Hanaud smiled.
"How I understand that! The first walk after an ordeal! The first walk of a convalescent after an operation! The first walk of a defendant found innocent of a grave charge! It must be worth taking, that walk. But console yourself, my friend, for the postponement of your luncheon. You have met me!" and he struck something of an attitude.
Now Jim had the gravest objection to anything theatrical, especially when displayed in public places, and he answered stiffly, "That is a pleasure, to be sure."
Hanaud grinned. To make Jim look "proper" was becoming to him an unfailing entertainment.
"Now I reward you," he said, though for what Jim could not imagine. "You shall come with me. At this hour, on the top of old Philippe le Bon's Terrace Tower, we shall have the world to ourselves."
He led the way into the great courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville. Behind the long wing which faced them, a square, solid tower rose a hundred and fifty feet high above the ground. With Frobisher at his heels, Hanaud climbed the three hundred and sixteen steps and emerged upon the roof into the blue and gold of a cloudless May in France. They looked eastwards, and the beauty of the scene took Frobisher's breath away. Just in front, the slender apse of Notre Dame, fine as a lady's ornament, set him wondering how in the world through all these centuries it had endured; and beyond, rich and green and wonderful, stretched the level plain with its shining streams and nestling villages.
Hanaud sat down upon a stone bench and stretched out his arm across the parapet. "Look!" he cried eagerly, proudly. "There is what I brought you here to see. Look!"
Jim looked and saw, and his face lit up. Far away on the horizon's edge, unearthly in its beauty, hung the great mass of Mont Blanc; white as silver, soft as velvet, and here and there sparkling with gold as though the flame of a fire leaped and sank.
"Oho!" said Hanaud as he watched Jim's face. "So we have that in common. You perhaps have stood on the top of that mountain?"
"Five times," Jim answered, with a smile made up of many memories. "I hope to do so again."