I had no barometer with me, but I felt that I was ascending, that the fog was growing less dense, and that I was approaching a purer atmosphere.
A feeling of intoxication seized me—a faint glimmer from above dimly illuminated the narrow pass, like the first dawn of day shining through the picture of a landscape painted on a window-blind; the trees stood out more distinctly, the field of vision increased, the tinkling of cowbells—from above—fell on my ear. And now, right on the summit, there hung a golden cloud; a few more steps and the stunted beeches and brushwood shone and glittered, dazzling splashes of gold, copper, bronze and silver, wherever a stream of broken sunlight fell on the faded foliage which was still clinging to the branches. I was standing in an autumn landscape looking out into a sun-bathed summerland; through my mind flashed the memory of a sail on the Lake of Mälar; I remembered how I was sitting in the sunshine, watching the passing of a black hail-storm no further off than a cable-length to leeward. And now I, too, stood in the sunlight, gazing at a northern landscape made up of firs and birch trees, green fields and red cattle, little brown cottages with old women on the thresholds, knitting socks for father, who was toiling far down in the canton of Tessin; my eyes rested on potato fields and lavender bushes, dahlias and marigolds.
The sun dried my hair and coat, and warmed my shivering limbs; I bared my head before the glowing orb, source and preserver of all there is, completely indifferent whether I was worshipping unquenchable flames of burning hydrogen, or the not yet scientifically acknowledged primordial substance, helium. Was it not the All-Father, who had given birth to the Cosmos, the Almighty, the Lord of life and death, ice and heat, summer and winter, dearth and plenty?
My eyes, which had been feasting on summer joy and green fields, plunged into the gloom of the abyss whence I had climbed. The mantle of cold and darkness which had been lying on the surface of the lake was cold and dark no longer; dazzling clouds, like snowy, sunlit piles of wool, hid from my gaze the twilight and the polluted earth; above them rose snow-clad peaks, glistening and sparkling, fashioned of condensed silver fog, a crystallised solution of air and sunlight, drift-ice on a sea of newly fallen snow. It was a vision of transcendent beauty, compared to which the cowbell-idyll under the birch trees was commonplace.
The dead silence was suddenly broken by a sound from below, where melancholy men and women toiled and trembled in the grey gloom. It was a splashing sound which approached deliberately; so deliberately that my eyes unconsciously tried to follow its course under the cloud-cover. It sounded like a millstream, a brook swollen with rain, a tidal wave. Then a scream rent the air, loud and wild, as if all the dwellers in the four cantons were calling for help against Uri-Rotstock; it was the shrill whistle of the paddle-boat which, penetrating the layer of clouds, gained in volume in the pure air and was caught up and tossed from rock to rock by the redundant echo of the Hochfluh.
It was noon! Time to begin my descent through the fog down to the greyness, the darkness, the damp, the dirt, and wait for another three weeks, perhaps, for another glimpse of the sun.
[VI]
After the New Year we left Switzerland and took up our abode in Germany; we had decided to stay for a while at the lovely shores of the Lake of Constance.
In Germany, the land of militarism, where the patriarchate is still in full force, Marie felt completely out of it. No one would listen to her futile talk about women's rights. Here young girls had just been forbidden to attend the University lectures; here the dowry of a woman who marries an officer of the army has to be deposited with the War Office; here all government appointments are reserved for the man, the breadwinner of the family.