The snow man

by George Sand

“I saw a tower, a square tower by the setting sun. Its gates look to the north. Drops of poison sweat from its openings. It is paved with serpents.

“The tree of the world embraces it; the strong ash-tree shakes. The great serpent bites the waves. The eagle screams; with its pale beak it tears the corpses; the ship of the dead is launched.

“Where are the Ases and the Alfes? They sigh by the entrance of the caves. The sun begins to be darkened; all things perish.

“But earth, green and beautiful, begins to brighten again from the east; the waters awake, the cascades flow.

“I saw a palace fairer than the sun upon the top of Gimli—I see it no more. The Vala falls again into the night.”

In these sombre poetical fragments Christian gradually recognized verses, arranged or repeated at random, from the antique poem called the Voluspa. This, considering the rustic pronunciation of the singer, he thought very extraordinary. Could it be that the peasants in that country had preserved a tradition of the sacred chants of the Scandinavian mythology? This seemed hardly probable, and yet who could have taught them to this woman? Christian, who, as a traveller, was curious on all subjects, resolved to find and cross-examine the singer, as soon as he had finished his sketch; but when he returned his album to his pocket a few moments afterwards, the voice had ceased. He looked all about, but could see no one. Supposing that she must be concealed behind the boulders, he proceeded to explore them, and found this not much easier than walking in the deep margin of the snow-drift outside. Within the expanse of the principal cavern, which followed the turns of the rock for some fifty steps, there was no footing except on a floor of ice, very slippery and wavy on the surface, as if the rippling water had been instantaneously frozen on some cold autumn night.

However, our adventurer succeeded in discovering the traces of his own steps, made the night before, when he imagined he was walking over fragments of bricks and tiles; and soon he found, also, the mysterious door, by which he had issued from the donjon. It was now fastened with two strong iron staples and a padlock, the key of which had been carried off. This must have been just done; the singer was undoubtedly some dependent, like Stenson and Ulphilas, who was employed about the old manor. She could not be far off, for he had heard her singing scarcely five minutes before, and she must have been behind the boulders, for Christian could see over the lake in all directions, and from top to bottom of the cliffs at the base of the tower, and no one was visible. He now retraced his steps to leave the grotto, which, as it was only lighted by a natural opening in about the middle of its whole extent, was rather dark. Pausing for a moment under this natural opening, to look at the sky, he saw, between himself and the heavens, an object projecting over the rock from the smooth and naked flank of the donjon. This he quickly recognized as the under-side of the stone balcony that supported the double window of the bear-room, and which was so situated that any one, with a cord or ladder, might easily descend through the space between the rocks below, when he would at once find himself under cover in the vault which they formed just at this place.

Christian, always inclined to be romantic, immediately thought out a plan of escape to be adopted in case of siege or captivity in Stollborg. He scaled the irregular rocks that formed the sides of the grotto, and, with a good deal of exertion, climbed out through the opening which, he was satisfied, had not been made by the hand of man. This examination led him to reflect, as we have all had occasion to do at least once in our lives, that even in the most desperate situations chances occasionally occur so improbable that they seem to belong, not to real life, but to the world of the imagination. However, still bent upon pursuing the singer, he continued his examination amongst the boulders, between almost any two of which there was room for penetrating. Finding no one, he was just giving up the chase, when he heard the voice again, coming this time from much lower down than he had supposed it to be when he heard it in the first place. He went towards it, but as he approached the spot where he thought the mysterious rhapsodist must be stationed, the chant, which had suddenly ceased, like that of the cicada on the approach of man, was heard once more in another direction, and from much higher up, as if floating in the air above him. Raising his head, Christian now perceived, in the side of the donjon, a long fissure, half hidden by ivy, and extending almost vertically, from a window in the upper story, a good deal to the right of the window in the bear-room, down to a ruinous part of the wall, below which were some other masses of rock.

He even thought that he could see pieces of stone falling along this fissure, as if some person had just made their way into it; but, on approaching as near as he could, it seemed to him quite inaccessible, and he went further on.

And now the voice once more began its plaintive chant, and Christian—amused at first, but finally with a feeling of irritation—followed the singer from one place to another in the little chaos of granite rocks. He was constantly disappointed, until he really began to be somewhat startled. These savage verses, fragments of a gloomy apocalypse, disconnected and wild, as if inspired by delirium, had something frightful in them, when heard in that gloomy place, at that melancholy evening hour. Christian thought involuntarily of the water-witches who are the centre of all the legends of Sweden, and indeed of all popular beliefs throughout the north of Europe.