“H’m. Let me see. It was in 1786. I was five-and-twenty; that makes me seventy-two to-day. What a fellow I was! With the devil’s own calves and hell’s own stomach. I could have gone three days without bite or sup. I had to do so once when I got lost on the Buet. I just munched a little snow, and that was all. And from time to time I looked across at Mont Blanc saying, ‘Say what you like, my beauty, and do what you like. Some day I shall climb you.’”
Balmat then tells us how he persuaded his wife that he was on his way to collect crystals. He climbed steadily throughout the day, and night found him on a great snowfield somewhere near the Grand Plateau. The situation was sufficiently serious. To be benighted on Mont Blanc is a fate which would terrify a modern climber, even if he were one of a large party. Balmat was alone, and the mental strain of a night alone on a glacier can only be understood by those who have felt the uncanny terror that often attacks the solitary wanderer even in the daytime. Fortunately, Balmat does not seem to have been bothered with nerves. His fears expressed themselves in tangible shape.
“Presently the moon rose pale and encircled by clouds, which hid it altogether at about eleven o’clock. At the same time a rascally mist came on from the Aiguille du Gouter, which had no sooner reached me than it began to spit snow in my face. Then I wrapped my head in my handkerchief, and said: ‘Fire away. You’re not hurting me.’ At every instant I heard the falling avalanches making a noise like thunder. The glaciers split, and at every split I felt the mountain move. I was neither hungry nor thirsty; and I had an extraordinary headache which took me at the crown of the skull, and worked its way down to the eyelids. All this time, the mist never lifted. My breath had frozen on my handkerchief; the snow had made my clothes wet; I felt as if I were naked. Then I redoubled the rapidity of my movements, and began to sing, in order to drive away the foolish thoughts that came into my head. My voice was lost in the snow; no echo answered me. I held my tongue, and was afraid. At two o’clock the sky paled towards the east. With the first beams of day, I felt my courage coming back to me. The sun rose, battling with the clouds which covered the mountain top; my hope was that it would scatter them; but at about four o’clock the clouds got denser, and I recognised that it would be impossible for me just then to go any further.”
He spent a second night on the mountain, which was, on the whole, more comfortable than the first, as he passed it on the rocks of the Montagne de la Côte. Before he returned home, Balmat planned a way to the summit. And now comes the most amazing part of the story. He had no sooner returned home than he met three men starting off for the mountain. A modern mountaineer, who had spent two nights, alone, high up on Mont Blanc, would consider himself lucky to reach Chamounix alive; once there, he would go straight to bed for some twenty-four hours. But Balmat was built of iron. He calmly proposed to accompany his friends; and, having changed his stockings, he started out again for the great mountain, on which he had spent the previous two nights. The party consisted of François Paccard, Joseph Carrier, and Jean Michel Tournier. They slept on the mountain; and next morning they were joined by two other guides, Pierre Balmat and Marie Couttet. They did not get very far, and soon turned back—all save Balmat. Balmat, who seems to have positively enjoyed his nights on the glacier, stayed behind.
“I laid my knapsack on the snow, drew my handkerchief over my face like a curtain, and made the best preparations that I could for passing a night like the previous one. However, as I was about two thousand feet higher, the cold was more intense; a fine powdery snow froze me; I felt a heaviness and an irresistible desire to sleep; thoughts, sad as death, came into my mind, and I knew well that these sad thoughts and this desire to sleep were a bad sign, and that if I had the misfortune to close my eyes I should never open them again. From the place where I was, I saw, ten thousand feet below me, the lights of Chamounix, where my comrades were warm and tranquil by their firesides or in their beds. I said to myself: ‘Perhaps there is not a man among them who gives a thought to me. Or, if there is one of them who thinks of Balmat, no doubt he pokes his fire into a blaze, or draws his blanket over his ears, saying, ‘That ass of a Jacques is wearing out his shoe leather. Courage, Balmat!’”
Balmat may have been a braggart, but it is sometimes forgotten by his critics that he had something to brag about. Even if he had never climbed Mont Blanc, this achievement would have gone down to history as perhaps the boldest of all Alpine adventures. To sleep one night, alone, above the snow line is a misfortune that has befallen many climbers. Some have died, and others have returned, thankful. One may safely say that no man has started out for the same peak, and willingly spent a third night under even worse conditions than the first. Three nights out of four in all. We are charitably assuming that this part of Balmat’s story is true. There is at least no evidence to the contrary.
Naturally enough, Balmat did not prosecute the attempt at once. He returned to Chamounix, and sought out the local doctor, Michel Paccard. Paccard agreed to accompany him. They left Chamounix at five in the evening, and slept on the top of the Montagne de la Côte. They started next morning at two o’clock. According to Balmat’s account, the doctor played a sorry part in the day’s climb. It was only by some violent encouragement that he was induced to proceed at all.
“After I had exhausted all my eloquence, and saw that I was only losing my time, I told him to keep moving about as best he could. He heard without understanding, and kept answering ‘Yes, yes,’ in order to get rid of me. I perceived that he must be suffering from cold. So I left him the bottle, and set off alone, telling him that I would come back and look for him. ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered. I advised him not to sit still, and started off. I had not gone thirty steps before I turned round and saw that, instead of running about and stamping his feet, he had sat down, with his back to the wind—a precaution of a sort. From that minute onwards, the track presented no great difficulty; but, as I rose higher and higher, the air became more and more unfit to breathe. Every few steps, I had to stop like a man in a consumption. It seemed to me that I had no lungs left, and that my chest was hollow. Then I folded my handkerchief like a scarf, tied it over my mouth and breathed through it; and that gave me a little relief. However, the cold gripped me more and more; it took me an hour to go a quarter of a league. I looked down as I walked; but, finding myself in a spot which I did not recognise, I raised my eyes, and saw that I had at last reached the summit of Mont Blanc.
“Then I looked around me, fearing to find that I was mistaken, and to catch sight of some aiguille or some fresh point above me; if there had been, I should not have had the strength to climb it. For it seems to me that the joints of my legs were only held in their proper place by my breeches. But no—it was not so. I had reached the end of my journey. I had come to a place where no one—where not the eagle or the chamois—had ever been before me. I had got there, alone, without any other help than that of my own strength and my own will. Everything that surrounded me seemed to be my property. I was the King of Mont Blanc—the statue of this tremendous pedestal.
“Then I turned towards Chamounix, waving my hat at the end of my stick, and saw, by the help of my glass, that my signals were being answered.”
Balmat returned, found the doctor in a dazed condition, and piloted him to the summit, which they reached shortly after six o’clock.
“It was seven o’clock in the evening; we had only two-and-a-half hours of daylight left; we had to go. I took Paccard by the arm, and once more waved my hat as a last signal to our friends in the valley; and the descent began. There was no track to guide us; the wind was so cold that even the snow on the surface had not thawed; all that we could see on the ice was the little holes made by the iron points of our stick. Paccard was no better than a child, devoid of energy and will-power, whom I had to guide in the easy places and carry in the hard ones. Night was already beginning to fall when we crossed the crevasse; it finally overtook us at the foot of the Grand Plateau. At every instant, Paccard stopped, declaring that he could go no further; at every halt, I obliged him to resume his march, not by persuasion, for he understood nothing but force. At eleven, we at last escaped from the regions of ice, and set foot upon terra firma; the last afterglow of the sunset had disappeared an hour before. Then I allowed Paccard to stop, and prepared to wrap him up again in the blanket, when I perceived that he was making no use whatever of his hands. I drew his attention to the fact. He answered that that was likely enough, as he no longer had any sensation in them. I drew off his gloves, and found that his hands were white and, as it were, dead; for my own part, I felt a numbness in the hand on which I wore his little glove in place of my own thick one. I told him we had three frost-bitten hands between us; but he seemed not to mind in the least, and only wanted to lie down and go to sleep. As for myself, however, he told me to rub the affected part with snow, and the remedy was not far to seek. I commenced operations upon him and concluded them upon myself. Soon the blood resumed its course, and with the blood, the heat returned, but accompanied by acute pain, as though every vein were being pricked with needles. I wrapped my baby up in his blanket, and put him to bed under the shelter of a rock. We ate a little, drank a glass of something, squeezed ourselves as close to each other as we could, and went to sleep.
“At six the next morning Paccard awoke me. ‘It’s strange, Balmat,’ he said, ‘I hear the birds singing, and don’t see the daylight. I suppose I can’t open my eyes.’ Observe that his eyes were as wide open as the Grand Duke’s. I told him he must be mistaken, and could see quite well. Then he asked me to give him a little snow, melted it in the hollow of his hand, and rubbed his eyelids with it. When this was done, he could see no better than before; only his eyes hurt him a great deal more. ‘Come now, it seems that I am blind, Balmat. How am I to get down?’ he continued. ‘Take hold of the strap of my knapsack and walk behind me; that’s what you must do.’ And in this style we came down, and reached the village of La Côte. There, as I feared that my wife would be uneasy about me, I left the doctor, who found his way home by fumbling with his stick, and returned to my own house. Then, for the first time, I saw what I looked like. I was unrecognisable. My eyes were red; my face was black; my lips were blue. Whenever I laughed or yawned, the blood spurted from my lips and cheeks; and I could only see in a dark room.”
“‘And did Dr. Paccard continue blind?’ ‘Blind, indeed! He died eleven months ago, at the age of seventy-nine, and could still read without spectacles. Only his eyes were diabolically red.’ ‘As the consequence of his ascent?’ ‘Not a bit of it.’ ‘Why, then?’ ‘The old boy was a bit of a tippler.’ And so saying Jacques Balmat emptied his third bottle.”