eedle seemed untrue. And how
could he find his bearings in a thick yellow fog that hindered him
from seeing ten steps about him--steps that were now, within a moment,
covered with an icy glaze that made the ascent more difficult.

Suddenly he stopped; the ground whitened vaguely before him... Look out
for your eyes!..

He had come to the region of snows...

Immediately he pulled out his spectacles, took them from their case, and
settled them securely on his nose. The moment was a solemn one. Slightly
agitated, yet proud all the same, it seemed to Tar-tarin that in
one bound he had risen 3000 feet toward the summits and his greatest
dangers.

He now advanced with more precaution, dreaming of crevasses and fissures
such as the books tell of, and cursing in the depths of his heart those
people at the inn who advised him to mount straight and take no guide.
After all, perhaps he had mistaken the mountain! More than six hours had
he tramped, and the Rigi required only three. The wind blew, a chilling
wind that whirled the snow in that crepuscular fog.

Night was about to overtake him. Where find a hut? or even a projecting
rock to shelter him? All of a sudden, he saw before his nose on the
arid, naked plain a species of wooden chalet, bearing, on a long placard
in gigantic type, these letters, which he deciphered with difficulty:
PHO... TO... GRA... PHIE DU RI... GI KULM. At the same instant the vast
hotel with its three hundred windows loomed up before him between the
great lamp-posts, the globes of which were now being lighted in the fog.

III.

An alarm on the Rigi. "Keep cool! Keep cool!" The Alpine
horn. What Tartarin saw, on awaking, in his looking-glass,
Perplexity. A guide is ordered by telephone.

"Ques aco?.. Qui vive?" cried Tartarin, ears alert and eyes straining
hard into the darkness.

Feet were running through the hotel, doors were slamming, breathless
voices were crying: "Make haste! make haste!.." while without was
ringing what seemed to be a trumpet-call, as flashes of flame illumined
both panes and curtains.

Fire!..

At a bound he was out of bed, shod, clothed, and running headlong
down the staircase, where the gas still burned and a rustling swarm of
_misses_ were descending, with hair put up in haste, and they themselves
swathed in shawls and red woollen jackets, or anything else that came to
hand as they jumped out of bed.

Tartarin, to fortify himself and also to r