he young girl, growing more insistent as Tartarin weakened, went on:--

"You spoke just now of a void to be filled; does it not seem to you more
noble, more interesting to risk your life for a great cause than to risk
it in slaying lions or scaling glaciers?"

"The fact is," said Tartarin, intoxicated, losing his head and mad with
an irresistible desire to take and kiss that ardent, persuasive little
hand which she laid upon his arm, as she had done once before, up there,
on the Rigi when he put on her shoe. Finally, unable to resist, and
seizing the little gloved hand between both his own,--

"Listen, Sonia," he said, in a good hearty voice, paternal and
familiar... "Listen, Sonia..."

A sudden stop of the landau interrupted him. They had reached the summit
of the Bruenig; travellers and drivers were getting into their carriages
to catch up lost time and reach, at a gallop, the next village where the
convoy was to breakfast and relay. The three Russians took their places,
but that of the Italian tenor remained unoccupied.

"That gentleman got into one of the first carriages," said Boris to the
driver, who asked about him; then, addressing Tartarin, whose uneasiness
was visible:--

"We must ask him for your rope; he chose to keep it with him."

Thereupon, fresh laughter in the landau, and the resumption for poor
Tartarin of horrid perplexity, not knowing what to think or believe in
presence of the good-humour and ingenuous countenances of the suspected
assassins. Sonia, while wrapping up her invalid in cloaks and plaids,
for the air on the summit was all the keener from the rapidity with
which the carriages were now driven, related in Russian her conversation
with Tartarin, uttering his pan! pan! with a pretty intonation which
her companions repeated after her, two of them admiring the hero, while
Manilof shook his head incredulously.

The relay!

This was on the market-place of a large village, at an old tavern with
a worm-eaten wooden balcony, and a sign hanging to a rusty iron
bracket. The file of vehicles stopped, and while the horses were being
unharnessed the hungry tourists jumped hurriedly down and rushed into a
room on the lower floor, painted green and smelling of mildew, where
the table was laid for twenty guests. Sixty had arrived, and for five
minutes nothing could be heard but a frightful tumult, cries, and
a vehement altercation between the Rices and the Prunes around the
compote-dishes, to the