All the world believed him to be dead, and he lived as a shadow among shadows.

The wild and solitary ice-peaks he sometimes scaled seemed to him the unsubstantial phantasmagoria of a troubled sleep.

He wondered with a dull amazement if the crevasses which yawned before him would swallow him up, or the shuddering violence of an avalanche bury him beneath it.

His life had been as a tale that is told, even to its last word, death..