The truth about that first ascent had to wait more than a hundred years. The final solution is due, in the main, to three men, Dr. Dübi (the famous Swiss mountaineer), Mr. Freshfield, and Mr. Montagnier. Dr. Dübi’s book, _Paccard wider Balmat, oder Die Entwicklung einer Legende_, gives the last word on this famous case. For a convenient summary of Dr. Dübi’s arguments, the reader should consult Mr. Freshfield’s excellent review of his book that appeared in the _Alpine Journal_ for May 1913. The essential facts are as follows. Dr. Dübi has been enabled to produce a diary of an eye-witness of the great ascent. A distinguished German traveller, Baron von Gersdorf, watched Balmat and Paccard through a telescope, made careful notes, illustrated by diagrams of the route, and, at the request of Paccard’s father, a notary of Chamounix, signed, with his friend Von Meyer, a certificate of what he had seen. This certificate is still preserved at Chamounix, and Von Gersdorf’s diary and correspondence have recently been discovered at Görlitz. Here is the vital sentence in his diary, as translated by Mr. Freshfield: “They started again [from the Petits Rochers Rouges], at 5.45 p.m., halted for a moment about every hundred yards, _changed occasionally the leadership_ [the italics are mine], at 6.12 p.m. gained two rocks protruding from the snow, and at 6.23 p.m. were on the actual summit.” The words italicised prove that Balmat did not lead throughout. The remainder of the sentence shows that Balmat was not the first to arrive on the summit, and that the whole fabric of the Dumas legend is entirely false. But Dumas was not alone responsible for the Balmat myth. This famous fiction was, in the main, due to a well-known Alpine character, whom we have dealt with at length in our third chapter. The reader may remember that Bourrit’s enthusiasm for mountaineering was only equalled by his lack of success. We have seen that Bourrit had set his heart on the conquest of Mont Blanc, and that Bourrit failed in this ambition, both before, and after Balmat’s ascent. In many ways, Bourrit was a great man. He was fired with an undaunted enthusiasm for the Alps at a time when such enthusiasm was the hall-mark of a select circle. He justly earned his title, the Historian of the Alps; and in his earlier years he was by no means ungenerous to more fortunate climbers. But this great failing, an inordinate vanity, grew with years. He could just manage to forgive Balmat, for Balmat was a guide; but Paccard, the amateur, had committed the unforgivable offence.