A LITTLE SWISS SOJOURN

 BY W. D. HOWELLS

 ILLUSTRATED

 NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1893

ILLUSTRATIONS

_Tourists at Montreux_ (frontispiece)

_Sign of the White Cross Inn_

_Entrance to Villeneuve_

_Post-office, Villeneuve_

_The Castle of Chillon_

_A Railroad Servant_

_A Bit of Villeneuve_

_The Prisoner of Chillon_

_One of the Fountains_

_"They helped to make the hay in the marshes"_

_Cattle at the Fountains_

_Washing Clothes in the Lake_

_Flirtation at the Fountains_

_The Wine-press_

_Castle of Aigle_

_The Market at Vevay_

_The Market, Vevay--A Bargain before the Notary_

_Germans at Montreux_

_Church Terrace, Montreux_

_Tour up the Lake_

A LITTLE SWISS SOJOURN

First Paper

[Illustration: _Sign of the White Cross Inn_]

I

Out of eighty or ninety days that we passed in Switzerland there musthave been at least ten that were fair, not counting the forenoons beforeit began to rain, and the afternoons when it cleared up. They said thatit was an unusually rainy autumn, and we could well believe it; yet Isuspect that it rains a good deal in that little corner of the CantonVaud even when the autumn is only usually rainy. We arrived late inSeptember and came away early in December, and during that time we hadneither the fevers that raged in France nor the floods that raged inItaly. We Vaudois were rather proud of that, but whether we had muchelse to be proud of I am not so certain. Of course we had our Alpinescenery, and when the day was fair the sun came loafing up over theeastern mountains about ten o'clock in the morning, and lounged downbehind the western tops about half-past three, after dinner. But then heleft the eternal snows of the Dent-du-Midi all flushed with his light, and in the mean time he had glittered for five hours on the "_bleuimpossible_" of the Lake of Geneva, and had shown in a hundred changinglights and shadows the storied and sentimentalized towers of the Castleof Chillon. Solemn groups and ranks of Swiss and Savoyard Alps hemmedthe lake in as far as the eye could reach, and the lateen-sailed craftlent it their picturesqueness, while the steamboats constantly makingits circuit and stopping at all the little towns on the shores imparteda pleasant modern interest to the whole effect, which the trains of therailroad running under the lee of the castle agreeably heightened. 

II

The Swiss railroad was always an object of friendly amusement with thechildren, who could not get used to having the trains started by a smallChristmas-horn. They had not entirely respected the English engine, withthe shrill falsetto of its whistle, after the burly roar of ourlocomotives; and the boatswain's pipe of the French conductor hadconsiderably diminished the dignity of a sister republic in their minds;but this Christmas-horn was too droll. That a grown man, much moreimposingly uniformed than an American general, should blow it to start areal train of cars was the source of patriotic sarcasm whenever itsplaintive, reedy note was heard. We had come straight through fromLondon, taking the sleeping-car at Calais, and rolling and bounding overthe road towards Basle in a fashion that provoked scornful comparisonswith the Pullman that had carried us so smoothly from Boston to Buffalo. It is well to be honest, even to our own adulation, and one must confessthat the sleeping-car of the European continent is but the nervous andhysterical daughter of the American mother of sleeping-cars. Manyexpress trains are run without any sleeper, and the charges for berthsare ludicrously extravagant--five dollars apiece for a single night. Itis not strange that the native prefers to doze away the nightbolt-upright, or crouched into the corners of his repellently paddedcarriage, rather than toss upon the expensive pallet of thesleeping-car, which seems hung rather with a view to affordinginvoluntary exercise than promoting dear-bought slumber. One advantageof it is that if you have to leave the car at five o'clock in themorning, you are awake and eager to do so long before that time. At thefirst Swiss station we quitted it to go to Berne, which was one of thethree points where I was told by the London railway people that mybaggage would be examined. I forget the second, but the third was Berne, and now at Delemont I looked about for the customs officers with theanxiety which the thought of them always awakens in the human heart, whether one has meant to smuggle or not. Even the good conscience maysuffer from the upturning of a well-packed trunk. But nobody wanted toexamine our baggage at Delemont, or at the other now-forgotten station;and at Berne, though I labored hard in several dialects with all therailway officials, I could not get them to open one of our ten trunks orfive valises. I was so resolute in the matter that I had some difficultyto keep from opening them myself and levying duty upon their contents. 

III

It was the first but not the last disappointment we suffered inSwitzerland. A friend in London had congratulated us upon going to theVaud in the grape season. "For thruppence, " he said, "they will let yougo into the vineyards and eat all the grapes you can hold. " Arrived uponthe ground, we learned that it was six francs fine to touch a grape inthe vineyards; that every field had a watch set in it, who popped upbetween the vines from time to time, and interrogated the vicinity withan eye of sleepless vigilance; and that small boys of suspiciouscharacter, whose pleasure or business took them through a vineyard, wereobliged to hold up their hands as they passed, like the victims of a FarWestern road agency. As the laws and usages governing the grape culturerun back to the time of the Romans, who brought the vine into the Vaud, I was obliged to refer my friend's legend of cheapness and freedom to anearlier period, whose customs we could not profit by. In point of fact, I could buy more grapes for thruppence in London than in the Vaud; andthe best grapes we had in Switzerland were some brought from Italy, andsold at a franc a pound in Montreux to the poor foreigners who had cometo feast upon the wealth of the local vineyards. 

It was the rain that spoiled the grapes, they said at Montreux, andwherever we complained; and indeed the vines were a dismal show ofsterility and blight, even to the spectator who did not venture nearenough to subject himself to a fine of six francs. The foreigners hadprotected themselves in large numbers by not coming, and the natives whoprosper upon them suffered. The stout lady who kept a small shop ofivory carvings at Montreux continually lamented their absence to me:"Die Fremden kommen nicht, dieses regenes Wetter! Man muss Geduldthaben! Die Fremden kommen nicht!" She was from Interlaken, and theaccents of her native dialect were flavored with the strong waters whichshe seemed always to have been drinking, and she put her face close upto that of the good, all-sympathizing Amerikaner who alone patronizedher shop, and talked her sorrows loudly into him, so that he should notmisunderstand. 

[Illustration: _Entrance to Villeneuve_]

IV

But one must not be altogether unreasonable. When we first came in sightof the lake the rain lifted, and the afternoon sun gushed out upon aworld of vineyards. In other words, the vines clothe all the littlelevels and vast slopes of the mountain-sides as far up as the cold willlet the grapes grow. There is literally almost no other cultivation, andit is a very pretty sight. On top of the mountains are the chalets withtheir kine, and at a certain elevation the milk and the wine meet, whilebelow is the water of the lake, so good to mix with both. I do not knowthat the Swiss use it for that purpose, but there are countries wheresomething of the sort would be done. 

When the train put us down at Villeneuve, among railway people asindifferent as our own at country stations, and much crosser and moresnubbing, the demand for grapes began with the party who remained withthe baggage, while a party of the second part went off to find the_pension_ where we were to pass the next three months. The grape-seekersstrolled up the stony, steaming streets of the little town, asking forgrapes right and left, at all the shops, in their imperfect French, andreturned to the station with a paper of gingerbread which they hadbought at a jeweller's. I do not know why this artist should have had itfor sale, but he must have had it a long time, for it was denselyinhabited. Afterwards we found two shops in Villeneuve where they hadthe most delicious _petits gâteaux_, fresh every day, and nothing butthe mania for unattainable grapes prevented the first explorers fromseeing them. 

In the mean time the party of the second part had found the pension--apretty stone villa overlooking the lake, under the boughs of tallwalnut-trees, on the level of a high terrace. Laurel and holly hemmed itin on one side, and southward spread a pleasant garden full of roses andimperfectly ripening fig-trees. In the rear the vineyards climbed themountains in irregular breadths to the belt of walnuts, beyond whichwere only forests and pastures. I heard the roar of the torrent thatfoamed down the steep; the fountain plashed under the group of laurelsat the kitchen door; the roses dripped all round the house; and the lakelapped its shores below. Decidedly there was a sense of wet. 

The house, which had an Italian outside covered with jasmine andwistarias, confessed the North within. There was a huge hall stove, notyet heated, but on the hearth of the pleasant salon an acceptable fireof little logs was purring. Beside it sat a lady reading, and at a tableher daughter was painting flowers. A little Italian, a very littleEnglish, a good deal of French, helped me to understand thatmademoiselle the landlady was momentarily absent, that the season wasexceptionally bad, and that these ladies were glad of the sunshine whichwe were apparently bringing with us. They spoke with those Suissessevoices, which are the sweetest and most softly modulated voices in theworld, whether they come from the throat of peasant or of lady, and canmake a transaction in eggs and butter in the market-place as musical aschanted verse. To the last these voices remained a delight, and thememory of them made most Italian women's voices a pang when we heardthem afterwards. 

V

At first we were the only people in the house besides these Swiss ladiesand their son and brother, but later there came two ladies fromStrasburg, and with them our circle was complete at the table and aroundthe evening lamp in the drawing-room. I am bound to say for the circle, outside of ourselves, that it was a cultivated and even intellectualcompany, with traits that provoked unusual sympathy and interest. Butthose friendly people are quite their own property, and I have nointention of compelling them to an involuntary celebrity in these pages, much as I should like to impart their quality to my narrative. In theStrasbourgeoises we encountered again that pathos of an insulted anddown-trodden nationality which had cast its melancholy over our Veniceof Austrian days. German by name and by origin, these ladies wereintensely French in everything else. They felt themselves doomed toexile in their own country, they abhorred their Prussian masters, andthey had no name for Bismarck that was bad enough. Our Swiss, indeed, hated him almost as bitterly. Their sympathies had been wholly with theFrench, and they could not repress a half-conscious dread of hisprinciple of race nationality, which would be fatal to Switzerland, oneneither in race nor religion, but hitherto indivisible in her ancientfreedom. While he lives this fear can never die in Swiss hearts, forthey know that if he will, he can, in a Europe where he is the only realpower. 

Mademoiselle sat at the chief place of the table, and led the talk, imparting to it a flavor of humorous good sense very characteristic. Thevilla had been her father's country-house, and it abounded in ascholar's accumulations of old books in divers languages. She herselfknew literature widely in the better way that it was once read. Thememories of many years spent in Florence made common Italian ground forus, and she spoke English perfectly. 

As I wish to give a complete notion of our household, so far as it maybe honestly set down, I will add that the domestics were three. Two ofthem, the cook and the housemaid, were German Swiss, of middle class, who had taken service to earn what money they could, but mainly to learnFrench, after the custom of their country, where the young people of aFrench or Italian canton would in like manner resort to a Germanprovince. The third was Louis, a native, who spoke his own _patois_, andfound it sufficient for the expression of his ideas. He was chieflyemployed about the grounds; in-doors his use was mostly to mount thepeculiar clogs used for the purpose, and rub the waxed floors till theyshone. These floors were very handsome, of hard woods prettily inlaid;and Louis produced an effect upon them that it seemed a pity to mar withmuddy shoes. 

I do not speak of Alexis, the farmer, who appeared in domesticexigencies; but my picture would be incomplete without the portrait ofPoppi. Poppi was the large house-dog, who in early life had intended tocall himself Puppy, but he naturally pronounced it with a French accent. He was now far from young, but he was still Poppi. I believe he was themore strictly domestic in his habits because an infirmity of temper hadbetrayed him into an attack upon a neighbor, or a neighbor's dog, and itwas no longer safe for him to live much out-of-doors. The confinementhad softened his temper, but it had rendered him effeminate andself-indulgent. He had, in fact, been spoiled by the boarders, and henow expected to be present at meals, and to be fed with choice morselsfrom their plates. As the cold weather came on he developed rheumatism, and demanded our sympathy as well as our hospitality. If Elise inwaiting on table brushed him with her skirts, he set up a lamentablecry, and rushed up to the nearest guest, and put his chin on the tablefor his greater convenience in being comforted. At a dance which we hadone evening Poppi insisted upon being present, and in his efforts tokeep out of the way and in the apprehensions he suffered he abandonedhimself to moans and howls that sometimes drowned the piano. 

Yet Poppi was an amiable invalid, and he was on terms ofperfect friendship with the cats, of which there were threegenerations--Boulette, Boulette's mother, and Boulette's grandmother. They were not readily distinguishable from one another, and I reallyforget which it was that used to mount to the dining-room windowwithout, and paw the glass till we let her in; but we all felt that itwas a great accomplishment, and reflected credit upon us. 

VI

The vineyard began immediately behind the laurels that enclosed thehouse, and at a little distance, where the mountain began to lift fromthe narrow plateau, stood the farmer's stone cottage, with the stablesand the wine-vaults under the same roof. Mademoiselle gave us grapesfrom her vines at dinner, and the walnut-trees seemed public property, though I think one was not allowed to knock the nuts off, but was onlyfree of the windfalls. A little later they were all gathered, and on acertain night the girls and the young men of the village have the customto meet and make a frolic of cracking them, as they used in husking cornwith us. Then the oil is pressed out, and the commune apportions eachfamily its share, according to the amount of nuts contributed. This nutoil imparts a sentiment to salad which the olive cannot give, andmushrooms pickled in it become the most delicious and indigestible ofall imaginable morsels. I have had dreams from those pickled mushroomswhich, if I could write them out, would make my fortune as a romanticnovelist. 

The Swiss breakfast was our old friend the Italian breakfast, withbutter and Gruyère cheese added to the milk and coffee. We dined at oneo'clock, and at six or seven we supped upon a meal that had left offsoup and added tea, in order to differ from the dinner. For all this, with our rooms, we paid what we should have paid at a New Hampshirefarm-house; that is, a dollar a day each. 

But the air was such as we could not have got in New Hampshire for twicethe money. It restored one completely every twenty-four hours, and itnot only stimulated but supported one throughout the day. Our own air isquite as exciting, but after stirring one up, it leaves him to take theconsequences, whereas that faithful Swiss air stood by and helped outthe enterprise. I rose fresh from my forenoon's writing and eager towalk; I walked all afternoon, and came in perfectly fresh to supper. Onecan't speak too well of the Swiss air, whatever one says of the Swisssun. 

[Illustration: _Post-office, Villeneuve_]

VII

Whenever it came out, or rather whenever the rain stopped, we pursuedour explorations of the neighborhood. It had many interesting features, among which was the large Hôtel Byron, very attractive and almost empty, which we passed every day on our way to the post-office in Villeneuve, and noted two pretty American shes in eye-glasses playing croquet amidthe wet shrubbery, as resolutely cheerful and as young-manless as ifthey had been in some mountain resort of our own. In the other directionthere were simple villas dropped along the little levels and ledges, andvineyards that crept to the road's edge everywhere. There was also acement factory, busy and prosperous; and to make us quite at home, asaw-mill. Above all, there was the Castle of Chillon; and one of thefirst Sundays after our arrival we descended the stone staircased stepsof our gardened terrace, dripping with ivy and myrtle, and picked oursteps over the muddy road to the old prison-fortress, where, in theancient chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, we heard an excellent sermon fromthe _pasteur_ of our parish. The castle was perhaps a bow-shot from ourpension: I did not test the distance, having left my trusty cross-bowand cloth-yard shafts in Boston; but that is my confirmed guess. Inpoint of time it is much more remote, for, as the reader need not bereminded, it was there, or some castle like it, almost from thebeginning, or at least from the day when men first began to fight forthe possession of the land. The lake-dwellers are imagined to have hadsome sort of stronghold there; and it is reasonably supposed thatRomans, Franks, and Burgundians had each fortified the rock. Count Wala, cousin of Charlemagne, and grandson of Charles Martel, was a prisoner inits dungeon in 830 for uttering some words too true for an ageunaccustomed to the perpetual veracity of our newspapers. Count Wala, who was also an abbot, had the misfortune to speak of Judith of Bavariaas "the adulterous woman, " and when her husband, Louis le Debonair, cameback to the throne after the conspiracy of his sons, the lady naturallywanted Wala killed; but Louis compromised by throwing him into the rockof Chillon. This is what Wala's friends say: others say that he was oneof the conspirators against Louis. At any rate, he was the first greatcaptive of Chillon, which was a political prison as long as politicalprisoners were needed in Switzerland. That is now a good while ago. 

[Illustration: _The Castle of Chillon_]

Chillon fell to the princes of the house of Savoy in 1033, and CountPeter, whom they nicknamed Little Charlemagne for his prowess and hisconquests, built the present castle, after which the barons of the Paysde Vaud and the Duke of Cophingen (whoever he may have been) besiegedPeter in it. Perhaps they might have taken him. But the wine was sogood, and the pretty girls of the country were so fond of dancing! Theyforgot themselves in these delights. All at once Little Charlemagne wasupon them. He leaves his force at Chillon, and goes by night to spy outthe enemy at Villeneuve, returning at dawn to his people. He came backvery gayly; when they saw him so joyous, "What news?" they asked. "Fineand good, " he answers; "for, by God's help, if you will behaveyourselves well, the enemy is ours. " To which they cried with one voice, "Seigneur, you have but to command. " They fell upon the barons and theduke, and killed a gratifying number of their followers, carrying therest back to Chillon, where Peter "used them not as prisoners, butfeasted them honorably. Much was the spoil and great the booty. "

Afterwards Peter lost the castle, and in retaking it he launched fiftythousand shafts and arrows against it. "The castle was not then anisolated point of rock as we now see it, but formed part of a group ofdefences. "

VIII

Two or three centuries later--how quickly all those stupid, cruel, wearyyears pass under the pen!--the spirit of liberty and protestantism beganto stir in the heads and hearts of the burghers of Berne and of Geneva. A Savoyard, Francis de Bonivard, prior of St. Victor, sympathized withthem. He was noble, accomplished, high-placed, but he loved freedom ofthought and act. Yet when a deputation of reformers came to him foradvice, he said: "It is to be wished, without doubt, that the evilshould be cast out of our midst, provided that the good enters. You burnto reform our Church; certainly it needs it; but how can you reform it, deformed as you are? You complain that the monks and priests arebuffoons; and you are buffoons; that they are gamblers and drunkards, and you are the same. Does the hate you bear them come from differenceor likeness? You intend to overthrow our clergy and replace them byevangelical ministers. That would be a very good thing in itself, but avery bad thing for you, because you have no happiness but in thepleasures the priests allow you. The ministers wish to abolish vice, butthere is where you will suffer most, and after having hated the priestsbecause they are so much like you, you will hate their successorsbecause they are so little like you. You will not have had them twoyears before you will put them down. Meanwhile, if you trust me, do oneof two things: if you wish to remain deformed, as you are, do not wonderthat others are like you; or, if you wish to reform them, begin byshowing them how. "

[Illustration: _A Railroad Servant_]

This was very odd language to use to a deputation of reformers, but Iconfess that it endears the memory of Bonivard to me. He was athoroughly charming person, and not at all wise in his actions. Throughmere folly he fell twice into the hands of his enemies, suffered twoyears' imprisonment, and lost his priory. To get it back he laid siegeto it with six men and a captain. The siege was a failure. He trustedhis enemy, the duke, and was thrown into Chillon, where he remained asort of guest of the governor for two years. The duke visited the castleat the end of that time. "Then the captain threw me into a vault lowerthan the lake, where I remained four years. I do not know whether it wasby order of the duke or from his own motion, but I do know that I thenhad so much leisure for walking that I wore in the rock which formed thefloor of the dungeon a _pathlet_ [_vionnet_], or little path, as if onehad beaten it out with a hammer. " He was fastened by a chain four feetin length to one of the beautiful Gothic pillars of the vault, and youstill see where this gentle scholar, this sweet humorist, this wise andlenient philosopher, paced to and fro those weary years like a restlessbeast--a captive wolf, or a bear in his pit. But his soul was never inprison. As he trod that _vionnet_ out of the stone he meditated upon hisreading, his travels, the state of the Church and its reform, politics, the origin of evil. "His reflections often lifted him above men andtheir imperfect works; often, too, they were marked by that scepticismwhich knowledge of the human heart inspires. 'When one considers thingswell, ' he said, 'one finds that it is easier to destroy the evil than toconstruct the good. This world being fashioned like an ass's back, thefardel that you would balance in the middle will not stay there, buthangs over on the other side. '"

Bonivard was set free by the united forces of Berne and Geneva, preaching political and religious liberty by the cannon's mouth, as hashad so often to happen. That too must have seemed droll to Bonivard whenhe came to think it over in his humorous way. "The epoch of theRenaissance and the Reformation was that of strong individualities andundaunted characters. But let no one imagine a resemblance between theprior of St. Victor and the great rebels his contemporaries, Luther, Zwinglius, and Calvin. Like them he was one of the learned men of histime; like them he learned to read the Evangels, and saw their lightdisengage itself from the trembling gleams of tradition; but beyond thathe has nothing in common with them. Bonivard is not a hero; he is notmade to obey or to command; he is an artist, a kind of poet, who treatshigh matters of theology in a humorous spirit; prompt of repartee, gifted with happy dash; his irony has lively point, and he likes toseason the counsels of wisdom with _sauce piquante_ and rusticbonhomie. .. . He prepares the way for Calvin, while having nothing of theCalvinist; he is gay, he is jovial; he has, even when he censures, Iknow not what air of gentleness that wins your heart. "

[Illustration: _A Bit of Villeneuve_]

IX

This and all the rest that I know of Bonivard I learn from a charminghistorical and topographical study of Montreux and its neighborhood, byMM. Rambert, Lebert, etc. ; and I confess it at once, for fear some oneelse shall find me out by simply buying the book there. It leaves youlittle ground for classifying Bonivard with the great reformers, but itleaves you still less for identifying him historically with Byron'sgreat melodramatic Prisoner of Chillon. If the Majority have somewherethat personal consciousness without which they are the Nonentity, onecan fancy the liberal scholar, the humorous philosopher, meeting theromantic poet, and protesting against the second earthly captivity thathe has delivered him over to. Nothing could be more alien to Bonivardthan the character of Byron's prisoner; and all that equipment of sixsupposititious brothers, who perish one by one to intensify hissufferings, is, it must be confessed, odious and ridiculous when youthink of the lonely yet cheerful sceptic pacing his _vionnet_, andcomposing essays and verses as he walked. Prisoner for prisoner, even ifboth were real, the un-Byronic Bonivard is much more to my mind. But thepoet had to make a Byronic Bonivard, being of the romantic time he was, and we cannot blame him. The love of his sentimentality pervades theregion; they have named the nearest hotel after him, and there is a_Sentier Byron_ leading up to it. But, on the other hand, they havecalled one of the lake steamboats after Bonivard, which, upon the whole, I should think would be more satisfactory to him than the poem. At anyrate, I should prefer it in his place. 

X

The fine Gothic chapel where we heard our pasteur preach was whitewashedout of all memory of any mural decoration that its earlier religion mayhave given it; but the gloss of the whitewash was subdued by the dimlight that stole in through the long slits of windows. We sat uponnarrow wooden seats so very hard that I hope the old dukes and theircourt were protected by good stout armor against their obduracy, andthat they had not to wait a quarter of an hour for the holy father tocome walking up the railroad track, as we had for our pasteur. Therewere but three men in the congregation that day, and all the rest wereSuissesses, with the hard, pure, plain faces their sex wear mostly inthat country. The choir sat in two rows of quaintly carved seats on eachside of the pulpit, and the school-master of the village led thesinging, tapping his foot to keep time. The pastor, delicate and wan offace, and now no longer living, I came afterwards to know better, and torespect greatly for his goodness and good sense. His health had beenbroken by the hard work of a mountain parish, and he had vainly spenttwo winters in Nice. Now he was here as the assistant of thesuperannuated pastor of Villeneuve, who had a salary of $600 a year fromthe Government; but how little our preacher had I dare not imagine, orwhat the pastor of the Free Church was paid by his parishioners. M. P---- was a man of culture far above that of the average New Englandcountry minister of this day; probably he was more like a New Englandminister of the past, but with more of the air of the world. He wore theGenevan bands and gown, and represented in that tabernacle of theancient faith the triumph of "the Religion" with an effectiveness thatwas heightened by the hectic brightness of his gentle, spiritual eyes;and he preached a beautiful sermon from the beautiful text, "Sufferlittle children, " teaching us that they were the types, not the models, of Christian perfection. There was first a prayer, which he read; then ahymn, and one of the Psalms; then the sermon, very simply and decorouslydelivered; then another hymn, and prayer. Here, and often again inSwitzerland, the New England that is past or passing was recalled to me;these Swiss are like the people of our hill country in their faith, aswell as their hard, laborious lives; only they sang with sweeter voicesthan our women. 

The wood-carving of the chapel, which must have been of the fourteenthcentury or earlier, was delightfully grotesque, and all the queerer forits contrast with the Protestant, the Calvinistic, whitewash which oneof our fellow-boarders found here in the chapel and elsewhere in thecastle _un peu vulgaire_--as if he were a Boston man. But the wholeplace was very clean, and up the corner of one of the courts ran a stripof Virginia-creeper, which the Swiss call the Canada vine, blood-redwith autumn. There was also a rose-tree sixty years old stretching itsarms abroad, over the ancient masonry, and feeling itself still young inthat sheltered place. 

We saw it when we came later to do the whole castle, and to revere thedungeon where Bonivard wore his _vionnet_ in the rock. I will nottrouble the reader with much about the Hall of Justice and the Chamberof Tortures opening out of it, with the pulley for the rack formerlyused in cross-questioning prisoners. These places were very interesting, and so were the bedchambers of the duke and duchess, and the great Hallof the Knights. The wells or pits, armed round with knife points, against which the prisoner struck when hurled down through them into thelake, have long had their wicked throats choked with sand; and the bedhewn out of the rock, where the condemned slept the night beforeexecution, is no longer used for that purpose--possibly because the onlyprisoners now in Chillon are soldiers punished for such social offencesas tipsiness. But the place was all charmingly mediæval, and the more sofor a certain rudeness of decoration. The artistic merit was purelyarchitectural, and this made itself felt perhaps most distinctly in theprison vaults, which Longfellow pronounced "the most delightful dungeon"he had ever seen. A great rose-tree overhung the entrance, and within wefound them dry, wholesome, and picturesque. The beautiful Gothic pillarsrose like a living growth from the rock, out of which the vault was halfhewn; but the iron rings to which the prisoners were chained still hungfrom them. The columns were scribbled full of names, and Byron's wasamong the rest. The _vionnet_ of Bonivard was there, beside one of thepillars, plain enough, worn two inches deep and three feet long in thehard stone. Words cannot add to the pathos of it. 

[Illustration: _The Prisoner of Chillon_]

XI

Nothing could be more nobly picturesque than the outside of Chillon. Itsbase is beaten by the waves of the lake, to which it presents widemasses of irregularly curving wall, pierced by narrow windows, andsurmounted by Mansard-roofs. Wild growths of vines and shrubs break thebroad surfaces of the wall, and out of the shoulders of one of thetowers springs a tall young fir-tree. The water at its base is intenselyblue and unfathomably deep. This is what nature has done; as for men, they have hugely painted the lakeward wall of the castle with the armsof the Canton Vaud, which are nearly as ugly as the arms of Ohio; andthey have wrought into the roof of the tallest tower with tiles of apaler tint the word "Chillon, " so that you cannot possibly mistake itfor any other castle. 

[Illustration: _One of the Fountains_]

XII

First and last, we hung about Chillon a good deal, both by land and bywater. For the latter purpose we had to hire a boat; and deceived by thefact that the owner spoke a Latin dialect, I attempted to beat him downfrom his demand of a franc an hour. "It's too much, " I cried. "It's theprice, " he answered, laconically. Clearly I was to take it or leave it, and I took it. We did not find our fellow-republicans flatteringlypolite, but we found them firm, and, for all I know, honest. At leastthey seemed as honest as we were, and that is saying a great deal. Whatstruck us from the beginning was the surliness of the men and theindustry of the women; and I am persuaded that the Swiss Government isreally carried on by the house-keeping sex. At any rate, the postmasterof Villeneuve was a woman; her little girl brought the mail up from therailway station in a hand-cart, and her old mother helped her tounderstand my French. They were rather cross about it, and one day, withthe assistance of a child in arms, they defeated me in an attempt I madeto get a postal order. I dare say they thought it quite a triumph; butit was not so very much to be proud of. At that period my French, alwaysspoken with the Venetian accent of the friend with whom I had studied itmany years before, was taking on strange and wilful characteristics, which would have disabled me in the presence of a much less formidableforce. I think the only person really able to interpret me was theamiable mistress of the Croix Blanche, to whose hostelry I went everyday for my after-dinner coffee. She knew what I wanted whenever I askedfor it, and I simplified my wants so as to meet her in the same spirit. The inn stood midway of the village street that for hundreds of yardsfollowed the curve of the lake shore with its two lines of high stonehouses. At one end of it stood a tower springing out of an almostfabulous past; then you came to the first of three plashing fountains, where cattle were always drinking, and bareheaded girls washingvegetables for the pot. Aloft swung the lamps that lighted the village, on ropes stretching across the street. I believe some distinction wasascribed to Villeneuve for the antiquity of this method ofstreet-lighting. There were numbers of useful shops along the street, which wandered out into the country on the levels of the Rhone, wherethe mountains presently shut in so close that there was scarcely roomfor the railway to get through. What finally became of the highway Idon't know. One day I tried to run it down, but after a long chase I wasglad to get myself brought back in a diligence from the next village. 

[Illustration: _"They helped to make the hay in the marshes"_]

The road became a street and ceased to be so with an abruptness thatadmitted nothing of suburban hesitation or compromise, and Villeneuve, as far as it went, was a solid wall of houses on either side. It wascalled Villeneuve because it was so very, very old; and in the levelbeyond it is placed the scene of the great Helvetian victory over theRomans, when the Swiss made their invaders pass under the yoke. I do notknow that Villeneuve witnessed that incident, but it looks and smellsold enough to have done so. It is reasonably picturesque in asemi-Italian, semi-French fashion, but it is to the nose that it makesits chief appeal. Every house has a cherished manure heap in its backyard, symmetrically shaped, with the projecting edges of the strawneatly braided: it is a source of family pride as well as profit. But itis chiefly the odor of world-old human occupation, otherwiseindescribable, that pervades the air of Villeneuve, and makes themildest of foreign sojourners long for the application of a littledynamite to its ancient houses. Our towns are perhaps the ugliest in theworld, but how open to the sun and wind they are! how free, how pure, how wholesome!

On week-days a cart sometimes passed through Villeneuve with a mostdisproportionate banging over the cobble-stones, but usually the wallsreverberated the soft tinkle of cow-bells as the kine wound through frompasture to pasture and lingered at the fountains. On Sundays the streetwas reasonably full of young men in the peg-top trousers which the Swissstill cling to, making eyes at the girls in the upper windows. Thesewere the only times when I saw women of any age idle. Sometimes throughthe open door I caught a glimpse of a group of them busy with theirwork, while a little girl read to them. Once in a crowded café, wherehalf a hundred men were smoking and drinking and chattering, the girlwho served my coffee put down a volume of Victor Hugo's poems to bringit. But mostly their literary employments did not go beyond driving thecows to pasture and washing clothes in the lake, where they beat thelinen with far-echoing blows of their paddles. They helped to make thehay on the marshes beyond the village, and they greatly outnumbered themen in the labors of the vintage. They were seldom pretty either in faceor figure; they seemed all to have some stage of goitre; but theirmanners were charming, and their voices, as I have said, angelicallysweet. Our pasteur's wife said that there was a great deal of pauperismin Villeneuve, "because of the drunkenness of the men and the disorderof the women;" but I saw only one man drunk in the streets there, andwhat the disorders of the women were I don't know. Possibly their laborsin the field made them poor house-keepers, though this is mereconjecture. Divorce is theoretically easy, but the couple seeking itmust go before a magistrate every four months for two years and insistthat they continue to desire it. This makes it rather uncommon. 

[Illustration: _Cattle at the Fountains_]

If the women were not good-looking, if their lives of toil stunted andcoarsened them, the men, with greater apparent leisure, were nohandsomer. Among the young I noticed the frequency of what may be calledthe republican face--thin and aquiline, whether dark or fair. TheVaudois as I saw them were at no age a merry folk. In the fields theytoiled silently; in the cafés, where they were sufficiently noisy overtheir new wine, they talked without laughter, and without the shrugs andgestures that enliven conversation among other Latin peoples. They had ahard-favored grimness and taciturnity that with their mountain sceneryreminded me of New England now and again, and gave me the bewilderedsense of having dropped down in some little anterior America. But therewas one thing that marked a great difference from our civilization, andthat was the prevalence of uniforms, for which the Swiss have the trueEuropean fondness. This is natural in a people whose men all are or havebeen soldiers; and the war footing on which the little republic isobliged to keep a large force in that ridiculous army-ridden Europe mustlargely account for the abandonment of the peaceful industries to women. But the men are off at the mountain chalets too, and they are away inall lands, keeping hotels, and amassing from the candle-ends of thetravelling public the fortune with which all Swiss hope to return hometo die. 

[Illustration: _Washing Clothes in the Lake_]

XIII

Sometimes the country people I met greeted me, as sometimes they stilldo in New Hampshire, but commonly they passed in silence. I think themountains must have had something to do with hushing the people: far andnear, on every hand, they rise such bulks of silence. The chief of theirstately company was always the Dent-du-Midi, which alone remainsperpetually snow-covered, and which, when not hooded in the rain-bearingmists of that most rainy autumn, gave back the changing light of everyhour with new splendors, though of course it was most beautiful in theearly sunsets. Then its cold snows warmed and softened into somethingsupernally rosy, while all the other peaks were brown and purple, andits vast silence was thrilled with a divine message that spoke to theeye. Across the lake and on its farther shores the mountains were dimlyblue; but nearer, in the first days of our sojourn, they were green totheir tops. Away up there we could see the lofty steeps and slopes ofthe summer pastures, and set low among them the chalets where theherdsmen dwelt. None of the mountains seemed so bare and sterile asMount Washington, and though they were on a sensibly vaster scale thanthe White Mountains generally, I remembered the grandeur of Chocorua andKearsarge in their presence. But my national--not to say myhemispheric--pride suffered a terrible blow as the season advanced. Ihad bragged all my life of the glories of our American autumnal foliage, which I had, in common with the rest of my countrymen, complacentlydenied to all the rest of the world. Yet here, before my very eyes, thesame beautiful miracle was wrought. Day after day the trees on themountain-sides changed, and kindled and softly smouldered in a thousanddelicate hues, till all their mighty flanks seemed draped in themingling dyes of Indian shawls. Shall I own that while this effect wasnot the fiery gorgeousness of our autumn leaves, it was somethingtenderer, richer, more tastefully lovely? Never!

[Illustration: _Flirtation at the Fountains_]

The clouds lowering, and as it were loafing along, among the tops andcrags, were a perpetual amusement, and when the first cold came it wasodd to see a cloud in a sky otherwise clear stoop upon some crest, andafter lingering there awhile drift off about its business, and leave themountain all white with snow. This grew more and more frequent, and atlast, after a long rain, we looked out on the mountains whitened allround us far down their sides, while it was still summer green andsummer bloom in the valley. The moon rose and blackened the mountainsbelow the crags of snow, which shone out above like one of her own deadlandscapes. Slowly the winter descended, snow after snow, keeping a linebeautifully straight along the mountain-sides, till it reached thevalley and put out our garden roses at last. The hard-wood trees losttheir leaves, and stretched dim and brown along the lower ranges; thepines straggled high up into the snows. The Jura, far across the lake;was vaguely roseate, with an effect of perpetual sunset; theDent-du-Midi lost the distinction of its eternal drifts; and the coldnot only descended upon us, but from the frozen hills all round ushemmed us in with a lateral pressure that pierced and chilled to themarrow. The mud froze, and we walked to church dry-shod. It was quitetime to fire the vestibule stove, which, after fighting hard and smokingrebelliously at first, sobered down to its winter work, and affordedPoppi's rheumatism the comfort for which he had longed pined. 

Second Paper

I

The winter and the vintage come on together at Villeneuve, and when thesnows had well covered the mountains around, the grapes in the valleywere declared ripe by an act of the Commune. There had been so much rainand so little sun that their ripeness was hardly attested otherwise. Fully two-thirds of the crop had blackened with blight; the imperfectclusters, where they did not hang sodden and mildewed on the vines, weresmall and sour. It was sorrowful to see them; and when, about the middleof October, the people assembled in the vineyards to gather them, thespectacle had none of that gayety which the poets had taught me toexpect of it. Those poor clusters did not

 "reel to earth Purple and gushing, "

but limply waited the short hooked knife with which the peasants cutthem from their stems; and the peasants, instead of advancing withjocund steps and rustic song to the sound of the lute and tabor andother convenient instruments, met in obedience to public notice dulyposted about the Commune, and set to work, men, women, and childrenalike silent and serious. So many of the grapes are harvested andmanufactured in common that it is necessary the vintage should begin ona fixed day, and no one was allowed to anticipate or postpone. Some cutthe grapes, and dropped them into the flattish wooden barrels, whichothers, after mashing the berries with a long wooden pestle, bore offand emptied frothing and gurgling into big casks mounted on carts. Thesewere then driven into the village, where the mess was poured into thepresses, and the wine crushed out to the last bitter dregs. Thevineyards were a scene of activity, but not hilarity, though a littleway off they looked rather lively with the vintagers at work in them. Weclimbed to one of them far up the mountain-side one day, where a familywere gathering the grapes on a slope almost as steep as a house roof, father, mother, daughter, son-in-law, big boy, and big girl all silentlybusy together. There were bees and wasps humming around the tubs ofcrushed grapes in the pale afternoon sun; the view of the lake and themountains was inspiring; but there was nothing bacchanalian in theaffair, unless the thick calves of the girl, as she bent over to cut theclusters, suggested a Mænad fury. These poor people were quite songless, though I am bound to say that in another vineyard I did hear some of thechildren singing. It had momentarily stopped raining; but it soon beganagain, and the vintage went sorrowfully on in the mud. All Villeneuvesmelt of the harsh juice and pulp arriving from the fields in thewagons, carts, tubs, and barrels which crowded the streets andsidewalks, and in divers cavernous basements the presses were at work, and there was a slop and drip of new wine everywhere. After dark thepeople came in from the fields and gossiped about their doors, and thered light of flitting lanterns blotched the steady rainpour. Outside ofthe village rose the black mountains, white at the top with their snows. 

[Illustration: _The Wine-press_]

In the cafés and other public places there were placards advertisingAmerican wine-presses, but I saw none of them in use. At a farm-housenear us we looked on at the use of one of the old-fashioned Swisspresses. Under it lay a mighty cake of grapes, stems, and skins, crushedinto a common mass, and bulging farther beyond the press with each turnof the screw, while the juice ran in a little rivulet into a tub below. When the press was lifted, the grapes were seen only half crushed. Twopeasants then mounted the cake, and trimmed it into shape withlong-handled spades, piling the trimmings on top, and then bringing thepress down again. They invited us with charming politeness to taste thejuice, but their heavy boots bore evidence of too recent a visit to thecherished manure heap, and we thanked them with equal courtesy. 

This grape cake, when it had yielded up its last drop, would be brokento pieces and scattered over the fields as a fertilizer. The juice wouldmeanwhile have been placed to ferment in the tuns, twelve and thirteenfeet deep, which lay in the adjoining cellar. 

For weeks after the vintage people were drinking the new wine, whichlooked thick and whitish in the glasses, at all the cafés. It seemed tobe thought a dainty beverage, but our scruples against it remained, andI cannot say what its effect upon the drinkers might be. Perhaps it hadproperties as a "sweet, oblivious antidote" which rendered necessary theplacard we saw in the café of the little Hôtel Chillon:

 "Die Rose blüht, Der Dorn der sticht; Wer gleich bezahlt Vergisst es nicht. "

Or, in inadequate English:

 The roses bloom, The thorns they stick; No one forgets Who settles quick. 

The relation of the ideas is not very apparent, but the lyric cry isdistinctly audible. 

II

One morning, a week before the vintage began, we were wakened by themusical clash of cow-bells, and for days afterwards the herds camestreaming from the chalets on all the mountains round to feed upon thelowland pastures for a brief season before the winter should house them. There was something charming to ear and eye in this autumnal descent ofthe kine, and we were sorry when it ended. They thronged the village intheir passage to the levels beside the Rhone, where afterwards they lenttheir music and their picturesqueness to the meadows. With each herdthere were two or three goats, and these goats thought they were cows;but, after all, the public interest of this descent of the cows was notreally comparable to that of the fall elections, now coming on withhandbills and newspaper appeals very like those of our own country atlike times. In the cafés, the steamboats, the railway stations, thestreet corners, vivid posters warned the voters against the wiles of theenemy, and the journals urged the people of the Canton Vaud to be up anddoing; they declared the issue before them a vital one, and the crisis acrisis of the greatest moment. 

[Illustration: _Castle of Aigle_]

In the mean time the people in our pension, who were so intelligent andwell informed about other things, bore witness to the real security ofthe State, and the tranquillity of the Swiss mind generally concerningpolitics, by their ignorance of the name of their existing President. They believed he was a man of the name of Schultz; but it appeared thathis name was not at all Schultz, when we referred the matter to ourpasteur. It was from him, indeed, that I learned nearly all I knew ofSwiss politics, and it was from his teaching that I became aconservative partisan in the question, then before the voters, of anational free-school law. The radicals, who, the pasteur said, wishedSwitzerland to attempt the role "_grande nation_, " had brought forwardthis measure in the Federal legislature, and it was now, according tothe sensible Swiss custom, to be submitted to a popular vote. Itprovided for the establishment of a national bureau of education, andthe conservatives protested against it as the entering wedge ofcentralization in government affairs. They contended that in a countryshared by three races and two religions education should be left as muchas possible to the several cantons, which in the Swiss constitution areequivalent to our States. I am happy to say that the proposed law wasoverwhelmingly defeated; I am happy because I liked the pasteur so much, though when I remember the sympathetic bric-à-brac dealer at Vevay, whowas a radical, but who sold me some old pewters at a very low price, Ican't help feeling a little sorry too. However, the Swiss still keeptheir old school law, under which each canton taxes itself foreducation, as our States do, though all share in the advantages of theuniversities, which are part of the public-school system. 

The parties in Switzerland are fortunately not divided by questions ofrace or religion, but the pasteur owned that the Catholics were adifficult element, and had to be carefully managed. They include thewhole population of the Italian cantons, and part of the French andGerman. In Geneva and other large towns the labor question troublesomelyenters, and the radicals, like our Democrats, are sometimes theretrograde party. 

The pasteur spoke with smiling slight of the Père Hyacinthe and theDöllinger movements, and he confessed that the Protestants were cut upinto too many sects to make progress among the Catholic populations. TheCatholics often keep their children out of the public schools, as theydo with us, but these have to undergo the State examinations, to whichall the children, whether taught at home or in private schools, mustsubmit. He deplored the want of moral instruction in the public schools, but he laughed at the attempts in France to instil non-religious moralprinciples: when I afterwards saw this done in the Florentine raggedschools I could not feel that he was altogether right. He was a memberof the communal school committee, and he told me that this body wasappointed by the syndic and council of each commune, who are elected bythe people. To some degree religion influences local feeling, theProtestant Church being divided into orthodox and liberal factions;there is a large Unitarian party besides, and agnosticism is aqualifying element of religious thought. 

Outside of our pension I had not many sources of information concerningthe political or social life at Villeneuve. I knew the villageshoemaker, a German, who had fixed his dwelling there because it was so_bequem_, and who had some vague aspirations towards Chicago, whither acitizen of Villeneuve had lately gone. But he was discouraged by myrepresentation, with his wax, his awl, and his hammer, successivelyarranged as New York, Cleveland, and Chicago, on his shoe-bench, of theextreme distance of the last from the seaboard. He liked his neighborsand their political system; and so did the _portier_ at the Hôtel Byron, another German, with whom I sometimes talked of general topics intransacting small affairs of carriage hire and the like, and who invitedme to notice how perfectly well these singular Swiss, in the midst of aEurope elsewhere overrun with royalties, got on without a king, queen, or anything of the kind. In his country, he said, those hills would becovered with fortifications, but here they seemed not to be thoughtnecessary. 

[Illustration: _The Market at Vevey_]

I made friends with the _instituteur_ of the Villeneuve public school, who led the singing at church, and kept the village book-store; and hetoo talked politics with me, and told me that all elections were held onSunday, when the people were at leisure, for otherwise they would nottake the time to vote. He was not so clear as to why they were alwaysheld in church, but that is the fact; and sometimes the sacred characterof the place is not enough to suppress boisterous party feeling, thoughit certainly helps to control it. 

After divine service on election Sunday I went to the Croix Blanche formy coffee, to pass the time till the voting should begin. On the churchdoor was posted a printed summons to the electors, and on the cafébilliard tables I found ballots of the different parties scattered. Gendarmes had also distributed them about in the church pews; they wereenclosed in envelops, which were voted sealed. On a table before thepulpit the ballot-box--a glass urn--was placed; and beside it sat thejudges of election, with lists of the registered voters. But in anyprecinct of the canton an elector who could prove that he had not votedat home might deposit his ballot in any other. The church bell rang forthe people to assemble, and the voting began and ended in perfect quiet. But I could not witness an election of this ancient republic, whereFreedom was so many centuries old, without strong emotion; it had fromits nature and the place the consecration of a religious rite. 

III

The church itself was old--almost as old as Swiss freedom, and olderthan the freedom of the Vaud. The Gothic interior, which had once, nodoubt, been idolatrously frescoed and furnished with statues, was nownaked and coldly Protestant; one window, partly stained, let in a littlecolored light to mix with the wintry day that struck through the others. The pulpit was in the centre of the church, and the clerk's deskdiagonally across from it. The floor was boarded over, but a chillstruck through from the stones below, and the people seemed to shiverthrough the service that preceded the election. When the pasteur mountedthe pulpit they listened faithfully, but when the clerk led the psalmthey vented their suffering in the most dreadful groaning that everpassed for singing outside of one of our country churches. 

It was all very like home, and yet unlike it, for there is much moregovernment in Switzerland than with us, and much less play ofindividuality. In small communes, for example, like Villeneuve, thereare features of practical socialism, which have existed apparently fromthe earliest times. Certain things are held in common, as mountainpasturage and the forests, from which each family has a provision offuel. These and other possessions of the commune are "confided to thepublic faith, " and trespass is punished with signal severity. The treesare felled under government inspection, and the woods are never cut offwholesale. When a tree is chopped down a tree is planted, and the floodsthat ravage Italy from the mountains denuded of their forests areunknown to the wiser Swiss. Throughout Switzerland the State insuresagainst fire, and inflicts penalties for neglect and carelessness fromwhich fires may result. Education is compulsory, and there is a rigidmilitary service, and a show of public force everywhere which is quiteunknown to our unneighbored, easy-going republic. I should say, upon thewhole, that the likeness was more in social than in political things, strange as that may appear. There seemed to be much the same freedomamong young people, and democratic institutions had produced a kindredtype of manners in both countries. But I will not be very confidentabout all this, for I might easily be mistaken. The Swiss make theirsocial distinctions as we do; and in Geneva and Lausanne I understoodthat a more than American exclusivism prevailed in families that heldthemselves to be peculiarly good, and believed themselves very old. 

Our excursions into society at Villeneuve were confined to a single teaat the pasteur's, where we went with mademoiselle one evening. He livedin a certain Villa Garibaldi, which had belonged to an Italian refugee, now long repatriated, and which stood at the foot of the nearestmountain. To reach the front door we passed through the vineyard to theback of the house, where a huge dog leaped the length of his chain atus, and a maid let us in. The pasteur, in a coat of unclerical cut, andhis wife, in black silk, received us in the parlor, which was heated bya handsome porcelain stove, and simply furnished, much like such a roomat home. Madame P----, who was musical, played a tempestuouslyrepresentative composition called "L'Orage" on the upright piano, andjoined from time to time in her husband's talk about Swiss affairs, which I have already allowed the reader to profit by. They offered ustea, wine, grapes, and cake, and we came away at eleven, lighted homethrough the vineyards by Louis, the farm boy, with his lantern. 

[Illustration: _The Market, Vevay--A Bargain before the Notary_]

Another day mademoiselle did us the pleasure to take us to her sister, married, and living at Aigle--a clean, many-hotelled, prosperous town, afew miles off, which had also the merit of a very fine old castle. Wefound our friends in an apartment of a former convent, behind whichstretched a pretty lawn, with flowers and a fountain, and then vineyardsto the foot of the mountains and far up their sides. We entered thecourt by a great stone-paved carriage-way, as in Italy, and we found thedrawing-room furnished with Italian simplicity, and abounding insouvenirs of the hostess's long Florentine sojourn; but it was fortifiedagainst the Swiss winter by the tall Swiss stove. The whole familyreceived us, including the young lady daughter, the niece, thewell-mannered boys and their father openly proud of them, and thepleasant young English girl who was living in the family, according to acommon custom, to perfect her French. This part of Switzerland is fullof English people, who come not always for the French, but often for thecheapness which they find equally there. 

Mr. K---- was a business man, well-to-do, well educated, agreeable, andinteresting; his house and his table, where we sat down to the mid-daydinner of the country, were witness to his prosperity. I hope it is noharm, in the interest of statistics, to say that this good Swiss dinnerconsisted of soup, cold ham put up like sausage, stuffed roast beefwhich had first been boiled, cauliflower, salad, corn-starch pudding, and apples stewed whole and stuck full of pine pips. There was abundanceof the several kinds of excellent wine made upon the estate, both whiteand red, and it was freely given to the children. Mr. K---- seemedsurprised when we refused it for ours; and probably he could have givenus good reason for his custom. His boys were strong, robust, handsomefellows; he had a charming pride in showing us the prizes they had takenat school; and on the lawn they were equally proud to show the gymnasticfeats they had learned there. I believe we are coming to think now thatthe American schools are better than the Swiss; but till we haveorganized something like the Swiss school excursions, and have learnedto mix more open air with our instruction, I doubt if the Swiss wouldagree with us. 

After dinner we went to the _vente_, or charitable fair, which the youngladies of the town were holding in one of the public buildings. It wasbewilderingly like the church fair of an American country town, sociallyand materially. The young ladies had made all sorts of prettyknick-knacks, and were selling them at the little tables set about theroom; they also presided, more or less alluringly, at fruit, coffee, andice-cream stands; and--I will not be sure, but I _think_--some of themseemed to be flirting with the youth of the other sex. There was anauction going on, and the place was full of tobacco smoke, which thewomen appeared not to mind. A booth for the sale of wine and beer wasset off, and there was a good deal of amiable drinking. This was notlike our fairs quite; and I am bound to say that the people of Aigle hadmore polished manners, if not better, than our country-town average. 

To quit this scene for the castle of Aigle was to plunge from thepresent into my favorite Middle Ages. We were directly in the times whenthe Lords of Berne held the Vaud by the strong hand, and forcedProtestant convictions upon its people by the same vigorous methods. Thecastle was far older than their occupation, but it is chiefly memorableas the residence of their bailiffs before the independence of the Vaudwas established after the French Revolution. They were hard masters, butthey left political and religious freedom behind them, where perhapsneither would have existed without them. The castle, though eminentlypicturesque and delightfully Gothic, is very rudely finished anddecorated, and could never have been a luxurious seat for the bailiffs. It is now used by the local courts of law; a solitary, pale, unshavenold prisoner, who seemed very glad of our tribute-money, inhabited itstower, and there was an old woman carding wool in the baronial kitchen. Her little grandson lighted a candle and showed us the _oubliettes_, which are subterranean dungeons, one above the other, and barred bymighty doors of wood and iron. The outer one bore an inscription, whichI copied:

 "Doubles grilles a gros cloux, Triples portes, fortes Verroux, Aux âmes vraiment méchantes Vous représentez l'Enfer; Mais aux âmes innocentes Vous n'êtes que du bois, de la pierre, & du fer!"

[Illustration: _Germans at Montreux_]

But these doors, thus branded as representing the gates of hell toguilty souls, and to the innocent being merely wood, stone, and iron, sufficed equally to shut the blameless in, and I doubt if the reflectionsuggested was ever of any real comfort to them. For one thing, thecaptives could not read the inscription; it seems to have been intendedrather for the edification of the public. 

We visited the castle a second time, to let the children sketch it; andeven I, who could not draw a line, became with them the centre ofpopular interest. Half a dozen little people who had been playing"snap-the-whip" left off and crowded round, and one of the boys profitedby the occasion to lock into the barn, near which we sat, a peasant whohad gone in to fodder his cattle. When he got out he criticised thepictures, and insisted that one of the artists should put in a certainwindow which he had left out of the tower. Upon the whole, we liked himbetter as a prisoner. 

"What would you do, " I asked the children, "if I gave you a piece oftwenty-five centimes?"

They reflected, and then evidently determined to pose as good children. "We would give it to our mamma. "

"Now don't you think, " I pursued, "that it would be better to spend itfor little cakes?"

This instantly corrupted them, and they cried with one voice, "Oh yes!"

Out of respect to me the oldest girl made a small boy pull up hisstocking, which had got down round his ankle, and then they took themoney and all ran off. Later they returned to show me that they had gotit changed into copper and shared equally among them. They must havespent an evening of great excitement talking us over. 

The October sun set early, chill, and disconsolate after a rain. A wearypeasant with a heavy load on his back, which he looked as if he hadbrought from the dawn of time, approached the castle gate, and bowed tous in passing. I was not his feudal lord, but his sad, work-worn aspectgave me as keen a pang as if I had been. 

IV

The Pays de Vaud is also the land of castles, and the visitor to Vevayshould not fail to see Blonay Castle, the seat of the ancient familywhich, with intervals of dispossession, has possessed it ever since theCrusades. It is only a little way off, on the first rise of the hills, from which it looks over the vineyards on inexpressible glories of lakeand distant mountains, and it is most nobly approached through steeps ofvine and grove. Apparently it is kept up in as much of the sentiment ofthe past as possible, and one may hire its baronial splendor fullyfurnished; for the keeper told it had been occupied by an English familyfor the last three winters. The finish, like that of the castle ofAigle, is rude, but the whole place is wonderfully picturesque andimpressive. The arched gateway is alone worth a good rent; the longcorridors from which the chambers open are suitable to ghosts fond ofwalking exercise; the superb dining-room is round, and the floor is soold that it would shake under the foot of the lightest spectre. The_répertoire_ of family traditions is almost inexhaustible, and doubtlessone might have the use of them for a little additional money. One of thelatest is of the seventeenth century, when the daughter of the house was"the beautiful Nicolaïde de Blonay, before whom many adorers had bentthe knee in vain. Among them, a certain Tavel de Villars, vanquished theproud beauty by his constancy. But the marriage was delayed. Officer inthe service of France, Tavel was detained by his military duties. In themean time Jean-François de Blonay, of another branch of the family, theSavoyard branch, fell in love with his cousin, and twice demanded her inmarriage. Twice he was refused. Then, listening only to his passion, heassembled some of his friends, and hid himself with them near thecastle. They watched the comings and goings of the baron, and suddenlyprofiting by his absence, they entered his dwelling and carried off thefair Nicolaïde, who, transported to Savoy, rewarded the boldness of hercaptor by becoming his wife. This history, which resembles that of thebeautiful Helen, and is not less authentic, kindled the fiercesthostilities between the Tavel and Blonay families; the French andItalian ambassadors intervened; and it all ended in a sentencepronounced at Berne against the Blonays--a sentence as useless as it wassevere--for the principal offenders had built a nest for their loves indomains which they possessed in Savoy. The old baron alone felt itseffects. He was severely reprimanded for having so ill fulfilled hispaternal duties. "

The good burghers of Berne--the Lords as they called themselves--were infact very hard with all their Vaudois subjects. "Equally merciless tothe vanities and the vices, they confounded luxury and drunkenness intheir rules, pleasures and bad manners. They were no less the enemies ofinnovations. Coffee at its introduction was stigmatized as a devilishinvention; tea was no better; as to tobacco, whether snuffed or smoked, it was worse yet. Low-necked dresses and low-quartered shoes wererigorously forbidden. Games and all dances, 'except three modest danceson wedding-days, ' were unlawful. .. . The Sabbath was strictly observed;silence reigned in the villages, even those remotest from the church, until the divine service of the afternoon was closed; no cart might passin the street, and no child play there. .. . In short, all theirordinances and regulations witness a firm design on the part of theirExcellencies 'to revive among all those under their domination a lifeand manners truly Christian. ' The Pays de Vaud under this régimeacquired its moral and religious education. A more serious spiritgradually prevailed. The Bible became the book _par excellence_, thebook of the fireside, and on Sunday the exercises of devotion took theplace of the public amusements. "

[Illustration: _Church Terrace, Montreux_]

When the regicides fled from England after the Restoration they couldnot have sought a more congenial refuge than such a land as this. One ofthem, as is known, died in Vevay by the shot of an assassin sent tomurder him by Charles II. ; with another he is interred in the old Churchof St. Martin there; and I went there to revere the tombs of Ludlow andBroughton. While I was looking about for them a familiar name on atablet caught my eye, and I read that "William Walter Phelps, of NewJersey, and Charles A. Phelps, of Massachusetts, his descendants beyondthe seas, " had set it there in memory of the brave John Phelps, who wasso anxious to be known as clerk of the court which tried Charles Stuartthat he set his name to every page of its record. 

That tablet was the most interesting thing in the old church; but Ifound Vevay quaint and attractive in every way. It is, as all the worldknows, the paradise of pensions and hotels and boarding-schools, and onemay live well and study deeply there for a very little money. It waspart of our mission to lunch at the most gorgeous of the hotels, and tolook upon such of our fellow-countrymen as we might see there, after ourlong seclusion at Villeneuve; and we easily found all the splendor andcompatriotism we wanted. The hotel we chose stood close upon the lake, with a superb view of the mountains, and its evergreens in tubs stoodabout the gravelled spaces in a manner that consoled us with a sense ofbeing once more in the current of polite travel. The waiter wanted noneof our humble French, but replied to our timorous advances in thattongue in a correct and finally expensive English. Under the stimulus ofthis experience we went to a bric-à-brac shop and bought a lot offascinating old pewter platters and flagons, and then we went recklesslyshopping about in all directions. We even visited an exhibition of Swisspaintings, which, from an ethical and political point of view, wereadmirable; and we strolled delightedly about through the market, wherethe peasant women sat and knitted before their baskets of butter, fruit, cheese, flowers, and grapes, and warbled their gossip and their bargainsin their angelic Suissesse voices, while their husbands priced thecattle and examined the horses. It was all very picturesque, andprophesied of the greater picturesqueness of Italy, which we were soonto see. 

V

In fact, there was a great deal to make one think of Italy in thatregion; but the resemblance ended mostly with the Southern architectureand vegetation. Our lake coast had its own features, one of the moststriking of which was its apparent abandonment to the use and pleasureof strangers. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the water waseverywhere bordered by hotels and pensions. Such large places as Vevayand Lausanne had their proper life, of course, but of smaller ones, likeMontreux, the tourist seemed to be in exclusive possession. In our walksthither we met her--when the tourist was of that sex--young, gay, gathering the red leaves of the Virginia-creeper from the lakewardterraces of the highway; we met him, old, sick, pale, munching the sourgrapes, and trying somehow to kill the time. Large listless groups ofthem met every steamboat from which we landed, and parties of themencountered us on every road. "A hash of foreigners, " the Swiss callMontreux, and they scarcely contribute a native flavor to the dish. TheEnglishman no longer characterizes sojourn there, I should say; theAmericans, who pay and speak little or no French, and the Russians, whospeak beautiful French but do not pay, are there in about equalabundance; there are some French people; but if it came to my laying myhand upon my heart, I should say there seemed more Germans than anyother nationality at Montreux. They are not pretty to look at, andapparently not pleasant; and it is said that the Swiss, who digest themalong with the rest of us, do not like them. In fact, the Germans seemeverywhere to take their new national consequence ungraciously. 

Besides the foreigners, there is not much to see at Montreux, though onemust not miss the ancient church which looks out from its lofty placeover the lake, and offers the visitor many seats on its terrace for theenjoyment of the same view. The day we went he had pretty well coveredthe gravel with grape-skins; but he had left the prospect undisturbed. 

What struck me principally in Montreux was its extreme suitability tothe purposes of the international novelist. It was full of sites formild incidents, for tacit tragedies, for subdued flirtations, andarrested improprieties. I can especially recommend the Kursaal atMontreux to my brother and sister fictionists looking about for a pretty_entourage_. Its terrace is beaten by the billows of the restless lake, and in soft weather people sit at little tables there; otherwise theytake their ices inside the café, and all the same look out on theDent-du-Midi, and feel so bored with everybody that they are just in thehumor to be interested in anybody. There is a very pretty theatre in theKursaal, where they seldom give entertainments, but where, if you evergo, you see numbers of pretty girls, and in a box a pale, delicate-looking middle-aged Englishman in a brown velvet coat, with histwo daughters. The concert will be very good, and a young man ofcultivated sympathies and disdainful tastes could have a very pleasanttime there. For the rest, Montreux offers to the novelist's hand perhapsthe crude American of the station who says it is the cheapest place hehas struck, and he is going to stick it out there awhile; perhaps thegroup of chattering American school-girls; perhaps the little Jewishwater-color painter who tells of his narrow escape from the mad dog, which having broken his chain at Bouveret, had bitten six persons on theway to Clarens, and been killed by the gendarmes near Vevay; perhaps twoEnglishwomen who talk for half an hour about their rooms at the hotel, and are presently joined by their husbands, who pursue the subject. These are the true features of modern travel, and for a bit of pensivephilosophy, or to have a high-bred, refined widow with a fading sorrowencountered by a sensitive nature of the other sex, there is no betterplace than the sad little English church-yard at Montreux. It is full ofthe graves of people who have died in the search for health far fromhome, and it has a pathos therefore which cannot be expressed. Thestones grow stained and old under the laurels and hollies, and therain-beaten ivy creeps and drips all over the grassy mounds. Yes, thatis a beautiful, lonely, heart-breaking place. Now and again I sawblack-craped figures silently standing there, and paid their grief thetribute of a stranger's pang as I passed, happy with my children by myside. 

VI

I did not find Aigle and Blonay enough to satisfy my appetite forcastles, and once, after several times passing a certain _château meubléà louer_ in the levels of the Rhone Valley, I made bold to go in and askto look at it. I loved it for the certain Louis XV. Grandiosity therewas about it; for the great clock in the stable wall; for the balconyfrescos on the front of the garden-house, and for the arched driveway tothe court. It seemed to me a wonderfully good thing of its kind, and Iliked Napoleon's having lodged in it when his troops occupiedVilleneuve. It had, of course, once belonged to a rich family, but ithad long passed out of their hands into those of the sort of farmer-folkwho now own it, and let it when they can. It had stood several yearsempty, for the situation is not thought wholesome, and the last tenanthad been an English clergyman, who kept a school in it for baddish boyswhom no one else could manage, and who were supposed to be out of harm'sway there. 

I followed a young man whom I saw going into the gateway, and asked himif I could see the house. He said "Yes, " and summoned his mother, afierce-looking little dame, in a black Vaudois cap, who came out of afarm-house near with jingling keys, and made him throw open the wholehouse, while she walked me through the sad, forgotten garden, past itssilent fountain, and through its grove of pine to the top of an orchardwall, where the Dent-du-Midi showed all its snow-capped mass. Within, the château was very clean and dry; the dining-room was handsomelypanelled, and equipped with a huge porcelain stove; the shelves of thelibrary were stocked with soberly bound books, and it was tastefullyfrescoed; the pretty chambers were in the rococo taste of the fine oldrococo time, with successive scenes of the same history painted over thefireplaces throughout the suite; the drawing-room was elegant with silkhangings and carved mirrors; and the noble staircase, whose landing washonored with the bust of the French king of the château's period, lookedas if that prince had just mounted it. All these splendors, with themodern comfort of hot and cold water wherever needed, you may have, ifyou like, for $500 a year; and none of the castles I saw compared withthis château in richness of finish or furnishing. I am rather particularto advertise it because a question, painfully debating itself in my mindthroughout my visit, as to the sum I ought to offer the woman wasawkwardly settled by her refusing to take anything, and I feel alingering obligation. But, really, I do not see how the reader, if helikes solitary state, or has "daughters to educate, " or baddish boys tokeep out of mischief, or is wearing out a heavy disappointment, or issuffering under one of those little stains or uneasy consciences such aspeople can manage so much better in Europe--I say I do not see how hecould suit himself more perfectly or more cheaply than in that pensivelysuperb old château, with its aristocratic seclusion, and possiblymalarious, lovely old garden. 

[Illustration: _Tour up the Lake_]

VII

Early in October, before the vintage began, we seized the first fineday, which the Dent-du-Midi lifted its cap of mists the night before topromise, and made an early start for the tour of the lake. Mademoiselleand her cousins came with us, and we all stood together at the steamer'sprow to watch the morning sunshine break through the silvery haze thathung over Villeneuve, dimly pierced by the ghostly poplars wandering upthe road beside the Rhone. As we started, the clouds drifted inineffable beauty over the mountain-sides; one slowly dropped upon thelake, and when we had sailed through it we had come in sight of thefirst town on the French border, which the gendarmes of the two nationsseemed to share equally between them. All these lake-side villages arewonderfully picturesque, but this first one had a fancy in chimney-topswhich I think none of the rest equalled--some were twisted, some shapedlike little chalets; and there were groups of old wood-colored roofs andgables which were luxuries of color. A half-built railroad wasstruggling along the shore; at times it seemed to stop hopelessly; thenit began again, and then left off, to reappear beyond some point of hillwhich had not yet been bored through or blown quite away. I have neverseen a railroad laboring under so many difficulties. The landscape wasnow grand and beautiful, like New England, now pretty and soft, like OldEngland, till we came to Evains-les-Bains, which looked like nothing butthe French watering-place it was. It looked like a watering-place thatwould be very gay in the season; there were lots of pretty boats; therewas a most official-looking gendarme in a cocked hat, and two jollyyoung priests joking together; and there were green, frivolous Frenchfishes swimming about in the water, and apparently left behind when therest of the brilliant world had flown. 

Here the little English artist who had been so sociable all the way fromVilleneuve was reinforced by other Englishmen, whom we found on the muchmore crowded boat to which we had to change. Our company began todiversify itself: there were French and German parties as well asEnglish. We changed boats four times in the tour of the lake, and eachboat brought us a fresh accession of passengers. By-and-by there cameaboard a brave Italian, with birds in cages and gold-fish in vases, witha gay Southern face, a coral neck button, a brown mustache and imperial, and a black-tasselled red fez that consoled. He was the vividest bit ofcolor in our composition, though we were not wanting in life withouthim. There began to be some Americans besides ourselves, and a prettygirl of our nation, who occupied a public station at the boat's prow, seemed to know that she was pretty, but probably did not. She willrecognize herself in this sketch; but who was that other pretty maiden, with brown eyes wide apart, and upper lip projecting a little, as ifpulled out by the piquant-nose? I must have taken her portrait socarefully because I thought she would work somewhere into fiction; butthe reader is welcome to her as she is. He may also have the_spirituelle_ English girl who ordered tea, and added, "I want somekätzchens with my tea. " "Kätzchens! Kätzchen is a little cat. " "Yes;it's a word of my own invention. " These are the brilliant littlepassages of foreign travel that make a voyage to Europe worth while. Iadd to this international gallery the German girl in blue calico, whohad so strong a belief that she was elegantly dressed that she came upon deck with her coffee, and drank it where we might all admire her. Iintersperse also the comment that it is the Germans who seem to prevailnow in any given international group, and that they have the air ofcoming forward to take the front seats as by right; while the English, once so confident of their superiority, seem to yield the places tothem. But I dare say this is all my fancy. 

I am sure, however, of the ever-varying grandeur and beauty of the Alpsall round us. Those of the Savoyard shore had a softer loveliness thanthe Swiss, as if the South had touched and mellowed them, as it had thelight-colored trousers which in Geneva recalled the joyous pantaloons ofItaly. These mountains moulded themselves one upon another, and deepenedbehind their transparent shadows with a thousand dimmer and tendererdyes in the autumnal foliage. From time to time a village, gray-walled, brown-roofed, broke the low helving shore of the lake, where the poplarsrose and the vineyards spread with a monotony that somehow pleased; andat Nyon a twelfth-century castle, as noble as Chillon, offered thedelight of its changing lines as the boat approached and passed. 

At Geneva we had barely time to think Rousseau, to think Calvin, tothink Voltaire, to drive swiftly through the town and back again to theboat, fuming and fretting to be off. There is an old town, gravelypicturesque and austerely fine in its fine old burgherly, Calvinistic, exclusive way; and outside the walls there is a new town, very clean, very cold, very quiet, with horse-cars like Boston, and a newRenaissance theatre like Paris. The impression remains that Geneva isoutwardly a small moralized Bostonian Paris; and I suppose the readerknows that it has had its political rings and bosses like New York. Italso has an exact reproduction of the Veronese tombs of the Scaligeri, which the eccentric Duke of Brunswick, who died in Geneva, willed it themoney to build; like most fac-similes, they are easily distinguishablefrom the original, and you must still go to Verona to see the tombs ofthe Scaligeri. But they have the real Mont Blanc at Geneva, bleak to theeye with enduring snow, and the Blue Rhone, rushing smooth and swiftunder the overhanging balconies of quaint old houses. With its neatquays, azure lake, symmetrical hotel fronts, and white steamboats, Geneva was like an admirable illustration printed in colors, for aholiday number, to imitate a water-color sketch. 

When we started we were detained a moment by conjugal affection. A lady, who had already kept the boat waiting, stopped midway up the gang-plankto kiss her husband in parting, in spite of the captain's loud cries of"Allez! Allez!" and the angry derision of the passengers. We were infact all furious, and it was as much as a mule team with bells, drawinga wagon loaded with bags of flower, and a tree growing out of a towerbeside the lake, could do to put me in good-humor. Yet I was not reallyin a hurry to have the voyage end; I was enjoying every moment of it, only, when your boat starts, you do not want to stop for a woman to kissher husband. 

Again we were passing the wild Savoyard shore, where the yellow tops ofthe poplars jutted up like spires from the road-sides, and on thehill-sides tracts of dark evergreens blotted their space out of thevaster expanses of autumn foliage; back of all rose gray cliffs andcrags. Now and then we met a boat of our line; otherwise the bluestretch of the water was broken only by the lateen-sails of theblack-hulked lake craft. At that season the delicate flame of theVirginia-creeper was a prominent tint on the walls all round the lake. 

Lausanne, which made us think Gibbon, of course, was a stately stretchof architecture along her terraces; Vevay showed us her quaint marketsquare, and her old church on its heights; then came Montreux with itsmany-hotelled slopes and levels, and chalets peeping from the brows ofthe mountains that crowd it upon the lake. All these places keepmultitudes of swans, whose snow reddened in the sunset that stained thewater more and more darkly crimson till we landed at Villeneuve. 

VIII

When December came, and the vintage and elections were over, and thewinter had come down into the valley to stay, Italy called to us moreand more appealingly. 

Yet it was not so easy to pull up and go. I liked the row-boat on thelake, though it was getting too cold and rough for that; I liked the waythe railway guards called out "Verney-Montreux!" and "Territey-Chillon!"as they ran alongside the carriages at these stations; I liked thepastel portraits of mademoiselle's grandmothers on the gray walls of ourpretty chamber that overlooked the lake, and overheard the lightest lispof that sometimes bellowing body of water; I liked the notion of thewild-ducks among the reeds by the Rhone, though I had no wish to killthem; I liked our little corner fireplace, where I covered a log of the_grand bois_ every night in the coals, and found it a perfect line ofbristling embers in the morning; I liked Poppi and the three generationsof Boulettes; and, yes, I liked mademoiselle and all her boarders; and Ihated to leave these friends. Mademoiselle made a grand Thanksgivingsupper in honor of the American nation, for which we did our best tofigure both at the table, where smoked a turkey driven over the Alpsfrom his Italian home for that fête (there are no Swiss turkeys), and inthe dance, for which he had wellnigh disabled us. Poppi was in uncommontune that night, and the voice of this pensive rheumatic lent a uniqueinterest to every change of the Virginia reel. 

But these pleasures had to end; it grew colder and colder; we had longsince consumed all the old grape-roots which constituted our _petitbois_, and we were ravaging our way through an expensive pile of _grandbois_ without much effect upon the climate. One morning the mostenterprising spirit of our party kindled such a mighty blaze on ourchamber hearth that she set the chimney on fire, thus threatening theSwiss republic with the loss of the insurance, and involvingmademoiselle in I know not what penalties for having a chimney thatcould be set on fire. By the blessing of Heaven, the vigor ofmademoiselle, and the activity of Louis and Alexis the farmer, theflames were subdued and the house saved. Mademoiselle forgave us, but weknew it was time to go, and the next Sunday we were in Florence. 

THE END