“On the morning of October 1, Masséna with fifteen thousand men again attacked Rosenberg whose troops followed up ‘a staggering volley’ with the famous Suvórof bayonet charge and drove them miles down the valley, inflicting on them a loss of more than two thousand, not counting perhaps as many more drowned in the Muotta, while some hundreds fell or threw themselves over precipices.

“Bagration was having equal success against Molitor in the defile by the Klöntalersee driving him back to Mollis, but when he was reinforced, retiring to Nettstal, in good order. Suvórof himself had captured Glarus and a large supply of provisions; while Rosenberg by a master-stroke of strategy succeeded in rejoining Suvórof in spite of a heavy snow-storm, and the sufferings of his men, who in their turn had to bivouac on the pass without food or fire.

“The army, however, was still hemmed in and was short of provisions, and still worse, short of ammunition. Their only hope was to escape by the Panixer pass, but at this time of the year the deep snow already fallen had obliterated the path; they were surrounded by dense clouds; they had no guides; the superstitious Russians were greatly alarmed by seeing the lightning and hearing peals of thunder below them—a phenomenon which seemed to them supernatural. Occasionally a man, or even an officer, mounted, would vanish entirely, swallowed up in some deep crevasse hidden by snow.

“They had to spend the night again on the mountain; it grew bitter cold; the snow became dangerously slippery. A bombardment of rocks from the heights above killed many.

“But the remainder with incredible courage pushed on the next day to Ilanz, where it was found that at least five thousand were missing.

“On the 8th of October they reached Coire, where, at last, the starved wretches had something to eat.

“And all this loss and suffering might have been largely obviated had Suvórof known enough to follow the Splügen pass and the Grisons, or having reached Altorf, joined Lipken by the Schächental.

“In honour of the heroic management of the Swiss campaign the Emperor made him generalissimo of the Russian army, calling him ‘the most renowned commander of this or any other age.’”

“That is certainly a great story,” said I. “Isn’t there a statue or a memorial to Suvórof?”

“Oh, yes. At the Devil’s Bridge, on the side of the chasm, there is a tall granite cross, about ten meters high, put up in 1899, and with an inscription in Russian to the memory of him and his brave comrades. The bridge itself is generally called after him.”

“It brings these great events very vividly before one to be at the very spot where they took place, does it not?”

“Yes, just think what centuries of history this Zürich of ours has seen! While I was in England a few years ago I picked up at a second-hand bookshop a queer old copy of Thomas Coryat’s ‘Crudities.’ Here is the book: in his dedication he calls himself ‘Thy benevolent itinerating friend T. C., the Odcombian Legge-Stretcher.’ He travelled through all this region, using his ‘ten toes for a nagge.’ Here he refers to Zürich: he says that while here he met Rodolphus Hospinianus, Gaspar Waserus and Henricus Bultigerus. Gaspar Waserus was the ‘ornamêt of the town, speaking eight languages’ but Hospinian—that ‘glittering lamp of learning’—told him that their city was founded in the time of Abraham. He derives the names from the fact that it belonged to two kingdoms—zweier Reich—‘one, on the farther bank of the Limacus,’ he says, ‘belonged to Turgouia, that on the hither bank Ergouia.’ The Latin name, according to him, was Turegum, quasi, duorum regum civitas.”

“An amusing case of imaginary etymology,” I should say. “But Zürich is a very ancient city, I believe.”

“Oh, yes. In 1853 and the following year there was a remarkable diminution of the waters in the lake and wide surfaces were laid bare. Near Obermeilen, above half-way up the lake, some labourers were embanking some new land and they discovered piles, bits of charcoal and other relics. Ferdinand Keller began making investigations and he discovered that these piles were in parallel rows and were evidently the remains of habitations. After that any number of similar discoveries were made. At Concise, near Neuchâtel, from one single aquatic village twenty-five thousand different objects were recovered. And they now know exactly how these villages looked with their floors of fire-hardened clay, their circular walls, their conical roofs made of wattled reeds and straw or bark. If you have been into any of the Swiss museums you have seen their weapons and stag-horns, bulls’ skulls, flint arrowheads, serpentine hatchets, slings, horn-awls, rings, and clay vessels, toys, quoits, ornamented often with rude but not inartistic etchings,—there is no end to the things preserved,—and even their canoes hollowed out of one trunk, just such as Hannibal used for crossing the Rhône. Each village had probably two or three hundred huts connected with the shore by a bridge. One investigator discovered a storehouse containing a hundred measures of barley and wheat. They evidently had their farms; they raised apples, pears and plums. They had a trade with other tribes, for coral and amber articles were found. Yes, Zürich is built on a settlement that existed probably fifteen hundred years before Christ—not so very far from the time of Abraham.”

“Who were they?”

“Some think they were of the same race as the Etruscans. It is probable that they were attacked by the Kelts, who burnt their villages.”

“I suppose it was Kelts who attacked Hannibal.”

“Probably; they were Allobrogi. The Kelts were always freedom-loving.”

“I remember what Kant says about the people of mountains loving freedom: ‘The peoples that dwell around and on the mountains are very strong and bold and in all ways seek to assert their freedom—ihre Freiheit zu behaupten. But this probably comes from the fact that in such regions it is very easy for a few to defend themselves against great armies, and, moreover, the mountain-peaks are uninhabited and uninhabitable; in the valleys also little wealth is to be found and no one is especially tempted to dwell in such regions.’ He also claims that the peoples that do live there and are vegetarians are the freest.”

“I am not so certain about the valleys not tempting to invasion. Do you know one of the most interesting episodes in Swiss history is the coming of the Saracens? Yet they left surprisingly few remains—a few medals without dates—a few names embedded in other names—like Pontresina, which is Pons Sarecenorum.”

“I know it is, because one of my favourite novels is Viktor von Scheffel’s ‘Ekkehard.’”

“Do you know that?”

“Indeed I do, and, above all things, I want to go to the Lake of Constance—your Bodensee—and make a pilgrimage to the Hohentwil, where Ekkehard taught the duchess Latin and she taught him love.”

“We will go there together; that will be an excellent excursion.”

This plan also, I will say here, we carried out, visiting at the same time Constance and two or three other towns on the lake, and also the Falls of the Rhine. Really, to know Switzerland, one would have to live here years. Everywhere I go the charm and variety of it grows on me. Mountains, mountains everywhere! I can say with old Coryat:—

“Such is the height of many of these mountains that I saw at the least two hundred of them that were ‘farre aboue’ some of the clouds!”

I was glad that Constance, which controls the mouth of its lake, has also its Reformer—John Huss—to compare with Geneva’s Calvin and Zürich’s Zwingli; they prize him all the more because they put him to death!

The Professor and I talked of all manner of things,—antiquities, Swiss history, which, except in spots, and its final results, is not very inspiring; strikes and labour-troubles, woman-suffrage, the growth of commercialism, the Swiss railways and the advantage of having them owned by the state, and education. We forgot that it rained. But the following morning the storm showed symptoms of dissolution, and the Professor and I sallied forth to see the city. Every city is worthy of a hundred books; for every city is full of human beings, or else of history, or both. Zürich has nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants and also has its history. I had seen lying on the library table a beautifully printed and well illustrated pamphlet describing the restoration of the Fraumünster, which was completed in 1912. That venerable building settles Zürich’s historic solidity. There were found in it, or rather under it, traces of the little church which was torn down in the Ninth Century to make room for the Carolingian minster, which has been so successfully repaired. We went around it and into it and the Professor pointed out to me the relics of its most ancient carvings, more or less mutilated inscriptions, grave-stones—one of them to the Ritter Berngerus von Wile, dated 1284.

“Did you know that in the Thirteenth Century when Berngerus,—I wonder if he was a bear-slayer,—when Von Wile was living in Zürich,—there was a regular school of poetry here? Heinrich Mannes, the Probst of the Abtei, who founded the Library, had charge of it. He died in 1270. Rüdiger Mannesse had a great collection of song-books, and the tests in ‘Mastersong’ were much enjoyed. Count Krafto von Toggenburg was afterwards Probst of the Abtei. It is supposed that Hadloub was his pupil. He was the nephew of Elizabeth von Wetzikon, the Fürstabtissin, who made him chaplain of St. Stephen’s outside the walls. This Elizabeth von Wetzikon’s mortuary inscription was found in the old church, but badly mutilated. The Zürich Antiquarian Society has published nearly three score of Hadloub’s poems. I read some of them. There is one that reminded me of the old English song—‘Sumer is i-kumen in—lude sing kuku.’ It begins:—

As it was still cloudy we went into the Swiss National Museum. A hasty glance at the old furniture, at the stained glass—the best collection in the world—made it evident that a week was all too short for Zürich—I should want at least a week for that wonderful museum alone. And with such an intelligent guide as Professor Landoldt it was most edifying. When we came out the sun was shining and we went to the top of the Polytechnikum and got that bird’s-eye view of the town which is the best introduction. I shall always remember the beauty of it; I can see with my mind’s eye the twin towers of the Gross-Münster—not that they are beautiful, at least not their caps—and (from closer observation) the quaint statue of Charlemagne with his gilded crown and sword.

“The molasses-sandstone which was used for building so many of the old edifices in Zürich,” said the Professor, “comes from quarries at the upper end of the lake that were known in Roman times. Unfortunately it crumbles rather readily ‘under the tooth of time.’ Some of the carvings on the old cathedral are most quaint and curious, as you will see. For instance, on the third story is a knight dressed in tunic and chlamys. He may have been meant for Rupert, an Alleman duke, or for Burkhart, Duke of Suabia. Besides the human and angel figures you will see birds and all sorts of four-footed creatures, many of them imaginary or apocalyptic. It is odd that the statues and decorations do not refer to Biblical subjects but rather to heathen imaginations—chimeras, dragons, hippogrifs, sirens, lions eating men who are certainly not meant to be Daniels; there are a winged crocodile devouring a giant’s ears, a toad standing on its head, a bearded Hercules strangling twisted serpents, Delilah cutting Samson’s hair, wolves biting at a boar, skinny monkeys with skulls at their mouths, a face with fish coming out of the mouth and ears, centaurs shooting bows, conventionalized grapes and monsters eating them, and the like.

“The first towers,” he went on to say, “were in Romanesque style and not intended to rise much above the roof; there should have been a separate campanile; at the end of the Fifteenth Century both towers were built higher in Gothic style. I think it was the ambitious Bürgermeister Waldmann, envious of the tall towers of Basel and Fribourg, who had them elevated. To meet the expenses he himself contributed three hundred gulden, and taxed the whole priesthood from the bishop down, but he did not live to see his ambition carried out. These towers went through various vicissitudes. In 1490 a pointed cap ornamented with lead was put on each, but the lead was too heavy and was taken off twenty years later and the caps were covered with larch shingles. These lasted till they caught fire in 1575; then a copper top was put on; then shingles again; then in 1763 it was struck by lightning and burned to the bell-deck. In 1770 a stone gallery with pyramids on the four corners showed itself. The present rather ridiculous top—the octagonal wooden helmets—dates back to 1779.”

“There must be any amount of interesting remains all around Zürich,” said I, leading him on.

“Indeed there are. A number of years ago the favourite spot for viewing Zürich was up on the Balgrist, where you look down into the Limmat valley and across the lake to the mountains. In 1814, I think it was, some labourers requiring material to mend the roads with dug down and discovered some skeletons. It was supposed to be remains of soldiers killed in the battle between the Russians and the French in 1799 and they gave these remains Christian burial. But they were really prehistoric. Afterwards all sorts of things were found there, but, as it was not then a scientific age, most of them were lost. The place is Entebüchel, which local etymology interprets as the Hill of the Giants; Büchel, equivalent to Hühl, meaning hill, and Ente the local word for giant. But it really means ‘Beyond the Hill,’ the word ent or ennet being an Alleman word.”

“What is the oldest monument in Zürich?”

“Oh, probably a grave-stone of the Second Century, which some Roman official set up to his beloved son; it stands in the present Lindenhof and has the words ‘Statio turicensis’ carved on it. When this region became Roman the tax-collectors dwelt here. After the fall of the Romans, the Allemanni came, then the Franks, then the German kings. Zürich was a palatinate, which means, as you know, palatium regis; a palace where the kings stayed when they visited here. Really, you might spend a life-time studying the history of Zürich and this lake. I shall like you to compare the Lake of Geneva with our much smaller Zürich Lake,” said Herr Landoldt. “I shall take you on a trip around it.”

He was true to his promise. After he had shown me all the sights of his splendid city—the largest in Switzerland—we made the tour of the lake. It has not the beauty of colouring of Lake Leman; it is a pale green but “the sweet banks of Zürich’s lovely lake” are what the French call riant, a little more than our smiling; and the background of snow-covered Alps is magnificent. The lake is about ten times as long as it is wide and is one hundred and forty-two meters deep. Just as from the end of Leman rushes the Rhône, so from the Zürich end of its lake rushes in a torrential dash the green Limmat. On the left shore, at the place where it attains its greatest width, are the two little islands of Lützelau and Ufenau. On Ufenau is a church and a chapel dating from about the middle of the Twelfth Century. Here died in 1523, Maximilian’s poet-laureate, Luther’s zealous partizan, the high-tempered, witty, impetuous Ulrich von Hutten. He had to flee from his enemies, and found a refuge through the protection of his fellow-reformer, Zwingli, who exercised somewhat the same commanding influence in Zürich as Calvin did in Geneva. I had never read any of Von Hutten’s works, but I found an excellent edition of them in the Professor’s library and I read with much amusement some of the sarcasms which he put into verse in his “Awakener of the German Nation.”

We went to Rapperswyl—the ending wyl or wil reminds one of the multitude of New England towns ending in ville and has the same origin—and spent an hour in the Polish National Museum founded in 1870 by Count Broel-Plater and installed in the Fourteenth-Century castle, which came to the Hapsburgs when its founders lost it. It seemed strange to see all the memorials of a vanquished people—weapons, banners and ornaments, portraits and historical pictures—on the walls or in the cabinets of a city so far away.

We got back to Zürich in the evening, and the Professor called my attention to the romantic effect of the lighted boats plying on the glittering waters. There was a brilliant moon, too, and a more beautiful scene I have rarely witnessed than the city with its myriad lights.

My week went like a breath. Before I knew it, we were off for our trip through the Austrian Tyrol. Will and Ruth appeared in due time, and, to my surprise, they brought Lady Q. with them. It is one of the curiosities of travel that one is always meeting the same persons. We should have toured the Bernese Oberland had not motor-vehicles been barred. But in the Tyrol splendid roads have been constructed and those incomparable regions are a paradise for travel. To detail the itinerary would be merely a catalogue with superlatives for decoration. To describe the journey with all its memorable details,—picturesque towns, valleys sweeping down between rugged mountains, rivers and cataracts, would occupy a book as big as a dictionary. I noticed that we came to the third class of mountain-peaks: the first was Dents, the second was Horns, and now we found the term was Piz. One of the most fascinating little places that we visited on a side trip to Davos-Platz was Sertig Dörfli, with its attractive church and its view of the Piz Kesch. At Davos lived John Addington Symonds, and I pleased my niece especially by reciting his beautiful sonnet: “’Neath an uncertain moon.” Besides that Piz we saw Piz Michel and Piz Vadret and Piz Grialetsch. In several cases, where we could not go in the car, we went either by train or by carriage. At Sils, also, finely situated on the largest of the Engadine lakes, there were still more Pizes: Piz della Marga, Piz Corvatsch, Piz Güz. There is no end to them.

We took the advice of some chance acquaintances who had been motoring through the Tyrol. We went to Bozen, and, after spending the night there, we followed the Val Sugana and the Broccone and Gobbera passes and then the new roads of the Rolle, the Pordoi and the Falzarego into the Dolomites. Of course the Dolomites do not belong to Switzerland as a State but only geologically. We crossed over into Italy and enjoyed the drive by the Italian lakes—a succession of “dreams of beauty,” as Lady Q. said with more truth than originality. We spent a day in Milan and then returned to Switzerland by the Saint-Gotthard.

CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE SHORES OF LAKE LUCERNE

MY classmate, Ned Allen, was always a dilettante; if he had been obliged to work, he might have accomplished great things; but, though he may have had ambitions, the days of his young manhood slipped away while he travelled all over the world. Then he became disgusted with what he considered unjust taxation, and, converting all his property into income-bearing bonds, so that he had no care or worry, he came to Europe and lived part of the time in his villa on the Lake of the Four Cantons and part of the time in a lovely palazzo near Palermo in Sicily.

He had everything to make him happy, and, yet, like most of the rich men whom I have ever known, he was not happy. Happiness comes only in forgetting one’s self, and that he had no time to do, because he had all the time there was.

It did him good, I think, to be obliged to exert himself a little to show me the sights. Like myself, he was very fond of music, and he followed the example of a good many wealthy men in Switzerland—he had a string quartet play every Sunday afternoon and also two or three evenings a week. One day he took me to the house of a friend of his who supported a large orchestra and gave concerts to a few invited guests or to himself alone according to circumstances. He had been to Paderewski’s villa on the Lake of Constance and to the Count von Hesse-Wartegg’s, where his wife, Madame Minnie Hauk, after retiring from the stage, has lived for a number of years. As I knew them all, I wished that I might pay my respects, but I had no chance—there were so many other things to do.

One of my first objects of pilgrimage at Lucerne was the Peace and War Museum, founded by that remarkable Austrian Jew, Von Bloch. My classmate was inclined to scoff at the notion of Universal Peace. I found he had not read or even thought very deeply on the subject, and I really think that my enthusiasm communicated itself somewhat to him. He had never thought, before I suggested it to him, that the small stature of the present-day French and Italians was probably due to the fact that the best and strongest of the youth of those two nations were killed off in the Napoleonic and subsequent wars. War does not ensure the survival of the fittest. The old and weaklings are left to perpetuate the race.

One would hardly believe it, but Ned had never been to the top of Pilatus; I found he was not especially interested in scenery, he who lived in the midst of the most splendid scenery in Switzerland. But he went with me to Pilatus. As we started I quoted the rhymed proverb:—

He had heard that and said it was quite true; if the mountain was adorned with a little cloudy cap it meant that there would be fair weather; fortunately the peak wore his hat and not his dagger, so we had bright sunshine and not rain.

But Ned did not know the legend which connects Pilate with the mountain. Of course it should be Mons Pileatus—the capt mountain; but the story became widespread that after Christ was put to death, Pilate was recalled to Rome. He wore Christ’s robe. He was found guilty of malfeasance and was put to death. His body was thrown into the Tiber which refused it and angry storms arose. It was sent to Vienna: the Danube refused it; it was brought to the Rhône; again storms; the lake refused it; new disasters came upon Lausanne. Then it was brought to the Frankmünt—that is what the rough upper part of the mountain is called; the mons fractus—where Pilate’s ghost fought with the spectre of King Herod—the red of the conflict was seen then and afterwards at sunset on the mountain-top. Up came a necromancer and laid a terrible spell. In the days that followed nothing would grow there, and on Good Friday the disgraced procurator was doomed to appear on a black mule with a white spot—like a Roman knight—and show himself.

So great was the fear of Pilatus that until comparatively modern times no one dared to go up to it. Now there is a railway, and the ghost of Pilate is laid. Sir Edwin Arnold speaks of the legend in his lilting poem:—

Whatever may have been the bareness of its sides in consequence of necromancer’s spells it is now filled with beautiful plant life—hundreds of varieties. If I had been as much of a botanist as I am a collector for my mental picture-gallery I might fill a page with the names and descriptions of the Alpine flowers, which I noticed as merely blue or pink or yellow and cared little for distinguishing them apart. Once during one of my trips I did see the edelweiss growing, but it is not very pretty; but the fields of gentians and the forget-me-nots—those acres of blue sky fallen to earth and growing up again—those would or might inspire and extract a poem from the most prosaic.

We went together also to the top of the Rigi, which is easily attainable by railway.

Töpfer, in his story entitled “Les Deux Scheidegg,” gives a most enthusiastic description of an avalanche. I think I like the view from Pilatus better than from Rigi; but from both the mountains look like a colossal ocean in a storm and suddenly stricken by the sight of Medusa’s face!

Ned took me in his motor-boat on several trips around the lake which has so many names. I was not really so much interested in the William Tell region as I suppose I should have been. Suppose it were proved as decisively as Tell, as Eindridi with King Olaf, as Hemingr with King Harald, or as Geyti, son of Alask, have been proved to be mere sun myths, that Napoleon and Apollo were really the same, and that George Washington was only a sun myth! His axe corresponds to the bow and arrow; it cuts down the cherry-tree of darkness with its glittering edge and brings liberty to his fellow-man. Who would then care, for any sentimental reasons, to go to Mount Vernon? Why, Schiller, himself, never saw the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons any more than Coleridge ever saw Chamonix; he got all his local colour from Goethe’s descriptions. To go to the Tell Chapel is to participate in a fraud! Yet the natives each year take part in a sort of folk-play, which has all the solemnity of a semi-religious celebration. I did not care to stop as we passed by; still less when we took passage in a big Zeppelin dirigible and looked down upon the big sprawling lake winding among its mountains!

Ned actually waked up enough to walk with me about Lucerne; like one who always has the opportunity, he had never before been through the two covered bridges past the imposing water tower or scrutinized the quaint wall paintings. He went with me to see the famous Lion of Lucerne—one of the few memorial monsters that do not pall on acquaintance. The little pool in front adds immensely to the effect.

I had to tear myself away from the pleasant and luxurious home of my friend. I went back to Lausanne by a somewhat different route, taking in Sarnen, Meyringen and Brienz, and then going by steamboat from end to end of the Brienzersee, not failing to spend a few hours at the Giessbach. They illuminate it at night, but there is something immodest about such an exhibition; it is like catching sight of a wood-nymph or a water-fairy. I remember once seeing a great fire at Niagara Falls and the river actually turned red with shame. But, by moonlight, without artificial streams of light, it must be enchanting.

I made a little stay at Interlaken, and from there I ran over to Lauterbrunnen, where the Staubbach falls over its frowning suicidal cliffs and dies before it reaches the valley. It is weird and ghostlike—the spirit of a waterfall. I walked far up into the valley, and, coming back to the hotel once more, saw that delicate blush on the Jungfrau. I don’t wonder Thomas Gray declares that “the mountains are ecstatic and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year.” I would go farther and say that as one grew older, one should live among them or in sight of them.

CHAPTER XXV
LAUSANNE AGAIN

IN going back I walked part of the way, taking in inverse order Byron’s route, which is interesting because he worked his reminiscences of it into “Manfred.” This is what Byron says, and it shows how poems crystallize: “The music of the cows’ bells (for their wealth, like the Patriarchs’, is cattle) in the pastures (which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain) and the shepherds, shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that I ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence—much more so than Greece or Asia Minor, for there we are a little too much of the saber and musquet order; and if there is a crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other—but this was pure and unmixed—solitary, savage and patriarchal: the effect I cannot describe. As we went, they played the ‘Ranz des Vaches’ and other airs by way of farewell.”

The pipes of the shepherds he later introduced into “Manfred:”

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, was famous for its cheese. Byron says it was famous for cheese, liberty, property and no taxes, also bad German. They passed along the valley of Simmenthal and came into the plain of Thun by its narrow entrance with high precipices wooded to the top. He crossed the river in a boat rowed by women, which caused him to remark: “Women went right for the first time in my recollection.” He visited the modern castle of Schadau at the western end of the Lake of Thun, near the mouth of the Aar. A boat took them in three hours from Castle Schadau to Neuhaus: “The lake small, but the banks fine: rocks down to the water’s edge.”

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 of a white horse streaking in the wind, such as might be conceived would be that of the ‘pale horse’ on which Death is mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water but a something between both; its immense height (nine hundred feet) gives it a wave, a curve, a spreading here, a condensation there, wonderful and indescribable.”

Here, again, he got aliment for “Manfred:”

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 avalanches falling every five minutes nearly—as if God was pelting the Devil down from Heaven with snowballs. From where we stood, on the Wengern Alp, we had all these in view on one side: on the other, the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the Ocean of Hell during a Springtide—it was white and sulphury and immeasurably deep in appearance.” From the summit they “looked down upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood.”

The avalanches and sulphurous clouds of course became part of the décor of “Manfred:”

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:

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.

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 considerable volume of water falls into an abyss about twenty-three meters higher than Niagara.

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 valley, spending his time in the cultivation of literature and music, in walking and in hunting. Rousseau was there also, and the count gives a lively narrative of his acquaintance with the philosopher; his dinners, his conversations, his evening walks in the woods, singing duets. One day he and Rousseau walked from Colombier to Les Brenets—six leagues—stopping every little while to study the wild places. The count says: “I consider this little portion of the Jura, enclosed in the boundaries of Neuchâtel, as one of the most curious countries in the world for the philosopher, the physician, the geologist, the artist and the mechanician to study.” They finally came to the residence of M. du Peyron, a rich, charitable American. Rousseau took kindly to him and they botanized together.

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 not live in it long, and it passed into the hands of Dr. Tissot. Voltaire moved into a house in Lausanne, 6, Rue du Grand Chêne, and here he gave theatrical entertainments. He also organized them at Monrepos, a château then owned by the Marquis de Langalérie. The stage was in the barn but the spectators were in the house. He wrote his friends about the success of them: “I play the old man, Lusignan.... I assure you, without vanity, that I am the best old fool to be found in any company.” To his friend Thiriot: “I wish that you had passed the winter with me at Lausanne. You would have seen new pieces performed by excellent actors, strangers coming from thirty leagues around, and my beautiful shores of Lake Leman become the home of art, of pleasure, and of taste.” To his niece, Madame de Fontaine: “The idlers of Paris think that Switzerland is a savage country; they would be very much astonished if they saw ‘Zaire’ better played at Lausanne than it is played at Paris; they would be still more surprised to see two hundred spectators as good judges as there are in Europe.... I have made tears flow from all the Swiss eyes.” When he moved to Geneva, and especially when he bought the château of Ferney, so that he might be a thorn in the flesh of Genevese sanctimoniousness, he was older, but still played his parts.