The Matterhorn was left in peace till the next year, but, meanwhile, a conspiracy for its downfall was hatched in Italy. The story is told in Guido Rey’s classic book on the Matterhorn, a book which should be read side by side with Whymper’s _Scrambles_, as it gives the Italian version of the final stages in which Italy and England fought for the great prize. In 1863, some leading Italian mountaineers gathered together at Turin to found an Italian Alpine Club. Amongst these were two well-known scientists, Felice Giordano and Quintino Sella. They vowed that, as English climbers had robbed them of Monte Viso, prince of Piedmontese peaks, Italy should have the honour of conquering the Matterhorn, and that Italians should climb it from Italy by the Italian ridge. The task was offered to Giordano, who accepted it. In 1863 Whymper and Carrel made another attempt on the Matterhorn, which was foiled by bad weather. In the next year, the mountain was left alone; but the plot for its downfall began to mature. Giordano and Sella had met Carrel, and had extracted from him promises of support. Carrel was, above all, an Italian, and, other things being equal, he would naturally prefer to lead an Italian, rather than an English, party to the summit. And now we come to the closing scenes. In 1865 Whymper returned to the attack, heartily tired of the Italian ridge. With the great guides Michel Croz and Christian Almer, Whymper attempted to reach the summit by a rock couloir that starts from near the Breuiljoch, and terminates high up on the Furggen arête. This was a mad scheme; and the route they chose was the most impracticable of all the routes that had ever been attempted on the Matterhorn. Even to-day, the great couloir has not been climbed, and the top half of the Furggen ridge has only been once ascended (or rather outflanked on the Italian side), an expedition of great danger and difficulty. Foiled in this attempt, Whymper turned his attention to the Swiss face. The eastern face is a fraud. From the Riffel and from Zermat, it appears almost perpendicular; but when seen in profile from the Zmutt glacier it presents a very different appearance. The average angle of the slope as far as “the shoulder,” about 13,925 feet, is about thirty degrees. From here to the summit the angle steepens considerably but is never more than fifty degrees. The wonder is that Whymper, who had studied the mountain more than once from the Zmutt glacier, still continued his attempts on the difficult Italian ridge.