It was Karl von Ehbehard who replied thus. He got up from his place, joined the other four, and stood in their midst, tall and thin, but breathing will and energy, and the others looked at him with sympathy and admiration; for they knew his history and life. The five worshippers of the high mountains, the five lovers of the Engadine were united in a group; Jean Morel, who had been for forty years; Paul Léon, the French poet, who had been for twenty; Don Giovanni Vergas, the head of a princely Italian house, who fled the yellow sands and the blue of Italy for the white heights of the Grissons; Otto von Raabe, the German millionaire banker, who had all the poesy of nature and heart in his mind, and Karl von Ehbehard, he who had found life up there, and who was trying to give it back to others—all the little group of mountain lovers were watching round another of them, who had been the victim of his love, on his funeral night.
"He will not go away," replied Ehbehard, "too much money is wanted to take away a corpse to Italy, and the Granata are poor. Our friend will rest here among us——" and suddenly the hard, cold voice broke.
"We ought to give him a great procession to-morrow," exclaimed Paul Léon, after glancing at the bandaged face of the dead man, which seemed like that of a child. "Carry him away loaded with flowers, through the broad roads, and give him a triumph, this hero of the mountains."
"That will not be possible," said Karl von Ehbehard, his voice suddenly becoming hard.
"Why?" asked Otto von Raabe.
"Because they won't allow it," said the doctor roughly.
"Who won't allow it? Who?" asked Paul Léon, with agitation.
"All do not wish it; no one wishes it," replied the great doctor bitterly. "The people in the hotels of the Dorf do not wish to see the dead, do not wish to know of disease; they have a horror of all that. These pleasure-seekers have for a motto, 'Evviva la vita!' They want to enjoy their pleasures here to the last without being disturbed; so the authorities, hotel-keepers, and others try in every way to prevent these pleasure-seekers from seeing a melancholy spectacle, for fear that they will leave two or three days sooner, or even one day. When people die here, no one knows when they are taken to the cemetery; no one is aware of it."
"What cruelty!" said Otto von Raabe sorrowfully.
"What infamy!" cried Paul indignantly.