Let us remember that Bourrit put his doctrine into practice. He has told us that he found men of diverse creeds reconciled beneath the shadow of Mont Blanc. Bourrit himself was a mountaineer first, and an ecclesiastic second. Perhaps he was no worse as a Protestant precentor because the mountains had taught him their eternal lessons of tolerance and serene indifference to the petty issues which loom so large beneath the shadow of the cathedral. Catholic or Protestant it was all the same to our good precentor, provided the man loved the hills. Prior Murith was his friend; and every Catholic mountaineer should be grateful to his memory, for he persuaded one of their archbishops to dispense climbers from the obligation of fasting in Lent. CHAPTER IV THE STORY OF MONT BLANC The history of Mont Blanc has been made the subject of an excellent monograph, and the reader who wishes to supplement the brief sketch which is all that we can attempt should buy _The Annals of Mont Blanc_, by Mr. C. E. Mathews. We have already seen that De Saussure offered a reward in 1760 to any peasant who could find a way to the summit of Mont Blanc. In the quarter-of-a-century that followed, several attempts were made. Amongst others, Bourrit tried on two occasions to prove the accessibility of Mont Blanc. Bourrit himself never reached a greater height than 10,000 feet; but some of his companions attained the very respectable altitude of 14,300 feet. De Saussure attacked the mountain without success in 1785, leaving the stage ready for the entrance of the most theatrical of mountaineers. Jacques Balmat, the hero of Mont Blanc, impresses himself upon the imagination as no other climber of the day. He owes his fame mainly, of course, to his great triumph, but also, not a little, to the fact that he was interviewed by Alexandre Dumas the Elder, who immortalised him in _Impressions de Voyage_. For the moment, we shall not bother to criticise its accuracy. We know that Balmat reached the summit of Mont Blanc; and that outstanding fact is about the only positive contribution to the story which has not been riddled with destructive criticism. The story should be read in the original, though Dumas’ vigorous French loses little in Mr. Gribble’s spirited translation from which I shall borrow. [Illustration: A Summit of Mont Blanc B ” ” Dôme du Gouter C ” ” Aiguille du Gouter D ” ” Aiguille de Bianossay E ” ” Mont Maudit E′ ” ” Mont Blanc du Tacul F ” ” Aiguille du Midi G Grand Mulets H Grand Plateau L Les Bosses du Dromadaire M Glacier des Bossons N Glacier de Taconnaz ]