The Car That Went Abroad Part 6

We grew friendly with the mountains in the course of the afternoon, then intimate. They sprang up before us and behind us; just across the valleys they towered into the sky. Indeed, we suddenly had a most dramatic proof that we were climbing one. We had been shut in by wooded roads and sheltered farmsteads for an hour or two when we came out again into the open valley, with the river flowing through. But we were no longer _in_ the valley! Surprise of surprises! we were on a narrow, lofty road hundreds of feet above it, skirting the mountainside! It seemed incredible that our gradual, almost imperceptible, ascent had brought us to that high perch, overlooking this marvelous Vale of Cashmere. Everyone has two countries, it is said; his own and France.

One could understand that saying here, and why the French are not an emigrating race. We stopped to gaze our fill, and as we went along, the scenery attracted my attention so much that more than once I nearly drove off into it. We were so engrossed by the picture that we took the wrong road and went at least ten miles out of our way to get to Gren.o.ble. But it did not matter; we saw startlingly steep mountainsides that otherwise we might not have seen, and dashing streams, and at the end we had a wild and glorious coast of five or six miles from our mountain fastness down into the valley of the Isere, a regular toboggan streak, both horns going, nerves taut, teeth set, probable disaster waiting at every turn. We had never done such a thing before, and promised ourselves not to do it again. One such thrill was worth while, perhaps, but the ordinary lifetime might not outlast another.

Down in that evening valley we were in a wonderland. Granite walls rose perpendicularly on our left; cottages nestled in gardens at our right--bloom, foliage, fragrance, the flowing Isere. Surely this was the happy valley, the land of peace and plenty, shut in by these lofty heights from all the troubling of the world. Even the towers and spires of a city that presently began to rise ahead of us did not disturb us.

In the evening light they were not real, and when we had entered the gates of ancient Gratianopolis, and crossed the Isere by one of its several bridges, it seemed that this modern Gren.o.ble was not quite a city of the eager world.

The hotel we selected from the red-book was on the outskirts, and we had to draw pretty heavily on our French to find it; but it was worth while, for it was set in a wide garden, and from every window commanded the Alps. We realized now that they _were_ the Alps, the Alps of the Savoy, their high green slopes so near that we could hear the tinkle of the goat bells.

We did not take the long drive through the "impossibly beautiful"

valleys of Gren.o.ble which we had planned for next morning. When we arose the air was no longer full of stillness and sunlight. In fact, it was beginning to rain. So we stayed in, and by and by for luncheon had all the good French things, ending with fresh strawberries, great bowls of them--in September--and apparently no novelty in this happy valley of the Isere. All the afternoon, too, it rained, and some noisy French youngsters raced up and down the lower rooms and halls, producing a homelike atmosphere, while we gathered about the tables to study the French papers and magazines.

It was among the advertis.e.m.e.nts that I made some discoveries about French automobiles. They are more expensive than ours, in proportion to the horsepower, the latter being usually low. About twelve to fifteen horsepower seems to be the strength of the ordinary five-pa.s.senger machine. Our own thirty-horsepower engine, which we thought rather light at home, is a giant by comparison. Heavy engines are not needed in France. The smooth roads and perfectly graded hills require not half the power that we must expend on some of our rough, tough, rocky, and steep highways. Again, these lighter engines and cars take less gasoline, certainly, and that is a big item, where gasoline costs at least 100 per cent more than in America. I suppose the lightest weight car consistent with strength and comfort would be the thing to take to Europe. There would be a saving in the gasoline bill; and then the customs deposit, which is figured on the weight, would not be so likely to cripple the owner's bank account.

Chapter XV

UP THE ISeRE

Sometime in the night the rain ceased, and by morning Nature had prepared a surprise for us. The air was crystal clear, and towering into the sky were peaks no longer blue or green or gray, but white with drifted snow! We were in warm, mellow September down in our valley, but just up there--such a little way it seemed--were the drifts of winter.

With our gla.s.s we could bring them almost within s...o...b..lling distance.

Feathery clouds drifted among the peaks, the sun shooting through. It was all new to us, and startling. These really were the Alps; there was no further question.

"Few French cities have a finer location than Gren.o.ble," says the guidebook, and if I also have not conveyed this impression I have meant to do so. Not many cities in the world, I imagine, are more picturesquely located. It is also a large city, with a population of more than seventy-five thousand--a city of culture, and it has been important since the beginning of recorded history. Gratian was its patron Roman emperor, and the name Gratianopolis, a.s.sumed in his honor, has become the Gren.o.ble of to-day. Gratian lived back in the fourth century and was a capable sort of an emperor, but he had one weak point.

He liked to array himself in outlandish garb and show off. It is a weakness common to many persons, and seems harmless enough, but it was not a healthy thing for Gratian, who did it once too often. He came out one day habited like a Scythian warrior and capered up and down in front of his army. He expected admiration, and probably the t.i.tle of Scythia.n.u.s, or something. But the unexpected happened. The army jeered at his antics, and eventually a.s.sa.s.sinated him. Scythian costumes for emperors are still out of style.

We may pa.s.s over the riot and ruin of the Middle Ages. All these towns were alike in that respect. The story of one, with slight alterations, fits them all. Gren.o.ble was the first town to open its gates to Napoleon, on his return from Elba, in 1815, which gives it a kind of distinction in more recent times. Another individual feature is its floods. The Isere occasionally fills its beautiful valley, and fifteen times during the past three centuries Gren.o.ble has been almost swept away. There has been no flood for a long period now, and another is about due. Prudent citizens of Gren.o.ble keep a boat tied in the back yard instead of a dog.

We did not linger in Gren.o.ble. The tomb of Bayard--_sans peur, sans reproche_--is there, in the church of St. Andre; but we did not learn of this until later. The great sight at Gren.o.ble is its environment--the superlative beauty of its approaches, and its setting--all of which we had seen in the glory of a September afternoon.

There were two roads to Chambery, one by the Isere, and another through the mountains by way of Chartreuse which had its attractions. I always wanted to get some of the ancient nectar at its fountainhead, and the road was put down as "picturesque." But the rains had made the hills slippery; a skidding automobile and old Chartreuse in two colors did not seem a safe combination for a family car. So we took the river route, and I am glad now, for it began raining soon after we started, and we might not have found any comfortable ruined castle to shelter us if we had taken to the woods and hills. As it was, we drove into a great arched entrance, where we were safe and dry, and quite indifferent as to what happened next. We explored the place, and were rather puzzled. It was unlike other castles we have seen. Perhaps it had not been a castle at all, but an immense granary, or brewery, or an ancient fortress. In any case, it was old and ma.s.sive, and its high main arch afforded us a fine protection.

The shower pa.s.sed, the sun came out, and sent us on our way. The road was wet, but hard, and not steep. It was a neighborly road, curiously intimate with the wayside life, its domestic geography and economies; there were places where we seemed to be actually in front dooryards.

The weather was not settled; now and then there came a sprinkle, but with our top up we did not mind. It being rather wet for picnicking, we decided that we would lunch at some wayside inn. None appeared, however, and when we came to think about it, we could not remember having anywhere pa.s.sed such an inn. There were plenty of cafes where one could obtain wines and other beverages, but no food. In England and New England there are plenty of hostelries along the main roads, but evidently not in France. One must depend on the towns. So we stopped at Challes-les-Eaux, a little way out of Chambery, a pretty place, where we might have stayed longer if the September days had not been getting few.

Later, at Chambery, we visited the thirteenth-century chateau of the Duc de Savoy, which has been rebuilt, and climbed the great square tower which is about all that is left of the original structure, a grand place in its time. We also went into the gothic chapel to see some handsomely carved wainscoting, with a ceiling to match. We were admiring it when the woman who was conducting us explained by signs and a combination of languages that, while the wainscoting was carved, the ceiling was only painted, in imitation. It was certainly marvelous if true, and she looked like an honest woman. But I don't know-- I wanted to get up there and feel it.

She was, at any rate, a considerate woman. When I told her in the beginning that we had come to see the Duke of Savoy's old hat, meaning his old castle, she hardly smiled, though Narcissa went into hysterics.

It was nothing--even a Frenchman might say "_chapeau_" when he meant "_chateau_" and, furthermore--but let it go--it isn't important enough to dwell upon. Anything will divert the young.

Speaking of hats, I have not mentioned, I believe, the extra one that we carried in the car. It belonged to the head of the family and when we loaded it (the hat) at Ma.r.s.eilles it was a fresh and rather fluffy bit of finery. There did not seem to be any good place for it in the heavy baggage, shipped by freight to Switzerland, and decidedly none in the service bags strapped to the running-board. Besides, its owner said she might want to wear it on the way. There was plenty of s.p.a.ce for an extra hat in our roomy car, we said, and there did seem to be when we loaded it in, all neatly done up in a trim package.

But it is curious how things jostle about and lose their ident.i.ty. I never seemed to be able to remember what was in that particular package, and was always mistaking it for other things. When luncheon time came I invariably seized it, expecting some pleasant surprise, only to untie an appetizing, but indigestible, hat. The wrapping began to have a travel-worn look, the package seemed to lose bulk. When we lost the string, at last, we found that we could tie it with a much shorter one; when we lost that, we gave the paper a twist at the ends, which was seldom permanent, especially when violently disturbed. Not a soul in the car that did not at one time or another, feeling something bunchy, give it a kick, only to expose our surplus hat, which always had a helpless, unhappy look that invited pity. No concealment insured safety. Once the Joy was found to have her feet on it. At another time the owner herself was sitting on it. We seldom took it in at night, but once when we did we forgot it, and drove back seven miles to recover. I don't know what finally became of it.

Chapter XVI

INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE

It is a rare and beautiful drive to Aix-les-Bains, and it takes one by Lake Bourget, the shimmering bit of blue water from which Mark Twain set out on his Rhone trip. We got into a street market the moment of our arrival in Aix, a solid swarm of d.i.c.kering people. In my excitement I let the engine stall, and it seemed we would never get through. Aix did not much interest us, and we pushed on to Annecy with no unnecessary delay, and from Annecy to Thones, a comfortable day's run, including, as it did, a drive about beautiful ancient Annecy, chief city of the Haute-Savoie. We might have stayed longer at Annecy, but the weather had an unsettled look, and there came the feeling that storms and winter were gathering in the mountains and we would better be getting along somewhere else. Also a woman backed her donkey cart into us at Annecy and put another dent in our mudguard, which was somehow discouraging. As it was, we saw the lake, said to be the most beautiful in France, though no more beautiful, I think, than Bourget; an ancient chateau, now transformed into barracks; the old prison built out in the river; the narrow, ancient streets; and a house with a tablet that states that Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived there in 1729, and there developed his taste for music.

The Haute-Savoie is that billowy corner of far-eastern France below Lake Geneva--a kind of neutral, no man's territory hemmed by the huge heights of Switzerland and Italy. Leaving Annecy, we followed a picturesque road through a wild, weird land, along gorges and awesome brinks, under a somber sky. At times we seemed to be on the back of the world; at others diving to its recesses. It was the kind of way that one might take to supernatural regions, and it was the kind of evening to start.

Here and there on the slopes were flocks and herds, attended by grave-faced women, who were knitting as they slowly walked. They barely noticed us or their charges. They never sat down, but followed along, knitting, knitting, as though they were patterning the fates of men.

Sometimes we met or pa.s.sed a woman on the road, always knitting, like the others. It was uncanny. Probably for every human being there is somewhere among those dark mountains a weird woman, knitting the pattern of his life. That night at Thones, a forgotten hamlet, lost there in the Haute-Savoie, a storm broke, the wind tore about our little inn, the rain dashed fearsomely, all of which was the work of those knitting women, beyond doubt.

But the sun came up fresh and bright, and we took the road for Geneva.

For a time it would be our last day in France. All the forenoon we were among the mountain peaks, skirting precipices that one did not care to look over without holding firmly to something. But there were no steep grades and the brinks were protected by solid little walls.

At the bottom of a long slope a soldier stepped out of a box of a house and presented arms. I dodged, but his intent was not sanguinary. He wanted to see our papers--we were at the frontier--so I produced our customs receipts, called _triptyques_, our T. C. de F. membership card, our car license, our driving license, and was feeling in my pocket for yet other things when he protested, "_Pas necessaire, pas necessaire_"

and handed all back but the French _triptyque_, which he took to his _bureau_, where, with two other military _attaches_, he examined, discussed, finally signed and witnessed it, and waved us on our way.

So we were not pa.s.sing the Swiss customs yet, but only leaving the French outpost. The ordeal of the Swiss _douane_ was still somewhere ahead; we had entered the neutral strip. We wished we might reach the Swiss post pretty soon and have the matter over with. We had visions of a fierce person looking us through, while he fired a volley of French questions, pulled our baggage to pieces, and weighed the car, only to find that the result did not tally with the figures on our triple-folded sheet. I had supplied most of those figures from memory, and I doubted their accuracy. I had heard that of all countries except Russia, Switzerland was about the most particular. So we went on and on through that lofty scenery, expecting almost anything at every turn.

But nothing happened--nothing except that at one place the engine seemed to be running rather poorly. I thought at first that there was some obstruction in the gasoline tube, and my impulse was to light a match and look into the tank to see what it might be. On second thought I concluded to omit the match. I remembered reading of a man who had done that, and almost immediately his heirs had been obliged to get a new car.

We pa.s.sed villages, but no _douane_. Then all at once we were in the outskirts of a city. Why, this was surely Geneva, and as we were driving leisurely along a fat little man in uniform came out and lifted his hand. We stopped. Here it was, then, at last.

For a moment I felt a slight attack of weakness, not in the heart, but about the knees. However, the little man seemed friendly. He held out his hand and I shook it cordially. But it was the papers he was after, our Swiss _triptyque_. I said to myself, "A minute more and we probably shall be on the scales, and the next in trouble." But he only said, "_Numero de moteur._" I jerked open the hood, scrubbed off the grease, and showed it to him. He compared it, smiled, and handed back our paper.

Then he waved me to a _bureau_ across the street. Now it was coming; he had doubtless discovered something wrong at a glance.

There was an efficient-looking, sinister-looking person in the office who took the _triptyque_, glanced at it, and threw something down before me. I thought it was a warrant, but it proved to be a copy of the Swiss law and driving regulations, with a fine road map of Switzerland, and all information needed by motorists; "Price, 2 Frs." stamped on the cover. I judged that I was required to buy this, but I should have done it, anyway. It was worth the money, and I wished to oblige that man. He accepted my two francs, and I began to feel better. Then he made a few entries in something, handed me my _triptyque_, said "_Bonjour, et bon voyage_," and I was done.

I could hardly believe it. I saw then what a nice face he had, while the little fat man across the street was manifestly a lovely soul. He had demanded not a thing but the number of the motor. Not even the number of the car had interested him. As for the weight, the bore of the cylinders, the number of the cha.s.sis, and all those other statistics said to be required, they were as nonexistent to him as to me. Why, he had not even asked us to unstrap our baggage. It was with feelings akin to tenderness that we waved him good-by and glided across the imaginary line of his frontier into Switzerland.

We glided very leisurely, however. "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland"--every stranger, that is--for breaking the speed laws.

This, at least, was our New York information. So we crept along, and I kept my eye on the speedometer all the way through Geneva, for we were not going to stop there at present, and when we had crossed our old friend, the Rhone, variously bridged here, skirted the gay water-front and were on the sh.o.r.e road of that loveliest of all lakes--Lake Leman, with its blue water, its snow-capped mountains, its terraced vineyards, we still loafed and watched the _gendarmes_ to see if they were timing us, and came almost to a stop whenever an official of any kind hove in sight. Also we used the mellow horn, for our book said that horns of the Klaxon type are not allowed in Switzerland.

We were on soft pedal, you see, and some of the cars we met were equally subdued. But we observed others that were not--cars that were just bowling along in the old-fashioned way, and when these pa.s.sed us, we were surprised to find that they were not ignorant, strange cars, but Swiss cars, or at least cars with Swiss number-plates and familiar with the dangers. As for the whistles, they were honking and snorting and screeching just as if they were in Connecticut, where there is no known law that forbids anything except fishing on Sunday. Indeed, one of the most sudden and violent horns I have ever heard overtook us just then, and I nearly jumped over the windshield when it abruptly opened on me from behind.

"Good G--, that is, goodness!" I said, "this is just like France!" and I let out a few knots and tooted the Klaxonette, and was doing finely when suddenly a mounted policeman appeared on the curve ahead. I could feel myself scrouging as we pa.s.sed, going with great deliberation. He did not offer to molest me, but we did not hurry again--not right away. Not that we cared to hurry; the picture landscape we were in was worth all the time one could give it. Still, we were anxious to get to Lausanne before dusk, and little by little we saw and heard things which convinced us that "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland" is a superst.i.tion, the explosion of which was about due. Fully half the people we met, _all_ that pa.s.sed us, could properly have been arrested anywhere. By the time we reached Lausanne we should have been arrested ourselves.

Chapter XVII

SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS

Now, when one has reached Switzerland, his inclination is not to go on traveling, for a time at least, but to linger and enjoy certain advantages. First, of course, there is the scenery; the lakes, the terraced hills, and the snow-capped mountains; the chateaux, chalets, and mossy villages; the old inns and brand-new, heaven-climbing hotels.

And then Switzerland is the land of the three F's--French, Food, and Freedom, all attractive things. For Switzerland is the model republic, without graft and without greed; its schools, whether public or private, enjoy the patronage of all civilized lands, and as to the matter of food, Switzerland is the _table d'hote_ of the world.

Swiss landlords are combined into a sort of trust, not, as would be the case elsewhere, to keep prices up, but to keep prices down! It is the result of wisdom, a far-seeing prudence which says: "Our scenery, our climate, our pure water--these are our stock in trade. Our profit from them is through the visitor. Wherefore we will encourage visitors with good food, attractive accommodations, courtesy; and we will be content with small profit from each, thus inviting a general, even if modest, prosperity; also, incidentally, the cheerfulness and good will of our patrons." It is a policy which calls for careful management, one that has made hotel-keeping in Switzerland an exact science--a gift, in fact, transmitted down the generations, a sort of magic; for nothing short of magic could supply a spotless room, steam heated, with windows opening upon the lake, and three meals--the evening meal a seven-course dinner of the first order--all for six francs fifty (one dollar and thirty cents) a day.[9]