She did not speak, but sat by his side in silence. He gazed at her several times and then gave the order to start. The carriage set off at a rapid gait.
The light of day was rapidly failing. Day and night seemed to join hands in a twilight mystery; black clouds were now piling up threateningly on the western horizon. A heavy gust scattered the thick aggressive atmosphere. Flying leaves were lifted up in the air as if by magic, and went through the wildest dances to the piping and howling of the storm, which now commenced to rage in all its fury, while voices of sinister shadows in the air, seemed to hold intercourse with others in the distance.
In these high mountainous regions a few moments suffice to turn a smiling landscape into a cheerless dripping desert. Claps of thunder and flashes of lightning followed each other at brief intervals. The rain now fell in torrents and the howling storm whipped the green lake whose wavelets had been so gently splashing half an hour ago.
IV.
During the events described in the preceding chapter, a man still in the glow of youth was walking through the valley surrounded by lofty saline cliffs, in this howling storm, while clouds of shrivelled leaves danced above his head. He did not mind the dreary desolation around him.
His face, naturally strong with manly beauty, was now pale and haggard, showing unmistakable traces of a great sorrow. His large intelligent eyes were now sunk deep in their sockets. A nervous restlessness made him shiver, and his pale cheeks gathered only a little color when an obstinate cough threatened to rend his suffering breast asunder.
His coat betrayed the elegant cut of the fashionable tailor, but it was now old and worn, and hung loosely about his emaciated form. He looked like a teacher on whom fortune had persistently turned her back.
He carried in his hands a thick book, carefully wrapped up in a handkerchief, which he clasped tightly almost tenderly to his breast, as if afraid at any moment it might escape or drop out of his hands. This idea made him tremble. It was indeed his only source of income; by the aid of this valuable book he had already earned many a gold piece in the Tyrolian and Styrian mountains.