LIBRARY WMl»fRVirV OF >*N 01 [GO J UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 3 1822 02502 9281 Tartarin on the Alps ^«'V ALPHONSI-: DAUDET From a Water-Colour bv L. R/ jsj^lSf, ^'/<>.c^. Aji apparitio7i on the Rigi-Kidm. — WJio is he ? — JVhat 7vas said at the table d'hôte. — Rice and Primes. — A)i improvised ball. — The Unknoivn signs his name in the Jioiel register.— P. C. A. On the loth of August, t88o, at the fabled hour of sunset, so much belauded by- Joanne's and Baedeker's Guide-Books, a thick, yellow fog, rendered more puzzling by a whirling snow-storm, enveloped the summit of the Rigi (Pegina montiiuii) and that im- mense hotel — which presents such an extra- ordinary appearance in the barren landscape B ^ 2 'rartariii on iJic Alps of hills— the Rigi-Kulm, glazed like an observatory, massive as a citadel, wlierein for a day and a night a crowd of sun-worshipping tourists is located. While awaiting the second dinner-gong, the occupants of this extensive and sumptuous caravanserai, chilled in their bed-rooms, or seated listlessly on the divans in the reading- room, in the damp semi-warmth of the lighted stoves, were gazing — in default of the pro- mised splendours — at the whirling snow- flakes in the air, or at the lighting of the great lamps before the entrance, whose double glasses quivered in the tempestuous wind. Fancy having ascended so high and having come from all ])arts of the world for this ! O Bcedeker ! Suddenly something emerged from the fog and advanced towards the hotel, with the clanking of iron, an exaggeration of its movements being caused by the unusual surroundings. At twenty paces distant through the snow, the idle ' tourists, with their noses flattened against the windows, the little girls, whose Tarfarin on the Alps hair was cut short like boys', took this appari- tion for a straying cow, then for a rétameur carrying his tools. At ten paces the apparition again changed its appearance, and showed a cross-bow on its shoulder, and the casque of an archer of the middle ages on its head, an object still less likely to be met with on the mountains than a cow or a pedlar. When he reached the steps, the- archer was only a fat man, thickset, and broad-shouldered, who stopped to pufif and blow, and to shake the snow from his gaiters, which were of yellow cloth like his cap, and from his knitted comforter, which permitted scarcely anything to be seen of his face but two enormous tufts of grey whisker and a pair of green spectacles like the eye-pieces of a stereoscope. An ice- axe, an alpenstock, a knapsack, a coil of rope, crampofis, and iron hooks suspended from the belt of a Norfolk jacket with deep flaps, com- pleted the accoutrement of this perfect Alpine climber. Upon the desolate summit of Mont Blanc or the Finsteraarhorn, such a " get up " would l\irtariii on the Alps have been suitable enougli ; but at the Rigi- Kuhn, a few i)aces from the railway ! The Alpinist, it is true, came from the side opposite to the station, and the condition of his leggings bore witness to the long tramj) he had had through the snow and mire. For a moment he gazed ^at the hotel and its de- pendencies, surprised to find, at six thousand feet above the level of the sea, a building of such a size, with its glazed gal- leries, its colonnades, its seven ranges of windows, and the wide flight of steps between two rows of lamps which gave to the top of the mountain something of the ai)pearance of the Place de I'Ope'ra in a wintry twilight. But hov.-ever greatly surprised he may have been the occupants of the hotel seemed much more so ; and when he entered the wide vestibule, a curious, pushing crowd filled the Tartarin on the Alps doorways of the salles ; gentlemen grasping billiard cues, or with newspapers in their hands ; ladies holding their books or work ; while at the end, up the staircase, heads were protruded over the banisters and between the chains of the " lift." The new-comer spoke in a loud voice, a strong basso-profundo, a creux du Midi, which sounded like a pair of cymbals : " Coquin de sort .' Here's weather " Suddenly he stopped, took off his cap and spectacles. He was choking. The glare of the lights, the heat of the gas and of the stoves, con- trasting with the black cold night outside, the sumptuous appearance of the hotel, the lofty vestibule, the richly-laced porters with " REGINA MONTiuM " in gold letters on their caps, the white ties of the juaitres d'hôtel, and the battalion of Swiss female Tartarin on the Alps servants in their national costumes, who came running up at the sound of the gong — all this impressed him for a second, not for more than one. He felt himself the cynosure of all eyes, and immediately recovered his self-posses- sion, like a comedian before a full house. " AfoJisieur desire ? " It was the manager who asked him the question, softly ; a very well got up mana- ger, with a striped jacket, carefully tended whiskers, and fres chic, in fact. The mountaineer, without any emotion, demanded a room, " a nice little room at any rate," quite as much at his ease with this majestic manager as with an old school- friend. He was very nearly putting himself out, though, when the Bernese servant approached him, candle in hand, resplendent in her gold lace and tulle-decked sleeves, to inquire whether ^Monsieur would like to go up in the lift. If she had suggested the commission of a crime our hero could not have been more indignant. Tai'tarm on the Alps A lift ! for him ! for him ! His exclama- tion and his gesture caused his paraphernalia to rattle again. As suddenly appeased he said to the Swiss maid in a pleasant tone : " Pedibus cum jambis, ma belle chatte" and he mounted behind her, his wide back occupying the width of the stairs, knocking against people on the way up, while the whole hotel rang with the question, " Who is he ? " expressed in every language under the sun. Then the second dinner-bell sounded, and no one troubled himself or herself any more con- cerning this extraordinary individual. A sight indeed is the salle-à-ma?iger of the Rigi-Kulm. Six hundred guests seated around an im- mense horse-shoe table on which dishes of rice and prunes alternate in long files with green plants, reflecting in their clear or brown sauce the lights of the lustres or the gilding of the panelled ceiling. 8 Tartarin on the Alps As at all Swiss tables d'hôte^ this rice and these prunes divide the diners into two rival fiictions, and the looks of hatred or covetous- ness bestowed upon the dessert dishes is quite sufficient to enable the spectator to divine to which party tlie guests belong. The Rice Party betray themselves by their pallor, the Prunes by their congested appearance. On this particular evening the latter were in the majority, and included all the most important personages, quite European cele- brities, such as the great historian Astier- Rehu of the French Academy ; the Baron de Stolz, an old Austro-Hungarian diplo- matist : Lord Chijjpendale, a member of Tartarin on the Alps the Jockey Club with his niece (?) (hum I) ; the illustrious Professor Schwanthaler, of Boijn University ; a Peruvian general and his eight daughters. To all these the Rice faction could only oppose as vedettes a Belgian Senator and his family ; Madame Schwanthaler, the wife of the Professor aforesaid ; and an Italian tenor on his ' way from Russia, exhibiting upon the table-cloth a pair of sleeve-links as large as saucers. These double and opposing currents no doubt gave an air of lassitude and stiffness to the table d'hote. How otherwise can we account for the silence of these six hundred persons, stiff, surly, défiant, with that supreme contempt which they affected to possess one for the other? A superficial observer would have attributed it to the stupid Anglo- Saxon reserve which now gives ^ _ the tone to the travelling world. But no ! Human beings do not thus hate each other at Tartarin on the Alps first sight ; turning up their noses at each other ; sneering, and ghincing superciliously at one another in the absence of introduc- tions. There must have been something else ! Rice and Prunes, I tell you. There you have the explanation of the mournful silence that weighed down upon the dinner at the Rigi-Kulm, which, considering the number and the varied nationalities of the guests, ought to have been very animated and noisy ; some- thing like what one would imagine a meal at the foot of the Tower of Babel might have been. The mountaineer entered the room — a little perplexed in this assembly of Trappists beneath the glare of the lustres — coughed loudly without any one taking any notice of him, and seated himself in his place next the last comer, at the end of the table. Un- accoutred now, he was simply an ordinary tourist, but of a very amiable appearance ; bald, rotund, his beard thick and pointed, a fine nose, thick and somewhat fierce eyebrows, with a pleasant manner and appearance. Tartariti on tlie Alps Rice or Prune ! No one knew yet. Scarcely had he seated himself, when, quitting his place with a bound, he ex- claimed, " Outre ! a draught ! " and rushed to an empty chair turned down at the centre of the table. He was stopped by one of the Swiss female attendants, a native of the canton of Uri, wear- ing little silver chains and white stomacher. " Monsieur, that is engaged." Then, from the table, a young lady, of whom he could see nothing but a mass of fair hair relieved by a neck white as virgiii snow, said, without turning round, and with a foreign accent : " This seat is at liberty ; my brother is not well, and will not come down to dinner." "111?" asked the mountaineer, with an interested, almost affectionate, manner, as he seated himself. "111? Not dangerously, an moins ? " He pronounced the last words i>i oit iJie Alps vented him from sliowing himself brave, and ewn heroic, on occasion ; l)Ut it is (juite per- niissiblc to inciuire what business he liad on the Rigi (/u;;,'/;/^? iiiontiiiiii) at his aye, when lie hatl so dearly i)urchased the right to his case and comfort. To such a question the infamous Coste- calde only could rej)ly. Costecalde, a gun maker by trade, repre- sented a type rare in Tarascon. Envy — liase, malignant envy — visible in the curl of the thin lips, and in a kind of yellow steam which, rising from the liver in puffs, swelled his large, shaven face into uneven ridges as if produced by the blows of a hammer — like an ancient medal of Tiberius or Cara- calla. Envy with him was a disease which he did not even attempt to hide, and with that Tar tar in on the Alps 37 fine Tarasconic temperament, which is gushing enough, he used to say when speaking of his infirmity, "You do not know how bad it is " ! Costecalde's tormentor naturally was Tar- tarin. All that glory for one man ! To him ever ; always to him ! And slowly, surely, like the termite in the gilded wood of the idol, for twenty years he had been sappingand under- mining this great repu- tation, moth eating it as it were. When in the evening, at the club, Tartarin would relate his combats widi the lion, his hunting in the Sahara, Costecalde would indulge in little sniggering laughs, and incredulous shakes of the head. " But the skins at least, Costecalde, the lion-skins which he sent us, which are yonder in the club-room ? " Tè ! pardi. And the furs; do not you 3 s Tartarin on the Alps think that tlicrc is any want of tlicni in Algeria ? " " But the marks of tlie bullets, quite round, in the heads? " " And on the other hand, was it not at the time of our cap-hunting that wc used to find, in the hatters' sho])s, caps with bullet-holes, and riddled with shot, for the unskilful marks- men ? "' No doubt the fame of Tartarin, the beast- slayer, remained superior to these attacks ; but the Alpinist in his own house listened to all the criticism, and Costecalde did not spare him, furious that they had named as Presi- dent of the Ali)ine Club a man who was ageing visibly, and whose habits, contracted in Algeria, disposed him to laziness. Rarely did Tartarin take part in any of the ascents ; he contented himself by accompany- ing the climbers with his good wishes, and in reading to the full assembly, with much rolling of eyes, and emphasis which made ladies grow pale, the dramatic records of the expeditions. Costecalde, on the contrary, dry, muscular, nervous, ^^ Jambe de coq" as they called Tar tarin on the Alps 39 him, always climbed first of all : he had made all the ascents of the Alpines one by one, and had planted upon their lofty summits the flag of the club, the silver-spangled Taf-asque or dragon. Nevertheless, he was only the Vice- President (V, P. C. A.), but he was working so well that evidently at the next election Tartarin would be ousted. Advised of this by his associates, our hero was at first terribly disgusted ; the evil spirit which ingratitude and injustice will raise in the best minds seized upon him. He had a great mind to give the whole thing up — to emigrate — to cross the bridge, and live in Beaucaire amongst the Volsques. But he grew calmer after a while. To leave his little house, his garden, his cherished habits, to renounce his chair as President of the Alpine Club he had founded, to give up the majestic P. C. A. which embellished and distinguished his card, his writing paper, even the lining of his hat ! It was not to be thought of ! It was impossible ! Vé ! Then suddenly there occurred to him a perfectly miraculous notion. 4° Tartarin on the Alps As a matter of fact tlic exploits of Coste calde were confined to his exi)cditions in tlie Alpith's. AN'hy sliould not Tartarin, during tlie three months which must in- tervene between that time and the election, attempt some grand adventure ? why should not he ])lant upon the highest sununits in Europe (the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc for instance) the banner of his club ? "What a triumph would await him on his Tartarin on the Alps 4Ï return, what a slap in the face it would be for Costecalde when the Fonun would have published the narrative of the ascent ! How after that could he dare to dispute the pos- session of the chairmanship? With all speed he went to work : he had sent to him secretly from Paris a number of special works, such as Whymper's Scrambles m the Alps, Tyndall's Among the Glaciers, Stephen d'Arve's Mont Blanc, the Alpitie /ournals (both Swiss and English) ; and he r 2 42 Tartarin on the Alps fuddled his brain with a string of Alpine terms, — chimneys, couloirs, vwulins, ncvc^ séracs, moraines, rotures, — witliout knowing precisely what they all meant. At night his dreams were disturbed by interminable glissades, and sheer falls into bottomless crevasses ! Avalanches over- whelmed him ; arêtes of ice impaled his body on the way ; and long after he was awake and had consumed his morning chocolate, which he always took in bed, he retained the agony and the oppression of the nightmare. But that did not deter him, once he had got up, from devoting his morn- ing to the laborious exercise of getting into training. There is all around Tarascon a road planted with trees, which in the local parlance is called " le tour de ville." Every Sunday, in the afternoon, the residents, who despite their imaginativeness are a regular people, always make the tour of the town, and always in the same way. Tartarin trained himself by doing it eight or ten times in the morning, and often even in the opposite direction ! He proceeded Tartarin on the Alps 43 with his hands behind his back, taking short steps as on a mountain, slow and sure, and the stall-keepers, horrified at this infraction of the local custom, lost themselves in specula- tions of the most complicated character. At home, in his own garden, he practised leaping crevasses by jumping over the little basin wherein some water-lilies floated ; on two occasions he fell in, and was obliged to go and change his clothes. These drawbacks only excited him to fresh effort, and, risking vertigo, he walked along the narrow rim of the basin, to the manifest alarm of the old servant, who could by no means understand all these performances. At the same time he ordered from Avignon cratnpoiis, such as are recommended by Whymper, for his boots, and an ice-axe of the Kennedy pattern ; he also procured a cooking-lamp, two waterproof coverings, and two hundred feet of rope of his own invention, twisted with iron wire. The arrival of these different articles, the mysterious comings and goings which their manufacture necessitated, exercised the Taras- 41 Tartarin on the Alps connais very greatly. It was reported in the town that the President was ])reparing a coup. But of what nature ? Something great for certain, for according to the brave and sen- tentious commandant Bravida, a retired captain who only dealt in apophthegms, " The eagle does not hunt flies ! " With his most intimate friends Tartarin remained impenetrable ; but at the club meetings they would remark the trembling of his voice and his flashing eyes when he spoke to Costecalde — an indirect result of this new expedition, of which the dangers and fatigues became more accentuated as the time drew nearer. The unlucky man did not conceal them from himself, and he looked at them in such lugubrious colours that he put his affairs in order and wrote his last wishes, the expression of which costs the Tarasconnais, who love their lives, so much that they generally die intestate ! So one morning in June, a bright, sunny day, without a cloud in the sky, the door of the study open to the neat little garden with Its sanded walks, on which the exotic plants Tartarin on the Alps 45 threw clearly-defined shadows, in whicli a tiny jet of water trickled amid the joyous cries of the Savoyards who were playing at inarclle before the gate, — on that morning see Tartarin in slippers, and easy flannel costume, happy, satisfied, smoking a favourite pipe, and reading aloud as he wrote : "This is my will." One had need to have a heart firm in its place and solidly fixed ; these are cruel moments ! Nevertheless, neither his hand nor his voice shook, while he devised to the citizens all the ethnographical riches treasured 46 Tdifiirin on t/w Alps in his little house, carefully dusted and kept in first-rate order : "To the Alpine ('lub. tlie baobab {Arlws r/o(7;//t-a), to be placed on llie chimney-piece of the hall of science. " To ]îravida, my fowling-pieces, revolvers, hunting-knives, Malay knives, tomahawks, and other deadly weapons. " To Excourbanies, all my i)ipes, calumets, naj-ghilts, and little pipes for kif and opium smoking. "To Costecalde — yes, Costecalde himself had his legacy — the famous poisoned arrows. (Mind you don't touch them !) " Perhaps Tartarin had a secret hope that the man would touch them and die, but no such idea was evidenced in the will, which closed with these words of divine mansuétude : " I beg my dear Alpinists not to forget their president. I hope they will forgive my mortal enemy as I forgive him, although it is he, nevertheless, who has occasioned my death." Here Tartarin was compelled to stop, Tartarin on the Alps 47 blinded by his tears. For one moment he seemed to see himself a mangled mass at the foot of some lofty mountain, picked up in a wheelbarrow, and his shapeless remains car- ried to Tarascon. Oil, power of the Pro- vençal imagination 1 he was assisting at his own funeral, listening to the chants for the dead, the discourse at the grave. " Poor Tartarin ! pechere ! " And lost amid the crowd of his friends, he began to weep for himself ! But almost immediately the sight of his study, filled with sunlight, glittering with weapons and rows of pipes, the song of the little Jet d'eau in the garden, brought him back to the reality of things. On the other hand, why should he die ? why even go away? AVho compelled him to do so, if not his own self-respect ? To risk his life for a presidential chair and three letters ! But this was only weakness, and did not last longer than the other impression. At the end of five minutes the will was finished, sigTied, and sealed with an enormous black seal, and the great man then made the last preparations for his departure. 48 l\iitaii)i on f/it- Alps Once again Taitarin oï the warren had triumphed over 'Jartarin of tlic cabbage- garden. And we miglit say of this Tarascon hero what was said of Turennc : "His body was not always ready to go into battle, but his soul carried him there in spite of himself." On the evening of that very day, as the last stroke of ten was sounding from the maison de ville, and the streets, already deserted, were clear except for here and there a belated one knocking for admission, a gruff voice half strangled with fear cried in the dark, " Good-night, au iiiotiain,'" and then, with a sudden closing of the door, a pedestrian glided tlirough the darkened town wliere the fronts of the houses were only illuminated by the red and green tints brightly re- flected from the bottles in Be'zuquet's shop, which were projected with the silhouette of the chemist himself, with his elbows on his desk, and sleeping on the Codex. He indulged in a little nap every evening in this manner, from nine till ten, so that — as he said — he might be all the fresher at Tariarifi on the Alps 49 night should any one require his services. Between ourselves, this was a mere Taras- connade, for no one ever called him up, and indeed he had himself severed the wire of the night-bell in order that he might sleep the more soundly. Suddenly Tartarin entered, wrapped up, his travelling-bag in his hand, and so pale, so discomposed, that the chemist, with that vivid local imagination of which the shop did not deprive him, believed that some fearful and terrible thing had happened. "Unhappy man ' " he exclaimed, " what is 50 Tartarin P?i the Alps the matter ? You have been poisoned ? Quick, quick, the ipccacuanlia ! " He was hurrying off, upsetting his bottles, when Tartarin, to stop him, was obhgcd to hold him round the body : "Just listen now, que diable ! " — and in his sharp tones the spitefulness of the actor who has made a bad entrance was manifest. The chemist once again brought back to his counter by an iron hand, Tartarin whispered : " Are we alone, Bezuquet ? " " Bé oui ! " replied the other, looking about him in vague terror. " Pascalon has gone to bed (Pascalon was his pupil), and mother also — But why ? " " Shut your shutters," said Tartarin in a commanding tone, without replying to the question. "They can see us from outside." Bézuquet obeyed, trembling. He was an old bachelor, living with his mother, whom he had never quitted ; he was as timid and gentle as a girl, and his demeanour contrasted strangely with his swarthy face and thick lips, his immense hooked nose, which bent over his long moustache — a head of an Algerian Tartarin on the Alps 51 pirate before the conquest. These antitheses are common in Tarascon, where the heads possess loo much of the Roman and Saracenic character : heads with the ex- pression of models in a school of design, unfitted to mere tradespeople and the ultra- pacific manners of the little town. Thus it was that Excourbanies, who had the air of one of the bold companions of Pizarro, was a mercer, and rolled flaming yellow eyes when measuring off two yards of thread ; and that Be'zuquet, labelling the Spanish liquorice and the sin/pus gnmmi, resembled an ancient rover of the Barbary coast. When the shutters had been closed, and fastened with bolt and bar, Tartarin said, "Listen, Ferdinand," for he had a habit of calling people by their Christian names. Then he arose and " emptied his heart," which was full of bitterness against his associates. He related the low manoeuvres of '■'■ Jamhe de coq,'' the trick which they wished to play him at the next election, and the manner in which he hoped to checkmate them. 52 Tartariii oit f/ie Alps In the first place, it was most important to keep the matter a secret, and not reveal it until the precise moment which would deter- mine the success of the plan had arrived, always except in case of an accident — one of those fearful catastrophes — " Eh ! coquin de sort, Bézuquet ; don't whistle like that wliile I am speaking." This was one of the chemist's little habits. Being taciturn by nature — a phenomenon in Taras- con — he gained the con- fidence of the President ; his big lips, always like an (J, preserved the habit of a continual whistling, which seemed to ridicule every one, even in the most solemn moments. And while the hero was alluding to his possible death, and saying, as he placed the folded, sealed, packet upon the table, " My last wishes are declared here, Bézuquet : I have chosen you as the executor of my will " "//;/, Jiu^ /t!/,'' whistled the chemist, carried Tartarin on the Alps 53 away by his mania, but really very much moved, and quite appreciating the importance of the part he had to play. Then the hour of departure approached : he wished to drink success to the enterprise — " something good, quel a glass of the Garus EUxir." After many cupboards had been opened and searched, he remembered that his _.l mother had the keys of the Garus. It would be necessary to wake her, and tell who was there. So a substitute for the elixir was found in a glass of the syrup of Calabria, a summer beverage, modest and inoffensive, of which Bezuquet was the inventor, and which was advertised in the Forum as '"'■ Sirop de Calabre, ten sous the bottle, in- 54 Tartarin on the Alps eluding a glass " ! " Sirop de Cadavre,'' that infernal Costecalde would say, for he sneered at all successes : for the rest, this abominable l^lay upon the words only aided the sale, and the Tarasconnais were exceedingly fond of this sirop de Cadavre. The libation performed, a few last words exchanged, the friends tore themselves asunder. Bezuquet was still whistling through his moustache, while great tears were rolling down his cheeks. "Adieu, an iiionain" said Tartarin in a rough voice, feeling as if he were about to weep also ; and as the shutter of the door had been put uj), the hero was obliged to leave the shop on all fours. The trials of his journey were already commencing. Three days later he disembarked at Vitznau, at the foot of the Rigi. As a preliminary canter to get into training for mountaineering, the Rigi attracted him because of its low altitude (1800 metres, about ten times the height of Mont-Terrible, the most elevated peak of the Alpifies /), and also because of Tartarin ott the Alps 55 the splendid panorama which is obtainable from the summit, all the Bernese Alps seated, white and rosy, round the lakes, waiting till the climber shall make his choice, and throw his ice-axe at one of them. Sure of being recognised en 7-oufe, and per- haps followed — for it was a weakness of his to fancy he was as well-known throughout France as he was celebrated and popular in Tarascon — he had made a wide detour to reach Switzerland, and did not " harness " himself until he had crossed the frontier. It was a good thing he did not, as his " arma- ment " could never be contained in a French railway compartment. But, however commodious the Swiss rail- way carriages may be, the Alpinist, embar- rassed by implements to the use of which he was quite unaccustomed, stabbed people's toes with the point of his alpenstock, har- pooned others with his crampons, and every- where he went, in the railway stations, the hotels, or on the steamer, he excited as much astonishment as cursing, elbowing, and angry looks, which he could not understand, and 56 Tartarin on the Alps which were torture to his candid and affectionate nature. To sum up, there was a leaden sky, lieavy clouds, and a pelting rain. It rained at Bale, where tlic houses are washed and re-washed by servants and the water from heaven ; it rained at Lucerne, on the quay where the mails and luggage seem- ed to be just recovered from a wreck ; and when he reached Vitznau, on tlie brink of the Lake of the Four Cantons, there was the same de- luge falling upon the green slopes of the Rigi, encircled by black clouds, with torrents dashing over the rocks, making cascades in dust-like spray, dropping from all the stones and from every fir-branch. Tartarin had never seen so much water before. He entered an auberge^ and was served " She burst into a peal of inextinguishable laughter. 58 Tartarin on the Alps with some cafe au lait, honey, and butter, the only really good things that he had so far enjoyed in his journey. Then, once more refreshed, liis beard cleared of some honey by means of a corner of his serviette, he made preparations to attempt his first ascent. " And now," said he, as he was packing up his sac, "how long will it take me to get to the top of the Rigi ? " "An hour or an hour and a quarter, monsieur. But you must make haste ; the train will start in five minutes." " A train up the Rigi ! You are joking ! " Through the leaden-sashed window of the auberge slie showed him the train which was about to ascend. Two large covered waggons without windows, pushed by a locomotive with a short chimney and with a kettle-shaped body — a monstrous insect clinging to the mountain, and getting quite out of breath in its attempt to climb the steep sides. The two Tartarins — the wild and the domestic species — were shocked at the idea of ascending in this hideous machine. One thought it ridiculous to cHmb the Alps in a Tartarin^on the Alps 59 lift : as for the other, the light bridges which carry the line over chasms, with the prospect of a fi-ill of a thousand feet if the train left the metals ever so little, inspired him with all kinds of sad reflections, which found reason for the establishment of the little cemetery at Vitznau, the tombs in which are squeezed together at the bottom of the slope like the linen displayed in the courtyard of a laundry. Evidently this cemetery is established as a matter of precaution, so that in case of acci- dent travellers may find it quite convenient. " I'll go up on foot," said the valiant Tarasconnais. " It will give me some exercise. Zou ! " And so he went, very much pre-occupied by his alpenstock in the presence of the staff of the auberge, who ran to the door shouting to him the way, indications which he never heard. He first pursued an ascending path, paved with great pebbles, of unequal sizes, pointed, as in a Southern lane, and bordered with wooden channels to permit the escape of the rain-water. To right and left are fine orchards, grassy 6o '/\jr/(viit on the Alps meadows crossed by these same irrigating jiipcs made from trunks of trees. This arrangement causes a continual sjjlashing of water from the top to llie l)ottom of the mountain, and every time that the ice-axe of the Alpinist caught in the low branches of an oak or chestnut his cap crackled as if subjected to a shower from a watering- pot. " Diou! what a quantity of water !" sighed the man of the South. But things became worse when the paved way ceased, for then he was obliged to pick his way through the torrent, to leap from one stone to another, so as not to wet his gaiters. Then the downpour hindered him, penetrating, continuous ; and it seemed to get colder as he ascended. When he stopped to take breath, he could hear nothing but the rushing of the water in which he stood, half-drowned, and when he turned round he could see the black clouds united to the lake by long fine rods of glass, through which the chalets of Vitznau glistened like freshly varnished toy-houses. Several men and children j^assed close by. Tartarin on the Alps 6i some with heads bent down and backs curved under the hod of white wood con- taining supjiHes for some villa or pension, whose balconies could be perceived mid-way. " To the Rigi-Kulm ? " asked Tartarin, to as sure himself tliat he - was in the right direction ; but his ex- traordinary equipment, and particularly the knitted comforter which shrouded his face, alarmed those he addressed, and every one of them, after staring at him with wide-open eyes, hurried upwards without re- These meetings soon became few and far between : the last human being he en- countered, was an old woman who was washing some linen in the trunk of a tree 02 Tartiiri)! ou tJie Alps uiiclcr the shade of an enormous red umbrella fixed in the grountl. " Rigi-Kulni ? " asked the Alpinist. The old woman raised to his a terrified and idiotic face, bearing a goitre which hung from her neck, as large as the bell of a Swiss cow : then after having taken a long look at him she burst into a peal of ine.\tinguishal)le laughter, which stretched her mouth from ear to ear, puckering up her little eyes ; and every time that she opened them again, the sight of Tartarin standing before her, his ice-axe on his shoulder, seemed to redouble her mirth. " Tron de lair ! " growled the Tarascon- nais, " it's lucky she's a woman ; " and burst- ing with rage he continued his route, losing his way in a jnne wood, where his boots slipped upon the soaking moss. Beyond that, the scene changed. No more l)aths, no trees nor pastures. A few mournful slopes, bare, but sustaining great boulders, which he was obliged to scale on hands and knees for fear of falling ; morasses full of yellow mud, wliich he crossed slowly, testing Tartarin on the Alps 63 the quagmire with his alpenstock, and Hfting liis feet Hke a knife-grinder. Every moment he consulted the compass which hung as a charm to his watch-chain ; but, whether owing to the altitude or to the variations of the tem- jjerature, the needle seemed defective. He had no means by which he could take his bear- ings, for the thick yellow fog that prevented him from seeing ten paces in any direction, was penetrated by a thick, cold sleet, which made the ascent more and more laborious. Suddenly he halted, the ground was white in front. Take care of your eyes ! He had come to the snow-line ! Immediately he drew his glasses from their case and adjusted them firmly. The moment was a solemn one. Somewhat nervous, but proud all the same, Tartarin felt that at one bound he had ascended 3000 feet towards the peaks and their dangers ! He advanced with great precaution, think- ing of the crevasses and the rotures of which he had read, and in his heart of hearts cursing the people of the auberge, who had advised him to ascend straight up without a guide. 64 Tarlarin on tlic Alps Niglit would surprise him «ui the mountain. Could ho I'md a hut, or only the projection of a rock, to shelter himself? Suddenly lie i)erceived, on the wild and desolate l)latform, a kind of woodei\ cJialct, bound with a placard bearing enormous letters, which he deciphered with difficulty : Pho — TO — GRA — PHIK DU Rl — GI KULM. At the same moment the immense hotel with its three hundred windows became visible to him a little farther on between the great lamps, which burned brightly in the fog. À k III. Aji alarm o?i the J?igi. — Be cool ! be cool ! — The Alpine horn. — What Tartarin found Perplexity, telephone. He asks for a j^y/iile by " Q7ces aco ? Who goes there ? " cried Tartarin, hstening attentively, and with eyes wide open in the dark. The pattering of many feet was audiljle in the hotel — doors banged — sounds of puffing — blowing — cries of " Make haste ! " — while out of doors was a blowing of horns, and a rush I) 66 Tartarin on the Alps of flame liglUctl up the windows and the curtains. Fire ! \\"\\\\ a single bound Tartarin was out of bed, and, raj^idly shod and dressed, gained the still gas lit staircase, where he found, descending, a bu/:zing swarm of young ladies hastily coiffées, wrapped up in green shawls, woollen scarves — anything that first came to hand when they got out of bed. Tartarin, with a view to fortifying his own courage, and to reassure the young ladies as he rushed about and ran against everybody, cried out, " Keep cool ! keep cool ! " with the voice of a sea-gull— a thin, faint voice — one of those which one hears in dreams, which give the "creeps" to the bravest of us. Can you imagine how the young ladies almost shouted with laughter as they looked at him? only thinking him very funny indeed. They had no idea of the danger —at their age ! Fortunately the old diplomatist came after them, rapidly arrayed in a dressing-gown over white caleçons, and silken slippers. Tartarin on the Alps 67 At last there was a man ! Tartarin ran up to him gesticulating : "Ah, Monsieur le Baron, what a terrible mishap ! Do you know anything about it ? Where is it ? How did it break out ? " " Who ? what ? " bleated the bewildered Baron, who understood nothing of all this. " Why, the fire ! " " What fire ? " The unfortunate man was evidently so vacant and stupid that Tartarin left him to himself, and dashed out of doors to organise assistance. " Assistance ! Help ! " repeated the Baron -, and after him five or six waiters, who slept standing in the antechamber, stared at each other and repeated in a bewildered foshion, " Help ! " At the first step he took outside the building Tartarin perceived his mistake. There was not the least sign of a fire. A nipping cold, a dark night illuminated by pine-torches which threw a lurid glare upon the snow. At the bottom of the steps, a man with an Aljjine horn emitted his modulated low- 68 '/'tir/ij/i/i 0/1 iJie Alps ings, a monotonous ranz des vaches of three notes, with wliich it is the fasliioii on the Rigi- Kuhn to awake tlic sun- worshippers, and to an- nounce to them the approacliing appearance of the hmiinary. 'T- — '""*>i, " It is stated that he V^ shows liimself sometimes, at his tlrst rising, at the extreme edge of the mountain behind the hotel. To find his bearings Tartarin had only to follow the continual tittering of the girls, who were walking close to him. lUit he proceeded more .slowly, still feeling very sleepy, and stitï in his limbs after his six liours' climb. "Is that you Maniloff ? " asked a clear-toned voice suddenly out of the darkness — a lady's voice : " come and help me ; I have lost my shoe." Tartarin recognised the bird- like notes of his little neighbour at 1^ \ \ ■m >' 1 5 %* i^ i w-w ^4 ! f 1*1 ■.*' f V f :V ^^: •A A liiilc hand iL-stiii'' fur a minute on his shoulder. yo Tartarin on the Alps tlio table d'/iôte, whose graceful profile he caught in the pale light reflected from the snowy ground. " It is not Maniloff, mademoiselle ; but if I can be of any assistance " She utteivtl a little cry of surprise and fear, and made a gesture of repulsion which Tartarin did not sec, for he was already stooping down and tapping the short grass, which crackled with frost beneath his fingers. '•'• Ti\ pardl ! here it is!" he exclaimed joyfully. He shook the slender shoe, which was powdered with rime, knelt down on one knee on the cold damp ground, in the most gallant fashion, and asked that he might be rewarded by having the honour to put on Cinderella's slipper ! The lady, more imamiable than in the story, replied with a " No " very sharply uttered, and hopping on one foot endeavoured to insert her silk stocking into the reddish-brown shoe ; but she would never have succeeded without the aid of our hero, who was very much i)leased to feel a little hand resting for a minute on his shoulder. Tartar in on the Alps 71 " You have very good eyes," she said by way of acknowledgment, while they proceeded groping their way in the dark side by side. "The result of sportmg habits, made- moiselle." " Ah, then you are a sportsman ! " She said this with some raillery and a little incredulity in her voice. Tartarin had only to mention his name to convince her of the fact, but, like all illustrious people, he was discreet, and, with a kind of coquetry, wished to surprise her by degrees as it were : " I am a hunter, as a matter of fact ! " She continued in her ironical tone — " And v.'hat game do you hunt for choice, now ? " "The large carnivora and the great deer," replied Tartarin, believing he would over- whelm her. " Do you find many of them on the Rigi ? " she asked. Always polite in his repartee, Tartarin was going to reply that on the Rigi he had met none but gazelles, when his remark was cut short by the approach of two shadows who called out, 72 Tartarin on the Alps "Sonia ! St)nia ! " '' I am coming," she said, aiul then lurning towards Tartarin, whose eyes, now accustomed to the obscurity, were able to distinguish lier pretty pale face under a mantilla en ma?io/a, she added, this time seriously : " \'ou are engaged in a dangerous jjursuit, my good man. Take care you do not lose your life " And then, all of a sudden, she disap- peared in the dark- ness with her friends. Later on the men- acing import of these words occurred to the imaginative mind of the Southerner : but at the time he was only vexed at the use of the term " good man," flung at his stout- ness and grey hair, and Tar tarin 07i the Alps 73 at the careless disappearance of the young lady just as he was going to tell her who he was, and to gloat over her stupefaction. He advanced a few paces in the direction of the group who were preceding him, with a confused murmur in his ears — the coughing, the sneezing of the assembled tourists, who were waiting with impatience the rising of the sun : some of the most adventurous climbed up into a little stand or belvedere, the supports of which, coated with snow, were dis- tinguishable in the dying darkness of the night. A gleam of light began to streak the eastern sky, and was saluted by another note on the Alpine horn, and with that "ah" D 2 74 Tartar in on the Alps wliirh (.scapes from tlie overcliargcd bosoms of tlio siiectators as tlic prompter's last bell rings for the raising of the curtain. Thin as a crack in a lid, tlie light gradually ex- tended itself, widening the horizon, but at the same time raising from the valley a thick, ojjaque, yellow fog, which became thicker and more extended as day broke. It was like a veil between the stage and the audience. They were obliged to give up all hope of seeing the beautiful effects described by the guide-books. On the other hand, the lielero- dox costumes of the dancers of the night before, hurriedly aroused from sleep, were displayed as in a magic lantern, ludicrous and eccentric ; for shawls, counterpanes, even the curtains of the beds which they had occupied were worn. Beneath the varied head-dresses — silk or cotton caps, hoods, toques, night-caps — were scared, puffed faces, the heads of shipwrecked people on an island in the open sea, on the watch for a sail in the offing with all the intentness of gaze of which their widely open eyes were capable. And nothing— all tlie time nothing ! Tartarm on the Alps 75 Nevertheless, some of them in an access of good will made believe to distinguish the peaks from the belvedere ; and the " clucking " of the Peruvian girls were heard as they surrounded a big fellow in a check ulster who was enumerating in the calmest way the invisible panoramic objects of the Bernese Alps, naming and designating, in a loud voice, the peaks which were enveloped in the fog: " On the left you see the Finsteraarliorn, 12,825 feet high; the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the Monch, the Jungfrau, to the elegant proportions of which I would call the attention of the young ladies." ^'Bé ! true, that fellow does not vvant for impudence," said Tartarin to himself. Then as an after-thought he muttered — " But I know that voice — pas viouainr He recognised the accent — that asse7it of the South of France which is as distinguish- able at a distance as the garlic is ; but so preoccupied was he in following up the foir unknown that he did not stop, continuing to inspect the groups he passed. She had, 76 Tartarin on the Alps no doubt, ivtumcd to tb.e liotcl, as every one else was now doing, tired of remaining shivering in the cold and stamj)ing their feet. Some bent backs, some tartar jjlaids, the ends of which swept the snow, disappeared into the ever-thicken- ing fog ! Very soon nothing remained on the plateau, cold and desolate in the grey dawn, but Tartarin, and the Alpine horn-blower who continued to extract melancholy howls from the in- strument like a dog baying at the moon. He was a little old man, with a long beard, wearing a Tyrolese hat embellished with green tassels which fell down his back, and bearing, like those of all the retainers of the hotel, the Regina Montium in letters of gold. Tartarin advanced towards him to bestow on him a Tartarin on the Alps 77 pour-hoin\ as he had seen the other tourists do. " Let us go to bed, old fellow," said he, tapping the man upon the shoulder with the Tarascon familiarity. " A regular humbug, que, this Rigi sunrise ! " The old man continued to blow his horn, finishing his ritorncllo with a silent laugh which wrinkled up the corners of his eyes and shook the green tassels of his hat. Tartarin, after all, did not regret the expe- rience of the night. The meeting with the pretty blonde made amends to him for his interrupted sleep, for although near his fiftieth year he had still a warm heart, a romantic 7 s Tartan II on the Alps iinaginatiiui, an ankiit soul. When lu' again had reached liis bedroom, and had shut his eyes to woo sleeji, he still fiincied he could feel in his hand the tiny shoe, and hear the jerky appeals of the young lady : " Is that you, Maniloff? " Sonia ! What a beautiful name. She was certainly a Russian ; and these young men were travelling with her — friends of her brother no doubt. 'J'hen all became misty ; the golden-curled little head went to mingle with other floating and drowsy visions — the slopes of the Rigi and the waterfalls, — and very soon the heroic snoring of the great man, sonorous and rhythmical, filled the little room and a considerable section of the corridor besides. As he was about to go down stairs next morning, at the first sound of the breakfast- bell, Tartarin was reassuring himself that his beard had been properly brushed, and that he did not look very badly in his mountaineering costume, when suddenly he began to shake with fear. Before him, open, and stuck in the looking-glass, an anonymous letter displayed the following threatening words : Tartar in on the Alps 79 '■'■Français du diable^ thy disguise hit ill conceals thee. IVe have spared thee this time, but if thou crassest our path again., be^uare I " Perfectly astounded, he read and re-read the note without comprehending it. Of whom, of what, was he to beware ? lîow had the letter got there ? Evidently while he slept, for he had not perceived it when he returned from his early morning promenade. He rang for the chambermaid, a flat-faced creature marked with small-pox like a Gruyère cheese, from whom he could elicit nothing intelligible except that she was of "/<■;;/ fa- mille," and never entered the rooms when a gentleman was in possession. " What a very curious thing," said Tartarin, as he turned the note over and over. He was greatly impressed. In a moment the name of Costecalde crossed his mind, Costccalde imbued with his own plans of mountaineer- ing, and endeavouring to turn him aside by menaces and plotting ! Then he began to persuade himself that the letter was a hoax, for he soon abandoned the other theory ; perhaps some of the girls who had laughed 8o Tariarin on the Alps at him so merrily had perpetrated it, — they were so indei)endent, these young Enghsh and American ladies ! The second bell soimded. He put the anonymous letter in his ])ocket. "After all, we shall soon see," he muttered, and tlie formidable moue which accompanied this reflection indicated the heroism of his soul. A new surprise awaited him at the brcakfiist-table. Instead of the pretty little neighbour with the golden hair he perceived the vulturc-likc neck of an old English woman whose long " weepers " swept the cloth. Tartarm Ofi the Alps 81 It was repeated near him that the young lady and her party had left by the early train. " Cre nom ! je suis floué" ex- claimed the Ita- lian tenor who the night before had declared so rudely to Tar- tarin that he did not understand French. He had evidently learnt it in the night ! The tenor rose from his chair, threw down his serviette and rushed out, leav- ing our hero completely dumbfounded. A great many ofthegusstsalso I 82 Til r fa rill on the Alps took their deiJarturo. It is always thus on the Rigi, where no one remains more than four-and twenty liours. Besides, the arrangements of the table are invariably the same, the dessert dishes in long rows separating the two factions. But that morning the Rice Party were trium- phant in the large majority — reinforced by some illustrious personages ; and the Prunes, as was said, did not show to advantage. Tartarin, without taking cither side, went up stairs, f;istened up his knapsack, and sent for his bill. He had had (juite enough of Rci::;iiia moiitiu/ii, of its tti!>/e J'/iôh', and its "dummies." Suddenly reminded of liis Alpine mania by the touch of his ice-axe, the rope, and the crampons with which he was again accoutred, he began to burn with the desire to attack some real mountain — a peak without a lift and a i)hotographic studio in the open. He hesitated between the more elevated Fin- steraarhorn and the more celebrated Jungfrau, while the fair virginal name of the latter brought the little Russian once more to his memory. Tartarin on the Alps 83 As he was balancing these questions in his mind while his bill was being got ready, he amused himself in the large, silent, and melancholy hall, by looking at the coloured photographs on the wall, which represent the glaciers, the snow-slopes, the celebrated and dangerous passes of the mountains. Here is a party in single file, like ants in search of food, upon an ice-rtTr/f, steep and blue ; farther on an enormous crevasse with sea-green sides, across which a ladder had been flung, and was being crossed by a lady on her knees, then by an abbé holding up his gown. The mountaineer of Tarascon, resting his hands upon his ice-axe, had had no idea of such difficulties as those; but he must en- counter them somehow ! Suddenly his face paled in fear. In a black frame Avas an engraving after the famous picture of Gustave Doré, repre- senting the accident on the Matterhorn. Four human bodies, on their backs or on their /aces, were sliding down the snow-slope, their arms extended, their hands beating the snow, seeking the broken rope on which their lives 84 Tartarin on the Alps dcpcntlcd, and which had only served to drag lliem more easily to death over the precipice when they fell pell-mell with ropes, axes, green veils, and all the pleasant apparatus of the ascent which had become so terribly tragic. " Mâtin ! " said Tartarin, speaking aloud in dismay. One of the jiolite managers heard his exclamation, and thought it his duty to reassure the guest. Accidents of that kind were becoming more and more rare : prudence was one essential qualification, and, particularly, a good guide. Tartarin inquired whether the manager could tell him of one in confidence. Not that he had any fear ; but it was always best to be on the safe side. The man considered the point with a very important air, caressing his whiskers the while. " In confidence ? Ah ! if monsieur had only mentioned it sooner we had here this morning the very man. The courier of a Peruvian family." " He is acquainted with the mountain ? " asked Tartarin with a knowing air. Tar /arm on the Alps 85 " Oh, monsieur, with every mountain — in Switzerland, Savoy, the Tyrol, and India, in the whole world — he has done them all ; he knows them by heart, and will tell you about them. He is something like ! I believe they would relinquish him without making any difficulty. With such a man as he a child could go anywhere without danger ! " " Where is he ? Where can he be found ? " "At the Kaltbad, monsieur, where he is arranging the rooms for his party. VIo. can telephone." A telephone, on the Rigi ! That was the crowning of the edifice. Tartarin was never astonished at anything after that ! In five minutes the garçon returned with the reply. The Peruvians' courier was leaving for Tellsplattc, where he would certainly stay the night. This Tellsplattc is a memorial chapel, one of the shrines established in honour of William Tell, many of which are found in Switzerland. People go there to see the 86 Tartarin on the Alps frescoes which a celebrated painter of Bale has executed on the walls of the chapel. It was scarcely an hour by steamboat or an hour and a half perhaps. Tartarin did not hesitate. He might thus lose a day, but he must i)ay his respects to William Tell, for whom he had a strong predilection ; and then there was the chance to secure this wonderful guide and arrange to do the Jungfrau with him. En route, zou ! He immediattly paid his bill, in which the sunrise and sunset were included as well as the lights and attendance, and then, preceded by the terrible clanking of iron which dis- seminated fear and surprise wherever he went, he proceeded to the railway — for to descend the Rigi on foot when he had already walked Tartarin on the Alps 87 up it seemed to him waste of time, and would, besides, be doing too much honour to that artificial mountain. A detachment of tlie Salvation Army.' IV On board the steamer. — Rain. — The hero of Tarascon salutes the Shades. — The truth about William Tell. — Disillusion. • — Tar- tarin of Tarascon never existed ! — • " Té! Bonipard ! " Hic liad left snow on tlic Rigi-Kulni — below on the lake he found rain, a fine close rain, a kind of mist in which the mountains ap- peared like clouds. The Toh/i wind was blowing, making waves upon the lake, where the gulls, flying low, seemed to be carried on by the billows : one could almost fancy one's self at sea. Tartarin recalled his departure from 90 Tartariii on the Alps Marseilles I'llkxii years before, when he was setting out to hunt lions — he thought of that sky without a cloud, bathed in light; the blue sea, blue as indigo, stirred uj) into crisj) salt \vaves by the mistral ; the salutes of the forts, the clanging of the bells, intoxication, joy, sun, all the fairy impressions of the first voyage What a contrast was it with the black deck of the almost deserted little steamer, on which he made out as in a mist a few j^assengers wrapped in ulsters or mackintoshes; and the man at the wheel, motionless abaft, hooded, grave, and sybilline, above the legend couched in three languages: "You must not speak to the man at the wheel." This ])rohibition was quite unnecessary, for no one spoke on board the Winkelried at all, — no more on deck than in the cabins, which were crammed with passengers of melancholy mien, sleeping, reading, yawning, pell-mell, their light baggage strewn upon the benches. They appeared like a number of lieojjle being trans[)orted on the day after a coup d'etat. Tartarin on the Alps 91 From time to time the hoarse steam whistle announced the approach to a station. A noise of footsteps and of the unloading of luggage resounded from the deck. Then the shore faded into the mist, advanced again, displaying the dark green slopes, the villas shivering amid the saturated trees, the poplars •in rows along the road, bordered all its length by sumptuous hotels designated in letters of gold on their façades — the hotels Meyer, Midler, du I^ac, with numbers of heads belonging to bored residents looking out of the dripping casements. The people crossed the gangway to the shore ; descended, ascended ; equally dirty, soaked, and silent. On the tiny pier a crowd of umbrellas was visible : the omnibus quickly disappeared. Then the paddle- wheels churned the water into foam and the shore receded, fading into the blurred landscape with the petisions Meyer, Midler, du Lac, — all the windows of which, for an instant open, displaying at every story a waving of pocket handkerchiefs, and out- stretched arms, as if to say : " Have mercy ! Tartarin on the Alps — l)ity us! take us away— if you only knew — ! " Sometimes tlie W'inkclricd would ])ass another steamer, with its name in black letters on the white ^xoww^— Genu an in ^ Cîiiillaiime Tt'll. There was the same luj^uhrious deck, the same shiny waterproofs, the same lament- \^ ^ >^ , ~>««^J V^^jjgjj ■■'"Eu _^ ~~ iHmH^ able passage, no matter in which direction the phantom vessel was proceeding, the same distressful glances were exchanged from one to the other. And to think that all these people were travelling for pleasure ! that they were prisoners for their own jjleasure in the pe7isions of Meyer, Miiller, and du Lac ! Here, as at the Rigi-Kulm, the great Tartarin on the Alps grievance of Tartarin, whicli irritated liim more than the cold rain or the leaden sky, was the impossibility of speaking ! Below, he had again found some well-known faces — the member of the Jockey Club, with his niece ! The Academician, Astier-Rehu, and Professor Schwanthaler, those two im- placable foes, condemned to exist side by side for a month, bound to the same itinerary, to a Cook's circular tour, with others too : but none of these illustrious Prunes would recog- nise the Tarasconnais, who was nevertheless easily recognisable by his comforter and his equipment, in a most indubitable manner. Every one seemed ashamed of that dance the evening before, and of the ine.\])licable 94 Tartarin on iJic Alps tr;ins])()its into which they hail been inveigled by that fat man. Afadamc Scliwanlhaler alone came towards her partner, witli the bright and rosy appear- ance of a little chubby fairy, and holding her skirt between two fingers as if she was about to perform a minuet, she said, " Ballir, — dant- si'r, — t/i's cJioli ! " Was she invoking memory, or tempting him to tread another measure? She would not let him alone ; and Tartarin, to escape her importunity, went on deck again, preferring to be wet to his very bones rather than be made a laughing-stock. And it did come down, and the sky was murky ! To heighten the gloom, a whole detachment of the Salvation Army was going to Beckenried — a dozen fat girls of heavy mien, with navy-blue dresses, and coal-scuttle bonnets, under enormous red umbrellas, singing hymns, which were accompanied on the accordion ])y a man with wild eyes, lanky, emaciated — a kind of David Gamm. These shrill voices, spiritless and discordant as the cries of a gull, came dragging through the rain, and the :;moke of the steamer which 1 7 a fia ri) I on f/ie Alps 95 the wind beat back. Tartarin had never heard anything so deplorable in his life. At Brunnen the detachment quitted the boat, leaving the tourists' pockets full of pious tracts ; and almost immediately the accordion and the singing of these poor larvœ had ceased, the sky began to clear, and bits of blue became visible. Now the steamer was entering the Bay of Uri, shaded and inclosed between wild and lofty mountains ; and on the right, at the foot of Seelisberg, the tourists were shown the Cirvitli, where Mclchtal, Fiirst, and Staufïlicher took the oath to deliver their land from the oppressor. Tartarin, very much affected, reverently removed his cap, without noticing the as- tonishment his action aroused ; he even waved his head-covering in the air three times, by way of doing homage to the manes of the heroes. Some passengers mistook his enthusiasm, and politely returned his salute. At length the engine uttered a hoarse l)el!ow, which echoed across tlic narrow bay. 'I'hc placard which they display on deck 96 Tartarin on the Alps at every lamling-placc — as is done at i)ul)lic balls at every change of dance — announced Tellsjjlatte. 'I'hey liad arrived ! The chapel is situated five minutes' walk from the landing-jjlace, (|uite on the margin of the lake, on the very rock ujîon which ^^'illiam Tell leaped from Gesler's l)oat in the storm. Tartarin experienced a delicious emotion, while he followed the Cook's tourists along the lake, as he trod the historic ground, and recalled, and lived over again, the principal events of the great drama, the details of which he knew as well as those in his own life. From his earliest years, William Tell had been his ideal ! When, at the chemist's, (at Bezuquet's) they used to write their " likes and dislikes," their favourite poet, author» tree, scent, hero or heroine, one of the papers invariably bore the following : "The favourite tree? — The baobab. " The favourite scent ? — Of powder. " The favourite author ? — Fenimore Cooper- " A\'ho would you wish to have l)een? — William Tell." Tartarin ofi the Alps 97' Then in the surgery there was only one opinion — they all cried with one voice, " That is Tartarin ! " Ask yourself, then, whether he was not happy, if his heart did not beat high, when he reached this memorial chapel erected as a mark of the gratitude of the entire nation. It seemed to him that William Tell in person, still dripping with water after his plunge in the lake, his cross-bow and arrows in his hand, would open the door to him. " No admission. I am at work : this is not the day," shouted a voice from the interior, the tone being much increased in volume by the vaulted roof. li 98 Tartarîn on the Alps " Monsieur Astier-Rohu, of the French Academy." " Herr Doctor Professor Scliwantlialer." "Tartarin de Tarascon ! " In the ogive window above tlie door, tlie artist, perched on a scafifolding, appeared in his working blouse, palette in hand. '■'■Vi.y famulus is going down to open the door to you, gentlemen," he said respectfully. "I was sure of it," thought Tartarin. "I had only to mention my name ! " Nevertheless he had the good taste to keep back, and modestly enter after every one else. The painter, a very fine young fellow, showing a golden head of an artist of the Renaissance, received his visitors on the wooden steps which ascended to the tem- porary staging erected for the painting of the chapel. The frescoes, representing the princi- pal episodes in the life of William Tell, had been completed, all but one — the representa- tion of the shooting at the apple in the market-place of Altorf He was working at it then, and his young assistant — famulus, as he called him — his hair à t archange, his legs and Tartarin on the Alps 99 feet bare, beneath a smock frock of the middle ages, was posing as the son of WilUam Tell. All these archaic personages, — red, green, yellow, blue, — ^of more than human stature, in narrow streets, and intended to be seen from a distance, impressed the spectators rather tamely ; but they were there to admire, and they did so. Besides, nobody there knew anything about them ! " I call that most characteristic," said the pontifical Astier-Re'hu, bag in hand. And Schwanthaler, a camp-.stool under his arm, not to be outdone, quoted two verses of Schiller, half of which remained in his flowing beard. Then the ladies exclaimed their delight, and for a while nothing was to be heard but such phrases as — " Sclmi ! oh, schon ! " " Yes ; lovely ! " " Exquis ! délicieux ! " One could have fancied one's self at a confectioner's ! Suddenly, a voice rang out like a trumpet blast in the silence which succeeded. Tdifiuin on the Alps "That shoulder is wrong, I tell you : that cross-bow is out of drawing ! " We can picture the stupor of the artist, face to face with the critical mountaineer, who, with his statï in hand and ice-axe on his shoulder threatening to wound some one at every movement, was demonstrating ener- getically that the attitude of ^Villiam I'ell was not correctly represented. "And I know what I am talking about, an moiiaifis .' I beg you to believe " " Who are you ? " " Who am I ! " exclaimed Tartarin, very much "put out." Was it not for him that admission had been granted ! Therefore, Tartarm on the Alps drawing himself up, he said: "Go and ask my name of the panthers of Zaccar, from the hons of the Atlas. T/wy will perhaps inform you ! " There was a simultaneous recoil, a general alarm, at these words. " But," asked the artist, at length, " in what way is my position not correct ? " " Look at me — you ! " Falling into posi tion with a stamp- ing which drove the dust from the staging in clouds, Tartarin shoulder- ; ed his alpenstock after the manner of a cross-bow, and stood in position. " Splendid 1 He is right. Don't stir." Then the artist, addressing his/^?w/////.s-, cried, " Quick — a .sheet of paper— a charcoal-pencil.'' Tartarin was going to be painted as he stood, a dumpy, round-backed man, wrapped I02 Ta via ri II on the Alps in his muflier to the chin ; fixing the terrified famulus witli his flaming httle eye. Imagination, oli wliat magic power you jiossess 1 lie believed himself standing in the market-place of Altorf, facing his son — he who had never had one — a l)olt in his cross-bow, another in his girdle to pierce the heart of the tyrant. More than that, he com- municated the conviction to the spectators 1 "It is William Tell himself!" said the artist, who, seated on a stool, was wielding his ])encil in feverish haste. "Ah, monsieur, I wish I had known you sooner ! Vou would have served for my model." " Really ! Vou .see some resemblance, then?" asked Tartarin, feeling much flattered, but without disarranging his pose. Yes, it was quite thus that the artist had pictured the hero. " His head, too ? " asked Tartarin. " Oh, the head does not matter," replied the aitist, as he stepped back to criticise his sketch. " A manly, energetic face is all that is necessary, since no one knows what William Tell was like — he probably never lived." Tartar in on the Alps 103 Tartarin let fall his " stock " in a kind of stupefaction. " Outre ! ' Never lived ! What is that you tell me ? " "Ask these gentlemen." Astier-Rehu, very solemn, his three chins resting upon his white neckcloth, replied : " It is a Danish legend." " Icc-landic," affirmed Schwanthaler, no less majestically. " Saxo Grammaticus relates that a \aliant named Tobe or Paltanoke " " It is written in the Viking's Saga " Then they proceeded, togethe'r — " fut condamne par le roi de Danemark, Harold aux dents bleues " " dass der Islandische Koni'r Necdinar " With fixed eyes, extended arms, without either looking at or understanding each other, ' Outre and houfre are Tarasconnais naths of mysterious ety- mobgy. Ladies use them at times with a softening addition — ■ as, " Outre ! cue vous tue feriez dire ! " 104 l\vtari)i 0)1 the Alps tliey both spoke at the same time, as if "in the chair," in the dictatorial despotic tones of the professor assured of not being con- tradicted. They became excited, shouting names and dates: " justinger dc lierne ! " " Jean de Wintcrtluir 1 " By and by the discussion became general, animated, furious ; they brandished camp- stools, umbrellas, valises, while the unhappy artist went from one to another endeavouring to restore harmony, while trembling for the solidity of his staging. When the storm had ceased, he was desirous to resume his sketch, Fixing the itrrii^ed/aw/t/us with his glaring eye. E i io6 Tarlarin on the Alps and sought the mysterious mountaineer ; he of whom the panthers of Zaccar, and tlie hons of tlie Atlas could alone ])ronounce the name I But the Alpinist had disappeared 1 He was striding furiously along through the birches and beeches, towards the hotel of Tellsplatte where the Peruvians' courier was to jxiss the night ; and, smarting under the blow which had disillusioned him, he spoke aloud, driving his alpenstock furiously into the soaked pathway. " Never lived ! William Tell ! William Tell a myth, a legend ! And it is the painter intrusted with the decoration of Tellsplatte who cahnly says that ! " He inveighed against it as a sacrilege ; he was angry with the savants, with this sceptical century, the imi^ious u])setter, which respects nothing — neither glory nor beauty : '■'■coquin de sort !" Thus two hundred or three hundred years hence, when i)eople speak of Tartarin, they will find Astier-Rehus and Schwanthalers to support the argument that no such person as Tartarin ever lived ! that he was a Provençal or Barbary myth ! He stoi)ped, suffocated Ta7-tarin on the Alps 107 by his indignation — and the steep ascent; and seated himself upon a rustic bench. From that place one can see, between the branches of the trees, the lake, and the white walls of the chapel like a new mausoleum. A blowing-off of steam and a rattling of a gangway indicated a new access of \'isitors. They were grouped on the shore of the lake, guide-book in hand, advancing and ges- ticulating as they read the legend. And suddenly, by a quick revulsion of thought, the comic side of the question came into Tartarin's head. He thought of all historic Switzerland living upon this imaginary hero ; raising statues and building chapels in his honour in the market-places of little towns and in the museums of great ones ; organising patriotic fetes at which people from all the cantons appear with banners carried before them ; the banquets, the toasts, the speeches, the cheering, the singing, the tears which swell the manly bosoms— all this for a great patriot who, everybody knows, never had any ex- istence ! ïo8 Ti7rfnriti on the Alps Talk of-Tarascon I Here was a Tarasco7i- nodc wliich never had its ecjual tlicrc ! Restored to good luimour, 'J'artarin in a few good jumps regained the high road to l'"hiclen, on which stands the Tellsplatte hotel with its long green-shuttered façade. While waiting the announcement of dinner, the boarders were walking up and down before a rock-work cascade upon the ravined road, along which a numl)er of unhorsed carriages were i)laced amid the copper-coloured pools of water. Tartarin ascertained that the man he sought was there. He learnt that he was at dinner. " Lead me to him, zou,'' and he said it with such an authoritative air, that, notwith- standing the respectful repugnance to disturb so important a personage which was displayed, a female servant led the Alpinist through the hotel, where his appearance created some sensation, towards the precious courier who was eating by himself in a small room opening from the courtyard. " Monsieur," began Tartarin, as he came in, ice-axe on shoulder. " Excuse me if " Tartarin on the A/ps 109 He stopped in surprise ; while the courier, the lanky courier, his serviette tucked under his chin amid the savoury steam of a plateful of soup, let his spoon fall. " Vé I Monsieur Tartarin." " Té ! Bompard." It was Bompard, the former manager of the club : a good fellow enough, but afflicted with a vivid imagination which prevented him from uttering a single word of truth, an attribute which had gained for him in Tarascon the surname of the Impostor. Designated at Tarascon as an impostor, you may judge what he was ! And this man was the incomjjarable la/tarin on the Alps guide, the climber of the Alps, the Himalayas, the Mountains of the Moon ! "Oh, then 1 understand!" exclaimed Tartarin, soniewliat disaj)pointetl, hut i)leased, nevertheless, at finding a countryman, and hearing the dear delicious accent du Cours. " Diffcremnient, Monsieur Tartarin, you will dine with me, qu'eV Tartarin at once accepted, relishing the idea of seating himself at a nice little table laid for two, witliout any ])artisan dishes, to be able to drink freely, to talk while he ate, and to enjoy many excellent courses ; for MM. les Courriers are \ery well treated by inn-keepers ; they dine ajjart, and ha\e the best wines and the "extra" dishes. And there was plenty of ^7U moins, pas mains, and différemment then 1 " So it was you, mon bon, whom I heard in the early morning holding forth on the staging on the Rigi ? " " Eh, parfaitemain ! I was j)ointing out the beauties to the young ladies. Is not the sunrise on the Alps magnificent ? " "6'«/^r^^."' assented Tartarin,at first without Tartarin on the Alps conviction, not wishing to contradict his friend, but wound up after a minute or so ; and then it was perfectly bewildering to listen to the two Tarasconnais recalling with enthusiasm the splendours they had seen on the Rigi. It was like Joanne alternated with Baedeker ! Then, in proportion as the meal progressed, the conversation became of a more personal character — full of confidences, gush, protest- ations, which brought tears into the brilliant Provençal eyes, always retaining in their facile emotion a trace of farce or raillery. This was the only point in which the friends re- sembled each other : one so dry, salted, tanned, seamed with those peculiar professional wrinkles ; the other short, broad-backed, of a sleek appearance, and of fresh complexion. He had seen so much of it, had this poor Bompard, since he had left the club ; that insatiable imagination, which prevented him from retaining any situation, had sent him wandering under so many suns with varied fortune ! And he related his adventures, enumerating all the excellent opportunities he had had of enriching himself, such as his latest 112 Tartiiiiii on the Alps invention for reducing the amount of the Army Estimates by economising the exi)ense of godillots. " Do you know liow ? Oh, mon Dieu, it is very simple — by shoeing tb.e soldiers' feet with iron." '' Outre ! " remarked Tartarin, astonished. làompard continued, cahii as ever, with that cool, innocent air of his : "A grand idea, was it not? l^h ! />é, to the War Office — but they never look any notice of me. Ah, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, I liave had my bad days. I have eaten the bread of affliction before I entered the service of the Company- -" "The Company?" Bompard discreetly lowered his voice. '•'•Chut! — by and by — not here 1 " Then resuming his natural tone, he continued : " And now, what have you all been about at Tarascon? You ha\en't told me anything of your reasons for coming amid the mountains." This was the opportunity for Tartarin to unbosom himself. Without anger, but with that melancholy cadence, tliat ennui, which Tartarm on the Alps 113 all great artists, beautiful women, and i^rcat conquerors of people and hearts, attain v.hen they grow old, he related the defection of his compatriots, the plot that was being concocted to deprive him of the presidency of the club, and the decision he had come to to do some thing heroic ; to make a grand ascf^nt, to plant the banner of Tarascon higher than it had ever yet been fixed — in fine, to prove to the Alpinists of Tarascon that he was ever worthy, always worthy Emotion made him pause ; he was obliged to cease speak- ing ; then : "You know me, Gonzague ! " he cried 114 lariarin on tlir. Alps No one could do justice to the effusiveness, the tenderness, which he threw into this trouhadour-likc name of Jîonipard. It was a kind of hand-pressing — of clasping him to his luari. " Vou know me, que ! You know whctlier 1 liave ever quailed when in tjuest of the lion ; and during the war, when we organised the defence of the club — " liompard nodded his head with dreadful mimicry ; he could fancy himself there still. "Well, moil boil, what the lions, what the Kru])]) guns, could not do, the Alps have done — ! 1 am afraid ! " " Don't say that, Tartarin ! " " \Vhy not ? " said the hero, with touching simjjlicity. " I say I am afraid, because I ai)i ! " Then quietly, without any attitudinising, he avowed the impression which the engraving from Dore's picture had made upon him, — the catastrophe upon the Matterhorn still haunted him. He was afraid of encountering like perils, and so, hearing of a most extra- ordinary guide, capable of avoiding such dangers, he had come to confide in him Tartarifi on the Alps 115 Then in the most matter-of-course tone he added : " You never have been a guide, l'ia\e )ou, Gonzague ? " '■^ Hé ! yes;" rephed Bompard, smiling. " Only I have not done all I said I had." " Of course," assented Tartarin. Then his companion said between his teeth : " Let us go out into the road, we shall be able to converse more freely there." Night was coming on : a cool humid breeze was driving the black clouds across the sky wherein the setting sun had left a gleam of dusky grey. They went side by side in the direction of Fluelen, passing mute shadows of famished tourists who were returning to the hotel, shades themselves, not uttering a word, until they reached the long tunnel through which the road is carried, and which opens here and there in " bays," terrace-fashion, over the lake. " Let us halt here," said Bompard, whose loud voice echoed in the archway like a cannon. Then, seated on the parapet, they 1 1 6 Tarhirin on the Alps contemplated the beautiful view of the lake, the slopes of firs, beeches, lilack and thick, in tlie foreground ; ihc indistinct sunnnits of tlie liigher mountains, tlion others liigher still in a confused bluish mass, like clouds ; in the middle a white line, scarcely visible, of some glacier frozen into the crevices, which was suddenly illuminated with party-coloured fires, yellow, red, and green. The mountain was being illuminated with Bengal lights. From Fluelen rockets were sent up, break- ing into multi-coloured stars, while Venetian lanterns shone and i)assed to and fro ui)on the lake in the invisible boats, carrying musicians and those assisting in ihtfete. A truly fairy scene it was, framed in the cold, smooth granite of the tunnel walls. " What a queer country this Switzerland is ! " exclaimed Tartarin. Bompard began to laugh. " Ah, vail Switzerland ! In the first place there is nothing Swiss in it ! " "V- ^y^^T V Confidences in a iiinnel. "Switzerland at the present time, ve ! Monsieur Tartarin, is nothing more than an immense Kursaal, which is open from June till September — a panoramic casino, to which people crowd for amusement, from all parts of the world ; and wliich a tremendously wealthy company possessed of thousands of millions, which has its head-quarters in Geneva, has exploited. Money is necessary, you may depend, to farm, harrow, and top- dress all this land, its lakes, forests, mountains, iiS Tartariii 07i the Alps and waterfalls, to keep up a staff o{ employes^ of supernumeraries, ami lo build upcjn all high places monster hotels with gas, telegraphs, and telephones all laid on." " That is true enough," murmured Tartarin, who recalled the Rigi. "Yes, it is true ; but you have seen nothing of it yet. ^^']len you i:)enetrate a little ûirther into the country, vou will not find a corner which is not fixed up and machined like the floor beneath the stage in the Opera : water- falls lighted up, turnstiles at the entrances of glaciers, and, for ascents of mountains, rail- ways—either hydraulic or funicular. The Company, ever mindful of its clients, the English and American climbers, takes care that some famous mountains, such as the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn, shall always retain their difficult and dangerous aspects, although in reality they are no more dan- gerous than any others." " But, my dear fellow, the crevasses ! Those horrible crevasses ! If you tumble into one of them ? " "You tumble on snow, Monsieur Tartarin, Tartarin on the Alps 119 and you will come to no harm : there is always at the bottom a porter — a chasseur — somebody who is able to assist you up again, who will brush your clothes, shake off the snow, and respectfully inquire whether ' Monsieur has any luggage ? ' " "Whatever is all this you are saying, Gonzague ? " Bompard became twice as serious as before : " The keeping up of the crevasses is one of the greatest sources of the Company's expenditure," he replied. There was a momentary silence in tlie tunnel : the surroundings were calm and peaceful. No more coloured fires, rockets, or boats on the water ; but the moon had risen, and displayed another conventional scene, blue, and liquid, with edges of im- penetrable shade. Tartarin hesitated to believe his com- panion's mere statement. Nevertheless, he reflected upon all the curious things he had seen in four days : the sun of the Rigi ; the farce of William Tell : and the inventions of liompard seemed to him all the more 120 Till tarin on the Alhs credible, inasmuch as in every Tarasconnais the faculty of crainniiiii; doubles that of swallowing. " Well, Init, my good friend, how do you explain those terrible accidents that on the Matterhorn, for instance?" •• Tliat was sixteen years ago : the Comi)any was not then in existence, Monsieur Tartarin." " But only last year there was that accident on the Wetterhorn— two guides were buried with the travellers." " That must happen sometimes, as a bait for Alpine climbers. The English would not Tartar in on the Alps care for a mountain which did not give them the chance of a broken head. The Wetter- horn was going down in people's estimation ; but after this httle accident the receipts went up inmiediately." " Well, but the two guides ? " "They got out, as well as the tourists; but they were obliged to — to disappear — to be maintained abroad for six months. This was a serious expense to the Company ; but it is rich enough to stand it." " Listen, Gonzague." Tartarin rose, one hand laid on the shoulder of the quondam manager : " You do not wish me to come to any harm, que ? Well then, tell me frankly ; you know my ' form ' as a moun- taineer — it is but middling." " Very middling, certainly 1 " " Nevertheless, do you think that I can without too great risk attempt the ascent of the Jungfrau ? " " I will answer for it, Monsieur Tartarm, Tarhjriti on the Alps * with my head in the fire.' Yon have only to trust yourself to your guide." " .-Vnd suppose I get giddy ? " " Shut your eyes." "If I .slip?" " Let yourself slip. It is just like the theatre. Everything is pracficahlc. You run no risk." "Ah, if I only had you there to tell mc all that —to repeat it to me ! Allotis, my brave fellow — a good idea. Come with me ! " . Bompard would have asked for nothing better ; but he had his Peruvians in tow till the end of the season ; and how astoni.shed liis friend was to see him performing the services of a courier — a servant ! " What would you have, Monsieur Tartarin ? The Company has the right to employ us as it seems good to them." Then he began to reckon off on his fingers the various situations he had filled during the past three years : guide in the Oberland : horn-player in the Alps ; an old chamois- hunter ; an old soldier of Charles X. ; Protest- ant pa.stor on the mountains Tartarin on the Alps " Ques aco ? " asked Tartarin, in surprise. And the other in his cahii way replied : "■Be! Old. \Mien you travel in German Switzerland, you may often perceive a pastor in the open air standing on a rock, or on a rustic chair, or on the trunk of a tree. Some shei:)herds and cheese-makers, with their caps in their hands, and women, habited in the cantonal costume, are grouped around in jiicturesque attitudes : the country is pretty, the ]iastures are green or freslily reaped ; there are waterfalls along the road ; and the cattle, with their heavy bells tinkling, are on all the mountain-slopes. All this, er.' is just decoration — pup])et-show ! The employes of the Company — guides, pastors, couriers, hotel-keepers — only are in the secret ; and it is their interest not to publish it, for fear of frightening away their customers." The Alpinist remained astounded, silent, the greatest sign of stupefaction in him. In his heart, any doubt of Bompard's veracity which he had was now removed ; he was more calm concerning Alpine ascents, and the conversation soon made him joyous. The 124 Tartarin on the Alps friends talked of Tarascon, of their pleasant jokes in the i)ast wlicn they were younger. " Talking of jokes," said Tartarin suddenly, "they ])lnycd inc a nice trick at the Rigi- Kulni. Just imagine, this morning " Then lie proceeded to relate the incident of the letter fixed to his glass, which ^1^ began with the enphatic gl|^ '•'■Français du diable." "That is a mystery, quel " Who can say? perhaps — " began Eompard, who seemed to take the incident more seriously. He inquired whether Tartarin during his stay at the Kulm had any conversation with any one, and let fall a word too much. " Ah 1 rw/, a word too much 1 How could one even open his mouth with all tho.se English and Germans as mute as fishes by way of being in 'good form' I" On reflection, however, he remembered having " given a clincher " pretty smartly to a sort of Cossack, a certain Mi— Milanoff ! 1 Tartarin on the Alps 125 " Maniloff," said Bompard, correcting him. " You know him, then ? Between you and me, I beheve that this Maniloff was annoyed with me on account of a Httle Russian girl." "Yes, Sonia;" murmured ' -_: — Bompard. ^ ^ " You know her also ? Ali. my friend, what a pearl of price — what a dear little grey par- tridge she is 1 " " Sonia de Wassilief I 'Twas she who shot General Felianine dead in the open street. He was president of the court- martial which had condemned her brother to transportation for life." Sonia an assassin I that child ! that little blonde ' Tartarin could not believe it. But Bompard was precise, and gave h un the details of the incident, which were well known. For two years, it appeared, Sonia had lived at Zurich, where her brother Boris, who had escaped from Siberia, had joined V 126 Tar lai ill on the Alps lier. He was consumptive, and all the summer she carried him about in the bracing mountain air. The courier liad frecjuently met them in the company of friends, who were all exiles — conspirators. The Wassiliefs, very intelligent, very energetic, still possessing some means, were at the head of the Nihilist party, with Bolibine, the assassin of the Prefect of Police, and this Maniloff, who the year before had l)lown up the Winter Palace. '' Boiifre .' " ejaculated Tartarin, "one has cjueer neighbours on the Rigi." But there was yet another thing I lîompard was of ojnnion that tlie famous letter had come from these young people : he recognised in this the Nihilist mode of i)roceeding. The Czar every morning found such menaces in his own room ; beneath his serviette. " But," said Tartarin, who had become very pale, " why do they send them to me? What have / done ? " Eompard thought they must have taken him for a spy. " A spy ! I ? " "^ tarin on the Alps all were admiring the scenery, and witli uplifted faces endeavouring to catch sight of the top of tlic granite tunnel. " One would almost imagine we were in the forests of the Atlas," remarked Tartarin gravely, and his speech passing unnoticed he added — " Without the roaring of the lions, of course." " You have heard them then, monsieur ? " inquired Sonia. Heard Hons ! He ! Then, with an indul- gent smile, he replied : " I am Tartarin of Tarascon, mademoiselle." Now see what barbarians they were ! If he had said " I am called Dupont," it would have been just the same. They were un- acquainted with the name of Tartarin 1 However, he did not feel vexed, and re- l)lied to the question of the young lady as to whether the roar of the lion frightened him : " No, mademoiselle ; my camel trembled greatly as I rode him, but I visited my bait as quietly as if in the neighbourhood of a herd of cows. At a distance, the roar is something like this " Tartar hi on the Alps 139 With a view to give Sonia an exact idea of the thing, he forced from his chest in his most sonorous tones a most formidable " Meu/i" wliich rose, extending in vohmie, and was reflected back by the echo of the rock. The horses pranced, the travellers in all the carriages stood up, greatly alarmed, wanting to know what had happened, and the cause of such an awful noise ; then recognising the Alpinist, whose capped head and voluminous equipment were visible over the hood of the landau, they asked themselves once more : " What can that creature be ? " He himself, perfectly calm, continued to illustrate the details, the manner of attacking the beast, the conquest, and the despatching of it, the diamond " sight " with which his gun was supplied so as to enable him to fire straight at night. The young girl listened, bending towards him, with the greatest atten- tion, as evidenced by the slight palpitation of her nostrils. "They say that Bombonnel still hunts," said her brother. " Did you know him ? " "Yes," replied Tartarin, without enthu- 140 Tartarin on the Alps siasm. " He is by no means unskilful. But we have better than he." A word to the wise ! Then in a melancholy tone he continued : " After all, one's greatest i)leasures are in hunting noble game. ^Vhen one cannot get that life seems void, and one does not know how to fill up ex- istence." At this juncture, Maniloff, who un- derstood French although he did not speak it, seem- ed to listen intently to Tartarin, and said some few •ft'Ords laughingly to his friends. " Maniloff pretends that we are in the same category with you," explained Sonia to Tar- tarin. " We also hunt big game ! " Tartarin on the Alps 141 '''■Té! Yts, pardi ; wolves, white bears." " Yes, wolves ; white bears, and other beasts still more detestable ! " The laughing began again, strident, inter- minable, in fierce and penetrating tones this time ; laughs which displayed the teeth, and recalled to Tartarin the peculiar character of the company in which he was travelling. Suddenly the carriages pulled up. The road was becoming stiff, and in this place made a long circuitous bend to reach the top of the Briinig, which could be reached in twenty minutes by a footpath through the ^ beech-wood. Notwithstanding the morn- ing's rain, and the wet and slippery ground, the tourists, taking advantage of a break in the clouds, nearly all got out, and proceeded in a long file in the narrow path. From Tartarin's landau, which came last, the men descended ; but Sonia, finding the paths very muddy, settled herself in the carriage, and as the Alj)inist was following 142 Tartariii on the Alps the others, somewhat retarded by his equip- iiKiit, she said to him in a low tone— and in a very insinuating manner too — " Remain liere, and keep me company ! " The poor man stood still, quite overwhelmed, weaving lor himself a romance as delicious as un- likely, winch made his old heart throb loudly and fast. He was cpiickly undeceived when he i)er- ceived the young lady bending anxiously to watch 15olibine and the Italian at the entrance of the path, behind Maniloff and Boris who were already ahead. The pretended tenor hesitated. Some instinct seemed to warn him not to trust himself alone with these men. He made up his mind at last, and Sonia watched him ascending, caressing her cheek with a bunch of violet cyclamen — those mountain violets, the leaf of which is toned with the fresh colour of the flowers. The landau proceeded at a slow pace ; the coachman was walking with his comrades, and the train of fifteen carriages jjroceeded u])wards silent and empty. Tartarin felt disturbed by some presenti- Tartarin on tlie Alps 143 nient of sinister import, net daring to look at his companion, so greatly did he fear that a word or a glance might make him an actor or an accomplice in the drajna which he felt was about to take place. But Sonia paid no attention to him : with abstracted eyes she continued to caress the soft down of her cheek, mechanically, with the bunch of flowers. Then she said after a long pause : '• So you know who we are — I and my friends? Well, what do you think of us ? What do the French people think of us? " The hero grew pale and then red. He did not \nsh to anger, by any imprudent state- ments, people so vindictive as these ; on the other hand, how could he make a compact with assassins ? He got out of the difficulty by using a metaphor : " ^Vell, mademoiselle, you told me just now that we were in the same category, hunters of hydras and monsters, of despots and carnivora. So as a confrère of St. Hubert I will reply. My oi)inion is that even when dealing with wild beasts we ought to meet them with honest weapons. Our Jules (Jerard 144 Tartarin on the Alps — the famous lion-hunter — used explosive bullets. I myself do not recognise such things, and I never used them. When I went in pursuit of the lion or the panther, I stood up before the animal face to face with my double-barrelled gun — and — bang ! bang ! — went a bullet into each eye ! " " In each eye ! " said Sonia. " Never once did I miss my aim ! " He said so : he still believed it himself. The young lady regarded him with naive admiration, thinking aloud : " It is a good thing that he should have been quite sure of it." A quick tearing aside of the branches of the briars, and the thicket opened above them so suddenly, in so feline a manner, that Tartarin, whose head was full of hunting adventures, could have believed he was on the watch in the Zaccar. Maniloff leaped from the thicket noiselessly, close to the carriage. His little wrinkled eyes burned ; his face was scratched by the brambles, his beard and his hair were dripping with moisture. Panting for breath, his great hands resting on Tartarin on the Alps 145 the carriage-door, he said a few words in Russian to Sonia, who, turning to Tartarin, said sharply : "Your rope — Quick ! " " My — my rope ? " " Quick, quick ! You shall have it again immediately." Without deigning any other explanation, with her own little gloved hands she assisted him to unfasten the famous rope, made at Avignon. Maniloff took the coil joyfully, and regained the summit of the bank in two bounds, with the activity of a wild cat. "What is going on? \Miat are they going 146 Ta lia fin on ilw Alps to do? He looked very ferocious," muttered Tartarin, not daring to speak his thoughts aloud. Fierce! Maniloff! Ah, it was easily to be seen that he did not know him. No creature could be better, milder, more compassionate ; and, as instancing this susceptible nature of his, Sonia, with open blue eyes, told him that her friend, after executing the dangerous man- date of the Revolutionary Committee, leai)cd into the sleigh which awaited him in his flight, and threatened to throw the coachman from his scat if he continued to beat or over-drive tlic horses on whose sjjeed his own safety depended ! Tartarin thought this trait worthy of the ancients ; then, having speculated on all the human lives sacrificed as indiscriminately as an earthquake, or as an active volcano, by Manilofif, who would not have an animal ill- treated, he asked the young lady with an ingenuous air : " Did he kill many peo2)le in the explosion of the Winter Palace.^" " Far too many," Sonia replied sadly. Ta lia ri u ou the Alps 147 " And the only one who deserved to die escaped." She remained silent, as if displeased ; and so pretty — the head bent down, and the long, golden lashes resting upon the damask cheek. Tartarin was vexed that he had annoyed her, and captivated by the charms of youthfulness and freshness which seemed to surround this strange little being. "So, monsieur, the war we wage appears to you unjust and inhuman?" She asked that c[uestion with her face close to his, with a caress in her voice and in her eyes : our hero felt himself giving wa\'. " Do not you think that any means are good and legitimate to deliver a people who are in the death-throes, who are being strangled ? " " No doubt — no doubt." The young lady, becoming more pressing as Tartarin became weaker, continued : " You were speaking of a void to be filled, just now ; does it not occur to you that it would be more noble, more interesting, to stake your life in a great cause than to risk it in killing lions or in climbing glaciers?" I I4S Ta I tarin on tJie Alps "The fact is — " said Tartarin, who^ quite intoxicated, liad lost his head, and was tortured by the mad impulse to seize and kiss that dainty, warm, persuasive hand which she had jilaced upon his arm, as she had that morning up on the Rigi, when he was jmtting on her shoe. At length he could control him- f^^aa "■^—"iiM. >^iV self no longer, and seizing her little gloved hand between his own — " Listen, Sonia," he cried, in a soft, familiar, and paternal voice; "Listen, Sonia " The sudden stoppage of the landau inter- rupted him. They had reached the summit of the Briinig : tourists and drivers were re- Tartarin on the Alps 149 joining their respective carriages, to make up for lost time, and to gain the next village — ■ where dejeuner and relays were to be had — at a gallop. The three Russians resumed their places, but that of the Italian remained unoccupied. "The gentleman has got into one of the first carriages," said Boris to the coachman, who made inquiry concern- ing him ; and then, address- ing himself to Tartarin, whose anxiety was plainly visible, he said : "We must obtain your rope from him ; he wished to keep it ! " Upon that, fresh bursts of laughter rose in the landau, and caused Tartarin once again the greatest perplexity : he did not know what to think of this good humour and cheerful disposition of the supposed assassins. While wrapping the invalid in plaids and rugs — for the air at that elevation was sharp, and aug- Tariarin on the Alps merited by the pace of the carriage — Sonia related in Russian to lier friends the con- versation she had had with Tartarin, throwing upon the " bang ! bang ! " a gentle emj^hasis which her countrymen repeated after her, some admiring the hero, while Maniloff shook his head incredulously. The relays ! There is, in the place of a large village, an old inn with a worm-eaten wooden balcony, with a rusty hanging iron sign-board. There the file of carriages halted, and while the horses were being changed, the hungry travellers hurried up and crowded into a first-ïloor room, painted green, which smelt mouldy and damp, where a table d'hôte had been laid for twenty people, more or less. There were actually sixty, and for five minutes a regular scramble took place between the Rice and Prune factions round the dishes, to the great alarm of the inn-keeper, who became quite confused, as if the "post'" did not pass his door every day at the same time, and he bustled his servants about, who were also seized with a chronic aberration of intellect — Tartarin on the Alps an excellent excuse for only serving half the dishes enumerated on the carte, and to give a fantastic change of their own, in which the white sou pieces of Switzerland count as half-francs ! " Suppose we breakfast in the carriage ? " said Sonia, who was tired ; and as nobody had time to attend to them the young people undertook to wait. Maniloff returned brand- ishing a cold leg of mutton, Bolibine with a long roll and sausages ; but the best forager of all was Tartarin. No doubt there was an excellent opportunity for him to leave his companions in the hubbub, and to assure himself concerning the fate of the Italian, but he did not think of that : he was entirely occupied by the prospect of breakfasting with '' la petite " and of showing Maniloff and the others what a native of Tarascon could do in the way of supplies. When he descended the steps of the hotel, with a grave and resolute face, holding a tray on which were plates, serviettes, and different kinds of food, with Swiss champagne in gold foil, Sonia clapped her hands and complimented him: Tartarin o>i the Alps " How did you manage to get all this ? " " I don't know — one manages it some- how — \vc are all like that in Tarascon." Oh ! those ha]')py moments. They will be red-letter minutes in the hero's life. That delightful break- fast, seated opposite Sonia, almost on her knees, as in a scene at the opera : the village market-place with its green quincunx, be- neath which the silver ornaments and the dresses of the Swiss women glanced lirightly as they paced about, two and two like dolls. How good the bread seemed to be, and what savory sausages ! The sky itself was Taitariii 07i the Alps 153 sympathetic, — soft, veiled, but not inclement. There was rain, certainly, but such gentle rain — " lost drops " — just enough to tone down the Swiss champagne, which is dangerous for Southern heads. ^t^*/ Under the veranda of the hotel were four Tyrolese, two giants and two dwarfs, in heavy ragged costumes of staring colours, who, it was said, released by the bankruptcy of a show at a fair, were now mingling their "goose-notes," — " aou ao2i,"—\\'\Û\ the clatter of plates and glasses. They stood there, ugly, stupid, inert, stretching the tendons of their thin necks ! Tartarin thought them delight- 154 Ta lia ri n on ihc Alps fui, nnd threw ihcm handfuls of coppers, to the great astonishment of the villagers who had assembled round the unhorsed landau. '■^ Fife le /''y^;/ss grasshoppers, for the rain liad not ceased for a week. Me had a capital room, witli a balcony, on tlic first floor; and in the morning, when trimming his beard before a little hand-glass — an old habit of his —the first object that met his gaze, beyond the corn, and the lavender, and the firs, in a frame of dark green, rising by successive stages, was the Jungfrau, its 1 eak-like summit emerging from the clouds, a puire white mass of snow, upon which the rays of an invisible sunrise rested daily. Then, between the red and white Alp and the Alpinist of Tarascon arose a short dialogue which was not wanting in grandeur. "Tartarin, are we ready?" inquired the Jungfrau severely. " Voilài I am ready," replied the hero, his thumb beneath his nose, hastening to finish his beard ; and very quickly he dressed as far as his check suit, which had not been worn for some days. He passed it by, grumbling : ^^ Coquin de sorti ît îs true that is no word " Rut a clear and pleasant voice now arose Tartarin on the Alps 187 amid the myrtles which hneci the windows of the rez-de-chaussce : "Good morning," said Sonia, seeing him appear upon the balcony ; " the landau is waiting for us — make haste, you lazy man ! "' " I am coming ; I am coming ! " In "two twos" he had substituted a linen shirt for his flannel one ; for his knicker- bockers a serpent-green suit with which he had been in the habit of turning the heads of all the Tarascon ladies on Sundays. The landau was waiting in front of the hotel. Sonia was already seated beside her brother, who was growing paler and paler day by day, notwithstanding the healthy air of Interlachen ; but at the moment of departure Tartarin saw approaching, with all the de liberation of bears, two famous guides of ( Jrindelwald, Rudolf Kaufmann and Christian Inebnit, engaged by him for the ascent of the Jungfrau, and who every morning came (o see whether their employer was disposed to attempt it. The appearance of these two men, wearing strong hobnailed boots, fustian jackets, rubbed i88 Taitariii on the Alps on the shoulder by the knapsack and rope, their simple and scricnis faces, the four words of French which llicy stumbletl over as they twirled their great liats in their hands, was veritable torture for Tartarin. He had better have said : " Don't disturb yourselves ; I will come to you first." Every day he found them in the same place, and got rid of them by a "tip" in proportion to the magnitude of his remorse. Very much de- lighted to do the Jungfrau in such pleasant fashion, the guides pocketed the trinkgeld gravely, and with resigned steps returned to their village in the fine rain, leaving Tartarin confused and desperate in his weakness. But the beautiful air, the flowery p.lains, reflected in the clear pupils of Sonia's bright eyes, the Tartarhi on the Alps ]S9 touch of lier little foot on his boot in the carriage To the devil with the Jungfrau ! The hero only thought of his love, or rather of the mission which had been assigned to him to turn into the right way this poor little Sonia — an ^ m ■■-..■ i unconscious cri- \ minal, cast, in ! consequence of *. her devotion to j . her brother, be- yond the j)ale of the law and of _ This was the motive which kept him in Inter- i. — ^ lachen, in the same hotel as the AVassiliefs. At his age, with his fatherly air, he could not — it was out of the question that he should — fall in love with this child ; only he perceived she was so gentle, so kind, so generous towards all the miserable people of her ])arty, so devoted to her brother, who had returned from the Siberian mines covered with ulcers, poisoned with verdigris, condemned to death iQO Til tin lin oit the Alps by consumption more surely than by any number of courts-martial ! There was some- thing to touch him in all this, allons ! Tartarin suggested that they should come to Tarascon, and he would accommodate them in a cottage full of sunlight at the gates of the iown, that charming little town where It never rains, where life i)asses in singing and flics. He got excited, pretended to play a tambourine on his hat, and hummed the gay national air to ?i farandole : La Tiirasco, La Tarasco, Lagadigadch L.a Tarasco de Casiàt. But while an ironical smile thinned the lips of the invalid, Sonia shook her head. No fctes^ no sun for her, so long as the Russian people groaned beneath the tyrant. So soon as her brother had recovered — his sunken eyes told another tale — nothing would prevent her from returning to Russia to suffer and to die for the sacred cause. Tartarin on the Alps 191 "But, coquin de bon sort!'' exclaimed Tar- tarin, "after this present tyrant has been blown up, there will be another ! You will then have to begin all over again ! And so time passes — vé ! the time for happiness and love." His manner of ])ronouncing amour, in the Tarascon dialect, with three r's, and his eyes starting out of his head, amused the young girl : but then, seriously, she could never love any man but one who would save her native land. Yes, were he as ugly as Bolibine, more rustic and rough-looking than Maniloff, she was prepared to give her- self up to him, to live with him en libre grâce, so long as her youth lasted, or until he was tired of her ! " £n libre grâce ! " is the term used by the Nihilists to describe the unions illegally con- tracted between them by mutual consent. And of this primitive style of marriage Sonia spoke calmly, with her maiden face opposite Tartarin, a good citizen, a peaceable elector, — but quite disposed, nevertheless, to end hiî; days with this adorable girl in the said state of "free grace"' if she had not saddled it with 192 Tiiriarin on the Alps so mnny murders, and such-like horrible conditions. While they were chscussing these exceed- ingly delicate topics, the fields, the lakes, the woods, the mountains were being unfolded before them, and ever, at every turning, through every shower of the ])eri)etual wet days which followed the hero in his excur- sions, the Jungfrau uplifted her white peak as if to sharpen the edge of his remorse for that beautiful excursion. The party returned to déjeuner^ and seated themselves at the long table, where the Rice and Prune factions preserved their hostile attitude, and silent as Tartarm on the Alps 193 ever ; but Tartarin was perfectly unconcerned about them, as he sat beside Sonia, watching to see that Boris did not have a window open behind him, solicitous, attentive, paternal, airing all his seductions as a man of the world, and his domestic qualities as an excellent domestic rabbit ! Afterwards they took tea in the Russian apartments, in the little salon on the ground floor at the end of the garden, by the side of the promenade. Another charming hour of 194 Tartarin on the Alps intimate conversation in a low tone for Tar- tarin, while r>oris slept on a sofa. The hot water bubbled in the samovar, a smell of watered flowers came in through the half open door, with the blue tint of the glass frame. A little more .sun and heat, and it would have been the realisation of Tartarin's dream— liis little Russian seated by him, tending the small garden in which the baobab grew I Suddenly Sonia jumped up : " Two o'clock ! And the letters ? " " Here goes," cried the worthy Tartarin, and by nothing but his accent, the manner in which he buttoned up his coat, and balanced his cane, could jou have guessed the gravity of his errand, so simple in appearance, viz., to go to the post-office to find the Wassiliefs' letters. Very closely watched by the local authori- ties and the Russian police, the Nihilists, par- ticularly the cluefs, were compelled to take certain precautions, such as having their letters addressed to the poste restante, and with initials only. Since their arrival at Interlachen, Boris liad Tartorin on the Alps 105 scarcely been able to get about. Tartarin, with a view to spare Sonia the long wait at the guichet^ under the gaze of many eyes, was charged with the risks and perils of the correspondence. The post-office is only ten minutes' walk from the hotel, in the wide street which is a continuation of the promenade, and bordered with cafcs^ beer-shops, shops for tourists' alpenstocks, gaiters, straps, opera- glasses, tinted spectacles, flasks, travelling- bags, everything that would serve to make a renegade climber ashamed of himself Tourists l)assed in caravans — horses, guides, mules, blue ve!ls, green veils, with the rattling of canteens, c"nd the ambling of animals, the iron tips of sticks marking the steps ; but this fcte^ ever renewed, left Tartarin indifferent. He did not even feel the bise and the puffs of snow which came down from the mountains, being only attentive to throw off the scent the spies whom he believed were on his track. The first soldier of the advance-guard, the first skirmisher skirting the wall of an enemy's town, does not advance with more circumspec- tion than did our hero duriiiLr his .short 196 Tiirtiirin on the Alps ■■t ^ j; 3 ■ r > ' excursion from the hotel to the post office. At the least sound of footsteps Ixhind him, he stoppnl attentively at the photographic shops, or turned a few pages of an English or German l)()ok, in order to com- pel the detective to pass him ; or some- times he would turn suddenly round, to per- ceive, with his fierce e)'es, a girl from one of the inns carrying or going for provisions ; or some inoffensive tourist, an old Prune from the table d'hote, who would step off ; the pavement aston- ished, taking him for an idiot. When he reached the '''■poste" the pigeon- hole of which opens right upon the street, Tartarin passed and repassed before he ap- proached ; then suddenly he hastened forward, pushed his head and shoulders into the \\t^ " Walcht-d the faces bclorc lie aiipicjaclied. iqS Tot hi ri II on the Alps aporliire, muttering seme indistinct words, which they always asked him to repeat, a course which made him savage, and at length, having received his letters, he regained the hotel by a long ditour by the kitchens, his hand clenched in his pocket upon the packet of letters and papers, ready to tear them tip and swallow them on the least alarm. Maniloff and Bolibine nearly always waited for the news in their friends' apartments. From motives of prudence and economy they did not lodge in the hotel. Bolibine had found work in a printing-office, and Maniloff, a very skilful cabinetmaker, worked for contractors. The Tarasconnais did not love these men ; the one bored him with his grimaces and his bantering manner, the other haunted him with his fierce airs. Besides, they occupied too much of Sonia's heart. " He is a hero, " she had said to him when talking of Bolibine, and she related how, during three years, he had, unaided, printed a revolutionary paper in St. Petersburg. Three years he did this, without coming down stairs once, and without showing himself at a window, Tartar in on the Alps 199 sleeping in a large cupboard, where the woman with whom he lodged concealed him every evening with his clandestine printing-machine. And, again, the life of Manilofif during six months in the underground cellars of the Winter Palace, biding his time, sleeping" every night upon his store of dynamite, which ga\e him intolerable headaches, and nervous attacks, still more enhanced by the ceaseless anguish, the sudden appearances of the police vaguely conscious that a mine was being prepared, and coming suddenly to surprise the work- men employed in the Palace. At his rare exits, Maniloff would be accosted on the Admiralty Square by a delegate of the Revolutionary Committee, vdio demanded, in a whisper : " Is it done ? " "No, nothing yet," the other v.-ould reply, without moving his lips. At length, one evening in February, the same question was put in the same terms ; he replied with the greatest coolness : " It is done." Almost immediately afterwards a bewilder- Tartarin on the Alps ing uproar confirmed his words, and all the lights in the Palace were suddenly extinguished, the square was i)lunged in the deepest obscurity, which was pierced only by the cries of pain and terror, the sounding of trumpets, the galloping of orderlies, and ol ihc rirc-i)r:ga(_lL' liurrying up with their engines. . . . Sonia paused in her recital : " Is this horrible, so many human lives sacrificed? is so much effort, courage, and intelligence useless ? No, no ; yet, these Ijutcheries efi masse are bad. The man they aim at always escapes The true way to proceed, the most humane, would be to go to the Czar as you would approach a lion, determined, well armed, post yourself at a Tartarin on the Alps window, or at the door of his carriage, and when he passes " '■'■Bé Old ! certainly," said Tartarin, who felt much embarrassed, feigning not to understand the allusion ; and suddenly he launched into some discussion, philosophic or humanitarian. k-fci '-iVt. v with some of the others present. For Bolibine and Alaniloff were not the only visitors to the Wassiliefs. Every day some new faces came in, young people, men or women dressed as poor students or fanatical teachers, blonde and rosy, with the obstinate foreheads and the fierce childishness of Sonia, law-breakers, exiles, some of them even under sentence of death, which could in no way detract from their youthful expansiveness. They laughed, chatting loudly too, and as H 2 202 Tariaiin on the Alps the greater number spoke French, Tartarin quickly found liimself at his ease, lliey called him " uncle," divining in him something infantine, noif^ which jjleased them. Perhaps he rather carried his recitals of his exi)loits a little too far, baring his arm above the elbow to show where the panther had wounded him, or displaying beneath his beard the holes which the claws of the lion of the Atlas had made ; perhaps, also, he became familiar with his friends too soon, putting his arm round them, slapping them on the shoulders, calling them by their Christian names in about five minutes after being introduced, as thus : " Listen, Dmitri, " " You know me, Fedor Ivanovitch," or at any rate within a very short time; but he "went down" with them all the same, by his plain-dealing, his amiability, his confident air, and by his desire to please. They read their letters in his presence, dis- cussed their plans and passwords to blindfold the police — a purely conspirators' view which tickled Tartarin's imagination very much ; and although he was by nature opposed to acts of violence, he could not at times help Tarfarùi oji the Alps 203 discussing their homicidal projects, approving, criticising, offering advice dictated by the experience of a great chief who has been upon the war path, accustomed to the management of all kinds of weapons, and to personal encounters with wild beasts. One day, when they were talking in his presence of the assassination of a police officer by a Nihilist at the theatre, he demon- strated to them that the thrust had been badly given, and then he gave them a lesson on the use of the knife : " Like this, ve ! from below upwards. Thus you do not run any risk of wounding yourself" Then, exciting himself to his acting level, he said : " Suppose, té ! that I have your despot entre quartre-z'yeux at a bear-hunt. He is where you are, Fedor ; I am here near the round table, and each has a hunting-knife. We two, monseigneur^ we must ha\-e a turn 1 " Planted in the middle of the loom, bending his short legs ready for a spring, stri])ped like a woodcutter, he imitated for them a real combai, terminating with his cry J04 Tartarin on the Alps of triunii^h when he had plunged his weapon to the hilt upwards, coquin de sort ! in the entrails of his adversary ! " That is how it is done, young people,'' he said. But what retribution, what terrors, he endured when he was no longer under the influence of Sonia's blue eyes, after the mental intoxi- cation which had produced this bouquet of follies, he found himself alone, in his night- cap, face to face with his reflections and his usual nightly glass of eau sucrée. After all, in what was he meddling? The Czar was not his Czar ; and all these tales scarcely concerned him. Suppose that, one Tartorin on the Alps 205 of these days, he was imprisoned, banished, deUvered up to Muscovite justice ! Boiifre ! all these Cossacks did not joke about that ! And in the darkness of his own room, with that horrible faculty of imagina- tion that I he horizontal position increases, now was opened out before him, like one of those sets of unfolding pictures which he used to have given him when a child, the varied and terrible punishments to which he was rendering himself liable ; Tartarin in the copper-mines, as Boris Iiad been, working in water up to his waist, his 2o6 Tartarin on the Alps body being slowly eaten away — poisoned. He escapes ! hides himself in llic midst of snowy forests, i)ursued by Tartars and dogs trained to hunt fugitives. Worn out by cold antl hunger, he is recaptured, and finally hanged between two convicts, embraced by a priest with shiny hair, smelling strongly of brandy and seal oil, while far away yonder at Tarascon, in the sunlight, sound the/rt-w- fares of trumpets on a fine Sunday : the crowd ■ — the ungrateful and oblivious populace — are installing the triumphant Costecalde in the chair of the P. C. A. ! It was in the agony of one of these terrible dreams that lie shouted, "^ moi, Bhiujiiet !" He sent to the chemist that confidential letter under the influence of that horrible nightmare. But the gentle "Good morning" of Sonia again bewitched him, and threw him once again into all the weakness of indecision. One evening, when returning from the Kursaal to the hotel with the Wassiliefs and Bolibine, after two hours of enthralling music, the miserable man forgot all prudence, and the words " Sonia, I love you ! " which he had Tartar m on the Alps 207 so long restrained, he at length pronounced, grasping the little arm which rested on his own. She made no sign of emotion, but looked at him fixedly, very pale, under the gas-light where they had stopped : " AVell then, deserve me," she said, with a charming but puzzling smile, which displayed all her beautiful teeth. Tartarin was about to reply, binding himself, by an oath, to perform any, deadly deed, when the chasseur of the hotel came up and said : " There are some people for you, up stairs, ■ — some gentlemen. They are looking for you ! " " Looking for me ! Outre ! What for ? " Then Number i of his dioramic views came before his mind's eye : Tartarin imprisoned — exiled ! Certainly he was afraid, but his attitude was heroic. Separating himself quickly from Sonia, he said in a choking voice, " Fly ! save yourself ! " Then he as- cended the stairs, with head erect, and proud mien, as if he were going to execution ; but so ner^'ous, nevertheless, that he was obliged to grasp the banisters for support. 2oS Tartariii ou Ihc Alps When he gained the corridor, he perceived a group of men at the door of his apartment, looking through the keyhole, knocking, and calling to him. He advanced two paces, and then with parched lips managed to say, " Do you want me, gentlemen ? " " 7?, pardi ! yes, my President ! " A little elderly man, brisk and bony, dressed in a grey suit, and who seemed to be carrying on his coat, his hat, his gaiters, his long pendent moustaches, all the dust of the Tour de ville^ fell upon the neck of our hero, rubbing against his soft and chubby cheeks the tough hide of the old captain. " Bravida ! it is impossible ! Excourbanies, too ! — and who is that yonder ? " A bleating voice replied, " Dear ma-as-ter ! " Then the pupil advanced, knocking against the wall as he came a species of long fishing- rod, thick at the top, and swathed in silver paper and oil-cloth. '■'■ Hè ! 7'é, it is Pascalon. Let us embrace, petitot ! But what are you carrying? Put it down 1 " Tartarin on the Alps 209 "The paper — undo the paper," pufFed the Commandant. The youth unrolled it quickly, and the Tarascon banner was displayed to the eyes of the astonished Tartarin. The delegates took off their hats. " My President " — Bravida's voice was trembling, solemn, and husky — '-you de- manded the banner ; we have brought it to you — ié ! " The President opened his eyes until they became as large as apples : " I ! / asked for it ? " " What 1 didn't you ask for it ? " "Ah! yes, par/aifemain," replied Tartarin, Till /mill on /Jic Alps suddcnl)' enlightened by the name of Be'zuquet.' Now he understood it all, and guessed what had happened ; and feeling overcome by the ingenious deception which Bezucjuet had i)ractised with a view to recall him to his duty and to honour, he choked, and muttered in his beard : " Ah, my children, this is kind — what good you do me ! " " I'ii'e le Prcsidain ! '' sc^ueaked Pascalon, brandishing his " oriflamme." The Gong sounded loudly, and shouted his war-whoop, "Ha! ha! ha! fen dé brut!'" which pene- trated to the cellars of the hotel. Doors were opened, curious faces appeared on every floor. Tliese disappeared quickly at the sight of the standard and of the dark and shaggy men who hurled out strange defiances with extended arms. Never had such a row been heard in the peaceful Jungfrau hotel before. " Come into my room," said Tartarin, somewhat ashamed. They were feeling their way in the darkness, seeking the matchbox, ' Dézu4uet is not menticnec!.— Trans Taiiarin on iJie Alps when an authoritative rap at the door caused it to open and disclose the arrogant, yellow, puffed visage of Meyer, the hotel proprietor. He was about to enter the room, but stopped in the darkness, in which his fiery eyes gleamed, on the sill, his teeth clenched on his hard Teutonic accents : " Mind ycu keep quiet, or I will have you all taken up by the police." A bellow as from a buffalo followed this discourteous speech, and the brutal use of the word " ramasser." The landlord retreated a pace, but flung another sentence into the room : "We know who you are! Be off! Wc have our eyes upon you ; and I do not want any more people like you in tlie house ! " "Monsieur Meyer," rej^lied Tartarin calmly, politely, but very firmly, "get my bill made out ; these gentlemen and I will leave for the Jungfrau to morrow morning." ' O, native land, O, little country in the Tiirtariu on the Alps great one, whnt influence is thine ! It was sufficient to hear the Tarascon dialect rustling, with the country air, the blue folds of the banner— when, lo ! there is Tartarin delivered from his love, and from the snares which surrounded him, restored to his friends, his mission, and to glory ! Now, zou ! . /'•• ^M- ' ^Jè^T'-^/r IX A^ the sign of " The Faithful Chamois." Next day it was delightful to take the foot- jjath from Interlachen to Grindelwald, which the tourists were obliged to pass to pick up the guides for the Little Scheideck ; delightful, the triumphal march of the P. C. A., once more equipped in his mountaineering habili- ments, supported on one side by the thin shoulder of the Commandant Bravida, on the other by the robust arm of Excourbanies, both proud to escort him, to sustain their dear President, to carry his ice-axe, his sac, his 2 14 Tartiuiii on tlw. Alps alpenstock ; while sometimes in front, and sometimes behind, or on the flank, Pascalon gamboled like a little dog, carrying his banner, wisely packed up, so as to avoid any demonstration such as they had had the evening before. The high spirits of his companions, the sentiment of duty done, the snowy Jungfrau yonder, were not sufficient to make tlie hero forget what lie had left behind him, perhaps for ever, and witliout a farewell ! As he passed the last houses of Interlachen, his eyes filled with tears, and while he was walk- ing he unbosomed himself, turn about, to Excourbanies with " Listen, Spiridion," or to Bravida with " You know me. Placide " — for, by the irony of fate, the invincible soldier was called Placide, and the rough "buffalo," with material instincts, Spiridion. Unfortunately, the Tarascon race, more brave than sentimental, never could take love affairs seriously. "Whoever loses a woman and fifteen pence, is to be condoled with for the loss of the money,'' replied the senten- tious Placide, and Spiridion quite agreed with Tartarin on the Alps 2 r 5 him. As for the innocent Pascalon, he held women in fear, and bhished to the eyes when they pronounced the name of la Petite Scheideck in his hearing, having a kind of no- tion that it referred to a lady of somewhat free-and-easy manners. The poor lover was, therefore, obliged to keep his thoughts to himself, and to console himself alone, which is, after all, the safest course. Besides, what worries could resist the attrac- tions of the route across the narrow, deep, and shaded valley, where the tourists skirted a wind- ing river, white with foam, and roaring like thun- der amid the echoing pines which overhung and surrounded it on both its sloping sides ! The Tarasconnais delegates, with their heads held high, advanced with a feeling akin to terror in " religious " admiration ; like the companions of Sindbad the Sailor, when they saw the mangroves and other gigantic flora of the Indian coasts. Only hitherto acquainted with their little bare and stony hills, they had no idea that there could possibly grow so many trees at once, on such very high mountains too ! " Oh, that is nothing ; wait until you see the 2i6 Ta lia fin on iltc Alps Jungfrau," remarked the P. C. A., who quite enjoyed their surprise, and felt himself grow- ing bigger in their estimation. At the same time, to enliven the scene and to humanise its imposing strain, many parties of people i)assed them eji route — large lan- daus at full trot, with veils floating from the doors — heads were bent in curiosity to see the President surrounded by the delegation ; while from time to time wood-carvers' stalls were passed ; little girls standing by the way- side, looking very wooden-y in their straw hats with wide ribbons, and party-coloured skirts, singing in chorus of three voices, and offering bouquets of raspberry-sprays and edehceiss. Sometimes the Alpine horn would echo through the mountains its melancholy notes, swelling up, and repeated by the gorges, then slowly dying away after the manner of a cloud resolving into vapour. "It is beautiful. One might fancy it the notes of an organ," murmured Pascalon, who, with moist eyes, was in ecstasy like a saint in a stained-glass window. Excourbanies shouted without any fear, and the echo Tartarifi on the Alps 217 repeated itself in his Tarascon dialect until It finally died away : "Ha ! ha ! ha ! feii dé brut ! " But they got tired of this in about two hours, Ijroceeding through the same scenery — was it all arranged ? — green on blue ; glaciers at the bottom; and as sonorous as a musical clock. I'he roar of the torrents, the three - voice choruses, the sellers of wood- carvings, the little flower- girls, became insupport- able to our friends : the dampness, too, the steam at the bottom of this gorge, the humid ground, full of water- l^lants, into which the sun never i)enetrates. " It is enough to give one i)leurisy," re- marked Bravida, pulling up his coat-collar. Then fatigue, hunger, and ill-humour all 2iS Tartarin on tJic Alps attacked him at once. They could find no inn, and, being stuffed with raspberries, Excourbaniës and Bravida began to suffer cruelly. pA'cn Pascalnn himself — that angel — laden not only witli the flag, but with the ice-axe, the sac, and the alpenstock, of which the others had by turns disembarrassed them- selves, had lost his sprightliness and activity. At a turn cf the road, as they were about to cross the Lutschine on one of the covered bridges which are found in very snowy dis- tricts, a very formidable blowing of a horn reached their ears. "Ah! ve ! enough I enough!" screamed the exasperated delegation. The blower— a giant ambuslicd by tlie side of the road — put down an enormous pine-trumpet, which rested on the ground and was terminated by a sounding-box which gave to this prehistoric instrument the loud- ness of a piece of artillery. " Ask him whether he knows where there is an inn ? " said the President to Excour- banies, who with great dignity, and with a very small pocket-dictionary, pretended Tarfai'in on the Alps 2 1 9 to act as interpreter to the delegation since they were in German Switzerland. But l)efore he could produce his dictionary, the liorn-blower replied in very good French : " An inn, gentlemen ? why, certainly : the Chamois fidcle is quite close by : allow me to show you the way ? " And while he accompanied them thither he informed them that he had lived in Paris many years as commissionaire at the corner of the Rue Vivienne. " Another of the Company's people, par- bleu ! " thought Tartarin, leaving his friends to be amazed. The co7ifrcre of Bompard also made himself very useful, for although the sign of the house was in French, the people of the Chamois fidèle only spoke a horrible Oerman patois. The delegates, .seated before an enormous l)otato omelette, soon recovered their health and good humour, which are essential to the .Southerner as the sun is to his country. They drank deeply, and ate well. After toasts drunk to the President and to his ascent, Tartarin, who had been much exercised in 220 Tar ta fin on the Alps liis mind concerning the sign, turned to the horn player, who was breaking a crust in the same room with them, and said : " So you have some chamois hereabouts ? I thought none were left in Switzerland." The man wmked his eyes : " There are not many of them, but we could manage to let you see one all the same ! " "He wants to shoot at one, vé!" said Pascalon enthusiastically, "and the President never misses his aim." Tartarin on the Alps minute ; I will speak to the Tartarin was sorry he had not brought his gun. " Wait a ' patron.' " He ascertained that the innkeeper was an old chamois-hunter ; he offered his gun, powder, his buckshot, and even his services as guide to the gentlemen, towards a lair which he knew. '''En avant; zouf'' cried Tartarin, yielding to his Alpinists, who were delighted to wit- ness their chiefs skill. It was only a trifling delay after all ; and the ! Jungfrau would lose nothing by waiting. Leaving the inn by the back door, they had only to push through a i)ath in an orchard scarcely larger than the little garden of a station-master on a railway, to find them- Tartariii on ilw Alps. selves on the mountain side, cut up by great crevasses between the pines and tlic bushes. The innkeeper had gone on ahead, and the delegates could perceive him gesticulating and throwing stones, no doubt with a view to startling the animal. They had considerable trouble to rejoin him on the rocky and dififîcult slopes, particularly for people who have just got up from table, and who are no more accustomed to climbing than the worthy Tarasconnais were. There was, besides, a heavy air, a pressage of storm, which rolled the clouds slowly across the peaks overhead. '■^ Boufre .' " whined Bravida. Excourbaniès groaned : '•Outre!" " Let me tell you — " added the tame and bleating Pascalon. But as the guide motioned them to be silent and to stay where they were, they obeyed. " One should never speak when carrying arms," said Tartarin of Tarascon with a severity of which each took his share, although the President was the only one armed. They remained standing and holding Tartarin on the Alps their breath ; suddenly Pascalon exclaimed : " Ve ! the chamois / Ve ! " At a hundred yards above them there stood the pretty animal, his horns upright, his coat a pretty fawn colour, the four t'eet planted together upon a rock. It was plainly visible against the sky, looking around without any appearance of fear. Tartarin methodically shouldered his gun as usual : he was going to fire, when the chamois disappeared ! "It is your fault," said the Command- ant to Pascalon. " You whistled — that frightened it." " I whistled ! I ! " "Then it was Spiridion." "Ah ! 7'ûï ; I never whistled in my life." There had nevertheless been a whistle, shrill and long. The President put them all at their ease by informing them that the chamois at the approach of an enemy utters a whistling noise through his nostrils. What a devil of a fellow Tartarin was ! he knew all the details of chamois-hunting as well as of all the other sports. At the guide's suggestion tliey continued their w^ay ; but the slope 224 Tartariii on tlic Alps became more and more steep, the rocks more uneven, with sloughs and guUies to right and left. Tartarin kept his presence of mind, turning round every moment to assist the delegates, to hold out his hand or his gun to them. " The hand, the hand ! .., , if it's all the same to you," exclaimed the brave lîravida, who had a mortal horror of loaded firearms. Another sign from the .1 _ * guide — another halt. "I think I felt a drop of rain," muttered the Commandant, who was At the same time it thundered, and louder than the thunder rose the voice of Excourbanies : " Look out, Tartarin ! " The chamois came on, bounding between them Uke a flash — too quick for even Tartarin to shoulder his gun, not quick enough though to prevent them from hearing the loud whist- ling of his nostrils. " I will give an account of him, coquin de very anxious. ■Tartarin shouldered his gun method. cally as usual." Tartarin on the Alps sort ! " said the President ; but the delegates protested. Excourbanies suddenly very shari)ly asked him if he had sworn to exterminate them. " Dear ma-as-ter," bleated Pascalon, timid- ly, " I have heard it said that the chamois when driven to bay turns against the hunter, and becomes very dangerous." " Don't let us bring him to bay, then," said Bravida the terrible. Tartarin called them chicken-hearted milk- sops. Then suddenly, while they were dis- puting, they lost sight of each other in a thick, warm cloud which smelt of sulphur, and through which they kept searching for each other, calling out : " m ! Tartarin ! " " Are you there. Placide ! " " Ma-as-ter ! " " Keep cool ! keep cool ! " There was a regular panic. Then a gust of wind dispersed the cloud, carried it away like a ve'l torn off the bushes, and from it came a forked flash of lightning, followed by an awful crash of thunder under their very feet as it seemed. Tartarifi on the Alps " My cap ! " exclaimed Spiridion, whose hair was standing up quite electrified, his head- gear having been carried oT by the tempest. They were in the heait of the storm — in Vulcan's forge itseP'. Bravida first fled at full speed ; the remainder of the delegation fol- lowed him ; but one cry from the P. C. A., who thought for them all, restrained them : ^''Malheureux ! beware of the lightning!" Besides, outside of the real dangers which threatened them, they could scarcely run upon the steep slopes, across ravines now trans- formed into torrents and cascades by the rain. Their return was disastrous, at a slow l^ace, amid the lightning, the thunder, their tumbles, glissades, and forced halts. Pascalon crossed himself, and appealed aloud as at Tarascon to Saint Martha, Saint Helena, and Saint Mary Magdalen, while Excourbanies swore '■'■ Cflt/uin de sort.'" and Bravida, who brought up the rear, turning round in a nervous state, said : " What is that I hear coming behind us ? that sniffling, that gallop,— there— it has stopped ! " The idea of the maddened 2 2^ Ta r ta ri V ov the Alps chamois throwing itself upon the hunters could not be banished from tlie mind of the old warrior. In a low tone, so as not to alarm the others, he imparted his fears to Tartarin, who bravely changed places with him, and marched last with head held high, wet to the skin, yet with the inward determina- tion which imminent danger bestows ! But when they had regained the inn, and when he saw his dear Alpinists in shelter, in a fair way to dry themselves around an enormous faïence stove, in a room on the first floor, whence was ascending the odour of hot grog and wine, then the President felt himself shiver, and he declared with a very pale face: "I really believe I am taken ill." Taken ill ! an expression of sinister mean- ing in its vagueness and brevity, which hinted at all kinds of maladies — plague, cholera, yellow fever, " blue devils," jaundice, and lightning-strokes, the thought of which always occurred to the Tarasconnais at the least indisposition. Tartarin was taken ill ! There could, there- fore, be no question of continuing the journey, Tartarin on the Alps !29 and the delegates only cared for rest. Quickly they warmed his bed, plied him with wine, and at the second glass the President felt a grateful warmth ]jermeate his body : a good omen ! Two pillows at his back, an Tariarin on tlic AI pi cider-down on his feet, his comforter tied over his head, lie experienced a dehcious satisfaction in Hstening to llic roarings of the storm ; in the jjleasant smell of the pines; in the little rustic, wooden inn, with latticed windows : in regarding his friends, the dear Alpinists, who jjressed around his bed, glasses in hand, looking such (pieer figures in their odd costumes of curtains and such materials, with their Ciallic, Saracen, or Roman types of features, while their clothes were drying before the stove. Forgetting himself, he ijuestioned them in a doleful \oice : "Are you cpiite well, Placide? Spiridion, you seemed to be unwell just now." No, Spiridion suffered no longer, it had all jjassed away when the President was taken so ill. Bravida, who suited the moral to the proverbs of his country, added cynic- ally : " The sickness of a neighbour comforts and even cures us." Then they si)oke of their hunting, warming at the recollection of certain dangerous incidents, such as when the animal had turned upon them furiously ; and without any complicity of lying, they Tartarin on the Alps very ingeniously fabricated a fable which they would relate on their return. Suddenly, Pascalon, who had gone down stairs for another modicum of grog, re- appeared in the greatest alarm — a naked arm outside his blue-flowered curtain, which he gathered around him with modest gesture à la Polyeucte. He was more than a second in the room before he could utter in a low voice and with quick breathing : "The chamois ! " " Well, what about it ? " " It is down stairs, in the kitchen ! " " Ah, go along ! " " You are joking ! " " Will you go and see. Placide ? " Bravida hesitated ; so Excourbanies de- scended on tip-toe ; and then returned almost immediately, with a scared face. INIore extraordinary news still — The chamois was drinking warm wine ! They owed him as much, poor beast, after the pretended hunt he had afforded them on the mountain, all the time started off or recalled by his master, who usually contented Î32 Ta I tarin ou the Alps himself with putting it through its paces in the salle to show tourists how easily it had been tamed. "This is crushing," said IJravida, not caring to understand any more about it, while Tartarin pulled the comforter over his face to hide from the delegates the gentle mirth wliich overspread his features, when at any stage of his journey he encountered the all- satisfying Switzerland of Bomi)ard, with its mechanism and its supernumeraries ! X The ascent of the Jungfrait. — Ve ! the oxen ! — The Kennedy ''crampons" do not ansiver ; neither does the lamp. — Appearance of masked men at the chalet — The President in the crevasse. — He leaves his spectacles behind him. — On the peaks. — Tartarin a deity. There was a tremendous crowd that morning at the Belle Vue Hotel on the Little Scheideck. Notwithstanding the rain and the squalls, the tables had been laid out of doors, under the shelter of the veranda, amongst an assemblage of alpenstocks, flasks, telescopes, cuckoo-clocks, &c. ; and the tourists could, I 2 234 Tartarin on the Alps while breakfasting, gaze to the left uiiuii \\w valley of Grindelwald, some 6,000 feel below ; on the right the Lauterbrunnen valley, and in front of them, at what seemed within gun-shot distanee, the pure and stupendous slopes of the Jungfrau, with its névé., its glaciers, the whiteness of it all illuminating the air around, making the glasses still more transparent and the table linen still more snowy. But for the moment the attention of the company was directed to a noisy bearded party of tourists, who were coming up on mule-back, on donkey-back, one man even in a chaise à porteurs, who jirepared themselves for the as- cent by a copious breakfast ; they were in high spirits, and the noise they made contrasted greatly with the worn-out and solemn airs of the Rice and Prune factions, some illustrious members of which had assembled at the Scheideck : Lord Chippendale, the IJtlgian Senator and his family, the Austro-Hungarian diplomatist and his family. It seemed as if all these bearded people were about to attempt the ascent, for they occupied themselves in turn with the preparations for departure, Tartarin on the Alps 235 rose, hurried off to give instructions to the guides ; to inspect the provisions, and from one end of the terrace to the other they shouted to each other in discordant accents : " Hé ! Placide, see if the frying-pan is in the bag, and don't forget the spirit-lamp, mind ! " When the starting time arrived, however, it was perceived that all this was on account of one, and that of all the party one individual alone was going to undertake the ascent ! But what an individual ! "Children, are we ready?" said the good Tartarin, in a triumphant and joyful tone, which did not tremble with the shadow of a fear for the possible perils of the journey, his last doubt concerning the " machinery " of the Swiss having been dissipated that morning before the two Grindelwald glaciers, each pro- vided with a turn-stile and a guichet with an inscription, "Entrance to the glacier, one franc and a half" He could then enjoy this departure without regret : the delight of feeling himself the observed of all observers ; envied, admired, 2;6 Tarlariii on tli<- Alps Iiy those chcokv lilllc girls with llic close- cropped hair, who had laughed at him so quietly on the Kigi-Kulm ; and who were at that very moment in raptures, comparing that Tartari7i on the Alps little man with that enormous mountain which he was going to ascend. One was sketching him in her album, another was requesting the honour of holding his alpenstock. " Tchimi> pegne — Tchimppegne," suddenly cried a lanky, melancholy Englishman, of l)rick-tint, who was approaching witli a bottle and a glass in his hands. Then, after liaving com- pelled the hero to drink, he said : " Lord Chippendale, sir ; et vôV "Tartarin de Tarascon.'' "Oh, yes, — Tarterine. It's a capital name for a horse," said his lordship, who must have been a great sportsman on the other side of the Channel ! 238 Tartarin on the Alps The Vustro-Hungarian diplomatist also came forward to shake the mountaineer by tlic liand between his mittens— having a vague recollection of having met him somewhere. " Delighted, delighted," he re])eated many times, and, not knowing how to get out of it, he added : " My compliments to Madame," — his society formula, by which he concluded all introductions. Jiut the guides were becoming impatient. The cabin of the Alpine (^lub must be reached before dark ; there they would sleep, and there was not a moment to lose. Tar- tarin cpiite understood this, and saluted the company with a wa\e of his hand, smiled paternally at the malicious " misses," and then, in a voice of thunder, cried : '' Pascalon, the banner ! " It was displayed, the Southerners had unfolded it, for they like theatrical display ; and at the thirtieth repetition of " Vive k Prcsidefif ."' '^ Vive Tartarin!''' "Ha! ha! fen dé brut" the party started — the two guides in front carrying the sac, the provisions, and some wood \ then Pascalon, holding the Tartarm o?i the Alps 239 "oriflamme ; " and the P. C. A. with the dele- gates, who were to escort him to the Guggi glacier, brought up the rear. So the procession deployed, the folds of the flag flapping upon the swampy ground, or on the naked or snowy crests, the corCege in a ^'aguc way recalling le Jflitr des morts in country places. Suddenly, the Commandant cried out in great alarm : " Vi' .' oxen ! " They perceived some cattle grazing amid the undulations of tlie ground. The old warrior had a nervous terror of cows — an insurmountable fear ; and as his friends could not leave him alone, the delegation was obliged to halt. Pascalon handed the banner to one of the guides \ then a last embrace, a few hurried words of warning, with their eyes on the cows : "Adieu, que f" " No imprudence, mind ! " And they parted. As for any one proposing to ascend with the President, it was not to be thought of The ascent was too high, boufre! As one 240 Tai tarin ou ihc Alps got nearer to it, it seemed more diffuult, the ravines increased, the peaks bristled up in a white chaos wliich seemed impossible ti) traverse. It was much better worth while to watch the ascent from the Sheideck. Naturally, Tarta- rin in all his life had never set foot on a glacier. There were no such things upon the hillocks of Tarascon, which were as perfumed and dry as a bundle of bent-grass. Yet the surroundings of the Guggi gave him a sensation of fami- liarity, as if he had seen them before — arousing the memory of the chase in Provence, all around the Camargue, Tartariti on the Alps 241 towards the sea. It was the same grass, but shorter and burnt up as if scorched by !!'''. Here and there were pools of water, infiltrations, indicated b}- slim reeds ; then the moraine, like a mobile hill of sand, broken shells, and cinders ; then the glacier, with its blue- green waves, tipped with white, undulating as a silent and frozen sea. The wind also had all the coolness and fresh- ness of the sea-breeze. " No, thanks ; I have my crampons^' said Tartarin, as the guide offered him woollen foot-protectors to wear over his boots : " Kennedy's pattern crainp07is — first-rate — very con- venient." He shouted all this at the top of his voice as if the guide were deaf, so as to make him understand better, for Chri.stian Inebnit knew no more French than his comrade Kaufmann. Then Tartarin 24- Tu lia ri II on the Alps seated himself upon the moraine and fixed upon his boots with irons the species of large pointed iron socks called crampons. He had experimented a hundred times \\\\.\\ tliese " Kennedy crampons^' and had tried them in the garden wlierc the l)aobal) grew ; nevertheless the result was unex- pected. Beneath the hero's weight the spikes buried themselves in the ice to such a depth that all attempts to extricate them were vain ! Behold Tartarin nailed to the ice, springing, swearing, making semaphores of his arms and alpenstock ; and finally reduced to recall his guides, who had gone on ahead in the full belief that they had to do with an experienced climber I Finding it inij)ossiI)lc to pull him up^ they unfastened the crampons from him, and left them in the ice, replacing them by a pair of worsted boot-coverings. The President then continued his way, not without toil and fatigue. Unaccustomed to use his bâton, he knocked it against his legs; the iron slid away from him, dragging him with it, when he leaned on it too heavily ; then he tried Tartarifi on the Alps 243 the ice-axe, which proved even more difficult to manage ; the swellings of the glacier in- creased, casting up its motionless waves into the appearance of a furious ocean suddenly petrified. Apparently motionless only — for the loud crackings, the interior rumblings, the enor- mous blocks of ice slowly displaced like the revolving scenes at a theatre, displayed the action, the treacherousness, of this immense glacial mass ; and before the climber's eyes, within reach of his axe, crevasses opened — bottomless pits into which the pieces of ice rolled to infinity. The hero fell into many of these traps— once up to his waist into one of the green gulfs, wherein his broad shoulders alone prevented him from being buried. Seeing him so unskilful, and at the same time so calm and collected — laughing, sing- ing, gesticulating, just as he had been doing at breakfast — the guides began to think that the Swiss champagne had got into his head. Could they think anything else of a President of an Alpine Club, of a mountaineer so !44 larfan'ji on the Alps. renowned, of whom his rompanions never spoke willioul "Ah !" and expressive gestures? Having, therefore, seized him under his arms after the respertful fashion of jioHcemen putting a well-horn hut elevated young gentle- man into a cab, the guides, by the aid of monosyllables and gestures, endeavoured to arouse his reason to the dangers of the route ; the threatening appearance of the crevasses, the cold, and the avalanches. With the points of their ice-axes they indicated the enormous accumulations of ice, the sloping wall of neve in front, rising to the zenith in a blinding glare. But the worthy Tartarin laughed at all this. " Ah .' vai, les crevasses ! Ah ! get out with your avalanches I " and he choked with laughter, winked at the guides, and nudged them playfully in the ribs, to make them understand that he was in the secret as well as they ! The men ended by joining in the fun, carried away by Tarascon melody ; and when they rested a moment upon a block of ice to permit " monsieur " to take breath, they Tartarin on the Alps ^45 "jodelled" in Swiss fasliion, but not loudly, for fear of avalanches, nor for long, because time was passing apace. Evening was evidently coming on, the cold was becoming more in tense, and the singula r discoloration of the snows and the ice. heaped up and over- hanging in masses, which, even under a cloudy sky, glitter and sparkle, but when day- light is dying out, gone up towards the tapering peaks, take the livid, spectral tints of the lunar world. Pallor, congelation, silence — all is dead. And the good Tartarin, so warm, so lively, began at length to lose his verve, when at the distant cry of a bird, the call of the " snow partridge " (ptarmigan) resounding .'»46 Tiutarin o)i the Alps amid Uic clcsolation, before his eyes tlieic passed a vision of a biimt-u]) country, browned under a setting sun, sportsmen of Tarascon, wiping their foreheads, seated upon their empty game-bags, beneath the shade of an ohve-tree ! This reminiscence comforted him. At the same time Kaufmann was pointing out to him sometliing above them wliich looked hke a faggot on the snow. This was the hut. It seemed as if a few paces would sufitice to reach it, but it was a good half-hour ere they got there. One of the guides went on in front to light the fire. It was dark by this time ; tho east wind came i)iercingly off the death-like ground, and Tartarin, no longer troubling himself about anything, firmly sustained by the arm of the guide, jumped and bounded about imtil there was not a dry thread on. him, notwithstanding the lowness of the temperature. Suddenly, a savoury odour of onion-soup assailed their nostrils. They had reached the hut. Nothing can be more simple than these stopping-places established on the mountains Tartarin on tJie Alps 247 by the forethought of the Swiss Alpine Club ; a single room, in which a sloping ])lank, serving as bed-place, occupies nearly all the s^Dace, leaving very little for the stove and the long table, which is nailed to the floor, as well as the benches which surround it. The su])per was already laid when the men arrived ; three bowls, tin spoons, the "Etna" for the coffee, two tins of Chicago preserved meats opened. Tartarin found the dinner excellent, although the onion-souj) was rather smoked, and the famous patent lamp, which ought to have produced a (juart of coffee in three minutes, failed to work. For dessert they sang : it was the only way to converse with the guides. He sang his country's songs : la Tamstjiw, h's Filles d'Avig- 71071. The guides responded with local songs in their German /rt-Zm.- "J// Voter iscli en Ap- penzeller : aon, oou ! " Fine fellows these — hard as rock, with soft flowing beards like moss, clear eyes, accustomed to move in space, as sailors' are; and this sensation of the sea and space, which he had lately ex- perienced while ascending the Guggi, Tartarin 24H Tarlari)! on ilic Alps again experienced here in the company of these glacier-pilots in that narrow cabin, low and smoky, a veritable " 'tween-decks," in the dripping of the snow which the heat had melted on the roof, and the wild gusts of wind, like masses of falling water, shaking everything, making the planks creak and the lamp flicker : then suddenly stopjjing in a silence as if all the world were dead. Dinner was finished, when heavy steps were heard approaching, and voices were distin- guished. A violent knocking at the door ! Tartarin, somewhat alarmed, gazed at the guides. A nocturnal attack at such an eleva- tion as this? The blows redoubled in in- tensity. " Who is there ? " cried the hero, seizing his ice-axe : but the cabin was already invaded by two tall Americans masked in white linen, their clothing saturated with per- spiration and sno^v-water, and behind them guides and porters — quite a caravan coming down from the summit of the Jungfrau. " Welcome, my lords," cried Tartarin, with a hospitable and patronising wave of his hand, but " milords " had no compunction Tar tar hi on the Alps 249 as to making themselves quite at home. In a few seconds the table was relaid, the bowls and spoons passed through some hot water to serve for the new-comers, according to the rules existing in all Alpine huts, the boots of "milords" were drying at the stove, while they, with their feet wrapped in straw, were dis- posing of a new supply of onion- soup. These Ameri- cans were father and son — two ruddy giants, with the heads of pioneers, hard and practical. The older of the two seemed to have white eyes ; and after awhile the manner in which he tapped and felt around him, and the care which his son took of him, assured Tartarin that he was the famous blind mountaineer of whom he had heard at the Belle Vue Hotel, a fact he could scarcely credit, a famous climber in his youth, and who, notwithstanding his si.xty years, had 2^o TiJitaiiit oit the Alps iL'coiniHcnccd his ascents again with his son. lie had in this manner already made the aseent ut" the Wetterhorn and the JimgtVau, and reckoned upon attacking the Cervin and Mont JJlanc, declaring that the mountain air gave him intense enjoyment, and recalled all his former vigour. " But," said Tartarin to one of the porters — for the Yankees were not communicative, and only replied " Yes " or " No " to all ad- vances — "but, if he cannot see, how can he manage to cross dangerous places?" " Oh, he has the foot of a true mountain- eer, and his son looks after him, places his feet in the proper positions, &c. The fact is, he never has an accident." " More especially as accidents are never very deplorable, quéV After a knowing smile to the astonished i)orter, the Taras- connais, more and more persuaded that all this was I'lagiie, stretched himself on the jjlank, rolled himself in his rug, his comforter up to his eyes, and fell asleep, notwithstanding the light, the chatter, the smoke of pipes, and the smell of the onion soup. Tar tar in on the Alps 251 '■'• Mossic ! Mossiéf" (Monseiur). One of the guides was shaking him b)- the shoulder, while the other was pouring out some boiling coffee into the bowls. There were a few oaths and some grumbling from the sleepers, as Tartarin pushed past them in his way to the table and to the door. All of a sudden, he found himself in the open air, shivering with cold, and puzzled by the moonlight upon the white plains, the frozen cascades, which the shadows of the peaks, aiguilles, and séracs, cut with intense black- ness. There was not the bewildering scin- tillation of the afternoon, nor the livid grey tinge of the evening, but a town cut by dark alleys, mysterious, passages, dubious angles between the marble monuments and crumbled ruins — a dead town with its wide deserted squares. Two o'clock I With good walking they ought to reach the summit by mid-day. ^' Zoté," said the P. C. A. quite gaily, and pressed forward to the assault. But the guides stopped him : it was necessary to rope themselves. 252 Dirfar/N c/i tlic Alps '• Ah ! go along with your lying up ! Very well, then : if it anniscs you, be it so ! " Christian Inebnit took the lead, leaving six feet of rope between him and Tartarin, and the same length between Tartarin and the other guide, who was carrying the pro- visions and the banner. The Tarasconnais got on better than the day before, and really he did not seem to appreciate the difficulties of the path — if the way along that terrible arete of ice can be called a path — over which they were advancing with the greatest caution. It was a few inches wide, and so slippery that Christian had to cut steps in it. The arete glittered between profound abysses. But do you think Tartarin was afraid ? Not a bit of it ! Scarcely did he experience the little tremor of the newly-made Freemason who has to submit to the ordeal ! He placed his feet exactly in the holes cut by the guide, doing everything as he saw him do it, as coolly as if he were in the baobab gar- den, walking on the edge of the fountain, to the great terror of the gold-fish. At one time, the crest became so narrow that they were Tariarin on the Alps 253 compelled to proceed on all-fours, and while they were advancing slowly a tremendous detonation was heard on the right beneath them. "An avalanche !" said Inebnit, stop- ping quite still so long as the uproar lasted, while the reverberations, grandly repeated, terminated by a lengthened thunder-roll, which slowly died away in echoes. After that the former terrible silence succeeded, covering all things like a winding-sheet. The arête passed, they reached the névé^ which sloped easily, but was terribly long. They had climbed for more than an hour, when a thin streak of rosy hue began to touch the peaks high — very high — over their heads. Day was announcing its arrival. As a good Southerner, cherishing an enmity to darkness, Tartarin trolled out his cheerful song : Grand sou kit de la Provenco Gai com paire don mistrau^ A tug at the cord both before and behind stopped him short in the middle of his verse : ' Grand soleil de la Provence, — Gai compère du mistraL 254 Ttvtari)! on tlic Alps "Hush! liush ! " cried Inebnit, indicating with the handle of his ice-axe the menacing line of immense and clustered scracs which the least shock, would send down upon the travellers. But the Tarasconnais knew what he was about^they were not going to Jiumbug liini ; so he recommenced in a resonant voice ; Til (jn'c.'coulèi la Diirauço Commo un flot devin de Craii.^ The guides, perceiving that they could not keep the headstrong singer within due bounds, made a wide dctojtr to avoid the séracs, and soon were brought to a standstill by an enorm- ous crevasse, which was lighted in its green depths by the first rays of daylight. A snow bridge crossed it, but so thin and fragile, that at the very first step it disappeared in a whirl- wind of fine snow, dragging with it the head guide and Tartarin, who hung by the cord, which Rudolf Kaufmann, the rear guide, gripped with all his force, his axe firmly fixed in the snow to sustain the tension. But ' Toi qui siffles la Durance — Comme un coup de vin de Crau. Tartarm on the Alps 25: though he could hold up the men, he could not haul them out, and he stood crouching down, with clenched teeth and straining muscles, too far from the crevasse to perceive what was passing within it. Astounded by the fall, and half blinded by the snow, Tartarin for a minute threw his legs and arms about like a puppet : but then, righting himself by means of the rope, he hung over the chasm, his nose touching the icy wall, which thawed beneath his breathing, in the posture of a plumber mending a water- pipe. He saw the sky paling above him, the last stars were disappearing ; beneath him a chasm of intense darkness, whence ascended a cold air. Nevertheless, his first astonishment over, he regained his coolness and good humour : " Eh ! up there ! Father Kaufmann, don't let us get mouldy here, que ! There is a draught, and this cursed cord is bruising our ribs." Kaufmann was not able to reply. If he unlocked his teeth he would lose some of his strength. But Inebnit hailed from below : 156 Taiiarin on the Alps "Mossié/ Mossic ! ice-axe!" — for he had lost his own in the crevasse ; and the heavy instrument passed from Tartarin's hands into those of the guide — a difficult operation because of the length of cord wliich separated them. The guide wanted it to cut steps in the ice in front of him, or to cling by it foot and hand. The strain upon the rope being thus lessened by one half, Rudolf Kaufmann, with carefully calculated force and infinite precau- tions, commenced to drag up the President, whose cap at length appeared over the edge of the crevasse. Inebnit came up in his turn, and the two mountaineers met with effusion, but with the few words which are exchanged after great dangers by people of a slow habit of speaking. They were much moved, and trembling with their exertions. Tartarin passed them his flask to restore them. He seemed quite composed and calm, and while he was beating the snow from his dress rhythmically, he kept humming a tune, under the very noses of the astonished guides. " Brav ! brav ! Franzose," said Kaufmann, Tartariii oti the Alps 257 patting him on the shoulder, and Tartarin, with his jolly laugh, replied : "■ Farceur, I knew quite well there was no danger ! " Within the memory of guide, never had there been such an Alpinist as this ! They continued their way, climbing a gigantic wall of ice eighteen hundred or two thousand feet high, in which they cut steps, which occupied much time. The man of Tarascon began to feel his strength failing him under the blazing sun, which reflected all the whiteness of the land- scape, all the more trying for his eyes as he had dropped his spectacles into the crevasse. Soon afterwards a terrible faintness seized upon him, that " mal de montagnes " which has the same effect as sea-sickness. Utterly done up, and light-headed, with dragging limbs, he stumbled about, so that the guides had to haul him along, one on each side, as they had done the day before, sustaining him, even drawing him up the ice-wall. Scarcely three hundred feet intervened between them and the top of the Jungfrau ; but alth(jugh K 258 Tartariu o)i the Alps the snow was Inni and llic way easy, this h^st stage occupied an " interminable " time, while the fatigue and the sensation of suffoca- tion increased with Tartarin continually. Suddenly, the guides let him go, and wav- ing their hats began to "jodel " with delight. They had reached the summit. This point in immaculate space, this white crest some- what rounded, was the end, and for poor Tartarin the end of the torpor in which he had been walking, as in his sleep, for the last hour. "Scheideck! Scheideck 1 " exclaimed the guides, pointing out to him iix below on a verdant plateau, standing out from the mists of the valley, the Hôtel Jîelle Vue, looking a very toy-house. From there they had a magnificent i)ano- rama spread before them, a snow slope tinged with an orange glow by the sun, or a cold deep blue ; a mass of ice fantastically sculp- tured into towers, steeples, needles, aretes ; gigantic mounds, like graves of the mastodon and tlie megatherium. All tlie colours of the rainbow played upon them, uniting again Tartarin on the Alps 259 in the beds of the great glaciers, with their motionless ice-falls, crossed by tiny streams which the sun was warming into life again. But at that great elevation the reflections were toned down, a light was floating in the air, a cold ecliptic light, which made Tartarin shiver as much as the sensation of the silence and sohtude of the white desert and its mysterious recesses. A little smoke was perceived, and some detonations were heard from the hotel. They had seen the tourists, and were firing cannon in their honour, and the conviction that they saw him, that his Alpinists were there, the young ladies, the illustrious Rices and Prunes, with their opera-glasses, recalled Tartarin to the importance of his mission. He snatched the Tarascon banner from the hands of the guide, and waved it two or three times ; then, fixing his ice-axe in the snow, he seated himself upon the iron of the pick, flag in hand, superb, facing the public. And without his perceiving it — by one of those spectral images frequent at the tojjs of mountains, the result of sun, and of mist which was rising Ijcliind him — a 26o Tartarin on the Alps gigantic Tartarin was outlined on the sky, enlarged and shortened, the beard bristling out of the comforter, like one of the Scan- dinavian deities, which tradition jiresents to us as enthroned in the midst of the clouds. ii&mJék ^*f^ Ifefe J;^ XI En 7-0 II te for Tarascon ! — The Lake of Geneva. — Tartarin suggests a visit to BoJinivard's cell. — A shoi't dialogue amid the 7'oses. — All the land under lock and key. — Tiie unfor- tufiate Bonnivard. — A certaifi rope made in Avii:no?i comes to linht. After the ascent, Tartarin's nose peeled and became pimpled, his cheeks cracked. He was obliged to remain in his room for five days at the îielle Vue. Five days of com- presses, pomades of whicli he whiled away the cloying mawkishness and boredom by making little whist parties with the delegates, 262 'i a lia ri n on the Alps or dictating to them a long detailed account, most circumstantial in incidents, of his ex- pedition, to l^e read in lull meeting at the club, and published in the Forum. 'I'hen, when his general fatigue had abated, and there remained u])on the noble features of the V. C. A. a few blisters, scars, and cracks, with a beautiful Etruscan vase tint, the dele- gation and its President took the route for Tarascon via Geneva. Let us pass over the incidents of the journey : the terror which the Southern party aroused in the narrow railway-carriages, the steamers, the tables (f/iote, by their songs, cries, and their exuberant affection for each other ; their banner, and their alpenstocks, for since the ascent of the P. C. A. they had all furnished themselves with stocks, on which the records of celebrated ascents were burnt in black letters. Montreux ! Here the delegates, at the suggestion of their leader, decided to halt for two or three days, to see the celebrated shores of the Lake Leman particularly (!hillon, and the legend- Tctrtarin on the Alps 263 ary prison in which languished the great patriot Bonnivard, as related by Byron and Delacroix. As for Tartarin, he cared very little for Bonnivard ; his adventure with William Tell had enlightened him concerning Swiss legends; but while passing through Interlachen he had learnt that Sonia was about to leave for Montreux with her brother, whose condition had become more serious, and this invention of a pilgrimage served him as a pretext to see the young lady once more, and — who knows? — to persuade her to follow him to Tarascon. It must be understood that his followers all believed in the good faith of their leader when he said he came to render homage to the celebrated citizen of Geneva, whose story the P. C. A. had related ; even now, with their taste for theatrical display, they would have marched in Hne to Chillon, with the banner displayed, crying " Vive Bonnivard !" But the President was obliged to restrain them. " Let us first breakfast," he said, " and then wc shall see." 264 Dirfariii o)i the Alps They TiUliI ihc onmilius of a pension MnlUr, situated, like many others, near the landing-stage by the lake. " Ve ! k i:;cndannc ! How he stares at us," said Pascalon, as last of all he got into the omnibus with the banner, which was very much in the Avay ; and Bravida, who was nervous, said : " That's true ; what can that gendarme want with us that he examines us so closely ? " "Perhaps he recognises mo., pardi.'" said the good Tartarin, and he smiled a far off Tartar ill on the Alps 265 smile at the Vaudois policeman, whose long blue capote was persistently turned towards the omnibus, which was proceeding along the poplar- lined road by the lake side. That was market day in Montreux. Rows of little shops in the open air were ranged along the lake, filled with fruit, vegetables, cheap lace, and with the silver jewellery, chains, plaques, brooches, &c., which embel- lish the Swiss female costumes like " worked " snow or ice-pearls. Amid these shops flowed the stream of people from the little harbour, which sheltered a flotilla of boats of brilliant colours, and wheie the disembarkation of K 2 266 Tartiiri)! on the Alps bags and barrels from the vessels with antennae- like sails, the shrill whistling, the bells of the steamers, the bustle of the cafes, the beer- shops, the Horists, and the second-hand dealers which line the (juay, were continually mingling. With a little sun, one might have fancied one's self in some Mediterranean port, between Mentone and I'ordighera. But the sun was wanting, and the natives of 'J'arascon looked at this pretty country through a veil of water which rose from the blue lake, climbed up the stony streets, united above the houses with other clouds, massed amid the dark verdure of the mountains, charged with rain, and ready to burst. " Coqui?i de sort ! I am not a lake-man," said Spiridion Excourbaniès, rubbing the glass of the omnibus window to see the views of the glaciers. " No more am I," sighed Pascalon ; " this fog, this dead water, makes one inclined to weep." Bravida complained also : he was afraid of his sciatica. Tartarin reprimanded them severely. Was Tarta7-m on the Alps 267 it, then, nothing that they would be able to say, when they returned, that they had seen the prison of Bonnivard, written their names on the historic walls beside the signatures of Rousseau, Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Eugène Sue ? Suddenly, in tJie middle of this tirade, the President interrupted himself — changed colour. He had seen a little toqtie^ resting on blonde hair, passing by. Without even stopping the omnibus, just then shcken- ing for the ascent, he leajjcd out, saying, "Go on to the hotel," to the stupefied Alpinists. " Sonia 1 Sonia ! " He was afraid he would not be able to overtake her, so hurried was she, her slim shadow flitting along the wall of the road. She turned and waited for him : " Ah ! 'tis you ! " Immediately their hands clasped she resumed her walk. He placed himself beside her, out of breath, excusing himself for having quitted her in such sudden fashion — the arrival of his friends — the necessity for the ascent, of which his face still bore the traces. She listened without saying a word, 268 Tariarin on ihc Alps hurrying on, lier eyes fixed and wide open. Judging by lier i)rofile, slie seemed to him ])ale, lier features deprived of their infantine candour, ' with something liard, resolute, which until then had not ex- isted, but in her voice — her imperious will ; but still her juvenile gracefulness, her wav- ing, golden liair ! "And lîoris — how is he ? " asked Tar- tarin, a little put out by her silence, by the coldness which was creeping over hi.:i. " Boris ? " She trembled. " Ah 1 yes, it is true ; you didn't know. Well, then, come with me ; come." They ])roceeded along a little i)ath, bordered with vines hanging almost over the lake, and "'I'he lillle cemetery amidst the roses, on the border of the lake." ayo Till tarin on the Alps villas, gardens — sanded, elegant, tlic tcrraccf planted witli the viri^in vine, roses, ])etunias, and myrtle. From time to time ihey passed some strange foce, with troubled features and mournful looks, their steps slow and melan- choly, such as one meets with at Mentone or Monaco : only there the light devours all, absorbs everything ; while beneath the cloudy sky suffering is more apparent, while the flowers ai)pear fresher. " Come in," said Sonia, pushing open a gate beneath a pediment of white masonry, inscribed with Russian characters in golden letters. Tartarin did not at first understand where he was. A little garden with carefully tended walks, pebbly, full of climbing roses amid the green bushes, great clusters of yellow and white blossoms filled the i)lace with their aroma and bloom. Amongst these garlands, this marvel- lous display of blossom, were some .stones standing wy or lying down, with dates and names u])on them, -this one, quite new : " Boris Je Wassilief, aged 22 years'' He had been laid there for some days, having Tariarin on the Alps 271 died almost immediately after he had reached Montreux ; and, in this cemetery of strangers, he found a trace of his native land amongst the Russians, Poles, Swedes, buried beneath the flowers — consumptive patients who are sent to this northern Nice, because the sunny South is too hot, and the transition too sudden for them. The pair remained motionless and silent for a moment before the new white headstone on the dark ground of the freshly-turned earth : the young girl, with bowed head, breathing the odour of the abundant roses, and thus resting her swollen eyes. " Poor little thing 1 " said Tartarin, much affected ; and, taking in his strong rough hands the tips of Sonia's fingers, he continued : " And you ? What will become of you, now ? " She looked him full in the face with dry and brilliant eyes, in which no tear trembled : " I ? I leave here in an hour 1 " " You are going away ? " " Eolibine is already in St. Petersburg. Manilofif is waiting for mc t(j pa.ss the frontier. 27- Tiir/(ji!ii on fJw Alps I am about to enter the furnace. People will licar us talked about." Then, in an undertone, slie added, witli a half smile, fixing her blue eyes full on the face of Tartarin, wlio blanched and avoided her gaze : " Who loves me will follow me I " Ah ! vai^ follow her 1 This enthusiast made hini afraid; besides, this funereal scene had cooled his ardour. He struggled, neverthe- less, not to run away like a contemptible wretch. So, with his hand on his heart, and a gesture worthy of Abenceragus, the hero began : " You know me, Sonia " She did not wish to hear any more. "Babbler!" she replied, shrugging her shoulders. And then she left him, upright and proud, passing between the rose bushes without once turning round. " Babbler ! " not another word, but tlie intonation was so contemptuous that the good Tartarin blushed under his beard, and convinced himself that they were alone in the garden, and that no one had heard them. Fortunately, impressions did not survive lontj with our Tarasconnais. Five minutes " ' JJabbler !' she said, witli a shrug of the shoulders. 2 74 Ttirtariu on the Alps later, he ascended the terraces of Montreux with a light stop, in quest of the pensicm Millier, where the Aljjinists were waiting déjeuner for him, and he felt a great relief at the termination of this dangerous liaisoji. As he proceeded, he nodded vigorously, and explained eloquently to himself the reason which Sonia would not listen to. Be! yes, it was certainly a despotism — he would not deny that ; but to pass from the idea to action ! Bonfre ! And then, what an employ- ment for him, to fire upon despots ! Suj)pose every oppressed nation came to him, as the Arabs did to Bombonnel when the panther prowled around the douar, all his efforts would not suffice. Allons ! A passing carriage (quickly cut short his monologue. He had only just time to leap aside : " Look out, you animal ! " But his angry exclamation was at once changed into an exclamation of surprise: '■'' Qucs aco ! Boudioii ! Impossible ! " I give you a thousand guesses to divine what he saw in the landau. The delegation ! The delegation in full — Bravida, Pascalon, PLxcourbanies— Tartarin on tlie Alps 275 crowded in at one side, pale, exhausted, dis- hevelled, after a struggle with two ge7idarmes, muskets in hand, seated opposite to them. All their profiles, motionless, mute, in the narrow frame of the doorway, seemed like a bad dream ; and Tartarin stood rooted to the spot as firmly as he ever was by the " Kennedy " crampons. He saw the carriage gallop off, behind it a crowd of school-boys, satchels on back, just released from school, when a voice sounded in his ear : " Here is the fourth man ! ' In a moment he was seized, handcuff"ed, bound : he was hustled into a hackney carriage with the gendarmes and an officer armed with his gigantic latte, which he held between his knees, the handle touching the top of the cab. Tartarin wanted to speak, to explain liimself There was evidently some mistake. He told them his name. He appealed to his Consul, to a dealer in Swiss honey who had known him at lîeaucaire. Then, in face of the persistent silence of his attendants, he began to look upon this arrest as a new move of IJompard's, and, addressing himself to the :70 lortann on the Alps ofliccr, he said, with a waggish air : "This is all a joke, que ! All ! vai, farceur ! I know very well it is all for fun ! " " If you speak any more I will gag you. Not a word ! " said tlie officer, rolling his terrible eyes, so that it seemed as if he was going to imjjale the prisoner on his staff. The other kept quiet, and did not stir any more ; he kept looking out of window at the borders of the lake, the high mountains — of a damp green hue — the hotels, with their Tartarhi oji the Alps 277 varied roofs, with gilded signs visible a league away ; and on the slopes, as on the Rigi, was a coming and going of men carrying up and down baskets and hods of provisions, &c. ; as at the Rigi, also, a toy railway, squeaking along, and climbing up as far as Glion; and, to complete the resemblance to the Regina mofitiiim, a heavy beating rain was falling — an exchange of water and fog between the lake and the sky, the sky and the lake, the clouds touching the waves. The carriage rolled over a drawbridge between some little shops where knick-knacks 278 Tar ta fin on the Alps were sold — penknives, button-hooks, and such things ; i)assed through a low postern, and stopped in the courtyard of an old castle, grass-grown, and flanked by round " pepper- box " towers, with black niouc/iarabis sup- ported by beams. Where was he ? Tartarin understood it when he heard the officer of gendarmes conversing with the concierge of the castle, a fat man in a Grecian cap, shaking a huge bunch of rusty keys. " In solitary confinement ? Eut I have no room ! The others occupy all — unless we jnit him in the Bonnivard prison." " Put him in l]f)nnivard's chamber, then — it is quite good enough for him," said the captain, authoritatively. And his orders were carried out. The Castle of Chillon, about which the President had continually been speaking to his friends the Alpinists, and in which, by the irony of fate, he found himself suddenly im- prisoned without knowing why, is one of the historical monuments of Switzerland. After having served as a summer residence of the Counts of Savoy, then as a State prison, a Tartarin on the Alps 279 depot of arms and stores, it is now only an excuse for an excursion, like the Rigi-Kulm or Tellsplatte. There is, however, a guard there, and a lock-up for drunkards and the wilder lads of the district ; but such inmates are rare, as the Vaud is a most peaceful canton ; thus the lock-up is usually untenanted, and the keeper keeps his store of fuel in it. So the arrival of all these prisoners had put him in a bad temper, particularly when he thought that people would not be able to see the celebrated dungeon, which was at that season of considerable profit. Furious, he led the way, and Tartarin fol- lowed him, timidly, and without making any resistance. A few worn steps, a damp corri- dor feeling like a cave, a high door like a wall, with enormous hinges, and they found themselves in a vast subterranean vault, with deeply trodden floor, and heavy Roman })illars on which hang the rings of iron to which the State prisoners were formerly chained. A semi-daylight flickers in, and the ripjjling lake is reflected through the narrow apertures which ])ermit naught but the sky to be seen. a8o Tar/aiin on the Alps "This is your place," said the gaoler. *' Mind you don't ^o to the end, the oubliettes are there." Tartarin recoiled in terror. " Les oubliettes ! Boudiou ! " lie exclaimed. " \\'hat would you have, mofi garço/i / 'I'licy have ordered me to put you in Bonnivard's dungeon. I have put you in ]Jonnivard's dungeon ! Now, if you have means, I can supply you with some luxuries, such as a mattress and coverlet for the night." "Let me have something to eat first/' said Tartarin, who very fortunately had not left his purse behind him. The concierge came back with some fresh bread, some beer, and a saveloy, which were all devoured eagerly by the prisoner of Chillon, who had not broken his fast since the day before, and was worn out by fatigue and emotion. AN'liile he was eating it on his stonj bench in the gleam of the embrasure, the gaoler kept examining him with a good- natured air. " Ma foi!" he said, " I don"t know what you have done, nor why lliey treat ) uu so severely."' Tartarin on the Alps 281 " Eh ! coqui7i de sort, no more do I ! I know nothing whatever about it," replied Tartarin, with his mouth full. " At any rate, one thing is certain — you liave not the appearance of a criminal, and I am sure you would never prevent a poor f^ither of a family from gaining his living ? Eh ? Well, then, I have up stairs all the peoi)le who have come to see Bonnivard's dungeon. If you will promise me to remain (juiet, and not attempt to escape " The worthy Tartarin promised at once, and five minutes afterwards he saw liis dungeon 282 Tartariii on the A/ps invaded l>y liis old acquaintances of llie I\ii:,i- Kuhnand the 'J'ellsplatte : the ass Schwan- tlialcr, the most inept Astier-Rchii, tlie member of the Jockey Club with Iiis niece, all the Cook's tourists 1 Ashamed, and fear- ful of being recognised, the unhai)py man hid behind the pillars, retiring and stealing away as they approached him, the tourists preceding the gaoler, who uttered his clap-trap in a mel- ancholy tone : " This is where the unfortunate Bonnivard was imprisoned." They advanced slowly, retarded by the disputes of the two sai'ajits, who were always quarrelling, ready to fly at each other, one waving his camp-stool, the other hxs sac de voy- age, in fantastic attitudes, which the half-light magnified along the vaulted dungeon roof. By the mere exigency of retreat, Tartarin found himself at last near the opening of the oubliettes —:i black pit, open level with the ground, breathing an odour of many centu- ries, damp and cold. Alarmed, he stopped, crouched in a corner, his cap over his eyes ; but tlie damp saltpetre of the walls affected him, and suddenlv a loud sneeze. A Tartarin on the Alps 283 which made the tourists recoil, betrayed him ! " Tie?is, Bonnivard ! " exclaimed the fast little Parisienne in the Directoire hat, whom the member of the Jockey Club called his niece. The Tarasconnais did not permit himself to show any signs of being disturbed. " It is really very interesting, these oub- liettes.' " he remarked in the most natural tone in the world, as if he also was a mere visitor for pleasure to the dungeon. Then he mingled with the other tourists, who smiled on recog- nising the Alpinist of the Rigi-Kulm, the mainspring of that famous ball. '■'■He! inossie ! baUif, dantsir !'" The comical outline of the little fairy Schwanthaler presented itself before him, ready to dance. Truly, he had a great mind to dance with her. Then, not knowing how to disembarrass himself of this excited little bit of a woman, he offered her his arm, and gallantly showed her his dungeon : the ring whereon the captive's chain had been riveted, the traces of his footsteps worn in the rock 284 Tiirtariii oil the Alps around the same pillar ; and, never having heard 'lartarin speak with such facility, the good lady never suspected that he who was walking with her was also a State prisoner — a victim to the injustice and the wickedness of men. Terrible, for instance, was the parting, when the unfortunate " Bonnivard," having led her to the door, took leave of her with the smile of a man of the world, saying : — " No, thank you, ve I I remain here a moment longer." She bowed, he bowed ; and the gaoler, who was on the alert, locked and bolted the door, to the great astonishment of all. What an insult ! He was bathed in agonised perspiration as he listened to the exclamations of the departing visitors. For- tunately such torture as this could not be repeated that day. The bad weather would deter tourists. A terrible wind was blowing under the old planks ; cries arose from the oubliettes, like the plaints of unburied bodies, and the ripple of the lake, dotted with the rain, beat against the walls to the edges of the embrasures whence tlie spray was dashed ' Tiens ! Lonnivard. 286 Tar fill in on the Alps over the prisoner. At intervals the bell of a steamer, and the patter of its wheels, broke upon the reverie of poor Tartarin, while the evening descended grey and niourn- ful on the dungeon, which seemed to grow larger. How could this arrest be exj)lained ? How could his ini])risonnient be justified ? Coste- calde, perhaps — an electoral manœuvre at the last moment. Or had the Russian police been informed of his imprudent utterances, his proposal to Sonia, and had demanded his extradition ? But then, why arrest the dele- gates? What could be alleged against these unfortunate men, whose alarm and despair he could picture, although they were not in the dungeon of Bonnivard, in these stony vaults, traversed at night by rats of enormous size, by crayfish, and silent spiders with hairy, uncanny feet. Now you see what it is to have a good conscience. Notwithstanding the rats, the cold, and the spiders, the great Tartarin found, amid all the horrors of the State prison, haunted by the shades (jf martyrs, a rutle sound sleep. Tartarin 07i the Alps 287 with mouth open and hands clenched, as he had slept between the sky and the abysses in the hut of the Alpine Club. He thought he was still dreaming, when he heard his gaoler enter in the morning. "Get up," said he; "the prefect of the district is here : he will question you ; " and he added, with some respect : " You must be a famous criminal for the prefect to i)ut himself out about you as he has done." Criminal ! No, but one may look like one after a night in a damp and dusty dungeon, without having any opportunity to make one's toilette^ however quickly. And in the old stable of the castle, now transformed into a guard-house, embellished with muskets in racks — when Tartarin, after a reassuring glance at the Alpinists, who were seated amongst the gendarmes, appeared before the prefect of the district, he had the pleasure of feeling he was in the presence of a tidy, well-dressed magis- trate, one who questioned him severely : " You arc named Maniloff, is not that so ? • — a Russian subject, an inccndiar\-, a fugitive assassin from Siberia ? " 288 Tiirtarin on the Alps. " Never in my life ! It is an error— a misprision ! " " Hold your tongue, or I will gag you," interrui)ted the captain. The neat prefect continued : " ^^'ell, to cut short your denials — do you know this rope? " His rope ! Coqum de sort ! His rope, with the iron fibre, made at Avignon. He bowed his head, to the stupefaction of tlie delegates, and replied, " I know it ! " " With this rope a man has been hanged in the Canton of Unterwald ! " Tartarin, trembling, sw(jrc thai he knew nothing about that. "We shall soon see." Then he introduced the Italian tenor, the detective, whom the Nihilists had hanged to the oak on the Briinig, but whom the woodcutters had miraculously delivered from death. The spy looked at Tartarin : " That is not the man nor," he added, looking at the delegates, " are those the others. There has been a mistake here." The prefect was furious : then, to Tartarin, '■ Well, then, what have y(ni done ? " Tariarifi on the Alps 289 "That is just what I want to know, vcl'' replied the President, with all the assurance of innocence. After some explanations, the Al- ' "' pinists of Tarascon, set at liberty, hurried away from Chillon, of which place no one has experienced the romantic and melancholy oppression more strongly than they. They stopped at the pension Miiller, to get their luggage, the banner, and to pay the bill of the déjeuner they had not had time to eat : then they departed for Geneva by train. Rain was falling. Through the steaming windows they could see the names of the L 290 Taiiarin on the Alps stations, Clarens, Vevay, Lausanne ; the red c/ialets, the gardens of rare shrubs — all lying under a damp veil, which drojiped from the branches of the trees, the roofs of the houses, and the terraces of the hotels. Installed in a corner of the long Swiss railway-carriage, two seats face to face, the Ali)inists looked defeated and discomfited. Bravida, very bitter, complained of pain, and all the time kept asking Tartarin, with fierce irony: "Eh, bé ! you haven't seen Bonni- vard's dungeon, have you ? You wished to see it so much, too ! I believe you have seen it, after all, que ? " Excourbaniès, voiceless for the first time in his life, gazed piteously at the lake, which the line skirted : " There is water enough, Boudioti ! After this, I shall never take another bath as long as I live ! " Upset by a shock from which he had not yet recovered, Pascalon, the banner between his knees, hid himself behind it, looking right and left, like a hare. And Tartarin ? Oh ! he ; always calm and dignified, he was improving his mind reading the papers from southern France, a packet of journals forwarded to the Tartarin on tJie Alps 291 pe7isio!i Millier, which had all copied from the Forum the narrative of his ascent — which he had dictated and enlarged —embellished by startling eulogies. All of a sudden, our hero uttered a cry — a loud cry which per- vaded the carriage. All the travellers rose : they thought an accident had occurred. It was only that these words had caught Tar- tarin's eyes in the Forum — " Listen to this ! " he cried to the Alpinists : " ' It is reported that V. P. C. A. Costecalde, who has scarcely recovered from the jaundice which has afflicted him for some days, is about to leave here with a view to ascend Mont Blanc — to go higher up than Tartarin ! ' Ah ! the bandit 1 He wants to destroy the effect of my Jungfrau ! Well, wait a little ; I will take the wind out of you and your mountain ! Chamonix is only a few miles from Geneva — I will do Mont Blanc before him ! Are you agreed, my boys ? " Bravida j)rotested. Outre ! He had had adventures enough. " Enough, and more than enough," growled Excourbanies in a low tone, in his husky voice. 2g2 Tartarin ou tlie Alps " And you, Pascalon ? " asked Tartarin, gently. The pupil bleated without raising his eyes : " Ma-as-ter ! " He also denied him ! " Very well," said the hero, solemnly and sorrowfully. " Then I will go alone. I .shall have all the honour. Zou ! Give me the banner ! " XII The Hôtel Baltet at Chavwnix. — That smell of garlic /— Concerniiig the uses of the cord in Alpine excursions. — Shake hands I — A pupil of Schopenhauer's. — At the Grands- Mulets. — " Tartarin, I must speak to you." The clock of Chanionix was striking nine on a chilly, wet evening. All the streets were dark, all the houses shut up, except where occasionally the gas of the hotels blazed out and made the surroundings still more sombre in the vague reflectior. of the snow, a star of white under a night of sky. 294 Tar tar in on the Alps At the Hôtel Baltet, one of the best and most freciiiented in the Alj^ine village, the numerous travellers and excursionists had dispersed hy degrees, tired out by the fatigues of the day, so there remained in the grand W^;/ only an English jjarson playing draughts with his wife, while his innumerable daughters in pinafore aprons were engaged in copying the notices for the next services ; and seated, in front of the hearth, on which blazed a good fire of logs, a young Swede, hollow- cheeked and pale, who was regarding tlie fire Avith a mournful air while he drank kirsch and seltzer-water. Occasionally a belated tourist traversed the salon with soaked gaiters and glistening waterproof; went up to a big barometer hanging on the wall, tapped it, watched the mercury for the next day's weather, and turned away in consternation. Not a word, no other manifestation of life save the crackling of the fire, the dashing of the sleet against the windows, and the roaring of the Arve beneath die wooden bridge, a few yards from the hotel. Suddenly the door of the salo7i was opened, Tartaiin on the Alps 295 a silver-laced porter entered laden with valises and rugs, with four Alpinists, shivering, and bewildered by the sudden change from darkness and cold to light and warmth. " Boudiou ! what weather ! " " Something to eat, zoii ! " " Warm the beds, que ! " They all spoke together beneath their comforters and wraps and ear protectors, and no one knew which to listen to, until a short fat man, whom they called the President, imposed silence upon them by crying louder than all, in a commanding tone : "Bring me the visitors' book first." Then, turning the leaves with a benumbed hand, he read aloud the names of the travellers who, during the last eight days, had sojourned at the hotel. Doctor Schwan- thaler and Frau — again ! Astier-Re'hu, of the French Academy ! He turned over two or three pages, growing pale when he saw a name resembling that of which he was in search. Then at length, as he threw the book ca the table with a triumphant laugh, 296 Tartarhi on the Alps the little man cut a caper— an extraordinary performance for such a fat little fellow — and cried : " He is not here, vc ! he has not come ! He must come down here, at any rate. Bother Costecalde ! lagadigadeou ! Quick with tlie SOU}), lads ! " And the worthy Tartarin, having bowed to the ladies, marched towards the salle à maiiger, followed by the delegates, hungry and noisy. Eh ? Yes ; the delegates — all of them — Bravida himself amongst them ! Is it pos- ■sible I ^\'hat would they have said yonder if they had gone home without Tartarin ? Each one had felt the same. And in the moment of separation at the railway-station at Geneva the buffet was witness to a most heartrending scene of tears, embraces, and distressing farewells to the banner, — ■ the result of which adieux was that the whole party crowded into the landau which the President had engaged to carry him to Chamonix. A superb route to which they firmly closed their eyes, swathed in wraps, snoring sonorously, without admiring the magnificent landscape which from Sallanches Tartarin on the Alps 297 displayed itself through the rain : chasms, forests, foaming cascades, and, according to the windings of the valley, alternately visible or shrouded, the crest of Mont Blanc above the clouds. Fatigued bv this kind of natural beauty, the Tarascon- nais only sought how to make up for the bad night they had passed under lock and key at Chillon. And now, once more, at the end of the long, deserted salle à manger of the Hôtel Baltet, while being served with the re heated soup and removes oi the. table d'hote^ they ate ravenously, without speaking, only preoccupied in their desire to get to bed as quickly as possible. Suddenly, Spiridion Excourbanies, who had L 2 298 Ta I tarin on the Alps been eating like a man in his sleep, rose up out of his place, and, sniffing tlie air, said : "• Outre ! what a smell of garlic I " " That's true, that is the smell," remarked Bravida ; and all the I'arty, aroused by this recall to their native land, this smell of the national dishes, which Tartarin had not breathed for a long while, turned in their chairs with gastronomic anxiety. The odour came from the other end of the salle, from a small room wherein was a traveller supping alone — no doubt a personage of importance, for every minute the cap of the chef was visible at the grating opening to the kitchen, to pass up a pile of little covered dishes, which were carried by the waitress to the little room. " Some one from the South," murmured the gentle Pascalon ; and the President, wlio had become pale at the idea of Costecalde, commanded : " Go and see, Spiridion ; you know what to say." A loud burst of laughter arose from the room which the brave man liad penetrated to Tartarin on tJie Alps 299 by his chiefs commands, whence he led in by the hand a long nosed individual with comic eyes, his serviette tucked under his chin, like the gastronomous horse. " Ve ! Bompard ! " " Té ! The Impostor ! " " He ! Adieu, Gonzague. Comment te va ? " " Pretty well, gentlemen ; I am your most obedient," said the courier, shaking hands all round, and seating himself at the table with the Tarasconnais to partake with them a dish of cèpes à Fail, prepared by Mère Baltet, who, as well as her husband, had a horror of the table dilate fare. Whether it was the fricot or the delight of finding a resting place, the delightful Bompard was inexhaustibly imaginative. Immediately fatigue and the des're for sleep were dissipated ; chamj)agne was gulped in bumpers, and with moustaches glistening with bubbles, they laughed, screamed, gesticulated, embraced each other, full of effusiveness. " I will not leave you any more," Bompard was saying. " My Peruvians have gone away. I am at liberty." 300 Tar ta lin on the Alps " At liberty ! Then you can make the ascent of Mont Blanc with me to-morrow ? " "Ah, you arc going to do Mont Blanc, Jemein / " replied Bompard without enthu- siasm. " Yes, I am going to put Costecalde's nose out of joint. When he comes, uit ! No more Mont Blanc ! You are witli me, Gonzague?" "I'm there, I'm there; if the weather suits. It is an ascent which is not always pleasant at this season." " Ah ! vaï with your ' not pleasant ! ' " said the worthy Tartarin, winking with a meaning which Bompard, on his part, did not seem to understand. " Let us have our coffee in the salon. We will consult with Père Baltet. He knows all about it. He is an old guide who has made the ascent twenty-seven times." The delegates cried simultaneously : " Twenty- seven times ! Boufre ! " " Bompard is always exaggerating," said the P. C. A. severely, with a touch of envy. In the salon they found the parson's family Tartarin on the Alps still bent over the church notices, the father and mother nodding over their game of draughts, and the long Swede stirring his kirsch and seltzer with the same listless gesture. But the in- \ asion of the Tarasconnais, brightened up by the champagne, ''gave some little entertainment, as we may imagine, to the young church-women. These charming young girls had never seen coffee taken with so much mimicry and so much rolling of eyes. " Sugar, Tartarin ? " " Well, no, Commandant, ^'ou know that since I was in Africa '"' 30 2 Tart a ri II oit tlie Alps " True, pnrdon ! Te ! Here is M. Baltet." "Sit down there, 5^//^, M. Baltet." " Long live M. Baltet ! Ha ! ha ! fcn de brut r' Surrounded and pressed upon by these people whom he had never seen in his life Père Baltet smiled calmly. A robust Savoy- ard, tall and broad - shouldered, his back rounded, his step slow, his thick and shaven face was lighted \\\> by a pair of cunning eyes still youthful, contrasting with his baldness caused by a frost-bite one early morning on the snow-fields. "These gentlemen wish to ascend Mont Blanc?" said he, gauging the Tarasconnais with a look at once humble and ironical. Tartarin was about to reply, but Bompard anticipated him : " Is not the season rather advanced ? " " No," replied the old guide. " Here is a Swedish gentleman who will go up to-morrow ; and I am expecting, at the end of the week, two American gentlemen to ascend also. One of them is blind." Tartar 'm on the Alps 303 '■'■ I know — I met him on the Guggi." " Ah ! monsieur has been to the Guggi ? " " Eight days ago, going up the Jungfrau." There was a flutter among the Evan- gehcal ladies, their phimes rustled, and they raised their heads to look at Tartarin, which action, for Englishwomen, who are great climbers, and experts in all sports, carried considerable authority. He had been up the Jungfrau ! "A good expedition," said Père Baltet, looking at the P. C. A. with astonishment ; while Pascalon, alarmed by the ladies, blushed, and bleated : " Ma - a - ster, tell them the — the crevassée The President smiled : "Child I " But all the same he commenced his recital of his fall ; first with a touch-and-go listless air, then he warmed up and illustrated the narrative with action, such as kicking at the end of the cord, over the chasm, appeals with stiffened hands, &c. Tlie ladies shivered, devouring him with their cold English eyes — those eyes which open so widely and round. 304 Tariai in on the Alps In the silence that followed, the voice of r>oni])ard rose loudly : " Up on Chinihorazo we do not tic our- selves to cross the crevasses T The delegates looked at him. As a Taras- connade, this beat everything! "Oh, tliat Bompard ! " murmured Pascalon, with in- genuous admiration. But Père Baltet, taking Chimborazo quite seriously, protested against the non-empioy- inent of the rope. According to his view, no ascent was possible on ice without ropes — a good Manilla rope. At least, then, if one slipped, the others could hold him up. "Supposing the rope does not break, Monsieur Baltet," said Tartarin, recalling the catastrophe on the Matterhorn. But the hotel-keeper replied deliberately : " The rope did not break on the Matterhorn. The rear guide cut it with his axe." As Tartarin became angry at this, he con- tinued : " You must excuse me, monsieur ; the guide was within his rights. He perceived the impossibility of holding the others, and he detached them to save the lives of himself, Tariaj-i?i on the Alps 305 his son, and the traveller who had accom- panied them. Had it not been for his deter- mination, there would have been seven victims instead of four." Then a discussion commenced. Tartarin maintained that, once attached to the line, it was a matter of honour- able engagement to live or die together ; and then, influenced by the presence of ladies, he rose to the occasion. He applied his words to facts, to people pre- sent. "Thus," said he, " when to-morrow, /^, in attaching myself to Bompard, it would not be only a precaution that I would take, but an oath before Heaven and my fellow-men only to live with my companion, and to die rather than return without him, coquin de sort !" " I accept the pledge for myself, as well as for you, Tartarin," exclaimed Bompard, from the other side of the round table. 3o6 7\irtariii on the Alps This was an affecting moment. The ])arson, as if electrified, rose and in- flicted on our hero a pumping liand-grip, l^nglish f;ishion. His wife followed his ex- ample ; while all his daughters continued to shake hands with a vigour which, properly applied, would ha\e pumj^ed water to the fifth story of the hotel. The delegates, I am bound to state, displayed less enthu- siasm. "Eh, be! I am of M. Baltet's opinion," said Bravida. " In cases like these, it's every (jne for himself, pardi ! and I can quite imderstand that stroke of the axe." "You astonish me, Placide," said Tartarin, severely ; then cpiite privately he added : " Hold, you miserable man— England is watching us ! " The old warrior, who decidedly had kept a store of bitterness in his heart since the ex- cursion to Chillon, made a gesture which signified his contempt for "England," and perhaps he would have drawn ujjon himself a severe reprimand from the President, irritated by so much cynicism, when the young man Tartari7i on the Alps 307 with the melancholy mien, full of grog and sadness, introduced his bad French into the conversation. He also maintained that the guide was right to cut the rope— to put an end to the existence of four unhappy individuals still young, that is to say, condemned to hve a certain time — to lay them to rest by one stroke — such an action was both noble and generous ! Tartarin at this exclaimed : " How, young man ! at your age, do you speak of life with this abandonment — this anger ! What harm has existence done you ?" "Nothing; it merely bores me." He was studying philosophy at Christiania, he had imbibed ideas from Schopenhauer and Hartmann, and found life gloomy, fooHsh, chaotic. Very near suicide, he had closed his books at his parents' urgent prayers, and had gone to travel ; still meeting everywhere witli the same eti7iui, the gloomy misery of the v.-orld. Tartarin and his friends a]:)peared to him the only ])eople contented to live whom he had hitherto met. The good P. C. A. began to laugh. "The 3o8 Tartarin on the Alps race comes out there, young man. We are all the same at Tarascon, the country of Ic Bon Dieu. From morn till night we laugh, we sing, and the rest of the time we dance \.\\c farandole, like this — tel" Then he cut an entrechat with the grace and lightness of a great cockchafer spreading his wings. But the delegates had not nerves of steel, or the indefatigable energy of their chief. Excourbaniès growled : " The Prisidain is dancing, and it is close ou midnight ! " Bravida rose in a rage : " Let us go to bed, ve ! I shall not have any more of my sciatica there." Tartarin consented, thinking of the ascent on the morrow ; and the Tarasconnais went, candlestick in hand, up the wide granite stair- case to their rooms, while the Père Baltet pro- ceeded to busy himself about provisions and to engage guides and mules. " 7c? .' it snows ! " These were the first words which escaped Tartarin as he saw the frosted windows next Tartarbi on the Alps 309 morning, and perceived that the room was bathed in a white reflection ; but when he hung up his httle shaving-glass, he understood that he had been mistaken, and that Mont Blanc was glittering opposite in a bright sun and making all this light. He opened his window to the breeze from the acier, fresh and com- forting, which carried to his ears all the tinkling of the cow-bells and the long bellowings of the shepherds' horns. Something strong and pastoral, which he had not breathed in Switzerland, filled the air. Down stairs an assemblage of guides and porters awaited him. The Swede already had mounted, and, mingled with the spectators, 310 Ta lia ri II on the Alps who formed a circle, was the parson's family ; all these brisk damsels, in morning toileiïrs, had come down to shake hands again with the hero who had haunted their dreams. " A splendid morning ! make haste ! " cried tlie hotel-keeper, whose bald head shone in the sun like a pebble. Tartarin had need to hurry, for it was no light task to awake the delegates, who were to accompany him as far as the Pierre-Pointue, where the mule-path stops. Neither prayers nor expostulations could induce the Commandant to get up ; with his nightcap down to his ears, and his nose against the wall, he contented himself with replying to the objurgations of the President by a cynical Tarasconnais proverb : " He who has a character for early rising may sleep till noon." As for Bompard, he kept repeating all the time: "Ah! get out with your Mont Blanc ! what rubbish 1 " and he would not get up until formally commanded to do so by the President of the Alpine Club. At length the party started, and crossed the little streets of Chamonix in a most im- posing array — Pascalon in front, on a mule, Tartariii on the Alps 311 the banner unfurled ; and last, grave as a mandarin, amongst the guides and porters who surrounded his mule, Tartarin himself, a more curious Alpinist than ever, with a new pair of spectacles of smoked glass, and his famous rope made in Avignon, recovered we know at how great a price. Stared at almost as much as the banner, he was delighted beneath that mask of im- portance, pleased with the picturesqueness of the streets of the Savoyard village, so different from the Swiss village — too clean, too varnished, like a new toy, the bazaar chalet— ÛïQ contrast of these buildings scarcely above ground, in which the stable occupies nearly all the space, with the large, sumptuous hotels, five stories high, whose glaring signs strike one equally as do the silver-banded cap of a porter, the black suit and the pumps of the maître d'hôtel, in the midst of the Savoyard costumes, the caps, the fustian, and the coalheavers' hats with large flaps. On the place are some unhorsed vehicles, travelling-carriages side by side with dung- carts ; a drove of pigs basking in the sun 312 Till tarin on tlie Alps before the ])ost-office, whence exits an Englishman with his packet (;f letters and his Times, wliicli he reads as he walks, before opening his correspondence. The cavalcade traversed all this, accoini)anied by the whinnying of the mules, the war-cry of Excourbanies, to whom the sun has restored the use of his " gong," the pastoral carillon on the slopes, and the roaring of the glacier- torrent — quite white, shining as if it were carrying with it sun and snow. At the end of the village, Bompard ap- proached his mule to that of the President, and said to him, as he rolled his extraordinary eyes : " Tartarr/V/, I must speak to you ! " " By and by," said the P. C. A., who was deep in a i)hilosoi)hic discussion with the young Swede, from whom he was endeavour- ing to drive out the black jjessimism by means of the marvellous spectacle which sur- rounded them — the pastures with their wide zones of light and .shade, those forests of dark green crested with the whiteness of the glittering Jiéfé. After two attempts to approach lartarin, Tariarbi on the Alps Eompard gave up the idea perforce. After crossing the Arve by a Httle bridge, the caravan found itself on one of those narrow jjathways which wind through the pine-woods, on which the mules, one by one, shave all the turns of the track above the abysses, and the Taras connais had quite enough to do to keep their equiHbrium by the aid of '^ Allotis !" ^^ Douce- 314 Tar tarin on t/ie Alps main!" '■'■Outre!" by which they managed their animals. At the hut on the Pierre-Pointue, in which Pascalon and Excourbanies were to await the return of the chmbers, Tartarin, very much occupied in ordering breakfast and in looking after the guides and porters, turned still a deaf ear to Bompartl. lUit it was a curious thing, which no one remarked until later, that notwithstanding the fine weather and the good wine, the pure air, 6000 feet above the sea, the déjeuner was melancholy. 'While the guides were laughing and joking on their side, the Tarasconnais were silent, occupied solely with the table, and the only noise being the clinking of glasses and the rattling of dishes on the wooden board, ^^'as it the presence of the mournful Swede, or the anxiety visible in the face of Gonzague, or some presenti- ment? The party coniinued the journey, as melancholy as a regiment without music, towards the glacier Des Bossons where the real ascent begins. When putting his foot on the ice, Tartarin could not help smiling at the recollection of Tartarin on the Alps the Guggi, and his patent crampons. What a contrast between the neophyte he there had been, and the first-class Alpine climber he felt hç had become ! Firm on his heavy boots, which the porter at the hotel had spiked with four big nails, expert in the use of his axe, he scarcely required the assistance of the guides, and less to sustain himself than to have the route indicated. The smoked glasses tem- pered the glare of the glacier, which a recent avalanche had powdered with fresh snow, where the little " lakes " of sea-green tint appeared here and there slippery and treache- rous ; and quite calm, assured by experience that there was no danger whatever, Tartarin strode alongside the smooth shining crevasses, infinitely deep, passing amidst séracs, only careful to place his feet behind the Swedish student, an intrepid climber, whose silver- buckled gaiters continued to step out short and clean, and at the same distance from the point of his alpenstock, which seemed a third limb. Their philosophical discus- sion continued in spite of the difficulties of the route, and peojjle could hear in the 3 1 6 Tartariii ou the Alps frozen air a sonorous sound as of a river, a hearty, familiar voice puffing out, " You know me, Otto ! " Eompard, all this time, was experiencing many adventures. Firmly convinced till that morning that Tartarin would never proceed with his boast, and that he (Bompard) would never do Mont Blanc any more than he had done the Jungfrau, the unhappy courier was clothed in his ordinary costume, without nailing his boots, nor even utilising his famous invention for shoeing the feet of soldiers ; he had no alpenstock cither — the mountaineers of Chimborazo did not require them ! Armed only with the cane which suited well his round hat and his ulster, the approach to the glacier terrified him, for, notwithstanding all his tales, the others knew pretty well that the Impostor had never made an ascent. He consoled himself, however, when he perceived from the morai7ie how well Tartarin got on on the ice, and he decided to follow him up to the Grands-Mulets, where they intended to pass the night. At the first step, he fell on his back, and the second time on his hands ' The ulster swept the ice like the coat of a white beai". " Tatiariii on the Alps and knees. " No, no," he said to the guide who offered to assist him, " it is done on purpose. The American fashion, vc ! as at Chimborazo ! " Tliis attitude seemed to him comfortable, so lie retained it, advancing on all fours, his hat on the back of his head, and his ulster training behind him like the coat of a white bear ; very calm withal, and telling those near him how, amid the Cordilleras of tlie Andes, he had climbed in this fashion a mountain 30,000 feet high. He did not say how long it took him, by the by, but it must liave been a very considerable time, judging by the stage up to the Grands-Mulets, where he arrived an hour after Tartarin, dripping with snow, while his hands were half-frozen under his worsted, knitted gloves. Compared with the hut on the Guggi, the cabin erected by the commune of Chamonix at the Grands-Mulets, is truly comfortable. AN'hen Bompard came into the kitchen, in which a bright wood fire was burning, he found Tartarin and the Swede drying their boots, whih the hut-keeper, an old shrivelled- up indi\ idual, with long white hair falling in Tartarin on the Alps 319 curls, was exhibiting to them the treasures of his httle museum. Somewhat sad wastliis museum of soitvetiirs of catastrophes on Mont Bhmc for a space of forty years, during which period the old man had kept the inn (hut) ] and, while taking the objects from their cases, he told their lament- able history. That morsel of cloth, those waistcoat-buttons, preserved the memory of a Russian savant, precipitated by a whirlwind over the glacier of the Brenva. Those teeth were the remains of a guide of the famous party of eleven travellers and porters who disappeared in a snow-storm. In the light of the dying day, and the pa'e reflection of the 7Û-vé against the glass, the surroundings of these relics, the monotonous recital of them had something painful in them, so much so that the old man's voice trembled in the pathetic parts, and he was even moved to tears in displaying the green veil of an English lady who perished in an avalanche in 1827. Tartarin had only to compare dates to convince himself that at that time the Com- 3-0 Tartarin on the Alps l)any was not in existence to arrange non- dangerous ascents, yet this voccro Savoyard touched him, and he went to the door for a little fresh air. Night came on, and shrouded the depths. The Bossons stood out livid, and seemed very near, while Mont Blanc rose high, still caressed by the ruddy beams of the setting sun. The Southern traveller was recovering himself at the sight of this smile of Nature, when the shade of Bompard came behind him. Tar ta rill on the Alps 321 " Ah ! 'tis you, Gonzague ? you see I am enjoying the pure air. I'hat old man rather made me feel foolish with his reminiscences." " Tartar!?/;/," said Hompard, catching hold of his companion's arm forcibly, " I hope that you have had enough of this, and that you are going to end this ridiculous expedi- tion here." The great man opened his eyes with some anxiety in them : " What are you chattering about ? " Then Bompard drew a jncture of the M 322 Till (il rill on fhc .11 pi thousand terrible deaths whicli menaced tlieni - -the iTiriissiw, tlic avalanches, the sturms, the wliirlw imls dl' miow ! 'I'artarin interrupted him : " Ah I î'ûï, yt)u joker ! And the Company ? Is not Mont Hlanc managed in the same manner as the rest ? " " Managed ! the Company ! " exclaimed Bompard, who remembered nothing of his Tai-asconnadc : and wlien the other repeated it word lor word - the Swiss Society, the "farming" out of the mountains, the clap- trap crevasses, ', what foutaise .' He put into the word so much persuasiveness of accent and such conviction that the Swede permitted himself to yield, and then at length, one by one, they gained the summit of this terrible rotiit-e. They untied themselves, and waited to drink and eat a little. Day was breaking — a cold pallid day — upon a magnificent amphi- theatre of peaks and pinnacles, dominated by Mont Blanc, still 4500 feet above. The 334 Dili I rill oil ///(• A//^s guides goslicul.Uod and convcrsctl apart, with many nods ot" tluir heads. On the wliitc ground tlie round l)ackcd, heavy men looked like marmots, lîompard and 'I'artarin were restless and an\ious, and left the Swede to eat by himself, while they came up to the group just as the chief guide was saying : " When he smokes his pipe we must only say, ' No.' " "Who is smoking his pipe?" asked Tar- tarin. '• Lc Mont Blanc, monsieur. Look ! " The man indicated, at the highest peak, a white smoke which was blowing towards Itah'. " Well, my good friend, and when Mont lilanc smokes hisjjipe what does it jjorlend?" " It means, monsieur, that a storm is raging at the summit — a snow-storm — which will be upon usere long. And, dame! it is dangerous I " " Let us return," said Bompard, turning green ; and Tartarin added : "Yes, yes, certainly ; no foolish swagger!" But the Swede came up and struck in. He had paid to go up Mont Blanc, and nothing would prevent him from going. He would Tartan'n on the Alps 335 ascend alone if no one would accompany him. " Cowards ! cowards ! " he added, turning to the guides ; and he repeated the insult in the same ghostly voice with which he had been urging himself to suicide just before. " You will very soon see whether we are cowards ! Attach yourselves ! E71 route ! " exclaimed the chief guide. This time it was Bompard who protested energetically. He had had enough ; he wished that they would take him back. Tartarin seconded him strongly : " You see quite well that this young man is mad ! " he exclaimed, indicating the Swede, who had already strode off amid the wisps of snow which the wind was throwing in all directions. But nothing would stop these men, who had been called " cowards." The marmots had been aroused, and Tartarin could not obtain a guide to lead him and Bompard to the Grands-Mulets. How- ever, the direction was easy. Three hours' walking, allowing a detour of twenty minutes to " turn " the great roture, if they were afraid to pass it alone. 336 Tartarni on the Alps '• Outre ! yes, we are afraid," said Boinpard, without any sliaino ; and the two parties sei)arated. Now the Tarasconnais were alone. They advanced with precaution over the desert of snow, attached to the same cord, Tartar in in advance, prodding with his alpenstock gravely, imbued with the responsibility which devolved upon him, searching for some comfort. '• Courage and coolness ! We shall extri- cate ourselves !" he said every instant to Bom- pard. Thus the officer in battle chases away the fear he feels by brandishing his sword and crying out to his men : " En avant ! all bullets do not kill 1 " At length, behold our travellers at the edge of the horrible crevasse. Thence there were no grave obstacles; but the wind blew, and blinded them with little snowstorms. Ad- \ance became imj)ossible without danger of losing their way. " Let us wait here a moment," said Tar- Tartar in on the Alps 337 tarin. A gigantic scrac gave them shelter at its base ; they crept in, stretched over them the doubled waterproof of the President, and emptied the rum-flask, the only provision which had been left them by the guides. They "■% "■ifij^^ thus obtained a little heat and comfort, while the sound of the step cutting above them, growing feebler and feebler, gave them an idea of the progress of the expedition. The sound echoed in the heart of the President like a regret for not having ascended to the summit of Mont Blanc. 338 Ta lia ri II on tlw Alps "Who will know that?" remarked Bom- pard, cynically. " The porters have retained the banner, and the people at Chamonix will think it is you." " Vou are right ; the honour of Tarascon is safe," concluded Tartarin, in a tone of con- viction. But the elements became furious — the bisc in a storm, the snow in masses. The two friends remained silent, haunted by sinister thoughts : they recalled the museum of the old man at the Mulets, his lamentable narra- tives, the tale of the American tourist, who was found ])etrified with cold and hunger, holding in his frozen hand a note-book, in which his last thoughts were inscribed till the last convulsion which shook the pencil and caused his signature to swerve. "Havejw^ a note-book, Gonzague?" And the other, who understood without any explanation, replied : " Ah 1 vai^ a note-book I Do you think I am going to let myself die like that American ? Vite ! let us be off; come away." " Impossible ! At the first step we .shall be Ta ltd ri n ou the Alps 33g carried away like straws, and dashed into some chasm ! " " But then we must shout ; the inn is not far from liere." And Bompard, on his knees, his head jjrotruding from the scrac in the attitude of a cow lowing, shouted : " Help ! Help ! " " Aux armes ! " cried Tartarin in his turn, in his most sonorous voice, which the grotto echoed like thunder. Bompard seized himby the arm: "Miserable man, the sérac!" Positively the whole block trembled ; another breath, and the mass of accumulated ice-blocks would fall upon them. They remained frozen, motionless, wrapijcd in a terrible silence, which was soon broken by a distant rumbling, which came nearer and nearer, increased, spread over the horizon, and finally died away underground in the gulfs of the ice. "Poor fellows!" murmured Tartarin, tliink- ing of the Swede and his guides, carried away by the avalanche, no doubt. Bompard shook his head : " We shall scarcely fare better next time," he said. In fact, their situation had 340 Tartarin on the Alps become very critical ; they did iicjt dare to move in their ice-grotto, nor could they venture out in the storm. To complete their terror of mind, from the valley now arose the baying of a dog — a death-wail. Suddenly, Tartarin, with staring eyes and trembling lips, seized the hands of his companion, and, looking at him kindly, said : " Forgive me, Gonzague ; yes, yes, forgive me. I have often been unkind to you. I treated you as a liar " " Ah ! vai, what does that matter ? " " I have as little right as any one to do so, for I have told many lies in my life, and at this supreme hour I feel the necessity to confess — to relieve my feelings — to publicly avow my impostures ! " " Impostures ! You ? " " Listen to me, friend ; in the first place, I never killed that lion ! " "That does not surprise me at all," re plied Bompard, quickly. " But why should you worry yourself about so little ? It is the sun which causes it ; we are born with the Tartariti on the Alps 341 lying faculty. Vé ! myself — have I ever told the truth since I came into the world? As soon as I open my mouth, my Southern blood ascends. The people of whom I speak — well, I do not know them ! The countries ? I have never been in them ! and all this makes such a tissue of invention that I can't even unravel it mvself ! " "It is imagination, pediere ! " sighed Tar- tarin. " We are liars in imagination ! " " And such lies have never done any one any harm ; while an envious person, such a one as Costecalde " " Let us not speak of the wretch 1 " inter- rupted the P. C. A., seized with sudden rage. " Coqum de hoti sort .' It is, all the same, a little 142 Tartariii on f/ie Alps annoying " He suddenly stopped at a gesture from Bompard. "Ah ! yes, the sérac" and lowering his voice, forced to swallow his anger, jxjor 'i'artarin continued his impreca- tions in a low voice, with an enormous and comical disarticulation of his mouth : " It is rather annoying to die in the flower of one's age by the fault of a scoundrel who at this moment is taking his demi tasse com- fortably in the Ton?- de ville ! " lîut while he was fulminating, the sky was clearing by degrees. The snow ceased, the wind dropped, blue rifts appeared above the grey of the clouds. Quick — away ! They had re-tied themselves, when Tartarin, who had taken the lead as before, turned round and said, finger on his mouth : " Vou know, (lonzague, all that has been said is quite between ourselves." " Té, pardi ! " Full of ardour, they resumed their way, plunging up to their knees into the newly- fallen snow, which had obliterated all traces of the party's ascent, so Tartarin consulted his compass every moment. But this Taras- 7\irtarin on the Alps 34^ con compass, accustomed to a hot climate, had been frozen since its arriwil in Switzerland. The needle played puss-in the-corner, agitated and trembling ; so the men proceeded straight before them, expecting to see suddenly the black rocks of the Grands-Mulets, calm amongst the uniform whiteness, amid the peaks, needles, and towers, which surrounded them ; which dazzled and alarmed them too, for dangerous crevasses might be hidden under their feet. " Coolness, Gonzague, coolness ! " "That is just what I require," replied Bompard lamentably. Then he groaned : " Oh, my foot, — oh, my leg — we are lost : we never shall get home again ! " They walked for two hours towards the middle of a snow-slope very hard to climb. Then Bompard cried, alarmed : "TartanV;;, this ascends ! " "Eh ! I can see that very well," replied the President, who seemed disturbed. " But in my opinion we ought to be going down ! " '•'■Be! yes; but what do you want me to 344 Ta rill lin on the Alps do ? Il" we keep ascending, we may get down the other side ! " That was descending indeed, and terribly, by a succession of wVw, almost jiointed glaciers, and beyond all this dangerous expanse of white a hut was perceived perched on a rock, at a depth that seemed inaccessible. It would be a refuge for the night if they could reach it, as they had lost the direction of the Grands- Mulets — but at the cost of what efforts, what perils, perhaps ! " Whatever you do, don't let me go, Gonzague ! " " Neither you me, Tartarin ! " They exchanged these assurances without seeing each other, being separated by an arete behind which Tartarin had disappeared, the one advancing to ascend, the other to descend, slowly and in fear. They said no more, concentrating all their strength for fear of a false step, or a slip. Suddenly, when he was not more than a yard from the crest, Bompard heard a fearful cry from his com- panion. At the same time, he felt the rope give way with violence, and with an N^. orV»J/ . Outre! ' ' Boxifre!" 34''> T(U tarin on the Alps irregular severance. He endeavoured to resist, to fix himself, in order to sustain his conii)anion over the abyss. iUit the r()])e was old, no (loul)t, for at last it Mia])])ed suddenly under the strain. " Outre : " " Boufre .' " These two cries arose, wild and despair- ing, in the silence and the solitude. Then succeeded a terrible calm — the calmness of death, which nothing could trouble more, in the vastness of the immaculate snows ! Towards evening, a man vaguely resembling liomjjard — a spectre, dishevelled, wounded, in jjrofuse perspiration — reached the auberge of the (îrands-.Mulets, where they rubbed him, warmed him, and put him to bed, ere he could i)ronounce the words — almost choked with tears, and interrupted by the clenching of his hands towards heaven : " Tartarin — lost — rope broke ! " At length they understood the great disaster which had happened. ^Vhile the old inn-keeper was lamenting, and Tar tarin on the Alps 347 adding a new chapter to his accidents on the mountain, pending the arrival of new relics, the Swede and his guides, who had returned from their expedition, set out in search of the imfortunate Tartarin, with ropes, ladders, and all the apparatus, alas ! without effect. Bom- pard remained as if stupefied, and was unable to furnish any precise information as to the place where the accident took place. They only found on the Dôme du Goûter an end of rope which remained in a fissure of the ice. But, curiously enough, this rope was cut as with a sharp instrument, so as to leave two ends. Tlie newspapers of Chambery gave a facsimile of it. At length, after eight days' searching, conscien- tiously undertaken, when every one was convinced that the poor Présidain was lost without hope of recovery, the delegates, despairing, returned to Tarascon, carrying Bompard with them — for his skull showed traces of a terrible fall. " Don't talk to me about it," he would say, whenever the accident was mentioned 148 Tar tarin on the Alps to liim. " Never speak to mc on the subject ! " Decidedly, ^^ont I'.lanc now reckoned one more victim ! And wliat a victim ! *" ■VvifiSBSi^îL"'^ •*! XIV Epilogue. A MORE impressive place than Tarascon cannot be found under the sun. Sometimes, in high fete, on Sundays, when all the town is out of doors — the drums beating, the Cours festive and noisy, dotted with green and red costumes, and on the great party-coloured posters the announcements of the wrestling matches for men and youths, and the bull- rings — it is enough for a practical joker to call out " Mad dog :" or "Escaped bull !" for 35© Dir/ijriii on tJic Alps tlic wliulc poinihuiun to run in-doors, bolt themselves in, the outside Venetian blinds clattering as if in a storm, and lo ! there is Tarascon deserted, silent, not a cat \isiblc, not a sound audible, even the grasshoppers themselves are cowering and attentive listeners. Such was the appearance of Tarascon on this particular morning, when it was neither/t'/t? day nor Sunday. The shops were closed, the houses shut up, squares and courts seemingly larger in the solitude. " Vasta silentio," said Tacitus, when describing Rome on the occasion of the funeral of Germanicus ; and the comparison of Rome in mourning would ai)ply so much better to Tarascon, inasmuch as a funeral service was being performed for the soul of Tartarin at that time in the metro- jjolitan church, where the population en masse was weeping for its hero, its divinity, its in- vincible one with the double muscles, who lay amid the glaciers of Mont Blanc. Now, while the tolling bell was showering its sad notes upon the deserted streets, Mile. Tournatoire, the Doctor's sister, who in conse- Tartar ill on the Alps 351 quence of her delicate health always remained in-doors, shi\ering in her great arm-chair by the window, was looking out as she listened to the bells. The Tournatoires' house was on the Avignon road, almost opposite to Tar- tarin's house, and the sight of that illustrious domicile, to which the proprietor would never return, the garden-gate for ever closed — all, even to the boot-brushing boxes of the two little Savoyards by the door, made the heart of the poor lady swell ; a secret passion for the hero ha\ing devoured her for more than thirty years 1 O mysteries of the heart of an old maid ' It had been her happiness to see him pass at his regular time, and to say, " Where are you going ? " to watch the altera- tions in his costume, whether he dressed in his Al[)ine habiliments or in the green coat ! Now, she would never see him more ! And even the consolation of praying for him with the other ladies of the town was denied to her. Suddenly, the long, white cheeks of Mile. Tournatoire coloured slightly ; her pale eyes, rimmed with rose-colour, dilated considerably ; 352 l\i lia rill ou the Alps while her thin hand, with its prominent wrinkles, formed the sign of the cross. He I 'twas he ! sidHng along the wall al the other side of the street. Al first slic was imder the improMim : ' ..c liad seen an apparition. No, it was Tartarin himself in flesh and blood ; only pale, piteous-looking, shabby ; sidling along the wall like a poor man or a thief. But to explain his furtive pre- sence at Tarascon we must return to Mont Blanc, to the Dôme du Goûter, at the precise " On that triumphal road . . at the head of liis cap-shooters." N 354 Tartarin oti the Alps time when ihc two friends found themselves one on each side of the Dôme, Bompard feehng the rope which attached him to his friend suddenly stretched, as if by the falling of a body ! In fact, the rope had caught between two masses of ice ; and Tartarin, feeling the same shock, also believed that his companion had fallen, and would drag him with him ! So, in that supreme moment — how am I to tell it ? mon Dieu ! — in the agony of fear, both men, forgetting the solemn oath at the Hôtel Baltet, by a simultaneous movement and the same instinctive gesture, cut the rope ! Bom- pard with his hunting-knife, and Tartarin with his ice-axe ; then, overwhelmed by their crime, both convinced that they had sacrificed their friend, fled in opposite directions ! When the spectre of Bompard appeared at the Grands-Mulets, that of Tartarin reached the canteen of d'Avesailles. How, by what miracle, after so many falls and glissades i Mont Blanc alone can tell ; for the poor P. C. A. remained two days in complete in- sensibility, incapable of uttering the slightest Tartarin oil the Alps 355 sound. As soon as he was fit, he came down to Courmayeur, the Italian Chamonix. At the hotel he heard nothing but the report of the melancholy catastrophe on Mont Blanc, quite a pendant to that on the Cervin : another Alpine climber killed in consequence of the fracture of the rope. In the conviction which he experienced concerning Bompard, Tartarin, torn by re- morse, did not dare to rejoin the delegates nor return home. He anticipated in all eyes and on ev'ery lip : " Cain, where is thy brother ? " However, the want of funds, the condition of his wardrobe, the cold of Sep- tember, which emptied the hotels, compelled him to proceed homewards. After all, no one had seen him commit the crime. Nothing need prevent him from inventing no matter what tale ; and, the distractions of the journey assisting, he commenced to pull himself to- gether again. But as he approached Taras- con, when he saw the fine lines oi ÛïcA/pifies standing forth against the blue sky, all the shame, remorse, and fear of being brought to justice seized upon him again ; and, to avoid N 2 35^» Til lia ri It on the Alps the scandal of an arrival on the railway-sta- tion, he (juitted the train at the last station before the town was reached. Ah ! on this fine Tarascon road, all white and crackling with dust, without any other shade than the posts and the telegraph-wires, on this triumphal way where so many times he had marched at the head of his Alpinists or his cap-shooters, who would have recognised him, the valiant, the spruce, under those torn and dirty clothes, with that defiant, restless gaze watching the ge?idarfnes ? The day was very warm though the season was declining, and the water-melon which he purchased from a hawker, and ate in the shade of the cart, seemed to him delicious, while the peasant declaimed against the want of custom in Tarascon that morning, "because amass for the dead was being said, for a person found away there in a hole in the mountains ! Tc ! the bells were tolling — they could hear them where they stood ! " There was no longer room for doubt : it was for Bompard, who had fallen, that this lugubrious carillon of death was carried by Tar ta rill oti the Alps 357 the wind over the lonely surrounding districts. What an accompaniment to the return of a great man to his native place 1 One minute, the door of the little garden was suddenly opened and shut. Tartarin found himself again at home — he saw the narrow paths bordered with trim box edging, and quite tidy; the basin, the fountain, the gold-fish darting away as the sand crackled under his feet, and the giant baobab in the ^^S*^ Ta lia ri II on the Alps flower-pot — a toucliing ajjpearance of comfort ; the warmth of his home as a domestic rabbit enveloped him hke a cloak of safety after all his dangers and adventures. IJut the bells — the cursed bells — redoubled their clangour, and their deep notes crushed into his heart anew. They kept saying to him in funereal tones : " Cain, where is thy brother ? Tartarin, what hast thou done wilh Bom- l)ard ? " Then, without having the courage to move, he sealed liimself on the sunny edge of the little basin, and remained there exhausted and pensive, to the great disturbance of the gold-fish. The bells have ceased. 'J"he church jjorch, lately so animated, is given up to the beggar-woman seated there as motionless as the stone saints. The religious ceremony is over, all Tarascon has jiroceeded to the Alpine Club, where in solemn session Bom- pard is about to give an account of the catastrophe, and to detail the incidents connected with the last moments of the President. Besides the members, many privileged persons, military, clerical, noble. Tartariti on the Alps 359 and mercantile, liad taken their places in the conference hall, of which the large open windows permitted the band stationed below on the steps, to mingle some heroic chords with the discourses of these gentlemen. An enormous crowd pressed around the musicians, standing on tip-toe and stretching their necks in the attempt to catch some fragments of the discourse ; but the windows were too high \\\), and they could obtain no impressions as to what was passing within, except from two or three youngsters perched in a tree hard by, who threw scraps of infor- mation as one throws nuts or cherries from the top of a tree. " V'e Costecalde, who is trying to make himself weep ! Ah ! the blackguard, he holds the chair at present, And poor Be'zucjuet, how he blows his nose, how red his eyes are ! Té ! they have put crêpe on the banner. And Bompard is coming to the table with the three delegates. He puts something on the desk. He speaks now. That must be beau- tiful ! Look, how the tears are falling ! " As a matter of fact, the tenderness became r. ■' And the water-melon he bought from a hawker seemed to him delicious." Tartar in on the Alps 361 general as Bompard advanced in liis fantastic recital. Ah ! memory came back to him again — also imagination 1 After relating how he and his illustrious companions got to the summit of Mont Blanc, without guides, for all had refused to follow them, being alarmed by the bad weather, and how they alone, with the banner displayed, for five minutes stood upon the highest peak in Europe, he pro- ceeded to recount — and with what emotion ! — 362 Ta //a ri n on the Alps the perilous descent and the fall — Tartarin rolling to the bottom of a crevasse, and he, lîompard, attaching himself to a rojie two hundred feet in length, had explored the hideous chasm throughout its whole length ! " More than twenty times, gentlemen — what do I say? — more than ninety times did I sound that abyss of ice without being able to reach our i)oor Prisidain, whose fall, never- theless, I could trace in consequence of some débris left in the crevices of the ice." As he spoke, he laid on the table a frag- ment of a jaw-bone, some hairs from a beard, a piece of a waistcoat, and a buckle from a pair of braces — one would have declared they came from the relic-cases at the Grands- Mulets 1 In face of this testimony, the transports of grief could no longer be restrained ; even the hardest hearts, the partisans of Costecalde and the gravest persons — Cambalalette the notary, Doctor Tournatoire — shed, most effec- tively, some tears as large as decanter stoppers. The ladies present uttered piercing cries, which dominated even the sobbing howls of Tartarin on tJie Alps Excourbaniès and the bleatings of Pascalon, while the funeral march, played by the band, accompanied all with a slow and lugubrious bass. Then, when he perceived the emotion and distress his peroration had caused, Bompard ended his speech with a fine gesture of pity towards the remains, as conclusive evidence : " There, dear friends and fellow-citizens, is all I could discover of our illustrious and well-beloved President. The remains the glacier will render up to us — in forty years ! " He was about to explain, for the benefit of ignorant people, the recent discovery of the regular progress of glaciers ; but the creaking of the little door at the end interrupted him — some one was coming in. Tartarin, paler than a spirit of Hume's raising, stood before the speaker ! " Vé ! Tartarin ! " " Té ! Gonzague ! " And this race is so singular, so facile, in the matter of improbable stories, audacious falsehoods and quick refutations, that the 3^4 Tar ta rill on the Alps arrival of the great man, whose fragments still lay on the table, did not create any particular astonishment throughout the hall. "It is a misapprehension, allons!'' said I'artarin, \cry much relieved - radiant — with his hand on the shoulder of the, man he had believed he had killed. " I did the Mont Blanc on two sides — ascended on one, de- scended on the other — and this quite accounts for my disappearance."' Tartarhi on the Alps 365 He did not confess that he had passed the second slope on his back ! '■^ Sacré Bompani I" said Bezuquet ; "he came back to us with his story all the same ! " Then they all laughed, and rubbed their hands, while outside, the band, which they in vain attempted to silence, furiously attacked the Funeral March of Tartarin of Tarascon. " Vé Costecalde, how yellow he is ! " mur- mured Pascalon to Bravida, indicating the ar- mourer, who had risen to cede his chair to the old President, whose good face shone brightly. Bravida, always sententious, replied in a whisper, as he perceived Costecalde super- seded — relegated to the rank of subaltern : " The luck of the Abbé Mandaire ; from parish priest he was relegated to curate." ^ And then the meeting resumed. ' " La fortune de l'abbé Mandaire — De curé il devint vicaire!" — H F. Table of Contents An apparition on the Rigi-Kulm. — Who is he? — What was said at the table d'/iôle. — Rice and Prunes.— An improvised ball. — The Unknown signs his name in the hotel register.— P. C. A. Page II Tarascon, five minutes' stoppage. — The Alpine Club. — Explanation of P. C. A. — Rabbits of the warren and of the cabbage-garden. — " This is my will." — The Strop de Cadavre. — First ascent. — Tartarin mounts his spectacles . . . 29 TitI'Ic of Cotiietifs lir Page An alarm on the Ris;i- — ^^^ cool ! be cool ! — The Alpine horn. — \Vliat Tartarin found on his looking glass when he awoke. — Perplexity. — He asks for a guide by telephone 65 IV On board the steamer. — Kain. — The hero of Tarascon salutes the Shades. — The truth about William Tell. — Disillusion — Tartarin of Tar- ascon never existed ! — " 7('.' Bompard ! " . . 88 Confidences in a tunnel 117 VI The Pass of the Briinig. — Tartarin falls into the hands of the Nihilists. — Disappearance of an Italian tenor and an Avignon rope. — New ex- ploits of a chasseur de casquettes. — Pau ! Pan ! VIT Night at Tarascon. — Where is he? — Anxiety. — The cigales (hi C^'wrj' demand Tartarin. — Mar- tyrdom of a Tarascon saint. — The .Mpine Club. — What happened at the chemist's. — Help ! Rezuquet 161 Table of Contents VIII Page Memorable dialogue between the lungfiau and Tartaiin. — A Niliilist salon. — The duel with lumtiiig-knives. — Horrilile nightmare. — " 'Tis I whom you seek, gentlemen ! " — Strange re- ception of the Tarascon delegates at the Hôtel Meyer 185 IX At the sign of " The Faithful Chamois "" .... 213 X The ascent of the Jungfrau. — Ve ! the oxen ! — The Kennedyr7V7OT/i 1 Q /ï '"> ?■ Q CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY University of California, San Diego f DATE DUE APR 2 8 mi ftPR20198Z CI 39 UCSD Libr. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 048 873 2