III.
Paul has climbed the Pic du Midi of Bigorre: here is his journal of the trip:—
“Set out in the mist at four o’clock in the morning. The pastures of Tau through the mist; the mist is distinctly visible. The lake of Oncet through the mist; same view.
“Howker of the Five Bears. Several whitish or grayish spots on a whitish or grayish ground. To form an idea of it, look at five or six wafers, of a dirty white, stuck behind a leaf of blotting-paper.
“Beginning of the steep rise; ascent at a footpace, head of one to tail of another; this recalls to me Leblanc’s riding-school, and the fifty horses advancing gracefully in the saw-dust, each one with his nose against the tail of the one before him, and his tail against the nose of his follower, as it used to be on Thursdays, the school-day for going out and for the riding lesson. I cradle myself voluptuously in the poetical remembrance.
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“First hour: view of the back of my guide and the hind-quarters of his horse. The guide has a vest of bottle-green velvet, darned in two places, on the right and on the left; the horse is a dirty brown and bears the marks of the whip. Several big pebbles in the pathway. Fog. I meditate on German philosophy. "Second hour: the view enlarges; I perceive the left eye of the guide’s horse. That eye is blind; it loses nothing.
“Third hour: the view broadens more. View of the hind-quarters of two horses and two tourists’ vests fifteen feet above us. Gray vests, red girdles, berets. They swear and I swear; that consoles us a little. .
“Fourth hour: joy and transports; the guide promises me for the summit the view of a sea of clouds.
“Arrival: view of the sea of clouds. Unhappily we are in one of the clouds. Appearance that of a vapor bath when one is in the bath.
“Benefits: cold in the head, rheumatism in the feet, lumbago, freezing, such happiness as a man might feel who had danced attendance for eight hours in an ante-chamber without fire.
“And this happens often?
“Twice out of three times. The guides swear it does not.”
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