Oh! above all, not being able to speak.

"I shall have dyspepsia as sure as fate," said the poor devil, wandering
about the hotel and not knowing what to do with himself.

He entered a cafe, vast and deserted as a church on a week day, called
the waiter, "My good friend," and ordered "a mocha without sugar,
_que'_." And as the waiter did not ask, "Why no sugar?" the Alpinist
added quickly, "'Tis a habit I acquired in Africa, at the period of my
great hunts."

He was about to recount them, but the waiter had fled on his phantom
slippers to Lord Chipendale, stranded, full length, upon a sofa and
crying, in mournful tones: "Tchempegne!.. tchempegne!.." The cork flew
with its silly noise, and nothing more was heard save the gusts of wind
in the monumental chimney and the hissing click of the snow against the
panes.

Very dismal too was the reading-room; all the journals in hand, hundreds
of heads bent down around the long green tables beneath the reflectors.
From time to time a yawn, a cough, the rustle of a turned leaf; and
soaring high above the calm of this hall of study, erect and motionless,
their backs to the stove, both solemn and both smelling equally musty,
were the two pontiffs of official history, Astier-Rehu and Schwanthaler,
whom a singular fatality had brought face to face on the summit of the
Rigi, after thirty years of insults and of rending each other to
shreds in explanatory notes referring to "Schwanthaler, jackass," "_vir
ineptissimus_, Astier-Rehu."

You can imagine the reception which the kindly Alpinist received on
drawing up a chair for a bit of instructive conversation in that chimney
corner. From the height of these two caryatides there fell upon him
suddenly one of those currents of air of which he was so afraid.
He rose, paced the hall, as much to warm himself as to recover
self-confidence, and opened the bookcase. A few English novels lay
scattered about in company with several heavy Bibles and tattered
volumes of the Alpine Club. He took up one of the latter, and carried
it off to read in bed, but was forced to leave it at the door, the rules
not allowing the transference of the library to the chambers.

Then, still continuing to wander about, he opened the door of the
billiard-room, where the Italian tenor, playing alone, was producing
effects of torso and cuffs for the edification of their pretty
neighbour, seated on a divan, between the two young men, to whom she was
reading a let