The Spell of Switzerland
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“We admired the magnificent spectacle spread before our eyes,” continues her biographer, “as we picked bouquets of the silène which makes great, rosy clusters in the old walls. These walls are placed there to hold up the vines and they serve as a retreat for a multitude of swift lizards which sleep there during the winter and whose bright little faces and infantile curiosity were a delight to us. As soon as we had passed a few steps beyond their holes we could see them emerge, cock up their heads, turning to the right and then to the left, with their bright eyes sparkling, and then dart away whenever there would be heard on the path the heavy shoes used by the Vaudois women, for it is said that their musical ear likes only harmonious noises. This inquisitiveness must cost the poor little saurians dear. The bald-buzzards, wheeling in the blue above our heads, seemed by no means indifferent to their movements. And so we kept finding one and another that showed traces of an existence very difficult to preserve. One would lack a paw, another its tail. Finally several, covered with dust, their skins faded and their eyes dulled, fled precipitately so as to leave the foot-path free to those of their brethren whose bright and gilded garb contrasted with their air of wretchedness and suffering, so deeply does misfortune modify the most sociable character.”
Then, after they had enlarged their bouquets by jasmine and syringa blossoms, with Alpine roses and golden-tinged cytisus, they would go to the grotto and from there to the terrace behind the church. The Princess thus describes the scene: —
“Sheltered by enormous walnut-trees, this grotto, which opens in a crag hung with ivy, gives passage to a brook which falls with a gentle murmur past a bathing establishment, a three-storied, rustic châlet charming to look at. Jasmines and rose-bush boxes deck the ground-floor and the first story with their graceful branches and give the place the appearance of a mass of verdure and of flowers.
“A foot-path, worn under the walnut-trees along the mountain, gives passage to the church and the terrace, which extends south of the edifice and affords one of the most beautiful views in the Pays de Vaud. Of a summer morning, toward nine o’clock, one can find the most marvellous tints spread over the lake. Over a sparkling azure ground wander designs in graceful silvery curves. The sapphire itself seems robbed of its brilliancy beside these waters. The metallic glitter of the bright blue wing of the king-fisher may give some idea of this almost fantastic shade, which seems to belong to another universe.
“We could never tire of contemplating this spectacle, the face of which changes with the color of the sky. Sometimes a cloud, passing across the mountains of Savoy, cast on their bald brows, or on their verdant sides, a shadow as gigantic as that of the Roumanian monster, the winged zmeou; again a steam-boat, proudly wearing the banner with the silver cross, would pour forth into the air a black plume of smoke and leave on the waves a glittering, foamy wake.
“Facing the terrace of Montreux can be seen the villages of the Catholic shore, – Boveret and Saint-Gingolph, separated by a big mountain, La Chaumény, marked by an immense ravine. This shore by its stern aspect makes a strong contrast with the shore of Vaud, but this very contrast adds to the originality and the grandeur of the landscape. The old fortress which served as Bonivard’s prison emerges at the left from the bosom of the waters, which form a graceful gulf around its walls. Opposite Chillon, a bouquet of verdure surrounded by a solid wall forms in the middle of the lake that islet on which that unknown captive, whose griefs Byron sang, used to feast his eyes.
“In the midst of this smiling landscape, the towers of Chillon, I confess, saddened my imagination more than it did Eléonora’s. When, as we sat on the terrace, I told her about the long captivity of Bonivard, who left in the pave- ment the circle of his footprints as he went round and round his pillar like a wild beast; when I spoke with animation of the instruments of torture and the oubliettes, which, in that sinister fortress, are a witness to the violences and the iniquities of feudal society, I noticed without a pang that she gave these questions only slight heed…
“When one wishes to go to Clarens without straying far from the lake, one passes at some distance from the principal village of the parish of Montreux. We almost always stopped at the end of a wide and picturesque ravine watered by a torrent called the baie of Montreux; here the view is lovely. If one looks toward the lake, Veytaux is to be seen at the right, hidden like a doves’ nest between Mont Cau and Mont Sonchaud; beyond Veytaux, Chillon thrusts its massive walls into the waters. At the right, the quadrangular manoir of Châtelard, with its thick walls, and narrow windows, stands in its isolation on its hill. When one turns toward the church of Montreux, one is astonished at the small space occupied by the chief village of this parish, formed by the houses of Les Planches and Le Châtelard and known by that name all over Europe. Concealed among thick walnut-trees and Virginian poplars, these houses are built between two rounded hills, one of which, called Le Rigi Vaudois, lifts aloft a great châlet in red wood. Behind the habitations appears in the distance a mountain with ragged summit, which the winter makes white with its snows and the summer covers with a pallid verdure diversified with fir-trees here and there.”
The Princess also paints a pretty picture of the lake in winter: —
“The gulls had reappeared along the shore. The vines were completely despoiled. Over the whole landscape spread a thick fog, which sometimes concealed the mountains and thus gave Lake Leman the appearance of a sea. By the beginning of December the sun was still struggling with the mists; often the mountains seemed cut in two by a luminous band which fell thickly over the lake, and stretched toward Vevey in dark folds. Above the peaks of Savoy, whose summits, now marked with streaks of snow, glittered in the sun, still shone the Italian sky like a consolation or like a hope.
“The lake itself was losing its lovely azure tints. I remember one day when we were seated on the road leading from Veytaux to the church, behind a low hedge of Bengal roses. Lake Leman was still blue in patches, but, for the most part, somber clouds with silver fringes were reflected in its melancholy waters. The gulf of Chillon was filled with a dark triangle, the shadow of the neighboring mountains. At the right the gulf of Vernex was glittering in the sunlight, a light the appearance of which we loved to salute, for its struggle with the darkness interested us as much as it would the worshipers of Ormuzd.
“When the landscape seemed completely asleep in the fog, suddenly a ray of sunlight would give it back all its brilliancy and life. One afternoon, as I was coming home with Eléonora from the terrace of the church, the sun appeared over the crest of Mont Sonchaud. The fir-trees arising above the snow then put on their loveliest tints. Whole masses of these trees remained in the shadow; a few were of a greenish yellow; others bore on their crests what seemed like a fantastic aureole.
“Arriving at Veytaux by the path which crosses the vineyards by a murmuring brook, we found a still more beautiful view. Between the two mountains that shelter the village, there rise at some distance two peaks of unequal shape; and these two are the only ones at this season as yet covered with snow. Their alabaster summits, standing out against a faint mist, shone as if one of the Olympians, celebrated in the song of the divine Homer, had touched them with his immortal foot.
“But at sunset especially did we most enjoy the magnificent sight of the lake, which could be seen from my windows in its whole length. An orange light then stained the west at the place where the mountains of Savoy dip down into the lake. These mountains stood out boldly against the blazing horizon. At the right a purple zone crowned the hills and grew feebler toward Vevey; in the midst of the lake flamed a marvellous fire, while the waters were somber under Villeneuve, of a pallid blue under Veytaux, and of a pearly gray color, cut by red bands, along the shores of Savoy.
“One evening this spectacle, though still fascinating, had something saddening about it. The mountains of Savoy were enveloped in a thick veil, surmounted by a canopy of pale azure illuminated by the dying sun. The veil grew larger toward Lausanne and formed a sort of chain of vapors, heaped up and climbing into space. A few lines of the color of blood streaked these gloomy masses. Such might have been the earth after the deluges of primitive times, when a ray of light began to smile across the darkness on a desolate universe.
“In the last week of December the snow, which had grown deep on the mountains, kept us from all walking. Nothing is so sad as a lake when it is surrounded by a winter landscape. The dazzling brilliancy of the snow spreads across the water, which was formerly the rival of the sapphire, a leaden hue more funereal than that of stagnant pools of the marsh. Here and there the steeper crags pierce through the pall with which they are covered and stand up like lugubrious sentinels. A miserly light comes down from the ashen-hued sky. One hears nothing but the hoarse cries of the gulls and the reiterated cawing of the crows as they fly in flocks along the shores of the lake and seem to delight in this spectacle of death.
“I have lived too long among the frozen fens of Ingria to love these melancholy pomps of winter, though they charm the imagination of some persons. Eléonora, though born on the foggy banks of the Rhine, was like me in loving the glory of the Day. She would have agreed with Gœthe, who, as he lay dying, cried: ‘More light! More light!’”
CHAPTER X
THE ALPS AND THE JURA
WE spent so much time at Chillon that we decided to put in for the night at Evian; but first we circled round the Ilot de Peilz (or, as some call it, L’Ile de Paix), one of the three artificial islands of the lake, which has none of its own. It was created about the middle of the eighteenth century on the beine. It still bears the three elms which shade its seventy-seven square meters of surface. The waters at one time undermined it and it had to be repaired.
Later we got a good look at the other two islets. The one called La Rocher aux Muettes, near Clarens, was built up on a reef of rocks about one hundred and twenty-five meters from the shore and was walled up in 1885. It covers about sixteen hundred square meters.
The third is the Ile de la Harpe, in front of Rolle. It was protected by a wall in 1838 and bears a white marble monument in memory of the patriotic General F. C. de la Harpe – he who, by telling the Emperor of Russia that he wished he might use the words “My Country,” had his support in the struggle with Bern and was instrumental in winning the freedom of Vaud. This islet stands, or sits, on what is called a tenevière or group of stones heaped up by nature or by the work of man, and in prehistoric times served as a palafitte or village of lake-dwellers. This proves that the level of the lake was about the same two thousand years ago as it is now. The sluiceway at Geneva tends to make an artificial difference of height throughout the lake and there has been for two centuries a law-suit between Geneva and Le Pays de Vaud growing out of this disturbance. The Vaudois claim that raising the level of the water has flooded their roads and fields.
We ran over to Villeneuve and had an excellent luncheon at the Hôtel du Port. About half-way between Villeneuve and the pretty town of Saint-Gingolph, on the Morge, we crossed the current of the Rhône, which, I suppose, owing to its swirling force and the sometimes really dangerous whirlpools it creates, particularly when there is a strong wind, is called “la Bataillère,” and is dangerous for small craft. When the Rhône is much colder than the lake it makes a subaqueous cataract, pouring down almost perpendicularly to the gloomy caverns below.
For a wonder there was very little air stirring from the lake at that time of the day, though there are always winds enough for one to choose from, not counting the bise or la bise noire, as it is called when it is particularly cold and disagreeable. Emile told us the various names of them; the bornan, which blows south from La Dranse; the joran, from the northwest; the molan, which (at Geneva) blows southeast from the valley of the Arve; the vaudaire, which blows from the southeast over the upper lake from the Bas Valais; the sudois, which, having full sweep across the widest part of the lake, dashes big waves against the shores of Ouchy. Then there are the day breezes, called rebat or séchard, and the night wind, the morget, which shifts up and down the mountains, owing to changes in temperature. In summer, he said, there is a warm, south wind, known as the vent blanc, which accompanies a cloudless sky. The natives call it maurabia, which means the wheat-ripener, from maura or murit and blla, blé.
“There is a charming excursion,” said Will, “from Saint-Gingolph. First a walk along the bank of the Morge to Novel, and then up to the top of Le Blanchard. Or, from Novel one can go almost twice as high to the Dent d’Oche. Perhaps a little later, when the snow is all gone, we can arrange to make it, if the climb would not be too much for you.”
“Too much for me!” I exclaimed, “What do you take me for – a valley-lounger?”
“There is an easier climb,” continued Will, ignoring my indignation, “up to the top of Le Grammont, which is only about fifty meters less in height. I have been up there several times. At the side of Le Grammont there are two charming lakes, Lovenex and – and – ”
“Tanay,” suggested Emile.
“One gets an excellent chance, from the top, to compare the mountains of the Jura across the lake with the Alps. The Jura has been compared to a great, stiff curtain, without fringes or folds; even its colours are rather monotonous, its distant blue is a bit gloomy and tragic. It is curious, but this solemnity and monotony is said to affect the inhabitants. On the other hand, the Alps sweep up with green forests, and there are coloured crags, and the snows that crown them take on wonderful prismatic tints and sometimes look as if they were on fire – as if copper were burning with crimson and violet flames. The difference has been explained partly by the way the valleys run; those of the Jura are longitudinal and follow the axis of the range, so that the mountains are easy to climb, while the Alps are shot through with transverse valleys.
“In the Alps one finds even at this day, certainly in the remoter regions, a primitive, natural, pastoral life, while the natives of the Jura are quicker to take up industries and are broader-minded. One could hardly imagine a native of an Alpine valley interesting himself in politics. The Alpine herdsman looks down on the world; but the man of the Jura might even belong to a labour-union! It has been well said that just as in the Middle Ages, the common people of the Jura were under feudal lords, so, up to the present time, the manufacturers have controlled a large part of their time and their work, even of their lives. But the natives of the Alps never submitted to any such tyranny.
“I remember reading somewhere that the Alps gallop, as it were, with their heads erect far over the earth, while the Jura Mountains march peacefully along, noiselessly and unboundingly, to follow their career in a graceful and courteous fashion, but without any sublime éclat. The Jura shows a simplicity, and spreads out distinctly and, as it were, prudently, offering nothing unexpected, exuberant, mad or magnificently useless, but, rather, a well-regulated behaviour, a calm and dignified, but somewhat gloomy, austerity, a cold and melancholy air. – Don’t you think that is pretty good? —
“This same lover of mountains finds even the snow different. On the Jura it falls on dark-green firs and pines and, mingling with the dreary foliage, gives forth only a sad and cautious half-smile. But in the Alps the white snow makes the mountains joyous. He compares it to a virginal mantle, embroidered with green and azure. When the morning has, for them, brought on the early day, they seem to sing gaily their reveille and their youth; a hymn of light floats high in the air above their heads and finds an echo of joy and of love in the hearts of mortals. In the evening they smoke like incense and, bending under the circling sky, they then offer a strangely fascinating image of prayer and of melancholy. From afar the Jura listens, and, like a dreamer, pursuing his way, plunges into the darkness.”
I may as well say, here and now, that a month later we carried out the plan of climbing Le Grammont, (which, of course, means the Great Mountain). We went to Vouvry and first admired the exquisite view where the pretty church, as it were, guides the eye up to the mountains, and contemplated the canal which the descendants of that fine old “robber-baron,” Kaspar Stockalper, who claimed the right to dominate the trade over the Simplon and guarded it by a body of seventy men, built to connect with the Rhône, though it remains unfinished. Then we easily followed the trail to the mountain-top. We chose a day which promised to be remarkably clear, and it fulfilled its promise. Words fail, and must always fail, to describe that panorama of splendour which includes the aerial heights of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau to the south, the whole extent of the lake and the tamer peaks of the Jura to the north, and a rolling sea of petrified and frozen billows in every direction.
When one speaks of Switzerland one instinctively thinks of Mont Blanc, and it seems an unfair advantage which France has taken to keep possession of Savoy, which used to belong to Switzerland, and the crown of the Swiss Alps. History has made strange partitions of territories; but the more one sees of Switzerland the more one wonders that it could have ever become a united country, composed as it is of isolated valleys, separated by lofty mountain-walls, intercommunicable only by treacherous passes. That same dividing construction of the country was the ruin of Greece, where each little province or city, set by itself and developing various qualities of character, was opposed in ideals and ambitions to every other.
It is curious, too, that the general notion that the Swiss are peculiarly liberty-loving should be based on a legend. Probably no other country in the world ever furnished so many mercenaries. But it is now one united country and largely freed from the crushing burden of rampant militarism.
It was a fine view also we had from the top of Le Grammont, overlooking the delta of the Rhône, which, from the height of nearly twenty-two hundred meters, lay below us. We could see how it was building the level marsh land into the lake. Perhaps some day the débris from the mountains will quite fill up the gulf. It is amazing how much material is brought down in the course of a single year, even by a single freshet. We could see, also, the confining walls of the dykes which, together with breakwaters, form what is called la correction du Rhône, preventing any riotous behaviour of that torrent when the floods sweep over the plain. The disreputable exploits of the river, before it was thus tamed and disciplined, explain why the region back of Villeneuve, regarded as desolate and uncultivated, is or has been compared to the vineyard-laden and fertile slopes of the Jorat.
But we are really not mountain-climbing; we are circling the lake and, except where some river or torrent forms what is technically called a cone, projecting out into the water, we are able to skirt close to the beine, often under tremendous, beetling cliffs. They become higher and higher, more and more romantic and magnificent. Only occasionally is there room for a village to cuddle in between the lake and the mountains, as, for instance, Meillerie, back of which one can see the great quarries gashing the mountain, and the tunnel through which the railway runs.
Samuel Rogers, in 1822, winging south on his Italian journey, so beautifully illustrated by Turner, was moved by the beauty of Meillerie to break out into song: —
“These gray majestic cliffs that tower to heaven,These glimmering glades and open chestnut groves,That echo to the heifer’s wandering bell,Or woodman’s ax, or steersman’s song beneath,As on he urges his fir-laden bark,Or shout of goat-herd boy above them all,Who loves not? And who blesses not the light,When through some loop-hole he surveys the lakeBlue as a sapphire-stone, and richly setWith châteaux, villages and village-spires,Orchards and vineyards, alps and alpine snows?Here would I dwell; nor visit, but in thought,Ferney far South, silent and empty now,As now thy once-luxurious bowers, Ripaille;Vevey, so long an exiled Patriot’s home;Or Chillon’s dungeon-floors beneath the wave,Channeled and worn by pacing to and fro;Lausanne, where Gibbon in his sheltered walkNightly called up the Shade of ancient Rome;Or Coppet and that dark untrodden groveSacred to Virtue and a daughter’s tears!“Here would I dwell, forgetting and forgot,And oft methinks (of such strange potencyThe spells that Genius scatters where he will)Oft should I wander forth like one in search,And say, half-dreaming: – ‘Here St. Preux has stood.’Then turn and gaze on Clarens.”The picture now is not so different from what it was almost a hundred years ago.
“Day glimmered and I went, a gentle breezeRuffling the Leman Lake. Wave after wave,If such they might be called, dashed as in sportNot anger, with the pebbles on the beachMaking wild music, and far westward caughtThe sun-beam – where alone and as entranced,Counting the hours, the fisher in his skiffLay with his circular and dotted lineOn the bright waters. When the heart of manIs light with hope, all things are sure to please;And soon a passage-boat swept gayly by,Laden with peasant-girls and fruits and flowersAnd many a chanticleer and partlet cagedFor Vevey’s market-place – a motley groupSeen through the silvery haze. But soon ’twas gone.The shifting sail flapped idly to and fro,Then bore them off.“I am not one of thoseSo dead to all things in this visible world,So wondrously profound, as to move onIn the sweet light of heaven, like him of old(His name is justly in the Calendar)Who through the day pursued this pleasant pathThat winds beside the mirror of all beauty,And when at eve his fellow pilgrims sateDiscoursing of the Lake, asked where it was.They marveled as they might; and so must all,Seeing what now I saw: for now ’twas dayAnd the bright Sun was in the firmament,A thousand shadows of a thousand huesChequering the clear expanse. Awhile his orbHung o’er thy trackless fields of snow, Mont Blanc,Thy seas of ice and ice-built promontories,That change their shapes for ever as in sport;Then traveled onward and went down behindThe pine-clad heights of Jura, lighting upThe woodman’s casement, and perchance his axBorne homeward through the forest in his hand;And, on the edge of some o’erhanging cliff,That dungeon-fortress never to be named,Where like a lion taken in the toils,Toussaint breathed out his brave and generous spirit.Little did he who sent him there to die,Think, when he gave the word, that he himself,Great as he was, the greatest among men,Should in like manner be so soon conveyedAthwart the deep.”A half dozen kilometers farther down the shore is the famous castle of Blonay. The days of feudalism were certainly tragic not only for the baronial masters who were subject to feuds and duels, but also to the common people. Lords and villeins, however, die and forget their woes, and the turreted castles which they built and had built are a splendid heritage for those who live under different conditions. The gorgeous tapestries which they hung on their walls become food for generations of moths or, if they escape, and still preserve their brilliant colours and their quaint and curious designs, display them to thousands of visitors at the museums where at last they are pretty sure to gravitate. The solid gold plate is perhaps melted into coin to pay the price of liberty. And so the cost of a picturesque château, erected high on an almost inaccessible crag, and lifting its frowning battlements against a background of snowy mountains, even though it be reckoned in human lives, may be small compared to the value which it has in after ages, especially if it comes into the possession of the people themselves, to be for ever prized as a memorial of a stormy past.