The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales.

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Ti­tle: The Ice-​Maid­en: and Oth­er Tales.

Au­thor: Hans Chris­tian An­der­sen

Trans­la­tor: Fan­ny Fuller

Re­lease Date: June 16, 2006 [EBook #18604]

Lan­guage: En­glish

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+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tran­scriber's Note: | | | | In­con­sis­tent hy­phen­ation match­es the orig­inal doc­ument. | | | | A num­ber of ob­vi­ous ty­po­graph­ical er­rors have been cor­rect­ed | | in this text. For a com­plete list, please see the bot­tom of | | this doc­ument. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

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THE ICE-​MAID­EN: AND OTH­ER TALES.

By HANS CHRIS­TIAN AN­DER­SEN.

TRANS­LAT­ED By FAN­NY FULLER

PHILADEL­PHIA: F. LEY­POLDT. 1863.

En­tered ac­cord­ing to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by F. LEY­POLDT, In the Clerk's of­fice of the Dis­trict Court of the Unit­ed States in and for the East­ern Dis­trict of Penn­syl­va­nia.

PRINT­ED BY KING & BAIRD.

CON­TENTS.

Page

THE ICE-​MAID­EN 7

THE BUT­TER­FLY 139

THE PSY­CHE 149

THE SNAIL AND THE ROSE-​TREE 183

The Ice-​Maid­en.

I.

LIT­TLE RUDY.

Let us vis­it Switzer­land and look around us in the glo­ri­ous coun­try of moun­tains, where the for­est ris­es out of steep rocky walls; let us as­cend to the daz­zling snow-​fields, and thence de­scend to the green plains, where the rivulets and brooks has­ten away, foam­ing up, as if they feared not to van­ish, as they reached the sea.

The sun beams up­on the deep val­ley, it burns al­so up­on the heavy mass­es of snow; so that af­ter the lapse of years, they melt in­to shin­ing ice-​blocks, and be­come rolling avalanch­es and heaped-​up glaciers.

Two of these lie in the broad clefts of the rock, un­der the Schreck­horn and Wet­ter­horn, near the lit­tle town of Grindel­wald. They are so re­mark­able that many strangers come to gaze at them, in the sum­mer time, from all parts of the world; they come over the high snow-​cov­ered moun­tains, they come from the deep­est val­leys, and they are obliged to as­cend dur­ing many hours, and as they as­cend, the val­ley sinks deep­er and deep­er, as though seen from an air-​bal­loon.

Far around the peaks of the moun­tains, the clouds of­ten hang like heavy cur­tains of smoke; whilst down in the val­ley, where the many brown wood­en hous­es lie scat­tered about, a sun-​beam shines, and here and there brings out a tiny spot, in ra­di­ant green, as though it were trans­par­ent. The wa­ter roars, froths and foams be­low, the wa­ter hums and tin­kles above, and it looks as if sil­ver rib­bons were flut­ter­ing over the cliffs.

On each side of the way, as one as­cends, are wood­en hous­es; each house has a lit­tle pota­to-​gar­den, and that is a ne­ces­si­ty, for in the door-​way are many lit­tle mouths. There are plen­ty of chil­dren, and they can con­sume abun­dance of food; they rush out of the hous­es, and throng about the trav­ellers, come they on foot or in car­riage. The whole horde of chil­dren traf­fic; the lit­tle ones of­fer pret­ti­ly carved wood­en hous­es, for sale, sim­ilar to those they build on the moun­tains. Rain or shine, the chil­dren as­sem­ble with their wares.

Some twen­ty years ago, there stood here, sev­er­al times, a lit­tle boy, who wished to sell his toys, but he al­ways kept aloof from the oth­er chil­dren; he stood with se­ri­ous coun­te­nance and with both hands tight­ly clasped around his wood­en box, as if he feared it would slip away from him; but on ac­count of this grav­ity, and be­cause the boy was so small, it caused him to be re­marked, and of­ten he made the best bar­gain, with­out know­ing why. His grand­fa­ther lived still high­er in the moun­tains, and it was he who carved the pret­ty wood­en hous­es. There stood in the room, an old cup-​board, full of carv­ings; there were nut-​crack­ers, knives, spoons, and box­es with del­icate fo­liage, and leap­ing chamois; there was ev­ery­thing, which could re­joice a mer­ry child's eye, but this lit­tle fel­low, (he was named Rudy) looked at and de­sired on­ly the old gun un­der the rafters. His grand­fa­ther had said, that he should have it some day, but that he must first grow big and strong enough to use it.

Small as the boy was, he was obliged to take care of the goats, and if he who can climb with them is a good guardian, well then in­deed was Rudy. Why he climbed even high­er than they! He loved to take the bird's nests from the trees, high in the air, for he was bold and dar­ing; and he on­ly smiled when he stood by the roar­ing wa­ter-​fall, or when he heard a rolling avalanche.

He nev­er played with the oth­er chil­dren; he on­ly met them, when his grand­fa­ther sent him out to sell his carv­ings, and Rudy took but lit­tle in­ter­est in this; he much pre­ferred to wan­der about the rocks, or to sit and lis­ten to his grand­fa­ther re­late about old times and about the in­hab­itants of Meirin­gen, where he came from. He said that these peo­ple had not been there since the be­gin­ning of the world; they had come from the far North, where the race called Swedes, dwelt. To know this, was in­deed great wis­dom, and Rudy knew this; but he be­came still wis­er, through the in­ter­course which he had with the oth­er oc­cu­pants of the house--be­long­ing to the an­imal race. There was a large dog, Ajo­la, an heir-​loom from Rudy's fa­ther; and a cat, and she was of great im­por­tance to Rudy, for she had taught him to climb. “Come out on the roof!” said the cat, quite plain and dis­tinct­ly, for when one is a child, and can not yet speak, one un­der­stands the hens and ducks, the cats and dogs re­mark­ably well; they speak for us as in­tel­li­gi­bly as fa­ther or moth­er. One needs but to be lit­tle, and then even grand­fa­ther's stick can neigh, and be­come a horse, with head, legs and tail. With some chil­dren, this knowl­edge slips away lat­er than with oth­ers, and peo­ple say of these, that they are very back­ward, that they re­main chil­dren fear­ful­ly long.--Peo­ple say so many things!

“Come with me, lit­tle Rudy, out on the roof!” was about the first thing that the cat said, that Rudy un­der­stood. “It is all imag­ina­tion about falling; one does not fall, when one does not fear to do so. Come, place your one paw so, and your oth­er so! Take care of your fore-​paws! Look sharp with your eyes, and give sup­ple­ness to your limbs! If there be a hole, jump, hold fast, that's the way I do!”

And Rudy did so, and that was the rea­son that he sat out on the roof with the cat so of­ten; he sat with her in the tree-​tops, yes, he sat on the edge of the rocks, where the cats could not come. “High­er, high­er!” said the trees and bush­es. “See, how we climb! how high we go, how firm we hold on, even on the out­er­most peaks of the rocks!”

And Rudy went gen­er­al­ly on the moun­tain be­fore the sun rose, and then he got his morn­ing drink, the fresh, strength­en­ing moun­tain air, the drink, that our Lord on­ly can pre­pare, and men can read its recipe, and thus it stands writ­ten: “the fresh scent of the herbs of the moun­tains and the mint and thyme of the val­leys.”

All heav­iness is im­bibed by the hang­ing clouds, and the wind sends it out like grape-​shot in­to the fir-​woods; the fra­grant breeze be­comes per­fume, light and fresh and ev­er fresh­er--that was Rudy's morn­ing drink.

The bless­ing bring­ing daugh­ters of the Sun, the sun-​beams, kissed his cheeks, and Ver­ti­go stood and watched, but dared not ap­proach him; and the swal­lows be­low from grand­fa­ther's house, where there were no less than sev­en nests, flew up to him and the goats, and they sang: “We and you! and you and we!” They brought greet­ings from home, even from the two hens, the on­ly birds in the room; with whom how­ev­er Rudy nev­er had in­ter­course.

Lit­tle as he was, he had trav­eled, and not a lit­tle, for so small a boy; he was born in the Can­ton Valais, and had been car­ried from there over the moun­tains. Late­ly he had vis­it­ed the Staub­bach, which waves in the air like a sil­ver gauze, be­fore the snow decked, daz­zling white moun­tain: “the Jungfrau.” And he had been in Grindel­wald, near the great glaciers; but that was a sad sto­ry. There, his moth­er had found her death, and, “lit­tle Rudy,” so said his grand­fa­ther, “had lost his child­ish mer­ri­ment.” “When the boy was not a year old, he laughed more than he cried,” so wrote his moth­er, “but since he was in the ice-​gap, quite an­oth­er mind has come over him.” His grand-​fa­ther did not like to speak on the sub­ject, but ev­ery one on the moun­tain knew all about it.

Rudy's fa­ther had been a pos­til­ion, and the large dog in the room, had al­ways fol­lowed him on his jour­neys to the lake of Gene­va, over the Sim­plon. In the val­ley of the Rhone, in Can­ton Valais, still lived Rudy's fam­ily, on his fa­ther's side, and his fa­ther's broth­er was a fa­mous chamois hunter and a well-​known guide. Rudy was on­ly a year old, when he lost his fa­ther, and his moth­er longed to re­turn to her re­la­tions in Bern­er Ober­lande. Her fa­ther lived a few hours walk from Grindel­wald; he was a carv­er in wood, and earned enough by it to live. In the month of June, car­ry­ing her lit­tle child, she start­ed home­wards, ac­com­pa­nied by two chamois hunters; in­tend­ing to cross the Gem­mi on their way to Grindel­wald. They al­ready had ac­com­plished the longer part of their jour­ney, had passed the high ridges, had come to the snow-​plains, they al­ready saw the val­ley of their home, with its well-​known wood­en hous­es, and had now but to reach the sum­mit of one of the great glaciers. The snow had fresh­ly fall­en and con­cealed a cleft,--which did not lead to the deep­est abyss, where the wa­ter roared--but still deep­er than man could reach. The young wom­an, who was hold­ing her child, slipped, sank and was gone; one heard no cry, no sigh, nought but a lit­tle child weep­ing. More than an hour elapsed, be­fore her com­pan­ions could bring poles and ropes, from the near­est house, in or­der to af­ford as­sis­tance. Af­ter great ex­er­tion they drew from the ice-​gap, what ap­peared to be two life­less bod­ies; ev­ery means were em­ployed and they suc­ceed­ed in call­ing the child back to life, but not the moth­er. So the old grand­fa­ther re­ceived in­stead of a daugh­ter, a daugh­ter's son in his house; the lit­tle one, who laughed more than he wept, but, who now, seemed to have lost this cus­tom. A change in him, had cer­tain­ly tak­en place, in the cleft of the glacier, in the won­der­ful cold world; where, ac­cord­ing to the be­lief of the Swiss peas­ant, the souls of the damned are in­car­cer­at­ed un­til the day of judg­ment.

Not un­like wa­ter, which af­ter long jour­ney­ing, has been com­pressed in­to blocks of green glass, the glaciers lie here, so that one huge mass of ice is heaped on the oth­er. The rush­ing stream roars be­low and melts snow and ice; with­in, hol­low cav­erns and mighty clefts open, this is a won­der­ful palace of ice, and in it dwells the Ice-​Maid­en, the Queen of the glaciers. She, the mur­der­ess, the de­stroy­er, is half a child of air and half the pow­er­ful ruler of the streams; there­fore, she had re­ceived the pow­er, to el­evate her­self with the speed of the chamois to the high­est pin­na­cle of the snow-​topped moun­tain; where the most dar­ing moun­taineer had to hew his way, in or­der to take firm foot-​hold. She sails up the rush­ing riv­er on a slen­der fir-​branch--springs from one cliff to an­oth­er, with her long snow-​white hair, flut­ter­ing around her, and with her bluish-​green man­tle, which re­sem­bles the wa­ter of the deep Swiss lakes.

“Crush, hold fast! the pow­er is mine!” cried she. “They have stolen a love­ly boy from me, a boy, whom I had kissed, but not kissed to death. He is again with men, he tends the goats on the moun­tains; he climbs up, up high, be­yond the reach of all oth­ers, but not be­yond mine! He is mine, I shall have him!”--

And she or­dered Ver­ti­go to ful­fil her du­ty; it was too warm for the Ice-​Maid­en, in sum­mer-​time, in the green spots where the mint thrives. Ver­ti­go arose; one came, three came, (for Ver­ti­go had many sis­ters, very many of them) and the Maid­en chose the strongest among those that rule with­in doors and with­out. They sit on the balus­ters and on the spires of the steep tow­ers, they tread through the air as the swim­mer glides through the wa­ter and en­tice their prey down the abyss. Ver­ti­go and the Ice-​Maid­en seize on men as the poly­pus clutch­es at all with­in its reach. Ver­ti­go was to gain pos­ses­sion of Rudy. “Yes, just catch him for me” said Ver­ti­go. “I can­not do it! The cat, the dirty thing, has taught him her arts! The child of the race of man, pos­sess­es a pow­er, that re­puls­es me; I can­not get at the lit­tle boy, when he hangs by the branch­es over the abyss. I may tick­le him on the soles of his feet or give him a box on the ear whilst he is swing­ing in the air, it is of no avail. I can do noth­ing!”

“We _can_ do it!” said the Ice-​Maid­en. “You or I! I! I!”--

“No, no!” sound­ed back the echo of the church-​bells through the moun­tain, like a sweet melody; it was like speech, an har­mo­nious cho­rus of all the spir­its of na­ture, mild, good, full of love, for it came from the daugh­ters of the sun-​beams, who en­camped them­selves ev­ery evening in a cir­cle around the pin­na­cles of the moun­tains, and spread out their rose-​coloured wings, that grow more and more red as the sun sinks, and glow over the high Alps; men call it, “the Alpine glow.” When the sun is down, they en­ter the peaks of the rocks and sleep on the white snow, un­til the sun ris­es, and then they sal­ly forth. Above all, they love flow­ers, but­ter­flies, and men, and amongst them they had cho­sen lit­tle Rudy as their favourite.

“You will not catch him! You shall not have him!” said they. “I have caught and kept stronger and larg­er ones!” said the Ice-​Maid­en.

Then the daugh­ters of the Sun sang a lay of the wan­der­er, whose cloak the whirl­wind had torn off and car­ried away. The wind took the cov­er­ing, but not the man. “Ye chil­dren of strength can seize, but not hold him; he is stronger, he is more spir­it-​like, than we; he as­cends high­er than the Sun, our moth­er! He pos­sess­es the mag­ic word, that re­strains wind and wa­ter, so that they are obliged to obey and serve him!”

So sound­ed cheer­ful­ly the bell-​like cho­rus.

And ev­ery morn­ing the sun-​beams shone through the tiny win­dow in the grand­fa­ther's house, on the qui­et child. The daugh­ters of the sun-​beams kissed him, they wished to thaw him, to warm him and to car­ry away with them the icy kiss, which the queen­ly maid­en of the glaciers had giv­en him, as he lay on his dead moth­er's lap, in the deep icy gap, whence he was saved through a mir­acle.

II.

THE JOUR­NEY TO THE NEW HOME.

Rudy was now eight years old. His fa­ther's broth­er, in Rhonethal, the oth­er side of the moun­tain, wished to have the boy, for he thought that with him he would fare and pros­per bet­ter; his grand­fa­ther per­ceived this and gave his con­sent.

Rudy must go. There were oth­ers to take leave of him, be­sides his grand­fa­ther; first there was Ajo­la, the old dog.

“Your fa­ther was post-​boy and I was post-​dog,” said Ajo­la. “We have trav­elled up and down; I know dogs and men on the oth­er side of the moun­tain. It is not my cus­tom to speak much, but now, that we shall not have much time to con­verse with each oth­er, I must talk a lit­tle more than usu­al. I will re­late a sto­ry to you; I shall tell you how I have earned my bread, and how I have eat­en it. I do not un­der­stand it and I sup­pose that you will not ei­ther, but it mat­ters not, for I have dis­cov­ered that the good things of this earth are not equal­ly di­vid­ed be­tween dogs or men. All are not fit­ted to lie on the lap and sip milk, I have not been ac­cus­tomed to it; but I saw a lit­tle dog seat­ed in the coach with us and it oc­cu­pied a per­son's place. The wom­an who was its mis­tress, or who be­longed to its mis­tress, had a bot­tle filled with milk, out of which she fed it; it got sweet sug­ar bis­cuits too, but it would not even eat them; on­ly snuffed at them, and so the wom­an ate them her­self. I ran in the mud, by the side of the coach, as hun­gry as a dog could be; I chewed my crude thoughts, that was not right--but this is of­ten done! If I could but have been car­ried on some one's knee and have been seat­ed in a coach! But one can­not have all one de­sires. I have not been able to do so, nei­ther with bark­ing nor with yawn­ing.”

That was Ajo­la's speech, and Rudy seized him by the neck and kissed him on his moist mouth, and then he took the cat in his arms, but she was an­gry at it.

“You are get­ting too strong for me, and I will not use my claws against you! Just climb over the moun­tains, I taught you to climb! Nev­er think that you will fall, then you are se­cure!”

Then the cat ran away, with­out let­ting Rudy see how her grief shone out of her eye.

The hens ran about the floor; one had lost her tail; a trav­eller, who wished to be a hunter, had shot it off, be­cause the crea­ture had tak­en the hen for a bird of prey!

“Rudy is go­ing over the moun­tain!” said one hen. “He is al­ways in a hur­ry,” said the oth­er, “and I do not care for leave-​tak­ings!” and so they both tripped away.

And the goats, too, said farewell and cried: “Mit, mit, mah!” and that was so sad.

There were two nim­ble guides in the neigh­bour­hood, and they were about to cross the moun­tains; they were to de­scend to the oth­er side of the Gem­mi, and Rudy fol­lowed them on foot. This was a se­vere march for such a lit­tle chap, but he had strength and courage, and felt not fa­tigue.

The swal­lows ac­com­pa­nied them a part of the way. They sang: “We and you! You and us!” The road went over the rapid Luets­chine, which rush­es forth from the black clefts of the glacier of Grindel­wald, in many lit­tle streams. The fall­en tim­ber and the quar­ry-​stones serve as bridges; they pass the alder-​bush and de­scend the moun­tain where the glacier has de­tached it­self from the moun­tain side; they cross over the glacier, over the blocks of ice, and go around them. Rudy was obliged to creep a lit­tle, to walk a lit­tle, his eyes sparkled with de­light, and he trod as firm­ly with his iron-​shod moun­tain shoes, as though he wished to leave his foot-​prints where he had stepped. The black mud which the moun­tain stream had poured up­on the glacier gave it a cal­cined ap­pear­ance, but the bluish-​green, glassy ice still shone through it. They were obliged to go around the lit­tle ponds which were dammed up by blocks of ice; dur­ing these wan­der­ings they came too near a large stone, which lay tot­ter­ing on the brink of a crevice in the ice. The stone lost its equi­lib­ri­um, it fell, rolled and the echo re­sound­ed from the deep hol­low paths of the glacier.

Up, ev­er up; the glacier stretched it­self on high--as a riv­er, of wild­ly heaped up mass­es of ice, com­pressed among the steep cliffs. For an in­stant Rudy thought on what they had told him, about his hav­ing laid with his moth­er, in one of these cold-​breath­ing chasms. Such thoughts soon van­ished; it seemed to him as though it were some oth­er sto­ry--one of the many which had been re­lat­ed to him. Now and then, when the men thought that the as­cent was too dif­fi­cult for the lit­tle lad, they would reach him their hand, but he was nev­er weary and stood on the slip­pery ice as firm as a chamois. Now they reached the bot­tom of the rocks, they were soon among the bare stones, which were void of moss; soon un­der the low fir-​trees and again out on the green com­mon--ev­er chang­ing, ev­er new. Around them arose the snow moun­tains, whose names were as fa­mil­iar to Rudy as they were to ev­ery child in the neigh­bour­hood: “the Jungfrau,” “the Moench,” and “the Eiger.”

Rudy had nev­er been so high be­fore, had nev­er be­fore trod­den on the vast sea of snow, which lay there with its im­move­able waves. The wind blew sin­gle flakes about, as it blows the foam up­on the wa­ters of the sea.

Glacier stood by glacier, if one may say so, hand in hand; each one was an ice-​palace for the Ice-​Maid­en, whose pow­er and will is: “to catch and to bury.” The sun burned warm­ly, the snow was daz­zling, as if sown with bluish-​white, glit­ter­ing di­amond sparks. Count­less in­sects (but­ter­flies and bees most­ly) lay in mass­es dead on the snow; they had ven­tured too high, or the wind had borne them thith­er, but to breathe their last in these cold re­gions. A threat­en­ing cloud hung over the Wet­ter­horn, like a fine, black tuft of wool. It low­ered it­self slow­ly, heav­ily, with that which lay con­cealed with­in it, and this was the “Foehn,”[A] pow­er­ful in its strength when it broke loose. The im­pres­sion of the en­tire jour­ney, the night quar­ters above and then the road be­yond, the deep rocky chasms, where the wa­ter forced its way through the blocks of stone with ter­ri­ble ra­pid­ity, en­graved it­self in­deli­bly on Rudy's mind.

On the oth­er side of the sea of snow, a for­sak­en stone hut gave them pro­tec­tion and shel­ter for the night; a fire was quick­ly light­ed, for they found with­in it char­coal and fir branch­es; they ar­ranged their couch as well as pos­si­ble. The men seat­ed them­selves around the fire, smoked their to­bac­co and drank the warm spicy drink, which they had pre­pared for them­selves. Rudy had his share too and they told him of the mys­te­ri­ous be­ings of the Alpine coun­try; of the sin­gu­lar fight­ing snakes in the deep lakes; of the peo­ple of night; of the hordes of spec­tres, who car­ry sleep­ers through the air, to­wards the won­der­ful float­ing city of Venice; of the wild shep­herd, who drives his black sheep over the mead­ow; it is true, they had nev­er been seen, but the sound of the bells and the un­hap­py bel­low­ing of the flock, had been heard.

Rudy lis­tened ea­ger­ly, but with­out any fear, for he did not even know what that was, and whilst he lis­tened he thought he heard the ghost-​like hol­low bel­low­ing! Yes, it be­came more and more dis­tinct, the men heard it al­so, they stopped talk­ing, lis­tened and told Rudy he must not sleep.

It was the Foehn which blew, the pow­er­ful storm-​wind, which rush­es down the moun­tains in­to the val­ley and with its strength bends the trees, as if they were mere reeds, and lifts the wood­en hous­es from one side of the riv­er to the oth­er, as if the move had been made on a chess-​board.

Af­ter the lapse of an hour, they told Rudy that the storm had now blown over and that he might rest; with this li­cense, fa­tigued by his march, he at once fell asleep.

They de­part­ed ear­ly in the morn­ing; the sun showed Rudy new moun­tains, new glaciers and snow-​fields; they had now reached Can­ton Valais and the oth­er side of the moun­tain ridge which was vis­ible at Grindel­wald, but they were still far from the new home. Oth­er chasms, precipices, pas­ture-​grounds; forests and paths through the woods, un­fold­ed them­selves to the view; oth­er hous­es, oth­er hu­man be­ings--but what hu­man be­ings! De­formed crea­tures, with un­mean­ing, fat, yel­low­ish-​white faces; with a large, ug­ly, fleshy lump on their necks; these were cretins who dragged them­selves mis­er­ably along and gazed with their stupid eyes on the strangers who ar­rived among them. As for the wom­en, the great­est num­ber of them were fright­ful!

Were these the in­hab­itants of the new home?

FOOT­NOTES:

[A] A hu­mid south wind on the lakes of Switzer­land, a fear­ful storm.

III.

THE FA­THER'S BROTH­ER.

The peo­ple in the un­cle's house, looked, thank heav­en, like those whom Rudy was ac­cus­tomed to see. But one cretin was there, a poor sil­ly lad, one of the many mis­er­able crea­tures, who on ac­count of their pover­ty and need, al­ways make their home among the fam­ilies of Can­ton Valais and re­main with each but a cou­ple of months. The wretched Saper­li hap­pened to be there when Rudy ar­rived.

Rudy's fa­ther's broth­er was still a vig­or­ous hunter and was al­so a coop­er by trade; his wife, a live­ly lit­tle per­son, had what is called a bird's face; her eyes re­sem­bled those of an ea­gle and she had a long neck en­tire­ly cov­ered with down.

Ev­ery­thing was new to Rudy, the dress, man­ners and cus­toms, yes, even the lan­guage, but that is soon ac­quired and un­der­stood by a child's ear. Here, they seemed to be bet­ter off, than in his grand­fa­ther's house; the dwelling rooms were larg­er, the walls looked gay with their chamois horns and high­ly pol­ished ri­fles; over the door-​way hung the pic­ture of the blessed Vir­gin; alpine ros­es and a burn­ing lamp stood be­fore it.

His un­cle, was as we have said be­fore, one of the most fa­mous chamois hunters in the neigh­bour­hood and al­so the most ex­pe­ri­enced and best guide.

Rudy was to be the pet of the house­hold, al­though there al­ready was one, an old deaf and blind dog, whom they could no longer use; but they re­mem­bered his many past ser­vices and he was looked up­on as a mem­ber of the fam­ily and was to pass his old days in peace. Rudy pat­ted the dog, but he would have noth­ing to do with strangers; Rudy did not long re­main one, for he soon took firm hold both in house and heart.

“One is not bad­ly off in Can­ton Valais,” said his un­cle, “we have the chamois, they do not die out so soon as the moun­tain goat! It is a great deal bet­ter here now, than in the old times; they may talk about their glo­ry as much as they please. The present time is much bet­ter, for a hole has been made in the purse and light and air let in­to our qui­et val­ley. When old worn-​out cus­toms die away, some­thing new springs forth!” said he. When un­cle be­came talkative, he told of the years of his child­hood and of his fa­ther's ac­tive time, when Valais was still a closed purse, as the peo­ple called it, and when it was filled with sick peo­ple and mis­er­able cretins. French sol­diers came, they were the right kind of doc­tors, they not on­ly shot down the sick­ness but the men al­so.

“The French­men can beat the stones un­til they sur­ren­der! they cut the Sim­plon-​road out of the rocks--they have hewn out such a road, that I now can tell a three year old child to go to Italy! Keep to the high­way, and a child may find his way there!” Then the un­cle would sing a French song and cry hur­rah for Napoleon Bona­parte.

Rudy now heard for the first time of France, of Lyons--the large city of the Rhone--for his un­cle had been there.

“I won­der if Rudy will be­come an ag­ile chamois hunter in a few years? He has ev­ery dis­po­si­tion for it!” said his un­cle, and in­struct­ed him how to hold a ri­fle, how to aim and to fire. In the hunt­ing sea­son, he took him with him in the moun­tains and made him drink the warm chamois blood, which pre­vents the hunter from be­com­ing dizzy. He taught him to heed the time when the avalanch­es roll down the dif­fer­ent sides of the moun­tain--at mid-​day or at night-​fall--which de­pend­ed up­on the heat of the rays of the sun. He taught him to no­tice the chamois, in or­der to learn from them how to jump, so as to alight steadi­ly up­on the feet. If there was no rest­ing place in the clefts of the rock for the foot, he must know how to sup­port him­self with the el­bow, and be able to climb by means of the mus­cles of the thigh and calf, even the neck must serve when it is nec­es­sary. The chamois are cun­ning, they place out-​guards--but the hunter must be still more cun­ning and fol­low the trail--and he can de­ceive them by hang­ing his coat and hat on his alpine stick, and so make the chamois take the coat for the man.

One day when Rudy was out with his un­cle hunt­ing, he tried this sport.

The rocky path was not wide; in­deed there was scarce­ly any, on­ly a nar­row ledge, close to the dizzy abyss. The snow was half-​thawed, the stones crum­bled when trod­den up­on, and his un­cle stretched him­self out full length and crept along. Each stone as it broke away, fell, knocked it­self, bound­ed and then rolled down; it made many leaps from one rocky wall to an­oth­er un­til it found re­pose in the black deep. Rudy stood about a hun­dred steps be­hind his un­cle on the out­er­most cliff, and saw a huge gold­en vul­ture, hov­er­ing over his un­cle, and sail­ing to­wards him through the air, as though wish­ing to cast the creep­ing worm in­to the abyss with one blow of his wing, and to make car­rion of him. His un­cle had on­ly eyes for the chamois and its young kid, on the oth­er side of the cleft. Rudy looked at the bird, un­der­stood what it want­ed, and laid his hand on his ri­fle in or­der to shoot it. At that mo­ment the chamois leaped--his un­cle fired--the ball hit the an­imal, but the kid was gone, as though flight and dan­ger had been its life's ex­pe­ri­ence. The mon­strous bird ter­ri­fied by the re­port of the gun, took flight in an­oth­er di­rec­tion, and Rudy's un­cle knew nought of his dan­ger, un­til Rudy told him of it.

As they now were on their way home in the gayest spir­its--his un­cle play­ing one of his youth­ful melodies on his flute--they sud­den­ly heard not far from them a sin­gu­lar sound; they looked side­ways, they gazed aloof and saw high above them the snow cov­er­ing of the rugged shelf of the rock, wav­ing like an out­spread piece of linen when ag­itat­ed by the wind. The icy waves cracked like slabs of mar­ble, they broke, dis­solved in foam­ing, rush­ing wa­ter and sound­ed like a muf­fled thun­der-​clap. It was an avalanche rolling down, not over Rudy and his un­cle, but near, on­ly too near to them.

“Hold fast, Rudy,” cried he, “firm, with your whole strength!”

And Rudy clasped the trunk of a tree; his un­cle climbed in­to its branch­es and held fast, whilst the avalanche rolled many fath­oms away from them. But the air-​drift of the blus­ter­ing storm, which ac­com­pa­nied it, bowed down the trees and bush­es around them like dry reeds and threw them be­yond. Rudy lay cast on the earth; the trunk of the tree on which he had held was as though sawed off, and its crown was hurled still far­ther along. His un­cle lay amongst the bro­ken branch­es, with his head shat­tered; his hands were yet warm, but his face was no longer to be rec­og­nized. Rudy stood pale and trem­bling; this was the first ter­ror of his life, the first hour of fear that he had ev­er known.

Late in the evening, he re­turned with his mes­sage of death to his home, which was now one of sor­row.

The wife stood with­out words, with­out tears, and not un­til the corpse was brought home did her sor­row find an out­burst. The poor cretin crept to his bed and was not seen all day, but to­wards evening he came to Rudy, and said: “Write a let­ter for me. Saper­li can­not write! Saper­li can take the let­ter to the post of­fice.”

“A let­ter for you,” asked Rudy, “and to whom?”

“To our Lord Christ!”

“What do you mean?”

And the half-​wit­ted crea­ture gave a touch­ing glance at Rudy, fold­ed his hands and said pi­ous­ly and solemn­ly: “Je­sus Christ! Saper­li wish­es to send him a let­ter, pray­ing him to let Saper­li lie dead and not the man of this house!”

And Rudy pressed his hand, “the let­ter can­not be sent, the let­ter will not give him back to us!”

It was dif­fi­cult for Rudy to ex­plain the im­pos­si­bil­ity to him.

“Now you are the stay of the house!” said his fos­ter-​moth­er, and Rudy be­came it.

IV.

BA­BETTE.

Who is the best shot in Can­ton Valais? The chamois knew on­ly too well: “Be­ware of Rudy!” they could say. Who is the hand­somest hunter?--“It is Rudy.” The young girls said this al­so, but they did not say: “Be­ware of Rudy!” No, not even the grave moth­ers, for he nod­ded to them quite as am­ica­bly as to the young girls. He was so bold and gay, his cheeks were brown, his teeth fresh and white and his coal-​black eyes glit­tered; he was a hand­some young fel­low and but twen­ty years old. The icy wa­ter did not sting him when he swam, he could turn around in it like a fish; he could climb as did no one, and he was as firm on the rocky walls as a snail--for he had good sinews and mus­cles that served him well in leap­ing--the cat had first taught him this, and lat­er the chamois. One could not trust one's self to a bet­ter guide than to Rudy. In this way he could col­lect quite a for­tune, but he had no taste for the trade of a coop­er, which his un­cle had taught him; his de­light and plea­sure was to shoot chamois, and this was prof­itable al­so. Rudy was a good match if one did not look high­er than one's sta­tion, and in danc­ing he was just the kind of dancer that young girls dream about, and one or the oth­er were al­ways think­ing of him when they were awake.

“He kissed me whilst danc­ing!” said the school­mas­ter's An­nette to her most in­ti­mate friend, but she should not have said this, not even to her dear­est friend, but it is dif­fi­cult to keep such things to one's self--like sand in a purse with a hole in it, it soon runs out--and al­though Rudy was so steady and good it was soon known that he kissed whilst danc­ing.

“Watch him,” said an old hunter, “he has com­menced with A, and he will kiss the whole al­pha­bet through!”

A kiss, at a dance, was all they could say in their gos­sip­ping, but he had kissed An­nette, and she was by no means the flow­er of his heart.

Down near Bex, be­tween the great wal­nut trees, close by a rapid lit­tle stream, dwelt the rich miller. The dwelling-​house was a large three-​sto­ried build­ing, with lit­tle tow­ers cov­ered with wood and coat­ed with sheets of lead, which shone in the sun­shine and in the moon­shine; the largest tow­er had for a weath­er-​cock a bright ar­row which pierced an ap­ple and which was in­tend­ed to rep­re­sent the ap­ple shot by Tell. The mill looked neat and com­fort­able, so that it was re­al­ly worth de­scrib­ing and draw­ing, but the miller's daugh­ter could nei­ther be de­scribed nor drawn, at least so said Rudy. Yet she was im­print­ed in his heart, and her eyes act­ed as a fire-​brand up­on it, and this had hap­pened sud­den­ly and un­ex­pect­ed­ly. The most won­der­ful part of all was, that the miller's daugh­ter, the pret­ty Ba­bette, thought not of him, for she and Rudy had nev­er even spo­ken two words with each oth­er.

The miller was rich, and rich­es placed her much too high to be ap­proached; “but no one,” said Rudy to him­self, “is placed so high as to be un­ap­proach­able; one must climb and one does not fall, when one does not think of it.” _This_ knowl­edge he had brought from home with him.

Now it so hap­pened that Rudy had busi­ness at Bex and it was quite a jour­ney there, for the rail­road was not com­plet­ed. The broad val­ley of Valais stretch­es it­self from the glaciers of the Rhone, un­der the foot of the Sim­plon-​moun­tain, be­tween many vary­ing moun­tain-​heights, with its mighty riv­er, the Rhone, which of­ten swells and de­stroys ev­ery­thing, over­flood­ing fields and roads. The val­ley makes a bend, be­tween the towns of Sion and St. Mau­rice, like an el­bow and be­comes so nar­row at Mau­rice, that there on­ly re­mains suf­fi­cient room for the riv­er bed and a cart way. Here an old tow­er stands like a sen­try be­fore the Can­ton Valais; it ends at this point and over­looks the bridge, which has a wall to­wards the cus­tom-​house. Now be­gins the Can­ton called Pays de Vaud and the near­est town is Bex, where ev­ery­thing be­comes lux­uri­ant and fruit­ful--one is in a gar­den of wal­nut and chest­nut trees and here and there, cy­press and pomegranate blos­soms peep out--it is as warm as the South; one imag­ines one's self trans­plant­ed in­to Italy.

Rudy reached Bex, ac­com­plished his busi­ness and looked about him, but he did not see a sin­gle miller's boy, not to speak of Ba­bette. It ap­peared as though they were not to meet.

It was evening, the air was heavy with the wild thyme and bloom­ing lin­den, a glis­ten­ing veil lay over the for­est-​clad moun­tains, there was a still­ness over ev­ery­thing, but not the qui­et of sleep. It seemed as though all na­ture re­tained her breath, as if she felt dis­posed to al­low her im­age to be im­print­ed up­on the fir­ma­ment.

Here and there, there were poles stand­ing on the green fields, be­tween the trees; they held the tele­graph wire, which has been con­duct­ed through this peace­ful val­ley. An ob­ject leant against one of these poles, so im­move­able, that one might have tak­en it for a with­ered trunk of a tree; but it was Rudy. He slept not and still less was he dead; but as the most im­por­tant events of this earth, as well as af­fairs of vi­tal mo­ment for in­di­vid­uals pass over the wires, with­out their giv­ing out a tone or a tremu­lous move­ment, even so flashed through Rudy, thoughts--pow­er­ful, over­whelm­ing, speak­ing of the hap­pi­ness of his life; his, hence­forth, “_con­stant thought_.” His eyes were fixed up­on a point in the trel­lis-​work, and this was a light in Ba­bette's sit­ting room. Rudy was so mo­tion­less, one might have thought that he was ob­serv­ing a chamois, in or­der to shoot it. Now, how­ev­er, he was like the chamois--which ap­pears sculp­tured on the rock, and sud­den­ly if a stone rolls, springs and flies away--thus stood Rudy, un­til a thought struck him.

“Nev­er de­spair,” said he. “I shall make a vis­it to the mill, and say: Good evening miller, good evening Ba­bette! One does not fall when one does not think of it! Ba­bette must see me, if I am to be her hus­band!”

And Rudy laughed, was of good cheer and went to the mill; he knew what he want­ed, he want­ed Ba­bette.

The riv­er, with its yel­low­ish white wa­ter rolled on; the wil­low trees and the lin­dens bowed them­selves deep in the has­ten­ing wa­ter; Rudy went along the path, and as it says in the old child's song:

---- ---- ---- Zu des Muellers Haus, Aber da war Nie­mand drin­nen Nur die Katze schaute aus![B]

The house-​cat stood on the step, put up her back and said: “Mi­au!” but Rudy had no thoughts for her lan­guage, he knocked, no one heard, no one opened. “Mi­au!” said the cat. If Rudy had been lit­tle, he would have un­der­stood the speech of an­imals and known that the cat told him: “There is no one at home!” He was obliged to cross over to the mill, to make in­quiries, and here he had news. The mas­ter of the house was away on a jour­ney, far away in the town of In­ter­lak­en--_in­ter la­cus_, “be­tween the lakes”--as the school-​mas­ter, An­nette's fa­ther, had ex­plained, in his wis­dom. Far away was the miller and Ba­bette with him; there was to be a shoot­ing fes­ti­val, which was to com­mence on the fol­low­ing day and to con­tin­ue for a whole week. The Swiss from all the Ger­man can­tons were to meet there.

Poor Rudy, one could well say that he had not tak­en the hap­pi­est time to vis­it Bex; now he could re­turn and that was what he did. He took the road over Sion and St. Mau­rice, back to his own val­ley, back to his own moun­tain, but he was not down-​cast. On the fol­low­ing morn­ing, when the sun rose, his good hu­mour had re­turned, in fact it had nev­er left him.

“Ba­bette is in In­ter­lak­en, many a day's jour­ney from here!” said he to him­self, “it is a long road thith­er, if one goes by the high­way, but not so far if one pass­es over the rocks and that is the road for a chamois hunter! I went this road for­mer­ly, for there is my home, where I lived with my grand­fa­ther when I was a lit­tle child, and they have a shoot­ing fes­ti­val in In­ter­lak­en! I will be the _first_ one there, and that will I be with Ba­bette al­so, as soon as I have made her ac­quain­tance!”

With his light knap­sack con­tain­ing his Sun­day clothes, with his gun and his hunts­man's pouch, Rudy as­cend­ed the moun­tain. The short road, was a pret­ty long one, but the shoot­ing-​match had but com­menced to-​day and was to last more than a week; the miller and Ba­bette were to re­main the whole time, with their re­la­tions in In­ter­lak­en. Rudy crossed the Gem­mi, for he wished to go to Grindel­wald.

He stepped for­wards mer­ry and well, out in­to the fresh, light moun­tain air. The val­ley sank be­neath him, the hori­zon widened; here and there a snow-​peak, and soon ap­peared the whole shin­ing white alpine chain. Rudy knew ev­ery snow moun­tain, on­ward he strode to­wards the Schreck­horn, that el­evates its white pow­dered snow-​fin­ger high in the air.

At last he crossed the ridge of the moun­tain and the pas­ture-​grounds and reached the val­ley of his home; the air was light and his spir­its gay, moun­tain and val­ley stood re­splen­dent with ver­dure and flow­ers. His heart was filled with youth­ful thoughts;--that one can nev­er grow old, nev­er die; but live, rule and en­joy;--free as a bird, light as a bird was he. The swal­lows flew by and sang as in his child­hood: “We and you, and You and we!” All was hap­pi­ness.

Be­low lay the vel­vet-​green mead­ow, with its brown wood­en hous­es, the Luets­chine hummed and roared. He saw the glacier with its green glass edges and its black crevices in the deep snow, and the un­der and up­per glacier. The sound of the church-​bells was car­ried over to him, as if they chimed a wel­come home; his heart beat loud­ly and ex­pand­ed, so, that for a mo­ment, Ba­bette van­ished from it; his heart widened, it was so full of rec­ol­lec­tions. He re­traced his steps, over the path, where he used to stand when a lit­tle boy, with the oth­er chil­dren, on the edge of the ditch, and where he sold carved wood­en hous­es. Yon­der, un­der the fir-​trees was his grand­fa­ther's house,--strangers dwelled there. Chil­dren came run­ning up the path, wish­ing to sell; one of them held an alpine rose to­wards him. Rudy took it for a good omen and thought of Ba­bette. Quick­ly he crossed the bridge, where the two Luetschines meet; the leafy trees had in­creased and the wal­nut trees gave deep­er shade. He saw the stream­ing Swiss and Dan­ish flags--the white cross on the red cloth--and In­ter­lak­en lay be­fore him.

It was cer­tain­ly a mag­nif­icent town; like no oth­er, it seemed to Rudy. A Swiss town in its Sun­day dress, was not like oth­er trad­ing-​places, a mass of black stone hous­es, heavy, un­invit­ing and stiff. No! it looked as though the wood­en hous­es, on the moun­tain had run down in­to the green val­ley, to the clear, swift riv­er and had ranged them­selves in a row--a lit­tle in and out--so as to form a street, the most splen­did of all streets, which had grown up since Rudy was here as a child. It ap­peared to him, that here all the pret­ty wood­en hous­es that his grand­fa­ther had carved, and with which the cup-​board at home used to be filled, had placed them­selves there and had grown in strength, as the old, the old­est chest­nut trees had done. Each house had carved wood-​work around the win­dows and bal­conies, pro­ject­ing roofs, pret­ty and neat; in front of ev­ery house a lit­tle flow­er gar­den ex­tend­ed in­to the stone-​cov­ered street. The hous­es were all placed on one side, as if they wished to con­ceal the for­est-​green mead­ow, where the cows with their tin­kling bells made one fan­cy one's self near the high alpine pas­ture-​grounds. The mead­ow was en­closed with high moun­tains, that leaned to one side so that the Jungfrau, the most state­ly of the Swiss moun­tains, with its glis­ten­ing snow-​clad top, was vis­ible.

What a quan­ti­ty of well dressed ladies and gen­tle­men from for­eign coun­tries! What mul­ti­tudes of in­hab­itants from the dif­fer­ent can­tons! The shoot­ers, with their num­bers placed in a wreath around their hats, wait­ing to take their turn. Here was mu­sic and song, hur­dy-​gur­dys and wind in­stru­ments, cries and con­fu­sion. The hous­es and bridges were decked with de­vices and vers­es; ban­ners and flags float­ed, ri­fles sound­ed shot af­ter shot; this was the best mu­sic to Rudy's ear and he en­tire­ly for­got Ba­bette, al­though he had come for her sake.

The marks­men thronged to­wards the spot where the tar­get-​shoot­ing was; Rudy was soon among them and he was the best, the luck­iest, for he al­ways hit the mark.

“Who can the strange hunter be?” they asked, “He speaks the French lan­guage as though he came from Can­ton Valais!” “He speaks our Ger­man very dis­tinct­ly!” said oth­ers. “He is said to have lived in the neigh­bour­hood of Grindel­wald, when a child!” said one of them.

There was life in the youth; his eyes sparkled, his aim was true. Good luck gives courage, and Rudy had courage at all times; he soon had a large cir­cle of friends around him, they praised him, they did homage to him, and Ba­bette had al­most en­tire­ly left his thoughts. At that mo­ment a heavy hand struck him on the shoul­der, and a gruff voice ad­dressed him in the French tongue:

“You are from Can­ton Valais?”

Rudy turned around. A stout per­son, with a red, con­tent­ed coun­te­nance, stood by him and that was the rich miller of Bex. He cov­ered with his wide body, the slight pret­ty Ba­bette, who how­ev­er, soon peeped out with her beam­ing dark eyes. The rich peas­ant be­came con­se­quen­tial be­cause the hunter from his can­ton had made the best shot and was the hon­oured one. Rudy was cer­tain­ly a favourite of for­tune, that, for which he had jour­neyed thith­er and al­most for­got­ten had sought him.

When one meets a coun­try­man far from one's home, why then one knows one an­oth­er, and speaks to­geth­er. Rudy was the first at the shoot­ing fes­ti­val and the miller was the first at Bex, through his mon­ey and mill, and so the two men pressed each oth­er's hands: this they had nev­er done be­fore. Ba­bette al­so, gave Rudy her lit­tle hand and he pressed her's in re­turn and looked at her, so--that she be­came quite red.

The miller told of the long jour­ney which they had made here, of the many large towns which they had seen--that was a re­al jour­ney; they had come in the steam-​boat and had been driv­en by post and rail!

“I came by the short road,” said Rudy, “I came over the moun­tains; there is no path so high, that one can not reach it!”

“But one can break one's neck,” said the miller, “you look as though you would do so some day, you are so dar­ing!”

“One does not fall, when one does not think of it!” said Rudy.

And the miller's fam­ily in In­ter­lak­en, with whom the miller and Ba­bette were stay­ing, begged Rudy to pay them a vis­it, for he was from the same can­ton as their re­la­tions.

These were glad tid­ings for Rudy, for­tune smiled up­on him, as it al­ways does on those that re­ly up­on them­selves and think up­on the say­ing: “Our Lord gives us nuts, but he does not crack them for us!” Rudy made him­self quite at home with the miller's re­la­tions; they drank the health of the best marks­man. Ba­bette knocked her glass against his and Rudy gave thanks for the hon­our shown him.

In the evening, they all walked un­der the wal­nut trees, in front of the dec­orat­ed ho­tels; there was such a crowd, such a throng, that Rudy was obliged to of­fer his arm to Ba­bette. “He was so re­joiced to have met peo­ple from Pays de Vaud,” said he, “Pays de Vaud and Valais were good neigh­bourly can­tons.” His joy was so pro­found that it struck Ba­bette, she must press his hand. They walked along al­most like old ac­quain­tances; she was so amus­ing, the dar­ling lit­tle crea­ture, it be­came her so pret­ti­ly Rudy thought, when she de­scribed what was laugh­able and over­done in the dress of the ladies, and ridiculed their man­ners and walk. She did not do this in or­der to mock them, for no doubt they were very good peo­ple, yes! kind and ami­able. Ba­bette knew what was right, for she had a god-​moth­er that was a dis­tin­guished En­glish la­dy. She was in Bex, eigh­teen years ago, when Ba­bette was bap­tized; she had giv­en Ba­bette, the ex­pen­sive breast­pin which she wore. The god-​moth­er had writ­ten her two let­ters; this year she was to meet her in In­ter­lak­en, with her daugh­ters; they were old maids, over thir­ty years old, said Ba­bette;--she was just eigh­teen.

The sweet lit­tle mouth was not still a minute; ev­ery­thing that Ba­bette said, sound­ed to Rudy of great im­por­tance. Then he re­lat­ed how of­ten he had been in Bex, how well he knew the mill; how of­ten he had seen Ba­bette, but she of course had nev­er re­marked him; he told how, when he reached the mill, with many thoughts to which he could give no ut­ter­ance, she and her fa­ther were far away; still not so far as to ren­der it im­pos­si­ble for him to as­cend the rocky wall which made the road so long.

Yes, he said this; and he al­so said how much he thought of her; that it was for her sake and not on ac­count of the shoot­ing fes­ti­val that he had come.

Ba­bette re­mained very still, for what he con­fid­ed to her was al­most too much joy.

The sun set be­hind the rocky wall, whilst they were walk­ing, and there stood the Jungfrau in all her ra­di­ant splen­dour, sur­round­ed by the dark green cir­cle of the ad­ja­cent moun­tains. The vast crowd of peo­ple stopped to look at it, Rudy and Ba­bette al­so gazed up­on its grandeur.

“It is nowhere more beau­ti­ful than here!” said Ba­bette.

“Nowhere!” said Rudy, and looked at Ba­bette.

“I must leave to-​mor­row!” said he, a lit­tle lat­er.

“Vis­it us in Bex,” whis­pered Ba­bette, “it will de­light my fa­ther!”

FOOT­NOTES:

[B] The cat looked out from the miller's house, No one was in, not even a mouse!

V.

HOME­WARDS.

Ah! how much Rudy car­ried with him, as he went home the next morn­ing over the moun­tains. Yes, there were three sil­ver gob­lets, two very fine ri­fles and a sil­ver cof­fee pot, which one could use if one wished to go to house-​keep­ing; but he car­ried with him some­thing far, far more im­por­tant, far might­ier, or rather _that_ car­ried him over the high moun­tains.

The weath­er was raw, moist and cold, grey and heavy; the clouds low­ered over the moun­tain-​tops like mourn­ing veils, and en­veloped the shin­ing peaks of the rocks. The sound of the axe re­sound­ed from the depths of the for­est, and the trunks of the trees rolled down the moun­tain, look­ing in the dis­tance like slight sticks, but on ap­proach­ing them they were heavy trees, suit­able for mak­ing masts. The Luets­chine rushed on with its monotonous sound, the wind blus­tered, the clouds sailed by.

Sud­den­ly a young girl ap­proached Rudy, whom he had not no­ticed be­fore; not un­til she was be­side him; she al­so was about cross­ing the moun­tain. Her eyes had so pe­cu­liar a pow­er that one was forced to look in­to them; they were so strange­ly clear--clear as glass, so deep, so fath­om­less--

“Have you a beloved one?” asked Rudy; for to have a beloved one was ev­ery­thing to him.

“I have none!” said she, and laughed; but it was as though she was not speak­ing the truth. “Do not let us take a by-​way,” con­tin­ued she, “we must go more to the left, that way is short­er!”

“Yes, so as to fall down a precipice!” said Rudy; “Do you know no bet­ter way, and yet wish to be a guide?”

“I know the road well,” said she, “my thoughts are with me; yours are be­neath in the val­ley; here on high, one must think on the Ice-​Maid­en, for they say she is not well dis­posed to mankind!”

“I do not fear her,” said Rudy, “she was forced to let me go when I was a child, so I sup­pose I can slip away from her now that I am old­er!”

The dark­ness in­creased, the rain fell, the snow came; it shone and daz­zled. “Give me your hand, I will help you to as­cend!” said the girl, and touched him with icy-​cold fin­gers.

“You help me,” said Rudy, “I do not yet need a wom­an's help in climb­ing!” He strode quick­ly on, away from her; the snow-​show­er formed a cur­tain around him, the wind whis­tled by him and he heard the young girl laugh and sing; it sound­ed so odd­ly! Yes, that was cer­tain­ly a spir­it in the ser­vice of the Ice-​Maid­en. Rudy had heard of them, when he had passed a night on high; when he had crossed the moun­tain, as a lit­tle boy.

The snow fell more scant­ily and the shad­ows lay un­der him; he looked back, there was no one to be seen, but he heard laugh­ing and _jodling_ and it did not ap­pear to come from a hu­man be­ing. When Rudy reached the up­per­most por­tion of the moun­tain, where the rocky path leads to the val­ley of the Rhone, he saw in the di­rec­tion of Chamouni, two bright stars, twin­kling and shin­ing in the clear streaks of blue; he thought of Ba­bette, of him­self, of his hap­pi­ness and be­came warmed by his thoughts.

VI.

THE VIS­IT TO THE MILL.

“You bring prince­ly things in­to the house!” said the old fos­ter-​moth­er, her sin­gu­lar ea­gle-​eyes glis­tened and she made strange and hasty mo­tions with her lean neck.

“For­tune is with you, Rudy, I must kiss you, my sweet boy!”

Rudy al­lowed him­self to be kissed, but one could read in his coun­te­nance, that he but sub­mit­ted to cir­cum­stances and to lit­tle house­hold mis­eries. “How hand­some you are, Rudy!” said the old wom­an.

“Do not put no­tions in­to my head!” an­swered Rudy, and laughed, but still it pleased him.

“I say it once more,” said the old wom­an, “for­tune is with you!”

“Yes, I agree with you there!” said he; thought of Ba­bette and longed to be in the deep val­ley. “They must have re­turned, two days have passed since they ex­pect­ed to do so. I must go to Bex!”

Rudy went to Bex, and the in­hab­itants of the mill had re­turned; he was well re­ceived and they brought him greet­ings from the fam­ily at In­ter­lak­en. Ba­bette did not talk much, she had grown silent; but her eyes spoke and that was quite enough for Rudy. The miller who gen­er­al­ly liked to car­ry on the con­ver­sa­tion--for he was ac­cus­tomed to have ev­ery one laugh at his wit­ty say­ings and puns--was he not the rich miller?--seemed now to pre­fer to lis­ten. Rudy re­count­ed to him his hunt­ing ex­pe­di­tions; de­scribed the dif­fi­cul­ties, the dan­gers and the pri­va­tions of the chamois hunter when on the lofty moun­tain peak; how of­ten he must climb over the in­se­cure snow-​ledges, that the wind had blown on the rocky brink, and how he must pass over slight bridges that the snow-​drifts had thrown across the abyss. Rudy looked fear­less, his eyes sparkled whilst he spoke of the shrewd­ness of the chamois, of their dar­ing leaps, of the vi­olence of the Foehn and of the rolling avalanch­es. He ob­served that with ev­ery de­scrip­tion he won more and more favour; but what pleased the miller more than all, was the ac­count of the lamb's vul­ture and the bold gold­en ea­gle.

In Can­ton Valais, not far from here, there was an ea­gle's nest, very sly­ly built un­der the pro­ject­ing edge of the rock; a young one was in it, but no one could steal it! An En­glish­man had of­fered Rudy a few days be­fore, a whole hand­ful of gold, if he would bring him the young one alive, “but ev­ery­thing has a lim­it,” said he, “the young ea­gle can­not be tak­en away, and it would be mad­ness to at­tempt it!”

The wine and con­ver­sa­tion flowed freely; but the evening ap­peared all too short for Rudy; yet it was past mid­night, when he went home from his first vis­it to the mill.

The light shone a lit­tle while longer through the win­dow and be­tween the green trees; the par­lour-​cat came out of an open­ing in the roof and the kitchen-​cat came along the gut­ter.

“Do you know the lat­est news at the mill?” said the par­lour-​cat, “there has been a silent be­trothal in the house! Fa­ther does not yet know it, but Rudy and Ba­bette have reached each oth­er their paws un­der the ta­ble, and he trod three times on my fore-​paws, but still I did not mew, for that would have awak­ened at­ten­tion!”

“I should have done it, nev­er­the­less!” said the kitchen-​cat.

“What is suit­ed to the kitchen is not suit­ed to the par­lour,” said the par­lour-​cat. “I should like to know what the miller will say, when he hears of the be­trothal!”

Yes, what the miller would say! That was what Rudy would have liked to know, for Rudy was not at all pa­tient. When the om­nibus rum­bled over the bridge of the Rhone, be­tween Valais and Pays de Vaud not many days af­ter, Rudy sat in it and was of good cheer; filled with pleas­ing thoughts of the “Yes,” of the same evening.

When evening came and the om­nibus re­turned, yes, there sat Rudy with­in, but the par­lour-​cat, was run­ning about in the mill with great news.

“Lis­ten, you, in the kitchen! The miller knows ev­ery­thing now. This has had an exquisite end­ing! Rudy came here to­wards evening; he and Ba­bette had much to whis­per and to chat­ter about, as they stood in the walk, un­der the miller's cham­ber. I lay close to their feet but they had nei­ther eyes nor thoughts for me. 'I am go­ing di­rect­ly to your fa­ther,' said Rudy, 'this is an hon­ourable af­fair!' 'Shall I fol­low you?' asked Ba­bette, 'it may give you more courage!' 'I have courage enough,' said Rudy, 'but if you are there, he will be forced to look at it in a more favourable light!' They went in. Rudy trod heav­ily on my tail! Rudy is in­de­scrib­ably awk­ward; I mewed, but nei­ther he nor Ba­bette had ears to hear it. They opened the door, they en­tered and I pre­ced­ed them; I leaped up­on the back of a chair, for I did not know but that Rudy would over­turn ev­ery­thing! But the miller re­versed all, that was a great step! Out of the door, up the moun­tains, to the chamois! Rudy can aim at them now, but not at our lit­tle Ba­bette!”

“But what was said?” asked the kitchen-​cat.

"Said? Ev­ery­thing. 'I care for her and she cares for me! When there is milk enough in the jug for one, there is milk enough in the jug for two!' 'But she is placed too high for you,' said the miller, 'she sits on gold dust, so now you know it; you can not reach her!' 'Noth­ing is too high; he who wills can reach any­thing!' said Rudy. He is too head­strong on this sub­ject! 'But you can­not reach the ea­glet, you said so your­self late­ly! Ba­bette is still high­er!' 'I will have them both!' said Rudy. 'Yes, I will be­stow her up­on you, if you make me a present of the ea­glet alive!' said the miller and laughed un­til the tears stood in his eyes.

“'Thanks for your vis­it, Rudy! Come again to-​mor­row, you will find no one at home. Farewell, Rudy!' Ba­bette said farewell al­so, as sor­row­ful­ly as a kit­ten, that can­not see its moth­er. 'A word is a word, a man is a man,' said Rudy, 'do not weep Ba­bette, I shall bring the ea­glet!' 'I hope that you will break your neck!' said the miller. That's what I call an over­turn­ing! Now Rudy has gone, and Ba­bette sits and weeps; but the miller sings in Ger­man, he learned to do so whilst on his jour­ney! I do not in­tend to trou­ble my­self any longer about it, it does no good!”

“There is still a prospect!” said the kitchen-​cat.

VII.

THE EA­GLE'S NEST.

Mer­ry and loud sound­ed the _jodel_ from the moun­tain-​path, it in­di­cat­ed good hu­mour and joy­ous courage; it was Rudy; he was go­ing to his friend Vesinand.

“You must help me! We will take Ragli with us; I am go­ing af­ter the ea­glet on the brink of the rock!”

“Do you not wish to go af­ter the black spot in the moon? That is quite as easy,” said Vesinand; “you are in a good hu­mour!”

“Yes, be­cause I am think­ing of my wed­ding; but se­ri­ous­ly, you shall know how my af­fairs stand!”

Vesinand and Ragli soon knew what Rudy wished.

“You are a bold fel­low,” said they, “do not do this! You will break your neck!”

“One does not fall, when one does not think of it!” said Rudy.

About mid-​day, they set out with poles, lad­ders and ropes; their path lay through bush­es and bram­bles, over the rolling stones, up, up in the dark night.

The wa­ter rushed be­neath them; the wa­ter flowed above them and the hu­mid clouds chased each oth­er in the air. The hunters ap­proached the steep brink of the rock; it be­came dark­er and dark­er, the rocky walls al­most met; high above them in the nar­row fis­sure the air pen­etrat­ed and gave light. Un­der their feet there was a deep abyss with its roar­ing wa­ters.

They all three sat still, await­ing the grey of the morn­ing; then the ea­gle would fly out; they must shoot him be­fore they could think of ob­tain­ing the young one. Rudy seemed to be a part of the stone on which he sat; his ri­fle placed be­fore him, ready to take aim, his eyes im­move­ably fas­tened on yon high cleft which con­cealed the ea­gle's nest. The three hunts­men wait­ed long.

A crash­ing, whizzing noise sound­ed high above them; a large hov­er­ing ob­ject dark­ened the air. Two ri­fle bar­rels were aimed as the black ea­gle flew from its nest; a shot was heard, the out-​spread wings moved an in­stant, then the bird slow­ly sank as if it wished to fill the en­tire cliff with its out­stretched wings and bury the hunts­men in its fall. The ea­gle sank in the deep; the branch­es of the trees and bush­es cracked, bro­ken by the fall of the bird.

They now dis­played their ac­tiv­ity; three of the longest lad­ders were tied to­geth­er; they stood them on the far­thest point where the foot could place it­self with se­cu­ri­ty, close to the brink of the precipice--but they were not long enough; there was still a great space from the out­er­most pro­ject­ing cliff, which pro­tect­ed the nest; the rocky wall was per­fect­ly smooth. Af­ter some con­sul­ta­tion, they de­cid­ed to low­er in­to the open­ing two lad­ders tied to­geth­er and to fas­ten them to the three al­ready be­neath them. With great dif­fi­cul­ty they dragged them up and at­tached them with cords; the lad­ders shot over the pro­ject­ing cliffs and hung over the chasm; Rudy sat al­ready on the low­est round.

It was an ice-​cold morn­ing, and the mist mount­ed from the black ravine. Rudy sat there like a fly on a rock­ing blade of grass, which a nest-​build­ing bird has dropped in its hasty flight, on the edge of a fac­to­ry chim­ney; but the fly had the ad­van­tage of es­cap­ing by its wings, poor Rudy had none, he was al­most sure to break his neck. The wind whis­tled around him and the roar­ing wa­ter from the thawed glaciers, the palace of the Ice-​Maid­en, poured it­self in­to the abyss.

He gave the lad­ders a swing­ing mo­tion--as the spi­der swings her­self by her long thread--he seized them with a strong and steady hand, but they shook as if they had worn-​out hasps.

The five long lad­ders looked like a tremu­lous reed, as they reached the nest and hung per­pen­dic­ular­ly over the rocky wall. Now came the most dan­ger­ous part; Rudy had to climb as a cat climbs; but Rudy could do this, for the cat had taught it to him. He did not feel that Ver­ti­go trod in the air be­hind him and stretched her poly­pus-​like arms to­wards him. Now he stood on the high­est round of the lad­der and per­ceived that he was not suf­fi­cient­ly high to en­able him to see in­to the nest; he could reach it with his hands. He tried how firm the twigs were, which plait­ed in one an­oth­er formed the bot­tom of the nest; when he had as­sured him­self of a thick and im­move­able one, he swung him­self off of the lad­der. He had his breast and head over the nest, out of which streamed to­wards him a sti­fling stench of car­rion; torn lambs, chamois and birds lay de­com­pos­ing around him. Ver­ti­go, who had no pow­er over him, blew poi­sonous vapours in­to his face to stupi­fy him; be­low in the black, yawn­ing abyss, sat the Ice-​Maid­en her­self, on the has­ten­ing wa­ter, with her long green­ish-​white hair and stared at him with death-​like eyes, which were point­ed at him like two ri­fle bar­rels.

“Now, I shall catch you!”

Seat­ed in one cor­ner of the ea­gle's nest was the ea­glet, who could not fly yet, al­though so strong and pow­er­ful. Rudy fas­tened his eyes on it, held him­self with his whole strength firm­ly by one hand, and with the oth­er threw the noose around it. It was cap­tured alive, its legs were in the knot; Rudy cast the rope over his shoul­der, so that the an­imal dan­gled some dis­tance be­low him, and sus­tained him­self by an­oth­er rope which hung down, un­til his feet touched the up­per round of the lad­der.

“Hold fast, do not think that you will fall and then you are sure not to do so!” That was the old les­son, and he fol­lowed it; held fast, climbed, was sure not to fall and he did not.

There re­sound­ed a strong _jodling_, and a joy­ous one too. Rudy stood on the firm, rocky ground with the young ea­glet.

VI­II.

THE NEWS WHICH THE PAR­LOUR-​CAT RE­LAT­ED.

“Here is what you de­mand­ed!” said Rudy, on en­ter­ing the house of the miller at Bex, as he placed a large bas­ket on the floor and took off the cov­er­ing. Two yel­low eyes, with black cir­cles around them, fiery and wild, looked out as if they wished to set on fire, or to kill those around them. The short beak yawned ready to bite and the neck was red and downy.

“The ea­glet!” cried the miller. Ba­bette screamed, jumped to one side and could nei­ther turn her eyes from Rudy, nor from the ea­glet.

“You do not al­low your­self to be fright­ened!” said the miller.

“And you keep your word, at all times,” said Rudy, “each has his char­ac­ter­is­tic trait!”

“But why did you not break your neck?” asked the miller.

“Be­cause I held on firm­ly,” an­swered Rudy, “and I hold firm­ly on Ba­bette!”

“First see that you have her!” said the miller and laughed; that was a good sign; Ba­bette knew this.

“Let us take the ea­glet from the bas­ket, it is ter­ri­ble to see how he glares! How did you get him?”

Rudy was obliged to re­count his ad­ven­ture, whilst the miller stared at him with eyes, which grew larg­er and larg­er.

“With your courage and with your luck you could take care of three wives!” said the miller.

“Thanks! Thanks!” cried Rudy.

“Yes, but you have not yet Ba­bette!” said the miller as he struck the young chamois hunter, jest­ing­ly on the shoul­der.

“Do you know the lat­est news in the mill?” said the par­lour-​cat to the kitchen-​cat. “Rudy has brought us the young ea­gle and tak­en Ba­bette in ex­change. They have kissed each oth­er and the fa­ther looked on. That is just as good as a be­trothal; the old man did not over­turn any­thing, he drew in his claws, took his nap and left the two seat­ed, ca­ress­ing each oth­er. They have so much to re­late, they will not get through till Christ­mas!”

They had not fin­ished at Christ­mas.

The wind whis­tled through the brown fo­liage, the snow swept through the val­ley as it did on the high moun­tains. The Ice-​Maid­en sat in her proud cas­tle and ar­rayed her­self in her win­ter cos­tume; the ice walls stood in glazed frost; where the moun­tain streams waved their wa­tery veil in sum­mer, were now seen thick ele­phan­tine ici­cles, shin­ing gar­lands of ice, formed of fan­tas­tic ice crys­tals, en­cir­cled the fir-​trees, which were pow­dered with snow.

The Ice-​Maid­en rode on the blus­ter­ing wind over the deep­est val­leys. The snow cov­er­ing lay over all Bex; Rudy stayed in doors more than was his wont, and sat with Ba­bette. The wed­ding was to take place in the sum­mer; their friends talked so much of it that it of­ten made their ears burn. All was sun­shine with them, and the loveli­est alpine rose was Ba­bette, the spright­ly, laugh­ing Ba­bette, who was as charm­ing as the ear­ly spring; the spring that makes the birds sing, that will bring the sum­mer time and the wed­ding day.

“How can they sit there and hang over each oth­er,” ex­claimed the par­lour-​cat, “I am re­al­ly tired of their eter­nal mew­ing!”

IX.

THE ICE-​MAID­EN.

The ear­ly spring time had un­fold­ed the green leaves of the wal­nut and chest­nut trees; they were re­mark­ably lux­uri­ant from the bridge of St. Mau­rice to the banks of the lake of Gene­va.

The Rhone, which rush­es forth from its source, has un­der the green glacier the palace of the Ice-​Maid­en. She is car­ried by it and the sharp wind to the el­evat­ed snow-​fields, where she ex­tends her­self on her damp cush­ions in the bril­liant sun­shine. There she sits and gazes, with far-​see­ing sight, up­on the val­ley where mor­tals busi­ly move about like so many ants.

“Be­ings en­dowed with men­tal pow­ers, as the chil­dren of the Sun, call you,” said the Ice-​Maid­en--“ye are worms! _One_ snow-​ball rolled and you and your hous­es and towns are crushed and swept away!” She raised her proud head still high­er and looked with death-​beam­ing eyes far around and be­low her. From the val­ley re­sound­ed a rum­bling, a blast­ing of rocks, men were mak­ing rail­ways and tun­nels. “They are play­ing like moles,” said she, “they ex­ca­vate pas­sages, and a noise is made like the fir­ing of a gun. When I trans­pose _my_ cas­tles, it roars loud­er than the rolling of the thun­der!”

A smoke arose from the val­ley and moved along like a float­ing veil, like a wav­ing plume; it was the lo­co­mo­tive which led the train over the new­ly built rail­road--this crooked snake, whose limbs are formed of cars up­on cars. It shot along with the speed of an ar­row.

“They are play­ing the mas­ters with their men­tal pow­ers,” said the Ice-​Maid­en, “but the pow­ers of na­ture are the rul­ing ones!” and she laughed and her laugh was echoed in the val­ley.

“Now an avalanche is rolling!” said the men be­low.

Still more loud­ly sang the chil­dren of the Sun; they sang of the “thoughts” of men which fet­ter the sea to the yoke, cut down moun­tains and fill up val­leys; of hu­man thoughts which rule the pow­ers of na­ture. At this mo­ment, a com­pa­ny of trav­ellers crossed the snow-​field where the Maid­en sat; they had bound them­selves firm­ly to­geth­er with ropes, in or­der to form a large body on the smooth ice-​field by the deep abyss.

“Worms!” said she, “as if you were lords of cre­ation!” She turned from them and looked mock­ing­ly up­on the deep val­ley, where the cars were rush­ing by.

“There sit those _thoughts_ in their pow­er of strength! I see them all!--There sits one, proud as a king and alone! They sit in mass­es! There, half are asleep! When the steam-​drag­on stops, they will de­scend and go their way! The thoughts go out in­to the world!” She laughed.

“There rolls an­oth­er avalanche!” they said in the val­ley.

“It will not catch us!” said two on the back of the steam drag­on;--“two souls and one thought”--these were Rudy and Ba­bette; the miller was there al­so.

“As bag­gage,” said he, “I go along, as the in­dis­pens­able!”

“There sit the two,” said the Ice-​Maid­en, “I have crushed many a chamois; I have bent and bro­ken mil­lions of alpine ros­es, so that no roots were left! I shall an­ni­hi­late _them_! The thoughts! The men­tal pow­ers!” She laughed.

“There rolls an­oth­er avalanche!” they said in the val­ley.

X.

THE GOD-​MOTH­ER.

In Mon­treux, one of the ad­join­ing towns, which with Clarens, Vernex and Crin forms a gar­land around the north­east part of the lake of Gene­va, dwelt Ba­bette's god-​moth­er, a dis­tin­guished En­glish la­dy, with her daugh­ters and a young re­la­tion. Al­though she had but late­ly ar­rived, the miller had al­ready made her his vis­it and an­nounced Ba­bette's en­gage­ment; had spo­ken of Rudy and the ea­glet; of the vis­it to In­ter­lak­en and in short had told the whole sto­ry. This had re­joiced her in the high­est de­gree, both for Rudy and Ba­bette's sake, as well as for the miller's; they must all vis­it her--there­fore they came. Ba­bette was to see her god-​moth­er, and the god-​moth­er was to see Ba­bette.

At the end of the lake of Gene­va, by the lit­tle town of Vil­leneuve, lay the steam-​boat which af­ter half an hour's trip from Vernex, ar­rived at Mon­treux. This is one of the coasts which are sung of by the po­ets. Here sat By­ron, by the deep bluish green lake, un­der the wal­nut trees and wrote his melo­di­ous vers­es up­on the pris­on­er of the deep som­bre cas­tle of Chillon. Here, where Clarens with its weep­ing wil­lows, mir­rored it­self in the wa­ters, once wan­dered Rousseau and dreamt of Heloise. Yon­der, where the Rhone glides along un­der Savoy's snow-​topped moun­tains and not far from its mouth, in the lake lies a lit­tle is­land, in­deed it is so small, that from the coast it is tak­en for a ves­sel. It is a val­ley be­tween the rocks, which a la­dy caused to be dammed up a hun­dred years ago and to be cov­ered with earth and plant­ed with three aca­cia-​trees, which now shade the whole is­land. Ba­bette was quite charmed with this lit­tle spot; they must and should go there, yes, it must be charm­ing be­yond de­scrip­tion to be on the is­land; but the steam­er sailed by, and stopped as it should, at Vernex.

The lit­tle par­ty wan­dered be­tween the white, sun­light­ed walls, which sur­round the vine­yards of the lit­tle moun­tain town of Mon­treux, through the fig-​trees which flour­ish be­fore ev­ery peas­ant's house and in whose gar­dens, the lau­rel and cy­press trees are green. Half-​way up the hill stood the board­ing house where the god-​moth­er resid­ed.

The re­cep­tion was very cor­dial. The god-​moth­er was a large ami­able per­son and had a round smil­ing coun­te­nance; as a child she must have had a re­al Raphael's an­gel head, but now it was an old an­gel's head with sil­very white hair, well curled. The daugh­ters were tall, slen­der, re­fined and much dressed. The young cousin who was with them, was clad in white from head to foot; he had gold­en hair and im­mense whiskers; he im­me­di­ate­ly showed lit­tle Ba­bette the great­est at­ten­tion.

Rich­ly bound books, loose mu­sic and draw­ings lay strewn about the large ta­ble; the bal­cony door stood open and one had a view of the beau­ti­ful out-​spread lake, which was so shin­ing, so still, that the moun­tains of Savoy with their lit­tle vil­lages, their for­est and their snowy peaks mir­rored them­selves in it.

Rudy, who usu­al­ly was so full of life, so mer­ry and so dar­ing, did not feel in his el­ement; he moved about over the smooth floor as though he were tread­ing on peas. How weari­ly the time dragged along, it was just as if one was in a tread mill! If they did go walk­ing, why, that was just as slow; Rudy could take two steps for­wards and two steps back­wards and still re­main in the pace of the oth­ers.

When they came to Chillon, (the old som­bre cas­tle on the rocky is­land) they en­tered in or­der to see the dun­geon and the mar­tyr's stake, as well as the rusty chains on the wall; the stone bed for those con­demned to death and the trap-​door where the wretched be­ings im­paled on iron goads, were hurled in­to the break­ers. It was a place of ex­ecu­tion el­evat­ed through By­ron's song to the world of po­et­ry. Rudy was sad, he lent over the broad stone sill of the win­dow, gazed in­to the deep blue wa­ter and over to the lit­tle soli­tary is­land with its three aca­cias and wished him­self there, free from the whole gos­sip­ing so­ci­ety. Ba­bette was re­mark­ably mer­ry, she had been in­de­scrib­ably amused. The cousin found her per­fect.

“Yes, a per­fect jack­anapes!” said Rudy; this was the first time, that he had said some­thing, that did not please her. The En­glish­man had pre­sent­ed her with a lit­tle book, as a sou­venir of Chillon,--By­ron's po­em of “The Pris­on­er of Chillon,” in the French lan­guage, so that Ba­bette might read it.

“The book may be good,” said Rudy, “but the fine­ly combed fel­low that gave it to you does not please me!”

“He looked like a meal-​bag, with­out meal in it!” said the miller and laughed at his own wit. Rudy laughed and thought that this was very well said.

XI.

THE COUSIN.

When Rudy came to the mill, a cou­ple of days af­ter­wards, he found the young En­glish­man there. Ba­bette had just cooked some trout for him and had dressed them with pars­ley in or­der to make them ap­pear more invit­ing. That was as­sured­ly not nec­es­sary. What did the En­glish­man want here? Did he come in or­der to have Ba­bette en­ter­tain and wait up­on him?

Rudy was jeal­ous and that amused Ba­bette; it re­joiced her, to learn the feel­ings of his heart, the strong as well as the weak ones.

Un­til now love had been a play and she played with Rudy's whole heart; yet he was her hap­pi­ness, her life's thought, the no­blest one! The more gloomy he looked, the more her eyes laughed and she would have liked to kiss the blonde En­glish­man with his gold­en whiskers, if she could have suc­ceed­ed by so do­ing, in mak­ing Rudy rush away fu­ri­ous. Then, yes then, she would have known how much he loved her. That was not right, that was not wise in lit­tle Ba­bette; but she was on­ly nine­teen! She did not re­flect and still less did she think how her be­haviour to­wards the young En­glish­man might be in­ter­pret­ed; for it was lighter and mer­ri­er than was seem­ly for the hon­ourable and new­ly af­fi­anced daugh­ter of the miller.

The mill lay where the high­way slopes--un­der the snow cov­ered rocky heights--which are called here, in the lan­guage of the coun­try “Di­ablerets” close to a rapid moun­tain stream, which was of a grey­ish white, like bub­bling soap suds. A small­er stream, rush­es forth from the rocks on the oth­er side of the riv­er, pass­es through an en­closed, broad rafter-​made-​gut­ter and turns the large wheel of the mill. The gut­ter was so full of wa­ter, that it streamed over and of­fered a most slip­pery way, to one who had the idea of cross­ing more quick­ly to the mill; a young man had this idea--the En­glish­man. Guid­ed by the light, which shone from Ba­bette's win­dow, he ar­rived in the evening, clothed in white, like a miller's boy; he had not learnt to climb and near­ly tum­bled head over heels in­to the stream, but es­caped with wet sleeves and splashed pan­taloons. He reached Ba­bette's win­dow, mud­dy and wet through, there he climbed in­to the old lin­den tree and im­itat­ed the screech of an owl, for he could not sing like any oth­er bird. Ba­bette heard it and peeped through the thin cur­tains, but when she re­marked the white man and rec­og­nized him, her lit­tle heart flut­tered with alarm, but al­so with anger. She hasti­ly ex­tin­guished the light, fas­tened the win­dows se­cure­ly and then she let him howl.

If Rudy was in the mill it would have been dread­ful, but Rudy was not there; no, it was much worse, for he was be­low. There was loud con­ver­sa­tion, an­gry words; there might be blows; yes, per­haps mur­der.

Ba­bette was ter­ri­fied; she opened the win­dow, called Rudy's name and begged him to go; she said she would not suf­fer him to re­main.

“You will not suf­fer me to re­main,” he ex­claimed, “then it is a pre­con­cert­ed thing! You were ex­pect­ing oth­er friends, friends bet­ter than my­self; shame on you, Ba­bette!”

“You are de­testable,” said Ba­bette, “I hate you!” and she wept. “Go! Go!”

“I have not de­served this!” said he, and de­part­ed. His cheeks burned like fire, his heart burned like fire.

Ba­bette threw her­self on her bed and wept.

“So much as I love you, Rudy, how can you be­lieve ill of me!”

She was an­gry, very an­gry, and this was good for her; oth­er­wise she would have sor­rowed deeply; but now she could sleep, and she slept the strength­en­ing sleep of youth.

XII.

THE EVIL POW­ERS.

Rudy for­sook Bex and went on his way home, in the fresh, cool air, up the snow-​cov­ered moun­tain, where the Ice-​Maid­en ruled. The leafy trees which lay be­neath him, looked like pota­to vines; fir-​trees and bush­es be­came less fre­quent; the alpine ros­es grew in the snow, which lay in lit­tle spots like linen put out to bleach. There stood a blue anemone, he crushed it with the bar­rel of his gun.

High­er up two chamois ap­peared and Rudy's eyes gained lus­tre and his thoughts took a new di­rec­tion; but he was not near enough to make a good shot; he as­cend­ed still high­er, where on­ly stiff grass grows be­tween the blocks of stone; the chamois were qui­et­ly cross­ing the snow field; he hur­ried hasti­ly on; the fog was de­scend­ing and he sud­den­ly stood be­fore the steep rocky wall. The rain com­menced to fall.

He felt a burn­ing thirst; heat in his head, cold in all his limbs; he grasped his hunt­ing flask, but it was emp­ty; he had not thought of fill­ing it when he rushed up the hill. He had nev­er been ill, but now he was so; he was weary and had a de­sire to throw him­self down to sleep, but ev­ery­thing was stream­ing with wa­ter. He en­deav­oured to col­lect his ideas, but all ob­jects danced be­fore his eyes. Sud­den­ly he per­ceived a new­ly built house lean­ing against the rocks and in the door­way stood a young girl. Yes, it ap­peared to him that it was the school­mas­ter's An­nette, whom he had once kissed whilst danc­ing; but it was not An­nette and yet he had seen her be­fore--per­haps in Grindel­wald, on the evening when he re­turned from the shoot­ing-​fes­ti­val at In­ter­lak­en.

“Where do you come from?” asked he.

“I am at home,” said she, “I tend my flock!”

“Your flock, where do they pas­ture? Here are on­ly cliffs and snow!”

“You have a ready an­swer,” said she and laughed; “be­low there is a charm­ing mead­ow! There are my goats! I take good care of them! I lose none of them, what is mine, re­mains mine!”

“You are bold!” said Rudy.

“So are you!” an­swered she.

“Have you any milk? Do give me some, my thirst is in­tol­er­able!”

“I have some­thing bet­ter than milk,” said she, “and you shall have it! Trav­ellers came yes­ter­day with their guide, but they for­got a flask of wine, such as you have nev­er tast­ed; they will not come for it, I shall not drink it, so drink you!”

She brought the wine, poured it in a wood­en cup and hand­ed it to Rudy.

“That is good,” said he, “I have nev­er drunk such a warm­ing, such a fiery wine!” His eyes beamed, a life, a glow came over him; all sor­row and op­pres­sion seemed to die away; gush­ing, fresh hu­man na­ture stirred it­self with­in him.

“Why this is the school­mas­ter's An­nette,” ex­claimed he, “give me a kiss!”

“Yes, give me the beau­ti­ful ring, which you wear on your fin­ger!”

“My en­gage­ment ring?”

“Just that one!” said the young girl and pour­ing wine in­to the cup, put it to his lips and he drank. Then the joy of life streamed in his blood; the whole world seemed to be­long to him. “Why tor­ment one's self? Ev­ery thing is made for our en­joy­ment and hap­pi­ness! The stream of life is the stream of joy, and for­get­ful­ness is fe­lic­ity!” He looked at the young girl, it was An­nette and then again not An­nette; still less, an en­chant­ed phan­tom, as he had named her, when he met her near Grindel­wald. The girl on the moun­tain was fresh as the new­ly fall­en snow, bloom­ing as the alpine rose and light as a kid; and a hu­man be­ing like Rudy. He wound his arm about her, looked in her strange clear eyes, yes, on­ly for a sec­ond--but was it spir­itu­al life or was it death which flowed through him? Was he raised on high, or did he sink in­to the deep, mur­der­ous ice-​pit, deep­er and ev­er deep­er? He saw icy walls like bluish green glass, num­ber­less clefts yawned around, and the wa­ter sound­ed as it dropped, like a chime of bells; it was pearly, clear and shone in bluish white flames. The Ice-​Maid­en gave him a kiss, which made him shiv­er from head to foot and he gave a cry of pain. He stag­gered and fell; it grew dark be­fore his eyes, but soon all be­came clear to him again; the evil pow­ers had had their sport with him.

The alpine maid­en had van­ished, the moun­tain hut had van­ished, the wa­ter beat against the bare rocky walls and all around him lay snow. Rudy wet to the skin, trem­bled from cold and his ring had dis­ap­peared, his en­gage­ment ring, which Ba­bette had giv­en him. He tried to fire off his ri­fle which lay near him in the snow but it missed. Hu­mid clouds lay in the clefts like firm mass­es of snow and Ver­ti­go watched for her pow­er­less prey; be­neath him in the deep chasm it sound­ed as if a block of the rock was rolling down and was en­deav­our­ing to crush and tear up all that met it in its fall.

In the mill sat Ba­bette and wept; Rudy had not been there for six days; he who had been so wrong; he who must beg her for­give­ness, be­cause she loved him with her whole heart.

XI­II.

IN THE MILLER'S HOUSE.

“What con­fu­sion!” said the par­lour-​cat to the kitchen-​cat.

"Now all is wrong be­tween Rudy and Ba­bette. She sits and weeps and he thinks no longer on her, I sup­pose.

“I can­not bear it!” said the kitchen-​cat.

“Nor I,” said the par­lour-​cat, “but I shall not wor­ry my­self any longer about it! Ba­bette can take the red-​whiskered one for a dear one, but he has not been here ei­ther, since he tried to get on the roof!”

With­in and with­out, the evil pow­ers ruled, and Rudy knew this, and re­flect­ed up­on what had tak­en place both around and with­in him, whilst up­on the moun­tain. Were those faces, or was all a fever­ish dream? He had nev­er known fever or sick­ness be­fore. Whilst he con­demned Ba­bette, he al­so con­demned him­self. He thought of the wild, wicked feel­ings which had late­ly pos­sessed him. Could he con­fess ev­ery­thing to Ba­bette? Ev­ery thought, which in the hour of temp­ta­tion might have be­come a re­al­ity? He had lost her ring and by this loss had she won him back. Could she con­fess to him? It seemed as if his heart would break when he thought of her; so many rec­ol­lec­tions passed through his soul. He saw her a live­ly, laugh­ing, petu­lant child; many a lov­ing word, which she had said to him in the full­ness of her heart, shot like a sun­beam through his breast and soon all there was sun­shine for Ba­bette.

She must be able to con­fess to him and she should do so.

He came to the mill, he came to con­fes­sion; and this com­menced with a kiss, and end­ed with the fact that Rudy was the sin­ner; his great fault was, that he had doubt­ed Ba­bette's fi­deli­ty; yes, that was in­deed atro­cious in him! Such mis­trust, such vi­olence could bring them both in­to mis­for­tune! Yes, most sure­ly! There­upon Ba­bette preached him a lit­tle ser­mon, which much di­vert­ed her and be­came her charm­ing­ly; in one ar­ti­cle Rudy was quite right; the god-​moth­er's re­la­tion was a jack­anapes! She should burn the book that he had giv­en her, and not pos­sess the slight­est ob­ject which could re­mind her of him.

“Now it is all ar­ranged,” said the par­lour-​cat, “Rudy is here again, they un­der­stand each oth­er and that is a great hap­pi­ness!”

“Last night,” said the kitchen-​cat, “I heard the rats say that the great­est hap­pi­ness was to eat tal­low can­dles, and to have abun­dance of taint­ed meat. Now who must one be­lieve, the rats or the lovers?”

“Nei­ther of them,” said the par­lour-​cat, “that is the surest way!”

The great­est hap­pi­ness for Rudy and Ba­bette was draw­ing near; they were await­ing, so they said, their hap­pi­est day, their wed­ding day.

But the wed­ding was not to be in the church of Bex, nor in the miller's house; the god-​moth­er wished it to be sol­em­nized near her, and the mar­riage cer­emo­ny was to take place in the beau­ti­ful lit­tle church of Mon­treux. The miller in­sist­ed that her de­sire should be ful­filled; he alone knew what the god-​moth­er in­tend­ed for the young cou­ple; they were to re­ceive a bridal present from her, which was well worth so slight a con­ces­sion. The day was ap­point­ed. They were to leave for Vil­leneuve, in time to ar­rive at Mon­treux ear­ly in the morn­ing, and so en­able the god-​moth­er's daugh­ters to dress the bride.

“Then I sup­pose there will be a wed­ding here in the house, on the fol­low­ing day,” said the par­lour-​cat, “oth­er­wise, I would not give a sin­gle mew for the whole thing!”

“There will be a feast here,” said the kitchen-​cat, “the ducks are slain, the pi­geons necks wrung, and a whole deer hangs on the wall. My teeth itch just with look­ing on! To-​mor­row the jour­ney com­mences!”

Yes, to-​mor­row! Rudy and Ba­bette sat to­geth­er for the last time in the mill.

With­out was the alpine glow; the evening bells pealed; the daugh­ters of the Sun sang: “What is for the best will take place!”

XIV.

THE VI­SIONS OF THE NIGHT.

The sun had gone down; the clouds low­ered them­selves in­to the Rhone val­ley--be­tween the high moun­tains; the wind blew from the south over the moun­tains--an African wind, a Foehn,--which tore the clouds asun­der. When the wind had passed, all was still for an in­stant; the part­ed clouds hung in fan­tas­tic forms be­tween the for­est-​grown moun­tains. Over the has­ten­ing Rhone, their shapes re­sem­bled sea-​mon­sters of the primeval world, soar­ing ea­gles of the air and leap­ing frogs of the ditch­es--they seemed to sink in­to the rapid stream and to sail on the riv­er, yet they still float­ed in the air. The stream car­ried away a pine tree, torn up by the roots; and the wa­ter sent whirlpools ahead; this was Ver­ti­go, with her at­ten­dants, and they danced in cir­cles on the foam­ing stream. The moon shone on the snow of the moun­tain-​peaks; it light­ed up the dark for­est and the sin­gu­lar white clouds; the peas­ants of the moun­tain, saw through their win­dow panes, the night­ly ap­pari­tions and the spir­its of the pow­ers of na­ture, as they sailed be­fore the Ice-​Maid­en. She came from her glacier cas­tle, she sat in a frail bark, a felled fir-​tree; the wa­ter of the glaciers car­ried her up the stream out to the main sea.

“The wed­ding guests are com­ing!” was whizzed and sung in the air and in the wa­ter.

Vi­sions with­out and vi­sions with­in!

Ba­bette dreamt a won­der­ful dream.

It ap­peared to her, as though she was mar­ried to Rudy, and had been so for many years. He had gone chamois hunt­ing and as she sat at home, the young En­glish­man with the gold­en whiskers was be­side her; his eyes were fiery, his words seemed en­dowed with mag­ical pow­er; he reached her his hand and she was obliged to fol­low him.

They flew from home. Steadi­ly down­wards.

A weight lay up­on her heart and it grew ev­er heav­ier. It was a sin against Rudy, a sin against God; sud­den­ly she stood for­sak­en. Her clothes were torn by the thorns; her hair had grown grey; she looked up in her sor­row and she saw Rudy on the edge of the rock. She stretched her arms to­wards him, but she ven­tured nei­ther to call, nor to im­plore him; but she soon saw that it was not he him­self, on­ly his hunt­ing coat and hat, which were hang­ing on his alpine staff, as the hunters are ac­cus­tomed to place them, in or­der to de­ceive the chamois! Ba­bette moaned in bound­less an­guish:

“Ah! would that I had died on my wed­ding day, my hap­pi­est day! Oh! my heav­en­ly Fa­ther! That would have been a mer­cy, a life's hap­pi­ness! Then we would have ob­tained, the best, that could have hap­pened to us! No one knows his fu­ture!” In her im­pi­ous sor­row, she threw her­self down the steep precipice. It seemed as if a string broke, and a sor­row­ful tone re­sound­ed.

Ba­bette awoke--the dream was at an end and oblit­er­at­ed; but she knew that she had dreamt of some­thing ter­ri­ble, and of the young En­glish­man, whom she had nei­ther seen, nor thought of, for many months. Was he per­haps in Mon­treux? Should she see him at her wed­ding? A slight shad­ow flit­ted over her del­icate mouth, her brow con­tract­ed; but her smile soon re­turned; her eyes sparkled again; the sun shone so beau­ti­ful­ly with­out, and to-​mor­row, yes to-​mor­row was her and Rudy's wed­ding day.

Rudy had al­ready ar­rived, when she came down stairs, and they soon left for Vil­leneuve. They were so hap­py, the two, and the miller al­so; he laughed and was ra­di­ant with joy; he was a good fa­ther, an hon­est soul.

“Now we are the mas­ters of the house!” said the par­lour-​cat.

XV.

CON­CLU­SION.

It was not yet night, when the three joy­ous peo­ple reached Vil­leneuve and took their din­ner. The miller seat­ed him­self in an arm-​chair with his pipe and took a lit­tle nap. The be­trothed went out of the town arm in arm, out on the car­riage way, un­der the bush-​grown rocks, to the deep bluish-​green lake. Som­bre Chillon, with its grey walls and heavy tow­ers, mir­rored it­self in the clear wa­ter; but still near­er lay the lit­tle is­land, with its three aca­cias, and it looked like a bou­quet on the lake.

“How charm­ing it must be there!” said Ba­bette; she felt again the great­est de­sire to vis­it it, and this wish could be im­me­di­ate­ly ful­filled; for a boat lay on the shore and the rope which fas­tened it, was easy to un­tie. As no one was vis­ible, from whom they could ask per­mis­sion, they took the boat with­out hes­ita­tion, for Rudy could row well. The oars skimmed like the fins of a fish, over the pli­ant wa­ter, which is so yield­ing and still so strong; which is all back to car­ry, but all mouth to en­gulph; which smiles--yes, is gen­tle­ness it­self, and still awak­ens ter­ror--and is so pow­er­ful in de­stroy­ing. The rapid cur­rent soon brought the boat to the is­land; they stepped on land. There was just room enough for the two to dance.

Rudy swung Ba­bette three times around, and then they seat­ed them­selves on the lit­tle bench, un­der the aca­cias, looked in­to each oth­er's eyes, held each oth­er by the hand, and ev­ery­thing around them shone in the splen­dour of the set­ting sun. The forests of fir-​trees on the moun­tains be­came of a pink­ish lilac as­pect, the colour of bloom­ing heath, and where the bare rocks were ap­par­ent, they glowed as if they were trans­par­ent. The clouds in the sky were ra­di­ant with a red glow; the whole lake was like a fresh flam­ing rose leaf. As the shad­ows arose to the snow-​cov­ered moun­tains of Savoy, they be­came dark blue, but the up­per­most peak seemed like red la­va and point­ed out for a mo­ment, the whole range of moun­tains, whose mass­es arose glow­ing from the bo­som of the earth.

It seemed to Rudy and Ba­bette, that they had nev­er seen such an alpine glow. The snow-​cov­ered Dent-​du-​Mi­di, had a lus­tre like the full moon, when it ris­es to the hori­zon.

“So much beau­ty, so much hap­pi­ness!” they both said.

“Earth can give me no more,” said Rudy, “an evening hour like this is a whole life! How of­ten have I felt as now, and thought that if ev­ery­thing should end sud­den­ly, how hap­pi­ly have I lived! How blessed is this world! The day end­ed, a new one dawned and I felt that it was still more beau­ti­ful! How boun­ti­ful is our Lord, Ba­bette!”

“I am so hap­py!” said she.

“Earth can give me no more!” ex­claimed Rudy.

The evening bells re­sound­ed from the Savoy and Swiss moun­tains; the bluish-​black Ju­ra arose in gold­en splen­dour to­wards the west.

“God give you that which is most ex­cel­lent and best, Rudy!” said Ba­bette.

“He will do that,” an­swered Rudy, “to-​mor­row I shall have it! To-​mor­row you will be en­tire­ly mine! Mine own, lit­tle, love­ly wife!”

“The boat!” cried Ba­bette at the same mo­ment.

The boat, which was to con­vey them back, had bro­ken loose and was sail­ing from the is­land.

“I will go for it!” said Rudy. He threw off his coat, drew off his boots, sprang in the lake and swam to­wards the boat.

The clear, bluish-​grey wa­ter of the ice moun­tains, was cold and deep. Rudy gave but a sin­gle glance and it seemed as though he saw a gold ring, rolling, shin­ing and sport­ing--he thought on his lost en­gage­ment ring--and the ring grew larg­er, widened in­to a sparkling cir­cle and with­in it shone the clear glacier; all about yawned end­less deep chasms; the wa­ter dropped and sound­ed like a chime of bells, and shone with bluish-​white flames. He saw in a sec­ond, what we must say in many long words. Young hunters and young girls, men and wom­en, who had once per­ished in the glacier, stood there liv­ing, with open eyes and smil­ing mouth; deep be­low them chimed from buried towns the peal of church bells; un­der the arch­es of the church­es knelt the con­gre­ga­tion; pieces of ice formed the or­gan pipes, and the moun­tain stream played the or­gan. On the clear trans­par­ent ground sat the Ice-​Maid­en; she raised her­self to­wards Rudy, kissed his feet, and the cold­ness of death ran through his limbs and gave him an elec­tric shock--ice and fire. He could not per­ceive the dif­fer­ence.

“Mine, mine!” sound­ed around him and with­in him.

“I kissed you, when you were young, kissed you on your mouth! Now I kiss your feet, you are en­tire­ly mine!”

He van­ished in the clear blue wa­ter.

Ev­ery­thing was still; the church bells stopped ring­ing; the last tones died away with the splen­dour of the red clouds.

“You are mine!” sound­ed in the deep. “You are mine!” sound­ed from on high, from the in­fi­nite.

How hap­py to fly from love to love, from earth to heav­en!

A string broke, a cry of grief was heard, the icy kiss of death con­quered; the pre­lude end­ed; so that the dra­ma of life might com­mence, dis­cord melt­ed in­to har­mo­ny.--

Do you call this a sad sto­ry?

Poor Ba­bette! For her it was a pe­ri­od of an­guish.

The boat drift­ed far­ther and far­ther. No one on shore knew that the lovers were on the is­land. The evening dark­ened, the clouds low­ered them­selves; night came. She stood there, soli­tary, de­spair­ing, moan­ing. A flash of light­ning passed over the Ju­ra moun­tains, over Switzer­land and over Savoy. From all sides flash up­on flash of light­ning, clap up­on clap of thun­der, which rolled con­tin­uous­ly many min­utes. At times the light­ning was vivid as sun­shine, and you could dis­tin­guish the grape vines; then all be­came black again in the dark night. The light­ning formed knots, ties, zigza­gs, com­pli­cat­ed fig­ures; it struck in the lake, so that it lit it up on all sides; whilst the noise of the thun­der was made loud­er by the echo. The boat was drawn on shore; all liv­ing ob­jects sought shel­ter. Now the rain streamed down.

“Where can Rudy and Ba­bette be in this fright­ful weath­er!” said the miller.

Ba­bette sat with fold­ed hands, with her head in her lap, mute with sor­row, with scream­ing and be­wail­ing.

“In the deep wa­ter,” said she to her­self, “he is as far down as the glaciers!”

She re­mem­bered what Rudy had re­lat­ed to her of his moth­er's death, of his preser­va­tion, and how he was with­drawn death-​like, from the clefts of the glacier. “The Ice-​Maid­en has him again!”

There was a flash of light­ning, as daz­zling as the sun­light on the white snow. Ba­bette start­ed up; at this in­stant, the sea rose like a glit­ter­ing glacier; there stood the Ice-​Maid­en ma­jes­tic, pale, blue, shin­ing, and at her feet lay Rudy's corpse. “Mine!” said she, and then all around was fog and night and stream­ing wa­ter.

“Cru­el!” moaned Ba­bette, “why must he die, now that the day of our hap­pi­ness ap­proached. God! En­light­en my un­der­stand­ing! En­light­en my heart! I do not un­der­stand thy ways! Notwith­stand­ing all thy om­nipo­tence and wis­dom, I still grope in the dark­ness.”

God en­light­ened her heart. A thought like a ray of mer­cy, her last night's dream in all its vivid­ness flashed through her; she re­mem­bered the words which she had spo­ken: “the wish for the best for her­self and Rudy.”

“Woe is me! Was that the sin­ful seed in my heart? Did my dream fore­tell my fu­ture life? Is all this mis­ery for my sal­va­tion? Me, mis­er­able one!”

Lament­ing, sat she in the dark night. In the solemn still­ness, sound­ed Rudy's last words; the last ones he had ut­tered: “Earth has no more hap­pi­ness to give me!” She had heard it in the full­ness of her joy, she heard it again in all the depths of her sor­row.

* * * * *

A cou­ple of years have passed since then. The lake smiles, the coast smiles; the vine branch­es are filled with ripe grapes; the steam­boats glide along with wav­ing flags and the plea­sure boats float over the wa­tery mir­ror, with their two ex­pand­ed sails like white but­ter­flies. The rail­road to Chillon is opened; it leads in­to the Rhone val­ley; strangers alight at ev­ery sta­tion; they ar­rive with their red cov­ered guide books and read of re­mark­able sights which are to be seen. They vis­it Chillon, they stand up­on the lit­tle is­land, with its three aca­cias--out on the lake--and they read in the book about the be­trothed ones, who sailed over one evening in the year 1856;--of the death of the bride­groom, and: “it was not till the next morn­ing, that the de­spair­ing shrieks of the bride were heard on the coast!”

The book does not tell, how­ev­er, of Ba­bette's qui­et life with her fa­ther; not in the mill, where strangers now dwell, but in the beau­ti­ful house, near the rail­way sta­tion. There she looks from the win­dow many an evening and gazes over the chest­nut trees, up­on the snow moun­tains, where Rudy once climbed. She sees in the evening hours the alpine glow--the chil­dren of the Sun en­camp them­selves above, and re­peat the song of the wan­der­er, whose man­tle the whirl­wind tore off, and car­ried away: “it took the cov­er­ing but not the man.”

There is a rosy hue on the snow of the moun­tains; there is a rosy hue in ev­ery heart, where the thought dwells, that: “God al­ways gives us that which is best for us!” but it is not al­ways re­vealed to us, as it once hap­pened to Ba­bette in her dream.

The But­ter­fly.

The but­ter­fly wished to pro­cure a bride for him­self--of course, one of the flow­ers--a pret­ty lit­tle one. He looked about him. Each one sat qui­et­ly and thought­ful­ly on her stalk, as a young maid­en should sit, when she is not af­fi­anced; but there were many of them, and it was a dif­fi­cult mat­ter to choose amongst them. The but­ter­fly could not make up his mind; so he flew to the daisy. The French call her _Mar­guerite_; they know that she can tell for­tunes, and she does this when lovers pluck off leaf af­ter leaf and ask her at each one a ques­tion about the beloved one: “How does he love me?--With all his heart?--With sor­row?--Above all?--Can not re­frain from it?--Quite se­cret­ly?--A lit­tle bit?--Not at all?”--or ques­tions to the same im­port. Each one asks in his own lan­guage. The but­ter­fly flew to­wards her and ques­tioned her; he did not pluck off the leaves, but kissed each sep­arate one, think­ing that by so do­ing, he would make him­self more agree­able to the good crea­ture.

“Sweet Mar­garet Daisy,” said he, “of all the flow­ers you are the wis­est wom­an! You can proph­esy! Tell me, shall I ob­tain this one or that one? Which one? If I but know this, I can fly to the charm­ing one at once, and pay my court!”

Mar­garet did not an­swer. She could not bear to be called a _wom­an_, for she was a young girl, and when one is a young girl, one is not a wom­an.

He asked again, he asked a third time, but as she did not an­swer a sin­gle word, he ques­tioned her no more and flew away with­out fur­ther par­ley, in­tent on his courtship.

It was ear­ly spring time, and there was an abun­dance of snow-​drops and cro­cus­es. “They are very neat,” said the but­ter­fly, “pret­ty lit­tle con­firmed ones, but a lit­tle green!” He, like all young men looked at old­er girls.

From thence he flew to the anemones; but he found them a lit­tle too sen­ti­men­tal; the tulips, too showy; the broom, not of a good fam­ily; the lin­den blos­soms, too small--then they had so many re­la­tions; as to the ap­ple blos­soms, why to look at them you would think them as healthy as ros­es, but to-​day they blos­som and to-​mor­row, if the wind blows, they drop off; a mar­riage with them would be too short. The pea blos­som pleased him most, she was pink and white, she was pure and re­fined and be­longed to the house­wife­ly girls that look well, and still can make them­selves use­ful in the kitchen. He had al­most con­clud­ed to make love to her, when he saw hang­ing near to her, a pea-​pod with its white blos­som. “Who is that?” asked he. “That is my sis­ter,” said the pea blos­som.

“How now, is that the way you look when old­er?” This ter­ri­fied the but­ter­fly and he flew away.

The hon­ey­suck­les were hang­ing over the fence--young ladies with long faces and yel­low skins--but he did not fan­cy their style of beau­ty. Yes, but which did he like? Ask him!

The spring passed, the sum­mer passed, and then came the au­tumn. The flow­ers ap­peared in their most beau­ti­ful dress­es, but of what avail was this? The but­ter­fly's fresh youth­ful feel­ings had van­ished. In old age, the heart longs for fra­grance, and dahlias and gillyflow­ers are scent­less. So the but­ter­fly flew to the mint. “She has no flow­er at all, but she is her­self a flow­er, for she is fra­grant from head to foot and each leaf is filled with per­fume. I shall take her!”

But the mint stood stiff and still, and at last said: “Friend­ship--but noth­ing more! I am old and you are old! We can live very well for one an­oth­er, but to mar­ry? No! Do not let us make fools of our­selves in our old age.”

So the but­ter­fly ob­tained no one.

The but­ter­fly re­mained a bach­elor.

Many vi­olent and tran­sient show­ers came late in the au­tumn; the wind blew so cold­ly down the back of the old wil­low trees, that it cracked with­in them. It did not do to fly about in sum­mer gar­ments, for even love it­self would then grow cold. The but­ter­fly how­ev­er pre­ferred not to fly out at all; he had by chance en­tered a door-​way, and there was fire in the stove--yes, it was just as warm there, as in sum­mer-​time;--there he could live. “Life is not enough,” said he, “one must have sun­shine, lib­er­ty and a lit­tle flow­er!”

He flew against the win­dow-​panes, was seen, was run through by a pin and placed in a cu­rios­ity-​box; one could not do more for him.

“Now I al­so am seat­ed on a stalk like a flow­er,” said the but­ter­fly, “it is not so com­fort­able af­ter all! But it is as well as be­ing mar­ried, for then one is tied down!” He con­soled him­self with this.

“What a wretched con­so­la­tion!” said the flow­er, that grew in the pot in the room.

“One can not en­tire­ly trust to flow­ers that grow in pots,” thought the but­ter­fly, “they have too much in­ter­course with men.”

The Psy­che.

A large star beams in the dawn of morn­ing in the red sky--the clear­est star of the morn­ing--its rays trem­ble up­on the white wall, as if they wished to write down and re­late, the scenes which they had wit­nessed dur­ing many cen­turies.

Lis­ten to one of these sto­ries!

A short time ago--(this _not long ago_ is with us men--cen­turies)--my rays fol­lowed a young artist; it was in the realm of the Pope, in the city of the world, in Rome. Many changes have been made, but the im­pe­ri­al palace, was, as it is to-​day, a ru­in; be­tween the over­thrown mar­ble columns and over the ru­ined bath-​rooms, whose walls were still dec­orat­ed with gold, grew fig and lau­rel trees. The Colos­se­um was a ru­in; the church bells rang, the in­cense arose and pro­ces­sions passed through the streets with ta­pers and gor­geous canopies. The Church was holy, and art was lofty and holy al­so. In Rome dwelt Raphael, the great­est painter of the world, here al­so dwelt Michael An­ge­lo, the great­est sculp­tor of the age; even the Pope did homage to them both, and hon­oured them with his vis­its. Art was rec­og­nized, hon­oured and re­ward­ed. All great­ness and ex­cel­lence is not seen and rec­og­nized.

In a lit­tle nar­row street, stood an old house, which had once been a tem­ple; here dwelt a young artist; he was poor, he was un­known; it is true that he had young friends, artists al­so, young in feel­ings, in hopes, and in thoughts. They told him, that he was rich in tal­ents and ex­cel­lence but that he need­ed con­fi­dence in him­self. He was nev­er sat­is­fied with his work and ei­ther de­stroyed all that he mod­eled or left it un­fin­ished; this is not the prop­er course to adopt, if one would be known, ap­pre­ci­at­ed and live.

“You are a dream­er,” said they, “this is your mis­for­tune! You have not yet lived, you have not in­haled life in large healthy draughts, you have not yet en­joyed it. One should do this in youth and be­come a man! Look at the great mas­ter Raphael whom the Pope hon­ours and the world ad­mires,--he takes wine and bread with him.”

“He dines with the bak­er's wife, the pret­ty Forna­ri­na!” said An­ge­lo, one of the mer­ry young friends.

Yes, they all ap­pealed to his good sense and to his youth.

They wished to have the young artist join them in their mer­ry-​mak­ings, in their ex­trav­agances and in their mad tricks; he would do so for a short time, for his blood was warm, his imag­ina­tion strong; he could take his part in their mer­ry con­ver­sa­tion, and laugh as loud­ly as the oth­ers; and yet “the mer­ry life of Raphael,” as they named it, van­ished from him like the morn­ing mist, when he saw the god­like lus­tre which shone forth from the paint­ings of the great mas­ters, or when he stood in the Vat­ican and be­held the forms of beau­ty, which the old sculp­tors had fash­ioned from blocks of mar­ble, cen­turies ago. His breast swelled, he felt some­thing so lofty, so holy, so el­evat­ed with­in him, yes, some­thing so great and good, that he longed to cre­ate and chis­el like forms from mar­ble blocks. He de­sired to give ex­pres­sion to the feel­ings which ag­itat­ed his heart; but how and in what shape? The soft clay al­lowed it­self to be mod­eled in­to beau­ti­ful fig­ures by his fin­gers, but on the fol­low­ing day, dis­sat­is­fied, he de­stroyed all he had cre­at­ed.

One day he passed by one of the rich palaces, of which Rome has so many; he stood a mo­ment at the large open en­trance, and gazed in­to a lit­tle gar­den, full of the most beau­ti­ful ros­es, which was sur­round­ed by arch­ways, dec­orat­ed with paint­ings. Large, white callas, with their green leaves, sprout­ed forth from mar­ble shells, in­to which splashed clear wa­ter; a form glid­ed by, a young girl, the daugh­ter of this prince­ly house, so el­egant, so light, so charm­ing! He had nev­er seen so love­ly a wom­an. Hold! yes, once, one made by Raphael, a paint­ing of Psy­che, in one of the palaces of Rome. There she was but paint­ed, here she breathed and moved.

She lived in his thoughts and in his heart; he went home to his poor lodg­ings and formed a Psy­che out of clay; it was the rich, young Ro­man girl, the prince­ly wom­an, and he gazed at his work with sat­is­fac­tion, for the first time. This had a sig­ni­fi­ca­tion--it was _She_. When his friends looked up­on it, they ex­claimed with joy, that this work was a rev­ela­tion of his artis­tic great­ness, which they had al­ways rec­og­nized, but which now should be rec­og­nized by the whole world.

Clay is nat­ural, flesh like, but it has not the white­ness, the dura­bil­ity of mar­ble; the Psy­che must ob­tain life from the block of mar­ble--and he had the most pre­cious piece of mar­ble. It had been the prop­er­ty of his par­ents, and had been ly­ing many years, in the court yard; bits of bro­ken bot­tles, re­mains of ar­ti­chokes were heaped over it and it was soiled, but its in­te­ri­or was white as the moun­tain snow; the Psy­che should rise forth from it.

One day, it so hap­pened--it is true, that the clear stars do not re­late it, for they did not see it, but we know it--that a dis­tin­guished Ro­man par­ty, came to view the young artist's work, of which they had ca­su­al­ly heard. Who were the dis­tin­guished vis­itors? Poor young man! All too hap­py young man, one may call him al­so. Here in his room stood the young girl her­self--with what a smile--when her fa­ther said: “You are that, liv­ing!” One can­not pic­ture the look, one can­not ren­der the look, the strange look with which she glanced at the young artist; it was a look which el­evat­ed, en­no­bled and--de­stroyed.

“The Psy­che must be ex­ecut­ed in mar­ble!” said the rich man. This was a word of life, for the dead clay and for the heavy block of mar­ble; it was al­so a word of life for the young man who was over­come by emo­tion. “I will buy it, as soon as the work is com­plet­ed!” said the prince­ly man.

It seemed as though a new era had dawned in the poor work-​room; oc­cu­pa­tion, life and gayety, light­ed it up. The beam­ing morn­ing star saw how the work pro­gressed. Even the clay had been en­dowed with a soul, since _she_ had been there, and he bent en­tranced over the well known fea­tures.

“Now I know what life is,” he ex­claimed with de­light, “it is love! it is the el­eva­tion of the heart to the di­vine, it is rap­ture for the beau­ti­ful! What my friends call life and en­joy­ment, is per­ish­able, like bub­bles in the fer­ment­ing lees, not the pure, heav­en­ly wine of the al­tar, the con­se­cra­tion of life!”

The mar­ble block was erect­ed, the chis­el hewed away large pieces; the labour­er's part was done, marks and points placed, un­til lit­tle by lit­tle, the stone be­came a body, a shape of beau­ty--the Psy­che--as charm­ing as was the wom­an made by God. The mas­sive stone be­came a soar­ing, danc­ing, airy, light and grace­ful Psy­che, with a heav­en­ly, in­no­cent smile, the smile that had been mir­rored in the young sculp­tor's heart.

The star, in the rosy-​tint­ed morn­ing saw, and part­ly un­der­stood what was ag­itat­ing the mind of the young man; it un­der­stood as well, the vary­ing colour of his checks and the glance of his eye, whilst he cre­at­ed, as though in­spired by God.

“You are a mas­ter like those in the days of the Greeks,” said his en­chant­ed friends, “the world will soon ad­mire your Psy­che!”

“My Psy­che,” he re­peat­ed, “mine, yes, that she must be! I am al­so an artist like the great de­part­ed ones! God has grant­ed gifts of mer­cy to me, and has el­evat­ed me to the high­ly born!”

He sank, weep­ing, on his knees and of­fered up his thanks to God--but for­got him again for her, for her por­trait in mar­ble, for the Psy­che form, that stood be­fore him, as though cut out of snow, blush­ing, in the morn­ing sun.

He should see her, the liv­ing, float­ing one, in re­al­ity; she, whose words sound­ed like mu­sic. He would him­self car­ry the tid­ings, that the mar­ble Psy­che was com­plet­ed, to the rich palace. He ar­rived, passed through the open court-​yard, where the wa­ter splashed from dol­phin's mouths in­to mar­ble shells, where callas bloomed and fresh ros­es blos­somed. He stepped in­to the large, lofty hall, whose walls and ceil­ings were gor­geous with bril­liant colours, with paint­ings and ar­mo­ri­al bear­ings. Well dressed and haughty ser­vants, hold­ing up their heads, (like sleigh hors­es with their bells,) were pac­ing up and down; some of them had even stretched them­selves out com­fort­ably and in­so­lent­ly on the carved wood­en bench­es; they ap­peared to be the mas­ters of the house. He named his busi­ness, and was con­duct­ed up the mar­ble steps, which were cov­ered with soft car­pets. On each side stood stat­ues. Then he came to rich­ly dec­orat­ed apart­ments, hung with paint­ings and with mo­sa­ic floors.

This pomp, this splen­dour made him breathe a lit­tle heav­ily, but he soon felt re­as­sured; for the old prince, re­ceived him kind­ly, al­most cor­dial­ly. Af­ter they had spo­ken, as he was tak­ing leave, he begged him to vis­it the young Sig­no­ra, for she al­so wished to see him. The ser­vants led him through mag­nif­icent cham­bers and cor­ri­dors to her apart­ments, of which she was the glo­ry and splen­dour.

She spoke with him! No Mis­erere, no church song could have melt­ed the heart more, or have more el­evat­ed the soul, than did the mu­sic of her voice. He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips--no rose is so soft, but a fire pro­ceeds from this rose--a fire streams through him and his breast heaves; words streamed from his lips, but he knew not what he said. Does the crater know that it throws forth burn­ing la­va? He told her his love. She stood there, sur­prised, in­sult­ed, proud, yes, scorn­ful; with an ex­pres­sion on her face as though a damp, clam­my frog had sud­den­ly touched her. Her cheeks coloured, her lips grew pale, her eyes were on fire, and still black as the dark­ness of night.

“Fran­tic crea­ture! Away, away!” said she, as she turned her back up­on him. Her face of beau­ty seemed turned to stone, like un­to the Medusa's head with its ser­pent locks. He de­scend­ed to the street, a weak, life­less thing; he en­tered his room like a night-​walk­er, and in the rage of his grief, he seized his ham­mer, bran­dished it high in the air and sought to de­stroy the beau­ti­ful mar­ble form. He did not ob­serve--so ex­cit­ed was he--that An­ge­lo, his friend, stood near him, and ar­rest­ed his arm with a firm grasp.

“Have you be­come mad? What would you do?” They strug­gled with each oth­er. An­ge­lo was the stronger, and with a deep drawn breath, he threw the young artist on a chair.

“What has oc­curred?” asked An­ge­lo, “Col­lect your­self! Speak!”

What could he say? What could he tell? As An­ge­lo could not seize the thread of his dis­course, he let it drop.

“Your blood grows thick with this eter­nal dream­ing! Be hu­man, like oth­ers and live not in the clouds! Drink, un­til you be­come slight­ly in­tox­icat­ed, then you will sleep well! The young girl from the Cam­pagna, is as beau­ti­ful as the princess in the mar­ble palace, they are both daugh­ters of Eve, and can not be dis­tin­guished one from the oth­er in Par­adise! Fol­low your An­ge­lo! I am your good an­gel, the an­gel of your life! A time will come when you are old, when the body will dwin­dle and some beau­ti­ful sun­shiny day, when ev­ery­thing laughs and re­joic­es, you will lie like a with­ered straw! I do not be­lieve what the priests say, that there is a life be­yond the grave! It is a pret­ty fan­cy, a fairy tale for chil­dren, de­light­ful to think up­on. I do not live in imag­ina­tion, but in re­al­ity! Come with me! Be­come a man!”

He drew him away, he could do this now, for there was a fire in the young artist's blood, a change in his soul; an ar­dent de­sire to tear him­self away from all his wont­ed ways, from all ac­cus­tomed thoughts; to for­get his old self--and to-​day he fol­lowed An­ge­lo.

In the sub­urbs, lay an os­te­ria, which was much fre­quent­ed by artists; it was built in the ru­ins of a bathing cham­ber. Amongst the dark shin­ing fo­liage, hung large yel­low lemons which cov­ered a por­tion of the old red­dish-​yel­low wall. The os­te­ria was a deep vault, al­most like a hol­low in the ru­ins; with­in, a lamp burned be­fore the im­age of the Madon­na; a large fire flamed on the hearth, for here they roast­ed, cooked and pre­pared the dish­es for the guests. With­out, un­der the lemon and lau­rel trees, stood ta­bles ready set.

They were re­ceived mer­ri­ly and re­joic­ing­ly by their friends; they ate lit­tle and drank much and be­came gay; they sang, and played on the gui­tar; the Saltarel­lo sound­ed and the dance be­gan. Two Ro­man girls, mod­els of the young artists, joined in the dance and mer­ri­ment; two pret­ty Bac­cha­nte! They had no Psy­che forms, they were not del­icate beau­ti­ful ros­es, but fresh, healthy flam­ing pinks.

How warm it was on this day, even warm at sun­down! Fire in the blood, fire in the air, fire in ev­ery glance. The air swam in gold and ros­es, life was gold and ros­es.

“Now you have at last joined us! Al­low your­self to be car­ried away by the cur­rent with­in and with­out you!”

“I nev­er felt so well and joy­ous be­fore!” said the young artist. “You are right, you are all of you right. I was a fool, a dream­er; man be­longs to re­al­ity and not to fan­cy!”

The young man left the os­te­ria, in the clear star­ry evening, with song and tin­kling gui­tars, and passed through the nar­row streets. The daugh­ters of the Cam­pagna, the two flam­ing pinks, were in their train.

In An­ge­lo's room, the voic­es sound­ed more sup­pressed but not less fiery, amongst the scat­tered sketch­es, the out­lines, the glow­ing, volup­tuous paint­ings; amongst the draw­ings on the floor there was many a sketch of vig­or­ous beau­ty, like un­to the daugh­ters of the Cam­pagna, yet they them­selves were much more beau­ti­ful. The six-​armed lamp glowed bright­ly, and the hu­man forms warmed and shone like gods.

“Apol­lo! Jupiter! I el­evate my­self to your heav­en, to your glo­ry! Me­thinks, that the flow­er of my life has un­fold­ed with­in my heart!” Yes, it did un­fold--it with­ered and fell to pieces; a stun­ning, loath­some vapour arose, daz­zling the sight, be­numb­ing the thoughts, ex­tin­guish­ing his sen­su­al, fiery emo­tions, and all was dark. He went home, sat down on his bed, and thought. “Fie!” sound­ed from his lips, from the bot­tom of his heart. “Mis­er­able wretch! away! away!”--and he sighed sor­row­ful­ly.

“Away! Away!” These, her words, the words of the liv­ing Psy­che, weighed up­on him, and flowed from his lips. He bowed his head up­on the pil­lows, his thoughts be­came con­fused and he slept.

At the dawn of day he start­ed up.--What was this? Was it a dream? Were her words, the vis­it to the os­te­ria, the evening with the pur­ple red pinks of the Cam­pagna but a dream?--No, all was re­al­ity; he had not known this be­fore.

The clear star beamed in the pur­ple-​tint­ed air, its rays fell up­on him, and up­on the mar­ble Psy­che; he trem­bled whilst he con­tem­plat­ed the im­age of im­mor­tal­ity, his glance even ap­peared im­pure to him. He threw a cov­er­ing over it, he touched it once more in or­der to veil its form, but he could not view his work.

Still, som­bre, buried in his own med­ita­tions, he sat there the whole day; he took no heed of what passed around him, no one knew what was ag­itat­ing this hu­man heart. Days passed by, weeks passed by; the nights were the longest. One morn­ing, the twin­kling star saw him rise from his couch--pale--trem­bling with fever; he walked to the mar­ble stat­ue, lift­ed the cov­er, gazed up­on his work with a sor­row­ful, deep, long look, and then al­most sink­ing un­der the weight, he drew the stat­ue in­to the gar­den. There was a sunken, dried-​up well, with­in it, in­to which he low­ered the Psy­che, threw earth up­on it and cov­ered the fresh grave with small sticks and net­tles.

“Away! Away,” was the short fu­ne­re­al ser­vice.

The star in the rosy red at­mo­sphere saw this, and two heavy tears trem­bled on the death­ly pale cheeks of the fever sick one--sick un­to death, as they called him.

The lay broth­er Ig­natius came to him as a friend and as a physi­cian. He came, and with the con­sol­ing words of re­li­gion, he spoke of the peace and hap­pi­ness of the church, of the sins of man, of the mer­cy and peace of God.

The words fell like warm sun beams on the moist, fer­ment­ing ground; they dis­persed and cleared away the misty clouds, from the trou­bled thoughts which had held pos­ses­sion of him; he gazed up­on his past life; ev­ery­thing had been a fail­ure, a de­cep­tion--yes, _had been_. Art was an en­chantress, that but leads us in­to van­ity, in­to earth­ly plea­sures. We be­come false to our­selves, false to our friends, false to our God. The ser­pent speaks ev­er in us: “Taste and thou shalt be­come like un­to God.”

Now, for the first time, he ap­peared to un­der­stand him­self, to have dis­cov­ered the road to truth, to peace.

In the church was God's light and bright­ness, in the monk's cell was found that peace, which en­ables man to ob­tain eter­nal bliss.

Broth­er Ig­natius sup­port­ed him in these thoughts, and the de­ci­sion was firm­ly made--a worldling be­came a ser­vant of the church;--the young artist took leave of the world, and en­tered the clois­ter.

How joy­ful­ly, how cor­dial­ly the broth­ers greet­ed him! How fes­tive the or­di­na­tion! It seemed to him that God was in the sun­shine of the church, and beamed with­in it, from the holy pic­tures and from the shin­ing cross. He stood in the evening sun­set, in his lit­tle cell, and opened his win­dow and gazed in the spring-​time over old Rome--with her bro­ken tem­ples, her mas­sive, but dead Colos­se­um; her bloom­ing aca­cias, her flour­ish­ing ev­er­greens, her fra­grant ros­es, her shin­ing lemons and or­anges, her palm trees fanned by the breeze--and felt touched and sat­is­fied. The qui­et, open Cam­pagna ex­tend­ed to the blue snow-​topped moun­tains, which ap­peared to be paint­ed on the air. Ev­ery­thing breathed beau­ty and peace. The whole--a dream!

Yes, the world here was a dream, and the dream ruled the hours and re­turned to hours again. But the life of a clois­ter is a life of many, many long years.

Man is nat­ural­ly im­pure and he felt this! What flames were these, that at times glowed through him? Was it the pow­er of the Evil One, that caused these wild thoughts to rage con­stant­ly with­in him? He pun­ished his body, but with­out ef­fect. What por­tion of his mind was that, which wound it­self around him, pli­able as a ser­pent, and which crept about his con­science un­der a lov­ing cloak and con­soled him! The saints pray for us, the holy Vir­gin prays for us, Je­sus him­self gave his blood for us!

Was it a child­like feel­ing, or the lev­ity of youth, that had in­duced him to give him­self up to grace, and which made him feel el­evat­ed above so many? For had he not cast away the van­ity of the world, was he not a son of the church?

One day, af­ter many years, he met An­ge­lo, who rec­og­nized him.

“Man,” said he, “yes, it is you! Are you hap­py now? You have sinned against God, and cast his gifts of mer­cy away from you; you have gam­bled away your vo­ca­tion for this world. Read the para­ble of the en­trust­ed pledge. The Mas­ter who re­lat­ed it, spoke but truth! What have you won and found af­ter all? Do not make a dream life for your­self! Make a re­li­gion for your­self, as all do. Sup­pose all is but a dream, a fan­cy, a beau­ti­ful thought!”

“Get thee from be­hind me, Sa­tan!” said the monk, and for­sook An­ge­lo.

“It is a dev­il, a dev­il per­son­ified! I saw him to-​day,” mur­mured the monk, “I reached him but a fin­ger, and he took my whole hand! No,” sighed he, "the wicked­ness is in my­self; it is al­so in this man, but he is not tor­ment­ed by it; he walks with el­evat­ed brow, he has his en­joy­ment; I but clutch at the con­so­la­tion of the church for my wel­fare! But if this is on­ly con­so­la­tion! If all here con­sists of beau­ti­ful thoughts and but re­sem­ble those which be­guiled me in the world? Is it but a de­cep­tion like un­to the beau­ty of the red evening clouds and like un­to the blue wave-​like beau­ty of the dis­tant moun­tains! Seen near, how changed! Eter­ni­ty, art thou like un­to the great in­fi­nite, calm ocean, which beck­ons to us, calls us, fills us with pre­sen­ti­ments, and if we ven­ture up­on it, we sink, we van­ish--die--cease to be?--

“De­ceit! away! away!”

He sat tear­less on his hard couch, des­olate, kneel­ing--be­fore whom? Be­fore the stone cross which was placed in the wall? No, habit alone caused his body to bend.

The deep­er he read with­in him­self, the dark­er all ap­peared to him. “Noth­ing with­in, noth­ing with­out! Life thrown away!” This thought, crushed him--ex­punged him.

“I dare con­fide to none the doubts which con­sume me! My pris­on­er is my se­cret and if it es­cape I am lost!”

The pow­er of God, wres­tled with­in him.

“Lord! Lord!” he ex­claimed in his de­spair, “be mer­ci­ful, give me faith! I cast thy gifts of mer­cy from me and my vo­ca­tion for this world! I prayed for strength and thou hast not giv­en it to me. Im­mor­tal­ity! The Psy­che in my breast--away! away!--Must it be buried like yon Psy­che, the light of my life? Nev­er to arise from the grave!”

The star beamed in the rosy red at­mo­sphere, the star which will be lost and will van­ish, whilst the soul lives and emits light. Its trem­bling ray fell up­on the white wall, but it spoke not of the glo­ry of God, of the grace, the eter­nal love which beams in the breast of ev­ery be­liev­er.

“Can the Psy­che nev­er die?--Can one live with con­scious­ness?--Can the im­pos­si­ble take place?--Yes! Yes! My be­ing is in­ex­pli­ca­ble. In­con­ceiv­able art thou, oh Lord! A won­der of might, glo­ry and love!”

His eyes beamed, his eyes closed. The peal of the church bells passed over the dead one. He was laid in holy ground and his ash­es min­gled with the dust of strangers.

Years af­ter­wards, his bones were ex­humed and stood in a niche in the clois­ters, as had stood those of the dead monks be­fore him; they were dressed in the brown cowl, a rosary of beads placed in his hand, the sun shone with­out, in­cense per­fumed with­in, and mass was read.--

Years rolled by.

The bones and legs fell asun­der. They stood up the skulls, and with them, formed the whole out­side wall of a church. There he stood in the burn­ing sun­shine; there were so many, many dead, they did not know their names, much less his.

See, some­thing liv­ing moved in the sun­shine in the two eye sock­ets; what was that? A bril­liant lizard was run­ning about in the hol­low skull, slip­ping in and out of the large, emp­ty sock­ets. This was now the life in the head, where once el­evat­ed thoughts, bril­liant dreams, love for art and the mag­nif­icent had been rife; from which hot tears had rolled and where the hope of im­mor­tal­ity had lived. The lizard leaped out and dis­ap­peared; the skull crum­bled away and be­came dust to dust.--

Cen­turies passed. Un­changed, the star, clear and large, beamed on as it had done for cen­turies. The at­mo­sphere shone with a red rosy hue, fresh as ros­es, flam­ing as blood.

Where there had once been a lit­tle street with the re­mains of an old tem­ple, now stood a con­vent; a grave was dug in the gar­den, for a young nun had died, and she was to be low­ered in the earth at this ear­ly hour of the morn­ing. The spade struck against a stone which ap­peared of a daz­zling white­ness--the white mar­ble came forth--it round­ed in­to a shoul­der;--they used the spade with care, and a fe­male head be­came vis­ible--but­ter­fly wings. They raised from the grave, in which the young nun was to be laid on this rosy morn­ing, a glo­ri­ous­ly beau­ti­ful Psy­che-​form, chis­eled from white mar­ble.

“How mag­nif­icent! How per­fect a mas­ter work!” they said. “Who can the artist be?” He was un­known. None knew him, save the clear star, which had been beam­ing for cen­turies; it knew the course of his earth­ly life, his tri­als, his fail­ings; it knew that he was: “but a man!” But he was dead, dis­persed as dust must and shall be; but the re­sult of his best ef­forts, the glo­ry which point­ed out the di­vine with­in him, the Psy­che, which nev­er dies, which sur­pass­es in bright­ness, all earth­ly renown, this re­mained, was seen, ac­knowl­edged, ad­mired and beloved.

The clear morn­ing star in the rosy tint­ed sky, cast its most ra­di­ant beams up­on the Psy­che, and up­on the smile of hap­pi­ness about the mouth and eyes of the ad­mir­ing ones, who be­held the soul, chis­eled in the mar­ble block.

That which is earth­ly pass­es away, and is for­got­ten; on­ly the star in the in­fi­nite knows of it. That which is heav­en­ly sur­pass­es renown; for renown, fame and earth­ly glo­ry die away, but--the Psy­che lives for­ev­er!

The Snail and the Rose-​Tree.

A hedge of hazel-​nut bush­es en­cir­cled the gar­den; with­out was field and mead­ow, with cows and sheep; but in the cen­tre of the gar­den stood a rose-​tree, and un­der it sat a snail--she had much with­in her, she had her­self.

“Wait, un­til my time comes,” said she, “I shall ac­com­plish some­thing more than putting forth ros­es, bear­ing nuts, or giv­ing milk, like the cows and sheep!”

“I ex­pect some­thing fear­ful­ly grand,” said the rose-​tree, “may I ask when it will take place?”

“I shall take my time,” said the snail, “you are in too great a hur­ry, and when this is the case, how can one's ex­pec­ta­tions be ful­filled?”

The next year the snail lay in about the same spot un­der the rose-​tree, which put forth buds and de­vel­oped ros­es, ev­er fresh, ev­er new. The snail half crept forth, stretched out its feel­ers and drew it­self in again.

“Ev­ery­thing looks as it did a year ago! No progress has been made; the rose-​tree still bears ros­es; it does not get along any far­ther!”

The sum­mer fad­ed away, the au­tumn passed, the rose-​tree con­stant­ly bore flow­ers and buds, un­til the snow fell, and the weath­er was raw and damp. The rose-​tree bent it­self to­wards the earth, the snail crept in the earth.

A new year com­menced; the ros­es came out, and the snail came out.

“Now you are an old rose bush,” said the snail, “you will soon die away. You have giv­en the world ev­ery­thing that you had in you; whether that be much or lit­tle is a ques­tion, up­on which I have not time to re­flect. But it is quite ev­ident, that you have not done the slight­est thing to­wards your in­ward de­vel­ope­ment; oth­er­wise I sup­pose that some­thing dif­fer­ent would have sprung from you. Can you an­swer this? You will soon be noth­ing but a stick! Can you un­der­stand what I say?”

“You star­tle me,” said the rose-​tree, “I have nev­er thought up­on that!”

“No, I sup­pose that you have nev­er med­dled much with think­ing! Can you tell me why you blos­som? And how it comes to pass? How? Why?”

“No,” said the rose-​tree, “I blos­som with plea­sure be­cause I could not do oth­er­wise. The sun was so warm, the air so re­fresh­ing, I drank the clear dew and the for­ti­fy­ing rain; I breathed, I lived! A strength came to me from the earth, a strength came from above, I felt a hap­pi­ness, ev­er new, ev­er great and there­fore I must blos­som ev­er, that was my life, I could not do oth­er­wise!”

“You have led a very easy life!” said the snail.

“Cer­tain­ly, ev­ery­thing has been giv­en to me,” said the rose-​tree, “but still more has been giv­en to you. You are one of those med­ita­tive, pen­sive, pro­found na­tures, one of the high­ly gift­ed, that as­tound the whole world!”

“I have as­sured­ly no such thought in my mind,” said the snail, “the world is noth­ing to me! What have I to do with the world? I have enough with my­self, and enough in my­self!”

“But should we not all, here on earth, give the best part of us to oth­ers? Of­fer what we can!--It is true, that I have on­ly giv­en ros­es--but you? You who have re­ceived so much, what have you giv­en to the world? What do you give her?”

“What I have giv­en? What I give? I spit up­on her! She is good for noth­ing! I have nought to do with her. Put forth ros­es, you can do no more! Let the hazel bush­es bear nuts! Let the cows and sheep give milk; they have each their pub­lic, I have mine with­in my­self! I re­tire with­in my­self, and there I re­main. The world is noth­ing to me!”

And there­upon the snail with­drew in­to her house and closed it.

“That is so sad,” said the rose-​tree, “with the best will, I can­not creep in, I must ev­er spring out, spring forth in ros­es. The leaves drop off and are blown away by the wind. Yet, I saw one of the ros­es laid in the hymn-​book of the moth­er of the fam­ily; one of my ros­es was placed up­on the breast of a charm­ing young girl, and one was kissed with joy by a child's mouth. This did me so much good, it was a re­al bless­ing! That is my rec­ol­lec­tion, my life!”

And the rose-​tree flow­ered in in­no­cence, and the snail sat in­dif­fer­ent­ly in her house. The world was noth­ing to her.

And years passed away. The snail be­came earth to earth and the rose-​tree be­came earth to earth; the re­mem­brances in the hymn-​book were al­so blown away--but new rose-​trees bloomed in the gar­den, new snails grew in the gar­den; they crept in their hous­es and spat.--The world is noth­ing to them.

Shall we read the sto­ry of the past again? It will not be dif­fer­ent.

* * * * *

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Ty­po­graph­ical er­rors cor­rect­ed in text: | | | | Page 104: suc­ced­ed re­placed with suc­ceed­ed | | Page 116: petu­lent re­placed with petu­lant | | Page 144: pref­ered re­placed with pre­ferred | | Page 167: 'were' cap­ital­ized to 'Were' (new sen­tence) | | Page 170: or­do­na­tion re­placed with or­di­na­tion | | Page 174: beck­ens re­placed with beck­ons | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

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