As disastrous as was the enterprise from a financial point of view what
a triumph for Favre would have been the day on which he traversed from
one end to the other that 15 kilometers of tunnel that he had walked
over step by step since the first blow of the pick had struck the rock
of the St. Gothard! But such a satisfaction was not to be reserved for
him. Suddenly, on the 19th of July, 1879, less than seven years after
the beginning of the work, and six months before the meeting of the
adits, in the course of one of his visits to the tunnel Favre was
carried off by the rupture of a blood vessel. A year before that epoch,
I had left the enterprise, Favre having confided to me the general
supervision over the manufacture of dynamite that he had undertaken at
Varallo Pombia for the needs of his tunnel, but my friend M. Stockalper,
engineer in chief of the Goschenen section, who accompanied Favre on his
fatal subterranean excursion, has many a time recounted to me the sad
details of his sudden death.
For months before it must be said Favre had been growing old. The man of
broad shoulders and with head covered with thick hair in which here and
there a few silver threads showed themselves, and who was as straight as
at the age of twenty years, had begun to stoop, his hair had whitened
and his face had assumed an expression of sadness that it was difficult
for him to conceal.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48