THE ICE-MAIDEN.
The walnuts and chestnut-trees, all hung with the green garlands of
spring, spread from the bridge at St. Maurice to the margin of the
Lake of Geneva along the Rhone, which with violent speed rushes from
its source under the green glacier--the ice palace, where the
Ice-Maiden lives, whence she flies on the wind to the highest
snow-field, and there, in the strong sunlight, stretches herself on
her drifting bed. And as she sits there she looks with far-seeing
glance into the deepest valleys, where men, like ants on a sunlit
stone, busily move about.
"Powerful Spirits, as the Children of the Sun call you!" said the
Ice-Maiden, "you are creeping things! with a rolling snowball both you
and your houses and towns are crushed and effaced!" And she raised her
proud head higher, and looked about her and deep down with deathly
eyes. But from the valley was heard a rumbling, blasting of the rocks;
men were at work; roads and tunnels were being made for railways.
"They play like moles!" said she; "they are digging passages,
therefore I hear sounds like musket-shots. When I move my castle the
sound is louder than the rolling of thunder."
From the valley arose a smoke, which moved onward like a flickering
veil; it was the flying plume from a locomotive, which was drawing a
train on the recently opened railway, the winding serpent, whose
joints are the carriages.
"They play at masters down below, the Powerful Spirits!" said the
Ice-Maiden. "Yet the powers of nature are mightier!" and she laughed
and sang, and the valleys resounded.
"Now there is an avalanche rolling!" said the men below.
But the Children of the Sun sang yet higher of human ideas, the
powerful means which subdue the sea, remove mountains, fill up
valleys; human ideas, they are the lords of the powers of nature. At
the same moment there came over the snow-field, where the Ice-Maiden
sat, a party of mountain climbers; they had bound themselves to one
another with cords for greater security on the smooth plain of ice,
near the deep precipices.
"Creeping things!" said she. "You the lords of nature!" and she turned
herself away from them and looked mockingly down into the deep valley,
where the railway train was rushing past.
"There they sit, these _thinkers!_ they sit in their power! I see them
all! One sits proud as a king, alone! there they sit in a cluster!
there half of them are asleep! and when the steam dragon stops they
get out, and go their way. The thinkers go out into the world!" And
she laughed.
"There is an avalanche rolling again!" said those down below in the
valley.
"It will not reach us!" said two people behind the steam dragon; "two
souls with one thought," as they say. It was Rudy and Babette; the
miller also was with them.
"As luggage!" said he. "I am with them as something necessary!"
"There sit those two!" said the Ice-Maiden.
"Many chamois have I crushed, millions of Alpine roses have I snapped
and broken, not leaving the roots! I will blot them out! Thinkers!
Powerful Spirits!" And she laughed.
"There's an avalanche rolling again!" said those down below in the
valley.