"Yes. We came to Lucerne, and I was taken out in a boat. I felt how
lovely it was, but the loveliness weighed upon me somehow or other, and
made me feel melancholy."

"Why?" asked Alexandra.

"I don't know; I always feel like that when I look at the beauties of
nature for the first time; but then, I was ill at that time, of course!"

"Oh, but I should like to see it!" said Adelaida; "and I don't know
WHEN we shall ever go abroad. I've been two years looking out for a good
subject for a picture. I've done all I know. 'The North and South I know
by heart,' as our poet observes. Do help me to a subject, prince."

"Oh, but I know nothing about painting. It seems to me one only has to
look, and paint what one sees."

"But I don't know HOW to see!"

"Nonsense, what rubbish you talk!" the mother struck in. "Not know how
to see! Open your eyes and look! If you can't see here, you won't see
abroad either. Tell us what you saw yourself, prince!"

"Yes, that's better," said Adelaida; "the prince learned to see abroad."

"Oh, I hardly know! You see, I only went to restore my health. I don't
know whether I learned to see, exactly. I was very happy, however,
nearly all the time."

"Happy! you can be happy?" cried Aglaya. "Then how can you say you did
not learn to see? I should think you could teach us to see!"

"Oh! DO teach us," laughed Adelaida.

"Oh! I can't do that," said the prince, laughing too. "I lived almost
all the while in one little Swiss village; what can I teach you? At
first I was only just not absolutely dull; then my health began to
improve--then every day became dearer and more precious to me, and the
longer I stayed, the dearer became the time to me; so much so that I
could not help observing it; but why this was so, it would be difficult
to say."

"So that you didn't care to go away anywhere else?"

"Well, at first I did; I was restless; I didn't know however I should
manage to support life--you know there are such moments, especially in
solitude. There was a waterfall near us, such a lovely thin streak of
water, like a thread but white and moving. It fell from a great height,
but it looked quite low, and it was half a mile away, though it did not
seem fifty paces. I loved to listen to it at night, but it was then
that I became so restless. Sometimes I went and climbed the mountain and
stood there in the midst of the tall pines, all alone in the terrible
silence, with our little village in the dist