nging a furtive ray of
the still invisible rising sun. Then between the white and rosy Alp
and the Alpinist a little dialogue took place regularly, which was not
without its grandeur.

"Tartarin, are you coming?" asked the Jung-frau sternly.

"Here, here..." replied the hero, his thumb under his nose and finishing
his beard as fast as possible. Then he would hastily take down his
ascensionist outfit and, swearing at himself, put it on.

"_Coquin de sort!_ there's no name for it..."

But a soft voice rose, demure and clear among the myrtles in the border
beneath his window.

"Good-morning," said Sonia, as he appeared upon the balcony, "the landau
is ready... Come, make haste, lazy man..."

"I 'm coming, I 'm coming..."

In a trice he had changed his thick flannel shirt for linen of the
finest quality, his mountain knickerbockers for a suit of serpent-green
that turned the heads of all the women in Tarascon at the Sunday
concerts.

The horses of the landau were pawing before the door; Sonia was already
installed beside Boris, paler, more emaciated day by day in spite of
the beneficent climate of Interlaken. But, regularly, at the moment of
starting, Tartarin was fated to see two forms arise from a bench on
the promenade and approach him with the heavy rolling step of mountain
bears; these were Rodolphe Kaufmann and Christian Inebnit, two famous
Grindelwald guides, engaged by Tartarin for the ascension of the
Jungfrau, who came every morning to ascertain if their monsieur were
ready to start.

The apparition of these two men, in their iron-clamped shoes and fustian
jackets worn threadbare on the back and shoulder by knapsacks and ropes,
their naive and serious faces, and the four words of French which they
managed to splutter as they twisted their broad-brimmed hats, were a
positive torture to Tartarin. In vain he said to them: "Don't trouble
yourselves to come; I 'll send for you..."

Every day he found them in the same place and got rid of them by a large
coin proportioned to the enormity of his remorse. Enchanted with
this method of "doing the Jungfrau," the mountaineers pocketed their
_trinkgeld_ gravely, and took, with resigned step, the path to their
native village, leaving Tartarin confused and despairing at his own
weakness. Then the broad open air, the flowering plains reflected in the
limpid pupils of Sonia's eyes, the touch of her little foot against his
boot in the carriage... The devil take that J