Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Every family clung to the fireside in a house carefully closed, with a store of biscuit, run butter, dried fish, and _ provisions laid in to stand seven months of winter. Hven the smoke of these dwellings was scarcely visible; they were all nearly buried in snow, of which the weight was broken by long planks starting from the roof, and supported at some distance from the walls on strong posts, thus forming a covered way round the house. During these dreadful winters the women weave and dye the stuffs of wool or linen of which the clothes are made; while the men for the most part read, or else lose themselves in those prodigious meditations which have given birth to the grand theories, the mystical dreams of the North, its beliefs and its studies—so thorough on certain points of science that they have probed to the core; a semi-monastic mode of life, which forces the soul back on itself, to feed on itself, and which makes the Norwegian peasant a being apart in the nations of Europe.

This, then, was the state of things on the Stromfiord in the first year of the nineteenth century, about the middle of the month of May.

One morning, when the sun was blazing down into the heart of this landscape, lighting up the flashes of the ephemeral diamonds produced by the crystallized surface of the

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snow and ice, two persons crossed the gulf and flew along the shelves of the Falberg, mounting toward the summit from ledge to ledge. Were they two human beings, or were they arrows? Any one who should have seen them would have taken them for two eiders soaring with one consent below -the clouds. Not the most superstitious fisherman, not the most daring hunter, would have supposed that human creatures could have the power of pursuing a path along the faint lines traced on the granite sides, where this pair were, nevertheless, gliding along with the appalling skill of somnambulists, when, utterly unconscious of the laws of gravity and the perils of the least false step, they run along a roof, preserving their balance under the influence of an unknown power.

“Stop here, Seraphitus,’’ said a pale girl, ‘‘and let me take breath. I would look only at you as we climbed the walls of this abyss; if I had not, what would have become

, of me? But, at the same time, I am but a feeble creature. Do I tire you?”’

‘‘No,’’ said the being on whose arm she leaned. ‘‘Let us go on, Minna; the spot where we are standing is not firm enough to remain on.”’

Once more the snow hissed off from the long boards attached to their feet, and they presently reached the first angular crag which chance had thrown out boldly from the face of the precipice. The person whorn Minna had addressed as Seraphitus poised himself on his right heel to raise the lath of about six feet long, and as narrow as a child’s shoe, which was fastened to his boot by two straps of walrus skin; this lath, about an inch thick, had a sole of reindeer skin, and the hair, pressed back against the snow, brought him to a full stop. By turning his left foot, onp. 18 é which this snow-shoe (or ski) was not less than twelve feet in length, he was able to turn nimbly round, he returned to his timid companion, lifted her up in spite of his awkward foot gear, and set her down on a rocky seat, after dusting away the snow with his pelisse.

‘*You are safe here, Minna, and may tremble at your ease.”’

‘“We have already reached a third of the height of the Ice-cap,’’ said she, looking at the peak, which she called by its popular Norwegian name. ‘‘I do not yet believe—”’

But she was too much out of breath to talk; she smiled at Seraphitus, who, without replying, held her up, his hand on her heart, listening to its palpitations, as rapid as those of a startled fledgling.

‘It often beats as fast as that when I have been running,’’ said she.