Nothing but gray bowlder-stones lying here cast about; no plant save the deadly monk’s-hood growing rank in thick, short tufts of deep sapphire hue; no sign of life but one solitary falcon soaring overhead, and some scattered feathers lying strewn at the water’s edge.[81]
The brooding melancholy of this solitary spot has a charm all its own. This would be the place, indeed, for a life-sick man to come and end his days, and if there be such a thing as a voluptuous suicide, methinks these were the proper surroundings for it. Death must come so swiftly and so surely in those still green waters, which have such an insinuating glitter; no danger here of being saved and brought back to unwelcome life by a meddlesome log of floating wood, or the officious arm of an out-stretched branch. Everything here seems to breathe of the very spirit of suicide; the cold green waters, the deadly monk’s-hood, the hovering falcon, all seem to agree, “This is the end of life—come here and die!”
But let the hapless wretch bent on leaving this world beware of looking round once more before executing his resolve, for if he but turn and gaze again at the magnificent panorama at his feet, he will assuredly be violently recalled to life.
I do not recollect having seen any single view which in its glorious variety ever impressed me as much as what I saw that day, looking from the platform beside the Bulea See; neither a framed-in picture nor yet a bird’s-eye view, it rather gave me the feeling as though I were standing at the head of a giant staircase whose balustrades are formed by the nicked-out peaks of the crags on either side, and whose separate steps present as many gradations of variegated beauty.
Close to our feet lay the stony valley we had just been traversing, with its gigantic tombstones and wizened dwarf bushes, and the flashing crest of the water-fall, just visible, like a silver thread, at the farthest point. Then, after a sudden drop of several hundred feet, our eye lights upon the pine valley, with the shelter-hut where we had passed the previous night. With a telescope we could just make out the place of the camp-fire and the figures of some grazing horses. Of the third step of this giant ladder—namely, the beech forest—we could see only the billowy tops of the close-grown trees, a mass of waving green, touched here and there by the hand of autumn into russet and golden tints; then far, far below lay stretched the smiling plain, streaked with occasional dark patches we knew to be forests, and sundry white dots we guessed at as villages, and the serpentine curves of the river Alt, winding like a golden ribbon between them.
A long bank of clouds which had been hovering over the plain now sank down, gradually obscuring that part of the view, but not for long. This was but another freak of nature, one more turn in the kaleidoscope; for now the mist has sunk so low that the plain itself appears above it, and we behold the landscape framed in the clouds, like a delusive Fata Morgana.
This is indeed a picture never to weary of, and after gazing at it for ten ecstatic minutes, I defy the life-sick man to turn away and carry out his suicidal intentions. The cold green waters have lost their attraction for him, and the spell of the deadly monk’s-hood is broken; for another voice whispers in his ear, and it tells him of life and of hope: a few minutes ago he had felt like a condemned criminal in sight of his grave, but now, with this glorious world at his feet, he is fain to think himself monarch of all he beholds.
The giant’s ladder contains one more step, for by scrambling up the rocks at one side of the loch one may reach the crest of the mountains, and walking there for hours on the confines of Roumania, gain an extensive view into both countries.
This is what some of the gentlemen of our party did, in hopes of coming across chamois; while the rest of us remained below, well content with what we had achieved, settling down, not to suicide, but to such healthier, if more commonplace, pursuits as luncheon and sketching. At least the luncheon was eaten and the sketch was begun; but beginning and finishing are two very different things in these regions, and one cannot reckon without the mountain-sprites, who were this day mischievously inclined.
A tiny white cloudlet, snowy and innocent-looking as a tuft of swan’s-down, had meanwhile detached itself from the bank of clouds below the plain, and was speeding aloft in our direction. Incredibly fast this mountain-sprite ascended the giant staircase—gliding over the space it had taken us three hours to traverse in not the tenth part of that time; jumping two steps at once, it seemed in its malicious haste to spoil our pleasure. Now it has reached the terrace where we are sitting; we feel its cold breath on our cheek, and in another minute it has thrown its moist filmy veil over the scene. The lake at our side has disappeared; we cannot see ten paces in front, and we shiver under the warm wraps we just now despised.