romenade lined with cafes, breweries,
shops for the tourists displaying alpenstocks, gaiters, straps,
opera-glasses, smoked glasses, flasks, travelling-bags, all of which
articles seemed placed there expressly to shame the renegade Alpinist.
Tourists were defiling in caravans, with horses, guides, mules, veils
green and blue, and a tintinnabulation of canteens as the animals
ambled, the ice-picks marking each step on the cobble-stones. But this
festive scene, hourly renewed, left Tartarin indifferent. He never even
felt the fresh north wind with a touch of snow coming in gusts from the
mountains, so intent was he on baffling the spies whom he supposed to be
upon his traces.

The foremost soldier of a vanguard, the sharpshooter skirting the
walls of an enemy's town, never advanced with more mistrust than the
Taras-conese hero while crossing the short distance between the hotel
and the post-office. At the slightest heel-tap sounding behind his own,
he stopped, looked attentively at the photographs in the windows, or
fingered an English or German book lying on a stall, to oblige the
police spy to pass him. Or else he turned suddenly round, to stare with
ferocious eyes at a stout servant-girl going to market, or some harmless
tourist, a _table d'hote_ Prune, who, taking him for a madman, turned
off, alarmed, from the sidewalk to avoid him.

When he reached the office, where the wickets open, rather oddly,
into the street itself, Tartarin passed and repassed, to observe the
surrounding physiognomies before he himself approached: then, suddenly
darting forward, he inserted his whole head and shoulders into the
opening, muttered a few indistinct syllables (which they always made him
repeat, to his great despair), and, possessor at last of the mysterious
trust, he returned to the hotel by a great detour on the kitchen side,
his hand in his pocket clutching the package of letters and papers,
prepared to tear up and swallow everything at the first alarm.

Manilof and Bolibine were usually awaiting his return with the
Wassiliefs. They did not lodge in the hotel, out of prudence and
economy. Bolibine had found work in a printing-office, and Manilof, a
very clever cabinetmaker, was employed by a builder. Tartarin did not
like them: one annoyed him by his grimaces and his jeering airs; the
other kept looking at him savagely. Besides, they took too much space in
Sonia's heart.

"He is a hero!" she said of Bolibine; and she told ho