“No, Sir, I was not!” replied Mr. Berkley.  “It is all a humbug! a confounded humbug!  They made such a noise about their sunrise, that I determined I would not see it.  So I lay snug in bed; and only peeped through the window curtain.  That was enough.  Just above the house, on the top of the hill, stood some fifty half-dressed, romantic individuals, shivering in the wet grass; and, a short distance from them, a miserable wretch, blowing a long, wooden horn.  That’s your sunrise on the Righi, is it? said I; and went to sleep again.  The best thing I saw at the Culm, was the advertisement on the bed-room doors, saying, that, if the ladies would wear the quilts and blankets for shawls, when they went out to see the sunrise, they must pay for the washing.  Take my word for it, the Righi is a great humbug!”

“Where have you been since?”

“At Zurich and Schaffhausen.  If you go to Zurich, beware how you stop at the Raven.  They will cheat you.  They cheated me; but I had my revenge, for, when we reached Schaffhausen, I wrote in the Traveller’s Book;

Beware of the Raven of Zurich!

’T is a bird of omen ill;

With a noisy and an unclean nest,

And a very, very long bill.

If you go to the Golden Falken you will find it there.  I am the author of those lines!”

“Bitter as Juvenal!” exclaimed Flemming.

“Not in the least bitter,” said Mr. Berkley.  “It is all true.  Go to the Raven and see.  But this Interlachen! this Interlachen!  It is the loveliest spot on the face of the earth,” he continued, stretching out both arms, as if to embrace the objectof his affection.  “There,—­only look out there!”

Here he pointed to the window.  Flemming looked, and beheld a scene of transcendent beauty.  The plain was covered already by the brown shade of the summer twilight.  From the cottage roofs in Unterseen rose here and there a thin column of smoke over the tops of the trees and mingled with the evening shadows.  The Valley of Lauterbrunnen was filled with a blue haze.  Far above, in the clear, cloudless heaven, the white forehead of the Jungfrau blushed at the last kiss of the departing sun.  It was a glorious Transfiguration of Nature!  And when the village bells began to ring, and a single voice at a great distance was heard yodling forth a ballad, it rather broke than increased the enchantment of a scene, where silence was more musical than sound.

For a long time they gazed at the gloaming landscape, and spake not.  At length people came into the parlour, and laid aside their shawls and hats, and exchanged a word or two with Berkley to Flemming they were all unknown.  To him it was all Mr. Brown and Mrs. Johnson, and nothing more.  The conversation turned upon the various excursions of the day.  Some had been at the Staubbach, others at the Grindelwald; others at the Lake of Thun; and nobody before had ever experienced half the rapture, which they had experienced that day.  And thus they sat in the twilight, as people love to do, at the close of a summer day.  As yet the lamps had not been lighted; and one could not distinguish faces; but voices only, and forms, like shadows.