bloomed by the wayside.

Richard regarded me for a long while in silence, and at last said,
"Father, I know what it is that moves your soul. Let it content you
that you did so much to make her life a lovely one."

On those heights, where no plant can live, where no bird sings, where
nothing can be heard but the rushing of the snow currents, where the
fragments of rocks lay bare and bleak, and eternal snows fill the
ravines, I felt as if I were floating in eternity--released from all
that belonged to earth--and I called out her name--"Gustava!"

Ah, if one could wait until death should overtake him in this cold,
bleak region, where naught that has life can endure.

I went on, and met people who had pitched their dwellings in lofty
spots, in order to shelter and entertain tourists. My heart seemed
congealed; but I can yet remember where I was when it again thawed into
life. Neither the lofty mountains nor the mighty landscape helped me. I
sat by the roadside and saw a little bush growing from among the
rubble-stones and bearing the blue flowers called snakeweed. And it was
there that I became myself again.

But look! A bee comes flying towards the bush. She bends down into the
open blossoms; she overlooks none of them, from the top to the bottom
of the bush, but seems to find nothing, and flies off to another
flower. On the next branch she sucks for a long while from every
flower-cup.

A second bee, apparently a younger one, approaches. She, too, tries
flower after flower, and does not know that some one has been there
before her. At last, however, she seems to become aware of the fact,
and skips two or three of the blossoms until she at last finds one that
contains nourishment for her.

Here by the wayside, just as up above where human footsteps do not
reach, there grows a flower that blooms for itself, and yet bears
within it nourishment for another.

I do not know how long I may have been seated there, but when I arose I
felt that life had returned to me, and that I was in full sympathy with
all that was firmly rooted in the earth or freely moving upon its
surface.

My soul had been closed to the world, but was now again open to the air
and the sunshine of existence. From that moment, I felt the spell of
the lofty peaks and lovely scenery, and, yielding to it, at last became
absorbed in self-communion.

I was again living in unconstrained and cheerful intercourse with human
beings; and indeed I could not,