seen
at the foot of that wall of ice, of depths that were sending upward the
chilling breath of subterranean abysses.

"Go gently, Gonzague, for fear of falling..." That phrase, which
Tartarin uttered with tender intonations, almost supplicating,
borrowed a solemn signification from the respective positions of the
ascensionists, clinging with feet and hands one above the other to the
wall, bound by the rope and the similarity of their movements, so that
the fall or the awkwardness of one put all in danger. And what danger!
_coquin de sort!_ It sufficed to hear fragments of the ice-wall bounding
and dashing downward with the echo of their fall to imagine the open
jaws of the monster watching there below to snap you up at the least
false step.

But what is this?.. Lo, the tall Swede, next above Tartarin, has stopped
and touches with his iron heels the cap of the P. C. A. In vain the
guides called: "Forward!.." And the president: "Go on, young man!.."
He did not stir. Stretched at full length, clinging to the ice with
careless hand, the Swede leaned down, the glimmering dawn touching his
scanty beard and giving light to the singular expression of his dilated
eyes, while he made a sign to Tartarin:--

"What a fall, hey? if one let go..."

"_Outre!_ I should say so... you would drag us all down... Go on!"

The other remained motionless.

"A fine chance to be done with life, to return into chaos through the
bowels of the earth, and roll from fissure to fissure like that bit
of ice which I kick with my foot..." And he leaned over frightfully
to watch the fragment bounding downward and echoing endlessly in the
blackness.

"Take care!.." cried Tartarin, livid with terror. Then, desperately
clinging to the oozing wall, he resumed, with hot ardour, his argument
of the night before in favour of existence. "There's _good_ in it...
What the deuce!.. At your age, a fine young fellow like you... Don't you
believe in love, _que!_"

No, the Swede did not believe in it. Ideal love is a poet's lie; the
other, only a need he had never felt...

"_Be!_ yes! _be!_ yes!.. It is true poets lie, they always say more than
there is; but for all that, she is nice, the _femellan_--that's what
they call women in our parts. Besides, there's children, pretty little
darlings that look like us."

"Children! a source of grief. Ever since she had them my mother has done
nothing but weep."

"Listen, Otto, you know me, my good friend..."

And