Henry came again to me after dinner.  The Count was going over the hills to the Forno glacier, and had asked him; but he would not go unless I wished it.  I bade him take my blessing and depart, and again he thanked me.

There was that night a band of thirty excellent performers to discourse music to the guests at the table—­being, as the saw says, us four and no more.  But the Count was greatly at his ease, and told us tales of the forests of Russia, of wolf-hunts, and of other hunts when the wolves were the hunters—­tales to make the blood run cold, yet not amiss being recounted over a bottle of Forzato in the bright dining-room.  For, though it was the beginning of May, the fire was sparkling and roaring upwards to dispel the chill which fell with the evening in these high regions.

There is talk of mountaineering and of the English madness for it.  The Count and Henry Fenwick are on a side.  Henry has been over long by himself on the Continent.  He is at present all for sport.  Every day he must kill something, that he may have something to show.  The Countess is for the hills, as I am, and the elan of going ever upward.  So we fall to talk about the mountains that are about us, and the Count says that it is an impossibility to climb them at this season of the year.  Avalanches are frequent, and the cliffs are slippery with the daily sun-thaw congealing in thin sheets upon the rocks.  He tells us that there is one peak immediately behind the hotel which yet remains unclimbed.  It is the Piz Langrev, and it rises like a tower.  No man could climb that mural precipice and live.

I tell them that I have never climbed in this country; but that I do not believe that there is a peak in, the world which cannot in some fashion or another be surmounted—­time, money, and pluck being provided wherewith to do it.

“You have a fine chance, my friend,” says the Count kindly, “for you will be canonised by the guides if you find a way up the front of the Langrev.  They would at once clap on a tariff which would make their fortunes, in order to tempt your wise countrymen, who are willing to pay vast sums to have the risk of breaking their necks, yet who will not invest in the best property in Switzerland when it is offered to them for a song.”

The Count is a little sore about his venture and its ill success.

The Countess, who sits opposite to me to-night, looks across and says, “I am sure that the peak can be climbed.  If Mr. Douglas says so, it can.”

“I thank you, Madame,” I say, bowing across at her.

Whereat the other two exclaim.  It is (they say) but an attempt on my part to claim credit with a lady, who is naturally on the side of the adventurous.  The thing is impossible.

“Countess,” say I, piqued by their insistency, “if you will give me a favour to be my drapeau de guerre, in twenty-four hours I shall plant your colours on the battlements of the Piz Langrev.”