She and her daughter remained with us about a week.  We sought diversion in excursions to the beautiful Valais, but did not succeed in dispelling Frau Hitter’s sadness of heart, caused by the knowledge of recent events of which she had now been informed, as well as by her anxiety at the course my life was taking.  As I afterwards learned, it had cost the nervous, delicate woman a great effort to undertake this journey, and when I urged her to leave her house to come and settle in Switzerland with her family, so that we might all be united, she at last pointed out to me that in proposing what seemed to her such an eccentric undertaking, I was counting upon a strength and energy she no longer possessed.  For the present she commended her son, whom she wished to leave with me, to my care, and gave me the necessary means to keep us both for the time being.  Regarding the state of her fortune, she told me that her income was limited, and now that it was impossible to accept any help from the Laussots, she did not know how she would be able to come to my assistance sufficiently to assure my independence.  Deeply moved, we took leave of this venerable woman at the end of a week, and she returned to Dresden with her daughter, and I never saw her again.

Still bent upon discovering a means of disappearing from the world, I thought of choosing a wild mountain spot where I could retire with Karl.  For this purpose we sought the lonely Visper Thal in the canton Valais, and not without difficulty made our way along the impracticable roads to Zermatt.  There, at the foot of the colossal and beautiful Matterhorn, we could indeed consider ourselves cut off from the outer world.  I tried to make things as comfortable as I could in this primitive wilderness, but discovered only too soon that Karl could not reconcile himself to his surroundings.  Even on the second day he owned that he thought it horrid, and suggested that it would be more pleasant in the neighbourhood of one of the lakes.  We studied the map of Switzerland, and chose Thun for our next destination.  Unfortunately I again found myself reduced to a state of extreme nervous fatigue, in which the slightest effort produced a profuse and weakening perspiration.  Only by the greatest strength of will was I able to make my way out of the valley; but at last we reached Thun, and with renewed courage engaged a couple of modest but cheerful rooms looking out on to the road, and proposed to wait and see how we should like it.  In spite of the reserve which still betrayed his shyness of character, I found conversation with my young friend always pleasant and enlivening.  I now realised the pitch of fluent and overflowing vivacity to which the young man could attain, particularly at night before retiring to rest, when he would squat down beside my bed, and in the agreeable, pure dialect of the German Baltic provinces, give free expression to whatever had excited his interest.  I was exceedingly cheered