'And now?' asks the Jungfrau, after more thousands of years: one minute.
'Now it is well,' answers the Finsteraarhorn, 'it is clean everywhere, quite white, wherever you look. … Everywhere is our snow, unbroken snow and ice. Everything is frozen. It is well now, it is quiet.'
'Good,' said the Jungfrau. 'But we have gossipped enough, old fellow. It's time to slumber.'
'It is time, indeed.'
The huge mountains sleep; the green, clear sky sleeps over the region of eternal silence.
February 1878.
THE OLD WOMAN
I was walking over a wide plain alone.
And suddenly I fancied light, cautious footsteps behind my back. … Some one was walking after me.
I looked round, and saw a little, bent old woman, all muffled up in grey rags. The face of the old woman alone peeped out from them; a yellow, wrinkled, sharp-nosed, toothless face.
I went up to her. … She stopped.
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