"No."
"Why not?"
"Because—you might be killed."
"Good heavens, one would think I was Icarus, gluing a pair of wax wings on to my shoulder-blades for a flight into ether. I'm not exactly a novice at the game, you know, though I haven't done any snow-climbing. Why, you little donkey, you look pale. What's the matter with you?"
"Do you know what happened this morning—or rather last night?" the Boy replied to my question with another. "Did any of the hotel people tell you?"
"No. Don't be mysterious before breakfast. It isn't good for the digestion."
"Don't joke. I wasn't going to say anything about it till afterwards, in case you hadn't heard; but now I will. The femme de chambre told me. The news has just come that a young guide has died of exhaustion on the mountain, between the Observatory and the Grands Mulets. Two others who were with him had to leave him lying dead, after dragging the body down a long way."
At this inappropriate moment, our coffee, rolls, and honey were set before us, and the waiter, being an accomplished linguist, like most of his singularly gifted and enterprising kind, had heard and understood the last sentence. Bursting with gruesome information, he could not resist lightening himself of the burden, for our benefit and his own. "You can see the dead man lying on the snow, far up on the mountain," said he eagerly, "if you go into the town and look through one of the telescopes. I have seen him already; he is like a small, dark packet on the white ground, wrapped in his coat."
My appetite for breakfast suddenly dwindled, but not so my appetite for the climb. I was very sorry that a man had died on the mountain, but I could not bring him to life again by remaining on low levels, and so I remarked when the Boy asked me if I were still in the same mind concerning the ascent. "I shall see about a guide directly after breakfast," said I, "and when you hear a cannon fired in the town announcing the arrival of a party at the top of Mont Blanc, you will know it is an echo of my shout of Excelsior!"
"No, I won't know it," returned the Boy obstinately. "For one thing, the cannon might be fired for someone else, and besides, I won't be here."