le
appearance in presence of that correct and solemn magistrate with the
carefully trimmed beard, who said to him sternly:--

"You call yourself Manilof, do you not?.. Russian subject... incendiary
at St. Petersburg, refugee and murderer in Switzerland."

"Never in my life... It is all a mistake, an error..."

"Silence, or I 'll gag you..." interrupted the captain.

The immaculate prefect continued: "To put an end to your denials... Do
you know this rope?"

His rope! _coquin de sort!_ His rope, woven with iron, made at Avignon.
He lowered his head, to the stupefaction of the delegates, and said: "I
know it."

"With this rope a man has been hung in the Canton of Unterwald..."

Tartarin, with a shudder, swore that he had nothing to do with it.

"We shall see!"

The Italian tenor was now introduced,--in other words, the police spy
whom the Nihilists had hung to the branch of an oak-tree on the Bruenig,
but whose life was miraculously saved by wood-choppers.

The spy looked at Tartarin. "That is not the man," he said; then at the
delegates, "Nor they, either... A mistake has been made."

The prefect, furious, turned to Tartarin. "Then, what are you doing
here?" he asked.

"That is what I ask myself, _ve!_.." replied the president, with the
aplomb of innocence.

After a short explanation the Alpinists of Tarascon, restored to
liberty, departed from the Castle of Chillon, where none have ever felt
its oppressive and romantic melancholy more than they. They stopped at
the Pension Mueller to get their luggage and banner, and to pay for the
breakfast of the day before which they had not had time to eat; then
they started for Geneva by the train. It rained. Through the streaming
windows they read the names of stations of aristocratic villeggiatura:
Clarens, Vevey, Lausanne; red chalets, little gardens of rare shrubs
passed them under a misty veil, the branches of the trees, the turrets
on the roofs, the galleries of the hotels all dripping.

Installed in one corner of a long railway carriage, on two seats facing
each other, the Alpinists had a downcast and discomfited appearance.
Bravida, very sour, complained of aches, and repeatedly asked Tartarin
with savage irony: "Eh _be!_you've seen it now, that dungeon of
Bonnivard's that you were so set on seeing... I think you have seen it,
_que?_" Excourbanies, voiceless for the first time in his life, gazed
piteously at the lake which escorted them the whole way: "Wate