seemed to me as if the sweetly animated countenance beside me had served as a model for the painter, so much did the Madonna resemble her; and, as if to complete the illusion, the golden ground of the painting seemed now represented by the horizon behind the Rigi, which, gilded by the setting sun, appeared like a burning altar of the Most High.
The sweet maiden must indeed have imagined I had lost all power of speech, for since my first question, and my assurance of having also to wait for the hermit, not a sound had escaped my lips, so lost had I been in contemplating the magic charms of this lovely creature. Even nature was dumb, and appeared also to have shared in the general expression of silent awe and admiration at the scene of celestial splendour and magnificence around us; the deepest silence reigned all over the forest; the air and leaves were motionless.
Who speaks much feels little; I was intoxicated with feelings of the most rapturous joy and delight.
At length I awoke from my trance, and enquired how long it was since her mother was laid under the flowers which she yesterday sprinkled with holy water.
“It was one year yesterday,” she softly and seriously replied, as from her virgin bosom heaved a painful sigh. Her eyes, filled with tears, seemed to rest upon the ocean of fire in the west; as if to express, that, with her mother, the sun which had illumined her life had descended into the darkness and obscurity of night, like the sun of creation now vanishing from our view.
“Have you no father left?” I asked, deeply affected by this expressive and silent look of sorrow and melancholy.
She shook her lovely head, bent it still lower upon her work, and after a pause, answered,
“My father died when I was a child.”
“And have you no relations, no friends?”
“Yes, in Shoenewerth, in the canton of Solothurn. You may perhaps be acquainted there with the charitable foundation of St. Clara-Werra: there I have an uncle. I wrote to
