"_Mais il faut monter juste au sommet, et après cela le déjeûner, n'est ce pas?_" I had not in fact reached the top. A saddle of rock stretched away up another 300 feet to the actual peak, and after a drink of ice-cold water I commenced the final ascent. A cairn of stones marks the summit of Mount Mounier--a feature not uncommon to the tops of mountains. I sat there, as it were, on a pinnacle, in a stupendous amphitheatre of mountains. The horizon was mountains, the foreground mountains, range upon range, peak after snow-clad peak, stabbing the cloudless sky. The valleys were full of shadows, violet in the depths, claret-coloured--the very tint of lees of wine--as they neared the sunlight. And as the sun rose higher a distant peak would flush rose-pink and pale again. A little wind came from over the edge of the world, the scented messenger of far-distant pine-trees, and passed whispering to another peak ten miles away. I sat for quite a while musing, as might the gods upon Olympus, over the littleness of man and his affairs; and in truth, with my chin on a level with this majestic array of Nature's grandeur, some aloofness of spirit was pardonable. In the middle of my Jove-like meditations, however, I saw the figure of my host, 300 feet below, gesticulating. "But, the omelette..." he protested, when I descended. As I ate and drank he bustled about the hut, voluble in a queer clipped patois; a gossip, removed by choice or destiny 5,000 feet above his fellows, to live in company with his dog in this hut. I looked round it for some clue to his pursuits: a couple of ice-axes and some coils of rope behind the door; a pair of skis in a corner; a shelf for crockery, with a powder-flask and a rosary hanging from a nail. A bed, a table and chair, a charcoal stove, and a few cooking implements: that was all. After I had finished eating he led me outside, and, pointing with a gnarled forefinger, named one by one the peaks in view. He spoke of them familiarly--as one who refers to constant and intimate companions, but once or twice I had to shake my head in despair. There might have been a wedge-shaped opal-tinted shadow on the far-off haze, but I could not confess to more. The little hawk-eyed man chuckled indulgently. "_Peut-être bien, peut-être bien. Mais j'ai l'habitude, moi._" Generously put, but I felt that I had failed in this supreme test, and it was significant that he no longer _tutoyait_ as at his first rapturous greeting.