Forbidden to seek careers at home, most of the aristocracy of Vaud went abroad to pursue fortune in the service of some foreign Power. There was always a good opening for them, whether as mercenary soldiers or as instructors of the young, and many of them achieved distinction and rose to high positions. Haldimand of Yverdon became a Lieutenant-General in the British Army and Governor of Canada. RÉverdil of Nyon was first tutor to Christian VII. of Denmark, and afterwards his secretary. AmÉdÉe de Laharpe was one of Napoleon's generals; the only General, it is said, in the Army of Italy, who was not guilty of rapacity and extortion. FrÉdÉric CÉsar de Laharpe held high office under Alexander I. of Russia; Dupuget of Yverdon was the tutor of the Russian Grand Dukes Nicolas and Michael; J. J. Cart was with Admiral Hood in America; Glayre became Polish Minister at St. Petersburg; Pache became Mayor of Paris; the list could be almost indefinitely extended.

Most of these emigrants, moreover, suffered from the nostalgia which is characteristic of the Swiss. It was not enough for them to come home to die; they liked to return in middle age, and spend at home the money which they had earned abroad. And when they did return, they had, of course, no longer the homely wits of the home-keeping youths. They were men of experience, men of the world, men of polished manners and cosmopolitan culture. Their presence gave a new and a broader tone to Lausanne society. They were not to be driven to church like a flock of sheep, or forbidden to go to the theatre like a pack of schoolboys, or stood in the pillory for playing cards, or told by the preachers what they should eat or wherewithal they should be clothed. So far as they were concerned the discipline of the Consistory broke down, and the Sumptuary Laws did not apply to them. Their example liberalized even the clergy. They insisted upon making Lausanne a pleasant place to live in. Strangers found out that it was pleasant, and came to settle there in large numbers. There was already a foreign colony in Lausanne from quite an early date in the eighteenth century.

Geneva had had its foreign colonists from a still earlier date, but they were exiles—Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, John Knox, John Bodley, William Whittingham, and others, who fled abroad to escape persecution by the Bloody Mary. With one accord they thanked their hosts for the hospitality bestowed upon them, and departed as soon as the accession of Elizabeth made it safe for them to do so. Some of the foreigners at Lausanne were also exiles, it is true, but hardly for conscience' sake, the opinions which had got them into trouble being more often political than religious. But they selected Lausanne as their place of residence because they liked it—not because it was a 'perfect school of Christ,' but because the site and the society were agreeable.

Voltaire himself lived there for a little while before he settled down at Ferney, and encountered no theological objection to the theatrical performances which he organized. Gibbon, who was there at the time, living in the house of Pastor Pavilliard, declared that the entertainments, to which he was sometimes invited, 'refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne';[1] and the philosopher himself paid a tribute to those manners in a letter to D'Alembert, in which he wrote: 'All the amenities of society and sound philosophy have found their way into the part of Switzerland in which the climate is most agreeable and wealth abounds. The people here have succeeded in grafting the politeness of Athens upon the simplicity of Sparta.'