"But, the omelette..." he protested, when I descended. As I ate and drank he bustled about the hut, voluble in a queer clipped patois; a gossip, removed by choice or destiny 5,000 feet above his fellows, to live in company with his dog in this hut. I looked round it for some clue to his pursuits: a couple of ice-axes and some coils of rope behind the door; a pair of skis in a corner; a shelf for crockery, with a powder-flask and a rosary hanging from a nail. A bed, a table and chair, a charcoal stove, and a few cooking implements: that was all.
After I had finished eating he led me outside, and, pointing with a gnarled forefinger, named one by one the peaks in view. He spoke of them familiarly—as one who refers to constant and intimate companions, but once or twice I had to shake my head in despair. There might have been a wedge-shaped opal-tinted shadow on the far-off haze, but I could not confess to more. The little hawk-eyed man chuckled indulgently.
"Peut-être bien, peut-être bien. Mais j'ai l'habitude, moi." Generously put, but I felt that I had failed in this supreme test, and it was significant that he no longer tutoyait as at his first rapturous greeting.
An hour and a half later, as I was nearing the expanse of turf on my downward journey, I encountered an ancient of days leading a charcoal-laden donkey: to be more exact, the donkey appeared to be leading him. The three of us halted to exchange amenities, and I proffered the old man a cigar which remained in the bottom of my wallet. The ancient took it readily enough, then looked searchingly round as if we were a pair of conspirators in a drama. I was about to inquire the reason for these precautions when he laid a forefinger to his nose, and half-closing one rheumy eye, whispered huskily:
"Vous êtes contrebandier—oui?"
Twenty-four hours earlier I should have repudiated the suggestion. But after my communing with mountains, and the great solitude of the snows, one man's occupation seemed as good as another's. After all, it is not easy to give pleasure to one's fellows, and if it added flavour to the tobacco to suggest it had been smuggled from over the frontier, then a smuggler I would be.
I nodded darkly, and we shook hands. With very little encouragement I think he would have embraced me. "An adventurous life!" wheezed the hoary sinner as we parted; "ah, but one of brave adventure!"
It was curious how the phrase recurred. First the bagman, then the village priest at Beuil, and now this withered charbonnier. I reached the village (the clock was striking noon) inclined to wonder whether, after all, I was the dull dog I had hitherto decided myself to be. But be it here recorded that this transient doubt I have since ascribed to the mountain air.
Already the hours were forging afresh the links that bound me to the sea, and soon after six I climbed wearily into the train for Nice. The compartment was crowded: nevertheless, at a little station lower down the Var valley, the door opened to admit four new-comers. Votaries of "La Chasse" returning from a day's shooting. They combined a varied taste in sporting attire with a fine disregard for the precautions usually observed by bearers of lethal weapons. One in particular, who had omitted to uncock his gun, held it so that the muzzle wavered between the pit of my stomach and his companion's ear. It may not have been loaded, but I was too tired to investigate or expostulate. Shot by shot, mile by mile, they lived through their day again, while the carriage applauded, commiserated, and hung breathless over the tale of prowess. The bag contained one greenfinch. Yet it needed but a glance at the principal narrator's flashing eye and vivid gestures to realise that none but the most exacting will judge the day by its material result.
I had not even a greenfinch to show, yet I doubt not that the five of us went to bed that night equally aglow with a sense of "the brave adventure." And when all is said and done, life would smack of the heroic often enough were but our audience a little more appreciative and the stage less cramped.