I was hurrying downhill to escape from an icy wind
which almost took away my consciousness, and I was looking up at the
gleaming, unchanging snow-peaks all round. They seemed like blades
immortal in the sky. So I almost ran into a very old Martertafel. It
leaned on the cold, stony hillside surrounded by the white peaks in the
upper air.
The wooden hood was silver-grey with age, and covered, on the top, with
a thicket of lichen, which stuck up in hoary tufts. But on the rock at
the foot of the post was the fallen Christ, armless, who had tumbled
down and lay in an unnatural posture, the naked, ancient wooden
sculpture of the body on the naked, living rock. It was one of the old
uncouth Christs hewn out of bare wood, having the long, wedge-shaped
limbs and thin flat legs that are significant of the true spirit, the
desire to convey a religious truth, not a sensational experience.
The arms of the fallen Christ had broken off at the shoulders, and they
hung on their nails, as ex-voto limbs hang in the shrines. But these
arms dangled from the palms, one at each end of the cross, the muscles,
carved sparely in the old wood, looking all wrong, upside down.
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