150 The Brothers of Goschenen. 



* As he spoke he grasped my hand with a force which I could not 

 have believed possible ; and his eyes, dim as they had been a little' 

 before, now flashed fire ; but, the first rush of feeling over, came the 

 ebb of natural weakness, and he gradually sunk back half fainting 

 on the pillows that supported him. 



" For some minutes he lay perfectly still, and I thought he was 

 dying. Slowly, however, he again rallied with two or three deep 

 ighs, ohysuch sighs! God shield us from the guilt that prompts them. 

 w< Pardon me, brother/ he said, languidly, 'if I have offended 

 you. I think I am mad sometimes. I sent for you to hear the his- 

 tory of him who is now dying before you, and you shall hear it; but 

 there is one to whom I must first bid farewell farewell for ever 

 (how mournfully he dwelt an the last word). We have lived and 

 loved together for five-and-fifty years, and, oh ! it is cruel to part 

 now. Where is Louise ?' 



" I entered the kitchen, from which I fancied I heard in peevish 

 anger the voice of the old woman I had first seen. A stout, ruddy- 

 eheeked servant wench was arranging the fire and sweeping the 

 wood-ashes together on the hearth, stealthily humming to herself the 

 air of some Swiss liedchen, in a tone of voice, however, too low to 

 reach the ear of her mistress, to whose angry admonition she was 

 evidently well accustomed. 



c * I interrupted the old crone's complaint of Suzanne's carelessness 

 in allowing the dust to fly about the room, and requested her pre- 

 sence in the inner apartment. She would, she said, come immedi- 

 ately ; but I could hear as I returned to the chamber of the dying 

 man, that she waited to finish her lecture to Suzanne, who in her turn 

 seemed to pay as little attention to its close, as she had done to the 

 beginning. 



" Never, never, shall I forget the gaze of anxious expectation 

 with which Karl Easier fixed his dim eye upon the door by which he 

 expected her to enter, nor the light of rapture that spread over his 

 pale face as she approached him. There was something in it that 

 startled me. It told of all the vivid feeling of twenty years of love 

 boundless, uncalculating love ; love that thinks not, knows not of 

 aught but the one loved object ; love adoration rather, more even 

 than fickle thoughtless youth can give more, God shield us, than 

 man should give to aug'it under heaven. 



" They formed a strange group, as she leant over him. ? Her dress 

 was arranged with the most punctilious neatness. Her hair, whose 

 glossy black was now mingled with the purest white, was gathered 

 in a knot on the crown, and fastened with the silver pin an heir- 

 loom from her mother which had ornamented it in the earlier days 

 of her matronhood. Her features were of that small delicate cast 

 that bears age best ; and even then, as she stood in the wrinkled pe- 

 yishness of age, the traces of beauty of no ordinary kind were plainly 

 distinguishable. His one hand was languidly cast around her waist ; 

 the other was laid upon her brow, and he looked in her face with 

 such oh ! such a gaze. He saw not the wrinkled crone that stood 

 before him : her puckered cheek, and rheumy eye, and bent and wi- 

 thered form, were to him but the memory of the Louise of his youth- 



