“Dost thou know it, the dull blue waveWhich bathes the ancient Wall of Chillon?Hast seen the grand shadow of the rocks of ArvelReflected in that azure sea?Knowest thou Naye and its steep crestAnd the toothed ridge of Jaman?Hast thou seen them, tell me, hast thou seen them?Come here to these scenes and never leave them!”
“Dost thou know it, the dull blue waveWhich bathes the ancient Wall of Chillon?Hast seen the grand shadow of the rocks of ArvelReflected in that azure sea?
“Dost thou know it, the dull blue wave
Which bathes the ancient Wall of Chillon?
Hast seen the grand shadow of the rocks of Arvel
Reflected in that azure sea?
Knowest thou Naye and its steep crestAnd the toothed ridge of Jaman?Hast thou seen them, tell me, hast thou seen them?Come here to these scenes and never leave them!”
Knowest thou Naye and its steep crest
And the toothed ridge of Jaman?
Hast thou seen them, tell me, hast thou seen them?
Come here to these scenes and never leave them!”
LA DENT DU MIDI FROM MONTREUX.
LA DENT DU MIDI FROM MONTREUX.
I suppose it is really one’s duty to know the names of the mountains, just as one must know the botanical names of flowers. Nevertheless, only within comparatively few years have distinctive names been actually fastened to special mountains. The names, foreign to English, when translated into English are often to the last degree banal. A typical example is the Greek headland with its high-sounding appellation, Kunoskephale, which means merely Dog’s Head; and those that first gave the Alps a generic name could not devise anything better than a word which means “White.” What would not the imaginative American Indians have called Mont Blanc! Very probably the Keltic inhabitants of these regions, with their poetic nature, would have named it something better than just “White Mountain!” The Romans might have the practical ability to build roads over the hills, but they could not name them!
Juste Olivier, however, goes into ecstasies over the names of some of the Swiss mountains. He says:—
“What more charming, more fresh and morning-like than the name of the Blümlisalp? What more gloomy than that of the Wetterhorn, more solid than that of the Stockhorn, more incomparable than that of the Jungfrau, more aerial and whiter than that of the Titlis, more superb and high sounding than that of the Kamor, more sparkling and vivid than that of the Silberhorn, more terrible than that of the Finsteraarhorn which falls and echoes like an avalanche!”
He is still more enthusiastic over the Alps of Vaud:—Moléson with its round and abundant mass so frequently sung by the shepherds of Gruyères, the slender, white, graceful forms of La Dent de Lis and Le Rubli. And he finds in the multitude of names ending inaz—Dorannaz, Javernaz, Oeusannaz, Bovannaz—something peculiarly alpestrine and bucolic, as if one heard in them the horn-notes blown by the herdsmen, and their long cadenzas with the echoes from the mountain walls; and the solemn lowing of the cows as they crop the flowery grass and shake the big copper bells fastened to their necks. There is an endless study in names of places as well as in names of people. Often centuries of history may be detected in a single word.
Meantime we have been speeding along, cutting through the fabric of the lake as if we were a knife. Behind us radiated two long, dark blue lines tipped with bubbles and mixing the reflections of the gracious shores. Oh, this wonderful lake! Vast tomes have been devoted to its poetic, picturesque, scientific characteristics. Almost every inch of its vast depths has been explored. No longer has the wily boatman, as he steers his lateen-sailedlochère, any excuse for telling his occasional passenger (as he used to tell James Fenimore Cooper) that the water is bottomless. Every fish that swims in it is known and every bird that floats on its broad bosom.
A lake is by no means a lazy body of water and Leman, or Lake Geneva, as it is often called, is not so much a lake as it is a swollen river. If the Rhône is an artery, the lake is a sort of aneurism; there is a current from one end to the other which keeps it constantly changing. Then, owing to atmospheric conditions, at least twice a year (as in even the most stagnant ponds) the top layers sink to the bottom and the bottom layers come to the top. There is also a sort of tide or tidal fluxes, calledseiches. The word means originally the flats exposed by low water, but is applied here tovariations averaging ten inches or so in the level of the lake, but sometimes greatly exceeding that. There were three or four in one day in September, 1600, when the lake fell five feet and boats were stranded. De Saussure, one August day in 1763, measured a sudden fall of 1.47 meters, or four and a half feet, in ten minutes’ time. Eight years previously, the effect of the great earthquake which destroyed Lisbon was noticed in the vibration of the lake. Various explanations of this curious phenomenon have been given. One was that the Rhône was stopped and, as it were, piled up at the so-called Banc du Travers—a bar or shallow between Le Petit Lac and Le Grand Lac which begins on a line between La Pointe de Promenthoux on the north and La Pointe de Nernier in Savoy on the south. It is probably due to the sweeping force of the winds. When there is a heavy storm waves on the lake have been observed and measured not less than thirty-five meters long and a meter and seven tenths in height.
James Fenimore Cooper in his novel “The Headsman of Berne,” published anonymously while he was United States Consul at Lyons, thus describes this wonderful body of water:—“The Lake of Geneva lies nearly in the formof a crescent, stretching from the southwest towards the northeast. Its northern or the Swiss shore is chiefly what is called, in the language of the country, acôte, or a declivity that admits of cultivation, and, with few exceptions, it has been, since the earliest periods of history, planted with the generous vine.
“Here the Romans had many stations and posts, vestiges of which are still visible. The confusion and the mixture of interests that succeeded the fall of the Empire gave rise in the middle ages to various baronial castles, ecclesiastical towns and towers of defence which still stand on the margin of this beautiful sheet of water, or ornament the eminences a little inland.... The shores of Savoy are composed with unmaterial exceptions of advanced spurs of the high Alps, among which towers Mont Blanc, like a sovereign seated in the midst of a brilliant court, the rocks frequently rising from the water’s edge in perpendicular masses. None of the lakes of this remarkable region possess a greater variety of scenery than that of Geneva, which changes from the smiling aspect of fertility and cultivation at its lower extremity to the sublimity of a savage and sublime nature at its upper.”
It seems almost incredible, but Lausannelies a good deal nearer to the North Pole than Boston does. The degree of latitude that sweeps across the lake where we started cuts just a little below Quebec, nearly touches Duluth and goes a bit south of Seattle. There are really three lakes, forming one which, in its whole extent, has a shore-line of one hundred and sixty-seven kilometers, the north shore being twenty-three longer than the south. Its greatest width is thirteen and eight-tenths kilometers, and it covers an area of about five hundred and eighty-two square kilometers. Its maximum depth is 309.7 meters. It is a true rock basin. The Upper Lake is, for the most part, a level plain, filled by the greyish-muddy Rhône which uses it as a sort of clearing-house. Being denser than the lake, the water of the river sinks and leaves on the bottom its perpetual deposits of mud, coarser near the shore, finer the farther out one goes. When the bottom of the Grand Lake is once reached, it is as flat as a billiard-table. Sixty meters from the Castle of Chillon it is sixty-four meters deep and shelves rapidly to three times that depth.
Deep as it seems—for a thousand feet of perpendicular water is in itself a somewhat awesome thought—still, in proportion to itssurface-extent, the lake is shallow. Pour out a tumbler of water on a wooden chair and the comparative depth is greater.
Pure as it seems to be—and the beauty of its colour is a proof of it—the Rhône carries down from it to the sea a vast amount of organic matter and, as it drains a basin of eight thousand square kilometers, it is not strange that Geneva, which has used the lake-water for drinking purposes since 1715, has occasionally suffered from typhoid fever. In 1884 there were sixteen hundred and twenty-five cases; but, since the intake-pipes have been carried farther into deep water, the danger seems to have passed. Ancient writers supposed that the Rhône ran through Lake Leman without mixing its waters; they did not know that the lake is the Rhône.
Emile told us that after thebise, that is, the northeast wind, had blown for several days, the muddy water of the Rhône shows green along the shore for several kilometers. This is calledles troublons du Rhône. He told us also that the lake-water is warmer than the air in every month except April and May. I asked him if it ever froze over, and he replied that there was a legend that once it did, but never within his memory.
One of the most interesting things in winter is the mirage. Almost every day one can see the land looming; it seems as if there were great castles and cities, and sometimes boats are sailing in the air. Places that are out of sight rise up, and gigantic walls and colossal quais appear where there are no such constructions.
ThisFata Morganagave ground for the magical Palace of the Fairy—le Palais de la Fée—and is perhaps the basis of the legend of the fairy skiff of the lake. Those that have the vision see it drawn along by eight snow-white swans. In it sits a supernaturally tall woman with golden locks and dressed in white robes, accompanied by chubby sprites. If one’s ears are keen enough one can hear the song that she sings, accompanied by a beautiful harp. Wherever her bark touches the shore bright flowers spring into bloom. Unlike many of the magical inhabitants of the mountains, she is a beneficent creature. Even the sight of her brings good fortune. But, since steamboats began to ply up and down and across the blue waters of the lake, she has not been seen; she was scared away. She appears only on post-cards accompanied by the German words “Glück auf”—“Cheer up.”
“By the way,” said Will, “did you know that the first steamboat to sail on Lake Geneva was built by an American?”
“No? What was his name?”
“That I don’t know; but he made a great success of it so that an association was formed to go into competition with him with two new boats and, when they were launched, they offered the American a sovereign a day to let his boat lie idly at the dock. He accepted the proposition and was spared all the worries of navigating the lake and of seeing his profits cut down by opposition. That was about a century ago.”
We were interrupted by an odd, droning noise from the direction of Montreux and, looking back, we saw what might have been taken for one of those huge birds, theroc, which we used to read about in the Arabian Nights. It came rapidly nearer and we saw it was a hydro-aeroplane darting down the lake. It must have been at least a thousand feet in the air, but with the spyglass we could see the faces of its passengers.
“I’d like to go up in one of those,” said Will, “but this tyrannical little wife of mine has made me promise that I won’t. Don’t youthink that she is exhibiting an undue interference with her lord and master?”
“Am I not perfectly right, Uncle?” asked Ruth with a show of indignation. “I suppose some time they will be made safe; but, till they are, a man who has a wife and children has no business to take such a risk. Suppose abiseshould suddenly come down from the mountains.”
Of course I took Ruth’s side; Will would not have liked it if I hadn’t; but I made up my mind then and there that, at the first opportunity, I, not being cramped by any marital obligations, would have a sail in a hydro-aeroplane. What is more, I carried out my purpose. One day everything seemed to favour me; the weather was fine and promised to continue so; Will and Ruth were occupied in some domestic complication; so I went out ostensibly for a walk, but hurried to the station and took a train for Vernex. I found the quai where the hydro-aeroplane starts, and, having been told that it cost a hundred francs, I had the passage-money ready in a bank-note.
I have seen a wild fowl rise from the surface of an Adirondack lake; the wings dash the water into foam, but after it has made a long, white wake, it rises and speeds down the horizon.So, as soon as I had taken my place with one other passenger, a Russian gentleman, the motor was set in motion and we glided out on the lake. Then, with a slight motion of the rudder, as our speed increased, we left the surface and, in an easy incline, mounted high into the air. I liked it all except the noise of the motor; that was deafening.
My favourite dream has always had to do with an act of levitation. I would seem to be standing on the great, granite step of my grandfather’s old house, and then by sheer will power lift myself—only there was no sense of lifting—high out over the river which flowed between the steep banks, a wide, calm stream, and, having made a turn above the swaying elms, come back to my starting-point without any sense of shock.
This came nearest to that dream. I had no sense of fear at all. Looking down, I could say with Tennyson’s eagle, “The wrinkled sea beneath me crawls.” The whole lake lay, as it were, in the palm of my hand. It was an indescribable panorama, flattened except where very high hills arose, and in the distance an infinitude of blended details. It was vastly more exciting than being on a mountain-top. The wind whistled through the wires and almosttook away my breath. Thanks to having twice circled the lake—once by motor-boat and once in the automobile—I knew pretty well what the towns were over which we sailed. We made a wide circuit over Geneva and, mounting still higher, cleared the crest of the Salève and then returned like an arrow to Vernex. I now knew how an eagle feels when in splendid spirals it soars up toward the sun until it is lost to human sight, and then, with absolute command of its motions, descends to its eyrie on the top of a primeval pine planted on the mountain’s dizzy side. I now knew how Icarus dared fit those wax-panoplied wings to his strong arms and with mighty strokes ply the upper skies, looking down on the sea which it was worth dying for to name through all the ages.
Over this very lake once floated the balloon sent up by Madame de Charrière de Bavois, kindled to enthusiasm by the invention of the celebrated Montgolfier brothers. It was nearly two meters high and two or three times that in circumference and was made of paper and a network of wires. But it caught fire, and fell like a meteor, and Lausanne forbade any more experiments of the sort without permission; there was too great risk of setting the woodson fire. What would Rousseau and Voltaire have said to see men flying a thousand feet above their heads? But what at first seems like a miracle soon becomes a commonplace and, now that I have been up in a “plane,” ordinary locomotion will seem rather tame.
But, to return to our trip around the lake. The buzzing hydro-aeroplane sped over our heads, going at a tremendous clip and of course filling us with wonder and admiration. While those above us were free from every obstacle, except the air itself, which Kant, in one of his poetic passages in the “Critique,” shows is the very support of the bird’s flight, we were making good progress in the “Hirondelle,” running not far from the shore, but of course avoiding the shelving edge of thebeine—to use the local term.
We were near enough to admire the beautiful villas which occupied commanding and lovely sites at frequent intervals between Lutry and Cully. When Emile pointed out Villette I wondered if Charlotte Brontë got the name of her autobiographical romance from it. Pretty soon we glided slowly by Vevey, where we could see the crowds of people on the Place du Marché, and the green fields with scatteredhouses, and enjoyed the tall trees and the fine old château de l’Aile and, farther back, the noble tower of Saint Martin.
Vevey has been rather unfortunate in its piers. In 1872 the municipality began to build a solid and handsome structure along La Place de l’Ancien Port. Several years were spent on it and it had been completed about eighteen months when one hundred and nine meters—all of the western part—suddenly, and without any warning, sank into the lake. The physical explanation of the catastrophe was very simple. Almost a hundred years earlier—in June and again in November, 1785—some of the houses on what was then La Rue du Sauveur, now La Rue du Lac, being founded on the same unstable basis, gave way. It happened again in 1809. The weight of the superimposed structure caused the mud and gravel deposits to slide down into deeper water. Even now one almost expects to see the white, gravelly beach, just beyond, sink into the depths, with all the chattering washer-women who use the lake as a bath-tub. Similar catastrophes have happened on several other Swiss lakes.
It was like a moving-picture to see the succession of interesting places. Beyond Vévey-la-Tour were the clustered villas of La Tour-de-Peilz, where Count Peter of Savoy once enjoyed the beauties of the lake; then Clarens, suggesting memories of Rousseau and Byron. Far up on the height we could see the Château des Crêtes. We made beautiful scallops in around by Vernex, and doubled the picturesque point on which Montreux roosts, and looked up to the far-away Dent de Jaman; we skirted Territe and then came close under the frowning, historic walls of Chillon.
LAKE LEMAN AT VEVEY.
LAKE LEMAN AT VEVEY.
CHILLONis probably the best-known castle in Switzerland. It commands the one pass between the mountains and the lake, and there, in the old days, two horsemen could defend the passage against a host. On Mont Sonchaux, a spur of the high crags of Naye, with Mont Arval rising on the east, and torn with ravines and landslides, between the two torrents, the Veraye and the Tinère, it stands, “a mass of towers placed on a mass of rocks.”
We sailed all around, from one side of the bridge to the other, and managed to approach near enough to clamber ashore. We fastened the boat to a tree by the longmaille, as they call the painter on the lake. Then we went all over the ancient fortress. Happily the Canton has at last awakened to the propriety of not merely keeping it in repair, but also of restoring it to something like its pristine condition. In the earlier castle Louis le Débonnaire confinedhis kinsman, Count Walla, the friend of Lothaire, on the ground that he was the instigator of that prince’s revolt against his father. At that time the country was a wilderness, and there was only a chapel where now Montreux gathers a wealthy and luxurious population. Walla spent many years in Chillon, but was ultimately transferred to the fortified Island of Noirmontier. Then he was set free, and died in 835 in the Abbey of Bobbio, sixteen leagues from Milan.
In 1235, Duke Pierre de Savoy received the Province of Chamblais, extending from Saint Bernard to the torrent of the Veveyse and to the Arve on both sides of the lake.
He erected many castles—one at Martigny, at the entrance to the pass leading up to Saint Bernard; one at Evian, on the south side of the lake; and still another at the village of Peilz—and he reconstructed Chillon. Having mastered the Pays de Vaud, he governed with moderation. He organized troops of archers and halberdiers, established shooting-societies, and maintained strong garrisons at various points. In 1265, Rodolphe, Duke of Hapsburg, invaded Vaud and besieged Chillon. Pierre suddenly attacked him and won a great victory. They took the duke prisoner, together witheighty barons, lords, knights and nobles of the country. After this Pierre had things his own way; he settled down at the Castle of Chillon and one of his pleasures was to go out rowing on the lake.
In 1358, when the plague ravaged Europe, the Jews were accused of poisoning the water. “The Court of Justice of Chillon,” says the local hand-book, “caused these unhappies to be tortured and they would confess and then were burnt.” So roused against them were the population that on one occasion a rabble forced the gates of the castle and put a number of them to death.
In Pierre’s day it must have been a magnificent residence. Even now, viewed with the eye of imagination, one can get some notion of what it was in its period of splendour, though Thomas Jefferson Hogg, in his “Journal of a Traveller,” declares that it is ugly, with its whitewashed walls crowned with a red-tiled roof. It is built in the form of an irregular oval. In the centre is a high, square tower which contained a great alarm-bell, the deep tones of which must have often echoed over the waters to call the defenders to resist the attacks of fierce enemies. On the north side are two ranges of crenelated walls and three round towers. On the east is the massive square of the principal tower, through which is the only entrance, formerly closed by a drawbridge extending from the shore to the rock. The rooms where the counts and their ladies dwelt in state were on the south side. On the first floor is the great apartment once occupied by the Governor of Chillon. In one of the rooms is a magnificent fireplace with sculptured columns. In the story above are the chambers where knights habited. Here are pillars richly carved, ornamented with ancient coats of arms, and once draped with banners. Then come the chambers of the duke and duchess, communicating by a private door. The duchess’s windows look down on the blue waters of the lake, while that of the prince looks into the courtyard.
THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.
THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.
Religion was not neglected in those days; in the chapel one admires the beautiful ogive of the nave. From the Hall of Justice a stairway leads down into the vaults below. These are caverns about a hundred meters long. The floors are only eight feet above the lake, which goes off very abruptly down to the deepest depths. These vaults are partitioned off into chambers of different sizes, separated by narrow, dark spaces and used for dungeons. Eachof the subterranean cells contains a row of pillars, surmounted by ogive arches. They are like the sombre and almost magical dungeons under the ancient King Arkel’s castle, where Pélléas and his jealous brother grope in Maeterlinck’s marvellous drama.
The last and largest of these terrible apartments is the one where Bonivard was confined. It is entered by a low, narrow doorway, and is divided by seven huge pillars, around one of which is the legendary groove hollowed by the restless pacing of the prisoner’s circling feet. Above are several narrow slits admitting a dim light. On bright days the light reflected from the lake casts a weird radiance on the ceiling. Little trembling waves go chasing one another across. Bonivard could tell when it was morning, for then the light is blue, while in the afternoon it has a sickly, greenish hue.
Francis Bonivard was born at Seyssel and was educated at Turin. At twenty he became prior of Saint Victor, a small monastery near Geneva. He joined the political organization, called “The Children of Geneva,” which was engaged in a revolt against the Bishop and Duke of Savoy. He said—“I foresee that we shall finally do what our friends in Berne have done—separate from Rome. I wastwenty years old and I was led like the others more by affection than by counsel, but God granted a happy issue to all our foolish undertakings, and treated us like a good father.”
The duke managed to capture him and imprisoned him for two years at Gex and Gerolles. Later, he fell a second time into the duke’s clutch.
Bonivard tells how it happened:—“At Moudon I resolved to return to Lausanne. When we were in the Jorat, lo, the Captain of the Castle of Chillon, Antoine de Beaufort, with some of his companions, comes out of the forest where he was concealed and approaches me suddenly. These worthy gentlemen fall on me all at once and make me a prisoner by the captain’s order and, though I show them my passport, they carry me off tied and bound to Chillon, where I was compelled to endure my second suffering for six years.”
This was from 1530 till 1536. He was treated mildly at first, but afterwards he was thrown into the dungeon and fastened to one of the pillars. “I had so much time for walking,” he says with a sort of grim humour, “that I wore a little pathway in the rock, as if it had been done with a hammer.”
In 1536 the Bernese sent troops to helpGeneva, which was besieged by Duke Charles III. Reinforced by the Genevese fleet after the relief of Geneva, they in turn besieged Chillon. The governor with his escort fled to Savoy and Bonivard was set free. His first words were:—“And Geneva?”
“Also free,” was the laconic reply.
After Bern had conquered Savoy, Auguste de Luternan (an appropriate name for a Lutheran) was the first Bernese bailiff of Chillon, and he and his successors made various alterations in the buildings. In 1733 the bailiwick was transferred to Vevey and just seventy years later the castle became the property of Vaud. For some time it was grievously neglected. For its sole garrison it had two gens-d’armes, and it was used only as a military magazine and a prison.
A prison? Ay! One must never forget the most illustrious prisoner ever confined in its gloomy oubliettes—though, to tell the honest truth, Chillon never had any oubliettes. Tartarin de Tarascon, tamer of camels, destroyer of African lions, slayer of the super-Alpine chamois—we see him passing disdainfully amid the attractions of the glittering shops of Montreux, only to be arrested as a RussianNihilist and, under threat of being gagged unless he keep his mouth shut, borne away to the very castle sacred to the memory of Bonivard, in whom he had lost faith, since William Tell had become a myth! Here is the vivid picture as chronicled by Daudet:—
“The carriage rolled across a drawbridge, between tiny shops where trinkets were for sale—chamois-skin articles, pocket-knives, button-hooks, combs and the like—passed under a low postern and came to a stop in the grass-grown courtyard of an old castle flanked by round pepper-box towers, with black balconies held up by beams. Where was he? Tartarin understood when he heard the police captain talking with the doorkeeper of the castle, a fat man in a Greek cap, shaking a huge bunch of rusty keys.
“‘In solitary confinement?—But I haven’t any more room. The rest of them occupy all the—unless we put him in Bonivard’s dungeon.’
“‘Put him in Bonivard’s dungeon then; it’s quite good enough for him,’ said the captain authoritatively. And his commands were obeyed.
“This Castle of Chillon, which the President of the Alpine Club had been for two days constantly talking about to his friends, the Alpinists, and in which, by the irony of fate, he suddenly found himself imprisoned without knowing why, is one of the historical monuments of Switzerland. After having served as a summer residence of the Counts of Savoy, then as a State prison, a dépôt of arms and stores, it is now only an excuse for an excursion, like the Rigi-Kulm or the Tellsplatte. There is however a police-station there and a lock-up for drunkards and the wilder youths of the district; but such inmates are rare, as La Vaud is a most peaceful canton; thus the lock-up is for the most part untenanted and the keeper keeps his winter fuel in it. So the arrival of all these prisoners had put him in a bad humour, particularly when it occurred to him that he should no longer be able to pilot people through the famous dungeons, which was at that season attended with no little profit.
THE PRISON OF BONIVARD IN THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.
THE PRISON OF BONIVARD IN THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.
“Filled with rage, he led the way and Tartarin timidly followed him, making no resistance. A few worn steps, a musty corridor, smelling like a cellar, a door as thick as a wall, with enormous hinges, and there they were in a vast subterranean vault, with deeply worn floor and solid Roman columns on which hung the iron rings to which in former times prisoners of state were chained. A dim twilight filtered in and the rippling lake was reflected through the narrow loop-holes, which allowed only a slender strip of sky to be seen.
“‘This is your place,’ said the jailer. ‘Mind you do not go to the end; the oubliettes are there.’
“Tartarin drew back in horror.
“‘The oubliettes!Noudiou!’ he exclaimed.
“‘What would you have, man alive? I was ordered to put you in Bonivard’s dungeon. I have put you in Bonivard’s dungeon. Now, if you have the wherewithal, I can supply you with some luxuries, such as a mattress and a coverlet for the night.’
“‘Let me have something to eat first,’ said Tartarin, whose purse fortunately had not been taken from him.
“The doorkeeper returned with fresh bread, beer and a Bologna sausage, and these were eagerly devoured by the new prisoner of Chillon, who had not broken his fast since the day before, and was worn out with fatigue and emotion. While he was eating it on his stone bench, in the dim light of the embrasure, the jailer was steadily studying him with a good-natured expression.
“‘Faith,’ said he, ‘don’t know what youhave been doing and why you are treated so severely....’
“‘Eh!coquin de sort, no more do I. I know nothing at all about it,’ replied Tartarin, with his mouth full.
“‘At any rate, one thing is certain—you don’t look like a criminal and I am sure you would never keep a poor father of a family from gaining his living, eh? Well, then, I have upstairs a whole throng of people who have come to see Bonivard’s dungeon. If you will give me your word to keep still and not attempt to escape—’
“The worthy Tartarin at once gave his word and five minutes later he saw his dungeon invaded by his old acquaintances of the Rigi-Kulm and the Tellsplatte—the stupid Schwanthaler, the ineptissimus Astier-Réhu, the member of the Jockey Club with his niece (hum!—hum!), all the Cook’s tourists. Ashamed and afraid of being recognized, the unhappy man hid behind the pillars, retiring and stealing away as he saw the tourists approach, preceded by his jailer and that worthy’s rigmarole, recited in a lugubrious tone, ‘This is where the unfortunate Bonivard—’
“They came forward slowly, retarded by the disputes of the two savants, who were all thetime quarrelling, ready to fly at each other—one waving his camp-stool, the other his travelling-bag, in fantastic attitudes which the half-light magnified along the vaulted dungeon roof.
“By the very exigency of retreat, Tartarin found himself at last near the opening of the oubliettes—a black pit, open level with the floor, breathing an odor of past ages, damp and chilling. Alarmed, he paused, crouched in a corner, pulling his cap over his eyes; but the damp saltpeter of the walls affected him and suddenly a loud sneeze, which made the tourists start back, betrayed him.
“‘Hold! Bonivard!’ exclaimed the saucy little Parisienne in the Directoire hat, whom the member of the Jockey Club called his niece.
“The Tarasconian did not permit himself to display any signs of being disturbed.
“‘These oubliettes are really very interesting,’ he remarked, in the most natural tone in the world, as if he also were a mere pleasure-seeker visiting the dungeon. Then he joined the other tourists, who smiled when they recognized the Alpinist of the Rigi-Kulm, the mainspring of the famous ball.
“‘Hé! Mossié!—ballir, ‘dantsir!’
“The comical outline of the little fairy Schwanthaler presented itself before him readyto dance. Truly he had a great mind to dance with her. Then, not knowing how to get rid of this excited bit of womanhood, he offered his arm and gallantly showed her his dungeon—the ring whereon the prisoner’s chain had been riveted; the traces of his footsteps worn in the rock around the same column; and, hearing Tartarin speak with such facility, the good lady never suspected that he who was walking with her was also a state prisoner—a victim to the injustice and the wickedness of man. Terrible, for instance, was the parting, when the unfortunate ‘Bonivard,’ having led his partner to the door, took leave of her with the smile of a society gentleman, saying, ‘No, thank you,—I will stay here a moment longer.’ She bowed, and the jailer, who was on the alert, locked and bolted the door to the great astonishment of all.
“What an insult! He was bathed in the perspiration of agony, as he listened to the exclamations of the departing visitors. Fortunately such torture as this was not inflicted on him again that day. The bad weather deterred tourists....”
In the morning he is rudely awakened, and brought before the prefect, charged with being the dreaded Russian incendiary and assassin, Manilof.
It is soon made manifest that there is a dreadful mistake. The prefect, angry at having been sent for under false pretences, cries in a terrible voice:—“Well, then, what are you doing here?”
“‘That is just what I want to know,’ replies the V. C. A., with all the assurance of innocence.”
And Tartarin is set free. Verily, we look among the names scribbled on the walls—names of great writers and men of less distinction—Rousseau, Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Shelley, Eugène Sue—for the immortal autograph of Tartarin de Tarascon. It must have been carried off bodily, like the picture of Mona Lisa! But Tartarin himself is just as much an inhabitant of the vaults as Byron’s Bonivard. And was not the policeman whom we caught sight of on the quai at Montreux the very one whose long blue capote was turned so persistently toward the omnibus in which rode the Tarasconian quartet?
LORD BYRON, in 1816, landed on this very spot with his friend John Cam Hobhouse. They came over from Clarens, probably in anaue, whose name, as well as its shape, harked back to olden days. Byron wrote about it:—
“I feel myself under the charm of the spirit of this country. My soul is repeopled with Nature. Scenes like this have been created for the dwelling-place of the Gods. Limpid Leman, the sail of thy barque in which I glide over the surface of thy mirror appears to me a silent wing which separates me from a noisy life. I loved formerly the warring of the furious ocean; but thy soft murmuring affects me like the voice of a sister.
“Chillon! thou art a sacred place. Thy pavement is an altar, for the footsteps of Bonivard have left their traces there. Let these traces remain indelible. They appeal to God from the tyranny of man.”
Byron made the fame of Chillon, and his Bonivard (or, as he spelt the name with two n’s, Bonnivard) was a far more ideal patriot than the actual prisoner, whose character has been shown of late years in a somewhat unfavourable light. Byron was devoted to the Lake of Geneva. He commemorated some of the great names associated with its shores in a sonnet, one of the few that he ever wrote:—
“Rousseau—Voltaire—our Gibbon—and De Staël—Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,Thy shore of names like these. Wert thou no moreTheir memory thy remembrance would recall:To them thy banks were lovely as to allBut they have made them lovelier, for the loreOf mighty minds doth hallow in the coreOf human hearts the ruin of a wall“Where dwells the wise and wondrous; but by theeHow much more, Lake of Beauty, do we feelIn sweetly gliding o’er thy crystal seaThe wild glow of that not ungentle zealWhich of the Heirs of ImmortalityIs proud and makes the breath of Glory real.”
“Rousseau—Voltaire—our Gibbon—and De Staël—Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,Thy shore of names like these. Wert thou no moreTheir memory thy remembrance would recall:To them thy banks were lovely as to allBut they have made them lovelier, for the loreOf mighty minds doth hallow in the coreOf human hearts the ruin of a wall
“Rousseau—Voltaire—our Gibbon—and De Staël—
Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these. Wert thou no more
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall
“Where dwells the wise and wondrous; but by theeHow much more, Lake of Beauty, do we feelIn sweetly gliding o’er thy crystal seaThe wild glow of that not ungentle zealWhich of the Heirs of ImmortalityIs proud and makes the breath of Glory real.”
“Where dwells the wise and wondrous; but by thee
How much more, Lake of Beauty, do we feel
In sweetly gliding o’er thy crystal sea
The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal
Which of the Heirs of Immortality
Is proud and makes the breath of Glory real.”
Can it be that Lord Byron pronounced “real” as if it were a monosyllable? But he also wrote “There let itlay!”
There are, on the shores of Lake Geneva,several hotels associated with Byron. At the Anchor Inn, still extant at Ouchy, he wrote that misleading rhapsody—“The Prisoner of Chillon.”
He had in 1816 definitely separated from his wife and had shaken the dust of England from his poetic shoes. Percy Bysshe Shelley with his wife and daughter, Williams, and Jane Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s half-sister, were established at Sécheron, a suburb of Geneva. Byron had never met the Poet of the Sky-lark, but Jane Clairmont, who was a passionate, fiery-eyed brunette, imbued with her father’s ideas of free love, had begun her unfortunate liaison with him, having deliberately thrown herself into his arms. They had met clandestinely a number of times just before their departure from England.
Byron and Shelley were both fond of sailing and they had many excursions on the lake. One evening they were out together when thebise, as the strong northwest wind is called, was blowing. They drifted before it and, getting into the current of the Rhône, were carried swiftly toward the piles at the entrance of Geneva harbour. It required all the strength of their boatmen to extricate them from the danger.
“I will sing you an Albanian song,” cried Byron. “Now be sentimental and give me all your attention.”
They expected a melancholy Eastern melody, but, instead, he uttered “a strange, wild howl” admirably suited to the dashing waves with which they were struggling. A few days later the Shelleys moved across to the south side of the lake, and settled down at Campagne Mont-Allègre. Byron stayed at Sécheron, but used often to row over to visit them. Finally, he himself rented the Villa Diodati, which stands a little higher up.
He and Shelley made a tour of the lake and had some exciting experiences. They left Mont-Allègre on June 23 and spent the first night at Nerni, where Byron declared he had not slept in such a bed since he left Greece five years before. At Evian, on the French side, they had trouble with their passports, but, when the Syndic learned Byron’s name and rank, he apologized for their treatment of him and left him in peace. On June 26 they were at Chillon. Off Meillerie they were attacked by what Byron called a squall. Shelley described it in a letter to Thomas Love Peacock:—
“The wind gradually increased in violence, until it blew tremendously; and as it camefrom the remotest extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding the sail at a time when the boat was on the point of being driven under water by the hurricane. On discovering his error he let it entirely go and the boat for a moment refused to obey the helm; in addition the rudder was so broken as to render the management of it very difficult; one wave fell in, and then another. My companion, an excellent swimmer, took off his coat, I did the same, and we sat with our arms crossed, every instant expecting to be swamped. The sail was, however, again held, the boat obeyed the helm, and still in imminent peril from the immensity of the waves, we arrived in a few minutes at a sheltered port, in the village of Saint-Gingoux.”
Byron, in a letter to John Murray, wrote:—“I ran no risk, being so near the rocks, and a good swimmer; but our party were wet and incommodated a good deal; the wind was strong enough to blow down some trees, as we found at landing.”
He was at this very time engaged in composing the third canto of “Childe Harold.”
MONT BLANC.
MONT BLANC.
On the third of June he had been dazzled by a glimpse of “yonder Alpine snow—Imperishably pure beyond all things below,” and a month later he wrote, “I have this day observed for some time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentière in the calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat. The distance of these mountains from their mirror is sixty miles.” In the poem he sings—I believe that is the proper verb!—
“Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,The mirror where the stars and mountains viewThe stillness of their aspect in each traceIts clear depth yields of their far height and hue:There is too much of man here, to look throughWith a fit mind the might which I behold;But soon in me shall Loneliness renewThoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in its fold....“Is it not better, then, to be aloneAnd love Earth only for its earthly sakeBy the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhône,Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,Which feeds it as a mother who doth makeA fair but froward infant her own care,Kissing its cries away as these awake;—Is it not better thus our lives to wear,Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?“I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me; and to me,High mountains are a feeling, but the humOf human cities torture: I can seeNothing to loathe in nature, save to beA link reluctant in a fleshly chain,Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plainOf ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.”
“Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,The mirror where the stars and mountains viewThe stillness of their aspect in each traceIts clear depth yields of their far height and hue:There is too much of man here, to look throughWith a fit mind the might which I behold;But soon in me shall Loneliness renewThoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in its fold....
“Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:
There is too much of man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold;
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,
Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in its fold....
“Is it not better, then, to be aloneAnd love Earth only for its earthly sakeBy the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhône,Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,Which feeds it as a mother who doth makeA fair but froward infant her own care,Kissing its cries away as these awake;—Is it not better thus our lives to wear,Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?
“Is it not better, then, to be alone
And love Earth only for its earthly sake
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhône,
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,
Kissing its cries away as these awake;—
Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?
“I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me; and to me,High mountains are a feeling, but the humOf human cities torture: I can seeNothing to loathe in nature, save to beA link reluctant in a fleshly chain,Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plainOf ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.”
“I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me,
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see
Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.”
And again further along:—