It is a great shock to find this figure sitting in a handsome, baroque,
pink-washed shrine in one of those Alpine valleys which to our thinking
are all flowers and romance, like the picture in the Tate Gallery.
'Spring in the Austrian Tyrol' is to our minds a vision of pristine
loveliness. It contains also this Christ of the heavy body defiled by
torture and death, the strong, virile life overcome by physical
violence, the eyes still looking back bloodshot in consummate hate
and misery.

The shrine was well kept and evidently much used. It was hung with
ex-voto limbs and with many gifts. It was a centre of worship, of a sort
of almost obscene worship. Afterwards the black pine-trees and the river
of that valley seemed unclean, as if an unclean spirit lived there. The
very flowers seemed unnatural, and the white gleam on the mountain-tops
was a glisten of supreme, cynical horror.

After this, in the populous valleys, all the crucifixes were more or
less tainted and vulgar. Only high up, where the crucifix becomes
smaller and smaller, is there left any of the old beauty and religion.
Higher and higher, the monument becomes smaller and smaller, till in the
snows it stands out like a post, or a thick arrow stuck barb upwards.
The crucifix itself is a small thing under the pointed hood, the barb of
the arrow. The snow blows under the tiny shed, upon the little, exposed
Christ. All round is the solid whiteness of snow, the awful curves and
concaves of pure whiteness of the mountain top, the hollow whiteness
between the peaks, where the path crosses the high, extreme ridge of the
pass. And here stands the last crucifix, half buried, small and tufted
with snow. The guides tramp slowly, heavily past, not observing the
presence of the symbol, making no salute. Further down, every mountain