“First hour: view of the back of my guide and the hind-quarters of his horse. The guide has a vest of bottle-green velvet, darned in two places, on the right and on the left; the horse is a dirty brown and bears the marks of the whip. Several big pebbles in the pathway. Fog. I meditate on German philosophy. "Second hour: the view enlarges; I perceive the left eye of the guide’s horse. That eye is blind; it loses nothing.
“Third hour: the view broadens more. View of the hind-quarters of two horses and two tourists’ vests fifteen feet above us. Gray vests, red girdles, berets. They swear and I swear; that consoles us a little. .
“Fourth hour: joy and transports; the guide promises me for the summit the view of a sea of clouds.
“Arrival: view of the sea of clouds. Unhappily we are in one of the clouds. Appearance that of a vapor bath when one is in the bath.
“Benefits: cold in the head, rheumatism in the feet, lumbago, freezing, such happiness as a man might feel who had danced attendance for eight hours in an ante-chamber without fire.
“And this happens often?
“Twice out of three times. The guides swear it does not.”
