Italy Was There, Just Above, Right To My Hand.
A Lifting Of A Cloud, A Little Respite, And Every Downward Step Would
Have Been Towards The Sunlight.
As it was, I was being driven back
northward, in retreat and ashamed.
The Alps had conquered me.
Let us always after this combat their immensity and their will, and
always hate the inhuman guards that hold the gates of Italy, and the
powers that lie in wait for men on those high places. But now I know
that Italy will always stand apart. She is cut off by no ordinary
wall, and Death has all his army on her frontiers.
Well, we returned. Twice the guide rubbed my hands with brandy, and
once I had to halt and recover for a moment, failing and losing my
hold. Believe it or not, the deep footsteps of our ascent were already
quite lost and covered by the new snow since our halt, and even had
they been visible, the guide would not have retraced them. He did what
I did not at first understand, but what I soon saw to be wise. He took
a steep slant downward over the face of the snow-slope, and though
such a pitch of descent a little unnerved me, it was well in the end.
For when we had gone down perhaps 900 feet, or a thousand, in
perpendicular distance, even I, half numb and fainting, could feel
that the storm was less violent. Another two hundred, and the flakes
could be seen not driving in flashes past, but separately falling.
Then in some few minutes we could see the slope for a very long way
downwards quite clearly; then, soon after, we saw far below us the
place where the mountain-side merged easily into the plain of that cup
or basin whence we had started.
When we saw this, the guide said to me, 'Hold your stick thus, if you
are strong enough, and let yourself slide.' I could just hold it, in
spite of the cold. Life was returning to me with intolerable pain. We
shot down the slope almost as quickly as falling, but it was evidently
safe to do so, as the end was clearly visible, and had no break or
rock in it.
So we reached the plain below, and entered the little shed, and thence
looking up, we saw the storm above us; but no one could have told it
for what it was. Here, below, was silence, and the terror and raging
above seemed only a great trembling cloud occupying the mountain. Then
we set our faces down the ravine by which we had come up, and so came
down to where the snow changed to rain. When we got right down into
the valley of the Rhone, we found it all roofed with cloud, and the
higher trees were white with snow, making a line like a tide mark on
the slopes of the hills.
I re-entered 'The Bear', silent and angered, and not accepting the
humiliation of that failure.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 106 of 189
Words from 54731 to 55244
of 97758
