unshine like a pebble. But though Tartarin himself
might hasten, it was not so easy a matter to rouse from sleep his dear
Alpinists, who intended to accompany him as far as the Pierre-Pointue,
where the mule-path ends. Neither prayers nor arguments could persuade
the Commander to get out of bed. With his cotton nightcap over his
ears and his face to the wall, he contented himself with replying to
Tartarin's objurgations by a cynical Tarasconese proverb: "Whoso has the
credit of getting up early may sleep until midday..." As for Bom-pard,
he kept repeating, the whole time, "Ah, _vai_, Mont Blanc... what a
humbug..." Nor did they rise until the P. C. A. had issued a formal
order.

At last, however, the caravan started, and passed through the little
streets in very imposing array: Pascalon on the leading mule, banner
unfurled; and last in file, grave as a mandarin amid the guides
and porters on either side his mule, came the worthy Tartarin, more
stupendously Alpinist than ever, wearing a pair of new spectacles
with smoked and convex glasses, and his famous rope made at Avignon,
recovered--we know at what cost.

Very much looked at, almost as much as the banner, he was jubilant
under his dignified mask, enjoyed the picturesqueness of these Savoyard
village streets, so different from the too neat, too varnished Swiss
village, looking like a new toy; he enjoyed the contrast of these hovels
scarcely rising above the ground, where the stable fills the largest
space, with the grand and sumptuous hotels five storeys high, the
glittering signs of which were as much out of keeping with the hovels
as the gold-laced cap of the porter and the pumps and black coats of the
waiters with the Savoyard head-gear, the fustian jackets, the felt hats
of the charcoal-burners with their broad wings.

On the square were landaus with the horses taken out, manure-carts side
by side with travelling-carriages, and a troop of pigs idling in the sun
before the post-office, from which issued an Englishman in a white linen
cap, with a package of letters and a copy of _The Times_, which he read
as he walked along, before he opened his correspondence. The cavalcade
of the Tarasconese passed all this, accompanied by the scuffling of
mules, the war-cry of Excourbanies (to whom the sun had restored the use
of his gong), the pastoral chimes on the neighbouring slopes, and the
dash of the river, gushing from the glacier in a torrent all white and
sparkling,