The Last Man
darkened steps. They were Germans from Saxony, and, emigrating thither
but a few years before, had formed new ties with the surrounding
villagers. About the time that the pestilence had broken out, a young
German student had joined them. Their simple history was easily
divined. He, a noble, loved the fair daughter of the poor musician, and
followed them in their flight from the persecutions of his friends; but
soon the mighty leveller came with unblunted scythe to mow, together
with the grass, the tall flowers of the field. The youth was an early
victim. She preserved herself for her father’s sake. His blindness
permitted her to continue a delusion, at first the child of
accident—and now solitary beings, sole survivors in the land, he
remained unacquainted with the change, nor was aware that when he
listened to his child’s music, the mute mountains, senseless lake, and
unconscious trees, were, himself excepted, her sole auditors.
The very day that we arrived she had been attacked by symptomatic
illness. She was paralyzed with horror at the idea of leaving her aged,
sightless father alone on the empty earth; but she had not courage to
disclose the truth, and the very excess of her desperation animated her
to surpassing exertions. At the accustomed vesper hour, she led him to
the chapel; and, though trembling and weeping on his account, she
played, without fault in time, or error in note, the hymn written to
celebrate the creation of the adorned earth, soon to be her tomb.
We came to her like visitors from heaven itself; her high-wrought
courage; her hardly sustained firmness, fled with the appearance of
relief. With a shriek she rushed towards us, embraced the knees of
Adrian, and uttering but the words, “O save my father!” with sobs and
hysterical cries, opened the long-shut floodgates of her woe.
Poor girl!—she and her father now lie side by side, beneath the high
walnut-tree where her lover reposes, and which in her dying moments she
had pointed out to us. Her father, at length aware of his daughter’s
danger, unable to see the changes of her dear countenance, obstinately
held her hand, till it was chilled and stiffened by death. Nor did he
then move or speak, till, twelve hours after, kindly death took him to
his breakless repose. They rest beneath the sod, the tree their
monument;—the hallowed spot is distinct in my memory, paled in by
craggy Jura, and the far, immeasurable Alps; the spire of the church
they frequented still points from out the embosoming trees; and though
her hand be cold, still methinks the sounds of divine music which they
loved wander about, solacing their gentle ghosts.
[24] Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.
CHAPTER VIII.
We had now reached Switzerland, so long the final mark and aim of our
exertions. We had looked, I know not wherefore, with hope and pleasing
expectation on her congregation of hills and snowy crags, and opened
our bosoms with renewed spirits to the icy Biz, which even at Midsummer
used to come from the northern glacier laden with cold. Yet how could
we nourish expectation of relief? Like our native England, and the vast
extent of fertile France, this mountain-embowered land was desolate of
its inhabitants. Nor bleak mountain-top, nor snow-nourished rivulet;
not the ice-laden Biz, nor thunder, the tamer of contagion, had
preserved them— why therefore should we claim exemption?
Who was there indeed to save? What troop had we brought fit to stand at
bay, and combat with the conqueror? We were a failing remnant, tamed to
mere submission to the coming blow. A train half dead, through fear of
death—a hopeless, unresisting, almost reckless crew, which, in the
tossed bark of life, had given up all pilotage, and resigned themselves
to the destructive force of ungoverned winds. Like a few furrows of
unreaped corn, which, left standing on a wide field after the rest is
gathered to the garner, are swiftly borne down by the winter storm.
Like a few straggling swallows, which, remaining after their fellows
had, on the first unkind breath of passing autumn, migrated to genial
climes, were struck to earth by the first frost of November. Like a
stray sheep that wanders over the sleet-beaten hill-side, while the
flock is in the pen, and dies before morning-dawn. Like a cloud, like
one of many that were spread in impenetrable woof over the sky, which,
when the shepherd north has driven its companions “to drink Antipodean
noon,” fades and dissolves in the clear ether—Such were we!
We left the fair margin of the beauteous lake of Geneva, and entered
the Alpine ravines; tracing to its source the brawling Arve, through
the rock-bound valley of Servox, beside the mighty waterfalls, and
under the shadow of the inaccessible mountains, we travelled on; while
the luxuriant walnut-tree gave place to the dark pine, whose musical
branches swung in the wind, and whose upright forms had braved a
thousand storms—till the verdant sod, the flowery dell, and shrubbery
hill were exchanged for the sky-piercing, untrodden, seedless rock,
“the bones of the world, waiting to be clothed with every thing
necessary to give life and beauty.”[25] Strange that we should seek
shelter here! Surely, if, in those countries where earth was wont, like
a tender mother, to nourish her children, we had found her a destroyer,
we need not seek it here, where stricken by keen penury she seems to
shudder through her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our
conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving glaciers of
Chamounix, rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the
leafless groves of tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the
loud avalanche, and hill-tops, the resort of thunder-storms. Pestilence
reigned paramount even here. By the time that day and night, like twin
sisters of equal growth, shared equally their dominion over the hours,
one by one, beneath the ice-caves, beside the waters springing from the
thawed snows of a thousand winters, another and yet another of the
remnant of the race of Man, closed their eyes for ever to the light.
Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a scene like this, whereon to
close the drama. Nature, true to the last, consoled us in the very
heart of misery. Sublime grandeur of outward objects soothed our
hapless hearts, and were in harmony with our desolation. Many sorrows
have befallen man during his chequered course; and many a woe-stricken
mourner has found himself sole survivor among many. Our misery took its
majestic shape and colouring from the vast ruin, that accompanied and
made one with it. Thus on lovely earth, many a dark ravine contains a
brawling stream, shadowed by romantic rocks, threaded by mossy
paths—but all, except this, wanted the mighty back-ground, the towering
Alps, whose snowy capes, or bared ridges, lifted us from our dull
mortal abode, to the palaces of Nature’s own.
This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our feelings, and
gave as it were fitting costume to our last act. Majestic gloom and
tragic pomp attended the decease of wretched humanity. The funeral
procession of monarchs of old, was transcended by our splendid shews.
Near the sources of the Arveiron we performed the rites for, four only
excepted, the last of the species. Adrian and I, leaving Clara and
Evelyn wrapt in peaceful unobserving slumber, carried the body to this
desolate spot, and placed it in those caves of ice beneath the glacier,
which rive and split with the slightest sound, and bring destruction on
those within the clefts—no bird or beast of prey could here profane the
frozen form. So, with hushed steps and in silence, we placed the dead
on a bier of ice, and then, departing, stood on the rocky platform
beside the river springs. All hushed as we had been, the very striking
of the air with our persons had sufficed to disturb the repose of this
thawless region; and we had hardly left the cavern, before vast blocks
of ice, detaching themselves from the roof, fell, and covered the human
image we had deposited within. We had chosen a fair moonlight night,
but our journey thither had been long, and the crescent sank behind the
western heights by the time we had accomplished our purpose. The snowy
mountains and blue glaciers shone in their own light. The rugged and
abrupt ravine, which formed one side of Mont Anvert, was opposite to
us, the glacier at our side; at our feet Arveiron, white and foaming,
dashed over the pointed rocks that jutted into it, and, with whirring
spray and ceaseless roar, disturbed the stilly night. Yellow lightnings
played around the vast dome of Mont Blanc, silent as the snow-clad rock
they illuminated; all was bare, wild, and sublime, while the singing of
the pines in melodious murmurings added a gentle interest to the rough
magnificence. Now the riving and fall of icy rocks clave the air; now
the thunder of the avalanche burst on our ears. In countries whose
features are of less magnitude, nature betrays her living powers in the
foliage of the trees, in the growth of herbage, in the soft purling of
meandering streams; here, endowed with giant attributes, the torrent,
the thunder-storm, and the flow of massive waters, display her
activity. Such the church-yard, such the requiem, such the eternal
congregation, that waited on our companion’s funeral!
Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal
sepulchre, whose obsequies we now celebrated. With this last victim
Plague vanished from the earth. Death had never wanted weapons
wherewith to destroy life, and we, few and weak as we had become, were
still exposed to every other shaft with which his full quiver teemed.
But pestilence was absent from among them. For seven years it had had
full sway upon earth; she had trod every nook of our spacious globe;
she had mingled with the atmosphere, which as a cloak enwraps all our
fellow-creatures—the inhabitants of native Europe—the luxurious
Asiatic—the swarthy African and free American had been vanquished and
destroyed by her. Her barbarous tyranny came to its close here in the
rocky vale of Chamounix.
Still recurring scenes of misery and pain, the fruits of this
distemper, made no more a part of our lives—the word plague no longer
rung in our ears—the aspect of plague incarnate in the human
countenance no longer appeared before our eyes. From this moment I saw
plague no more. She abdicated her throne, and despoiled herself of her
imperial sceptre among the ice rocks that surrounded us. She left
solitude and silence co-heirs of her kingdom.
My present feelings are so mingled with the past, that I cannot say
whether the knowledge of this change visited us, as we stood on this
sterile spot. It seems to me that it did; that a cloud seemed to pass
from over us, that a weight was taken from the air; that henceforth we
breathed more freely, and raised our heads with some portion of former
liberty. Yet we did not hope. We were impressed by the sentiment, that
our race was run, but that plague would not be our destroyer. The
coming time was as a mighty river, down which a charmed boat is driven,
whose mortal steersman knows, that the obvious peril is not the one he
needs fear, yet that danger is nigh; and who floats awe-struck under
beetling precipices, through the dark and turbid waters—seeing in the
distance yet stranger and ruder shapes, towards which he is
irresistibly impelled. What would become of us? O for some Delphic
oracle, or Pythian maid, to utter the secrets of futurity! O for some
Œdipus to solve the riddle of the cruel Sphynx! Such Œdipus was I to
be—not divining a word’s juggle, but whose agonizing pangs, and
sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines, wherewith to lay bare the
secrets of destiny, and reveal the meaning of the enigma, whose