The guide appeared. He was tall, muscular, and rather strange-looking, about thirty years old, the wrinkles of his face giving an expression of hard and energetic will. He had a large, straight nose, wide mouth, thick, bushy black hair, and a beard of several days’ growth, while in his cap he wore a sprig of freshly-plucked edelweiss.
I invited him into my room, but he shrugged his shoulders.
“You wish to go to Lanslebourg, over the Cenis?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Very well; give me ten lire.”
The price was very moderate, but the fellow struck me as a swaggerer. Instinctively I did not like him.
“Where is your licence? Are you a regular guide?” I asked.
“I have no licence, but I have a certificate of honourable discharge. I was in the Fourth Regiment of Artillery.”
“And your name?”
“Do you want to know all this for ten lire?” and he began to laugh sarcastically. “Very well; I will tell you my name gratis. I am called Giovanni Oldrini. Has the cross-examination concluded?”