At some time or other the fog
thinned a little; we did not know when, for we were facing
the empty universe and the thinness could not show;
but at last Harris happened to look around, and there stood
a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been.
One could faintly discern the windows and chimneys,
and a dull blur of lights. Our first emotion was deep,
unutterable gratitude, our next was a foolish rage,
born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been
visible three-quarters of an hour while we sat there
in those cold puddles quarreling.
Yes, it was the Rigi-Kulm hotel - the one that occupies
the extreme summit, and whose remote little sparkle
of lights we had often seen glinting high aloft among
the stars from our balcony away down yonder in Lucerne.
The crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the surly
reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times,
but by mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness
and servility we finally got them to show us to the room
which our boy had engaged for us.
We got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was
preparing we loafed forsakenly through a couple of vast
cavernous drawing-rooms, one of which had a stove in it.
This stove was in a corner, and densely walled around
with people. We could not get near the fire, so we moved
at large in the artic spaces, among a multitude of people
who sat silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering - thinking
what fools they were to come, perhaps. There were some
Americans and some Germans, but one could see that the
great majority were English.
We lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd,
to see what was going on. It was a memento-magazine.
The tourists were eagerly buying all sorts and styles of
paper-cutters, marked "Souvenir of the Rigi," with handles
made of the little curved horn of the ostensible chamois;
there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things,
similarly marked. I was going to buy a paper-cutter, but I
believed I could remember the cold comfort of the Rigi-Kulm
without it, so I smothered the impulse.
Supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed - but first,
as Mr. Baedeker requests all tourists to call his attention
to any errors which they may find in his guide-books, I
dropped him a line to inform him he missed it by just
about three days. I had previously informed him of his
mistake about the distance from Allerheiligen to Oppenau,
and had also informed the Ordnance Depart of the German
government of the same error in the imperial maps.
I will add, here, that I never got any answer to those letters,
or any thanks from either of those sources; and, what is still
more discourteous, these corrections have not been made,
either in the maps or the guide-books. But I will write
again when I get time, for my letters may have miscarried.
We curled up in the clammy beds, and went to sleep without
rocking.
We were so sodden with fatigue that we never stirred nor
turned over till the blooming blasts of the Alpine horn
aroused us. It may well be imagined that we did not lose
any time. We snatched on a few odds and ends of clothing,
cocooned ourselves in the proper red blankets, and plunged
along the halls and out into the whistling wind bareheaded.
We saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak
of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it.
We rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding,
and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair
flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the fierce
breeze.
"Fifteen minutes too late, at last!" said Harris,
in a vexed voice. "The sun is clear above the horizon."
"No matter," I said, "it is a most magnificent spectacle,
and we will see it do the rest of its rising anyway."
In a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us,
and dead to everything else. The great cloud-barred disk
of the sun stood just above a limitless expanse of tossing
white-caps - so to speak - a billowy chaos of massy mountain
domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and flooded
with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors,
while through rifts in a black cloud-bank above the sun,
radiating lances of diamond dust shot to the zenith.
The cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted
mist which veiled the ruggedness of their crags and ribs
and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region
into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise.
We could not speak. We could hardly breathe.
We could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink in it.
Presently Harris exclaimed:
"Why - nation, it's going DOWN!"
Perfectly true. We had missed the MORNING hornblow,
and slept all day. This was stupefying.
Harris said:
"Look here, the sun isn't the spectacle - it's US - stacked
up here on top of this gallows, in these idiotic blankets,
and two hundred and fifty well-dressed men and women down
here gawking up at us and not caring a straw whether the sun
rises or sets, as long as they've got such a ridiculous
spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum-books.
They seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's
one girl there at appears to be going all to pieces.
I never saw such a man as you before. I think you are
the very last possibility in the way of an ass."
"What have _I_ done?" I answered, with heat.
