ersion, such
anger... What has life done to you?"

"Nothing; it bores me." He had studied philosophy at Christiania, and
since then, won to the ideas of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, he had found
existence dreary, inept, chaotic. On the verge of suicide he shut his
books, at the entreaty of his parents, and started to travel, striking
everywhere against the same distress, the gloomy wretchedness of this
life. Tartarin and his friends, he said, seemed to him the only beings
content to live that he had ever met with.

The worthy P. C. A. began to laugh. "It is all race, young man.
Everybody feels like that in Tarascon. That's the land of the good God.
From morning till night we laugh and sing, and the rest of the time we
dance the farandole... like this... _te!_" So saying, he cut a double
shuffle with the grace and lightness of a big cockchafer trying its
wings.

But the delegates had not the steel nerves nor the indefatigable spirit
of their chief. Excour-banies growled out: "He 'll keep us here till
midnight." But Bravida jumped up, furious. "Let us go to bed, _ve!_
I can't stand my sciatica..." Tartarin consented, remembering the
ascension on the morrow; and the Tarasconese, candlesticks in hand, went
up the broad staircase of granite that led to the chambers, while Baltet
went to see about provisions and hire the mules and guides.

"_Te!_ it is snowing..."

Those were the first words of the worthy Tartarin when he woke in the
morning and saw his windows covered with frost and his bedroom inundated
with white reflections. But when he hooked his little mirror as usual
to the window-fastening, he understood his mistake, and saw that Mont
Blanc, sparkling before him in the splendid sunshine, was the cause of
that light. He opened his window to the breeze of the glacier, keen and
refreshing, bringing with it the sound of the cattle-bells as the
herds followed the long, lowing sound of the shepherd's horn. Something
fortifying, pastoral, filled the atmosphere such as he had never before
breathed in Switzerland.

Below, an assemblage of guides and porters awaited him. The Swede was
already mounted upon his mule, and among the spectators, who formed a
circle, was the minister's family, all those active young ladies, their
hair in early morning style, who had come for another "shake hands" with
the hero who had haunted their dreams.

"Splendid weather! make haste!.." cried the landlord, whose skull was
gleaming in the s