"So much beauty! so much happiness!" they both said.
"The earth has no more to give me!" said Rudy. "An evening hour like this is a whole lifetime! How often have I felt my good fortune as I feel it now, and thought, 'If all were now ended, how fortunately I should have lived! How blessed is this world!' and the day ended; but a new one began again, and it seemed to me that it was fairer still! Heaven is infinitely good, Babette!"
"Earth has nothing more to give me!" exclaimed Rudy.
And the evening bells chimed from the mountains of Savoy, from the mountains of Switzerland; the dark blue Jura lifted itself towards the west in a golden luster.
"God give thee what is grandest and best!" exclaimed Babette.
"That He will!" said Rudy. "To-morrow I shall have it! to-morrow thou wilt be mine! my own little, charming wife!"
"The boat!" cried Babette at that moment.
The boat, which was to take them back, had broken loose and drifted from the island.
"I will fetch it!" said Rudy, throwing off his coat; and he pulled off his boots, sprang into the lake, and took rapid strokes towards the boat.
Cold and deep was the clear, bluish-green water from the mountain glacier. Rudy looked down below, only one single glance--and he thought he saw a golden ring rolling, and gleaming, and playing--he thought of his lost betrothal ring, and the ring became larger, and expanded into a sparkling circle, and in that shone the clear glacier; interminable deep crevasses yawned around him, and the dripping water sounded like a carillon of bells and gleamed with bluish flames; in an instant he saw what we have to tell in so many words. Young huntsmen and young maidens, men and women, once swallowed up in the crevasses of the glacier, stood here alive, with open eyes and smiling mouth, and deep under them came the sound of church bells from submerged towns; a congregation knelt under the church arches, pieces of ice formed the organ-pipes, mountain torrents played on it. The Ice-Maiden sat on the clear, transparent floor; she raised herself up towards Rudy, kissed his feet, and there ran a deadly coldness through his limbs, an electric shock--ice and fire! one does not know the difference at the first touch.