e strangled it gently, listening to
the cessation of breathing in its throat and the beatings of its heart.
He laughed, wild with joy, pressing closer and closer his formidable
embrace, crying in a delirium of joy, "Look, Jean, look!" All resistance
ceased; the body of the wolf became limp. He was dead.

Franqois took him up in his arms and carried him to the feet of the
elder brother, where he laid him, repeating, in a tender voice: "There,
there, there, my little Jean, see him!"

Then he replaced on the saddle the two bodies, one upon the other, and
rode away.

He returned to the chateau, laughing and crying, like Gargantua at the
birth of Pantagruel, uttering shouts of triumph, and boisterous with joy
as he related the death of the beast, and grieving and tearing his beard
in telling of that of his brother.

And often, later, when he talked again of that day, he would say, with
tears in his eyes: "If only poor Jean could have seen me strangle the
beast, he would have died content, that I am sure!"

The widow of my ancestor inspired her orphan son with that horror of
the chase which has transmitted itself from father to son as far down as
myself.

The Marquis d'Arville was silent. Some one asked:

"That story is a legend, isn't it?"

And the story teller answered:

"I swear to you that it is true from beginning to end."

Then a lady declared, in a little, soft voice

"All the same, it is fine to have passions like that."

THE INN

Resembling in appearance all the wooden hostelries of the High Alps
situated at the foot of glaciers in the barren rocky gorges that
intersect the summits of the mountains, the Inn of Schwarenbach serves
as a resting place for travellers crossing the Gemini Pass.

It remains open for six months in the year and is inhabited by the
family of Jean Hauser; then, as soon as the snow begins to fall and to
fill the valley so as to make the road down to Loeche impassable, the
father and his three sons go away and leave the house in charge of the
old guide, Gaspard Hari, with the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, and Sam,
the great mountain dog.

The two men and the dog remain till the spring in their snowy prison,
with nothing before their eyes except the immense white slopes of the
Balmhorn, surrounded by light, glistening summits, and are shut in,
blocked up and buried by the snow which rises around them and which
envelops, binds and crushes the little house, which lies piled on