orted from him by his mishaps, for an avalanche was on the watch, and
the slightest concussion, a mere vibration of the crystalline air, might
send down its masses of snow and ice. To suffer in silence! what torture
to a native of Tarascon!

But the caravan halted. Tartarin asked why. A discussion in low voice
was heard; animated whisperings: "It is your companion who won't come
on," said the Swedish student. The order of march was broken; the human
chaplet returned upon itself, and they found themselves all at the edge
of a vast crevasse, called by the mountaineers a _roture_. Preceding
ones they had crossed by means of a ladder, over which they crawled
on their hands and knees; here the crevasse was much wider and the
ice-cliff rose on the other side to a height of eighty or a hundred
feet. It was necessary to descend to the bottom of the gully, which
grew smaller as it went down, by means of steps cut in the ice, and
to reascend in the same way on the other side. But Bompard obstinately
refused to do so.

Leaning over the abyss, which the shadows represented as bottomless, he
watched through the damp vapour the movements of the little lantern by
which the guides below were preparing the way. Tartarin, none too easy
himself, warmed his own courage by exhorting his friend: "Come now,
Gonzague, _zou!_" and then in a lower voice coaxed him to honour,
invoked the banner, Tarascon, the Club...

"Ah! _vai_, the Club indeed!.. I don't belong to it," replied the other,
cynically.

Then Tartarin explained to him where to set his feet, and assured him
that nothing was easier.

"For you, perhaps, but not for me..." "But you said you had a habit of
it..." "_Be!_ yes! habit, of course... which habit? I have so many...
habit of smoking, sleeping..." "And lying, especially," interrupted the
president.

"Exaggerating--come now!" said Bompard, not the least in the world
annoyed.

However, after much hesitation, the threat of leaving him there all
alone decided him to go slowly, deliberately, down that terrible
miller's ladder... The going up was more difficult, for the other face
was nearly perpendicular, smooth as marble, and higher than King Rene's
tower at Tarascon. From below, the winking light of the guides going up,
looked like a glow-worm on the march. He was forced to follow, however,
for the snow beneath his feet was not solid, and gurgling sounds of
circulating water heard round a fissure told of more than could be