Reader, in the foregoing pages we have been whisked along the rail to, and through, some places we visited together last year. What has been said by the way will have given you to understand, that I had in view a special object. You will now also know what that object was, and will see that it was one, which might be sufficiently attended to without much interference with the ordinary objects of a Swiss excursion; if they are, as I take them to be, for the mind the enjoyment of mountain scenery, and for the body more or less vigorous exertion. For an excursion of this mixed kind, carried out in a leisurely fashion, and with some contentment, in the narrative of which the special object will take the position, as it did in fact, of so much collateral by-work, I would now bespeak your friendly company.
CHAPTER II.
A CULTIVATED ITALIAN.
He cannot be a perfect man,
Not being tried and tutored in the world.—Shakespeare.
But before we enter on the narrative of the excursion itself, which will afterwards be uninterrupted throughout, I would ask leave to give a short account of a meeting I had with a fellow wanderer at its first step—while I was crossing the threshold to enter upon it. It was one of those little incidents that are ever occurring in travel, and contribute in no small degree to its pleasure.
August 3.—At a little before 9 A.M. I was on board the boat for Brienz. The morning was fresh and bright. Only here and there a streak of thin white fleece flecked the clear, smooth, unfathomable blue. The late storm had given to the atmosphere a transparency that to the eye brought the mountains very near. I placed myself on a bench athwart the vessel, that I might have the lake before me, and be able to look on the mountains on each side. I had just taken this seat, when a gentleman walked up to me, and asked, if I knew at what hour in the evening the last train left Interlaken for Berne. My interrogator—for we get into a habit of taking an inventory of people, under such circumstances, at a glance—was not stout, but inclined to become so; well-dressed, carefully, but quietly; middle-aged, but looking young for his years; with light hair slightly silvered, the gray just beginning to be perceptible; and of a fresh complexion. He had the assured manner of one, who, from having mixed much in the world, has acquired a facility in making his way, with, under the conditions of the moment, the least amount of friction. I was able to give him the information he wanted.
‘Excuse me,’ he replied, ‘but are you sure that that is the time?’
My authority, I said, was Bradshaw. It happened that I had been asked the same question yesterday.
‘Again excuse me,’ he rejoined, ‘but is your Bradshaw that for this month?’