Apart from a Babel of tongues, in which English prevailed, and swarms of motley tourists with the Rhigi railway as the scientific means to the desired end of attaining a region so strange in giddy height and width of view, so familiar by the descriptions and raptures of its crowds of admirers—and those inevitable attributes of Lucerne, were not very conspicuous in the early summer when the Stanhopes occupied their quarters—there were two distinct, even discordant, associations sharing the ground between them. There were the more vivid and recent traces of what all well-instructed, incredulous people now call the myth of William Tell—the national hero whose imaginary personality struck the first blow in breaking the fetters—doubtless as fabulous as the rest—of his country. Certainly, the common representation of him in a stage kilt, theatrically administering the oath of allegiance to his equally fantastic fellow-conspirators, as it figured in cheap photographs, was not calculated to inspire faith in his identity. There was also the mediæval legend which, in its wild superstition, belonged to all Christendom, of the unrighteous judge who falsely condemned, not his lord and king alone, but the King of kings and the Saviour of men. And there was not found any place for repentance, in men’s horrified minds, for this traitor any more than for the arch-traitor. Pontius Pilate was doomed for ever to hide his white, conscience-stricken face, and wring his accursed, palsied hands with a feeble show of washing away the innocent blood from which no holy baptism of water could cleanse them. Constantly as the sun rose or set on the glorious world of mountain peaks, wood, and water, these two idealised memories awoke and rose in conflict, glimmering through the white mists of morning, or brooding under the purple vault of night—the honest, brave Swiss freeman who bade all Swiss slaves go free—the falsehearted Roman coward who saw no evil in this man, and yet delivered up the Deliverer of the World into the hands of his deadly foes to do with Him what they would. At Lucerne, Fan’s baby was born. To the mother her little daughter came as an angel from heaven, promising her a fresh paradise instead of the old, which had turned out but a waste howling wilderness with green oases here and there. To the father the child brought the delight of a new toy with which he might play joyously for a while, and then, without thinking, break it. Harry had none of the trembling reverence, and clumsy awkwardness, in the middle of their tenderness, which some inexperienced fathers betray on their first introduction to their offspring. Harry took his infant daughter in his arms without hesitation and dandled her like an expert at once. The nurse and all who saw his performance cried out he was the most charmingly fatherly young father who had ever been beheld.