the houses, other clouds,
black and gray that were clinging about the sombre verdure of the
mountain, big with rain.

"_Coquin de sort!_ I'm not a lacustrian," said Spiridion Excourbanies,
wiping the glass of the window to look at the perspective of glaciers
and white vapours that closed the horizon in front of him...

"Nor I, either," sighed Pascalon, "this fog, this stagnant water...
makes me want to cry."

Bravida complained also, in dread of his sciatic gout.

Tartarin reproved them sternly. Was it nothing to be able to relate,
on their return, that they had seen the dungeon of Bonnivard, inscribed
their names on its historic walls beside the signatures of Rousseau,
Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Eugene Sue? Suddenly, in the middle of
his tirade, the president interrupted himself and changed colour... He
had just caught sight of a little round hat on a coil of blond hair.
Without stopping the omnibus, the pace of which had slackened in going
up hill, he sprang out, calling back to the stupefied Alpinists: "Go on
to the hotel..."

"Sonia!.. Sonia!.."

He feared that he might not be able to catch her, she walked so rapidly,
the delicate silhouette of her shadow falling on the macadam of the
road. She turned at his call and waited for him. "Ah! is it you?" she
said; and as soon as they had shaken hands she walked on. He fell into
step beside her, much out of breath, and began to excuse himself for
having left her so abruptly... arrival of friends... necessity of
making the ascension (of which his face was still bearing traces)...
She listened without a word, hastening her pace, her eyes strained and
fixed. Looking at her profile, she seemed to him paler, her features no
longer soft with childlike innocence, but hard, a something resolute
on them which till now had existed only in her voice and her imperious
will; and yet her youthful grace was there, and the gold of her waving
hair.

"And Boris, how is he?" asked Tartarin, rather discomfited by her
silence and coldness, which began to affect him.

"Boris?.." she quivered: "Ah! true, you do not know... Well then! come,
come..."

They followed a country lane leading past vineyards sloping to the
lake, and villas with gardens, and elegant terraces laden with clematis,
blooming with roses, petunias, and myrtles in pots. Now and then they
met some foreigner with haggard cheeks and melancholy glance, walking
slowly and feebly, like the many whom one meets at Me