Ernst shrugged his shoulders: "I did not ask you to go with me. Stay at home if you are afraid, Gronau."
Veit's brown face showed irritation, but he controlled himself: "We have surely shared enough of adventure together, Herr Waltenberg, to set your mind at rest with regard to my timidity. I will go with you to the extent of what is possible; you, I fear, mean to go farther, and your mood is not one to enable you to encounter danger coolly."
"You are mistaken; my mood is excellent, and I ara going to make this ascent, with or without guides; if needs must I will go alone."
Gronau was familiar with this tone, and knew that there was nothing to be done in opposition to it; nevertheless he made one last attempt. He supposed that there would be an outbreak, but he determined to speak: "Remember your promise. You promised Baroness Thurgau to avoid the Wolkenstein."
Ernst started: his change of colour, the flash of menace in his eyes, betrayed how he suffered by the touch upon his bleeding wound; but in a moment he had shrouded himself in a frigid composure that forbade all further discussion.
"The circumstances under which I made that promise no longer exist. Moreover, I must entreat that all allusion to them in my presence be avoided for the future."
He went to his room, turning upon the threshold to say, "At eight o'clock to-morrow morning you will have the carriage ready for a drive to Oberstein."
Upon a snow-field in face of the peak of the Wolkenstein a small group of bold mountain-climbers were assembled, who had undertaken the ascent, and had actually accomplished the greater part of it,--the two guides, muscular, weather-beaten mountaineers, and Veit Gronau. They were provided with ropes, axes, and every accessory of a mountain-ascent, and were evidently taking a prolonged rest here.
They had left Oberstein on the previous day and had climbed to the borders of the limitless waste of rocks, where was a hut, in which they had taken shelter for the night, and then with the first dawn of morning they had attacked the cliff hitherto pronounced inaccessible. With persistent pains, with indescribable exertions, and with reckless contempt of the danger that threatened them at every step, they had scaled it. It had been ascended for the first time!