“Where, where is he?” she asked, with blanched lips.
“So!” said the old witch, “thou hast run away from me with a strange man, and now comest back, and dost not ask after me, but after him? He is not here.”
“Yes, yes, he is! I traced him, up to the edge of yonder snow!”
With these words she began to scatter down jewels in endless quantities upon the horsemen.
“He came no further, indeed!” laughed the old witch. “He is smothered beneath thy jewels!”
With a terrible cry, Alba cast herself down upon the patch of snow and began to shovel it away with her hands. But in vain! The covering that lay upon her beloved was too heavy, it was frozen too fast. With one cry—“Oh, mother, mother! what hast thou done to me!”—Alba fell dead beside the ice and snow.
Then Baba Coaja hurled forth so terrible a curse, that the very mountain reeled, and the castle fell with a crash, burying her and her gold beneath its ruins. But on the spot where the beautiful Alba had drawn her last breath, there sprang up a white flower, in a white velvet dress, which has ever since been called “Alba Regina,” or Edelweiss. This flower only blooms close to the eternal snow which covered her beloved, and is as white and pure as she was herself.