The Brothers of Goschenen. 147 



"It is many many years since the circumstances I am going- to 

 relate occurred. I was about two-and-twenty, when I happened, in 

 the course of wanderings which have been pretty widely extended, to 

 be constrained to demand the hospitality for a day or two of the 

 brethren of our little establishment at Realp. It was late one sum- 

 mer evening that I approached Goschenen, on my journey down the 

 valley. A peasant, who was hastening in the direction of our little 

 convent, met me about half a mile from the village, and informed me 

 he was on the way to procure from some of our order resident at 

 Realp spiritual consolation for Karl Easier, whose cottage he pointed 

 out to me at some little distance among the trees. I hastily accom- 

 panied him thither. 



" On the way I learned briefly the history of him whose death-bed 

 I was now to witness. He had inherited a considerable patrimony 

 from his father (considerable at least for a Swiss peasant), and for- 

 tune had smiled on his endeavours to increase it fickle and desultory 

 as they were. The herds of old Basler were always the fattest au<l 

 sleekest in the valley ; the grass of his meadows was the greenest ; 

 and the blight and the murrain seemed carefully to pass him by. 

 Prosperous through a long life, for he was now in his 80th year, 

 wealth had filled his coffers almost without his needing to stretch forth 

 his hand for its attainment ; and, though to those accustomed to a less 

 simple life, to call him rich might seem a mockery of the term, yet in 

 the valley of Goschenen the childless rich old Karl was received at 

 the meetings of the villagers with all the deference, which in more 

 polished circles wealth is wont to command. A few of the oldest vil- 

 lagers could remember when he and his brother Franz were the two 

 handsomest Burschen of the valley. At the dance, the father whose 

 daughter was fortunate enough to have Franz or Karl for a partner 

 followed them admiringly through its maze. At the wrestling, the 

 shoulder-stone, or the rifle match, the one or the other generally se- 

 cured the prize. Their orphan cousin, Louise, to whom their father's 

 house had been a home since her childhood, was in her turn the belle 

 of the village ; and while she looked up to her manly cousins with 

 even perhaps somewhat more than sisterly pride, they felt for her in 

 return perhaps even somewhat more than brotherly affection. 



" Thus passed their lives, until Louise had attained the full bloom- 

 ing womanhood of five-and-twenty. Many and many a youth had in 

 the interval gazed into that blue eye with the intense devotion of a 

 saint at the gate of Paradise, to find some hint, that might bid him 

 utter the thoughts that were burning in his breast ; but each found 

 nothing there [but the calm moonlight beauty of a tranquil mind. 

 The echo of her gay innocent laugh was like a silver bell, un- 

 broken by a single lurking sigh. There was a perfect happiness in 

 its tone which is never heard amid the more than happiness of youth- 

 ful love. Her cousins were both somewhat older than herself; and 

 they too remained unsmitten by any of the bright eyes that they met 

 at the wedding dance or the rifle match, or which at church peeped 

 occasionally over the well-worn family prayer-book with its silver 

 clasps. The maidens of Goschenen began at last to think, that Franz 



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