I tell him, too, something of the greater peaks his hero has subsequently rendered subject among the Andes,—­Chimborazo, Antisana and others; of his passing twenty-six consecutive hours encamped with his guides on the summit of Cotopaxi; of the difficulties of route and dangers of weather he everywhere experienced.  The guide had heard that Whymper had been in the Andes, but knew no details of his doings nor of the heights and nature of the mountains.  He greedily adds these new facts to his collection of Whymperiana.

These guides make little.  To be sure, they spend little.  Probably they want for little, as well.  Living is low, and the Frenchman is thrifty.  Yet a guide’s occupation is particularly uncertain; there are long gaps of enforced idleness even in the season, and wages of seven or eight francs a day when he is employed are not only little enough at best, considering the toil and occasional danger, but must be averaged down to cover the unoccupied days besides.  For ascents among the greater peaks the pay is better, but they are much less frequent.  My friend of the mustachios lives in Cauterets, he tells me, during the season; he has a family; in winter he can work at logging and wood-hauling, in summer he earns most as a guide.  Many persons too come to hunt, not to climb, and sportsmen are always liberal; but the hunting is growing poor; the bouquetin is extinct, the bear is almost gone, the wolf is a coward; of large game, only the izard remains.

V.

Meanwhile, we have all been clambering up the pathway, calling out at points of view, expecting at each rise to see the lake in the level above.  At length, a short hour from the Pont d’Espagne, we press up the last curve, come out suddenly upon a plateau, and the lonely basin of the Lac de Gaube is before us.

Just ahead is the low-roofed house built at the side of the lake for the purposes of a restaurant; and we enter, to unroll the wraps and make some important stipulations regarding trout and a soufflet.  Though the lake is not even with the snow-level, the cool air makes a light overcoat most acceptable after the warm morning climb.  Then we hurry out to see our surroundings.

The great Vignemale, the central feature in the picture, at first disappoints us.  This, the fourth in height of Pyrenees mountains, confronts one squarely from across the lake, effectively framed between two barren slopes,—­the highest of its triple peaks somewhat hidden by the hill on the right.  But the giant does not seem to tower in the least, and appears from this spot little else than a huge but disjointed mass of rock and glaciers, in the latter of which the Vignemale abounds.  The view improves, a few yards on around the lake.  But it requires an effort to believe that of those

          “three mountain tops,
  Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,”

the loftiest is ten thousand, eight hundred and twenty feet above the sea; it is still harder to grant that its knobby tips are a full mile in perpendicular height above us at the Lac de Gaube.  It is only by degrees that the distant form seems to grow and mount, as we come to realize its true dimensions.