[THE INN]
Like all the wooden inns in the higher Alps, which are situated in the rocky and bare gorges which intersect the white summits of the mountains, the inn of Schwarenbach stands as a refuge for travelers who are crossing the Gemmi.
It remains open for six months in the year, and is inhabited by the family of Jean Hauser; then, as soon as the snow begins to fall, and fills the valley so as to make the road down to Loëche impassable, the father and his three sons go away, and leave the house in charge of the old guide, Gaspard Hari, with the young guide, Ulrich Kunzi, and Sam, the great mountain dog.
The two men and the dog remained till the spring in their snowy prison, with nothing before their eyes except the immense, white slopes of the Balmhorn; they were surrounded by light, glistening summits, and shut up, blocked up and buried by the snow which rose around them, and which enveloped, bound and crushed the little house, which lay piled on the roof, reached to the windows and blocked up the door.
It was the day on which the Hauser family were going to return to Loëche, as winter was approaching, and the descent was becoming dangerous. Three mules started first, laden with baggage and led by the three sons. Then the mother, Jean Hauser and her daughter Louise mounted a fourth mule, and set off in their turn, and the father followed them, accompanied by the two men in charge, who were to escort the family as far as the brow of the descent. First of all they passed round the small lake, which was now frozen over, at the bottom of the mass of rocks which stretched in front of the inn, and then they followed the valley, which was dominated on all sides by the snow covered summits.
A ray of sunlight fell into that little white, glistening, frozen desert, and illuminated it with a cold and dazzling flame; no living thing appeared among this ocean of hills; there was nothing more in this immeasurable solitude, and no noise disturbed the profound silence.
By degrees the young guide Ulrich Kunzi, a tall, long legged Swiss, left daddy Hauser and old Gaspard behind, in order to catch up to the mule, which carried the two women. The younger one looked at him as he approached, and appeared to be calling him, with her sad eyes. She was a young, light haired peasant girl, whose milk white cheeks and pale hair looked as if they had lost their color by their long abode amidst the ice. When he had got up with the animal which carried them, he put his hand on the crupper, and relaxed his speed. Mother Hauser began to talk to him, and enumerated with the minutest details all that he would have to attend to during the winter. It was the first time that he was going to stop up there, while old Hari had already spent fourteen winters amidst the snow, at the inn of Schwarenbach.
Ulrich Kunzi listened, without appearing to understand, and looked incessantly at the girl. From time to time he replied: "Yes, Madame Hauser;" but his thoughts seemed far away, and his calm features remained unmoved.
They reached Lake Daube, whose broad, frozen surface extended to the bottom of the valley. On the right, the Daubenhorn showed its black rocks, rising up in a peak above the enormous moraines of the Lömmeon glacier, which rose above the Wildstrubel. As they approached the neck of the Gemmi, where the descent to Loëche begins, they suddenly beheld the immense horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the broad, deep valley of the Rhone separated them.
In the distance, there was a group of white, unequal flat or pointed mountain summits, which glistened in the sun; the Mischabel with its two peaks, the huge group of the Weisshorn, the heavy Brunegghorn, the lofty and formidable pyramid of Mont Cervin, that slayer of men, and the Dent-Blanche, that terrible coquette.