Scarce arrived at Lucerne, I quickly hastened once more to the cathedral, the _Hofkirche_, built on the site of a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas[451], the patron saint of sailors: this primitive chapel served also as a beacon, for, during the night, it was seen lighted up in a supernatural manner. It was Irish missionaries that preached the Gospel in the almost desert country of Lucerne; they brought it the liberty which their unhappy mother-land has not enjoyed. When I returned to the cathedral, a man was digging a grave; in the church, they were finishing a service around a bier, and a young woman was having a child's cap blessed at an altar: she placed it, with a visible expression of joy, in a basket which she carried on her arm, and went away laden with her treasure. The next day, I found the grave in the cemetery closed up, a vessel of holy water placed on the fresh earth, and some fennel-seed sprinkled for the little birds: already they were alone, beside that corpse of a night. I took some walks in the neighbourhood of Lucerne, in magnificent pine-woods. The bees, whose hives are placed above the farm-doors, under the shelter of the overhanging roofs, live with the peasants. I saw the famous Clara Wendel[452] go to Mass behind her companions in captivity, in her prison dress. She is very common; I found in her the look of all those brutes in France who are present at so many murders, without for that reason being more distinguished than a fierce beast, in spite of all that the theory of crime and the admiration of slaughter would attribute to them. A simple foot-soldier, armed with a carbine, here takes the convicts to perform their day's work and brings them back to the prison. This evening, I prolonged my walk along the Reuss, to a chapel built on the road: one goes up to it by a little Italian portico. From this portico, I saw a priest praying alone on his knees inside the oratory, while, on the top of the mountains, I saw the last gleams of the setting sun. On returning to Lucerne, I heard women saying the rosary in the cottages; the voices of children made the responses to the maternal adoration. I stopped, I listened through the twining vines to those words addressed to God from within a hut. The comely and graceful young girl who waits on me at the Golden Eagle also most regularly says her _Angelus_ as she draws the curtains of the windows in my room. When I come in, I give her a few flowers which I have gathered; she says to me, gently patting her breast with her hand: "_Per me?_" I answer: "For you." There our conversation ends. LUCERNE, 26 _August_ 1832.