tall, funereal
Englishman with a brick-coloured skin, coming up to him, bottle and
glass in hand. Then, after obliging the hero to drink with him:

"Lord Chipendale, sir... And you?"

"Tartarin of Tarascon."

"Oh! yes... Tartarine... Capital name for a horse," said the lord, who
must have been one of those great turfmen across the Channel.

The Austro-Hungarian diplomat also came to press the Alpinist's hand
between his mittens, remembering vaguely to have seen him somewhere.
"Enchanted!.. enchanted!.." he enunciated several times, and then, not
knowing how to get out of it, he added: "My compliments to madame..."
his social formula for cutting short presentations.

But the guides were impatient; they must reach before nightfall the hut
of the Alpine Club, where they were to sleep for the first stage, and
there was not a minute to lose. Tartarin felt it, saluted all with a
circular gesture, smiled at the malicious misses, and then, in a voice
of thunder, commanded:

"Pascalon, the banner!"

It waved to the breeze; the Southerners took off their hats, for they
love theatricals at Tarascon; and at the cry, a score of times repeated:
"Long live the president!.. Long live Tartarin!.. Ah! ah!.._fen de
brut!_.." the column moved off, the two guides in front carrying the
knapsack, the provisions, and a supply of wood; then came Pascalon
bearing the oriflamme, and lastly the P. C. A. with the delegates who
proposed to accompany him as far as the glacier of the Guggi.

Thus deployed in procession, bearing its flapping flag along the sodden
way beneath those barren or snowy crests, the cortege vaguely recalled
the funeral marches of an All Souls' day in the country.

Suddenly the Commander cried out, alarmed: "_Ve!_ those oxen!"

Some cattle were now seen browsing the short grass in the hollows of
the ground. The former captain of equipment had a nervous and quite
insurmountable terror of those animals, and as he could not be left
alone the delegation was forced to stop. Pascalon transmitted the
standard to the guides. Then, with a last embrace, hasty injunctions,
and one eye on the cows:

"Adieu, adieu, _que!_"

"No imprudence, _au mouain_..." they parted. As for proposing to the
president to go up with him, no one even thought of it; 'twas so high,
_boufre!_ And the nearer they came to it the higher it grew, the abysses
were more abysmal, the peaks bristled up in a white chaos, which looked
to be insurmountable.