ancient Rigi still remained stationary before my sight, but the beautiful and charming Liesli came not.
This, then, is the work of the hermit, I said to myself; he is the author of this painful disappointment, recalling his words to my recollection. Yesterday I fancied to myself the happiness I should experience this morning—but now I felt convinced that the hermit had laid the net in which I was caught, a net of the most unaccountable doubt and mystery. Well, indeed, might he pronounce his prophecy, for all this was, no doubt, of his contrivance: he it was, and he alone, who had prepared for me this harrowing disappointment, and thus so suddenly and so completely blasted all the pleasure I had anticipated in ascending the Rigi with Liesli. The small ladder which I was to have ascended with her, had appeared to my fancy as Jacob’s ladder of angels; in imagination I had climbed with her to the very heavens, and having arrived at that eternal sojourn, had drawn the ladder up after us, and contemplated from the abode of angels the busy scene of tumult and agitation below, utterly regardless of all that was passing there.
But now, alas! I found myself standing awake before mount Rigi, on the summit of which mountain, where the rising sun saluted with his rays the great cross, I had hoped, thus elevated nearer to heaven, in the presence of God, and in the face of free Switzerland, her native soil, to enfold in purest love my dear and lovely Liesli. I would have besought her to be mine, to share with me in my joys and sorrows; and when recalled to dust by my Maker’s decree, I would have asked her also to bestrew my grave with flowers, as she did her mother’s, and for me too as fervently to invoke the mercy of the Supreme Being.
All this I had thought and determined within myself during the night, when, after much reflection, I was at length convinced that Liesli was no supernatural, but a human being; and now the moment which was to have crowned my happi-
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