Note 2 — Chapter XI · THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (CONTINUED)

Not in vain does a man breathe at birth the air of the mountain-tops; not in vain does he live his earliest summers with the vision of the heights before him. He retains as it were a nostalgia for the heights, and a wild longing to climb them. It will not surprise us to learn that the child of the Haut-Rouergue, transplanted, by the vicissitudes of life, from the Lévézou mountains to the Provençal plains, should calm his brain, burning with the stress of study, by gazing at Mont Ventoux, and anticipating his approaching expedition to the mountain of his dreams.2 We shall not be surprised to find that he never allowed himself to be repulsed by the difficulties of the enterprise, and that more than a score of ascents failed to produce satiety, whereas many another found his courage and his interest evaporate almost at the outset.3 For the ascent of Mont Ventoux is a difficult task, more difficult than that of the majority of our mountains: