Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/25

Rh some great whole. And so may the Spirit of Truth, which alone I will follow, guide me whither and as it will!

Thus I said to myself, and calmed my excited feelings with a Vanilla ice—it was very delicious!—which I took sitting on a stone wall under the tree. The sun descended; the fantastic cloud-imagery among the Alps faded away; the music ceased, the few pleasure-seekers on the terrace departed either in groups or alone, but I returned happy in the evening twilight to Berne.

“I am solitary, but not alone!” But the Titans of the Oberland had produced too great an effect on my mind for me to turn my back on them at once. No: I could not be satisfied without seeing them more closely; seeing their brilliant icy palaces, and hearing the roar of their waters. I could in a few hours reach Thun and Interlachen, the heart of the Oberland. I had been once before in Berne. Then I was young, but bound as a bird in a golden cage. Now I was old, but free, and——Divine freedom!

I went to Thun. Hast thou been to Thun and seen its lake and its shores? If thou hast not been there, then go, if thou possibly canst, for a scene of more enchanting beauty, on a large scale, is not to be met with on this beautiful earth. And the morning, how beautiful it was, when I rose with the young June sun and wandered along the shores of that mirror-smooth lake; first towards the little church, which, standing on a hill to the right of the town, looks so pretty amongst its leafy trees, and surrounded by its