At last the woods grew thinner, the boundary of the flames was passed, they had reached the top--were saved. The neighing steeds of the wind received them on the barren height and strove to hurl them back into the fiery grave, but Freyer's towering form resisted their assault and, with powerless fury, they tore away the rocks on the right and left and rolled them thundering down into the depths below. The water pouring from the clouds drenched the lovers like a billow from the sea, beating into their eyes, mouths, and ears till, blinded and deafened, they were obliged to grope their way along the cliff. The garments of the beautiful Madeleine von Wildenau hung around her in tatters, heavy as lead, her hair was loosened, dripping and dishevelled, she was trembling from head to foot with cold in the icy wind and rain here on the heights, after the heat and terror below in the smouldering thicket.
"I know where there is a herder's hut, I'll take you to it. Cling closely to me, we must climb still higher."
They silently continued the ascent.
The countess staggered with fatigue. Freyer lifted her again in his arms, and, by almost superhuman exertion, bore her up the last steep ascent to the hut. It was empty. He placed the exhausted woman on the herder's straw pallet, where she sank fainting. When she regained her consciousness she was supported in Freyer's arms, and her face was wet with his tears. She gazed at him as if waking to the reality of some beautiful dream. "Is it really you?" she asked, with such sweet childlike happiness, as she threw her arms around him, that the strong man's brain and heart reeled as if his senses were failing.
"You are alive, you are safe?" He could say no more. He kissed her dripping garments her feet, and tenderly examined her beautiful limbs to assure himself that she had received no injury. "Thank Heaven!" he cried joyously, amid his tears, "you are safe!" Then, half staggering, he rose: "Now, in the presence of the deadly peril we have just escaped, tell me whether you really love me, tell me whether you are mine, wholly mine! Or hurl me down into the blazing forest--it would be more merciful, by Heaven! than to deceive me."
"Joseph!" cried the countess, clinging passionately to him. "Can you ask that--now?"
"Alas! I cannot understand how a poor ignorant man like me can win the love of such a woman. What can you love, save the illusion of the Christ, and when that has vanished--what remains?"
"The divine, the real love!" replied the countess with a lofty expression.
"Oh, I believe that you are sincere. But if you have deceived yourself, if you should ever perceive that you have overestimated me--ah, it would be far better for me to be lying down below amid the flames than to experience that. There is still time--consider well, and say--what shall it be?"
"Consider?" replied the countess, drawing his head down to hers. "Tell the torrent to consider ere it plunges over the cliff, to dissolve into spray in the leap. Tell the flower to consider ere it opens to the sunbeam which will consume it! Will you be more petty than they? What is there to consider, when a mighty impulse powerfully constrains us? Is not this moment worth risking the whole life without asking: 'What is to come of it?' Ah, then--then, I have been mistaken in you and it will be better for us to part while there is yet time."