Tartarin asked if he could be told of one there, “with confidence...” Not that he himself had any fear, but it was always best to have a sure man. The waiter reflected, with an important air, twirling his moustache. “With confidence?.. Ah! if monsieur had only spoken sooner; we had a man here this morning who was just the thing... the courier of that Peruvian family...” “He understands the mountain?” said Tartarin, with a knowing air. “Oh, yes, monsieur, all the mountains, in Switzerland, Savoie, Tyrol, India, in fact, the whole world; he has done them all, he knows them all, he can tell you all about them, and that’s something!.. I think he might easily be induced... With a man like that a child could go anywhere without danger.” “Where is he? How could I find him?” “At the Kaltbad, monsieur, preparing the rooms for his party... I could telephone to him.” A telephone! on the Rigi! That was the climax. But Tartarin could no longer be amazed. Five minutes later the man returned bringing an answer. The courier of the Peruvian party had just started for the Tellsplatte, where he would certainly pass the night. The Tellsplatte is a memorial chapel, to which pilgrimages are made in honour of William Tell. Some persons go there to see the mural pictures which a famous painter of Bâle has lately executed in the chapel... As it only took by boat an hour or an hour and a half to reach the place, Tartarin did not hesitate. It would make him lose a day, but he owed it to himself to render that homage to William Tell, for whom he had always felt a peculiar predilection. And, besides, what a chance if he could there pick up this marvellous guide and induce him to do the Jungfrau with him. Forward, _zou!_ He paid his bill, in which the setting and the rising sun were reckoned as extras, also the candles and the attendance. Then, still preceded by the rattle of his metals, which sowed surprise and terror on his way, he went to the railway station, because to descend the Rigi as he had ascended it, on foot, would have been lost time, and, really, it was doing too much honour to that very artificial mountain. IV. On the boat. It rains. The Tarasconese hero salutes the Ashes. The truth about William Tell. Disillusion. Tartarin of Tarascon never existed. “Té! Bompard.” He had left the snows of the Rigi-Kulm; down below, on the lake, he returned to rain, fine, close, misty, a vapour of water through which the mountains stumped themselves in, graduating in the distance to the form of clouds. The “Föhn” whistled, raising white caps on the lake where the gulls, flying low, seemed borne upon the waves; one might have thought one’s self on the open ocean.