“Oh! no,” she answered: “the homely, burgher lives of the Swiss rarely led them to the romantic, but their simple piety, as I have said, clothed their tales with a religious coloring. This, for instance, is where they believe that Pilate committed suicide; that, having been banished to Gaul by the Emperor Tiberius for failure in the administration of his province when governor, he could no longer bear living in public, and his uneasy conscience drove him from one wild district to another until he stopped here; but even then he continued miserable, and finally threw himself into the small lake near the summit yonder, over which his spirit still hovers. He is the author of all the storms hereabouts. He cannot bear strangers, but, especially if they disturb him maliciously by throwing stones into this lake, he avenges himself by thunder and lightning and a general confusion of the elements. They were so persuaded of this in the middle ages that the Lucerners actually made a statute forbidding any one to explore the mountains, and there are records of several persons being severely punished for venturing up in defiance of the order. He regulates the weather even now; for you can always tell by Pilatus what kind of day it is likely to be. Have you never heard the lines? “ ‘Wenn Pilatus trägt sein Hut Darum wird das Wetter gut. Trägt er aber seinen Degen Darum wird’s wohl sicher regnen.’(31) “The _Hut_, or Hood, is a little cloud which settles on the summit only, but the sword is a long streak across the centre of the mountain, which bodes rain and all manner of bad weather. There are ominous stories, besides, of dragons and winged serpents, which were formerly seen to fly from Pilatus to the Rigi at night, leaving fiery tracks behind them, and tormenting the shepherds and their flocks.” “Well! if ever there were an excuse for pantheism and belief in a spirit‐ world animating nature, it certainly would be in Switzerland! Everywhere I go the mountains, cloudy sunsets, the whole moving face of nature, speak a language ever varying in one sense, but uniform in leading one’s thoughts upwards.” “Yes; and even in bad weather you would not tire of it! Pilatus is never so grand as when the storm‐clouds gather round his brow and roll down pitilessly on this very spot.” “I should very much like to know whether the people keep up their piety now, and how they are likely to act in the coming religious storm,” I remarked.