student
had joined them. Their simple history was easily divined. He, a noble,
loved the fair daughter of the poor musician, and followed them in their
flight from the persecutions of his friends; but soon the mighty leveller
came with unblunted scythe to mow, together with the grass, the tall
flowers of the field. The youth was an early victim. She preserved herself
for her father's sake. His blindness permitted her to continue a delusion,
at first the child of accident--and now solitary beings, sole survivors
in the land, he remained unacquainted with the change, nor was aware that
when he listened to his child's music, the mute mountains, senseless lake,
and unconscious trees, were, himself excepted, her sole auditors.

The very day that we arrived she had been attacked by symptomatic illness.
She was paralyzed with horror at the idea of leaving her aged, sightless
father alone on the empty earth; but she had not courage to disclose the
truth, and the very excess of her desperation animated her to surpassing
exertions. At the accustomed vesper hour, she led him to the chapel; and,
though trembling and weeping on his account, she played, without fault in
time, or error in note, the hymn written to celebrate the creation of the
adorned earth, soon to be her tomb.

We came to her like visitors from heaven itself; her high-wrought courage;
her hardly sustained firmness, fled with the appearance of relief. With a
shriek she rushed towards us, embraced the knees of Adrian, and uttering
but the words, "O save my father!" with sobs and hysterical cries, opened
the long-shut floodgates of her woe.

Poor girl!--she and her father now lie side by side, beneath the high
walnut-tree where her lover reposes, and which in her dying moments she had
pointed out to us. Her father, at length aware of his daughter's danger,
unable to see the changes of her dear countenance, obstinately held her
hand, till it was chilled and stiffened by death. Nor did he then move or
speak, till, twelve hours after, kindly death took him to his breakless
repose. They rest beneath the sod, the tree their monument;--the hallowed
spot is distinct in my memory, paled in by craggy Jura, and the far,
immeasurable Alps; the spire of the church they frequented still points
from out the embosoming trees; and though her hand be cold, still methinks
the sounds of divine music which they loved wander about, solacing their
gentle ghosts.

[1] Burke's Reflections