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In front of them stood perpetually the one real thing which had surged up through the quiet of his life, and, lover-like, he justified its presence to himself, by seeing in Kate Alden's frank face the incarnation of the ideal patterns of his books. The visits to Grindelwald grew more frequent and more prolonged. The climax, however, came unexpectedly to both.
This plan they punctually fulfilled, spending July at Interlaken and Grindelwald, and August at a little place called Etretat, on the Normandy coast, which some one had recommended as quaint and quiet.
Your much attached friends, The Journal notes a six weeks' tour with Mrs. Reeve in Switzerland and Germany: August 1st. To Paris and Geneva, via Dieppe. Saw Thiers in Paris. He had been turned out of office on May 4th. On August 4th reached Binet's campagne. Family dinners, &c., at Geneva. 12th, called at Blumenthal's chalet, near Vevey. 14th, to Berne, Grindelwald, and Ragaz, by Zurich.
They met frequent parties of travellers returning from Grindelwald to Lauterbrunnen some on foot, some on horseback, and others in carriages which were more or less spacious and elegant, according to the rank or wealth of the travellers who were journeying in them. At length they arrived at the fork of the valley.
Yes, it appeared to him that it was the schoolmaster's Annette, whom he had once kissed whilst dancing; but it was not Annette and yet he had seen her before perhaps in Grindelwald, on the evening when he returned from the shooting-festival at Interlaken. "Where do you come from?" asked he. "I am at home," said she, "I tend my flock!" "Your flock, where do they pasture?
"The prospect, which embraced the whole valley, was magnificent. We could perceive the châlets of Grindelwald, like miniatures sprinkled over the greensward. My guides exclaimed, 'Ah, it is from the height of the heavens that we behold our wives! And we continued our ascent, leaving beneath us the clouds floating everywhere like grey scarves.
There are few sights more pleasant than that of two families bound together by the ties of friendship and affection, and living together as though they were all brothers and sisters of a common home. For long years afterwards the Homes and the Kennedys looked back on those days at Grindelwald as among the happiest of their lives, and, indeed, they glided by like a dream of unbroken pleasure.
Then were the houses of the rebels ransacked, and their cattle, goods and possessions, and whatever property belonged to the Unterwaldeners in the canton were taken and confiscated to the city of Bern, though afterward through pity much was given back again to women and children. Hereupon some arrived from Halse, Brienz, Grindelwald, Habkeren and Rinkenberg in chains.
"Once below these slopes of snow," says the journal of young de Pourtales again, "rocks almost vertical, or narrow ledges covered with grass, served us as a road and brought us to the glacier of the Grindelwald.
From Berne over Lake Thun, from the Rhône Valley over the Gemmi or through the Simmenthal come the tourists, seeing as they come the white peaks of the Oberland. And Interlaken welcomes them all, and rests them for their closer relations with the High Alps by trips to the region of the Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, and Mürren, and the great mountain plateaux looking down upon them.
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