They turned to her companion, but he was lying senseless on the snow.
“Lower me down to him,” she said, taking two little kegs they had brought, and hanging them about her, “or I will dash myself to pieces! I am a peasant, and I know no giddiness or fear; and this is nothing to me, and I passionately love him. Lower me down!”
“Ma’amselle, ma’amselle, he must be dying or dead.”
“Dying or dead, my husband’s head shall lie upon my breast, or I will dash myself to pieces.”
They yielded, overborne. With such precautions as their skill and the circumstances admitted, they let her slip from the summit, guiding herself down the precipitous icy wall with her hand, and they lowered down, and lowered down, and lowered down, until the cry came up: “Enough!”
“Is it really he, and is he dead?” they called down, looking over.
The cry came up: “He is insensible; but his heart beats. It beats against mine.”
“How does he lie?”
The cry came up: “Upon a ledge of ice. It has thawed beneath him, and it will thaw beneath me. Hasten. If we die, I am content.”
One of the two men hurried off with the dogs at such topmost speed as he could make; the other set up the lighted torches in the snow, and applied himself to recovering the Englishman. Much snow-chafing and some brandy got him on his legs, but delirious and quite unconscious where he was.