Ch. 24 - Danemora

Reader, do you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize
you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the
land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into
the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep
declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must
creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She
sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his
swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the
nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and
it sways under him--the walls vanish from him.

Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the
air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.

We met with her at Danemora's immense gulf, whither we came on broad,
smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest. She sat on the
extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun
with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large
beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.

The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun,
into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the
chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering
through the air. But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones
and marrow; through all the nerves. Her icy breath blew in his neck,
and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder. It
seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and
higher: the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall--a
fall in sleep, that shock in the blood. Did it go quicker downwards,
or was it going up again? He could not distinguish by the sensation.

The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow--the dirty trodden,
eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth
from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark,
yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The
stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above
him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers
sounded; the watery damps dripped down--and he again entered the tun,
which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness
breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye
measured the giddy depth through the tun: "It is appalling," said he.

"Appalling!" echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at
Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the
same street as the Sealander--if the Sound be called a street
(strait).