c The Brothers of Goschene,*. 153 



scended to the side of the Reuss, and bathed my brow in its icy wa- 

 ters in vain in vain ! I reached the Teufels Briicke. I stood long 

 looking from its narrow arch down on the hell of waters underneath. 

 It was like the tumult of my soul. I thought so even then as I stood 

 and gazed at it, and it seemed as if a voice from the abyss below 

 warned me that thus, thus, as the ceaseless waters foamed and swel- 

 tered in their granite bed, should this heart until it cease to beat be 

 even as it was then. Thus it has been thus it will be for a little 

 longer for but a little longer now. 



'* ' I wandered on. I sprung up the rocky path that led to the 

 Furka with the speed of desperation. It was night, but the moon- 

 light was bright as day. Qn on I knew not where ; madness had 

 laid her finger upon me. I found myself at last at the foot of the 

 Rhone Gletscher. I was lying on the grass beside the warm source 

 from which the river springs. My face and hands were wet with 

 tears. There I swore an awful oath in words that hell itself seemed 

 to 'dictate, and I called in my madness on the cliffs around me. I 

 called on the Gallenstock as it towered ghastly white in the moon- 

 light, on the still glacier, on the pine forest that whispered down 

 the valley. I called on heaven and earth to witness that I would keep 

 it. I swore that never, while I lived, should Louise be the wife of 

 Franz. I have kept it ! oh, how well ! 



" * I knew not then how what I dreaded worse than death was to 

 be prevented. I had sworn it should not be I knew it should not. 

 But wherefore not, how not, I could not tell. Day by day, as I 

 cursed myself for my blindness in not discovering it before, I saw 

 their heart-strings twining round each other. It was by his side she 

 sat, when our little household assembled round the evening fire ; it 

 was leaning on his arm that she walked to the old church ; it'was from 

 his book she read the prayers her pure heart offered up for him and 

 for me for me, who was looking on like a fallen fiend at happiness 

 in which I had no share. If I came home unexpectedly, there, in 

 the broad window yonder, sat they. When I entered there was a 

 pause ; and when they spoke to me there was, I thought, a cold dis- 

 welcome in their tone. They were all the world to each other. I 

 was unwelcome beloved by both, but still unwelcome. 1 felt I was, 

 and yet I lingered with them in sick weariness of heart. It was 

 fascination. Writhing in torture, I tried to smile as I was wont, 

 My laugh sounded hollow in my own ear. I talked wildly enough 

 sometimes, God knows ; but I could not for an instant exclude from 

 my mind the one burning thought Franz and Louise husband and 

 wife never! My oath was sworn to a thousand times a day. 



" * Still, day by day and month by month passed on. I saw the 

 progress of their affection, morning and noon and eve ; at the 

 church, or at our own fireside ; at prayer, and at meals ; every hour 

 for" along long year did I undergo this slow torture. Talk not of the 

 rack ! Boiling lead poured drop by drop upon the bare and living 

 fibre were nothing to what I suffered. Yet my secret lay here ; it 

 was told to none but the cliff and the glacier. When alone in the so- 

 litudes of the Gallenstock, I buried my face in my hands, and yelled 

 in the despair of a breaking heart. You see yonder a black rock stand- 



