On the desolate summits of Mont Blanc or the Finsteraarhorn this clambering apparel would have seemed very natural, but on the Rigi-Kulm ten feet from a railway track!—
The Alpinist, it is true, came from the side opposite to the station, and the state of his leggings testified to a long march through snow and mud.
For a moment he gazed at the hotel and its surrounding buildings, seemingly stupefied at finding, two thousand and more yards above the sea, a building of such importance, glazed galleries, colonnades, seven storeys of windows, and a broad portico stretching away between two rows of globe-lamps which gave to this mountain-summit the aspect of the Place de l’Opéra of a winter’s evening.
But, surprised as he may have been, the people in the hotel were more surprised still, and when he entered the immense antechamber an inquisitive hustling took place in the doorways of all the salons: gentlemen armed with billiard-cues, others with open newspapers, ladies still holding their book or their work pressed forward, while in the background, on the landing of the staircase, heads leaned over the baluster and between the chains of the lift.
The man said aloud, in a powerful deep bass voice, the chest voice of the South, resounding like cymbals:—
“Coquin de bon sort! what an atmosphere!”
Then he stopped short, to take off his cap and his spectacles.
He was suffocating.
The dazzle of the lights, the heat of the gas and furnace, in contrast with the cold darkness without, and this sumptuous display, these lofty ceilings, these porters bedizened with Regina Montium in letters of gold on their naval caps, the white cravats of the waiters and the battalion of Swiss girls in their native costumes coming forward at sound of the gong, all these things bewildered him for a second—but only one.
He felt himself looked at and instantly recovered his self-possession, like a comedian facing a full house.