with all the valorous ardour of his soul Tartarin exhausted himself
to revive and rub to life at that distance this victim of Schopenhauer
and of Hartmann, two rascals he'd like to catch at the corner of a
wood, _coquin de sort!_ and make them pay for all the harm they had done
to youth...

Represent to yourselves during this discussion the high wall of
freezing, glaucous, streaming ice touched by a pallid ray of light,
and that string of human beings glued to it in echelon, with ill-omened
rumblings rising from the yawning depth, together with the curses of the
guides and their threats to detach and abandon the travellers. Tartarin,
seeing that no argument could convince the madman or clear off his
vertigo of death, suggested to him the idea of throwing himself from
the highest peak of the Mont Blanc... That indeed! _that_ would be
worth doing, up there! A fine end among the elements... But here, at the
bottom of a cave... Ah! _vai_, what a blunder!.. And he put such tone
into his words, brusque and yet persuasive, such conviction, that the
Swede allowed himself to be conquered, and there they were, at last, one
by one, at the top of that terrible _roture_.

They were now unroped, and a halt was called for a bite and sup. It
was daylight; a cold wan light among a circle of peaks and shafts,
overtopped by the Mont Blanc, still thousands of feet above them. The
guides were apart, gesticulating and consulting, with many shakings of
the head. Seated on the white ground, heavy and huddled up, their round
backs in their brown jackets, they looked like marmots getting ready to
hibernate. Bompard and Tartarin, uneasy, shocked, left the young Swede
to eat alone, and came up to the guides just as their leader was saying
with a grave air:--

"He is smoking his pipe; there's no denying it."

"Who is smoking his pipe?" asked Tartarin.

"Mont Blanc, monsieur; look there..."

And the guide pointed to the extreme top of the highest peak, where,
like a plume, a white vapour floated toward Italy.

"_Et autremain_, my good friend, when the Mont Blanc smokes his pipe,
what does that mean?"

"It means, monsieur, that there is a terrible wind on the summit, and
a snow-storm which will be down upon us before long. And I tell you,
that's dangerous."

"Let us go back," said Bompard, turning green; and Tartarin added:--

"Yes, yes, certainly; no false vanity, of course."

But here the Swedish student interfered. He had paid his mo