Mountains, still mountains ... and forest, magnificent,
ancient, stately forest. The night sky was clear;
I could recognise some kinds of trees, especially
the splendid firs, with their straight white trunks.
Here and there on the edge of the forest, wild goats
could be seen; graceful and alert, they stood on their
slender legs and listened, turning their heads prettily
and pricking up their great funnel-shaped ears.
A ruined tower, sightless and gloomy, on the crest
of a bare cliff, laid bare its crumbling turrets;
above the old forgotten stones, a little golden star
was shining peacefully. From a small almost black
lake rose, like a mysterious wail, the plaintive croak
of tiny frogs. I fancied other notes, long-drawn-out,
languid like the strains of an AEolian harp....
Here we were in the home of legend! The same
delicate moonlight mist, which had struck me in Schwetzingen,
was shed here on every side, and the farther away the
mountains, the thicker was this mist. I counted
up five, six, ten different tones of shadow at different
heights on the mountain slopes, and over all this
realm of varied silence the moon queened it pensively.
The air blew in soft, light currents. I felt
myself a lightness at heart, and, as it were, a lofty
calm and melancholy....
‘Alice, you must love this country!’
‘I love nothing.’
‘How so? Not me?’
‘Yes ... you!’ she answered indifferently.
It seemed to me that her arm clasped my waist more
tightly than before.
‘Forward! forward!’ said Alice, with a
sort of cold fervour.
‘Forward!’ I repeated.
XXI
A loud, thrilling cry rang out suddenly over our heads,
and was at once repeated a little in front.
‘Those are belated cranes flying to you, to
the north,’ said Alice; ’would you like
to join them?’
‘Yes, yes! raise me up to them.’
We darted upwards and in one instant found ourselves
beside the flying flock.
The big handsome birds (there were thirteen of them)
were flying in a triangle, with slow sharp flaps of
their hollow wings; with their heads and legs stretched
rigidly out, and their breasts stiffly pressed forward,
they pushed on persistently and so swiftly that the
air whistled about them. It was marvellous at
such a height, so remote from all things living, to
see such passionate, strenuous life, such unflinching
will, untiringly cleaving their triumphant way through
space. The cranes now and then called to one
another, the foremost to the hindmost; and there was
a certain pride, dignity, and invincible faith in
these loud cries, this converse in the clouds.
‘We shall get there, be sure, hard though it
be,’ they seemed to say, cheering one another
on. And then the thought came to me that men,
such as these birds—in Russia—nay,
in the whole world, are few.
‘We are flying towards Russia now,’ observed
Alice. I noticed now, not for the first time,
that she almost always knew what I was thinking of.
’Would you like to go back?’
