We had just reached the long rocky ridge that forms the crest of the
Altenberg; behind it flows the torrent of the Schnéeberg, but in winter
no current is visible; scarcely does a mere thread of its blue waters
trickle under the thick crust of ice. Here the deep solitude is broken by
no murmuring brooks, no warblings of birds, no thunder of the waterfall.
In the vast unbroken solitudes the awful silence is terrible.

The Count of Nideck and the old woman found a gap in the face of the
rock, up which they mounted straight with marvellous celerity, whilst I
had to pull myself up by the help of the bushes.

Hardly had they reached the ridge of the crags, which came almost to a
point, when I was within three yards of them, and I beheld beyond a
dreadful precipice of which I could not see the bottom. At the left hung
in the air like a vast sheet the fall of the Schnéeberg, a mass of ice.
That resemblance to an immense wave taking the precipice at one bound,
bearing trees on its breast, fringed with the bushes, and winding out the
long ivy sprays, which exhibit in their delicate tracery the form of the
rigid glassy billow; that mere semblance of movement amidst the stillness
and immovableness of death, and the presence of those two speechless
creatures pursuing their ghastly work with automatic precision, added to
the terror with which I already trembled.

Nature herself seemed to shrink with horror.

The count had laid down his burden; the old woman and he took it up
together, swung it for a moment over the edge of the precipice, then the
long shroud floated over the abyss, and the imaginary murderers in
silence bent forward to see it fall.