and sound were lost, his Tarasconese intonations: "Ha! ha! ha! _fen de
brut!_"

But people grow weary after marching for two hours through the same sort
of decorative scene, however well it may be organized, green on blue,
glaciers in the distance, and all things sonorous as a musical clock.
The dash of the torrents, the singers in triplets, the sellers of
carved objects, the little flower-girls, soon became intolerable to our
friends,--above all, the dampness, the steam rising in this species of
tunnel, the soaked soil full of water-plants, where never had the sun
penetrated.

"It is enough to give one a pleurisy," said Bravida, turning up the
collar of his coat. Then weariness set in, hunger, ill-humour. They
could find no inn; and presently Excourbanies and Bravida, having
stuffed themselves with strawberries, began to suffer cruelly. Pascalon
himself, that angel, bearing not only the banner, but the ice-axe, the
knapsack, the alpenstock, of which the others had rid themselves basely
upon him, even Pascalon had lost his gayety and ceased his lively
gambolling.

At a turn of the road, after they had just crossed the Lutschine by one
of those covered bridges that are found in regions of deep snow, a loud
blast on a horn greeted them.

"Ah! _vai_, enough!.. enough!" howled the exasperated delegation.

The man, a giant, ensconced by the roadside, let go an enormous
trumpet of pine wood reaching to the ground and ending there in
a percussion-box, which gave to this prehistoric instrument the
sonorousness of a piece of artillery.

"Ask him if he knows of an inn," said the president to Excourbanies,
who, with enormous cheek and a small pocket dictionary undertook,
now that they were in German Switzerland, to serve the delegation as
interpreter. But before he could pull out his dictionary the man replied
in very good French:

"An inn, messieurs? Why certainly... The 'Faithful Chamois' is close by;
allow me to show you the place."

On the way, he told them he had lived in Paris for several years, as
commissionnaire at the corner of the rue Vivienne.

"Another employe of the Company, _parbleu!_" thought Tartarin, leaving
his friends to be surprised. However, Bompard's comrade was very useful,
for, in spite of its French sign, _Le Chamois Fidele_ the people of the
"Faithful Chamois" could speak nothing but a horrible German patois.

Presently, the Tarasconese delegation, seated around an enormous potato
omelet, re