He looked first at Gabrielle and then at Madame Plomb, with his large eyes full of bewilderment. The leaden lady smiled. 'Is this the M. Nicholas of whom you so often speak?' she asked. Gabrielle became crimson. Nicholas at the same moment radiated joy and nodded to the girl. 'This is the M. Nicholas Deschwanden who can tell you all about his land of mountains and lakes,' she said. 'That is capital,' exclaimed the lady. 'Sit down, young man, and tell me all about Switzerland.' 'Ah! good madame, how could I tell you all in one breath? Switzerland would take a lifetime to describe. And again, what description can adequately express its glories?' 'You have snowy mountains there,' said madame. 'Snowy mountains!' echoed Nicholas, his eyes lighting up. 'Oh! if you could but see them, standing half way up the sky, with their bases lost in blue shadows, and the evening glow--the Alpenglüth, we call it--upon their heads. Madame, since I have been in Paris, I have met some philosophers who deny all those things which I have been taught to believe. I have heard them pronounce Heaven and Paradise to be a fable; but no one looking at our Alps of an evening could doubt in Heaven and Paradise; they are a Revelation,--a witness of a better life and a better country. I am clumsy to express myself, but I feel it there,' and he laid his hand on his heart. 'Ah! good madame, it is a wonderful sight to behold the golden crimson light fade off the snow, and then there steals over the icy peaks a greyness like death, a ghastly chill that lasts for a few moments, as though they knew that they were not eternal.' 'And the lakes,' said Madame Berthier. 'I remember one as blue as heaven, with white water-lilies on it.' 'Was it a pond in France?' asked Nicholas, looking at Gabrielle. 'No. I have been among mountains and lakes.' 'Have you been in Switzerland?' asked Nicholas, eagerly. 'I do not know. I remember when I was a little child that I was in a beautiful land; but whether it was Switzerland or not I cannot tell.' 'We have such lakes,' said Nicholas; 'little heavens lying among the rough mountains, like still souls, such as that of Gabrielle, amongst the wild spirits surrounding them. There are water-lilies on our Sarnen See. But that is not equal to the lake of the Four Cantons, shaped like a cross, and the Catholic cantons cling around it lovingly.' 'Are you not all Catholics in Switzerland?' asked Madame Berthier. 'No,' answered the young man, sadly. 'Some of the cantons are Protestant. Oh, madame, is not that sad? and in those parts you cannot travel without tears. Love, faith, religion, are dead. Above the Lake of Thun, on the edge of a precipice, is a little cave in which lived a thousand years ago a blessed hermit.' 'Not Bruder Klaus, surely,' said Gabrielle.