Leaning over the abyss, which the shadows represented as bottomless, he watched through the damp vapour the movements of the little lantern by which the guides below were preparing the way. Tartarin, none too easy himself, warmed his own courage by exhorting his friend: “Come now, Gonzague, _zou!_” and then in a lower voice coaxed him to honour, invoked the banner, Tarascon, the Club... “Ah! _vaï_, the Club indeed!.. I don’t belong to it,” replied the other, cynically. Then Tartarin explained to him where to set his feet, and assured him that nothing was easier. “For you, perhaps, but not for me...” “But you said you had a habit of it...” “_Bé!_ yes! habit, of course... which habit? I have so many... habit of smoking, sleeping...” “And lying, especially,” interrupted the president. “Exaggerating--come now!” said Bompard, not the least in the world annoyed. However, after much hesitation, the threat of leaving him there all alone decided him to go slowly, deliberately, down that terrible miller’s ladder... The going up was more difficult, for the other face was nearly perpendicular, smooth as marble, and higher than King Rene’s tower at Tarascon. From below, the winking light of the guides going up, looked like a glow-worm on the march. He was forced to follow, however, for the snow beneath his feet was not solid, and gurgling sounds of circulating water heard round a fissure told of more than could be seen at the foot of that wall of ice, of depths that were sending upward the chilling breath of subterranean abysses. “Go gently, Gonzague, for fear of falling...” That phrase, which Tartarin uttered with tender intonations, almost supplicating, borrowed a solemn signification from the respective positions of the ascensionists, clinging with feet and hands one above the other to the wall, bound by the rope and the similarity of their movements, so that the fall or the awkwardness of one put all in danger. And what danger! _coquin de sort!_ It sufficed to hear fragments of the ice-wall bounding and dashing downward with the echo of their fall to imagine the open jaws of the monster watching there below to snap you up at the least false step. But what is this?.. Lo, the tall Swede, next above Tartarin, has stopped and touches with his iron heels the cap of the P. C. A. In vain the guides called: “Forward!..” And the president: “Go on, young man!..” He did not stir. Stretched at full length, clinging to the ice with careless hand, the Swede leaned down, the glimmering dawn touching his scanty beard and giving light to the singular expression of his dilated eyes, while he made a sign to Tartarin:-- “What a fall, hey? if one let go...” “_Outre!_ I should say so... you would drag us all down... Go on!” The other remained motionless.