ward at
sound of the gong, all these things bewildered him for a second--but
only one.

He felt himself looked at and instantly recovered his self-possession,
like a comedian facing a full house.

"Monsieur desires..?"

This was the manager of the hotel, making the inquiry with the tips of
his teeth, a very dashing manager, striped jacket, silken whiskers, the
head of a lady's dressmaker.

The Alpinist, not disturbed, asked for a room, "A good little room,
_au mouain?_" perfectly at ease with that majestic manager, as if with a
former schoolmate.

But he came near being angry when a Bernese servant-girl, advancing,
candle in hand, and stiff in her gilt stomacher and puffed muslin
sleeves, inquired if Monsieur would be pleased to take the lift. The
proposal to commit a crime would not have made him more indignant.

"A lift! he!.. for him!.." And his cry, his gesture, set all his metals
rattling.

Quickly appeased, however, he said to the maiden, in an amiable tone:
"_Pedibusse cum jambisse_, my pretty little cat..." And he went up
behind her, his broad back filling the stairway, parting the persons he
met on his way, while throughout the hotel the clamorous questions ran:
"Who is he? What's this?" muttered in the divers languages of all four
quarters of the globe. Then the second dinner-gong sounded, and nobody
thought any longer of this extraordinary personage.

A sight to behold, that dining-room of the Rigi-Kulm.

Six hundred covers around an immense horseshoe table, where tall,
shallow dishes of rice and of prunes, alternating in long files with
green plants, reflected in their dark or transparent sauces the flame of
the candles in the chandeliers and the gilding of the panelled ceiling.

As in all Swiss _tables d'hote_, rice and prunes divided the dinner into
two rival factions, and merely by the looks of hatred or of hankering
cast upon those dishes it was easy to tell to which party the guests
belonged. The Rices were known by their anaemic pallor, the Prunes by
their congested skins.

That evening the latter were the most numerous, counting among them
several important personalities, European celebrities, such as the great
historian Astier-Rehu, of the French Academy, Baron von Stolz, an
old Austro-Hungarian diplomat, Lord Chipendale (?), a member of the
Jockey-Club and his niece (h'm, h'm!), the illustrious doctor-professor
Schwanthaler, from the University of Bonn, a Peruvian general with eight
y