aces?"

"Oh! he has got the mountaineer's foot; besides, his son watches over
him, and places his heels... And it is a fact that he has never had an
accident."

"All the more because accidents in Switzerland are never very terrible,
_que?_" With a comprehending smile to the puzzled porter, Tartarin,
more and more convinced that the "whole thing was _blague_," stretched
himself out on the plank rolled in his blanket, the muffler up to his
eyes, and went to sleep, in spite of the light, the noise, the smoke of
the pipes and the smell of the onion soup...

"Mossie!.. Mossie!.."

One of his guides was shaking him for departure, while the other poured
boiling coffee into the bowls. A few oaths and the groans of sleepers
whom Tartarin crushed on his way to the table, and then to the door.
Abruptly he found himself outside, stung by the cold, dazzled by the
fairy-like reflections of the moon upon that white expanse, those
motionless congealed cascades, where the shadow of the peaks, the
_aiguilles_, the _seracs_, were sharply defined in the densest black. No
longer the sparkling chaos of the afternoon, nor the livid rising upward
of the gray tints of evening, but a strange irregular city of darksome
alleys, mysterious passages, doubtful corners between marble monuments
and crumbling ruins--a dead city, with broad desert spaces.

Two o'clock! By walking well they could be at the top by mid-day.
"_Zou!_" said the P. C. A., very lively, and dashing forward, as if
to the assault. But his guides stopped him. They must be roped for the
dangerous passages.

"Ah! _vai_, roped!.. Very good, if that amuses you."

Christian Inebnit took the lead, leaving twelve feet of rope between
himself and Tartarin, who was separated by the same length from the
second guide who carried the provisions and the banner. The hero kept
his footing better than he did the day before; and confidence in the
Company must indeed have been strong, for he did not take seriously the
difficulties of the path--if we can call a path the terrible ridge of
ice along which they now advanced with precaution, a ridge but a few
feet wide and so slippery that Christian was forced to cut steps with
his ice-axe.

The line of the ridge sparkled between two depths of abysses on either
side. But if you think that Tartarin was frightened, not at all!
Scarcely did he feel the little quiver of the cuticle of a freemason
novice when subjected to his opening test. He placed