"It will not last long. Fine weather never does when the outlines of the mountains are so distinct and the crests seem so near."

Ernst did not at once reply,--he stood gazing steadily at the blue distance; but after two or three minutes he said, "I want to drive to Oberstein to-morrow; order the carriage, if you please."

Gronau looked at him, surprised: "To Oberstein? Do you intend making an excursion?"

"Yes; I wish to ascend the Wolkenstein."

"You mean to the cliffs."

"No, to the summit."

"Now? At this season? It is impossible, Herr Waltenberg. You know the summit has always been inaccessible."

"That is the very reason why it attracts me. I have stayed on here to make the ascent, but I could do nothing in the weather we have had. Get me a couple of competent guides----"

"There are none such to be had for the ascent you speak of," Gronau gravely interrupted him.

"Why not? Because of that old nurse's tale? Offer the men a large sum of money; 'tis a sure cure for superst.i.tion."

"Possibly; but it might well fail here, for the old nurse's tale has a background of indubitable reality, as we have seen. The avalanche and the ruin it wrought are too fresh in the memory of the mountaineers."

"Yes, it wrought ruin indeed," Ernst said, dreamily, still gazing towards the mountains.

"And therefore let the Wolkenstein alone for the present," Veit entreated. "This clearing up of the skies is not going to last, I a.s.sure you. We cannot undertake the feat now."

Ernst shrugged his shoulders: "I did not ask you to go with me. Stay at home if you are afraid, Gronau."

Veit's brown face showed irritation, but he controlled himself: "We have surely shared enough of adventure together, Herr Waltenberg, to set your mind at rest with regard to my timidity. I will go with you to the extent of what is possible; you, I fear, mean to go farther, and your mood is not one to enable you to encounter danger coolly."

"You are mistaken; my mood is excellent, and I ara going to make this ascent, with or without guides; if needs must I will go alone."

Gronau was familiar with this tone, and knew that there was nothing to be done in opposition to it; nevertheless he made one last attempt. He supposed that there would be an outbreak, but he determined to speak: "Remember your promise. You promised Baroness Thurgau to avoid the Wolkenstein."

Ernst started: his change of colour, the flash of menace in his eyes, betrayed how he suffered by the touch upon his bleeding wound; but in a moment he had shrouded himself in a frigid composure that forbade all further discussion.

"The circ.u.mstances under which I made that promise no longer exist.

Moreover, I must entreat that all allusion to them in my presence be avoided for the future."

He went to his room, turning upon the threshold to say, "At eight o'clock to-morrow morning you will have the carriage ready for a drive to Oberstein."

Upon a snow-field in face of the peak of the Wolkenstein a small group of bold mountain-climbers were a.s.sembled, who had undertaken the ascent, and had actually accomplished the greater part of it,--the two guides, muscular, weather-beaten mountaineers, and Veit Gronau.

They were provided with ropes, axes, and every accessory of a mountain-ascent, and were evidently taking a prolonged rest here.

They had left Oberstein on the previous day and had climbed to the borders of the limitless waste of rocks, where was a hut, in which they had taken shelter for the night, and then with the first dawn of morning they had attacked the cliff hitherto p.r.o.nounced inaccessible.

With persistent pains, with indescribable exertions, and with reckless contempt of the danger that threatened them at every step, they had scaled it. It had been ascended for the first time!

This consciousness, however, was the only reward of their success, for the weather, which had hitherto been tolerably clear, had changed within an hour or two. Thick mist filled the valleys, obscuring the outlook, and the crests only of the surrounding mountains were visible.

The peak of the Wolkenstein, itself a mighty pyramid of ice rising sheer above them, was gradually disappearing. Gronau's field-gla.s.s was directed steadily to this pyramid, and the two guides exchanged a few monosyllabic remarks, while their grave faces showed their anxiety.

"I can see nothing more," said Veit, at last, taking the gla.s.s from his eyes. "The peak is veiled in mist; nothing can be distinguished any longer."

"That mist is snow," said one of the guides, an elderly man with grizzled hair. "I told the gentleman it was coming, but he would not listen to me."

"Yes, it was madness to attempt the ascent under such circ.u.mstances,"

Gronau muttered. "I should have thought we had done enough in surmounting this cliff. It was a terrific piece of climbing; few will ever venture to follow us, and it never has been done before."

Meanwhile, the younger guide had kept a sharp lookout in all directions; he now approached and said, "We can wait no longer, Herr; we must return."

"Without Herr Waltenberg? Upon no account!" Gronau declared.

The man shrugged his shoulders: "Only as far as the snow-barrow, where we can find shelter beneath the rocks, if it comes to the worst. Up here we could never stand against the snow, and we must descend the worst part of the cliff before it comes, or not one of us will get down alive. We agreed to wait for the gentleman at the snow-barrow."

Such had, in fact, been the agreement when Waltenberg separated from the party. The guides who had been prevailed upon to undertake the expedition by the offer of three times their usual fee had brought the two strangers successfully to the top of the cliff. Here they had positively refused to go farther, not because their courage failed them,--the summit lying directly before them was probably less dangerous to climb than the steep, almost perpendicular cliff they had already scaled,--but the experienced mountaineers well knew what those grayish-white clouds foreboded which were beginning to a.s.semble, at first as light as hovering mist. They begged for an immediate return, and Gronau seconded their entreaties, but in vain.

Ernst saw directly before him the summit he had so longed to attain, and no warning, no entreaty, availed to alter his determination to proceed. He insisted upon the completion of his daring attempt with all the obstinacy of a nature that held cheaply his own life, as well as the lives of others. The threatening skies did not move him, and the refusal of the guides to accompany him only roused his antagonism. With a sneer at their caution when the goal was all but attained he left them.

Gronau had kept his word; he had gone with him to the extent of what was possible, but when that was reached, when the risk was madness,--a provoking of fate,--he had remained behind, and yet he was regretting that he had done so. The climber had been visible for a while as he toiled upward, until near the summit all trace of him through the field-gla.s.s had been lost, because of the mists which gathered quickly and heavily.

"We must go down," the elder guide said, resolutely. "If the gentleman comes back he will find us beside the snow-barrow. We shall do him no good by staying here, and we risk our lives by losing time."

Gronau saw the justice of the man's words, and shut up his gla.s.s with a sigh.

The wavering ma.s.ses of mist grew thicker and darker; they floated upward from all the valleys, sailed forth from every cleft, and veiled forests and peaks in their damp mantle. The precipices of the Wolkenstein, the sheer gigantic stretch of its rocky walls, vanished in the rolling fog,--the ice-pyramid of its peak alone stood forth clear and distinct.

And aloft upon this summit stood the man who had persisted and had accomplished what had been deemed impossible. His dress bore traces of his fearful toil, his hands were bleeding from the jagged points of ice by which he had held to swing himself up, but he stood where no human foot save his own had ever trod. He had dared to ascend the cloudy throne of the Alpine Fay, to lift her veil and to look the sovereign of this icy realm in the face.

And her face was beautiful! But its beauty was wild and phantom-like: there was in it no trace of earth, and it dazzled with a painful splendour the eyes of the undaunted adventurer. Around him and below him was naught save ice and snow,--rigid white glaciers riven and billowy but gleaming with fairylike brilliancy. The creva.s.ses gave back here the greenish hue of spring and there the deep blue of ocean, and the dazzling white of the jagged, snow-covered crests reflected a thousand prismatic dyes, while above it all arched a sky of such clear azure that it was as if it would fain pour forth all its fulness of light upon the old legendary throne of the mountains, the crystal palace of the Alpine Fay.

Ernst drew deep, long breaths: for the first time in many days the weight that had so burdened his spirit vanished; the world, with its loves and hates, its struggles and conflicts, lay far below him; it disappeared in the misty sea that filled the valleys and buried beneath it meadows and forest and the habitations of men. The mountain-peaks alone emerged, like islands in a measureless ocean. Here appeared a couple of dark crests of rock, there a peak of dazzling snow, and there a distant range. But they all looked unreal, bodiless, floating and sailing upon the flood which heaved and undulated as it slowly rose higher and higher. Over it brooded the silence of death: life was extinct in this realm of eternal ice.

And yet a warm, pa.s.sionate human heart was throbbing in this waste, fain to flee from the world and its woe, seeking forgetfulness here, but bringing its woe with it. So long as danger strained every nerve, so long as there was a goal to be attained, the haunting misery of his soul had been stilled. The old magic draught which Ernst had so often quaffed had not lost its charm; danger and enjoyment indissolubly linked, the spell of magnificent nature, and the unfettered freedom again his own, were all-powerful to stir him. Again he felt the intoxicating force of the draught, and in the midst of this icy waste he was seized with a burning longing for those lands of sunshine and light where only he had been truly at home. There he could forget and recover,--there he could again live and be happy.

The misty sea rose higher and higher; slowly, noiselessly, but steadily, one peak after another vanished beneath the gray, mysterious flood, which, like a deluge, swallowed up everything belonging to earth. The ice-pyramid of the Wolkenstein alone still stood forth, but its gleaming splendour had vanished with the vanished sunlight.

The solitary dreamer suddenly shuddered as if from the chill of an icy breath. He looked up; the blue above him had faded: he saw only white mist, which began to veil everything near at hand.

Ernst had been abundantly warned by the guides: he knew this sign; with danger the tension of his nerves returned; it was high time to retrace his steps. He began the descent, slowly, cautiously, testing every step as he had done in climbing up, but the mist barred his way everywhere and chilled him to the bone. Nevertheless, he pursued his downward path steadily, the traces of his ascent in the snow guiding him; at last, however, he was forced to search for them, and more than once he lost them. The effects of his over-exertion began also to a.s.sert themselves.

His breath came short and in gasps, the moisture stood out upon his forehead, and his sight grew uncertain. Conscious of this, he roused himself to greater efforts. He had challenged the danger, he would not succ.u.mb to it, the old nurse's tale should not come true, and his force of will was again victorious. He traversed the terrible path for the second time, and panting, gasping, half frozen, half dead from fatigue, he finally reached the foot of the pyramid, and stood upon the glacier summit of the cliff.

The hardest part of his task was over. True, there was still the sheer descent of the cliff to achieve, but steps had been hewn in the ice by the ascending party, and ropes had been left at the worst places to help in the descent. Ernst knew that he should find these aids; in spite of the fog, they would guide him to the snow-barrow, where his companions awaited him.

Then forth from the mist it hovered white and glistening, like fluttering veils softly touching cheek and brow in a gentle caress,--the snow had begun to fall. And in a few minutes the caressing touch was transformed to an oppressive, stifling embrace which it was vain to try to escape. Ernst staggered forward, then turned back, but the icy arms were everywhere: they robbed him of breath and froze the blood in his veins. One short, desperate struggle, and they held him in an indissoluble clasp,--he sank on the ground.