“Not so,” the answer comes; “he has just completed the thousandth ascent of the Aiguille...; he comes of a curious race which, history relates, at one time much frequented these districts; but that was a great while ago—long before the monarchy was re-established. You do well to look at him; that is the last of the climbing Englishmen. They always seem depressed when they have succeeded in achieving their ambition of the moment; it is a characteristic of their now almost extinct race.”
“And what about the perils of the expedition?” the old man asks, brightening up a little as if some old ideas had suddenly flashed across his mind. “I would fain know whether the journey is different now from what it was formerly; yet the heroes would mock me, perchance, if I were to interrogate them.”
“Not at all,” the youth replies. “There are but few of the first party who would not vouchsafe to give you a full account, and might even in their courtesy embellish the narrative with flowers of rhetoric. But it is unnecessary. They will print a detailed and full description of their exploits. It has all been said before, but so has everything else, I think.”
“That is true,” the old man murmurs to himself; “it was even so in my time, and two hundred years before I lived a French writer commenced his book with the remark, ‘_Tout est dit._’ But what of the other, the dejected survivor? does he not too write?”
“Yes, indeed, but not in the same strain; he will but pour out a little gentle sarcasm and native spleen, in mild criticism of the fulsome periods he peruses in other tongues.”
“Ah me!” thinks the old man, “in one respect then I need not prove so much behind the time. If the memory of the Alpine literature of my day were still fresh, I could hold mine own with those I see around.”
May I be permitted, in conclusion, to come back to our own day, and to say a very few words on the subject of mountaineering accidents? Most heartily would I concur with any one who raised the objection that such remarks are out of place in a chapter on the mountaineering of the future. But perhaps we have been looking too far ahead, and there may be a period to follow between this our time and the future to be hoped for.