over with invisible poison!

"Beware of the kirsch in your flask, and the frothing milk that cow-man
in sabots brings you. They stop at nothing, I tell you."

"If so, what's to be done! I'm doomed!" groaned Tartarin; then, grasping
the hand of his companion:--

"Advise me, Gonzague."

After a moment's reflection, Bompard traced out to him a programme. To
leave the next day, early, cross the lake and the Bruenig pass, and sleep
at Interlaken. The next day, to Grindelwald and the Little Scheideck.
And the day after, the JUNGFRAU! After that, home to Tarascon, without
losing an hour, or looking back.

"I 'll start to-morrow, Gonzague..." declared the hero, in a virile
voice, with a look of terror at the mysterious horizon, now dim in the
darkness, and at the lake which seemed to him to harbour all treachery
beneath the glassy calm of its pale reflections.

VI.

The Bruenig pass. Tartarin falls into the hands of Nihilists,
Disappearance of an Italian tenor and a rope made at
Avignon, Fresh exploits of the cap-sportsman. Pan! pan!

"Get in! get in!"

"But how the devil, que! am I to get in? the places are full... they
won't make room for me."

This was said at the extreme end of the lake of the Four Cantons,
on that shore at Alpnach, damp and soggy as a delta, where the
post-carriages wait in line to convey tourists leaving the boat to cross
the Bruenig.

A fine rain like needle-points had been falling since morning; and the
worthy Tartarin, hampered by his armament, hustled by the porters and
the custom-house officials, ran from carriage to carriage, sonorous and
lumbering as that orchestra-man one sees at fairs, whose every movement
sets a-going triangles, big drums, Chinese bells, and cymbals. At all
the doors the same cry of terror, the same crabbed "Full!" growled in
all dialects, the same swelling-out of bodies and garments to take
as much room as possible and prevent the entrance of so dangerous and
resounding a companion.

The unfortunate Alpinist puffed, sweated, and replied with "_Coquin
de bon sort!_" and despairing gestures to the impatient clamour of the
convoy: "En route!.. All right!.. Andiamo!.. Vorwarts!.." The horses
pawed, the drivers swore. Finally, the manager of the post-route, a
tall, ruddy fellow in a tunic and flat cap, interfered himself, and
opening forcibly the door of a landau, the top of which was half up,
he pushed in Tartarin, hoisting him like a bundle, an