"For nearly eight years we lived thus, entirely for ourselves, and reminded only by little excursions and visits to the city, that any world existed beyond our pine woods. Then our child sickened with the measles, and retained from them a bad throat-trouble, which our physician advised us to check at once by a sojourn in milder air. Although it was harvest-time, we soon decided to leave home and take our child to Lake Geneva, for which place my wife had always preserved a tender feeling since her school-days at a French _pension_ there. "In Vernex, where, as yet, the hotels had not rendered the beautiful shore unsafe, we found an excellent house, entirely after our own hearts. It was arranged for only a dozen guests, and was situated in the midst of a beautifully green garden, with a most glorious view of the lake and the mountains on the south shore. We settled ourselves in two spacious rooms on the second floor. My wife and child slept in the small room; the large one adjoining it served as the sitting-room, and at night my bed was made on the divan. The corresponding rooms on the ground floor beneath us were occupied during the first day by an English couple, who disturbed us by continual playing on the piano; but when they departed on the following day, they left such stillness behind them that we might have considered ourselves the only persons in the paradise, had not the usual meals, in an elegant dining-room, reminded us that we still had half-gods near us. "On the first evening I was surprised by a tender stratagem of my wife's. As I unpacked the great trunk belonging to her and the child, which she herself had filled at home, I struck something hard, which proved to be my violin-case. "I embraced her heartily as I saw her smile with pleasure because she had accomplished this so cleverly and secretly. "'As I brought my color-box,' she said, 'there was no need for your instrument to remain at home. I know a hundred places by the lake and on the road to Montreux, where I can carry on my daubing by the hour, while you are conjuring your uncanny spirits up here.' "Yet it happened otherwise than I had first thought in my excitement over her loving forethought. The case remained unopened, and for a full week not one musical thought occurred to me. I would sit by the hour on the balcony with an unopened book in my hand, wholly absorbed in the nobly beautiful picture before me. Or I would accompany my wife and child on their walks; and when my wife had settled down to sketch the magnificent chestnut-trees, or the white houses surrounded with fig-trees and vineyards, glimmering on the slopes in the ravines between Montreux and Veytaux, I would stretch myself in the shade near by; chat with the child, who was visibly improving; and feel so completely satisfied with God and man, that that sultan who vainly searched the world for the happiest man would finally have found him in me.