Among our Tarasconese, fortunately, impressions do not last long. Five minutes later Tartarin was going up the terraces of Montreux with a lively step in quest of the Pension Müller and his Alpinists, who must certainly be waiting breakfast for him; and his whole person breathed a relief, a joy at getting rid finally of that dangerous acquaintance. As he walked along he emphasized with many energetic nods the eloquent explanations which Sonia would not wait to hear, but which he gave to himself mentally: Bé!.. yes, despotism certainly... He didn’t deny that... but from that to action, boufre!.. And then, to make it his profession to shoot despots!.. Why, if all oppressed peoples applied to him—just as the Arabs did to Bombonnel whenever a panther roamed round their village—he couldn’t suffice for them all, never!
At this moment a hired carriage coming down the hill at full speed cut short his monologue. He had scarcely time to jump upon the sidewalk with a “Take care, you brute!” when his cry of anger was changed to one of stupefaction: “Quès aco!.. Boudiou!.. Not possible!..”
I give you a thousand guesses to say what he saw in that old landau...
The delegation! the full delegation, Bravida, Pascalon, Excourbaniès, piled upon the back seat, pale, horror-stricken, ghastly, and two gendarmes in front of them, muskets in hand! The sight of all those profiles, motionless and mute, visible through the narrow frame of the carriage window, was like a nightmare. Nailed to the ground, as formerly on the ice by his Kennedy crampons, Tartarin was gazing at that fantastic vehicle flying along at a gallop, followed at full speed by a flock of schoolboys, their atlases swinging on their backs, when a voice shouted in his ears: “And here’s the fourth!..” At the same time clutched, garotted, bound, he, too, was hoisted into a locati with gendarmes, among them an officer armed with a gigantic cavalry sabre, which he held straight up from between his knees, the point of it touching the roof of the vehicle.
Tartarin wanted to speak, to explain. Evidently there must be some mistake... He told his name, his nation, demanded his consul, and named a seller of Swiss honey, Ichener, whom he had met at the fair at Beaucaire. Then, on the persistent silence of his captors, he bethought him that this might be another bit of machinery in Bompard’s fairyland; so, addressing the officer, he said with sly air: “For fun, qué!.. ha! vaï, you rogue, I know very well it is all a joke.”
“Not another word, or I’ll gag you,” said the officer, rolling terrible eyes as if he meant to spit him on his sabre.
The other kept quiet, and stirred no more, but gazed through the door at the lake, the tall mountains of a humid green, the hotels and pensions with variegated roofs and gilded signs visible for miles, and on the slopes, as at the Rigi, a coming and going of market and provision baskets, and (like the Rigi again) a comical little railway, a dangerous mechanical plaything crawling up the height to Glion, and—to complete the resemblance to Regina Montium—a pouring, beating rain, an exchange of water and mist from the sky to Leman and Leman to the sky, the clouds descending till they touched the waves.
The vehicle crossed a drawbridge between a cluster of little shops of “chamoiseries,” penknives, corkscrews, pocket-combs, etc., and stopped in the courtyard of an old castle overgrown with weeds, flanked by two round pepper-pot towers with black balconies guarded by parapets and supported by beams. Where was he? Tartarin learned where when he heard the officer of gendarmerie discussing the matter with the concierge of the castle, a fat man in a Greek cap who was jangling a bunch of rusty keys.
“Solitary confinement... but I haven’t a place for him. The others have taken all... unless we put him in Bonnivard’s dungeon.”
“Yes, put him in Bonnivard’s dungeon; that’s good enough for him,” ordered the captain; and it was done as he said.