Page:Gleanings from Germany (1839).djvu/48

 tiful lakes, as of tasting her wines and cheese. To her beggars I had given alms, and her innkeepers had enriched themselves at my expense; her maidens—but not one word of the women of Switzerland! Each time when the discourse fell upon them, and I was questioned as to my opinion of them, and how I liked them—my heart was cut in twain. Away, away, therefore, from that country in which the greatest earthly happiness had smiled upon me, only to disappear, with increased and merciless scorn!—Yet, I had no sooner passed the gigantic, heaven-piercing Alps, than I felt myself attracted thither again by some irresistible desire, for well did my heart in secret tell me that Liesli must still be among her native mountains, else whence could this nameless feeling proceed?

The thought alone of once more returning to Switzerland after the expiration of the year, sustained my sinking spirits. I already enjoyed in imagination the pleasure I should experience on my visit to the hermit, and should he attempt to escape me by the least evasion, when summoned to fulfil his promise, he certainly should never escape my hands alive.

In the mean time, after my return home to my friends, I had to endure the torment of all their sneers and jeers. “Well, to be sure,” said they, scornfully, behind my back; “now that he has seen the world a little, there is nothing here which is good enough for the gentleman. Whenever we, who contentedly remain at home, bless our stars to think that we have such a happy land to live and enjoy ourselves in, and which, surely, God has not in his goodness rendered quite a desert, there sits master Hermann, turning up his nose in contempt, as if our high hills in front of the windmill-gate were, in his opinion, not worth looking at. Well, dear heaven, they are certainly not glaciers; but pray do potatoes grow upon his favourite ice-tipped hill, as they do here round the windmill? Why the man will at last become a glacier himself, he is so cold and frosty in his manner!”

I let the good people talk on, and whenever anxious to