“And what game do you prefer to hunt?”
“The great carnivora, wild beasts...” uttered Tartarin, thinking to
dazzle her.
“Do you find many on the Rigi?”
Always gallant, and ready in reply, Tartarin was about to say that
on the Rigi he had so far met none but gazelles, when his answer was
suddenly cut short by the appearance of two shadows, who called out:--
“Sonia!.. Sonia!..”
“I’m coming,” she said, and turning to Tartarin, whose eyes, now
accustomed to the darkness, could distinguish her pale and pretty face
beneath her mantle, she added, this time seriously:--
“You have undertaken a dangerous enterprise, my good man... take care
you do not leave your bones here.”
So saying, she instantly disappeared in the darkness with her
companions.
Later, the threatening intonation that emphasized those words was fated
to trouble the imagination of the Southerner; but now, he was simply
vexed at the term “good man,” cast upon his elderly embonpoint, and also
at the abrupt departure of the young girl just at the moment when he was
about to name himself, and enjoy her stupefaction.
He made a few steps in the direction the group had taken, hearing a
confused murmur, with coughs and sneezes, of the clustering tourists
waiting impatiently for the rising of the sun, the most vigorous among
them having climbed to a little belvedere, the steps of which, wadded
with snow, could be whitely distinguished in the vanishing darkness.
A gleam was beginning to light the Orient, saluted by a fresh blast from
the Alpine horn, and that “Ah!!” of relief, always heard in theatres
when the third bell raises the curtain.
Slight as a ray through a shutter, this gleam, nevertheless, enlarged
the horizon, but, at the same moment a fog, opaque and yellow, rose from
the valley, a steam that grew more thick, more penetrating as the day
advanced. ‘T was a veil between the scene and the spectators.
All hope was now renounced of the gigantic effects predicted in the
guide-books. On the other hand, the heteroclite array of the dancers of
the night before, torn from their slumbers, appeared in fantastic and
ridiculous outline like the shades of a magic lantern; shawls, rugs, and
even bed-quilts wrapped around them. Under varied headgear, nightcaps
of silk or cotton, broad-brimmed female hats, turbans, fur caps with
ear-pads, were haggard faces, swollen faces, heads of shipwrecked beings
cast upon a desert island in mid-ocean, watching for a sail in the
offing with staring eyes.
But nothing--everlastingly nothing!
Nevertheless, certain among them strove, in a gush of good-will, to
distinguish the surrounding summits, and, on the top of the belvedere
could be heard the clucking of the Peruvian family, pressing around a
big devil, wrapped to his feet in a checked ulster, who was pointing out
imperturbably, the invisible panorama of the Bernese Alps, naming in a
loud voice the peaks that were lost in the fog.
“You see on the left the Finsteraarhorn, thirteen thousand seven hundred
and ninety-five feet high... the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the Monk,
the Jungfrau, the elegant proportions of which I especially point out to
these young ladies...”
“_Bé! vé!_ there’s one who does n’t lack cheek!” thought Tartarin; then,
on reflection, he added: “I know that voice, _au mouain._”
He recognized the accent, that accent of the South, distinguishable
from afar like garlic; but, quite preoccupied in finding again his fair
Unknown, he did not pause, and continued to inspect the groups--without
result. She must have reentered the hotel, as they all did now, weary
with standing about, shivering, to no purpose, so that presently no one
remained on the cold and desolate plateau of that gray dawn but Tartarin
and the Alpine horn-player, who continued to blow a melancholy note
through his huge instrument, like a dog baying the moon.
He was a short old man, with a long beard, wearing a Tyrolese hat
adorned with green woollen tassels that hung down upon his back and,
in letters of gold, the words (common to all the hats and caps in the
service of the hotel) _Regina Montium_. Tartarin went up to give him a
pourboire, as he had seen all the other tourists do. “Let us go to
bed again, my old friend,” he said, tapping him on the shoulder with
Tarasconese familiarity. “A fine humbug, _qué!_ the sunrise on the
Rigi.”
The old man continued to blow into his horn, concluding his ritornelle
in three notes with a mute laugh that wrinkled the corners of his eyes
and shook the green glands of his head-gear.
Tartarin, in spite of all, did not regret his night. That meeting with
the pretty blonde repaid him for his loss of sleep, for, though nigh
upon fifty, he still had a warm heart, a romantic imagination, a glowing
hearthstone of life. Returning to bed, and shutting his eyes to make
himself go to sleep, he fancied he felt in his hand that dainty little
shoe, and heard again the gentle call of the fair young girl: “Is it
you, Manilof?”
Sonia... what a pretty name!.. She was certainly Russian; and those
young men were travelling with her; friends of her brother, no doubt.
Then all grew hazy; the pretty face in its golden curls joined the other
floating visions,--Rigi slopes, cascades like plumes of feathers,--and
soon the heroic breathing of the great man, sonorous and rhythmical,
filled the little room and the greater part of the long corridor...
The next morning, before descending at the first gong for breakfast,
Tartarin was about to make sure that his beard was well brushed, and
that he himself did not look too badly in his Alpine costume, when,
all of a sudden, he quivered. Before him, open, and gummed to his
looking-glass by two wafers, was an anonymous letter, containing the
following threats:--
“_Devil of a Frenchman, your queer old clothes do not conceal you.
You are forgiven once more for this attempt; but if you cross our path
again, beware!_”
Bewildered, he read this two or three times over without understanding
it. Of whom, of what must he beware? How came that letter there?
Evidently during his sleep; for he did not see it on returning from his
auroral promenade. He rang for the maid on duty; a fat, white face, all
pitted with the small-pox, a perfect gruyère cheese, from which nothing
intelligible could be drawn, except that she was of “bon famille,” and
never entered the rooms of the gentlemen unless they were there.
“A queer thing, _au mouain_,” thought Tartarin, turning and returning
the letter, and much impressed by it. For a moment the name of
Coste-calde crossed his mind,--Costecalde, informed of his projects of
ascension, and endeavouring to prevent them by manoeuvres and threats.
On reflection, this appeared to him unlikely, and he ended by persuading
himself that the letter was a joke... perhaps those little misses who
had laughed at him so heartily... they are so free, those English and
American young girls!
The second breakfast gong sounded. He put the letter in his pocket:
“After all, we’ll soon see...” and the formidable grimace with which he
accompanied that reflection showed the heroism of his soul.
Fresh surprise when he sat down to table. Instead of his pretty
neighbour, “whom Love had curled with gold,” he perceived the vulture
throat of an old Englishwoman, whose long lappets swept the cloth. It
was rumoured about him that the young lady and her companions had left
the hotel by one of the early morning trains.
“‘_Cri nom!_ I’m fooled...” exclaimed aloud the Italian tenor, who, the
evening before, had so rudely signified to Tartarin that he could not
speak French. He must have learned it in a single night! The tenor
rose, threw down his napkin, and hurried away, leaving the Southerner
completely nonplussed.
Of all the guests of the night before, none now remained but himself.
That is always so on the Rigi-Kulm; no one stays there more than
twenty-four hours. In other respects the scene was invariably the same;
the compote-dishes in files divided the factions. But on this particular
morning the Rices triumphed by a great majority, reinforced by certain
illustrious personages, and the Prunes did not, as they say, have it all
their own way.
Tartarin, without taking sides with one or the other, went up to his
room before the dessert, buckled his bag, and asked for his bill. He
had had enough of _Regina Montium_ and its dreary table d’hôte of deaf
mutes.
Abruptly recalled to his Alpine madness by the touch of his ice-axe, his
crampons, and the rope in which he rewound himself, he burned to attack
a real mountain, a summit deprived of a lift and a photographer. He
hesitated between the Finsteraarhorn, as being the highest, and the
Jungfrau, whose pretty name of virginal whiteness made him think more
than once of the little Russian.
Ruminating on these alternatives while they made out his bill, he amused
himself in the vast, lugubrious, silent hall of the hotel by looking at
the coloured photographs hanging to the walls, representing glaciers,
snowy slopes, famous and perilous mountain passes: here, were
ascensionists in file, like ants on a quest, creeping along an icy
_arête_ sharply defined and blue; farther on was a deep crevasse, with
glaucous sides, over which was thrown a ladder, and a lady crossing it
on her knees, with an abbé after her raising his cassock.
The Alpinist of Tarascon, both hands on his ice-axe, had never, as
yet, had an idea of such difficulties; he would have to meet them, _pas
mouain!_..
Suddenly he paled fearfully.
In a black frame, an engraving from the famous drawing of Gustave Doré,
reproducing the catastrophe on the Matterhorn, met his eye. Four human
bodies on the flat of their backs or stomachs were coming headlong
down the almost perpendicular slope of a _névé_, with extended arms
and clutching hands, seeking the broken rope which held this string of
lives, and only served to drag them down to death in the gulf where the
mass was to fall pell-mell, with ropes, axes, veils, and all the gay
outfit of Alpine ascension, grown suddenly tragic.
“Awful!” cried Tartarin, speaking aloud in his horror.
A very civil maître d’hôtel heard the exclamation, and thought best
to reassure him. Accidents of that nature, he said, were becoming very
rare: the essential thing was to commit no imprudence and, above all, to
procure good guides.
Tartarin asked if he could be told of one there, “with confidence...”
Not that he himself had any fear, but it was always best to have a sure
man.
The waiter reflected, with an important air, twirling his moustache.
“With confidence?.. Ah! if monsieur had only spoken sooner; we had a man
here this morning who was just the thing... the courier of that Peruvian
family...”
“He understands the mountain?” said Tartarin, with a knowing air.
“Oh, yes, monsieur, all the mountains, in Switzerland, Savoie, Tyrol,
India, in fact, the whole world; he has done them all, he knows them
all, he can tell you all about them, and that’s something!.. I think
he might easily be induced... With a man like that a child could go
anywhere without danger.”
“Where is he? How could I find him?”
“At the Kaltbad, monsieur, preparing the rooms for his party... I could
telephone to him.”
A telephone! on the Rigi!
That was the climax. But Tartarin could no longer be amazed.
Five minutes later the man returned bringing an answer.
The courier of the Peruvian party had just started for the Tellsplatte,
where he would certainly pass the night.
The Tellsplatte is a memorial chapel, to which pilgrimages are made in
honour of William Tell. Some persons go there to see the mural pictures
which a famous painter of Bâle has lately executed in the chapel...
As it only took by boat an hour or an hour and a half to reach the
place, Tartarin did not hesitate. It would make him lose a day, but he
owed it to himself to render that homage to William Tell, for whom he
had always felt a peculiar predilection. And, besides, what a chance if
he could there pick up this marvellous guide and induce him to do the
Jungfrau with him.