pointed out to the others some peculiar charm of the view. The sight was,
in sooth, of a nature to preclude selfishness, no one catching a glimpse
that he did not wish to be shared by all. Vévey, their journey, the
fleeting minutes, and their disappointment, were all forgotten in the
delight of witnessing this evening landscape, and the silence was broken
only to express those feelings of delight which had long been uppermost in
every bosom.

"I doff my beaver to thy Switzerland, friend Melchior," cried the Signor
Grimaldi, after directing the attention of Adelheid to one of the peaks of
Savoy, of which he had just remarked that it seemed a spot where an angel
might love to light in his visits to the earth; "if thou hast much of
this, we of Italy must look to it, or--by the shades of our fathers! we
shall lose our reputation for natural beauty. How is it young lady; hast
thou many of these sun-sets at Willading? or, is this, after all, but an
exception to what thou seest in common--as much a matter of astonishment
to thyself, as--by San Francesco! good Marcelli, we must even own, it is
to thee and me!"

Adelheid laughed at the old noble's good-humored rhapsody, but, much as
she loved her native land, she could not pervert the truth by pretending
that the sight was one to be often met with.

"If we have not this, however, we have our glaciers, our lakes, our
cottages, our châlets, our Oberland, and such glens as have an eternal
twilight of their own."

"Ay, my true-hearted and pretty Swiss, this is well for thee who wilt
affirm that a drop of thy snow-water is worth a thousand limpid springs,
or thou art not the true child of old Melchior de Willading; but it is