Part 19 (1/2)
”With this rope a man has been hung in the Canton of Unterwald...”
Tartarin, with a shudder, swore that he had nothing to do with it.
”We shall see!”
The Italian tenor was now introduced,--in other words, the police spy whom the Nihilists had hung to the branch of an oak-tree on the Brunig, but whose life was miraculously saved by wood-choppers.
The spy looked at Tartarin. ”That is not the man,” he said; then at the delegates, ”Nor they, either... A mistake has been made.”
The prefect, furious, turned to Tartarin. ”Then, what are you doing here?” he asked.
”That is what I ask myself, _ve!_..” replied the president, with the aplomb of innocence.
After a short explanation the Alpinists of Tarascon, restored to liberty, departed from the Castle of Chillon, where none have ever felt its oppressive and romantic melancholy more than they. They stopped at the Pension Muller to get their luggage and banner, and to pay for the breakfast of the day before which they had not had time to eat; then they started for Geneva by the train. It rained. Through the streaming windows they read the names of stations of aristocratic villeggiatura: Clarens, Vevey, Lausanne; red chalets, little gardens of rare shrubs pa.s.sed them under a misty veil, the branches of the trees, the turrets on the roofs, the galleries of the hotels all dripping.
Installed in one corner of a long railway carriage, on two seats facing each other, the Alpinists had a downcast and discomfited appearance.
Bravida, very sour, complained of aches, and repeatedly asked Tartarin with savage irony: ”Eh _be!_you've seen it now, that dungeon of Bonnivard's that you were so set on seeing... I think you have seen it, _que?_” Excourbanies, voiceless for the first time in his life, gazed piteously at the lake which escorted them the whole way: ”Water! more water, _Boudiou!_.. after this, I 'll never in my life take another bath.”
Stupefied by a terror which still lasts, Pascalon, the banner between his legs, sat back in his seat, looking to right and left like a hare fearful of being caught again... And Tartarin?.. Oh! he, ever dignified and calm, he was diverting himself by reading the Southern newspapers, a package of which had been sent to the Pension Muller, all of them having reproduced from the _Forum_ the account of his ascension, the same he had himself dictated, but enlarged, magnified, and embellished with ineffable laudations. Suddenly the hero gave a cry, a formidable cry, which resounded to the end of the carriage. All the travellers sat up excitedly, expecting an accident. It was simply an item in the _Forum_, which Tartarin now read to his Alpinists:--
”Listen to this: 'Rumour has it that V. P. C. A. Costecalde, though scarcely recovered from the jaundice which kept him in bed for some days, is about to start for the ascension of Mont Blanc; to climb higher than Tartarin!..' Oh! the villain... He wants to ruin the effect of my Jung-frau... Well, well! wait a bit; I 'll blow you out of water, you and your mountain... Chamounix is only a few hours from Geneva; I'll do Mont Blanc before him! Will you come, my children?”
Bravida protested. _Outre!_ he had had enough of adventures.
”Enough and more than enough...” howled Excourbanies, in his almost extinct voice.
”And you, Pascalon?” asked Tartarin, gently.
The pupil dared not raise his eyes:--
”Ma-a-aster...” He, too, abandoned him!
”Very good,” said the hero, solemnly and angrily. ”I will go alone; all the honour will be mine... _Zou!_ give me back the banner...”
XII.
Hotel Baltet at Chamonix. ”I smell garlic!” The use of rope in Alpine climbing. ”Shake hands.” A pupil of Schopenhauer.
At the hut on the Grands-Mulets. ”Tartarin, I must speak to you.”
Nine o'clock was ringing from the belfry at Chamonix of a cold night s.h.i.+vering with the north wind and rain; the black streets, the darkened houses (except, here and there, the facades and courtyards of hotels where the gas was still burning) made the surroundings still more gloomy under the vague reflection of the snow of the mountains, white as a planet on the night of the sky.
At the Hotel Baltet, one of the best and most frequented inns of this Alpine village, the numerous travellers and boarders had disappeared one by one, weary with the excursions of the day, until no one was left in the grand salon but one English traveller playing silently at backgammon with his wife, his innumerable daughters, in brown-holland ap.r.o.ns with bibs, engaged in copying notices of an approaching evangelical service, and a young Swede sitting before the fireplace, in which was a good fire of blazing logs. The latter was pale, hollow-cheeked, and gazed at the flame with a gloomy air as he drank his grog of kirsch and seltzer.
From time to time some belated traveller crossed the salon, with soaked gaiters and streaming mackintosh, looked at the great barometer hanging to the wall, tapped it, consulted the mercury as to the weather of the following day, and went off to bed in consternation. Not a word; no other manifestations of life than the crackling of the fire, the pattering on the panes, and the angry roll of the Arve under the arches of its wooden bridge, a few yards distant from the hotel.
Suddenly the door of the salon opened, a porter in a silver-laced coat came in, carrying valises and rugs, with four s.h.i.+vering Alpinists behind him, dazzled by the sudden change from icy darkness into warmth and light.
”_Boudiou!_ what weather!..”
”Something to eat, _zou!_”