"What is the matter with the boy? Is he out of his senses?" asked the emperor, who was anxiously watching the ascent to terra firma. "No, I do not know that you could call him out of his senses exactly," replied Le Glorieux. "The Lady Marguerite wanted some edelweiss blossoms, and he was trying to find them for her. I have no doubt that he was after that very bunch when he fell. There is one thing that I have noticed about Philibert," went on the jester, "and that is that when he starts out to do a thing he will do it if it threatens every drop of blood in his body." "He is a foolhardy youth," said the emperor. "I can understand how one could take almost any risk to kill a chamois, but not to pluck a handful of weeds." But he looked pleased, nevertheless, for he was a man who could appreciate perseverance. And he examined Philibert's wound with careful attention, saying that the two boys and the jester should return to the inn in the company of one of the guides. And Philibert de Bresse still clutched the flowers which he had risked so much to obtain. Behind the mountaineer's hut, where the remainder of the party expected to spend the night, Le Glorieux took from the spot where he carefully had placed them, a cluster of snowy blossoms, which, with great difficulty, a scratched face, and some bruises, he had gathered before he heard of Philibert's mishap. These children of the snow he threw over the cliff unseen by his companions. "Let him have all the praise and the honor of it," said he to himself. "You are nothing but a fool, Le Glorieux, and you must not be selfish." The princess received the flowers with a little cry of joy, and she thanked the donor with a smile so beaming, inquiring so tenderly about his wound, that Philibert felt repaid a thousandfold for the trouble he had taken to gratify her wish. "But, my poor Le Glorieux," said the princess sweetly, "you have an ugly scratch across your face, and your hands are bruised. Have you also had a fall?" "No, little Cousin," he returned gravely, and with a shake of the head. "The scrapings you notice on my handsome countenance and on my slender hands are but the result of a weakness with which I was born." "You were not born with those scratches, or I should have observed them long ago," she replied, smiling. "I said the result of a weakness, your Highness. It is my nature to want to climb. Whenever I see the side of a rock I am seized with an uncontrollable desire to scale it, and climb I must if the sky falls. I always have found it the most agreeable sensation in the world to be clinging to the side of a rock with nothing over me but the blue of the heavens, and nothing beneath me but the blue of some mountain lake and with a delightful feeling of uncertainty as to just where I am to find my next foothold." "That is an odd taste indeed," she returned, laughing, "and I do not think there are many who share it with you."