"
But Luca heard not; he was still kneeling at the feet of
Raffaelle, where the world has knelt ever since.
FINDELKIND
There was a little boy, a year or two ago, who lived under the
shadow of Martinswand. Most people know, I should suppose, that
the Martinswand is that mountain in the Oberinnthal where, several
centuries past, brave Kaiser Max lost his footing as he stalked
the chamois, and fell upon a ledge of rock, and stayed there, in
mortal peril, for thirty hours, till he was rescued by the
strength and agility of a Tyrol hunter--an angel in the guise of a
hunter, as the chronicles of the time prefer to say.
The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of the spurs of the
greater Sonnstein, and rises precipitously, looming, massive and
lofty, like a very fortress for giants, where it stands right
across that road which, if you follow it long enough, takes you
through Zell to Landeck,--old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where
Frederick of the Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows in ballads to
his people,--and so on by Bludenz into Switzerland itself, by as
noble a highway as any traveler can ever desire to traverse on a
summer's day. It is within a mile of the little burg of Zell,
where the people, in the time of their emperor's peril, came out
with torches and bells, and the Host lifted up by their priest,
and all prayed on their knees underneath the steep gaunt pile of
limestone, that is the same to-day as it was then, whilst Kaiser
Max is dust; it soars up on one side of this road, very steep and
very majestic, having bare stone at its base, and being all along
its summit crowned with pine woods; and on the other side of the
road are a little stone church, quaint and low, and gray with age,
and a stone farmhouse, and cattle sheds, and timber sheds, all of
wood that is darkly brown from time; and beyond these are some of
the most beautiful meadows in the world, full of tall grass and
countless flowers, with pools and little estuaries made by the
brimming Inn River that flows by them; and beyond the river are
the glaciers of the Sonnstein and the Selrain and the wild Arlberg
region, and the golden glow of sunset in the west, most often seen
from here through the veil of falling rain.
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