an hour elapsed before her two companions could obtain from the nearest
house ropes and poles to assist in raising them; and it was with much
exertion that they at last succeeded in raising from the crevasse what
appeared to be two dead bodies. Every means was used to restore them to
life. With the child they were successful, but not with the mother; so the old
grandfather received his daughter’s little son into his house an orphan,-a
little boy who laughed more than he cried; but it seemed as if laughter had
left him in the cold ice-world into which he had fallen, where, as the Swiss
peasants say, the souls of the lost are confined till the judgment-day.
The glaciers appear as if a rushing stream had been frozen in its course,
and pressed into blocks of green crystal, which, balanced one upon another,
form a wondrous palace of crystal for the Ice Maiden-the queen of the
glaciers. It is she whose mighty power can crush the traveller to death, and
arrest the flowing river in its course. She is also a child of the air, and with
the swiftness of the chamois she can reach the snow-covered mountain tops,
where the boldest mountaineer has to cut footsteps in the ice to ascend. She
will sail on a frail pine-twig over the raging torrents beneath, and spring
lightly from one iceberg to another, with her long, snow-white hair flowing
around her, and her dark-green robe glittering like the waters of the deep
Swiss lakes. “Mine is the power to seize and crush,” she cried. “Once a
beautiful boy was stolen from me by man,-a boy whom I had kissed, but
had not kissed to death. He is again among mankind, and tends the goats on
the mountains. He is always climbing higher and higher, far away from all
others, but not from me. He is mine; I will send for him.” And she gave
Vertigo the commission.
It was summer, and the Ice Maiden was melting amidst the green verdure,
when Vertigo swung himself up and down. Vertigo has many brothers, quite
a troop of them, and the Ice Maiden chose the strongest among them. They
exercise their power in different ways, and everywhere. Some sit on the
banisters of steep stairs, others on the outer rails of lofty towers, or spring
like squirrels along the ridges of the mountains. Others tread the air as a
swimmer treads the water, and lure their victims here and there till they fall
