Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/154

170 end, and the hundred stream back again to the hotel to breakfast, and I follow in the stream.

It was Sunday. I had resolved to spend the whole day at Rhigi, in order to enjoy its scenes thoroughly. The greater part of the hundred guests left the mountain soon after breakfast. At Rhigi, at this season, there is a perpetual ebb and flow of human beings.

I seated myself on a rock on the lofty plateau. The mists had spread themselves from the lakes, over the whole earth, so that one could not in the slightest degree discern its dwellings, fields, or hills. A dense vail of cloud covered every object. Above this the white, jagged peaks of the Alps were alone visible, and above them arched itself a deep blue and perfectly cloudless heaven.

“If the people below there, under the vail of cloud, did but know how bright it is at the same time,” thought I, grieved for those from whom this gray, cloudy heaven concealed the sun. Then the church bells began to ring down below. They rang for divine worship. It seemed to me as if the bright sound was dulled by the cloud-covering. But before long this was penetrated by the sunbeams, or riven asunder by a wind which was not felt on the heights where I sat; and from the river mist stood forth, one after another, towns and churches, villages, woods, cultivated fields, lakes and rivers. The first lake which stood out, blue and bright, was the little mountain-lake, Egeri, the lake of Lucerne, Zug, Sarnen, and others. By degrees, the whole region was unvailed, and it was an enchanting scene. But now, lying there in its whole extent, in the full blaze of daylight, the