A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER XLIII

  [My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed]

  Everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the principal street of thevillage--not on the sidewalks, but all over the street; everybody waslounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--forit was train-time. That is to say, it was diligence-time--the half-dozenbig diligences would soon be arriving from Geneva, and the village wasinterested, in many ways, in knowing how many people were coming andwhat sort of folk they might be. It was altogether the livest-lookingstreet we had seen in any village on the continent.

  The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music was loudand strong; we could not see this torrent, for it was dark, now, butone could locate it without a light. There was a large enclosed yard infront of the hotel, and this was filled with groups of villagers waitingto see the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists forthe morrow. A telescope stood in the yard, with its huge barrel cantedup toward the lustrous evening star. The long porch of the hotel waspopulous with tourists, who sat in shawls and wraps under the vastovershadowing bulk of Mont Blanc, and gossiped or meditated.

  Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed at one's veryelbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty cluster of slender minaretsthat were its neighbors, seemed to be almost over one's head. It wasnight in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere; the broadbases and shoulders of the mountains were in a deep gloom, but theirsummits swam in a strange rich glow which was really daylight, and yethad a mellow something about it which was very different from the hardwhite glare of the kind of daylight I was used to. Its radiance wasstrong and clear, but at the same time it was singularly soft, andspiritual, and benignant. No, it was not our harsh, aggressive,realistic daylight; it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or toheaven.

  I had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but I had not seendaylight and black night elbow to elbow before. At least I had not seenthe daylight resting upon an object sufficiently close at hand, before,to make the contrast startling and at war with nature.

  The daylight passed away. Presently the moon rose up behind some ofthose sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles of bare rock of which I havespoken--they were a little to the left of the crest of Mont Blanc,and right over our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high enoughtoward heaven to get entirely above them. She would show the glitteringarch of her upper third, occasionally, and scrape it along behind thecomblike row; sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuetteof ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide outof it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while thenext pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk withthe black exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacletook the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiestsilhouette, while it rested against the moon. The unillumined peaks andminarets, hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the otherswere painfully white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiareffect.

  But when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles, was hiddenbehind the stupendous white swell of Mont Blanc, the masterpiece of theevening was flung on the canvas. A rich greenish radiance sprang intothe sky from behind the mountain, and in this some airy shreds andribbons of vapor floated about, and being flushed with that strangetint, went waving to and fro like pale green flames. After a while,radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up andstretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain. It was aspectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it, and the sublimity.

  Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow streaming upfrom behind that dark and prodigious form and occupying the half of thedull and opaque heavens, was the most imposing and impressive marvel Ihad ever looked upon. There is no simile for it, for nothing is likeit. If a child had asked me what it was, I should have said, "Humbleyourself, in this presence, it is the glory flowing from the hidden headof the Creator." One falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes, intrying to explain mysteries to the little people. I could have foundout the cause of this awe-compelling miracle by inquiring, for it is notinfrequent at Mont Blanc,--but I did not wish to know. We have not thereverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know howit is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into the matter.

  We took a walk down street, a block or two, and a place where fourstreets met and the principal shops were clustered, found the groupsof men in the roadway thicker than ever--for this was the Exchange ofChamonix. These men were in the costumes of guides and porters, and werethere to be hired.

  The office of that great personage, the Guide-in-Chief of the ChamonixGuild of Guides, was near by. This guild is a close corporation, and isgoverned by strict laws. There are many excursion routes, some dangerousand some not, some that can be made safely without a guide, and somethat cannot. The bureau determines these things. Where it decides that aguide is necessary, you are forbidden to go without one. Neither are youallowed to be a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay.The guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man who is to takeyour life into his hands, you must take the worst in the lot, if it ishis turn. A guide's fee ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (forsome trifling excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according tothe distance traversed and the nature of the ground. A guide's feefor taking a person to the summit of Mont Blanc and back, is twentydollars--and he earns it. The time employed is usually three days, andthere is enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy andwealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be. The porter'sfee for the same trip is ten dollars. Several fools--no, I mean severaltourists--usually go together, and divide up the expense, and thus makeit light; for if only one f--tourist, I mean--went, he would have tohave several guides and porters, and that would make the matter costly.

  We went into the Chief's office. There were maps of mountains on thewalls; also one or two lithographs of celebrated guides, and a portraitof the scientist De Saussure.

  In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots and batons, andother suggestive relics and remembrances of casualties on Mount Blanc.In a book was a record of all the ascents which have ever been made,beginning with Nos. 1 and 2--being those of Jacques Balmat and DeSaussure, in 1787, and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet. Infact No. 685 was standing by the official table waiting to receive theprecious official diploma which should prove to his German household andto his descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough to climb tothe top of Mont Blanc. He looked very happy when he got his document; infact, he spoke up and said he _was_ happy.

  I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home who had nevertraveled, and whose desire all his life has been to ascend Mont Blanc,but the Guide-in-Chief rather insolently refused to sell me one. I wasvery much offended. I said I did not propose to be discriminated againston the account of my nationality; that he had just sold a diploma tothis German gentleman, and my money was a good as his; I would see toit that he couldn't keep his shop for Germans and deny his produce toAmericans; I would have his license taken away from him at the droppingof a handkerchief; if France refused to break him, I would make aninternational matter of it and bring on a war; the soil should bedrenched with blood; and not only that, but I would set up an oppositionshow and sell diplomas at half price.

  For two cents I would have done these things, too; but nobody offered metwo cents. I tried to move that German's feelings, but it could not bedone; he would not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me.I _told_ him my friend was sick and could not come himself, but hesaid he did not care a _verdammtes pfennig_, he wanted his diploma forhimself--did I suppose he was going to risk his neck for that thing andthen give it to a sick stranger? Indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't. Iresolved, then, that I would do all I could to injure Mont Blanc.

  In the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents which happenedon the mounta
in. It began with the one in 1820 when the Russian Dr.Hamel's three guides were lost in a crevice of the glacier, and itrecorded the delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-movingglacier forty-one years later. The latest catastrophe bore the date1877.

  We stepped out and roved about the village awhile. In front of thelittle church was a monument to the memory of the bold guide JacquesBalmat, the first man who ever stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc. Hemade that wild trip solitary and alone. He accomplished the ascenta number of times afterward. A stretch of nearly half a century laybetween his first ascent and his last one. At the ripe old age ofseventy-two he was climbing around a corner of a lofty precipice of thePic du Midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell. So he died inthe harness.

  He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go offstealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible gold among thoseperilous peaks and precipices. He was on a quest of that kind when helost his life. There was a statue to him, and another to De Saussure, inthe hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door of a room upstairsbore an inscription to the effect that that room had been occupiedby Albert Smith. Balmat and De Saussure discovered Mont Blanc--so tospeak--but it was Smith who made it a paying property. His articles in_Blackwood_ and his lectures on Mont Blanc in London advertised it andmade people as anxious to see it as if it owed them money.

  As we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red signal-lightglowing in the darkness of the mountainside. It seemed but a triflingway up--perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes. It was a luckypiece of sagacity in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met andget a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb tothat lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose. The man said thatthat lantern was on the Grands Mulets, some sixty-five hundred feetabove the valley! I know by our Riffelberg experience, that it wouldhave taken us a good part of a week to go up there. I would sooner notsmoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light.

  Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this mountain's closeproximity creates curious deceptions. For instance, one sees with thenaked eye a cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above andbeyond he sees the spot where that red light was located; he thinks hecould throw a stone from the one place to the other. But he couldn't,for the difference between the two altitudes is more than three thousandfeet. It looks impossible, from below, that this can be true, but it istrue, nevertheless.

  While strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all the time, and westill kept an eye on her after we got back to the hotel portico. I hada theory that the gravitation of refraction, being subsidiary toatmospheric compensation, the refrangibility of the earth's surfacewould emphasize this effect in regions where great mountain rangesoccur, and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic forcestogether, the one upon the other, as to prevent the moon from risinghigher than 12,200 feet above sea-level. This daring theory had beenreceived with frantic scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and withan eager silence by others. Among the former I may mention Prof. H----y;and among the latter Prof. T----l. Such is professional jealousy; ascientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did notstart himself. There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people.Indeed, they always resent it when I call them brother. To show how fartheir ungenerosity can carry them, I will state that I offered to letProf. H----y publish my great theory as his own discovery; I even beggedhim to do it; I even proposed to print it myself as his theory. Insteadof thanking me, he said that if I tried to fasten that theory on him hewould sue me for slander. I was going to offer it to Mr. Darwin, whomI understood to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to methat perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did not concernheraldry.

  But I am glad now, that I was forced to father my intrepid theorymyself, for, on the night of which I am writing, it was triumphantlyjustified and established. Mont Blanc is nearly sixteen thousand feethigh; he hid the moon utterly; near him is a peak which is 12,216 feethigh; the moon slid along behind the pinnacles, and when she approachedthat one I watched her with intense interest, for my reputation as ascientist must stand or fall by its decision. I cannot describe theemotions which surged like tidal waves through my breast when I saw themoon glide behind that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing morethan two feet four inches of her upper rim above it; I was secure, then.I knew she could rise no higher, and I was right. She sailed behind allthe peaks and never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one ofthem.

  While the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers, its shadow wasflung athwart the vacant heavens--a long, slanting, clean-cut, darkray--with a streaming and energetic suggestion of _force_ about it, suchas the ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords. Itwas curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly object cast uponso intangible a field as the atmosphere.

  We went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but I woke up,after about three hours, with throbbing temples, and a head which wasphysically sore, outside and in. I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy,unrefreshed. I recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent.In the mountain villages of Switzerland, and along the roads, one hasalways the roar of the torrent in his ears. He imagines it is music, andhe thinks poetic things about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and islulled to sleep by it. But by and by he begins to notice that hishead is very sore--he cannot account for it; in solitudes where theprofoundest silence reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuousroar in his ears, which is like what he would experience if he hadsea-shells pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is drowsyand absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind, he cannot keep holdof a thought and follow it out; if he sits down to write, his vocabularyis empty, no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do,and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed, listeningpainfully to the muffled roar of a distant train in his ears; in hissoundest sleep the strain continues, he goes on listening, alwayslistening intently, anxiously, and wakes at last, harassed, irritable,unrefreshed. He cannot manage to account for these things.

  Day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights in a sleeping-car.It actually takes him weeks to find out that it is those persecutingtorrents that have been making all the mischief. It is time for himto get out of Switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered thecause, the misery is magnified several fold. The roar of the torrent ismaddening, then, for his imagination is assisting; the physical painit inflicts is exquisite. When he finds he is approaching one of thosestreams, his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track andavoid the implacable foe.

  Eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents had departedfrom me, the roar and thunder of the streets of Paris brought it allback again. I moved to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace.About midnight the noises dulled away, and I was sinking to sleep,when I heard a new and curious sound; I listened: evidently some joyouslunatic was softly dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head.I had to wait for him to get through, of course. Five long, long minuteshe smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed, then something fell witha thump on the floor. I said to myself "There--he is pulling off hisboots--thank heavens he is done." Another slight pause--he went toshuffling again! I said to myself, "Is he trying to see what he can dowith only one boot on?" Presently came another pause and another thumpon the floor. I said "Good, he has pulled off his other boot--_now_ heis done." But he wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again. I said,"Confound him, he is at it in his slippers!" After a little came thatsame old pause, and right after it that thump on the floor once more.I said, "Hang him, he had on _two_ pair of boots!" For an hour thatmagician went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed asmany as twenty-five pair, and I was hovering on the verge of lunacy. Igot my gun and stole up there. The fellow was in the midst of an acre ofsprawling boots, and he had a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, I mean_polishing_ it. The mystery w
as explained. He hadn't been dancing. Hewas the "Boots" of the hotel, and was attending to business.