THE danneman’s sleigh was not so light as the one in which the major
had brought Christian to the chalet, but fortunately it was more
solid, for the young Dalecarlian did not condescend to avoid either
rock or hole. Instead of allowing the horse--the more intelligent
of the two--to go as his instinct should direct, he made the drive,
dangerous under any circumstances, blunderingly foolhardy, by whipping
and opposing him at every point. Christian, who was lying in the midst
of the four bears, two of them dead and two living, said to himself
that he would fall softly, unless they should be flung to one side and
he to the other. At last, irritated at seeing the danneman’s horse
maltreated without any advantage to any one, he took the reins and
the whip abruptly, saying to the young lad, in a tone indicating his
displeasure, that he preferred driving himself.
Olof was good-natured and gentle; he only put on his terrible airs out
of vanity, so as to appear like a man. He began singing a Swedish song,
both to amuse himself and to show his companion that he pronounced
the mother-tongue more purely than the other members of the family.
Remarking this, Christian determined to have a talk with him.
“Why,” said he, “did you not come with us when we went to the hunt?
Have you never yet seen a bear erect?”
“Aunt would never let me,” replied the young lad, with a sigh.
“Aunt Karine?”
“There is no other at our house.”
“And you have to do everything she says?”
“Everything.”
“Has she predicted that you would have bad luck?”
“She says that I am too young.”
“She is right, perhaps.”
“It must be so, since she says so.”
“She is a woman, it seems, who knows more than others?”
“She knows everything, since she talks with--”
“With whom does she talk?”
“I must not speak about that; my father will not allow it?”
“Because he is afraid that people will laugh at his sister; but he has
no fear of that with me, for he told me to ask her what luck I should
have in the hunt.”
“And did she tell you?”
“She did. Where did she learn her science?”
“She learned it where she still learns it: in the waterfalls where
girls who have died for love weep, and on the lakes where the men of
past times return.”
“She is still able to walk, then?”
“She is not old; she is only fifty.”
“But I thought she was infirm?”
“She can walk quicker and farther than you.”
“Then she is ill just at present, since she remained in bed while we
were at breakfast?”
“She is not ill. She is often tired like that, when she has been
standing up a long time.”
“I thought she did not work?”
“She does not work; she talks, or she walks; she sings, or she prays;
and, whether by night or day, she watches until she drops with fatigue.
Then she sleeps so long, that you would think she was dead; but
sometimes you are very much surprised, in the morning, when you go to
her bed, to find that she is neither there, nor in the house, nor on
the mountains, nor anywhere, where any one else can go.”
“And where do you suppose she is, when she disappears in this way?”
“Some say that she goes to Blakulla; but you must not believe them!”
“What is Blakulla? The rendezvous of witches?”
“Yes, the black mountain where those wicked women take the little
children whom they steal while they are asleep, and whom they carry to
Satan on the horse Skjults, who looks like a flying cow. Then Satan
takes and marks them by biting them, either on the forehead or the
little fingers, and they keep that mark all their lives. But I know
very well why they say that of my aunt Karine.”
“And why?”
“Because a long time ago, before I was born, it seems that she brought
a little child to the house, whose fingers had been bitten by the
devil. My father would not look at him at first, but in a little while
he began to love him, and he says that my aunt is a good Christian,
and that all people say of her is false. The pastor finds nothing to
blame in her, and he says, since she needs to run about in her sleep,
she must be allowed to do so. Besides, she has declared herself, that
she would die, and that great misfortunes would happen, if she should
be shut up. That is why she goes where she wishes; and my father says
it is better not to know where she goes, because she has secrets that
she could not help, perhaps, disclosing, if she should be followed and
watched.”
“And did no accident ever happen to her while she is walking thus sound
asleep?”
“Never; and perhaps she is not really asleep when she walks,--how does
any one know? It is certain, anyhow, that we are sometimes three days
and three nights without knowing whether she will return, but she
always comes back, some time or other; and then, when she has slept and
dreamed, she is no longer ill, and she prophesies things that always
happen. Stay, this morning--But my father forbade me to repeat it!”
“If you tell me, Olof, it is as if you told these stones.”
“Do you swear on the Bible not to repeat it?”
“I swear on whatever you choose.”
“Well,” replied Olof, who so seldom found any one to talk to in the
solitude of his mountain home, that he was quite delighted at securing
the attention of the handsome stranger, “this is what she said when she
woke up at day-break. ‘The great iarl is going forth to the hunt. To
the hunt the iarl and his suite are departing.’ The iarl, you know, is
the Baron de Waldemora!”
“Ah, ah! He has really gone hunting. But your aunt may have heard that.”
“Yes, but the rest, you will see: ‘The iarl will leave his soul at the
house; at the house he will leave his soul’--wait, wait until I think
of the rest;--she sang it--I know the air, the air will remind me of
the words.”
And Olof began to sing the oracle to an air that might have brought the
devil, in person, to the spot.
“‘And when the iarl shall return to the house, when he returns to
the house to rejoin his soul, the soul of the iarl will no longer be
there.’”
Just as the young Dalecarlian had finished these mysterious words, a
sleigh, advancing at great speed, began rapidly to gain upon them,
and the resounding voice of the coachman cried imperiously, “Room!
room!” At the same time he whipped savagely his four horses, who had
been terrified, while still at a distance, by the odor of the bears
brought by Christian. They had left the mountain, and were on a narrow
road running along the edge of a gorge, and which led to the lake.
Christian, fearing that they would be upset unless he should get
out of the way, and seeing no means of accomplishing this unless by
pitching headlong into the stream at the bottom of the gorge, whipped
the danneman’s horse so as to get forward and reach a place where
there would be room for the other vehicle to pass; but, just as he had
succeeded in drawing a little to the right, the brutal coachman of
the advancing sleigh urged forward his fiery horses, the two vehicles
grazed, and were upset simultaneously.
Christian found himself on the earth with Olof and his four bears,
and so effectually buried in the snow piled up along the edge of the
road, that it took him some time to discover whereabouts, and in what
company, he had been interred in this fashion. The first voice that
struck upon his ear, the first face that rejoiced his sight, were the
face and voice of the illustrious Professor Stangstadius. The learned
man had not been at all injured; but he was furious, and, making his
first attack upon Christian, who was not masked, and with whom, as he
arose, he found himself face to face, he overwhelmed him with insults,
and threatened him with divine vengeance and the maledictions of the
universe.
“There, there, gently, gently!” replied Christian, helping him to get
up upon his unequal legs once more; “you have no bones broken, Monsieur
Professor, God be praised! I call the universe and heaven to witness
how glad I am! But, if it is you who drive your equipage so crazily, I
must say that you are not very considerate of people whose horses are
not as good as yours. There now, leave me alone,” he added, quietly
pushing away the geologist, who was attempting to seize him by the
collar, “or else, the first time I meet you on the lake, I will leave
you to freeze there, instead of bruising my shoulders by carrying you.”
The professor, without seeking to recognize Christian, continued
declaiming, to prove to him that it was his fault that the accident
had happened, when Christian, who was only thinking of picking up his
game and Olof, noticed, in the midst of the four bears, a man of lofty
stature, stretched out and motionless, with his face to the earth. At
the same time, a young man, dressed in black, and pale with terror,
came from the opposite bank, where he had been thrown, and running
forward, cried:
“The baron! Where is the baron?”
“What baron?” said Christian, who had just lifted up the swooning man,
and was supporting him in his arms.
At this moment the son of the danneman pushed Christian with his
shoulder, and whispered:
“The iarl! look at the iarl!”
The baron’s young physician hastened to remove his fur cap, which had
got pulled down over the invalid’s face, so that he was in danger of
suffocating; and Christian came very near opening his strong arms
and letting him fall back into the snow, on recognizing, with an
insurmountable horror, in the dying man whom he was trying to succor,
the Baron Olaus de Waldemora.
They stretched him out on the pile of bears; it was the best bed
possible under the circumstances, and the terrified physician implored
Stangstadius, who had formerly taken a degree as a physician, to
assist him with his advice and experience, in a case which seemed to
him extremely grave. Stangstadius, who was making ready to try all his
joints, to satisfy himself that he was not more damaged than usual,
consented, at last, to pay some attention to the only person whom the
overturn seemed to have seriously endangered.
“_Parbleu!_” he said, looking at the baron, and touching him; “it
is perfectly plain: the pulse inert, the face purple, the lips swollen,
a death rattle, and, notwithstanding, no injury--It is as clear as day;
it is a fit of apoplexy. He must be bled--bled quickly, and abundantly.”
The young physician looked for his case of surgical instruments, and
could not find it. Christian and Olof assisted him in his search,
but with no better fortune. The baron’s fiery horses had run away
with his sleigh, and, by this time, it was almost out of sight. The
coachman, thinking that his master would have him beaten to death for
his awkwardness, was running after it, half crazy, and startling the
desolate silence with his imprecations.
As the danneman’s docile horse had stopped short, they talked of
putting the invalid in the peasant’s sleigh, and removing him to the
chateau as quickly as possible. Stangstadius protested that he would be
dead before they could arrive. The doctor, out of his senses, proposed
running after the runaway horses, so as to look for his case in the
baron’s sleigh. At last he found it in his pocket, where, thanks to
his agitation, he had touched it a dozen times without feeling it;
but his hand trembled so, when the moment came to open the vein,
that Stangstadius, who was perfectly indifferent to anything outside
himself, and who, besides, was very well pleased at being able to prove
his superiority in all respects, was obliged to take the lancet and do
his work for him.
Christian, who was standing near by, contemplated, with deep inward
emotion, this strange and gloomy picture, lighted by the pale gleams
of the setting sun: this man, with his powerful frame and terrible
countenance, tossing convulsively on his strange couch,--a confused
pile of corpses of ferocious beasts; his large, white arm, from which
a stream of black blood, congealing upon the snow as it fell, was
slowly flowing; the young physician, with his mild, pusillanimous face,
upon his knees by his terrible patient, and seemingly divided between
the fear of seeing him die under his hands, and a childish terror at
the growling of the still living bears by his side; the overturned
sleigh, the scattered weapons; the startled look of the young danneman,
through which--strangely blending with his terror--flashed a gleam of
malignant satisfaction; the thin horse smoking after his rapid race,
as he indifferently ate the snow; and, above all, the fantastic face
of Stangstadius, lighted up by a smile of triumph which had become his
habitual expression, and his sharp voice, haranguing about all that had
happened, in a self-satisfied and pedantic tone. It was a scene never
to be forgotten: a group at the same time laughable and tragic; at a
first glance, perhaps, incomprehensible.
“My poor doctor,” said Stangstadius, “there is no use in hiding it,
if your invalid escapes he will be lucky! But don’t imagine it is the
upset that has brought on this fit; it has been threatening for the
last twenty-four hours. How is it that you did not foresee it?”
“I foresaw it plainly,” said the young doctor rather spitefully, “and
told you so an hour ago, Monsieur Stangstadius, when he received that
letter at the hunting pavilion, that disturbed him so; as he read
it, his very features grew distorted. It is not my fault if you have
forgotten what I said. I did everything in my power to prevent his
lordship from going to the hunt. He would not listen to anything; the
most he would consent to, was to allow me to accompany him in his
sleigh.”
“By heavens! a valuable assistant you are! If I had not offered to
return with the two of you, when I saw that he was not in a condition
to hunt, he would probably have stifled here. You would not have had
presence of mind enough--”
“You are very hard upon young people, Monsieur Professor,” replied the
physician, more and more offended; “there is some excuse for losing
your presence of mind when you have just been thrown ten feet out of a
sleigh, and are no sooner up again than you are called upon to judge,
at the first glance, of what is perhaps a hopeless case.”
“A fine matter, truly, a fall in the snow!” said M. Stangstadius,
shrugging the one shoulder which was obedient to his will. “If you had
fallen, as I did, into the bottom of the shaft of a well! A fall of
fifty feet, seven inches, and five lines, a swoon lasting six hours,
fifty-three--”
“Goodness gracious! Monsieur Professor, it is the swoon of my patient
that I am troubled about, and not yours! What is past is past. Will you
be so good as to hold his arm, while I look for a ligature?”
“No, not at all; the fact is that there are some people who complain
about everything,” continued Stangstadius, coming and going, without
listening to the doctor.
Then, forgetting that he had just been in a terrible rage against
Christian, the quick-tempered, but really good-natured worthy, turned
gayly to him.
“Did I so much as turn pale,” he said, “when I found myself under
those four animals--without counting the two others, you and your
comrade? Two awkward clowns, be it said in passing! But what matter a
few bruises more or less, after all? I did not even think of myself! I
was all ready to give an opinion about the invalid, and to bleed him.
My eye rapid and sure, my hand firm!--How now--where the devil have I
seen you?” he continued, still addressing Christian, and forgetting all
about the sick man. “Did you kill all these beasts? There is a fine
prize, to be sure, a bear of the large kind, the brown species with
blue eyes! When one thinks that that imbecile of a Buffon--But where
did you meet with it? It is rare in this country!”
“You must excuse me from replying, at present,” said Christian; “the
doctor requires my help.”
“Let him alone--let the blood flow;” remarked the geologist, quietly.
“No, no, he has lost enough!” cried the physician; “the bleeding
has had a good effect. Come and see, Monsieur Professor; but we must
not abuse the remedy; it is as dangerous now, as the evil it is to
counteract.”
Christian, not without a shudder of mortal and inexplicable repugnance,
held the baron’s cold, heavy arm, while the physician closed the vein.
The sick man opened his eyes, and soon tried to make out where he was.
His first glance was for the strange bed where he was lying, the second
for his blood-stained arm, and the third for his trembling physician.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, in a feeble voice, and in a scornful tone, “you
have been bleeding me! I forbade it.”
“It was necessary, your lordship; you are much better, thank heaven!”
replied the doctor.
The baron was too weak to argue. He tried to look around him with his
faded eyes, in which appeared an expression of gloomy anxiety; but,
when he saw Christian’s face, his eyes dilated, and fastened upon him
with a stupefied stare. At that moment, Christian was bending forward
to help the physician to lift him up; he repulsed him with a convulsive
gesture; and the faint semblance of a lifelike hue, that was beginning
to return to his face, was succeeded by a livid pallor.
“Open the vein again,” cried Stangstadius to the doctor; “I knew
you were closing it too soon. Did I not tell you so? Open it, and
afterwards leave him quiet for at least five minutes.”
“But the cold, Monsieur Professor,” said the physician, obeying
Stangstadius mechanically; “are you not afraid that the cold will be
fatal, under such circumstances?”
“Bah! the cold!” replied Stangstadius; “I laugh at the cold of the
atmosphere! The cold of death is much worse! Let him bleed, I tell you,
and then let him rest. You must follow the prescription, come what may.”
Turning to Christian, he added:
“The tall baron is in a bad scrape. I would not like to be in his skin
just now. There now--where the devil have I seen you?”
Just then he picked up something on the snow, which set him running on
a new tack.
“What is that piece of red stone doing here?” he cried; “a fragment of
porphyry, in a region of gneiss and basalt? You must have brought it
from up yonder,” he added, pointing to the peaks rising to the west.
“It was in your pocket. Ah! you see it is not very easy to deceive me!
I know the character and form of all the rocks at ten leagues distance!”
The baron’s sleigh finally returned, and a few moments afterwards, as
he began to seem a little better again, they were able to close the
vein, and place the sick man in his equipage, which proceeded slowly to
the chateau, while Christian started, in advance, with the son of the
danneman.
“Well,” said the young lad, when they had left the gloomy vehicle
behind them, “what was I telling you when it happened? What did my aunt
Karine say?”
“I did not understand the song very well,” said Christian, absorbed in
his thoughts; “it was not very cheerful, I remember.”
“‘He left his soul at the house,’” repeated Olof; “‘and when he shall
come to rejoin it, he will no longer find it.’ Is not that perfectly
plain, Herr Christian? The iarl was ill; he wanted to shake off his
malady; but his soul did not want to go to the hunt, and with good
reason, perhaps, for it is bound now on a villanous journey!”
“You hate the iarl!” said Christian. “You think his soul is going to
hell!”
“As to that, God knows! But as to hating him, I don’t hate him any more
than every one does. You don’t love him yourself, do you?”
“I--I do not know,” replied Christian, shuddering inwardly at the
consciousness of the hate which filled his heart, more intense,
perhaps, than was felt by any other person.
“Well, if he gets well,” resumed the lad, “you will hear about it! He
will soon find out who upset him, and, if you are wise, you will quit
the country.”
“So, then, every one believes that it will not do to offend him?”
“Good gracious! He poisoned his father, he stabbed his brother with a
dagger, and he starved his sister-in-law; and he has killed ever so
many other people besides that my aunt Karine knows about, and that
every one would know about, if she would speak; but she will not!”
“And don’t you feel afraid that the baron’s anger will be directed
against you, when he shall learn that it is your father’s sleigh that
upset him?”
“It is not the fault of the sleigh, and mine still less. You would
drive! If I had been driving it would not have happened, perhaps; but
what is to happen, happens; and when harm befalls wicked men, it is
because it is the will of God!”
But Christian, constantly haunted by the dreadful idea that had taken
possession of him, shuddered at the thought that destiny had perhaps
chosen him as the parricidal instrument for accomplishing the baron’s
destruction.
“No, no!” he cried, in answer to his own thoughts, rather than to the
son of the danneman; “I did not cause his fit. The physicians said that
he had been doomed for twenty-four hours.”
“And my aunt Karine said so too!” rejoined Olof; “so you can rest easy,
he will not recover.”
Thereupon, Olof began humming the sad refrain which reminded Christian
more and more of the melancholy air which he had heard the previous
evening among the boulders.
“Does not your aunt Karine sometimes go to Stollborg?” he asked of Olof.
“To Stollborg?” said the lad. “I should only believe it if I saw it.”
“Why?”
“Because she does not like that place; she will not even allow it to be
named where she is.”
“Why so?”
“Who can tell? And yet, in former years, when the Baroness Hilda was
alive, she lived there; but I cannot tell you anything more about it,
because I have told you now all that I know; we never speak, at our
house, either of Stollborg or of Waldemora!”
Christian felt that there would be something indelicate in questioning
the young danneman about the relations that may have existed between
his aunt and the baron; besides, he had become so gloomy and depressed,
that he had not the heart, for the moment, to make any further
inquiries.
The sudden change in the atmosphere contributed not a little to his
melancholy. The sun, whether beneath the horizon or not, had entirely
disappeared in one of those thick fogs which very frequently, in the
short winter days, suddenly envelop earth and sky, especially towards
sunset, or in the morning at sunrise. It was a heavy, melancholy veil,
of a dull, leaden gray, which grew thicker every instant, and which
soon left nothing visible but the bottom of the gorge, into which it
had not yet fully penetrated. In proportion as it approached this goal,
it seemed to sweep forward in dense waves, but it did not mingle at all
with the black smoke rising from great fires kindled in the depths of
the valley, to preserve harvests or keep open small streams of water.
Christian did not even ask Olof the object of these fires; he gave
himself up to the dreary amusement of watching their red and spectral
forms, glimmering like rayless, fluctuating meteors on the banks of
the stream, and in following with his eye the persistent and fantastic
struggle of their gloomy flames and clouds of smoke, with the fog,
which, through the contrast, seemed even whiter than it was. The frozen
torrent was still visible; but, by some strange optical delusion, it
sometimes appeared so near the road that Christian imagined he could
touch it with the end of his whip, and sometimes seemed buried in
immeasurable depths, while in reality it was infinitely less distant,
and infinitely less near, than the deceptive undulations of the fog
caused it to appear.
Night followed, with the long northern twilight. At this hour there is
usually a delicate greenish tint in the atmosphere, but this evening
it was colorless and livid. Not a living being was visible on the face
of the globe; whatever had life was concealed, motionless, silent.
Christian felt oppressed at this universal gloom of nature, and then he
accepted it with a sort of apathetic resignation. Olof jumped out to
lead the horse, for the road, as it now descended to the shore of the
lake, spreading like a vague ocean of vapor beneath them, was almost
perpendicular. Christian imagined that he was descending the sharp
declivity of the globe itself, and about to plunge off into the void
abysms of space. Two or three times the horse slipped until he was
thrown back upon his haunches, and Olof came very near letting go the
bridle and leaving him to his fate, together with the sleigh and the
traveller. The latter was overwhelmed by a mortal indifference. The
baron’s son! These three words, written, as it were, in black letters
upon his brain, seemed to have killed within him hope in the future,
and love of life. It was not despair that he felt, but a profound
disgust for all that life can offer; and, in this mood, the only thing
he noticed was the one immediate fact that he felt overwhelmed with
sleep, and that he would have been quite willing to fall asleep forever
by rolling, without a sound, to the bottom of the lake. He did really
lose himself, and so completely, that he had entirely forgotten where
he was, when a voice as faint as the twilight, as veiled as the sky
and the lake, sang close to him these words, to which he listened
unconsciously, and gradually comprehended:
“Behold, the sun is rising! Beautiful and clear it shines on the meadow
enamelled with flowers. I see the fairies all in white, crowned with
garlands of willow-boughs and lilacs; the fairies who dance in the
valley, on the moss glittering with dew. The child is in the midst of
them, the child of the lake, more beautiful than the morning.
“Behold, the sun climbs to the zenith! The birds are silent; the little
flies buzz in the beams of dusty gold. The fairies have entered a
grove of azaleas, to seek the cool, refreshing shade on the shore of
the stream. The child is asleep on their knees--the child of the lake,
more beautiful than the day.
“Behold, the sun is setting! The nightingale sings to the diamond star
that mirrors itself in the waters. The fairies are seated at the foot
of the sky, on the staircase of rosy crystal; they sing a lullaby to
the child, who smiles in his downy nest; the child of the lake, more
beautiful than the star of the evening!”
Once again it was the voice heard among the boulders that struck
upon Christian’s ear, but it seemed, as it now chanted poetic words
set to an agreeable and melodious air, far sweeter than before. The
words were, perhaps, a modern song which the sibyl had understood and
remembered exactly. However, it was in vain that Christian tried to
catch the faintest glimpse of a human form. He could not even see the
horse that was conducting him, or rather, to speak more correctly,
which was no longer conducting him, for the sleigh was standing still,
and Olof was not there. Far from feeling uneasy about his situation,
Christian listened until the three verses were completed. The first had
seemed to him to be sung a few steps behind him, the second nearer, and
the third farther on; gradually the voice died away in advance of him.
The young man came very near jumping out of the sleigh, to try and
seize the invisible singer as she passed; but, as he put out his foot,
he became aware that there was a void under him instead of solid
ground; and, as the tender words of the song had revived within him
the instinct of self-preservation, he stretched out his hand, to find
out where he was. He felt the reeking rump of the horse, and called
Olof several times, without receiving any reply. Then, as the singer’s
voice began chanting again, still farther away, he called her also,
by the name of _Vala Karina_; but she either did not hear him,
or would not answer. He resolved then to get out on the other side of
the sleigh, and he found himself on a steep road, which he explored
for about twenty steps, still calling Olof with the greatest anxiety.
Could the child have rolled over a precipice during Christian’s brief
slumber? At last he saw, gleaming through the fog, an imperceptible
point of light, which came towards him, and soon he recognized Olof
carrying a lighted lantern.
“Is it you, Herr Christian?” said the lad, who had not heard him
approach, and who was terrified at meeting him thus suddenly face to
face. “It was wrong of you to get out of the sleigh when you could not
see well; this is a very dangerous place, and I told you not to budge
while I went to light my lantern, at the mill close by. Didn’t you hear
me?”
“Not at all; but you, did not you hear some one singing?”
“Yes, but I did not listen. You often hear voices on the shore of the
lake, and it is not good to understand what they sing, for then they
will lead you into places from which you never return.”
“Very well, for my part, I listened,” said Christian, “and I recognized
the voice of your aunt Karine. She must be close by--Let us look for
her, since you have a light, or call her; she will, perhaps, answer
you.”
“No no!” cried the boy; “leave her alone. If she is in her dream, and
we wake her up, she will kill herself!”
“But she is in just as much danger of killing herself if we leave her
walking on the edge of this ravine, where you can’t see your hand
before you!”
“Where we cannot see, she can; be quiet, unless you wish to bring some
misfortune upon her, and to prevent her from returning to the house,
where I am very sure I shall find her as usual.”
Christian was obliged to give up the idea of seeking the seeress,
especially as the light of the lantern was scarcely sufficient to show
them where to plant their feet, the fog was so impenetrable. Christian
helped Olof to guide the horse cautiously to the shore of the lake, and
there the lad, who did not seem at all alarmed by their adventures,
asked him whether he would get into the sleigh again, and go on to the
major’s bostoelle.
“No, no,” said Christian, “I must go to Stollborg. Must I not turn to
the right?”
“No,” said Olof, “try to walk forward in a straight line, while you
count three hundred steps. If you take two steps more and don’t come to
the rock, you have gone wrong.”
“And what must I do then?”
“Look and see from what direction the whiffs of the fog come. The wind
is from the south, and it is quite mild. If the fog passes to your
left, you must turn to your right. As for the rest, there is no danger
on the lake, the ice is firm everywhere.”
“But you, my child, will you be able to get along all alone?”
“Able to go to the bostoelle? I promise you. The horse knows the road
now; don’t you see how impatient he is?”
“But you will not return to your father’s house this evening?”
“Yes, indeed! The fog will lift, perhaps; and besides, the moon will
rise soon, and, as it is full, I can see to drive.”
Christian shook hands with the young danneman, gave him a daler, and,
following his instructions, reached Stollborg without missing his road,
and without meeting a living soul.