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AMBITION FOR LOVE'S SAKE
In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holiday to make a
tour through Switzerland, set out from Lucerne one fine morning in the
month of July in a boat pulled by three oarsmen. They started for
Fluelen, intending to stop at every notable spot on the lake of the
Four Cantons. The views which shut in the waters on the way from
Lucerne to Fluelen offer every combination that the most exacting
fancy can demand of mountains and rivers, lakes and rocks, brooks and
pastures, trees and torrents. Here are austere solitudes and charming
headlands, smiling and trimly kept meadows, forests crowning
perpendicular granite cliffs, like plumes, deserted but verdant
reaches opening out, and valleys whose beauty seems the lovelier in
the dreamy distance.
As they passed the pretty hamlet of Gersau, one of the friends looked
for a long time at a wooden house which seemed to have been recently
built, enclosed by a paling, and standing on a promontory, almost
bathed by the waters. As the boat rowed past, a woman's head was
raised against the background of the room on the upper story of this
house, to admire the effect of the boat on the lake. One of the young
men met the glance thus indifferently given by the unknown fair.
"Let us stop here," said he to his friend. "We meant to make Lucerne
our headquarters for seeing Switzerland; you will not take it amiss,
Leopold, if I change my mind and stay here to take charge of our
possessions.
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