or the maid on duty; a fat, white face, all
pitted with the small-pox, a perfect gruyere cheese, from which nothing
intelligible could be drawn, except that she was of "bon famille," and
never entered the rooms of the gentlemen unless they were there.

"A queer thing, _au mouain_," thought Tartarin, turning and returning
the letter, and much impressed by it. For a moment the name of
Coste-calde crossed his mind,--Costecalde, informed of his projects of
ascension, and endeavouring to prevent them by manoeuvres and threats.
On reflection, this appeared to him unlikely, and he ended by persuading
himself that the letter was a joke... perhaps those little misses who
had laughed at him so heartily... they are so free, those English and
American young girls!

The second breakfast gong sounded. He put the letter in his pocket:
"After all, we'll soon see..." and the formidable grimace with which he
accompanied that reflection showed the heroism of his soul.

Fresh surprise when he sat down to table. Instead of his pretty
neighbour, "whom Love had curled with gold," he perceived the vulture
throat of an old Englishwoman, whose long lappets swept the cloth. It
was rumoured about him that the young lady and her companions had left
the hotel by one of the early morning trains.

"'_Cri nom!_ I'm fooled..." exclaimed aloud the Italian tenor, who, the
evening before, had so rudely signified to Tartarin that he could not
speak French. He must have learned it in a single night! The tenor
rose, threw down his napkin, and hurried away, leaving the Southerner
completely nonplussed.

Of all the guests of the night before, none now remained but himself.
That is always so on the Rigi-Kulm; no one stays there more than
twenty-four hours. In other respects the scene was invariably the same;
the compote-dishes in files divided the factions. But on this particular
morning the Rices triumphed by a great majority, reinforced by certain
illustrious personages, and the Prunes did not, as they say, have it all
their own way.

Tartarin, without taking sides with one or the other, went up to his
room before the dessert, buckled his bag, and asked for his bill. He
had had enough of _Regina Montium_ and its dreary table d'hote of deaf
mutes.

Abruptly recalled to his Alpine madness by the touch of his ice-axe, his
crampons, and the rope in which he rewound himself, he burned to attack
a real mountain, a summit deprived of a lift and a photographer