“What stuff are you talking to me now?”
Whereupon Bompard made a terrible picture of the thousand deaths that awaited him; crevasses, avalanches, hurricanes, whirlwinds...
Tartarin interrupted him:—
“Ah! vaï, you rogue; and the Company? Isn’t Mont Blanc managed like the rest?”
“Managed?. the Company?..” said Bompard, bewildered, remembering nothing whatever of his tarasconade, which Tartarin now repeated to him word for word—Switzerland a vast Association, lease of the mountains, machinery of the crevasses; on which the former courier burst out laughing.
“What! you really believed me?.. Why, that was a galéjade a fib... Among us Taras-conese you ought surely to know what talking means...”
“Then,” asked Tartarin, with much emotion, “the Jungfrau was not prepared?”
“Of course not.”
“And if the rope had broken?..”
“Ah! my poor friend...”