“Ah! _vaï_, you rogue; and the Company? Isn’t Mont Blanc managed like
the rest?”
“Managed?. the Company?..” said Bompard, bewildered, remembering nothing
whatever of his tarasconade, which Tartarin now repeated to him word for
word--Switzerland a vast Association, lease of the mountains, machinery
of the crevasses; on which the former courier burst out laughing.
“What! you really believed me?.. Why, that was a _galéjade_ a fib...
Among us Taras-conese you ought surely to know what talking means...”
“Then,” asked Tartarin, with much emotion, “the Jungfrau was not_
prepared?_”
“Of course not.”
“And if the rope had broken?..”
“Ah! my poor friend...”
The hero closed his eyes, pale with retrospective terror, and for one
moment he hesitated... This landscape of polar cataclysm, cold, gloomy,
yawning with gulfs... those laments of the old hut-man still weeping
in his ears... _Outre!_ what will they make me do?.. Then, suddenly,
he thought of the _folk_ at Tarascon, of the banner to be unfurled
“up there,” and he said to himself that with good guides and a trusty
companion like Bompard... He had done the Jungfrau... why should n’t he
do Mont Blanc?
Laying his large hand on the shoulder of his friend, he began in a
virile voice:--
“Listen to me, Gonzague...”