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[Pg 359] 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.[Pg 360]

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.

Then, beneath them, in a tremendous hole, at the bottom of a terrible abyss, they perceived Loëche, where houses looked as grains of sand which had been thrown in that enormous crevice, which finishes and closes the Gemmi, and which opens, down below, onto the Rhone.

The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which goes turning and twisting continually, and which comes back fantastically and strangely, along the side of the mountain, as far as the almost invisible little village at its feet. The women jumped into the snow, and the two old men joined them. "Well," father Hauser said, "good-bye, and keep up your spirits till next year, my friends," and old Hari replied: "Till next year."

They embraced each other, and then Madame Hauser in her turn, offered her cheek, and the girl did the same.[Pg 361]

When Ulrich Kunzi's turn came, he whispered in Louise's ear: "Do not forget those up yonder," and she replied: "no," in such a low voice, that he guessed what she had said, without hearing it. "Well, adieu," Jean Hauser repeated, "and don't fall ill." And going before the two women, he commenced the descent, and soon all three disappeared at the first turn in the road, while the two men returned to the inn at Schwarenbach.

They walked slowly, side by side, without speaking. It was over, and they would be alone together for four or five months. Then Gaspard Bari began to relate his life last winter. He had remained with Michael Canol, who was too old now to stand it; for an accident might happen during that long solitude. They had not been dull, however; the only thing was to make up one's mind to it from the first, and in the end one would find plenty of distraction, games and other means of whiling away the time.

Ulrich Kunzi listened to him with his eyes on the ground, for in his thoughts he was following those who were descending to the village. They soon came in sight of the inn, which was, however, scarcely visible, so small did it look, a black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of snow, and when they opened the door, Sam, the great curly dog, began to romp round them.

"Come, my boy," old Gaspard said, "we have no women now, so we must get our own dinner ready. Go and peel the potatoes." And they both sat down on wooden stools, and began to put the bread into the soup.

The next morning seemed very long to Kunzi. Old Hari smoked and spat onto the hearth, while the young[Pg 362] man looked out of the window at the snow-covered mountain opposite the house.

In the afternoon he went out, and going over yesterday's ground again, he looked for the traces of the mule that had carried the two women; then when he had reached the neck of the Gemmi, he laid himself down on his stomach and looked at Loëche.

The village, in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow, although it came quite close to it, but it was stopped short by the pine woods which protected it. Its low houses looked like paving stones in a large meadow, from up there. Hauser's little daughter was there now, in one of those gray colored houses. In which? Ulrich Kunzi was too far away to be able to make them out separately. How he would have liked to go down, while he was yet able!

But the sun had disappeared behind the lofty crest of the Wildstrubel, and the young man returned to the chalet. Daddy Hari was smoking, and when he saw his mate come in, he proposed a game of cards to him, and they sat down opposite each other, on either side of the table. They played for a long time, a simple game called brisque, and then they had supper and went to bed.

The following days were like the first, bright and cold, without any more snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the eagles and other rare birds which ventured onto those frozen heights, while Ulrich returned regularly to the neck of the Gemmi to look at the village. Then they played at cards, dice or dominoes, and lost and won a trifle, just to create an interest in the game.

One morning Hari, who was up first, called his com[Pg 363]panion. A moving deep and light cloud of white spray was falling on them noiselessly, and was by degrees burying them under a thick, dark coverlet of foam, and that lasted four days and four nights. It was necessary to free the door and the windows, to dig out a passage and to cut steps to get over this frozen powder, which a twelve hours frost had made as hard as the granite of the moraines.

They lived like prisoners, and did not venture outside their abode. They had divided their duties, which they performed regularly. Ulrich Kunzi undertook the scouring, washing, and everything that belonged to cleanliness. He also chopped up the wood, while Gaspard Hari did the cooking and attended to the fire. Their regular and monotonous work was interrupted by long games at cards or dice, and they never quarreled, but were always calm and placid. They were never even impatient or ill-humored, nor did they ever use hard words, for they had laid in a stock of patience for their wintering on the top of the mountain.

Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and occasionally he killed one. Then there was a feast in the inn at Schwarenbach, and they reveled in fresh meat. One morning he went out as usual. The thermometer outside marked eighteen degrees of frost, and as the sun had not yet risen, the hunter hoped to surprise the animals at the approaches to the Wildstrubel, and Ulrich, being alone, remained in bed until ten o'clock. He was of a sleepy nature, but he would not have dared to give way like that to his inclination in the presence of the old guide, who was ever an early riser. He breakfasted leisurely with Sam, who also spent his days and nights in sleeping in front[Pg 364] of the fire; then he felt low-spirited and even frightened at the solitude, and was seized by a longing for his daily game of cards, as one is by the desire of an invincible habit, and so he went out to meet his companion, who was to return at four o'clock.

The snow had leveled the whole deep valley, filled up the crevasses, obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that between the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white, regular, dazzling and frozen surface. For three weeks, Ulrich had not been to the edge of the precipice, from which he had looked down onto the village, and he wanted to go there before climbing the slopes which led to Wildstrubel. Loëche was now also covered by the snow, and the houses could scarcely be distinguished, covered as they were by that white cloak.

Then turning to the right, he reached the Lämmern glacier. He went along with a mountaineer's long strides, striking the snow, which was as hard as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with his piercing eyes, he looked for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that enormous, white expanse.

When he reached the end of the glacier he stopped and asked himself whether the old man had taken that road, and then he began to walk along the moraines with rapid and uneasy steps. The day was declining; the snow was assuming a rosy tint, and a dry, frozen wind blew in rough gusts over its crystal surface. Ulrich uttered a long, shrill, vibrating call; his voice sped through the deathlike silence in which the mountains were sleeping; it reached the distance, over profound and motionless waves of glacial foam, like the[Pg 365] cry of a bird over the waves of the sea; then it died away and nothing answered him.

He set to walk again. The sun had sunk yonder behind the mountain tops, which were still purple with the reflection from the sky; but the depths of the valley were becoming gray, and suddenly the young man felt frightened. It seemed to him as if the silence, the cold, the solitude, the winter death of these mountains were taking possession of him, were going to stop and to freeze his blood, to make his limbs grow stiff, and to turn him into a motionless and frozen object; and he set off running, fleeing towards his dwelling. The old man, he thought, would have returned during his absence. He had taken another road; he would, no doubt, be sitting before the fire, with a dead chamois at his feet.

He soon came in sight of the inn, but no smoke rose from it. Ulrich walked faster and opened the door; Sam ran up to him to greet him, but Gaspard Hari had not returned. Kunzi, in his alarm, turned round suddenly, as if he had expected to find his comrade hidden in a corner. Then he re-lighted the fire and made the soup; hoping every moment to see the old man come in. From time to time he went out, to see if he were not coming in. It was quite night now, that wan night of the mountains, a livid night, with the crescent moon, yellow and dim and just disappearing behind the mountain tops, lit up on the edge of the horizon.

Then the young man went in and sat down to warm his hands and his feet, while he pictured to himself every possible accident. Gaspard might have broken a leg, have fallen into a crevasse, taken a false step[Pg 366] and dislocated his ankle. And perhaps he was lying on the snow, overcome and stiff with the cold, in agony of mind, lost and perhaps shouting for help, calling with all his might, in the silence of the night.

But where? The mountain was so vast, so rugged, so dangerous in places, especially at that time of the year, that it would have required ten or twenty guides to walk for a week in all directions, to find a man in that immense space. Ulrich Kunzi, however, made up his mind to set out with Sam, if Gaspard did not return by one in the morning; and he made his preparations.

He put provisions for two days into a bag, took his steel climbing irons, tied a long, thin, strong rope round his waist and looked to see that his iron-shod stick and his axe, which served to cut steps in the ice, were in order. Then he waited. The fire was burning on the hearth and the great dog was snoring in front of it, and the clock was ticking as regularly as a heart beating, in its case of resounding wood.

He waited, with his ears on the alert for distant sounds, and he shivered when the wind blew against the roof and the walls. It struck twelve, and he trembled. Then, as he felt frightened and shuddering, he put some water on the fire, so that he might have some hot coffee before starting, and when the clock struck one he got up, woke Sam, opened the door and went off in the direction of the Wildstrubel. For five hours he mounted, scaling the rocks by means of his climbing irons, cutting into the ice, advancing continually and occasionally hauling up the dog, who remained below at the foot of some slope that was too steep for him, by means of the rope. It was about six o'clock when he[Pg 367] reached one of the summits to which old Gaspard often came after chamois, and he waited till it should be daylight.

The sky was growing pale over head, and suddenly a strange light, springing, nobody could tell whence, illuminated the immense ocean of pale mountain summits, which stretched for a thousand leagues around him. One might have said that this vague brightness arose from the snow itself, in order to spread itself into space. By degrees the highest, distant summits assumed a delicate, fleshlike rose color, and the red sun appeared behind the ponderous giants of the Bernese Alps.

Ulrich Kunzi set off again, walking like a hunter, bent and looking for any traces, and saying to his dog: "Seek, old fellow, seek!"

He was descending the mountain now, scanning the depths closely, and from time to time shouting, uttering a loud, prolonged cry, which soon died away in that silent vastness. Then, he put his ear to the ground, to listen; he thought he could distinguish a voice, and so he began to run, and shouted again, but he heard nothing more and sat down, worn out and in despair. Towards midday, he breakfasted and gave Sam, who was as tired as himself, something to eat also, and then he recommenced his search.

When evening came he was still walking, and he had walked more than thirty miles over the mountains. As he was too far away to return home, and too tired to drag himself along any further, he dug a hole in the snow and crouched in it with his dog, under a blanket which he had brought with him. And the man and the dog lay side by side, warming themselves one[Pg 368] against the other, but frozen to the marrow, nevertheless. Ulrich scarcely slept, his mind haunted by visions and his limbs shaking with cold.

Day was breaking when he got up. His legs were as stiff as iron bars, and his spirits so low that he was ready to cry with grief, while his heart was beating so that he almost fell with excitement, when he thought he heard a noise.

Suddenly he imagined that he also was going to die of cold in the midst of this vast solitude, and the terror of such a death roused his energies and gave him renewed vigor. He was descending towards the inn, falling down and getting up again, and followed at a distance by Sam, who was limping on three legs, and they did not reach Schwarenbach until four o'clock in the afternoon. The house was empty, and the young man made a fire, had something to eat and went to sleep, so worn out that he did not think of anything more.

He slept for a long time, for a very long time, an unconquerable sleep. But suddenly a voice, a cry, a name: "Ulrich," aroused him from his profound torpor and made him sit up in bed. Had he been dreaming? Was it one of those strange appeals which cross the dreams of disquieted minds? No, he heard it still, that reverberating cry,—which had entered at his ears and remained in his flesh,—to the tips of his sinewy fingers. Certainly, somebody had cried out, and called: "Ulrich!" There was somebody there, near the house, there could be no doubt of that, and he opened the door and shouted: "Is it you, Gaspard?" with all the strength of his lungs. But there was no[Pg 369] reply, no murmur, no groan, nothing. It was quite dark, and the snow looked wan.

The wind had risen, that icy wind that cracks the rocks, and leaves nothing alive on those deserted heights, and it came in sudden gusts, which were more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!" And then he waited again. Everything was silent on the mountain! Then he shook with terror and with a bound he was inside the inn, when he shut and bolted the door, and then he fell into a chair, trembling all over, for he felt certain that his comrade had called him, at the moment he was expiring.

He was sure of that, as sure as one is of being alive, or of eating a piece of bread. Old Gaspard Hari had been dying for two days and three nights somewhere, in some hole, in one of those deep, untrodden ravines whose whiteness is more sinister than subterranean darkness. He had been dying for two days and three nights and he had just then died, thinking of his comrade. His soul, almost before it was released, had taken its flight to the inn where Ulrich was sleeping, and it had called him by that terrible and mysterious power which the spirits of the dead have, to haunt the living. That voiceless soul had cried to the wornout soul of the sleeper; it had uttered its last farewell, or its reproach, or its curse on the man who had not searched carefully enough.

And Ulrich felt that it was there, quite close to him, behind the wall, behind the door which he had just fastened. It was wandering about, like a night bird, which lightly touches a lighted window with his wings,[Pg 370] and the terrified young man was ready to scream with horror. He wanted to run away, but did not dare to go out; he did not dare, and he should never dare to do it in the future, for that phantom would remain there day and night, round the inn, as long as the old man's body was not recovered and had not been deposited in the consecrated earth of a churchyard.

When it was daylight, Kunzi recovered some of his courage at the return of the bright sun. He prepared his meal, gave his dog some food, and then remained motionless on a chair, tortured at heart as he thought of the old man lying on the snow, and then, as soon as night once more covered the mountains, new terrors assailed him. He now walked up and down the dark kitchen, which was scarcely lighted by the flame of one candle, and he walked from one end of it to the other with great strides, listening, listening whether the terrible cry of the other night would again break the dreary silence outside. He felt himself alone, unhappy man, as no man had ever been alone before! He was alone in this immense desert of snow, alone five thousand feet above the inhabited earth, above human habitations, above that stirring, noisy, palpitating life, alone under an icy sky! A mad longing impelled him to run away, no matter where, to get down to Loëche by flinging himself over the precipice; but he did not even dare to open the door, as he felt sure that the other, the dead man, would bar his road, so that he might not be obliged to remain up there alone.

Towards midnight, tired with walking, wornout by grief and fear, he at last fell into a doze in his chair, for he was as afraid of his bed, as one is of a haunted spot. But suddenly the strident cry of the other even[Pg 371]ing pierced his ears, and it was so shrill that Ulrich stretched out his arms to repulse the ghost, and he fell onto his back with his chair.

Sam, who was awakened by the noise, began to howl, like frightened dogs do howl, and he walked all about the house, trying to find out where the danger came from; but when he got to the door, he sniffed beneath it, smelling vigorously, with his coat bristling and his tail stiff, while he growled angrily. Kunzi, who was terrified, jumped up, and holding his chair by one leg, he cried: "Don't come in, don't come in, or I shall kill you." And the dog, excited by this threat, barked angrily at that invisible enemy who defied his master's voice. By degrees, however, he quieted down and came back and stretched himself in front of the fire, but he was uneasy, and kept his head up, and growled between his teeth.

Ulrich, in turn, recovered his senses, but as he felt faint with terror, he went and got a bottle of brandy out of the sideboard, and he drank off several glasses, one after another, at a gulp. His ideas became vague, his courage revived, and a feverish glow ran through his veins.

He ate scarcely anything the next day, and limited himself to alcohol, and so he lived for several days, like a drunken brute. As soon as he thought of Gaspard Hari, he began to drink again, and went on drinking until he fell onto the ground, overcome by intoxication. And there he remained on his face, dead drunk, his limbs benumbed, and snoring, with his face to the ground. But scarcely had he digested the maddening and burning liquor, than the same cry, "Ulrich," woke him like a bullet piercing his brain, and he got up,[Pg 372] still staggering, stretching out his hands to save himself from falling, and calling to Sam to help him. And the dog, who appeared to be going mad, like his master, rushed to the door, scratched it with his claws, and gnawed it with his long white teeth, while the young man, with his neck thrown back, and his head in the air, drank the brandy in draughts, as if it had been cold water, so that it might by and by send his thoughts, his frantic terror and his memory, to sleep again.

In three weeks he had consumed all his stock of ardent spirits, but his continual drunkenness only lulled his terror, which awoke more furiously than ever, as soon as it was impossible for him to calm it. His fixed idea then, which had been intensified by a month of drunkenness, and which was continually increasing in his absolute solitude, penetrated him like a gimlet. He now walked about his house like a wild beast in its cage, putting his ear to the door to listen if the other were there, and defying him through the wall. Then, as soon as he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice which made him leap to his feet.

At last one night, like cowards do when driven to extremities, he sprang to the door and opened it, to see who was calling him, and to force him to keep quiet, but such a gust of cold wind blew into his face that it chilled him to the bone, and he closed and bolted the door again immediately, without noticing that Sam had rushed out. Then, as he was shivering with cold, he threw some wood on the fire, and sat down in front of it to warm himself, but suddenly he started, for somebody was scratching at the wall, and crying. In desperation he called out: "Go away!" but was answered by another long, sorrowful wail.[Pg 373]

Then, all his remaining senses forsook him, from sheer fright. He repeated: "Go away!" and turned round to try to find some corner in which to hide, while the other person went round the house, still crying and rubbing against the wall. Ulrich went to the oak sideboard, which was full of plates and dishes and of provisions, and lifting it up with superhuman strength, he dragged it to the door, so as to form a barricade. Then piling up all the rest of the furniture, the mattresses, palliasses and chairs, he stopped up the windows like one does when assailed by an enemy.

But the person outside now uttered long, plaintive, mournful groans, to which the young man replied by similar groans, and thus days and nights passed, without their ceasing to howl at each other. The one was continually walking round the house, and scraped the walls with his nails so vigorously that it seemed as if he wished to destroy them, while the other, inside, followed all his movements, stooping down, and holding his ear to the walls, and replying to all his appeals with terrible cries. One evening, however, Ulrich heard nothing more, and he sat down, so overcome by fatigue, that he went to sleep immediately, and awoke in the morning without a thought, without any recollection of what had happened, just as if his head had been emptied during his heavy sleep, but he felt hungry, and he ate.

The winter was over, and the Gemmi pass was practicable again, so the Hauser family started off to return to their inn. As soon as they had reached the top of the ascent, the women mounted their mule, and spoke about the two men who they would meet again shortly. They were, indeed, rather surprised that neither of[Pg 374] them had come down a few days before, as soon as the road became usable, in order to tell them all about their long winter sojourn. At last, however, they saw the inn, still covered with snow, like a quilt. The door and the window were closed, but a little smoke was coming out of the chimney, which reassured old Hauser; on going up to the door, however, he saw the skeleton of an animal which had been torn to pieces by the eagles, a large skeleton lying on its side.

They all looked closely at it, and the mother said: "That must be Sam," and then she shouted: "Hi! Gaspard!" A cry from the interior of the house answered her, and a sharp cry, that one might have thought some animal had uttered it. Old Hauser repeated: "Hi! Gaspard!" and they heard another cry, similar to the first.

Then the three men, the father and the two sons, tried to open the door, but it resisted their efforts. From the empty cow-stall they took a beam to serve as a battering-ram, and hurled it against the door with all their might. The wood gave way, and the boards flew into splinters; then the house was shaken by a loud voice, and inside, behind the sideboard, which was overturned, they saw a man standing upright, with his hair falling onto his shoulders, and a beard descending to his breast, with shining eyes and nothing but rags to cover him. They did not recognize him, but Louise Hauser exclaimed: "It is Ulrich, mother." And her mother declared that it was Ulrich, although his hair was white.

He allowed them to go up to him, and to touch him, but he did not reply to any of their questions, and they were obliged to take him to Loëche, where the doctors[Pg 375] found that he was mad, and nobody ever knew what had become of his companion.

Little Louise Hauser nearly died that summer of decline, which the medical men attributed to the cold air of the mountains.

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