Couvercle. Though the early climbers used to start from Chamonix or other equally low-lying valleys, and walk steadily, and so far as one can learn without any symptom of fatigue, to the top of their peaks, we moderns are cast in a less robust mould—at least some of us are—and I freely confess that as I floundered and slipped on the last slope of loose stones leading to the Couvercle, exhaustion had laid hold of me as its victim, and even Hastings . . . But the love of veracity must not be pushed too far. Truth, at all events outside its symbolical representations, requires decorous garments and draperies; even one's belief in an overruling Providence is strengthened and upheld by the wise ordinance that not merely is Truth ever appropriately habited and veiled, but usually compelled to lie hidden at the bottom of deepest wells. Moreover, it is always unwise to excite retort. Hastings, raging at the shameless goddess, might even hint that a few days later, as we were slowly plodding up the calotte of Mont Blanc, weary with a long struggle amid the mazes of the Brevna slopes, the rope tightened between us till its function seemed rather that of a tow-line than a mere protection against concealed crevasses. But these are incidents which, even in this age of brutal realism, are too painful for written words, and I will, therefore, merely chronicle the bare fact that we, all of us, did actually reach the Couvercle. Sinking
