_, says
Tacitus, describing Rome at the funeral of Germanicus; and that citation
of his mourning Rome applies all the better to Tarascon, because a
funeral service for the soul of Tartarin was being said at this moment
in the cathedral, where the population _en masse_ wept for its hero,
its god, its invincible leader with double muscles, left lying among the
glaciers of Mont Blanc.

Now, while the death-knell dropped its heavy notes along the silent
streets, Mile. Tournatoire, the doctor's sister, whose ailments kept
her always at home, was sitting in her big armchair close to the window,
looking out into the street and listening to the bells. The house of the
Tournatoires was on the road to Avignon, very nearly opposite to that
of Tartarin; and the sight of that illustrious home to which its master
would return no more, that garden gate forever closed, all, even the
boxes of the little shoe-blacks drawn up in line near the entrance,
swelled the heart of the poor spinster, consumed for more than thirty
years with a secret passion for the Tarasconese hero. Oh, mystery of the
heart of an old maid! It was her joy to watch him pass at his regular
hours and to ask herself: "Where is he going?.." to observe the
permutations of his toilet, whether he was clothed as an Alpinist or
dressed in his suit of serpent-green. And now! she would see him no
more! even the consolation of praying for his soul with all the other
ladies of the town was denied her.

Suddenly the long white horse head of Mile. Tournatoire coloured
faintly; her faded eyes with a pink rim dilated in a remarkable manner,
while her thin hand with its prominent veins made the sign of the
cross.. He! it _was_ he, slipping along by the wall on the other side of
the paved road... At first she thought it an hallucinating apparition...
No, Tartarin himself, in flesh and blood, only paler, pitiable, ragged,
was creeping along that wall like a beggar or a thief. But in order to
explain his furtive presence in Tarascon, it is necessary to return to
the Mont Blanc and the Dome du Gouter at the precise instant when, the
two friends being each on either side of the ridge, Bompard felt the
rope that bound them violently jerked as if by the fall of a body.

In reality, the rope was only caught in a cleft of the ice; but
Tartarin, feeling the same jerk, believed, he too, that his companion
was rolling down and dragging him with him. Then, at that supreme
moment--good heavens!