ir _sirop de cadavre_.

Libations made and a few last words exchanged, they embraced, Bezuquet
whistling as usual in his moustache, adown which rolled great tears.

"Adieu, _au mouain_"... said Tartarin in a rough tone, feeling that
he was about to weep himself, and as the shutter of the door had been
lowered the hero was compelled to creep out of the pharmacy on his hands
and knees.

This was one of the trials of the journey now about to begin.

Three days later he landed in Vitznau at the foot of the Rigi. As the
mountain for his debut, the Rigi had attracted him by its low altitude
(5900 feet, about ten times that of Mount Terrible, the highest of the
Alpines) and also on account of the splendid panorama to be seen from
the summit--the Bernese Alps marshalled in line, all white and rosy,
around the lakes, awaiting the moment when the great ascensionist should
cast his ice-axe upon one of them.

Certain of being recognized on the way and perhaps followed--'t was
a foible of his to believe that throughout all France his fame was as
great and popular as it was at Tarascon--he had made a great detour
before entering Switzerland and did not don his accoutrements until
after he had crossed the frontier. Luckily for him; for never could his
armament have been contained in one French railway-carriage.

But, however convenient the Swiss compartments might be, the Alpinist,
hampered with utensils to which he was not, as yet, accustomed, crushed
toe-nails with his crampons, harpooned travellers who came in his way
with the point of his alpenstock, and wherever he went, in the stations,
the steamers, and the hotel salons, he excited as much amazement as he
did maledictions, avoidance, and angry looks, which he could not explain
to himself though his affectionate and communicative nature suffered
from them. To complete his discomfort, the sky was always gray, with
flocks of clouds and a driving rain.

It rained at Bale, on the little white houses, washed and rewashed by
the hands of a maid and the waters of heaven. It rained at Lucerne, on
the quay where the trunks and boxes appeared to be saved, as it were,
from shipwreck, and when he arrived at the station of Vitznau, on the
shore of the lake of the Four-Cantons, the same deluge was descending
on the verdant slopes of the Rigi, straddled by inky clouds and striped
with torrents that leaped from rock to rock in cascades of misty sleet,
bringing down as they came the loose