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THE KING OF THE MOUNTAINS
BY EDMUND ABOUT.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
MRS. C. A. KINGSBURY.
Chicago and New York:
RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY.
MDCCCXCVII.
Copyright, 1897, by Rand, McNally & Co.
THE KING OF THE MOUNTAINS.
I.
HERMANN SCHULTZ.
On the 3d of July, about six o'clock in the morning, I was watering myflowers. A young man entered the garden. He was blonde, beardless; hewore a German cap and sported gold spectacles. A long, loose woolencoat, or paletot, drooped in a melancholy way around his form, like asail around a mast in a calm. He wore no gloves; his tan leather shoeshad such large soles, that the foot was surrounded by a narrow flange.In the breast-pocket of his paletot, a huge porcelain pipe bulgedhalf-way out. I did not stop to ask myself whether this young man was astudent in the German Universities; I put down my watering-pot, andsaluted him with: "Guten Morgen!"
"Monsieur," he said to me in French, but with a deplorable accent, "myname is Hermann Schultz; I have come to pass some months in Greece, andI have carried your book with me everywhere."
This praise penetrated my heart with sweet joy; the stranger's voiceseemed more melodious than Mozart's music, and I directed toward hisgold glasses a swift look of gratitude. You would scarcely believe, dearreader, how much we love those who have taken the trouble to decipherour jargon. As for me, if I have ever sighed to be rich, it is in orderto assure an income to all those who have read my works.
I took him by the hand, this excellent young man. I seated him beside meon the garden-bench. He told me that he was a botanist, that he had acommission from the "Jardin des Plantes" in Hamburg. In order tocomplete his herbarium he was studying the country, the animals, and thepeople. His naive descriptions, his terse but just decisions, recalledto me, a little, the simple old Herodotus. He expressed himselfawkwardly, but with a candor which inspired confidence; he emphasizedhis words with the tone of a man entirely convinced. He questioned me,if not of every one in Athens, at least of all the principal personagesin my book. In the course of the conversation, he made some statementson general subjects, which seemed to me far more reasonable than anywhich I had advanced. At the end of an hour we had become good friends.
I do not know which of us first spoke of brigandage. People who travelin Italy talk of paintings; those who visit England talk ofmanufactures; each cou