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Interlachen! How peacefully, by the margin
of the swift-rushing Aar, thou liest, on the broad
lap of those romantic meadows, all overshadowed
by the wide arms of giant trees! Only the round
towers of thine ancient cloister rise above their
summits; the round towers themselves, but a
child's playthings under the great church-towers
of the mountains. Close beside thee are lakes,
which the flowing band of the river ties together.
Before thee opens the magnificent valley of Lauterbrunn,
where the cloud-hooded Monk and pale
Virgin stand like Saint Francis and his Bride of
Snow; and all around thee are fields, and orchards,
and hamlets green, from which the church-bells
answer each other at evening! The evening

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sun was setting when I first beheld thee! The
sun of life will set ere I forget thee! Surely it
was a scene like this, that inspired the soul of the
Swiss poet, in his Song of the Bell!

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Paul Flemming alighted at one of the principal
hotels. The landlord came out to meet him.
He had great eyes and a green coat; and reminded
Flemming of the innkeeper mentioned in the
Golden Ass, who had been changed by magic into
a frog, and croaked to his customers from the lees
of a wine-cask. His house, he said, was full;
and so was every house in Interlachen; but, if the
gentleman would walk into the parlour, he would
procure a chamber for him, in the neighbourhood.

On the sofa sat a gentleman, reading; a stout
gentleman of perhaps forty-five, round, ruddy, and
with a head, which, being a little bald on the top,
looked not unlike a crow's nest, with one egg in it.
A good-humored face turned from the book as
Flemming entered; and a good-humored voice
exclaimed;

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“Ha! ha! Mr. Flemming! Is it you, or your
apparition! I told you we should meet again!
though you were for taking an eternal farewell of
your fellow-traveller.”

Saying these words, the stout gentleman rose
and shook Flemming heartily by the hand. And
Flemming returned the shake as heartily, recognising
in this ruddy personage, a former travelling
companion, Mr. Berkley, whom he had left, a
week or two previous, toiling up the Righi. Mr.
Berkley was an Englishman of fortune; a good-humored,
humane old bachelor; remarkable alike
for his common sense and his eccentricity. That
is to say, the basis of his character was good,
sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed
by education; but this level groundwork his
strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor,
whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His
ruling passion was cold-bathing; and he usually
ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and
reading a newspaper. He kissed every child he
met; and to every old man, said in passing, “God

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bless you!” with such an expression of voice and
countenance, that no one could doubt his sincerity.
He reminded one of Roger Bontemps, or the Little
Man in Gray; though with a difference.

“The last time I had the pleasure of seeing
you, Mr. Berkley,” said Flemming, “was at Goldau,
just as you were going up the Righi. I
hope you were gratified with a fine sunrise on the
mountain top.”

“No, Sir, I was not!” replied Mr. Berkley.
“It is all a humbug! a confounded humbug!
They made such a noise about their sunrise, that
I determined I would not see it. So I lay snug
in bed; and only peeped through the window curtain.
That was enough. Just above the house,
on the top of the hill, stood some fifty half-dressed,
romantic individuals, shivering in the wet grass; and,
a short distance from them, a miserable wretch,
blowing a long, wooden horn. That's your sunrise
on the Righi, is it? said I; and went to sleep
again. The best thing I saw at the Culm, was
the advertisement on the bed-room doors, saying,

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that, if the ladies would wear the quilts and
blankets for shawls, when they went out to see the
sunrise, they must pay for the washing. Take
my word for it, the Righi is a great humbug!”

“Where have you been since?”

“At Zurich and Schaffhausen. If you go to
Zurich, beware how you stop at the Raven.
They will cheat you. They cheated me; but I
had my revenge, for, when we reached Schaffhausen,
I wrote in the Traveller's Book;


Beware of the Raven of Zurich!
'T is a bird of omen ill;
With a noisy and an unclean nest,
And a very, very long bill.
If you go to the Golden Falken you will find it
there. I am the author of those lines!”

“Bitter as Juvenal!” exclaimed Flemming.

“Not in the least bitter,” said Mr. Berkley.
“It is all true. Go to the Raven and see. But
this Interlachen! this Interlachen! It is the loveliest
spot on the face of the earth,” he continued,
stretching out both arms, as if to embrace the

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object of his affection. “There,—only look out
there!”

Here he pointed to the window. Flemming
looked, and beheld a scene of transcendent beauty.
The plain was covered already by the brown shade
of the summer twilight. From the cottage roofs
in Unterseen rose here and there a thin column of
smoke over the tops of the trees and mingled with
the evening shadows. The Valley of Lauterbrunnen
was filled with a blue haze. Far above,
in the clear, cloudless heaven, the white forehead
of the Jungfrau blushed at the last kiss of the
departing sun. It was a glorious Transfiguration
of Nature! And when the village bells began
to ring, and a single voice at a great distance
was heard yodling forth a ballad, it rather broke
than increased the enchantment of a scene, where
silence was more musical than sound.

For a long time they gazed at the gloaming
landscape, and spake not. At length people came
into the parlour, and laid aside their shawls and
hats, and exchanged a word or two with Berkley

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To Flemming they were all unknown. To him it
was all Mr. Brown and Mrs. Johnson, and nothing
more. The conversation turned upon the various
excursions of the day. Some had been at the
Staubbach, others at the Grindelwald; others at
the Lake of Thun; and nobody before had ever
experienced half the rapture, which they had experienced
that day. And thus they sat in the
twilight, as people love to do, at the close of a
summer day. As yet the lamps had not been
lighted; and one could not distinguish faces; but
voices only, and forms, like shadows.

Presently a female figure, clothed in black, entered
the room and sat down by the window. She
rather listened to the conversation, than joined in
it; but the few words she said were spoken in a
voice so musical and full of soul, that it moved the
soul of Flemming, like a whisper from heaven.

O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is
indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of
man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and
in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon

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his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in
the voice only; as God revealed himself to the
prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a
voice from the burning bush. The soul of man
is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays
the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to
man!

Flemming would fain have sat and listened for
hours to the sound of that unknown voice. He
felt sure, in his secret heart, that the being from
whom it came was beautiful. His imagination
filled up the faint outline, which the eye beheld in
the fading twilight, and the figure stood already in
his mind, like Raphael's beautiful Madonna in the
Dresden gallery. He was never more mistaken
in his life. The voice belonged to a beautiful being,
it is true; but her beauty was different from
that of any Madonna which Raphael ever painted;
as he would have seen, had he waited till the
lamps were lighted. But in the midst of his reverie
and saint-painting, the landlord came in, and

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told him he had found a chamber, which he begged
him to go and look at.

Flemming took his leave and departed. Berkley
went with him, to see, he said, what kind of a nest
his young friend was to sleep in.

“The chamber is not what I could wish,” said
the landlord, as he led them across the street.
“It is in the old cloister. But to-morrow or next
day, you can no doubt have a room at the house.”

The name of the cloister struck Flemming's imagination
pleasantly. He was owl enough to like
ruins and old chambers, where nuns or friars had
slept. And he said to Berkley;

“So, you perceive, my nest is to be in a cloister.
It already makes me think of a bird's-nest
I once saw on an old tower of Heidelberg castle,
built in the jaws of a lion, which formerly served
as a spout. But pray tell me, who was that young
lady, with the soft voice?”

“What young lady with the soft voice?”

“The young lady in black, who sat by the
window.”

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“O, she is the daughter of an English officer,
who died not long ago at Naples. She is passing
the summer here with her mother, for her health.”

“What is her name?”

“Ashburton.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“Not in the least; but very intellectual. A
woman of genius, I should say.”

And now they had reached the walls of the
cloister, and passed under an arched gateway, and
close beneath the round towers, which Flemming
had already seen, rising with their cone-shaped
roofs above the trees, like tall tapers, with extinguishers
upon them.

“It is not so bad, as it looks,” said the landlord,
knocking at a small door, in the main building.
“The Bailiff lives in one part of it.”

A servant girl, with a candle in her hand, opened
the door, and conducted Flemming and Berkley
to the chamber which had been engaged. It
was a large room on the lower floor, wainscoted
with pine, and unpainted. Three lofty and narrow

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windows, with leaden lattices and small panes, looked
southward towards the valley of Lauterbrunnen
and the mountains. In one corner was a large
square bed, with a tester and checked curtains. In
another, a huge stove of painted tiles, reaching almost
to the ceiling. An old sofa, a few high-backed
antique chairs, and a table, completed the
furniture of the room.

Thus Flemming took possession of his monkish
cell and dormitory. He ordered tea, and began to
feel at home. Berkley passed the evening with
him. On going away he said;

“Good night! I leave you to the care of the
Virgin and all the Saints. If the ghost of any
old monk comes back after his prayer-book, my
compliments to him. If I were a younger man,
you certainly should see a ghost. Good night!”

When he had departed, Flemming opened the
lattice of one of the windows. The moon had risen,
and silvered the dark outline of the nearest
hills; while, afar off, the snowy summits of the
Jungfrau and the Silver-Horn shone like a white

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cloud in the sky. Close beneath the windows
was a flower-garden; and the breath of the summer
night came to him with dewy fragrance.
There was a grateful seclusion about the place.
He blessed the happy accident, which gave him
such a lodging, and fell asleep that night thinking
of the nuns, who once had slept in the
same quiet cells; but neither wimpled nun nor
cowled monk appeared to him in his dreams; not
even the face of Mary Ashburton; nor did he hear
her voice.

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