88 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 

 Bonnet refers to this incident in a note to Haller : 



' Our great Alpinier (sic) l has told you something of his trip to 

 the glaciers. He had a narrow escape of being beatified you will 

 guess I refer to his electrification hi the clouds. The adventure is 

 unique, and could not have been foreseen.' 



Most mountaineers nowadays have met with similar experiences. 

 De Saussure occupied a wet morning in the chalet in 

 writing to his wife, who was then expecting her second child, 

 born in the following October. His conscience was obviously 

 a little uneasy at having left her in the circumstances, 

 and he did his best to console her for his absence by a letter 

 inspired by the fondest affection, in which he first pictures her 

 occupied with her year -old baby and her thoughts of her hus- 

 band, while the elders talk politics, and then describes his own 

 surroundings : 



' What a spectacle would present itself to my Albertine how she 

 would enjoy its surprising novelty ! She would make fun of me ; she 

 would press the mosses I had already pressed and would repeat 

 " Hyposum siccatum " ! How she would laugh if she could see the three 

 of us at this moment in a row on the straw of our chalet, making the 

 most of the little light that comes through the gap left by a missing 

 plank in our hovel, each writing on his knees to the person dearest to 

 him. She would cast an eye on our three servants and four guides 

 sitting round a fire built against the wall without any chimney. On 

 this fire is a huge cauldron full of milk being boiled to make cheese ; 

 beside it stands a tall shepherd, continually stirring the milk with a 

 big ladle and burying his naked white arms in the depths of the 

 cauldron. Turning her head, she would see through a hole in the wall 

 a huge mass of ice hi the middle of a wood and a pasture covered with 

 all sorts of flowers. What would strike her most by its oddity is a 

 goat which, in its effort to find shelter from the rain, has climbed to 

 the hole which serves us as a window and throws the shadow of its 

 beard and horns across my paper.' 



De Saussure, one notes, is careful to leave out, no doubt as 

 too alarming, the adventure with lightning just recorded. 



Before leaving Chamonix the travellers made an expedition 

 to the Mer de Glace, and recognised that the interior of the chain 



1 This form, which has been superseded by Alpiniste, was doubtless formed 

 by analogy to ' Crystallier,' used of the Chamonix crystal-seekers. 



