Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/83

Rh be at the imminent risk of their own lives, and, if he were to die on the passage, not to leave his body behind. This confession at once opened the floodgates to a host of anecdotes; and each, in turn, had his story to tell of the difficulties and dangers of wandering over the mountains amidst which the people had here to live as in their proper element; so that with the greatest indifference they speak of mischances and accidents to which they themselves are daily liable. One of them told a story of how, on the Candersteg, on his way to Mount Gemmi, he and a comrade with him (he is mentioned on every occasion with both Christian and surname) found a poor family in the deep snow, the mother dying, her boy half dead, and the father in that state of indifference which verges on a total prostration of intellect. He took the woman on his back, and his comrade her son; and thus laden, they had driven before them the father, who was unwilling to move from the spot.

During the descent of Gemmi the woman died on his back; but he brought her, dead as she was, to Leukerbad. When we asked what sort of people they were, and what could have brought them at such a season into the mountains, he said they were poor people of the canton of Berne, who, driven by want, had taken to the road at an unseasonable period of the year, in the hope of finding some relations either in Valais or the Italian canton, and had been overtaken by a snow-storm. Moreover, they told many anecdotes of what had happened to themselves during the winter journeys over the Furca with the chamois-skins; on which expeditions, however, they always travelled in companies. Every now and then our reverend host would make excuses for the dinner, and we redoubled our assurances that we wished for nothing better. We also found that he contrived to bring back the conversation to himself and his own matters, observing that