d then stood,
majestically, with outstretched hand for his _trinkgeld_.

Humiliated, furious with the people in the carriage who were forced
to accept him _manu militari_, Tartarin affected not to look at them,
rammed his porte-monnaie back into his pocket, wedged his ice-axe on
one side of him with ill-humoured motions and an air of determined
brutality, as if he were a passenger by the Dover steamer landing at
Calais.

"Good-morning, monsieur," said a gentle voice he had heard already.

He raised his eyes, and sat horrified, terrified before the pretty,
round and rosy face of Sonia, seated directly in front of him, beneath
the hood of the landau, which also sheltered a tall young man, wrapped
in shawls and rugs, of whom nothing could be seen but a forehead of
livid paleness and a few thin meshes of hair, golden like the rim of
his near-sighted spectacles. A third person, whom Tartarin knew but too
well, accompanied them,--Manilof, the incendiary of the Winter Palace.

Sonia, Manilof, what a mouse-trap!

This was the moment when they meant to accomplish their threat, on that
Bruenig pass, so craggy, so surrounded with abysses. And the hero, by
one of those flashes of horror which reveal the depths of danger, beheld
himself stretched on the rocks of a ravine, or swinging from the topmost
branches of an oak. Fly! yes, but where, how? The vehicles had started
in file at the sound of a trumpet, a crowd of little ragamuffins were
clambering at the doors with bunches of edelweiss. Tartarin, maddened,
had a mind to begin the attack by cleaving the head of the Cossack
beside him with his alpenstock; then, on reflection, he felt it was
more prudent to refrain. Evidently, these people would not attempt their
scheme till farther on, in regions uninhabited, and before that, there
might come means of getting out. Besides, their intentions no longer
seemed to him quite so malevolent. Sonia smiled gently upon him from her
pretty turquoise eyes, the pale young man looked pleasantly at him, and
Manilof, visibly milder, moved obligingly aside and helped him to put
his bag between them. Had they discovered their mistake by reading on
the register of the Rigi-Kulm the illustrious name of Tartarin?.. He
wished to make sure, and, familiarly, good-humouredly, he began:--

"Enchanted with this meeting, beautiful young lady... only, permit me
to introduce myself... you are ignorant with whom you have to do, _ve!_
whereas, I am perfectly