Bohemian Days: Three American Tales

by George Alfred Townsend

No word was interchanged for several hours. They passed through shaggy glens, under toppled towers and battlements, by squalid villages, and within the sound of dashing streams. If they descended ever, it was to gain breath for a longer ascent; for now the mountain snows were above them on either side, and the Alps rose sublimely impassable in front. The hawks careened beneath them; the chamois above dared not look down for dizziness, and Hugenot said, at Ariola, that they were taking lunch in a balloon. The manner of Mr. Plade now altered marvellously. It might have been his breakfast that gave him spirit and speech; he sang a merry, bad song, which the rocks echoed back, and all the goitred women at the roadside stopped with their pack burdens to listen. He told a thousand anecdotes. He knew all the story of the pass; how the Swiss, filing through it, had scattered the Milanese; how Suwarrow and Massena had made its sterility fertile with blood.

Hugenot's admiration amounted to envy. He had never known his associate so brilliant, so pleasing; the exaltation was too great, indeed, to arise from any ordinary cause; but Hugenot was not shrewd enough to inquire into the affair. He wearied at length of the talk and of the scene, and when at last they reached the region of perpetual ice, he closed the cabriolet windows, and watched the filtering flakes, and heard the snow crush under the wheels, and dropped into a deep sleep which the other seemed to share.

The clouds around them made the mountains dusky, and the interior of the carriage was quite gloomy. At length the large gentleman turned his head, so that his ear could catch every breath, and he regarded the dim outlines of the lesser with motionless interest. Then he took a straw from the litter at his feet, and, bending forward, touched his comrade's throat. The other snored measuredly for a while, but the titillation startled him at length, and he beat the air in his slumber. When the irritation ceased he breathed tranquilly again, and then the first-named placed his hand softly into the sleeper's pocket. He drew forth the wallet with steady fingers, and as coolly emptied it of its contents. These he concealed in the leg of his boot, but replaced the book where he had found it. For a little space he remained at rest, leaning against the back of the carriage, with his head bent upon his breast and his hands clenched like one at bay and in doubt.

The slow advance of the teams and the frequent changes of direction—sometimes so abrupt as almost to reverse the cabriolet—advised him that they were climbing the mountain by zigzags or terraces. He knew that they were in the Val Tremola, or Trembling Way, and he shook his comrade almost fiercely, as if relieved by some idea which the place suggested.

"Hugenot," he said, "rouse up! The grandeur of the Alps is round about us; you must not miss this scene. Come with me! Quit the vehicle! I know the place, and will exhibit it."

The other, accustomed to obey, leaped to the ground immediately, and followed through the snow, ankle deep, till they passed the diligence, which kept in advance. The guard could not be seen—he might have resorted to the interior; and the two pedestrians at once left the roadway, climbing its elbows by a path more or less distinctly marked, so that after a half hour they were perhaps a mile ahead. The agility of Mr. Plade during this episode was the marvel of his companion. He scaled the rocks like a goatherd, and his foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of so extravagant, exaggerated elation.

At last they stood upon a little bridge spanning a chasm like a cobweb. A low parapet divided it from the awful gulf. On the other side the mountain lifted its jagged face, clammy with icicles, and far over all towered the sterile peaks, above the reach of clouds or lightnings, forever in the sunshine—forever desolate.

"Stand fast!" said the leader, suddenly cold and calm. "Uncover, that the snow-flakes may give us the baptism of nature! There is no human God at this vast height; they worship Him in the flat world below. Give me your hand and look down! You are not dizzy? One should be free from the baseness of fear, standing here upon St. Gothard."

"If I had no qualm before," said Hugenot, "your words would make me shudder."

"You have heard of the 'valley of the shadow'? Was your ideal like this? I told you in Florence of the great poet Dante. You have here at a glance more beauty and dread conjoined than even his mad fancy could conjure up. That is the Tessino, braining itself in cataracts. Yonder, where the clouds make a golden lake, laving forests of firs, lies Italy as the Goths first beheld it, with their spears quivering. See how the eagles beat the mist beneath!—that was a symbol that the Roman standards should be rent."