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I have an idea that a number of things are included in the puzzling conjunction of those two words, AIGUILLE CREUSE. What is troubling me at present is rather the material on which the document is written, the paper employed. Do they still manufacture this sort of rather coarse-grained parchment? And then this ivory color.
Before he had ended, he knew that he had won. He heard the girl draw sharply in her breath. She was making for herself a picture of the last step from the ice-slope to summit ridge. "Very well," she said. "It shall be the Aiguille d'Argentière." Michel went upon his way out of Chamonix and across the fields. They would be sure to speak, those two, to-morrow at the Pavillon de Lognan.
And in that same sketch-book, his constant companion, there was one page which opened oftener than any other fell open of itself, if you held the volume carelessly containing a drawing, not of Alpine aiguille, nor Italian valley, nor Spanish posada, nor Greek temple, but of a comfortable old mansion, no way romantically situate among swelling hills, and partially swathed in ivy.
One of my excursions was to the summit of the Aiguille de Varens, by a path, in one place cut in the face of a precipice, only wide enough for one's feet, with sheer cliff above and below, and nothing to hold by. I have a good head, but to follow my guide on that path was something which only mauvaise honte brought me to. I was ashamed to hesitate where he walked along so cheerily.
Steadily upwards, over the Glacier des Bossons, they went, with airy cloudlets floating around them, with the summit at which they aimed, the Dome du Gouter, and the Aiguille du Gouter in front, luring them on, and other giant Aiguilles around watching them.
Is it not enough to sit at your window, and watch the clouds when they lift from the Mont Blanc range, disclosing splendor after splendor, from the Aiguille de Goute to the Aiguille Verte, white needles which pierce the air for twelve thousand feet, until, jubilate! the round summit of the monarch himself is visible, and the vast expanse of white snow-fields, the whiteness of which is rather of heaven than of earth, dazzles the eyes, even at so great a distance?
It was past the middle of the forenoon of the 10th of August when, with Couttet and the porter, I left Chamonix. Dismissing my tired mule at the Pierre Pointue, which hangs with its flag nearly seven thousand feet above sea level, and high over the séracs of the Glacier des Bossons, we began the ascent by way of the Pierre a l'Echelle and over the missile-scarred foot of the Aiguille du Midi.
Passing the village of Argentiere with rapid strides, and pausing but a few moments to look at the vast glacier of the same name which pours into the valley the ice-floods gendered among the heights around the Aiguille Verte and the Aiguille du Chardonnet, which rise respectively to a height of above 13,400 and 12,500 feet they reached the point where the Tete-Noire route diverged to the left at that time, in the form of a mere bridle-path, and pushed forward towards the Col, or pass.
She was just looking quietly and steadily into his face and waiting for his explanation. "Well, the truth is," he blurted out, "I wanted to go up the Aiguille d'Argentière with you," and he saw a smile dimple her cheeks. "I am honored," she said, and the tone of her voice showed besides that she was very glad. "Oh, but it wasn't only for the sake of your company," he said, and stopped.
She was reading the account of the first ascent of an aiguille in the Chamonix district, held by guides to be impossible and conquered at last by a party of amateurs. In spite of its humor Sylvia Thesiger was thrilled by it.
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