The Bachelors by Adalbert Stifter

Author:Adalbert Stifter
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2012-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

V

ISLAND SOJOURN

WHEN VICTOR WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, he was shocked by the grandeur that presented itself to him. The Grisel stood across from where he was, sparkling and gleaming in all its crevices, and although at night it had appeared to be the highest mountain, higher ones now rose up on either side of it that he hadn’t seen in the night and these were now shining down, a soft blue, revealing in many places patches of snow, tucked into the crevices like white swans. Everything shone and shimmered in a mêlée of light; tall trees stood in front of the house glistening with more moisture than he had ever seen on them; the grass was a mass of dewdrops; everywhere broad shadows were cast; and the whole spectacle appeared again in the lake, which, swept clean of every wisp of mist, lay there like the most delicate of mirrors. Victor had flung open his window and thrust his glowing face out between the iron bars. He was awestruck. The sharpest of contrasts was created by all this encircling profusion of light and colours alongside the surrounding deathlike silence in which these gigantic mountains stood. There wasn’t a soul in sight, even in front of the house—only some birds twittered sporadically in the sycamore trees. What a chorus of morning sounds must be ringing out up there in those heights, but they went unheard because they were too far away. Victor stretched his head out as far as he could, so as to be able to look around. He could see a considerable part of the lake. Everywhere rock faces marched alongside it, and the young man was quite unable to make out the way he had come. The sun had risen, too, at quite another place than he had expected, that is, behind the house, and his windows were still in shadow, which made the light of the rock faces opposite even more intense. He was similarly wrong about the moon, which, to judge from its light, he had thought to be a narrow sickle at the most, for it was a half-moon that was still standing in the sky, inclining down towards the mountain peaks. Victor was not yet familiar with the effect of light in the mountains. What a flood of light would have to have fallen on those distant walls of rock to illuminate them as brightly as the church tower of his village, which had always reached up into the dark-blue night air so shimmeringly white and sharp in the moonlight. Although the sun had risen quite high already, the air that streamed into his windows, however, was still cold and damp, much more so than he was used to at home; but this didn’t trouble him: rather he found it simultaneously so hard and raw that it stimulated all his vital spirits.

He stepped back finally from the window and began to unpack his knapsack in order to put on something different from what he

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