Culchard descends from the Clouds.
Scene—in Front of the Hôtel Bodenhaus at Splügen. The Diligence For Bellinzona is having its team attached. An elderly Englishwoman is sitting on her trunk, trying to run through the last hundred pages of a novel from the Hotel Library before her departure. Podbury is in the Hotel, negotiating for sandwiches. Culchard is practising his Italian upon a very dingy gentleman in smoked spectacles, with a shawl round his throat.
The Dingy Italian (suddenly discovering Culchard's nationality). Ecco, siete Inglese! Lat us spika Ingelis. I onnerstan' 'im to ze bottomside. (Laboriously, to Culchard, who tries to conceal his chagrin.) 'Ow menni time you employ to go since Coire at here? (C. nods with vague encouragement.) Vich manners of vezzer you vere possess troo your travels—mosh ommerella? (C.'s eyes grow vacant.) Ha, I tink it vood! Zis day ze vicket root sall 'ave plenti 'orse to pull, &c., &c. (Here Podbury comes up, and puts some rugs in the coupé of the diligence.) You sit at ze beginning-end, hey? better, you tink, zan ze mizzle? I too, zen, sall ride at ze front—we vill spika Ingelis, altro!
Podb. (overhearing this, with horror). One minute, Culchard. (He draws him aside.) I say, for goodness' sake, don't let's have that old organ-grinding Johnny in the coupé with us!
Culch. Organ-grinder! you are so very insular! For anything you can tell, he may be a decayed nobleman.
Podb. (coarsely). Well, let him decay somewhere else, that's all! Just tell the Conductor to shove him in the intérieur, do, while I nip into the coupé and keep our places.
[Culchard, on reflection, adopts this suggestion, and the Italian Gentleman, after fluttering feebly about the coupé door, is unceremoniously bundled by the Conductor into the hinder part of the diligence.
IN THE BERNARDINO PASS, DURING THE ASCENT.
Culch. Glorious view one gets at each fresh turn of the road, Podbury! Look at Hinter-rhein, far down below there, like a toy village, and that vast desolate valley, with the grey river rushing through it, and the green glacier at the end, and these awful snow-covered peaks all round—look, man!