Naturally enough, Balmat did not prosecute the attempt at once. He returned to Chamounix, and sought out the local doctor, Michel Paccard. Paccard agreed to accompany him. They left Chamounix at five in the evening, and slept on the top of the Montagne de la Côte. They started next morning at two o’clock. According to Balmat’s account, the doctor played a sorry part in the day’s climb. It was only by some violent encouragement that he was induced to proceed at all. “After I had exhausted all my eloquence, and saw that I was only losing my time, I told him to keep moving about as best he could. He heard without understanding, and kept answering ‘Yes, yes,’ in order to get rid of me. I perceived that he must be suffering from cold. So I left him the bottle, and set off alone, telling him that I would come back and look for him. ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered. I advised him not to sit still, and started off. I had not gone thirty steps before I turned round and saw that, instead of running about and stamping his feet, he had sat down, with his back to the wind--a precaution of a sort. From that minute onwards, the track presented no great difficulty; but, as I rose higher and higher, the air became more and more unfit to breathe. Every few steps, I had to stop like a man in a consumption. It seemed to me that I had no lungs left, and that my chest was hollow. Then I folded my handkerchief like a scarf, tied it over my mouth and breathed through it; and that gave me a little relief. However, the cold gripped me more and more; it took me an hour to go a quarter of a league. I looked down as I walked; but, finding myself in a spot which I did not recognise, I raised my eyes, and saw that I had at last reached the summit of Mont Blanc. “Then I looked around me, fearing to find that I was mistaken, and to catch sight of some aiguille or some fresh point above me; if there had been, I should not have had the strength to climb it. For it seems to me that the joints of my legs were only held in their proper place by my breeches. But no--it was not so. I had reached the end of my journey. I had come to a place where no one--where not the eagle or the chamois--had ever been before me. I had got there, alone, without any other help than that of my own strength and my own will. Everything that surrounded me seemed to be my property. I was the King of Mont Blanc--the statue of this tremendous pedestal. “Then I turned towards Chamounix, waving my hat at the end of my stick, and saw, by the help of my glass, that my signals were being answered.” Balmat returned, found the doctor in a dazed condition, and piloted him to the summit, which they reached shortly after six o’clock.