how shall I tell it?--in that agony of fear, both,
at the same instant, forgetting their solemn vow at the Hotel
Baltet, with the same impulse, the same instinctive action, cut the
rope,--Bompard with his knife, Tartarin with his axe; then, horrified at
their crime, convinced, each of them, that he had sacrificed his friend,
they fled in opposite directions.

When the spectre of Bompard appeared at the Grands-Mulets, that of
Tartarin was arriving at the tavern of the Avesailles. How, by what
miracle? after what slips, what falls? Mont Blanc alone could tell.
The poor P. C. A. remained for two days in a state of complete apathy,
unable to utter a single sound. As soon as he was fit to move they took
him down to Courmayeur, the Italian Chamonix. At the hotel where he
stopped to recover his strength, there was talk of nothing but the
frightful catastrophe on Mont Blanc, a perfect pendant to that on the
Matterhorn: another Alpinist engulfed by the breaking of the rope.

In his conviction that this meant Bompard, Tartarin, torn by remorse,
dared not rejoin the delegation, or return to his own town. He saw, in
advance, on every lip, in every eye, the question: "Cain, what hast thou
done with thy brother?.." Nevertheless, the lack of money, deficiency
of linen, the frosts of September which were beginning to thin the
hostelries, obliged him to set out for home. After all, no one had seen
him commit the crime... Nothing hindered him from inventing some tale,
no matter what... and so (the amusements of the journey lending their
aid), he began to feel better. But when, on approaching Tarascon, he
saw, iridescent beneath the azure heavens, the fine sky-line of the
Alpines, all, all grasped him once more; shame, remorse, the fear of
justice, and, to avoid the notoriety of arriving at the station, he left
the train at the preceding stopping-place.

Ah! that beautiful Tarasconese highroad, all white and creaking with
dust, without other shade than the telegraph poles and their wires,
erected along the triumphal way he had so often trod at the head of his
Alpinists and the sportsmen of caps. Would they now have known him, he,
the valiant, the jauntily attired, in his ragged and filthy clothes,
with that furtive eye of a tramp looking out for gendarmes? The
atmosphere was burning, though the season was late, and the watermelon
which he bought of a marketman seemed to him delicious as he ate it
in the scanty shade of the barrow, whil