For a moment he gazed at the hotel and its surrounding buildings, seemingly stupefied at finding, two thousand and more yards above the sea, a building of such importance, glazed galleries, colonnades, seven storeys of windows, and a broad portico stretching away between two rows of globe-lamps which gave to this mountain-summit the aspect of the Place de l’Opéra of a winter’s evening. But, surprised as he may have been, the people in the hotel were more surprised still, and when he entered the immense antechamber an inquisitive hustling took place in the doorways of all the salons: gentlemen armed with billiard-cues, others with open newspapers, ladies still holding their book or their work pressed forward, while in the background, on the landing of the staircase, heads leaned over the baluster and between the chains of the lift. The man said aloud, in a powerful deep bass voice, the chest voice of the South, resounding like cymbals:-- “_Coquin de bon sort!_ what an atmosphere!” Then he stopped short, to take off his cap and his spectacles. He was suffocating. The dazzle of the lights, the heat of the gas and furnace, in contrast with the cold darkness without, and this sumptuous display, these lofty ceilings, these porters bedizened with _Regina Montium_ in letters of gold on their naval caps, the white cravats of the waiters and the battalion of Swiss girls in their native costumes coming forward at sound of the gong, all these things bewildered him for a second--but only one. He felt himself looked at and instantly recovered his self-possession, like a comedian facing a full house. “Monsieur desires..?” This was the manager of the hotel, making the inquiry with the tips of his teeth, a very dashing manager, striped jacket, silken whiskers, the head of a lady’s dressmaker. The Alpinist, not disturbed, asked for a room, “A good little room, _au mouain?_” perfectly at ease with that majestic manager, as if with a former schoolmate. But he came near being angry when a Bernese servant-girl, advancing, candle in hand, and stiff in her gilt stomacher and puffed muslin sleeves, inquired if Monsieur would be pleased to take the lift. The proposal to commit a crime would not have made him more indignant. “A lift! he!.. for him!..” And his cry, his gesture, set all his metals rattling. Quickly appeased, however, he said to the maiden, in an amiable tone: “_Pedibusse cum jambisse_, my pretty little cat...” And he went up behind her, his broad back filling the stairway, parting the persons he met on his way, while throughout the hotel the clamorous questions ran: “Who is he? What’s this?” muttered in the divers languages of all four quarters of the globe. Then the second dinner-gong sounded, and nobody thought any longer of this extraordinary personage. A sight to behold, that dining-room of the Rigi-Kulm.