d passed
through, the little adventures we had met with! The small country
taverns seldom furnished more than six or eight beds; so that more than
three fourths of our number usually slept in some barn well furnished
with hay or straw. How soundly we slept, and how merry the awaking!
There were among us, as among German students there always are,
excellent musicians, well-trained to sing their stirring national airs,
or gems from the best operas, or the like,--duets, trios, quartets.
After our frugal noonday meal in the shade, or perhaps when we had
surmounted some mountain-pass, and came suddenly, as we reached the
verge of the descent, upon some magnificent expanse of valley or
champaign scenery stretching out far beneath us, it was our habit to
call a halt for music. The fresh grass, dotted, perhaps, with Alpine
roses, furnished seats; and our vocalists drawing from their knapsacks
the slender _cahier_ containing melodies expressly selected for the
occasion and arranged in parts, we had, under the most charming
circumstances, an impromptu concert. I have heard much better music
since, but never any that I enjoyed more.

On one of these excursions we passed by Napoleon's wonderful road, the
Simplon, into one of the most beautiful regions of Italy. The first
night at Baveno was delicious. The soft Italian air,--the moonlight on
the placid lake, on the softly rounded olive-clad hills, on the
trellised vines, so picturesque, compared to the formal vineyards of
France,--all in such contrast to the giant mountain-peaks of granite,
snow-covered, cutting through the clouds, the vast glacier, bristling
with ice-blocks, sliding-down, an encroacher on the valley's
verdure,--in such marvellous contrast to all that region of rock and ice
and mountain-torrent and rugged path, and grand, rude, wild majesty of
aspect, it seemed like passing in a single day into another and a
gentler world.

Then came the quiet excursions on the lakes,--Lugano, Maggiore, Como:
such a rest to our blistered feet! Those blisters _were_ a drawback; but
what episode in human life has none? We strayed through the lime-groves
of the Isola Bella, where I exchanged the few words of Italian of which
I was master with a fair and courteous madonna who crossed our
path,--ascended, by clambering up within one of the folds of the Saint's
short mantle, the gigantic bronze statue of the holy Borromeo, sat down
inside the head, and looked out through the eyebrows on