“Is there anything new at the mill?” asked the housecat. “We have a secret engagement in the house! Father doesn’t know about it yet. Rudy and Babette stepped on each other’s paws all evening under the table. They stepped on me twice, but I didn’t miaow because it would have caused attention.”
“Well, I would have miaowed!” said the kitchen cat.
“What’s fitting in the kitchen isn’t fitting in the parlor,” said the housecat. “I just wish I knew what the miller will say when he finds out about the engagement.”
What would the miller say? Rudy wanted to know that too, but he couldn’t wait a long time to find out, and so a few days later, when the coach rolled over the Rhone bridge between Valais and Vaud, Rudy was sitting within, optimistic as usual. He was thinking good thoughts about being accepted that very evening.
And when evening came, and the coach drove the same way back, Rudy was sitting in it again, going back the same way, but at the mill the housecat ran around with news.
“Have you heard about it, kitchen cat? Now the miller knows everything. A fine ending, I’ll say! Rudy got here towards evening, and he and Babette had a lot to whisper about. They were standing in the hallway right outside the miller’s room. I lay by their feet, but they had no word or thought for me. ‘I’m going straight in to your father,’ said Rudy. ‘It’s an honorable matter.’ ‘Shall I go with you?’ asked Babette. ‘It will give you courage.’ ‘I have enough courage,’ said Rudy, ‘but if you come along, he must look kindly upon us, whether he wants to or not.’ ”
“So they went in. Rudy stepped hard on my tail! He’s so clumsy. I miaowed, but neither he nor Babette had ears for me. They opened the door, and both went in. I went first, but jumped up on the back of a chair. I had no way of knowing what direction Rudy would kick next. But the miller is the one who kicked out! And it was a good kick. Out of the door, and up into the mountains to the antelope! Now Rudy can aim at them and not at our little Babette!”
“But what was said?” asked the kitchen cat.
“Said! Everything was said that people say when they’re courting: ‘I love her, and she loves me. And if there’s enough milk in the pail for one, there’s enough for two!’ ‘But she’s too far above you,’ said the miller, ‘She’s sitting on grain, golden grain, as you know. You can’t reach her.’ ‘Nothing is so high that it can’t be reached if you really want it,’ Rudy said, because he’s quick on the draw. ‘But you said last time that you can’t reach the eaglet! And Babette sits higher than that!’ ‘I’ll take both of them,’ said Rudy. ‘I’ll give her to you when you bring me the eaglet alive,’ said the miller, and he laughed until he cried. ‘Thanks for the visit, Rudy. If you come back tomorrow, there’ll be no one home. Good bye, Rudy.’ And Babette said good bye too, as pitifully as a little kitten who can’t see its mother. ‘A man’s as good as his word,’ Rudy said. ‘Don’t cry, Babette, I’ll bring the eaglet.’ ‘I hope you’ll break your neck,’ said the miller, ‘then we’ll get out of seeing you here.’ I call that kicking! Now Rudy’s gone. Babette is crying, and the miller is singing in German. He learned that on his trip. I’m not going to cry over it. It doesn’t help.”
“But there are always appearances,” said the kitchen cat.
7. THE EAGLE’S NEST
On the mountain path the yodeling rang out merrily and loudly. It suggested good spirits and confident courage. It was Rudy on his way to see his friend, Vesinand.
“You have to help me! We’ll get Ragli to come along. I must get the eaglet up on the cliff edge.”
“Why don’t you get the dark of the moon first? That would be just as easy,” said Vesinand. “You’re in a good mood.”
“I’m thinking about getting married. But seriously now, I’ll tell you what I’ve gotten myself into.”
And soon Vesinand and Ragli knew what Rudy wanted.
“You’re a foolhardy fellow!” they said. “It’s impossible! You’ll break your neck!”
“You won’t fall if you don’t think you will,” said Rudy.
At midnight they started off with poles, ladders, and ropes. The path went through scrub and bushes, and over rocky slopes, always upwards, upwards in the dark night. The river was rushing down below. Water was trickling above them, and heavy rain clouds chased by in the air. The closer the hunters got to the steep mountain edge, the darker it became. The walls of the cliffs almost met, and only high up above through the narrow cleft did the sky lighten. Close by, under them, there was a deep abyss with the sound of roaring water. All three sat quietly waiting for dawn when the eagle would fly out. It had to be shot before the eaglet could attempt to be taken. Rudy squatted, as still as if he were a piece of the rock he sat on. He had his rifle in front of him, ready to shoot. His eyes never left the upper cleft where the eagle’s nest was hidden under the overhanging cliff. The three hunters waited for a long time.
Then high above they heard a terribly loud rushing sound and a huge, hovering object darkened the sky. Two gun barrels aimed as the black eagle flew out of the nest. A shot rang out. For a moment the widespread wings moved, and then the bird slowly fell. It was as if its size and wing span would fill the entire cleft and pull the hunters down with it in its fall. But the eagle sank into the depths. They heard the creaking of tree branches and bushes that cracked from the bird’s fall.
Then they got busy. Three of the longest ladders were tied together. They had to reach all the way up, but when they were placed on the outermost safe footing at the edge of the abyss, they didn’t reach far enough. The side of the cliff was as smooth as a wall a considerable way further up, where the nest was hidden in the shelter of the uppermost overhanging cliff crag. After some deliberation they agreed that the best thing to do was to lower two ladders tied together into the cleft from above, and then connect these to the three that were already set up from below. With great difficulty two ladders were dragged furthest up and ropes attached. The ladders were lowered over the projecting cliff and hung swaying freely over the abyss. Rudy was already sitting on the lowest rung. It was an ice-cold morning. Clouds of fog drifted upward from the black crevice. Rudy sat there like a fly sitting on a tottering straw lost by a nest-building bird on the edge of a factory chimney. But the fly can fly when the straw breaks loose, and Rudy could only break his neck. The wind rushed around him, and down in the abyss roared the rushing water from the thawing glacier, the palace of the Ice Maiden.
He set the ladder in a swinging motion, like when a spider tries to grab hold from its long, swaying thread. And when Rudy touched the tip of the lower ladders the fourth time, he got hold of them. He tied them together with a sure and steady hand, but still they wobbled as if they had worn hinges.
The five long ladders that reached up towards the nest looked like a swaying reed as they leaned vertically towards the mountain wall. Now came the most dangerous part. He had to climb like a cat climbs, but Rudy could do that. The cat had taught him. He didn’t sense Vertigo, who was treading air behind him, reaching her polyp-like arms towards him. He was standing on the ladder’s top rung and realized that even here he couldn’t reach high enough to see into the nest. He could only reach it with his hand. He tested how solid the thick, lower, intertwined branches that made up the lower part of the nest were, and when he was sure that he had a thick, unbreakable branch, he swung from the ladder up to the branch and got his head and chest above the nest. But he was met with the sickening stench of rotting meat. Rotted lambs, antelope, and birds lay there torn to pieces. Vertigo, who wasn’t able to touch him, blew the poisonous reek into his face so that he would get dizzy, and down in the black, gaping depths on the rushing water sat the Ice Maiden herself with her long, white-green hair gazing with eyes deadly as gun barrels.
“Now I’ll catch you!”
In a corner of the eagle’s nest he saw the eaglet sitting, big and powerful. It couldn’t fly yet. Rudy fastened his eyes on it, held on with all his might with one hand, and with his other hand thre
w a sling around the young eagle. It was captured alive, its leg in the tight cord. Rudy slung the sling with the bird over his shoulder, so the eagle dangled a good distance below him, and clung to a helpfully lowered rope until his toes again reached the top rung of the ladder.
“Hold on tight! Don’t think you’ll fall and you won’t.” It was the old mantra, and he followed it. He held on tight, crawled, was sure he wouldn’t fall, and he didn’t fall.
There was yodeling then, loud and happy. Rudy stood on the firm rocky ground with his eaglet.
8. THE HOUSECAT HAS NEWS
“Here’s what you called for,” said Rudy, who walked into the miller’s house in Bex and set a big basket on the floor. He took the cloth off and two yellow, black-rimmed eyes glowed out, so flashing and wild that they looked like they could burn into and through anything. The strong, short beak was gaping to bite, and its neck was red and downy.
“The eaglet!” cried the miller. Babette shrieked and jumped aside, but couldn’t take her eyes off Rudy or the eaglet.
“You don’t scare easily!” said the miller.
“And you always keep your word,” said Rudy. “We each have our distinguishing feature!”
“Why didn’t you break your neck?” asked the miller.
“Because I held on,” answered Rudy, “and I’m still doing it. I’m holding on to Babette!”
“Make sure you have her first,” said the miller and laughed, and Babette knew that was a good sign.
“Let’s get the eaglet out of the basket. Look how terribly he’s glaring! How did you get a hold of him?”
And Rudy told the story while the miller’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.
“With your courage and luck you could support three wives,” said the miller.
“Thank you! Thank you!” cried Rudy.
“Well, you don’t have Babette yet,” said the miller, and slapped the young hunter on the shoulder in jest.
“Did you hear the latest from the mill?” The housecat asked the kitchen cat. “Rudy has brought us the eaglet and is taking Babette in exchange. They kissed each other right in front of Father. They’re as good as engaged. The old fellow didn’t kick. He pulled in his claws, took a nap, and let the two sit there and fawn over each other. They have so much to say that they won’t finish by Christmas.”
And they didn’t finish by Christmas. The wind whirled the brown leaves. The snow drifted in the valley as it did on the high peaks. The Ice Maiden sat in her proud palace that grew bigger when winter came. The cliff walls were glazed with ice, and there were yard-wide icicles as heavy as elephants in places where the mountain streams waved their veils in the summer. Garlands of fantastic ice crystals shone on the snow-dusted spruce trees. The Ice Maiden rode on the roaring wind over the deepest valleys, and the snow blanket reached all the way down to Bex. She could ride there and see Rudy indoors, more than he was used to being. He was sitting with Babette. The wedding would be in the summer. Their ears were often ringing, so much was the wedding discussed among their friends. There was sunshine, and the loveliest glowing rhododendron. There was the merry, laughing Babette, as lovely as the spring that came. Spring—that had all the birds singing about summer, and about the wedding day.
“How those two sit and hang on each other!” said the housecat. “I’m tired of that miaowing of theirs!”
9. THE ICE MAIDEN
Spring had unfolded its lush green garlands of walnut and chestnut trees that were especially luxuriant from the bridge by St. Maurice to Lake Geneva along the Rhone, which rushed with tremendous speed from its source under the green glacier, the ice palace where the Ice Maiden lives. She lets herself be carried on the piercing wind up onto the highest fields of snow and in the bright sunshine stretches out on the drifting pillows of snow. There she sat and looked with her far-sighted glance down in the deep valleys, where people busily moved about, like ants on a sunny rock.
“Powers of reason, as the children of the sun call you,” said the Ice Maiden. “You’re nothing but vermin. A single rolling snowball, and you and your houses and towns are crushed and obliterated!” And she lifted her proud head higher and looked around widely and deeply with her death-flashing eyes. But there was a rumbling sound from the valley, the blasting of rocks. This was the work of men—roads and tunnels for the railroad were being built.
“They’re playing mole!” she said. “They’re digging passages. That’s why there’s a sound like gunfire. If I were to move my palaces, there would be roaring louder than the boom of thunder !”
Smoke lifted up from the valley, moving forward like a fluttering veil, a waving plume from the locomotive that was pulling the train on the newly laid tracks. It was a winding snake whose joints were car after car. It shot forward swiftly as an arrow.
“They’re playing God down there, those powers of reason!” said the Ice Maiden. “But the powers of nature are the rulers,” and she laughed and sang so it resounded in the valley.
“Another avalanche,” said the people down there.
But the children of the sun sang even louder about human ideas. Thought that rules. It has subjugated the sea, moved mountains, and filled valleys. The human mind is the master of the natural powers. Just at that moment a party of travelers came across the snowfield where the Ice Maiden was sitting. They had tied each other together with a rope to make a bigger body on the slippery ice, along the deep crevices.
“Vermin!” she said. “How can you be the masters of natural forces?” and she turned away from them and looked mockingly down in the deep valley, where the train went roaring by.
“There they sit, those thinkers! They’re sitting in nature’s power. I can see each of them. One is sitting alone as proudly as a king. Others are sitting in a bunch. Half of them are sleeping. And when the steam dragon stops, they climb out and go their way. Thoughts going out into the world!” And she laughed.
“There went another avalanche,” they said down in the valley.
“It won’t reach us,” said two people in the steam dragon. “Two minds but with a single thought,” as the saying goes. It was Rudy and Babette, and the miller was also along.
“As baggage,” he said, “I’m along because I’m necessary.”
“There those two sit,” said the Ice Maiden. “I have crushed many a goat-antelope, and I have beat and broken millions of rhododendrons. Not even the roots remained. I wipe them out! Thoughts! People of reason!” And she laughed.
“Another avalanche!” they cried down in the valley.
10. GODMOTHER
In Montreux, one of the closest towns, that along with Clarens, Vernex and Crin form a garland around the northeastern part of Lake Geneva, Babette’s godmother, the distinguished English lady, was staying with her daughters and a young relative. They had recently arrived, but the miller had already paid them a visit, announced Babette’s engagement, told about Rudy and the eaglet, and the visit to Interlaken; in short, the whole story. This had pleased them to the highest degree and made them interested in Rudy and Babette, and the miller too. All three of them must come for a visit, and so they did! Babette was going to see her godmother, the godmother to see Babette.
By the little town of Villeneuve, at the end of Lake Geneva, lay the steamship that would reach Vernex, close to Montreux, after a half-hour trip. It’s a coast sung about by poets. Here under the walnut trees by the deep, blue-green lake, Byron sat and wrote his melodic verse about the prisoner in the sinister mountain castle of Chillon. At Clarens, where the town is mirrored in the water with its weeping willows, Rousseau walked dreaming of Heloise. The Rhone river flows along under the high snow-covered mountains of Savoy. Not far from its mouth in the lake lies a small island. It’s so small that from the coast it looks like a little boat out there. It’s a skerry, and a hundred years ago a woman had it surrounded by rocks and filled with soil. She had three acacia trees planted there. Now they shade the entire island. Babette was transported with delight when she saw it. She thoug
ht it was the loveliest sight on the whole boat trip—they should land there—they must land there! She thought it would be so marvelous to be there. But the steamship went by and docked where it was supposed to, at Vernex.
The little party walked from there up through the white, sunlit walls that surround the vineyards around the little mountain village of Montreux. The farmers’ houses are shaded by fig trees, and laurel and cypress trees grow in the gardens. Half way up was the bed and breakfast where Babette’s godmother was staying.
They were very warmly received. Godmother was a big, friendly woman with a round, smiling face. As a child she must have had one of Raphael’s cherub faces, but now she had an old angel’s face, surrounded by abundant silver-white curls. Her daughters were neat and elegant, tall and thin. Their young cousin, who was with them, was dressed in white from tip to toe. He had golden hair and such big gilded sideburns that they could have been divided among three gentlemen. He immediately paid the utmost attention to little Babette.
Richly bound books, sheets of music, and drawings lay spread across the big table. The balcony door stood open to the lovely view of the wide lake that was so calm and still that the mountains of Savoy with towns, forests and snowcaps were reflected in it upside down.
Rudy, who usually was so cheerful, lively, and confident, felt like a fish out of water, as they say. He acted as if he was walking on peas spread on a slippery floor. How slowly time passed! It was like a treadmill. And now they were going for a walk! That went just as slowly. Rudy had to take two steps forwards and one back to be in step with the others. They went down to Chillon, the sinister old castle on the rocky island, to see the torture stakes and cells of death, and rusty chains in the rocky wall. They saw stone bunks for the condemned, and the trap-doors through which poor unfortunates were pushed to fall impaled onto iron spikes in the surf. And this is supposed to be a pleasure to see! It was a place of execution, lifted into the world of poetry by Byron’s song. Rudy sensed the horror. He leaned against the big stone window ledge and looked down into the deep, blue-green water, and over to the lonely little island with the three acacia trees. He wished he were there, free of the whole prattling company, but Babette felt very happy. She had enjoyed herself tremendously, she said later. She thought the cousin was just perfect.
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