cier, which a recent avalanche had powdered with
fresh snow, and through which little spaces of a glaucous green
showed themselves here and there, slippery and treacherous. Very calm,
confident through experience that there was not the slightest danger,
Tartarin walked along the verge of the crevasses with their smooth,
iridescent sides stretching downward indefinitely, and made his way
among the _seracs_, solely intent on keeping up with the Swedish
student, an intrepid walker, whose long gaiters with their silver
buckles marched, thin and lank, beside his alpenstock, which looked like
a third leg. Their philosophical discussion continuing, in spite of the
difficulties of the way, a good stout voice, familiar and panting, could
be heard in the frozen space, sonorous as the swell of a river: "You
know me, Otto..."

Bompard all this time was undergoing misadventures. Firmly convinced, up
to that very morning, that Tartarin would never go to the length of his
vaunting, and would no more ascend Mont Blanc than he had the Jungfrau,
the luckless courier had dressed himself as usual, without nailing his
boots, or even utilizing his famous invention for shoeing the feet of
soldiers, and without so much as his alpenstock, the mountaineers of the
Chimborazo never using them. Armed only with a little switch, quite in
keeping with the blue ribbon of his hat and his ulster, this approach to
the glacier terrified him, for, in spite of his tales, it is, of
course, well understood that the Impostor had never in his life made an
ascension. He was somewhat reassured, however, on seeing from the top of
the moraine with what facility Tartarin made his way on the ice; and he
resolved to follow him as far as the hut on the Grands-Mulets, where it
was intended to pass the night. He did not get there without difficulty.
His first step laid him flat on his back; at the second he fell forward
on his hands and knees: "No, thank you, I did it on purpose," he said to
the guides who endeavoured to pick him up. "American fashion, _ve!_.. as
they do on the Chimborazo." That position seeming to be convenient,
he kept it, creeping on four paws, his hat pushed back, and his ulster
sweeping the ice like the pelt of a gray bear; very calm, withal, and
relating to those about him that in the Cordilleras of the Andes he had
scaled a mountain thirty thousand feet high. He did not say how much
time it took him, but it must have been long, judging by this stage