Page:Ernestus Berchtold or the Modern Œdipus.djvu/24

 feel this. I seem always to crouch beneath some invisible being whose power is infinite, and which I am conscious I cannot resist. It seems that I hear him laughing audibly at our vain attempts to encroach upon his dominion. It appears to me as if the avalanche were but the weapon of his impatience, while he insidiously steals upon those habitations he has covered with his snows, by the silent, gradual approach of the glaciers. Let mankind labour for ages upon these ribs of the world, and their work shall not be seen. The pyramids might rise unnoticed upon the rocks before my view, undistinguished from the fragment that falls unperceived with the passing torrent. I cannot bear that human strength should be unable to stamp its hand upon these towering memorials of convulsions we could not influence, could not hope to controul. Thus morbid feeling may have been excited by my foster mother constantly