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I felt there was something wrong around me this afternoon a shadow of evil. The conversation died: only the flies buzzed monotonously over us, as though we were offal or carrion; and the wind blew the dust in hail-storms against the canvas walls of the tent. And then it came the terribly evil thing.
He is necessitated to ward off the strokes directed against him by Providence, in hurricanes, tempests, frosts, hail-storms, inundations, droughts, and the various accidents, which so often render useless all his labours. In a word, we see man continually occupied in guarding against the ill offices of that Providence, which is supposed to be attentive to his happiness.
There were two disastrous winters with snow and ice, and March brought hail-storms and hurricanes which left the crops lying low. Even as Lepailleur had threateningly predicted with a laugh of impotent envy, it seemed as if the earth meant to prove a bad mother, ungrateful to them for their toil, indifferent to their losses.
Those "GOLDEN or soft radiances" which we saw in him, admirable to Voltaire and to Friedrich, and to an esurient philanthropic world, it is not those, it is "the STEEL-BRIGHT or stellar kind," that are to become predominant in Friedrich's existence: grim hail-storms, thunders and tornado for an existence to him, instead of the opulent genialities and halcyon weather, anticipated by himself and others!
But if the emperor used his power in this manner to lay heavy burdens upon his subjects, he exerted himself actively for their good, and was always ready to help them; for instance, when their crops were damaged by hail-storms, he not only remitted all taxes, but gave them corn from his own stores, and when there was any great mortality among the flocks and herds in any particular province, he always replaced them at his own expense.
So the doctors sent Michael to the Platten See. But they had forgotten that toward the end of the summer hail-storms had laid waste the whole district; and nothing is more depressing than a place ruined by hail.
When the storm ceased, suddenly, as all such mountain hail-storms do, I ordered my trooper in front of me and went limping through the darkness shouting for Ranjoor Singh, and I found him at last, sitting on the rump of a dead donkey with the ten boxes of gold coin beside him quite little boxes, yet only two to a donkey load. "I have the gold," he said. "What have you?"
It was at first thought that this apparatus, erected at numerous points over an extent of several miles, was of some service as a protection against hail, but this opinion was soon disputed, and does not appear to be supported by well-ascertained facts. See "On the Influence of the Forest in Preventing Hail-storms," a paper by Becquerel, in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences, vol. xxxv.
The extremes of temperature are less marked than in the valley, which becomes excessively heated, and where hot winds sometimes last for a week, blowing in furious gusts. The climate of the whole neighbourhood has of late changed materially; and the fall of rain has much diminished, consequent on felling the forests; even within six years the hail-storms have been far less frequent and violent.
Indeed he has a trying life of it, for his hopes go up and down with the barometer. If his vines escape the much-dreaded May frosts, there is a risk that the summer may be too wet for the grapes, which love sunshine. Then, again, in the hottest summers there are violent hail-storms, and in half an hour he may see his promising crop beaten to the ground.
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