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A fringe of sausages hung from the roof; red bedding was scorching in the sunshine; three cats were sunning themselves on the steps; a young woman sat in the green balcony knitting. There were some curious inscriptions on the walls of the châlet, and the date was distinctly marked, "1670." An old woman over the way sat in her doorway spinning.
Here, at the Chalet Hatasu, as it was named, the servants had unpacked the hampers which they had brought from the hotel at Luxor, and the hungry travelers were soon seated around well-spread tables. During the meal a throng of scantily clad men, boys, and small children assembled outside the Chalet.
Rowland thought of Mary Garland's challenge in the porch, but he thought even more that, although the fetid interior of a high-nestling chalet may offer a convenient refuge from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible music in the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick's voice.
Violet picked it up, where it lay under his feet, and then glided rapidly out of the chalet, while Kennedy slowly followed, never once taking his eye from his crouching antagonist. Before he stepped into the open air, he said to the men, "If I hear but one footstep in pursuit of us, I will shoot one of you dead."
A chalet was therefore planted on the rocks between the chapel and the castle, and a bath-house opened, which would probably be still much frequented on account of the beauty of the situation were the bath-owner only a little more attentive to the comfort of his humble guests. The valley, apparently so gloomy, proved not only cheerful, but full of romance and old-world memories.
It will be well for any future visitor to the châlet to go very warily, and to intrench himself in a strong position when he sees half-a-dozen huge dogs like black and white bears come out to attack him.
The car was now slowing on the sharp decline leading to the shore, and Jacques de Wissant got up and touched the chauffeur on the shoulder. "Stop here," he said. "You needn't drive down to the Châlet. I want you to turn and wait for me at the Pavillon de Wissant. Ask my servants to give you some luncheon. I may be half an hour or more, but I want to get back to Falaise as soon as I can."
The passage of the Bossons was difficult, but we accomplished it without accident. Half an hour before reaching Chamonix, we met, at the chalet of the Dard falls, some English tourists, who seemed to be watching our progress. When they perceived us, they hurried up eagerly to congratulate us on our success. One of them presented us to his wife, a charming person, with a well-bred air.
How does the memory of scrambles along snow arêtes, of plunges luckily not too deep into crevasses, of toil through long snowfields, towards a refuge that seemed to recede as we advanced where, to quote Tennyson with due alteration, to the traveller toiling in immeasurable snow Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill The châlet sparkles like a grain of salt;
He carried his convictions home with him unspoiled, and his first building a hospital or something of the kind was a monument to his discoveries, a record of his adventures among the masterpieces of Europe, beginning on the ground floor as the Strozzi Palace, developing into various French castles, and finishing on the top as a Swiss châlet, atrocious as architecture, but amusing as autobiography.
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