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. Then you can go where you please; my journey is ended. Pull
to land, men, and put us out at this village; we will breakfast here. I
will go back to Lucerne to fetch all our luggage, and before you leave
you will know in which house I take a lodging, where you will find me on
your return."

"Here or at Lucerne," replied Leopold, "the difference is not so great
that I need hinder you from following your whim."

These two youths were friends in the truest sense of the word. They were
of the same age; they had learned at the same school; and after studying
the law, they were spending their holiday in the classical tour in
Switzerland. Leopold, by his father's determination, was already pledged
to a place in a notary's office in Paris. His spirit of rectitude, his
gentleness, and the coolness of his senses and his brain, guaranteed him
to be a docile pupil. Leopold could see himself a notary in Paris; his
life lay before him like one of the highroads that cross the plains
of France, and he looked along its whole length with philosophical
resignation.

The character of his companion, whom we will call Rodolphe, presented
a strong contrast with Leopold's, and their antagonism had no doubt had
the result of tightening the bond that united them. Rodolphe was the
natural son of a man of rank, who was carried off by a premature
death before he could make any arrangements for securing the means of
existence to a woman he fondly loved and to Rodolphe. Thus cheated by a
stroke of fate, Rodolphe's mother had recourse to a heroic measure. She
sold everything she owed to the munificence of her child's father for
a sum of more than a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a life
annuity fo