XVI

There was nothing very scenically interesting about the trip from

Geneva to Chamonix. So far as I remember, we played cards all the way.

A certain thrill of emotion was experienced as we passed over the

French border. The boys felt it because it was the first time, Belle

Soeur and I because we were back again! The baggy red trousers of the

soldiers of the line loafing about the station—Heavens, how natural

they looked! Frater called them bloomers, but that was irreverent of

him.

Chamonix reminded us of Zermatt for being big and full of tourists,

and, as at Zermatt, we yearned to get out of the village. We went to a

hotel mentioned by Baedeker well up on the hillside, which must have

a fine view of Mont Blanc and the neighboring peaks when the weather

permitted. Just then, low-lying clouds shut them all out.

It was an attractive place, surrounded by a garden, rather more

sophisticated than the hotels we generally frequented. But being late

in the season, they gave us beautiful front rooms at very moderate

pension rates.

We laid our plans for an all-day’s excursion on the morrow and were

very much disgusted when we woke up to find it raining. We loafed

around the house rather disconsolately all the morning, writing letters

and playing cards.

After lunch it had stopped raining, though the sky was still overcast.

So we curtailed our intended expedition and started out. We betook

ourselves to a spot called Montanvert overhanging the Mer de Glace,

adorned, of course, by a restaurant, where we had tea and Belle Soeur

bought a pair of woolen socks. She was weak on nails in her soles,

and the socks, put on over her shoes, were to take their place while

crossing the glacier.

[Illustration: _Mont Blanc, Glacier des Bossons_]

There were streams of tourists here coming and going and quantities of

guides anxious to take us across, but we assured them that we had had

large experience in glaciers and needed no assistance. A timid-looking

bearded German overheard us thus assuring the last offering guide

and decided to combine safety and economy by following us. He said no

word of thanks, explanation or apology, but constituted himself our

shadow. Also, by the grace of God, he came through alive.

The crossing of the Mer de Glace is hummocky and requires climbing. It

is also slippery. But there is no danger involved of anything worse

than sitting down hard. The continuous procession of tourists passing

over makes losing one’s way quite out of the question, and the function

of the guide is only to lend a steadying hand to the aged and infirm

or to persons unsuitably dressed for scrambling. There is nothing at

all about the Mer de Glace to justify its reputation. It is simply an

average characteristic sort of glacier, very accessible to the general

tourist, and safe and easy to walk across.

The path on the other side, after running along the ridge of the

lateral moraine for a little distance, takes one down the famous

“Mauvais Pas.” It may have been “bad” at some prehistoric time, though

the vertical distance involved is so small (perhaps a hundred and

fifty feet to the surface of the glacier) that it can never have been

_very_ desperate. But now there are nice steps cut out in the rock

and an iron hand-rail let into the cliff to hold on by, and really

no one but a cripple, an old lady or a young child could find it

dangerous. Nevertheless, the French dramatic instinct has not failed

to take advantage of its traditional terrors. Two little boxes for the

poor are attached to the rock at the beginning and end of the “Pas”

with a request that the traveler express his gratitude to God for his

preservation by alms-giving. The whole thing was so delightfully Latin

and characteristic that we stopped and contributed.

It was a long way down through the woods and home, and we quickened our

steps till we were almost running the last mile or two, for we had a

strong interest in dinner and we knew that we were late.

The next morning it was raining again! This was disgusting. We decided,

however, that as it had stopped about noon the day before, perhaps it

would do so this time. So we ordered our luncheon put up and started

out on the Mont Blanc trail. Besides, I wanted to try the exercise and

fresh air cure on a cold I was catching. The microbe had established

itself in my throat the morning previous, when I was sitting on the

balcony outside my window, waiting for it to stop raining. An old

gentleman sitting on _his_ balcony directly overhead was sneezing and

sneezing with great violence. In the midst of so much fresh air, it

did not occur to me to think of infection, till all at once I felt a

raw scratchiness in the mucous membrane of my throat, and I knew that

the “invasion” had taken place. I tried to drive the beast out with

listerine, but unfortunately there was only a spoonful left in the

bottle. So then I tried the mountain air. It was my misfortune that it

could be had just then only in combination with rain.

It is only just to say that this explanation of the origin of my cold

was not accepted by my companions, who preferred to lay it on the

weather. But they were all able to bear witness later to the highly

contagious nature of the malady. Personally, I was and am convinced

that my three months of out-door life in all weathers had seasoned me

beyond any peradventure of catching cold because my shoes were damp.

It was only drizzly, for the most part. When a hard downpour came,

we stopped and took shelter under a shed or dense-leafed tree. Some

distance up the mountain-side, but still within the tree belt, we came

upon a lonely little refreshment hut, where we stopped and ordered

coffee and hot milk to go with our cold lunch from the hotel. It was

raining pretty hard just then, and we spread out our lunch hour as

long as possible, keeping up each other’s spirits by a very conscious,

but reasonably successful effort. Evidently it looked all right from

the outside at least, for when we came to go, the proprietress of the

châlet, a sad-eyed little Frenchwoman, begged us almost with tears to

stay longer,—not to feel that we must order anything more either, but

just to stay and not go out in the rain. She would _love_ to have us

stay, we were young and had _le cœur gai_, and it did her good to look

at us and listen to us, although she could not understand what we were

saying!

However, though thanking her for her tribute to our gay hearts and

not ungrateful (I at least) for that incidental tribute to our

extreme youth, we decided it was time to move and pushed on up the

mountain-side. After half an hour or more we passed the more elaborate

Pavilion de la Pierre Pointue, and then all at once found ourselves on

the brink of the Glacier des Bossons.

I do not know whether on a clear day it would have seemed so enormous,

so awe-inspiring. The rain had turned into snow drifting lazily down on

us. The clouds were all around, above, below. Out of the clouds above

flowed that huge ice-mass,—vast, measureless, tossed like waves of the

sea suddenly frozen. Down below us the clouds swallowed it again. What

we saw was gigantic. Who could tell how much more there might be hidden

in the clouds? The Pavilion was lost behind a corner of rocks. It might

have been a thousand miles away, and any other trace of humanity as

well, for aught that we could see. We seemed to be in the very heart of

Nature—huge, untrammeled, primordial.

The cold and the increasing thickness of the snow-storm drove us down,

but it was glorious while it lasted.

The next morning at breakfast we observed for the last time the amiable

manners of the young Frenchman with the downy moustache who always

kissed his father, mother and two sisters on the forehead before

sitting down to his coffee, and admired once more the embroidered

napkin-covers of the English family. Then we asked for our bill. The

sun was really out that morning and the clouds looked as if they might

lift, but we did not feel that we could stay longer in Chamonix.

Antonio’s time in Switzerland was growing very limited, and we must

give him a few days to rest at the Châlet Edelweiss before starting on

the homeward journey.

The amiable French proprietress blandly presented us with a bill about

twice the size agreed upon. Then followed heavy weather. If there is

anything under heaven I hate, it is an altercation over a bill, but my

three companions stood expectantly beside me, and I _can_ be voluble

in French when I have to be. So I girded up my loins and did my duty.

Back and forth we hurled the language, up and down we shrugged our

shoulders, using hands and eye-brows to intensify our effects. She was

much bigger than I, and her voice was louder. Also she had doubtless

had more practice. But the Three stood firm behind me to block retreat,

and the consciousness of being in the right presumably buoyed me up.

All at once, without the slightest warning of an approaching change of

front, the proprietress dropped her blustering voice, yielded the point

at issue with an incredible gracefulness, made out the bill anew in the

way it ought to be, and devoted the last few minutes of our stay to

making an agreeable impression. The clouds were lifting. Ah, we should

have a view of Mont Blanc before we left! Quick, François, bring the

big telescope and have it all ready. Ah—ah—joy! There go the clouds!

There at last is Mont Blanc!

There it was, and we were very glad we did not have to leave Chamonix

without seeing it. But aside from this academic satisfaction, Mont

Blanc is very disappointing,—a wide, rounded excrescence on a long

mountain range, hardly any higher apparently than the surrounding

peaks, some of which are infinitely more picturesque in form. In fact,

the dominating feature of the Chamonix scenery is not that broad lumpy

saddle-back of Mont Blanc, but the serrated rows of needle peaks called

Aiguilles rising black above the snow, uptilted rock-strata worn away

by erosion, the most spectacular objects, except the Matterhorn, in all

the Alps.

A party who had ascended Mont Blanc the day of our arrival, before

the rain came on, and had been imprisoned at the summit ever since,

were taking advantage of this first clearing to get down. Through the

telescope we could see them plainly—little moving black specks on the

snow field, descending towards the Grands Mulets.

We left them presently, Madame and François and the rest of the hotel

staff in a perfect ferment of amiability and politeness, and walked up

the valley to Argentière, then, sharply turning to the left, followed

the diligence road over the Tête Noire.