"I wouldn't have him suffer for anything."
"That will be all right."
"Thank you very much. I shall tell my wife he died in his sleep. Good-bye."
E. V. L.
THE MOUNTAIN AND THE PROPHETS.
My dear Charles,—At Geneva there is, and was long before the arrival of the League of Nations, a mountain. There are many mountains in Switzerland, but Geneva's private mountain happens to be in France. It is called "The Salève," a nasty name, but not of my choosing. If, being in Geneva, you want to go up The Salève (as I personally do not) you have first to get your passport off the police. The police are always a little difficult about passports, but, if you mention the name of The Salève, you will find them easier. You have next to obtain the French visa in order to get out of Geneva; then the Swiss visa in order to get back again. Thus provided you have to compete with a complicated and long-drawn process of trams and frontier controls; even so you find yourself at the bottom and not at the top of The Salève.
Being a busy (or shall we say idle?) man yourself, you will thus understand the reasons of my policy; if the mountain will not come to Mahomed then Mahomed and the mountain are best kept apart.
The inhabitants of Geneva have long been contriving, intriguing, I will even say complotting, to get me up The Salève. My doctor, having made me thoroughly interested in myself, got on to the subject of exercise; when my banker passed from the subject of interest on overdrafts to the advisability of my seeing the great Geneva view, it was undoubtedly blackmail; and as for my dentist—well, you know what dentists are and what mean advantages they take. But this one, I think, over-stepped the limit when he allowed the crown of my tooth to remind him of the crown of Mont Blanc; paused in fixing the former to descant on the beauties of the latter; told me that from The Salève I should get a better view of the latter than he, where he was, was getting of the former; asked me almost simultaneously if he was hurting me and if I had been up The Salève, and told me that I must go up it and (which I took to mean "or") that he might have to hurt me.
That was the most critical moment in the whole Battle of The Salève; the military critics are unanimous that I should have then said, "I will go up," had I been in a position to say anything at all. Saved by the gag, I have won the war against the Genevois.