He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible gold among those perilous peaks and precipices.  He was on a quest of that kind when he lost his life.  There was a statue to him, and another to De Saussure, in the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door of a room upstairs bore an inscription to the effect that that room had been occupied by Albert Smith.  Balmat and De Saussure discovered Mont Blanc—­so to speak—­but it was Smith who made it a paying property.  His articles in Blackwood and his lectures on Mont Blanc in London advertised it and made 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-light glowing in the darkness of the mountainside.  It seemed but a trifling way up—­perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes.  It was a lucky piece of sagacity in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and get a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb to that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose.  The man said that that lantern was on the Grands Mulets, some sixty-five hundred feet above the valley!  I know by our Riffelberg experience, that it would have taken us a good part of a week to go up there.  I would sooner not smoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light.

Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this mountain’s close proximity creates curious deceptions.  For instance, one sees with the naked eye a cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above and beyond he sees the spot where that red light was located; he thinks he could 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 thousand feet.  It looks impossible, from below, that this can be true, but it is true, nevertheless.

While strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all the time, and we still kept an eye on her after we got back to the hotel portico.  I had a theory that the gravitation of refraction, being subsidiary to atmospheric compensation, the refrangibility of the earth’s surface would emphasize this effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur, and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic forces together, the one upon the other, as to prevent the moon from rising higher than 12,200 feet above sea-level.  This daring theory had been received with frantic scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and with an eager silence by others.  Among the former I may mention Prof.  H——­y; and among the latter Prof.  T——­l.  Such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.  There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people.  Indeed, they always resent it when I call them brother.  To show how far their ungenerosity can carry them, I will state that I offered to let