oung daughters.

To these the Rices could only oppose as a picket-guard a Belgian senator
and his family, Mme. Schwanthaler, the professor's wife, and an Italian
tenor, returning from Russia, who displayed his cuffs, with buttons as
big as saucers, upon the tablecloth.

It was these opposing currents which no doubt caused the stiffness
and embarrassment of the company. How else explain the silence of six
hundred half-frozen, scowling, distrustful persons, and the sovereign
contempt they appeared to affect for one another? A superficial observer
might perhaps have attributed this stiffness to stupid Anglo-Saxon
haughtiness which, nowadays, gives the tone in all countries to the
travelling world.

No! no! Beings with human faces are not born to hate one another thus at
first sight, to despise each other with their very noses, lips, and eyes
for lack of a previous introduction. There must be another cause.

Rice and Prunes, I tell you. There you have the explanation of the
gloomy silence weighing upon this dinner at the Rigi-Kulm, which,
considering the number and international variety of the guests, ought to
have been lively, tumultuous, such as we imagine the repasts at the foot
of the Tower of Babel to have been.

The Alpinist entered the room, a little overcome by this refectory of
monks, apparently doing penance beneath the glare of chandeliers; he
coughed noisily without any one taking notice of him, and seated himself
in his place of last-comer at the end of the room. Divested of his
accoutrements, he was now a tourist like any other, but of aspect more
amiable, bald, barrel-bellied, his beard pointed and bunchy, his nose
majestic, his eyebrows thick and ferocious, overhanging the glance of a
downright good fellow.

Rice or Prunes? No one knew as yet.

Hardly was he installed before he became uneasy, and leaving his place
with an alarming bound: "Ouf! what a draught!" he said aloud, as he
sprang to an empty chair with its back laid over on the table.

He was stopped by the Swiss maid on duty--from the canton of Uri, that
one--silver chains and white muslin chemisette.

"Monsieur, this place is engaged..."

Then a young lady, seated next to the chair, of whom the Alpinist could
see only her blond hair rising from the whiteness of virgin snows, said,
without turning round, and with a foreign accent:

"That place is free; my brother is ill, and will not be down."

"Ill?.." said the Alpinist, seating himse