"As you go from Motiers-Navers to Boudry, on your way to Neufchatel," said the young professor of botany, "you follow a road between two walls of rocks of immense height; they reach a of five or six hundred feet, and are hung with wild plants, the mountain basil (thymus alpinus), ferus (polypodium), the whortleberry (vitis idoea), ground , and other climbing plants producing a wonderful effect.
"The road winds along this ; it rises, falls, turns, sometimes tolerably level, sometimes broken and , according to the thousand irregularities of the ground. Grey rocks almost meet in an arch overhead, others stand wide apart, leaving the distant blue visible, and discovering sombre and -looking depths, and rows of firs as far as the eye could reach.
"The Reuss flows along the bottom, sometimes leaping along in waterfalls, then creeping through , or steaming, , and thundering over , while the echoes prolong the and roar of its in one immense endless hum. Since I left Tubingen the weather had continued fine; but when I reached the summit of this gigantic staircase, about two leagues distant from the little hamlet of Novisaigne, I suddenly noticed great grey clouds begin passing overhead, which soon filled up the defile ; this vapour was so that it soon my clothes as a heavy dew would have done.
"Although it was only two in the afternoon, the sky became clouded over as if darkness was coming on; and I foresaw a heavy storm was about to break over my head.
"I consequently began looking about for shelter, and I saw through one of those wide openings which afford you a perspective view of the Alps, about two or three hundred yards distant on the slope leading down to the lake, an ancient-looking grey châlet, -covered, with its small round windows and sloping roof loaded with large stones, its stairs outside the house, with a carved rail, and its basket-shaped balcony, on which the Swiss generally hang their snowy and petticoats to dry.
" as I was looking down, a tall woman in a black cap was folding and collecting the linen which was blowing about in the wind.
"To the left of this building a very large supported on beams, arranged like a balcony, formed a above the valley.
"You may easily believe that without the loss of a moment I set off bounding through the heather to seek for shelter from the coming storm, and well it was I lost no time, for I had hardly laid my hand on the handle of the door before the hurricane burst furiously overhead; every of wind seemed about to carry the cottage bodily away; but its foundations were strong, and the security of the good people within, by the warmth of their reception, completely me about the probability of any accident.
"The cottage was inhabited by Walter Young, his wife Catherine, and little Raesel, their only daughter.
"I remained three days with them; for the wind, which went down about midnight, had so filled the valley of Neufchatel with mist, that the mountain where I had taken refuge was completely in it; it was impossible to walk twenty yards from the door without experiencing great difficulty in finding it again.
"Every morning these good people would say, when they saw me on my knapsack—
"'What are you about, Mr. Hennetius? You cannot mean to go yet; you will never arrive anywhere. In the name of Heaven stay here a little longer!'
"And Young would open the door and exclaim—
"'Look there, sir; you must be tired of your life to risk it among these rocks. Why, the dove itself would be troubled to find the ark again in such a mist as this.'
"One glance at the mountain side was enough for me to make up my mind to put my stick back again in the corner.
"Walter Young was a man of the old times. He was nearly sixty; his grand head wore a calm and expression—a real Apostle's head. His wife, who always wore a black silk cap, pale and thoughtful, resembled him much in . Their two profiles, as I looked at them defined sharply against the little of glass in the chalet's windows, recalled to my mind those drawings of Albert Durer the sight of which carried me back to the age of faith and the patriarchal manners of the fifteenth century. The long brown rafters of the ceiling, the deal table, the chairs with the carved backs, the tin drinking-cups, the sideboard with its old-fashioned painted plates and dishes, the crucifix with the carved in box on an ebony cross, and the worm-eaten clock-case with its many weights and its dial, completed the illusion.
"But the face of their little daughter Raesel was still more . I think I can see her now, with her flat horsehair cap and watered black silk ribbons, her trim bodice and broad blue sash down to her knees, her little white hands crossed in the attitude of a dreamer, her long fair curls—all that was , slender, and ethereal in nature. Yes, I can see Raesel now, sitting in a large leathern arm-chair, close to the blue curtain of the at the end of the room, smiling as she listened and .
"Her sweet face had charmed me from the first moment I saw her and I was continually on the point of inquiring why she wore such an melancholy air, why did she hold her pale face down so invariably, and why did she never raise her eyes when spoken to?
"! the poor child had been blind from her birth.
"She had never seen the lake's vast expanse, nor its blue sheet blending so with the sky, the fishermen's boats which ploughed its surface, the wooded heights which crowned it and cast their quivering reflection on its waters, the rocks covered with moss, the green plants in their vivid and brilliant colouring; nor had she ever watched the sun set behind the , nor the long shades of evening draw across the valleys, nor the golden broom, nor the endless heather—nothing. None of these things had she ever seen; nothing of what we saw every day from the windows of the chalet.
"'What an commentary on the gifts of Fortune!' thought I, as I sat looking out of the window at the mist, in expectation of the sun's appearing once more, 'to be blind in this place! here in presence of Nature in its form, of such limitless ! To be blind! Oh, God, who shall dare to dispute Thy impenetrable decrees, or who shall venture to at the severity of Thy justice, even when its weight falls on an innocent child? But to be thus blind in the presence of Thy grandest creations, of creations which ceaselessly renew our enthusiasm, our love, and our for Thy genius, Thy power, and Thy goodness; of what crime can this poor child have been guilty thus to deserve Thy ?'
"And my reflections continually to this topic.
"I asked myself, too, what compensation Divine pity could make its creature for the deprival of its greatest , and, finding none, I began to doubt its power.
"'Man, in his presumption,' said the royal poet, 'dares to himself in his knowledge, and judge the Eternal. But his wisdom is but , and his light darkness.'
"Oh that day one of Nature's great mysteries was revealed to me, doubtless with the purpose of my vanity, and of teaching me that nothing is impossible to God, and that it is in His power only to multiply our senses, and by so doing gratify those who please Him."
Here the young professor took a pinch from his tortoiseshell snuff-box, raised his eyes to the ceiling with a contemplative air, and then, after a short pause, continued in these terms:—
"Does it not often happen to you, ladies, when you are in the country in fine weather in summer, especially after a brief storm, when the air is warm, and the exhalations from the ground filling it with the perfume of thousands of plants, and their sweet and warms you; when the from the trees in the avenues, as well as from the bushes, seems to lean over you as if it sought to take you in its arms and embrace you; when the minutest flowers, the daisy, the blue forget-me-not, the convolvulus in the hedgerows raise their heads and follow you with a look—does it not happen to you to experience an inexpressible sensation of , to sigh for no apparent reason, and even to feel inclined to shed tears, and to ask yourselves, 'Why does this feeling of love oppress me? why do my knees bend under me? whence these tears?'
"Whence indeed, ladies? Why from life, and the thousands of living things which surround you, lean to you, and call to you to stay with them, while they gently murmur, 'We love you; love us, and do not leave us.'
"You can easily imagine, then, the deep enthusiastic feeling and the religious sentiment of a person always in a similar state of . Even if blind, abandoned by his friends, do you think there is nothing to envy in his lot? or that his destiny is not happier than our own? For my own part I have not the slightest doubt of it.
"But you will, doubtless, say such a condition is impossible—the mind of man would break down under such a load of happiness. And, moreover, whence could such happiness be ? What organs could transmit, and where could it find, such a sensation of universal life?
"This, ladies, is a question to which I can give you no answer; but I ask you to listen and then judge.
"The very day I arrived at the chalet I had made a singular remark—the blind girl was especially uneasy about the bees.
"While the wind was roaring without Raesel sat with her head on her hands listening .
"'Father,' said she, 'I think at the end of the apiary the third hive on the right is still open. Go and see. The wind blows from the north; all the bees are home; you can shut the hive.'
"And her father having gone out by a side door, when he returned he said—
"'It is all right, my child; I have closed the hive.'
"Half an hour afterwards the girl, rousing herself once more from her reverie, murmured—
"'There are no more bees about, but under the roof of the apiary there are some waiting; they are in the sixth hive near the door; please go and let them in, father.'
"The old man left the house at once. He was away more than a quarter of an hour; then he came back and told his daughter that everything was as she wished it—the bees had just gone into their hive.
"The child nodded, and replied—
"'Thank you, father.'
"Then she seemed to again.
"I was by the stove, lost in a of reflections; how could that poor blind girl know that from such or such a hive there were still some bees absent, or that such a hive had been left open? This seemed to me; but having been in the house hardly one hour, I did not feel in asking my hosts any questions with regard to their daughter, for it is sometimes painful to talk to people on subjects which interest them very nearly. I concluded that Young gave way to his daughter's fancies in order to induce her to believe she was of some service in the family, and that her forethought protected the bees from several accidents. That seemed the simplest explanation I could imagine, and I thought no more about it.
"About seven we supped on milk and cheese, and when it was time to retire Young led me into a goodsized room on the first floor, with a bed and a few chairs in it, panelled in fir, as is generally the case in the greater number of Swiss châlets. You are only separated from your neighbours by a deal partition, and you can hear every footstep and nearly every word.
"That night I was to sleep by the whistling of the wind and the sound of the rain beating against the window-panes. The next day the wind had gone down and we were enveloped in mist. When I awoke I found my windows quite white, quite padded with mist. When I opened my window the valley looked like an immense stove; the tops of a few fir-trees alone showed their outlines against the sky; below, the clouds were in regular layers down to the surface of the lake; everything was cal............