At this inappropriate moment, our coffee, rolls, and honey were set before us, and the waiter, being an accomplished linguist, like most of his singularly gifted and enterprising kind, had heard and understood the last sentence.  Bursting with gruesome information, he could not resist lightening himself of the burden, for our benefit and his own.  “You can see the dead man lying on the snow, far up on the mountain,” said he eagerly, “if you go into the town and look through one of the telescopes.  I have seen him already; he is like a small, dark packet on the white ground, wrapped in his coat.”

My appetite for breakfast suddenly dwindled, but not so my appetite for the climb.  I was very sorry that a man had died on the mountain, but I could not bring him to life again by remaining on low levels, and so I remarked when the Boy asked me if I were still in the same mind concerning the ascent.  “I shall see about a guide directly after breakfast,” said I, “and when you hear a cannon fired in the town announcing the arrival of a party at the top of Mont Blanc, you will know it is an echo of my shout of Excelsior!”

“No, I won’t know it,” returned the Boy obstinately.  “For one thing, the cannon might be fired for someone else, and besides, I won’t be here.”

“Oh, you’ll go on with the Contessa?  But I shouldn’t be surprised if she were good-natured enough to wait at Chamounix to congratulate me when I come down.”

“No doubt she thinks enough of you to do that.  But what I mean is this:  if you go up Mont Blanc, I’m going too.”

“Nonsense!  You’ll do nothing of the kind.  You are a very plucky chap, but you’re not a Hercules yet, whatever you may develop into ten years from now.  No minors are permitted to ascend Mont Blanc.”

“That’s nonsense, if you like!  I shall go if you do.”

“I won’t take you.”

“I don’t ask you to.  I shan’t start until after you’ve gone, so, you see, you’ll have no power to prevent me.”

“You are simply talking rot, my dear boy.  Good heavens, you’d die of mountain sickness or exhaustion before you were half-way up.”

“Perhaps.  I know very little about my ability as a climber, for I’ve never made any big ascents, though I’ve scrambled about in the mountains a little at home.”

“It would be madness for you to attempt such a thing.  Why, don’t you know it taxes the endurance of a strong man?  You’ve only lately recovered from an illness; you told me so yourself.  I shan’t allow you to——­”

“You’re not my keeper, you know.”

“But we are friends, pals.  I ask you, as a great favour, to be sensible, and——­”

“I asked you as a great favour not to go up Mont Blanc.  Things happen.  I have a feeling that something might happen to you.  I should be—­wretched while you were gone.  I couldn’t sit still under the suspense, feeling as I do.  So I would follow your example.”