“Listen to this: ‘Rumour has it that V. P. C. A. Costecalde, though scarcely recovered from the jaundice which kept him in bed for some days, is about to start for the ascension of Mont Blanc; to climb higher than Tartarin!..’ Oh! the villain... He wants to ruin the effect of my Jung-frau... Well, well! wait a bit; I ‘ll blow you out of water, you and your mountain... Chamounix is only a few hours from Geneva; I’ll do Mont Blanc before him! Will you come, my children?” Bravida protested. _Outre!_ he had had enough of adventures. “Enough and more than enough...” howled Excourbaniès, in his almost extinct voice. “And you, Pascalon?” asked Tartarin, gently. The pupil dared not raise his eyes:-- “Ma-a-aster...” He, too, abandoned him! “Very good,” said the hero, solemnly and angrily. “I will go alone; all the honour will be mine... _Zou!_ give me back the banner...” XII. Hôtel Baltet at Chamonix. “I smell garlic!” The use of rope in Alpine climbing. “Shake hands.” A pupil of Schopenhauer. At the hut on the Grands-Mulets. “Tartarin, I must speak to you.” Nine o’clock was ringing from the belfry at Chamonix of a cold night shivering with the north wind and rain; the black streets, the darkened houses (except, here and there, the façades and courtyards of hotels where the gas was still burning) made the surroundings still more gloomy under the vague reflection of the snow of the mountains, white as a planet on the night of the sky. At the Hôtel Baltet, one of the best and most frequented inns of this Alpine village, the numerous travellers and boarders had disappeared one by one, weary with the excursions of the day, until no one was left in the grand salon but one English traveller playing silently at backgammon with his wife, his innumerable daughters, in brown-holland aprons with bibs, engaged in copying notices of an approaching evangelical service, and a young Swede sitting before the fireplace, in which was a good fire of blazing logs. The latter was pale, hollow-cheeked, and gazed at the flame with a gloomy air as he drank his grog of kirsch and seltzer. From time to time some belated traveller crossed the salon, with soaked gaiters and streaming mackintosh, looked at the great barometer hanging to the wall, tapped it, consulted the mercury as to the weather of the following day, and went off to bed in consternation. Not a word; no other manifestations of life than the crackling of the fire, the pattering on the panes, and the angry roll of the Arve under the arches of its wooden bridge, a few yards distant from the hotel. Suddenly the door of the salon opened, a porter in a silver-laced coat came in, carrying valises and rugs, with four shivering Alpinists behind him, dazzled by the sudden change from icy darkness into warmth and light. “_Boudiou!_ what weather!..” “Something to eat, _zou!_” “Warm the beds, _que!_”