JOSEPH TURC. PIERRE GASPARD. MATHON. HIPPOLYTE RODIER.
W. HERR VON RATH. A. B. HERR GRISAR.
We had parted from Truffer with mutual regrets, for he was a very good fellow, and taken on Joseph Turc, a more experienced man than Rodier, and they worked well together. This Turc had just come over from La Grave with a porter named Etienne. The latter, a poor wizened sun-baked little man, had all his finger tips on each hand blackened with frost-bite; his thumbs had escaped. It appears that a Frenchman who could not climb well was taken by Turc to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde. They got no further than the Pic Central, there they had to spend the night—next day getting into La Grave. The poor porter was allowed to sleep with his fingers in this bad state, and come back over a pass to La Bérarde where in the afternoon I saw him. He had had some pain in the morning of this day, and this encouraged me to attempt treatment; so during two or three hours I rubbed him and watched him, and was assisted by my friend; it was satisfactory to find a considerable improvement, especially in his right hand, which next morning was even more apparently improved when the limits of the black dead portions were more defined—his nails will probably come off, and there will be ulcerated surfaces on his finger ends, which will be months in healing. The aspect of this man presented a pitiable combination of apathy and patience, reminding me of the wolf-bitten Russian peasants I saw in Pasteur’s laboratory in the Rue D’Ulm years ago. The guide with the frost-bitten feet, of whom I wrote in my letter last year, is only now hobbling about with sticks, the wounds of his amputated toes still unhealed, so much is the process of repair hindered in tissues damaged by frost-bite.
What I call determination, but my friends describe as obstinacy, now induced me, after three days’ rest, to climb the Meije, 13,081 feet. It is a serious rock climb, decidedly stiffer than the Matterhorn, and I did not attempt the traverse, but it was an error of judgment to have climbed it in my crippled condition. Doubtless the fine air, which makes a man laugh so easily, and makes the careworn light-hearted, steals away the reason like champagne—making the old man seem young—so the poet writes—
“The plague of guide and chum, and wife and daughter
Is Senex who will climb and didn’t oughter.”