“What have I done?” I answered, with heat.

“What have you done?  You’ve got up at half past seven o’clock in the evening to see the sun rise, that’s what you’ve done.”

“And have you done any better, I’d like to know?  I’ve always used to get up with the lark, till I came under the petrifying influence of your turgid intellect.”

“You used to get up with the lark—­Oh, no doubt —­you’ll get up with the hangman one of these days.  But you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this, in a red blanket, on a forty-foot scaffold on top of the Alps.  And no end of people down here to boot; this isn’t any place for an exhibition of temper.”

And so the customary quarrel went on.  When the sun was fairly down, we slipped back to the hotel in the charitable gloaming, and went to bed again.  We had encountered the horn-blower on the way, and he had tried to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset, which we did see, but for the sunrise, which we had totally missed; but we said no, we only took our solar rations on the “European plan”—­pay for what you get.  He promised to make us hear his horn in the morning, if we were alive.

CHAPTER XXIX [Looking West for Sunrise]

He kept his word.  We heard his horn and instantly got up.  It was dark and cold and wretched.  As I fumbled around for the matches, knocking things down with my quaking hands, I wished the sun would rise in the middle of the day, when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and one wasn’t sleepy.  We proceeded to dress by the gloom of a couple sickly candles, but we could hardly button anything, our hands shook so.  I thought of how many happy people there were in Europe, Asia, and America, and everywhere, who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not have to get up and see the Rigi sunrise—­people who did not appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would get up in the morning wanting more boons of Providence.  While thinking these thoughts I yawned, in a rather ample way, and my upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door, and while I was mounting a chair to free myself, Harris drew the window-curtain, and said: 

“Oh, this is luck!  We shan’t have to go out at all —­yonder are the mountains, in full view.”

That was glad news, indeed.  It made us cheerful right away.  One could see the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night.  Fully clothed, and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an Alpine sunrise was going to look by candlelight.  By and by a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowy wastes—­but there the effort seemed to stop.  I said, presently: