Dr. Dumanys Wife | Page 4

face pressed to the window-pane and the tiny hand never
losing hold of the edge of the curtain, which he had purposely lifted,
for the governess had pulled the curtain down the moment I left,
possibly to take off her bonnet.
Mine was not a very pleasant situation in that corridor. I watched the
rising and sinking of the moon, which phenomenon repeated itself

about twice every hour, according to the serpentine windings of the
road. I looked at the milky mist which surrounded the icy pinnacles of
the great mountains, and grumbled over the intense darkness in the
many tunnels, in which the roar and noise of the train is tremendously
increased, thundering as if Titans were breaking out of their prisons
below Mount Pelion.
As if they had not broken through long, long ago! What if the old
Grecian gods should come to life? should leave their marble temples,
and gaze about on the world as it is at present? If Pallas Athene were
told of America? If Helios Apollo could listen to Wagner's operas, and
Zeus Jupiter might look into the great tube of the London Observatory,
wondering what had become of that milky way which had been formed
out of the milk spilled by Amalthea? If we could show him that we had
caught and harnessed his heavenly lightning to draw our vehicles and
carry our messages, and that, with the help of fire-eyed leviathans, we
break through the rocky womb of his great mountains? And yet, how
easy it would be for them, with a simple sneeze of their most illustrious
and omnipotent noses, to raise such a tempest that earth and sea would
rise and destroy man and his pigmy works at one fell stroke! I wonder
if they never awake? I rather think they sometimes get up and shake
their mighty fists at us. These cyclones look very suspicious to me!
The huge iron leviathan turns and twists itself like a Gordian knot;
disappears and reappears, almost on the same spot, but higher up on the
mountain, and then glides rapidly on along the brinks of fearful abysses,
over long iron bridges looking like some fanciful filigree work, some
giant spider's web, extending across great valleys, chasms, and
precipices, over which great mountain rivers splash down, roaring and
foaming in gigantic falls. What giant power has cleft the way for these
waters--Vulcan or Neptune? Or was it laid down in Euclid's
adventurous age, when the Titans went into bankruptcy?
The train increases its speed to regain the time lost in uncoupling the
disabled parlour-car, and this increased speed is chiefly felt at the tail of
the great iron dragon. I have to cling tightly to the brass rod in front of
the windows. We pass the central station without stopping, the

locomotive whistles, the lamps of the little watch-houses fly past like
so many jack-o'-lanterns, and all at once we are enveloped by a thick
fog rising from beneath, where it had rested above the sea, and when
the train has twice completed the circle around the valley, the noxious,
dangerous mist surrounds us entirely.
But once more the creation of human hands conquers the spectre, and,
puffing and whistling, the locomotive breaks through the dark haze.
Once again the iron serpent disappears into the bowels of the rock, and
as it emerges it crosses another valley and is greeted by a clear heaven
and a multitude of brightly-glistening stars.
We are on the Rossberg. A devastated tract of the globe it seems. Our
eyes rest on barren soil devoid of vegetation. Beneath a large field of
huge boulders, imbedded in snow and ice, the Alpine vegetation thrives.
The whole valley is one immense graveyard, and the great rocks are
giant tombstones, encircled by wreaths of white flowers meet for
adorning graves. At the beginning of the present century one of the
ridges of the Rossberg gave way, and in the landslide four villages were
buried. This happened at night, when the villagers were all asleep, and
not a single man, women, or child escaped. This valley is their
resting-place. Was I not right to call it a graveyard?
Above this valley of destruction the train glides on. Upon the side of
the mountain is a little watch-house, built into the rock; a narrow flight
of steps hewn in the stone leads up to it like a ladder. The moon, which
had lately seemed fixed to the crest of the mountain, now plays
hide-and-seek among the peaks. A high barricade on the side of the
Rossberg serves to protect the railroad track against another landslide.
On the high ridges of the mountain goats were pasturing, and not far
from them a shepherd's fire was blazing, and the shepherd himself sat
beside it. I remember all