It was mentioned in the previous post that “there was no unexpected encounter with the courteous young man on the Horn”, yet that did not mean the young man was absent. In fact, he had been following them every step of the way, and entirely unseen by them, was in the gondola behind theirs, making its descent to the lower and bottom stations.

The young man opened wide the windows of the gondola, letting the cool mountain air billow around him. He surveyed the majestic mountain scenery, and the backs of the triumvirate in the gondola below. A smile crossed his countenance, as he began to murmur:

downwards we hurried fast,

And enter’d with the road which we had miss’d

Into a narrow chasm: the brook and road

Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass,

And with them did we journey several hours

At a slow step. The immeasurable height

Of woods decaying, never to be decay’d,

The stationary blasts of waterfalls,

And every where along the hollow rent

Winds thwarting winds, bewilder’d and forlorn,

The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,

The rocks that mutter’d close upon our ears,

Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side

As if a voice were in them, the sick sight

And giddy prospect of the raving stream,

The unfetter’d clouds, and region of the heavens,

Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light

Were all like workings of one mind, the features

Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,

Characters of the great Apocalypse,

The types and symbols of Eternity,

Of first and last, and midst, and without end.

Thus did the young man make his visionary descent from the Kitzbüheler Horn, and prepared for the next episode in this meandering tale, as it speeds towards the débâcle of its entirely unpredictable and unforeseen dénouement.