or once more. I
said, "Hang him, he had on TWO pair of boots!" For an hour that magician
went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed as many as
twenty-five pair, and I was hovering on the verge of lunacy. I got
my gun and stole up there. The fellow was in the midst of an acre of
sprawling boots, and he had a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, I mean
POLISHING it. The mystery was explained. He hadn't been dancing. He was
the "Boots" of the hotel, and was attending to business.

CHAPTER XLIX

[I Scale Mont Blanc--by Telescope]

After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went out in the yard
and watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departing
with their mules and guides and porters; then we took a look through
the telescope at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc. It was brilliant with
sunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yards
away. With the naked eye we could dimly make out the house at the Pierre
Pointue, which is located by the side of the great glacier, and is more
than three thousand feet above the level of the valley; but with the
telescope we could see all its details. While I looked, a woman rode by
the house on a mule, and I saw her with sharp distinctness; I could have
described her dress. I saw her nod to the people of the house, and rein
up her mule, and put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. I was
not used to telescopes; in fact, I had never looked through a good one
before; it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be so far away.
I was satisfied that I could see all these details with my naked
eye; but when I tried it, that mule and those vivid people had wholly
vanished, and the house itself was become small and vague. I tried
the telescope again, and again everything was vivid. The strong black
shadows of the mule and the woman were flung against the side of the
house, and I saw the mule's silhouette wave its ears.

The telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--I do not know which is
right--said a party were making a grand ascent, and would come in sight
on the remote upper heights, presently; so we waited to observe this
performance. Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand with a
party on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely to be able to say I had done
it, and I believed the telescope could set me within seven feet of the
uppermost man. The telescoper assured me that it could. I then asked him
how much I owed him for