“Well, we made the passage safely, and toiled up the steep, loose moraine beyond—­to find the track over which was harder than crossing the glacier.  But we did it, and struck the path along the hillside, which leads by the Mauvais Pas (the mauvais quart d’heure) to the little cabaret called the Chapeau.  This tavern, too, was shut and dismal.  It did not matter.  We sat like sparrows on a railing, and munched our egg-sandwiches and drank our wine in a sort of glorious stupefaction.  For right opposite us was the vast glacier-fall, whose crashing foam was towers and parapets of ice, that went over and rolled into the valley below, a ruin of thunder.

“Far beyond, where the mouth of the gorge spread out littered with monstrous destruction, we saw the hundred threads of the glacier streams collect into a single rope of silver, that went drawn between the hills, a highway of water.  It was all a majestic panorama of grey and pearly white—­the sky, the torrents, the mountains; but the blue and rusty green of the stone pines, flung abroad in hanging woods and coppices, broke up and distributed the infinite serenity of the snow fields.

“Presently, having drunk deep of rich content, we rose to retrace our steps.  For, spurred by vanity, we must be returning the way we had come, to show our confident experience of glaciers.

“All went well.  Actually we had passed over near two-thirds of the ice-bed, when a touch on my arm stayed me, and ma mie looked into my eyes, very comical and insolent.

“‘Little cabbage,’ she said; ’will you not put your new knowledge to account?’

“‘But how, my soul?’

“She laughed and pressed my arm to her side.  Her heart fluttered like a nestling after its first flight.

“’To rest on the little prowess of a small adventure!  No, no!  Shall he who has learnt to swim be always content to bathe in shallow water?’

“I was speechless as I gazed on her.

“‘Behold, then!’ she cried.  ’We have opposed ourselves to this problem of the ice, and we have mastered it.  See how it rears itself to the inaccessible peaks, the which to reach the poor innocents expend themselves over rocks and drifts.  But why should one not climb the mountain by way of the glacier?’

“‘Fidele!’ I gasped.

“‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, nodding her head; ’but poor men!  They are mules.  They spill their blood on the scaling ladders when the town gate is open.’

“Again I cried ‘Fidele!’

“‘But, yes,’ she said, ’it needs a woman to see.  It is but two o’clock.  Let us ascend the glacier, like a staircase; and presently we shall stand upon the summit of the mountain.  Those last little peaks above the ice can be of no importance.’

“I was touched, astounded by the sublimity of her idea.  Had no one, then, ever thought of this before?

“We began the ascent.

“I swear we must have toiled upwards half a mile, when the catastrophe took place.