The favourite place for our walks, and our usual studio, was a small grove of firs situated at a tolerable elevation above the lake, in the rear of the rock of Seeberg. We ascended thither by two routes doubly illuminated by the mighty radiance of the splendid mirror in which the four cantons are reflected. No landscape can be more gentle, if we look towards Lucerne; none more serious or solemn, in the direction of St. Gothard and the amphitheatre of mountains. But all this grandeur and brightness terminated suddenly at the first step we took beneath our firs. It was as if one had reached the end of the world. The light lessened; sounds seemed subdued; life itself appeared absent. [Illustration] Such, at the first glance, is the customary effect of the woods. But at the second all is changed. The suffocation, or at least subordination, imposed by the fir upon all those plants which would fain grow in its shade, lets light into the depths; and when the eyes have become accustomed to this kind of gloaming, we see considerably further, and distinguish much more clearly, than in the inextricable labyrinth of ordinary forests where everything acts as an obstruction. The spectacle first presented to us under the noble funereal pillars--the pillars, may we not say? of a stately temple--was a spectacle of death; not of a saddening death, but of a death rich, adorned, and graceful, such as Nature frequently vouchsafes to plants. At every step the old trunks of trees, felled but not uprooted, were clothed in an incomparable velvety green,--a tissue superbly woven of fine mosses soft to the touch, which delighted the eye by their changing aspects, their reflexes, and their shifting gleams. But where was the animal life of the forest? Our ears soon grew accustomed to recognize and divine its presence. I do not refer to the whistle of the tomtits, or the strange laughter of the woodpecker, the evident lord of the place. I am thinking of a different people, against whom the birds wage war. [Illustration] A great hum and murmur, sufficiently loud to drown the noise of a brook, warned us that the forest was haunted by wasps. Already we had discovered their fort, whence more than one endeavoured to lead us astray, suspecting our steps, and obviously ill-disposed towards us.