go of me, Gonzague, qué!.

"Nor you either, Tartarin."

They exchanged these requests without seeineach other, being separated by a ridge behinwhich Tartarin disappeared, being in advancand beginning to descend, while the other wagoing up, slowly and in terror. They spoke n



more, concentrating all their forces, fearful of false step, a slip. Suddenly, when Bompard wawithin three feet of the crest, he heard a dread

ful cry from his companion, and at the saminstant, the rope tightened with a violent, iregular jerk... He tried to resist, to hold fahimself and save his friend from the abyss. Buthe rope was old, no doubt, for it parted, sud

denly, under his efforts.

"Outre!"

"Boufre!"

The two cries crossed each other, awful, hearrending, echoing through the silence and soltude, then a frightful stillness, the stillness odeath that nothing more could trouble in tha

waste of eternal snows.

Towards evening a man who vaguely resembled Bompard, a spectre with its hair on endmuddy, soaked, arrived at the inn of th



Grands-Mulets, where they rubbed him, wamed him, and put him to bed, before he coulutter other words than these—choked wit

tears, and his hands raised to heaven: "Tatarin... lost!.. broken rope..." At last, howevethey were able to make out the great misfotune which had happened.

While the old hut-man was lamenting and adding another chapter to the horrors of the mountain, hoping for fresh ossuary relics for hcharnel glass-case, the Swedish youth and hguides, who had returned from their expedtion, set off in search of the hapless Tartariwith ropes, ladders, in short a whole life-savinoutfit, alas! unavailing... Bompard, renderehalf idiotic, could give no precise indications a

to the drama, nor as to the spot where it happened. They found nothing except, on thDôme du Goûter, one piece of rope which wacaught in a cleft of the ice. But that piece of rope, very singular thing! was cut at both ends, a



with some sharp instrument; the Chambérnewspapers gave a facsimile of it, which proved the fact.

Finally, after eight days of the most conscientious search, and when the conviction becamirresistible that the poor president would nevebe found, that he was lost beyond recall, th

despairing delegates started for Tarascon, taking with them the unhappy Bompard, whosshaken brain was a visible result of the terribshock.

"Do not talk to me about it," he replied whequestioned as to the accident, "never speak tme about it again!"

Undoubtedly the White Mountain could recko

one victim the more—and what a victim!



XIV.

Epilogue.

A REGION more impressionable than Tarascowas never seen under the sun of any land. Atimes, of a fine festal Sunday, all the town outambourines a-going, the Promenade swarming, tumultuous, enamelled with red and greepetticoats, Arlesian neckerchiefs, and, on bimulti-coloured posters, the announcement owrestling-matches for men and lads, races o

Camargue bulls, etc., it is all-sufficient for somwag to call out: "Mad dog!" or "Cattle looseand everybody runs, jostles, men and womefright themselves out of their wits, doors arlocked and bolted, shutters clang as with

storm, and behold Tarascon, deserted, mutnot a cat, not a sound, even the grasshopperthemselves lying low and attentive.



This was its aspect on a certain morningwhich, however, was neither a fête-day nor Sunday; the shops closed, houses dead, square

and alleys seemingly enlarged by silence ansolitude. Vasta silentio, says Tacitus, describinRome at the funeral of Germanicus; and thacitation of his mourning Rome applies all thbetter to Tarascon, because a funeral service fo

the soul of Tartarin was being said at this moment in the cathedral, where the population emasse wept for its hero, its god, its invincibleader with double muscles, left lying amon

the glaciers of Mont Blanc.Now, while the death-knell dropped its heavnotes along the silent streets, Mile. Tournatoirthe doctor's sister, whose ailments kept he

always at home, was sitting in her big armchaclose to the window, looking out into the streand listening to the bells. The house of thTournatoires was on the road to Avignon, vernearly opposite to that of Tartarin; and th



sight of that illustrious home to which its mater would return no more, that garden gatforever closed, all, even the boxes of the littl

shoe-blacks drawn up in line near the entrancswelled the heart of the poor spinster, consumed for more than thirty years with a secrpassion for the Tarasconese hero. Oh, mysterof the heart of an old maid! It was her joy t

watch him pass at his regular hours and to asherself: "Where is he going?.." to observe thpermutations of his toilet, whether he was clohed as an Alpinist or dressed in his suit of se

pent-green. And now! she would see him nmore! even the consolation of praying for hsoul with all the other ladies of the town wadenied her.

Suddenly the long white horse head of MilTournatoire coloured faintly; her faded eyewith a pink rim dilated in a remarkable manner, while her thin hand with its prominenveins made the sign of the cross.. He! it was h



slipping along by the wall on the other side othe paved road... At first she thought it an halucinating apparition... No, Tartarin himself, i

flesh and blood, only paler, pitiable, raggedwas creeping along that wall like a beggar or thief. But in order to explain his furtive preence in Tarascon, it is necessary to return to thMont Blanc and the Dôme du Goûter at th

precise instant when, the two friends beineach on either side of the ridge, Bompard fethe rope that bound them violently jerked as by the fall of a body.

In reality, the rope was only caught in a cleft othe ice; but Tartarin, feeling the same jerk, believed, he too, that his companion was rollindown and dragging him with him. Then, at tha

supreme moment—good heavens! how shalltell it?—in that agony of fear, both, at the saminstant, forgetting their solemn vow at the Hôtel Baltet, with the same impulse, the same instinctive action, cut the rope,—Bompard wit



his knife, Tartarin with his axe; then, horrifieat their crime, convinced, each of them, that hhad sacrificed his friend, they fled in opposit

directions.When the spectre of Bompard appeared at thGrands-Mulets, that of Tartarin was arriving athe tavern of the Avesailles. How, by what m

racle? after what slips, what falls? Mont Blanalone could tell. The poor P. C. A. remained fotwo days in a state of complete apathy, unabto utter a single sound. As soon as he was fit tmove they took him down to Courmayeur, thItalian Chamonix. At the hotel where he stopped to recover his strength, there was talk onothing but the frightful catastrophe on MonBlanc, a perfect pendant to that on the Matte

horn: another Alpinist engulfed by the breaking of the rope.

In his conviction that this meant Bompard, Tatarin, torn by remorse, dared not rejoin the d

legation, or return to his own town. He saw, i



advance, on every lip, in every eye, the quetion: "Cain, what hast thou done with thy broher?.." Nevertheless, the lack of money, def

ciency of linen, the frosts of September whicwere beginning to thin the hostelries, obligehim to set out for home. After all, no one haseen him commit the crime... Nothing hinderehim from inventing some tale, no matter what

and so (the amusements of the journey lendintheir aid), he began to feel better. But when, oapproaching Tarascon, he saw, iridescent beneath the azure heavens, the fine sky-line of th

Alpines, all, all grasped him once more; shamremorse, the fear of justice, and, to avoid thnotoriety of arriving at the station, he left thtrain at the preceding stopping-place.

Ah! that beautiful Tarasconese highroad, awhite and creaking with dust, without otheshade than the telegraph poles and their wireerected along the triumphal way he had so oten trod at the head of his Alpinists and th



sportsmen of caps. Would they now havknown him, he, the valiant, the jauntily attiredin his ragged and filthy clothes, with that fu

tive eye of a tramp looking out for gendarmesThe atmosphere was burning, though the season was late, and the watermelon which hbought of a marketman seemed to him delcious as he ate it in the scanty shade of the ba

row, while the peasant exhaled his wratagainst the housekeepers of Tarascon, all othem absent from market that morning "on acount of a black mass being sung for a man o

the town who was lost in a hole, over there ithe Swiss mountains... Té! how the bells rangYou can hear 'em from here..."

No longer any doubt. For Bompard were thos

lugubrious chimes of death, which a warmbreeze wafted through the country solitudes.

What an accompaniment of the return of thgreat Tartarin to his native town!



For one moment, one, when the gate of the littgarden hurriedly opened and closed behinhim and Tartarin found himself at home, whe

he saw the little paths with their borders sneatly raked, the basin, the fountain, the golfish (squirming as the gravel creaked beneathis feet), and the baobab giant in its mignonetpot, the comfort of that cabbage-rabbit burrow

wrapped him like a security after all his dangers and adversities... But the bells, those cused bells, tolled louder than ever; their blacheavy notes fell plumb upon his heart an

crushed it again. In funereal fashion they wersaying to him: "Cain, what hast thou done witthy brother? Tartarin, where is BompardThen, without courage to take one step, he sadown upon the hot coping of the little basi

and stayed there, broken down, annihilated, tthe great agitation of the gold fish.

The bells no longer toll. The porch of the cathedral, lately so resounding, is restored to th



mutterings of the beggarwoman sitting by thdoor, and to the cold immovability of its stonsaints. The religious ceremony is over; all Ta

ras-con has gone to the Club of the Alpinewhere, in solemn session, Bompard is to tell thtale of the catastrophe and relate the last moments of the P. C. A. Besides the members othe Club, many privileged persons of the army

clergy, nobility, and higher commerce havtaken seats in the hall of conference, the windows of which, wide open, allow the city bandinstalled below on the portico, to mingle a few

heroic or plaintive notes with the remarks othe gentlemen. An enormous crowd, pressinaround the musicians, is standing on the tips oits toes and stretching its necks in hopes tcatch a fragment of what is said in session. Bu

the windows are too high, and no one woulhave any idea of what was going on withouthe help of two or three urchins perched in thbranches of a tall linden who fling down scrap



of information as they are wont to fling cherriefrom a tree:

"Vé , there's Costecalde, trying to cry. Ha! thbeggar! he's got the armchair now... And thapoor Bézuquet, how he blows his nose! and heyes are all red!.. Té! they've put crape on thbanner... There's Bompard, coming to the tab

with the three delegates... He has laid something down on the desk... He's speaking nowIt must be fine! They are all crying..."

In truth, the grief became general as Bompar

advanced in his narrative. Ah! memory hacome back to him—imagination also. After pituring himself and his illustrious companioalone on the summit of Mont Blanc, withou

guides (who had all refused to follow them oaccount of the bad weather), alone with thbanner, unfurled for five minutes on the highest peak of Europe, he recounted, and witwhat emotion! the perilous descent and fal

Tartarin rolling to the bottom of a crevasse, an



he, Bompard, fastening himself to a rope twhundred feet long in order to explore that guto its very depths.

"More than twenty times, gentlemen—what amI saying? more than ninety times I sounded thicy abyss without being able to reach our unfotunate présidain whose fall, however, I was ab

to prove by certain fragments left clinging ithe crevices of the ice..."

So saying, he spread upon the table-cloth fragment of a tooth, some hairs from a beard,

morsel of waistcoat, and one suspender bucklalmost the whole ossuary of the GrandMulets.

In presence of such an exhibition the sorrowfu

emotions of the assembly could not be rstrained; even the hardest hearts, the partisanof Costecalde, and the gravest personages—Cambalalette, the notary, the doctor, Tourna

toire—shed tears as big as the stopper of a wa



ter-bottle. The invited ladies uttered hearrending cries, smothered, however, by the sobbing howls of Excourbaniès and the bleating

of Pascalon, while the funeral march of thdrums and trumpets played a slow and lugubrious bass.

Then, when he saw the emotion, the nervou

excitement at its height, Bompard ended htale with a grand gesture of pity toward thscraps and the buckles, as he said:—

"And there, gentlemen and dear fellow-citizen

there is all that I recovered of our illustriouand beloved president... The remainder thglacier will restore to us in forty years..."

He was about to explain, for ignorant person

the recent discoveries as to the slow but regulamovement of glaciers, when the squeaking of door opening at the other end of the room interrupted him; some one entered, paler tha



one of Home's apparitions, directly in front othe orator.

"Vé! Tartarin!.."

"Té! Gonzague!.."

And this race is so singular, so ready to believall improbable tales, all audacious and easilrefuted lies, that the arrival of the great mawhose remains were still lying on the table caused only a very moderate amazement in thassembly.

"It is a misunderstanding, that's all," said Tatarin, comforted, beaming, his hand on thshoulder of the man whom he thought he hakilled. "I did Mont Blanc on both sides. Wen

up one way and came down the other; and thais why I was thought to have disappeared."

He did not mention that he had come down o

tartar on the alps

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