more difficult ascent of
Piz-Roseg. Mlle. Moriaz found it hard to decide whether this news was
good or bad news. All depended on what point of view was taken, and she
changed hers every hour.

Since his mishap, M. Moriaz had become less rash than formerly.
Experience had taught him that there are treacherous rocks that can
be climbed without much difficulty, but from which it is impossible to
descend--rocks exposing one to the danger of ending one's days in their
midst, if there is no Pole near at hand. Certain truths stamp themselves
indelibly on the mind; so M. Moriaz never ventured again on the
mountains without being attended by a guide, who received orders from
Antoinette not to leave him, and not to let him expose himself. One day
he came in later than usual, and his daughter reproached him, with some
vivacity, for the continual anxiety he caused her. "The glaciers and
precipices will end by giving me the nightmare," she said to him.

"Pray on whose account, my dear?" he playfully rejoined. "I assure you
the ascent that I have just made was neither more difficult nor more
dangerous than that of Montmartre, nor of the Sannois Hill, and as to
glaciers, I have firmly resolved to keep shy of them. I have passed
the age of prowess. My guide has been making me tremble by relating the
dangers to which he was exposed in 1864 on Morteratsch, where he had
accompanied Professor Tyndall and another English tourist. They were all
swept away by an avalanche. Attached to the same rope, they went down
with the snow. A fall of three hundred metres! They would have been
lost, if, through the presence of mind of one of the guides, they
had not succeeded in stopping themselves two feet from a frightful
precipice, which was about to swallow them up. I am a father, and I
do not despise life. Let him ascend Morteratsch who likes! I wish our
friend Larinski had made the descent safe and sound. If he has met an
avalanche on the way, he will invent no more guns."

Antoinette was no longer mistress of her nerves: during the entire
evening she was so preoccupied that M. Moriaz could not fail to notice
it; but he had no suspicion of the cause. He was profoundly versed in
qualitative and quantitative analysis, but less skilled in the analysis
of his daughter's heart. "How pale you are!" he said to her. "Are you
not well? You are cold.--Pray, Mlle. Moiseney, make yourself useful and
prepare her a mulled egg; you know I do not permit her to be