She thought of all this with some compunction now, as she sat in her own warm safe chamber and heard the thunder, the wind, the raising of the storm which had now fairly broken in full fury. She felt uneasy for the erring stranger. The roads over the passes were still perilous from avalanches and half melted snow in the crevasses; the time of year was more dangerous than midwinter.
'I ought to have given him a guide,' she thought, and went out and joined the Princess Ottilie, who had awakened from her after-dinner repose under the loud roll of the thunder and the constantly recurring flashes of lightning.
'I am troubled for that traveller whom I saw in the woods to-day,' she said to her aunt. 'I trust he is safe housed.'
'If he had been a pastry-cook from the Engadine, or a seditious heretical colporteur from Geneva, you would have sent him into the kitchens to feast,' said the Princess, contentiously.
'I hope he is safe housed,' repeated Wanda. 'It is several hours ago; he may very well have reached the posthouse.'
'You have the satisfaction of thinking the kuttengeier is safe, sitting on some rock tearing a fish to pieces,' said the Princess, who was irritable because she was awakened before her time. 'Will you have some coffee or some tea? You look disturbed, my dear; after all, you say the man was a poacher.'
'Yes. But I ought to have seen him safe off my ground. There are a hundred kinds of death on the hills for anyone who does not know them well. Let us look at the weather from the hall; one can see better from there.'
From the Rittersäal, whose windows looked straight down the seven miles of the lake water, she watched the tempest. All the mountains were sending back echoes of thunder, which sounded like salvoes of artillery. There was little to be seen for the dense rain mist; the beacon of the Holy Isle glimmered redly through the darkness. In the upper air snow was falling; the great white peaks and pinnacles ever and again flashed strangely into view as the lightning illumined them; the Glöckner-wanda towered above all others a moment in the glare, and seemed like ice and fire mingled.
'They are like the great white thrones of the Apocalypse,' she thought.
Beneath, the lake boiled and seethed in blackness like a witches' cauldron.