“THE MUSIC OF THE COWS’ BELLS.” The pipes of the shepherds he later introduced into “Manfred:” “Hark! the note, The natural music of the mountain reed— For here the patriarchal days are not A pastoral fable—pipes in the liberal air, Mix with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd.” Still in the high lands he describes threading the long, narrow valley of the Sarine then little traversed by travellers. He describes the bed of the river as very low and deep, “rapid as anger.” He thought the people looked free and happy and rich: “the cows superb; a bull nearly leaped into the charaban—agreeable companion in a post chaise—goats and sheep very thriving. A mountain with enormous glaciers to the right—the Kletsgerberg; further on, the Hockthorn—nice names—so soft!—Hockthorn, I believe, very lofty and craggy, patched with snow only; no glaciers on it, but some good epaulettes of clouds.” As he travelled from the Canton Vaud into the Canton of Bern he crossed between the ChÂteau d’Oex and the village of Saanen, so I reversed the order. The valley then, as now, He was carried away by the splendour of the scenery beyond Interlaken. The glaciers and torrents from the Jungfrau charmed him. He lodged at the house of the curate, which stood immediately opposite the Staubbach—“nine hundred feet in height of visible descent.” He heard an avalanche fall like thunder. “A storm came on—thunder, lightning, hail; all in perfection and beautiful.” He would not let the guide carry his cane because it had a sword concealed in it and he was afraid it might attract the lightning. He thus describes the fall:—“The torrent is in shape curving over the rock, like the tail THE STAUBBACH. Here, again, he got aliment for “Manfred:” “It is not noon—the sunbow’s rays still arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column, O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular, And flings its lines of foaming light along And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail, The giant steed, to be bestrode by Death As told in the Apocalypse.” The rainbow was suggested by the sun shining on the lower part of the torrent, “of all colors but principally purple and gold, the bow moving as you move.” A day later he climbed to the top of the Wengern Mountain, five thousand feet above the valley, the view comprising the whole of the Jungfrau with all her glacier, then the Dent d’Argent, “shining like truth,” the two Eigers and the Wetterhorn. He says: “I heard the The avalanches and sulphurous clouds of course became part of the dÉcor of “Manfred:” “Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down In mountainous overwhelming, come and crush me! I hear ye momently above, beneath, Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, And only fall on things which still would live. “The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell.” He saw the Grindelwald Glacier distinct, though it was twilight, and he compared it to a frozen hurricane, a figure which he put unchanged in his poem: “O’er the savage sea, The glassy ocean of the mountain ice, We skim its rugged breakers, which put on The aspect of a tumbling tempest’s foam, Frozen in a moment.” Passing over the Great Scheideck, Rosenlaui, the Falls of the Reichenbach (“two hundred feet high”), the Valley of Oberhasli, he reached Brienz, where four of the peasant girls of Oberhasli sang the airs of their country—“wild and original and at the same time of great sweetness.” The summer was drawing to an end. I had got somewhat tired of excursions, and was content to settle down to a regular course of reading. I suppose if it had not been for my beloved relatives I might have been tempted to plan for a winter in Rome, which had for years seemed to me a desirable place to visit. If it had not been for these same dear ones, there were a dozen places in Switzerland which would have attracted me. I detest the cold, and Montreux, which has been called the Riviera of Helvetia, offered a climate tempered against the pernicious bise. We ran up to the Tour d’AÏ one afternoon and I was fascinated with the place. Will and I made a walking trip through the Bernese Oberland and we both liked Thun. He suggested that it was because we, or I, happened to be musical. I vowed that I would, in some way, get possession of the Twelfth-Century Castle of ZÄhringen-Kyburg, have it refitted with all American conveniences and live there the rest of my days—provided I could find the right kind of a housekeeper. Seriously, is there any more magnificent view in all Switzerland than from the environs of Thun and from the lake? I trow not. But perhaps one would weary of too grandiose views; after all, for human nature’s daily food, human society is preferable to mountains, and the fact that the tamer lakes, such as Leman and Constance, seem to attract for regular residence more congenial personages than I could find dwelt at Thun might make one pause in one’s plan to oust the museum and turn public property into a selfish private possession. I could not follow Voltaire’s example and buy every chÂteau I saw and liked! So I was contented enough with Lausanne as a home. I do not propose to inflict on my friends an account of every excursion that I took. That through the Oberland perhaps more than any other made me realize how completely I was subjected to that peculiar hypnotic influence which we agree to call a spell. A STREET IN THUN. It is a curious thing that in many of the high mountain passes, where desolation of barrenness reigns, there is a lake said to have been formed by the tears of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. For instance, when he first came to the Grimsel pass, between Bern and Valais, it was radiant with fertile beauty; the climate was warm; it supported a happy population; but he passed like a desolating breath, and when, years later, he came again, in that never-ceasing round, all was changed. He wept and his tears formed “The Lake of the Dead”—Der Totensee. In it lie the bones of those who perished in that terrible struggle between the Austrians and the French in 1799. There are all sorts of wonderful legends which one might collect. For instance, how came the Grindelwald to be so wide?—not that it is so wide,—but still it is wider than it once was! Well, Saint Martin came there and was not satisfied with its appearance, so he pried the valley walls apart. The prints of his feet are visible. On the way to the Grimsel we spent a long time at the Handeck Fall, which is regarded as the finest in Europe; the Aar with I followed Byron’s footsteps in following Rousseau’s—only much more deliberately. It is rather difficult now, for many of the houses which sheltered Rousseau and his fair mistress have been destroyed; that one which belonged to Madame de Warens’s father, J. B. de la Tour, “Baron de l’Empire,” was taken down in 1889. The daughter was educated at Lausanne and married Noble Sebastien-Isaac de Loys, son of the Seigneur de Villardin, and a soldier who had fought in the Swedish service. As M. de Loys possessed a seigneurie in a neighbouring village he took the name of it and called himself Vuarens, which the Bernese made into Warens. I sympathized with poor M. de Warens. He tells the story of his marital troubles in a letter which is a volume and breathes sincerity. But there is a good deal of comedy about the whole affair, and only Madame de Warens’s pathetic ending, in poverty and neglect, makes one feel sorry for her. In 1762 the Comte d’Escheray—a young man of twenty-nine—happened to be living in a little house at Motiers-Travers, in a delightful It was a pleasant excursion to pick out Rousseau’s tracks in this expedition. I also made a study of Voltaire’s life, and read a great deal of his writings. I prepared an article on his theatrical ventures. One of his chÂteaux was Monrion (which means mons rotundus) on the crest between Lausanne and the lake. It was a square two-story building with high attic and L-shaped wings. It had twenty-four rooms with superb views. He did CHÂTEAU VOLTAIRE, FERNEY. In 1760 Catherine de Chandieu, then a girl of nineteen, was at Geneva and saw Voltaire’s play “Fanime,” given extremely well by Madame Denis, Madame Constant-Pictet, Mademoiselle de Basincourt and Voltaire himself. She describes him thus: “Voltaire was dressed in a way which was enough to make one choke with amusement; he wore huge culottes which came down to his ankles, a little vest of red silk embroidered with gold; over this vest a very large vest of magnificent material, white embroidered in gold and silver; it was open at one side so as to show the undervest and on the other it came down below the knee; his culottes were of satin cramoisi; over his great vest he wore a kind of coat of satin with silver, and over the whole a blue mantle doublÉ de cramoisi galooned with gold and superb; when he appeared on the stage many people began to laugh and I was one of them; he had a huge white beard which he had to readjust several times, and a certain comic look even in the most tragic passages.” Madame de Genlis went to Geneva on purpose to call on M. de Voltaire, though she had no letter to him. He invited her to dinner, and, “What an effect the presence of such a man as Voltaire must have had on the pious Genevans may be imagined when this story was told of him. Shortly after the publication of ‘Emile,’ Voltaire was discussing Rousseau’s marvellous picture of the sunrise. ‘I must try it,’ said he. ‘I, too, will go some morning on the top of a mountain; I should like to know if one is really compelled to adore the Creator at daybreak.’ The necessary preparations were made; they set out at night and reached just before dawn the Col de la Faucille in the Jura. The sunrise was splendid.... Voltaire knelt down, gazed in silence and then said: ‘Yes, Creator of heaven and earth, I adore you before the magnificence of your works.’ ... Then getting up, he rubbed his knees and cried: ‘Mais quant À monsieur votre fils et À madame sa mÈre, je ne les connais pas!’ “When Rousseau heard that he became pensive and then said, ‘Oh, that man, that man, he would make me hate the page of my works which I like best.’ “When the earthquake at Lisbon shocked the whole world Pastor Vernes preached a cele WRESTLING AT A VILLAGE FESTIVAL. Another plan which occupied me in the hours which I consecrated to regular work was for an article on the village festivals of Switzerland:—The charming Narcissus Festival of Montreux, celebrated in May, the great FÊte of the AbbÉ des Vignerons, so fascinatingly described by Juste Olivier and so cleverly worked by James Fenimore Cooper into his novel, “The Headsman.” It would include processions through picturesque streets and the rejoicings at the return of the cows from the Alp with the Ranz des Vaches:— “Blantz et neÌre, Rotz et motaÌle, DzjoÙven et Ôtro Les sonaillire Van lez premire La tÔte neÌre Van lez derriÈre: Hau! hau! llauba!” I gathered any quantity of material about Swiss authors and composers: Jacques Hoffmann, When winter came we went to see the winter sports at Saint-Moritz—the skiing where it was not uncommon for some of the French and Norwegian champions to leap almost thirty meters. Indeed, one man flew through the air forty-six meters, but could not keep his balance when he struck far down the slope. I was not tempted to try it. Switzerland in winter is even more beautiful than in summer. The uniform blanket of dazzling snow, though its curves are filled with vivid tints of violet and blue, may be hard on the eyes. The mercury may go low but the purity of the atmosphere and its exhilaration atone for the discomfort of cold. In the house we kept warm and cozy. The children were well and happy and I stayed on and on: I could not resist the Spell. THE END. |