The snow man

by George Sand

“Why?”

“Because she does not like that place; she will not even allow it to be named where she is.”

“Why so?”

“Who can tell? And yet, in former years, when the Baroness Hilda was alive, she lived there; but I cannot tell you anything more about it, because I have told you now all that I know; we never speak, at our house, either of Stollborg or of Waldemora!”

Christian felt that there would be something indelicate in questioning the young danneman about the relations that may have existed between his aunt and the baron; besides, he had become so gloomy and depressed, that he had not the heart, for the moment, to make any further inquiries.

The sudden change in the atmosphere contributed not a little to his melancholy. The sun, whether beneath the horizon or not, had entirely disappeared in one of those thick fogs which very frequently, in the short winter days, suddenly envelop earth and sky, especially towards sunset, or in the morning at sunrise. It was a heavy, melancholy veil, of a dull, leaden gray, which grew thicker every instant, and which soon left nothing visible but the bottom of the gorge, into which it had not yet fully penetrated. In proportion as it approached this goal, it seemed to sweep forward in dense waves, but it did not mingle at all with the black smoke rising from great fires kindled in the depths of the valley, to preserve harvests or keep open small streams of water.

Christian did not even ask Olof the object of these fires; he gave himself up to the dreary amusement of watching their red and spectral forms, glimmering like rayless, fluctuating meteors on the banks of the stream, and in following with his eye the persistent and fantastic struggle of their gloomy flames and clouds of smoke, with the fog, which, through the contrast, seemed even whiter than it was. The frozen torrent was still visible; but, by some strange optical delusion, it sometimes appeared so near the road that Christian imagined he could touch it with the end of his whip, and sometimes seemed buried in immeasurable depths, while in reality it was infinitely less distant, and infinitely less near, than the deceptive undulations of the fog caused it to appear.

Night followed, with the long northern twilight. At this hour there is usually a delicate greenish tint in the atmosphere, but this evening it was colorless and livid. Not a living being was visible on the face of the globe; whatever had life was concealed, motionless, silent. Christian felt oppressed at this universal gloom of nature, and then he accepted it with a sort of apathetic resignation. Olof jumped out to lead the horse, for the road, as it now descended to the shore of the lake, spreading like a vague ocean of vapor beneath them, was almost perpendicular. Christian imagined that he was descending the sharp declivity of the globe itself, and about to plunge off into the void abysms of space. Two or three times the horse slipped until he was thrown back upon his haunches, and Olof came very near letting go the bridle and leaving him to his fate, together with the sleigh and the traveller. The latter was overwhelmed by a mortal indifference. The baron’s son! These three words, written, as it were, in black letters upon his brain, seemed to have killed within him hope in the future, and love of life. It was not despair that he felt, but a profound disgust for all that life can offer; and, in this mood, the only thing he noticed was the one immediate fact that he felt overwhelmed with sleep, and that he would have been quite willing to fall asleep forever by rolling, without a sound, to the bottom of the lake. He did really lose himself, and so completely, that he had entirely forgotten where he was, when a voice as faint as the twilight, as veiled as the sky and the lake, sang close to him these words, to which he listened unconsciously, and gradually comprehended:

“Behold, the sun is rising! Beautiful and clear it shines on the meadow enamelled with flowers. I see the fairies all in white, crowned with garlands of willow-boughs and lilacs; the fairies who dance in the valley, on the moss glittering with dew. The child is in the midst of them, the child of the lake, more beautiful than the morning.

“Behold, the sun climbs to the zenith! The birds are silent; the little flies buzz in the beams of dusty gold. The fairies have entered a grove of azaleas, to seek the cool, refreshing shade on the shore of the stream. The child is asleep on their knees—the child of the lake, more beautiful than the day.