The Car That Went Abroad Part 8

I am forgetting, however. One day, when we had been there a month or two, and were clawing up the steep hill--Mount Pelerin--that rises back of the hotel to yet other hotels, and to compact little villages, we strayed into a tiny lane just below Chardonne, and came to a stone watering trough, or fountain, under an enormous tree. Such troughs, with their clear, flowing water, are plentiful enough, but this one had a feature all its own. The stone upright which held the flowing spout had not been designed for that special purpose. It was, in fact, the upper part of a small column, capital and all, very old and mended, and _distinctly of Roman design_. I do not know where it came from, and I do not care to inquire too deeply, for I like to think it is a fragment of one of those villas that overlooked the Lake of Geneva long ago.

There are villas enough about the lake to-day, and chateaux by the dozen, most of the latter begun in the truculent Middle Ages and continued through the centuries down to within a hundred years or so ago. You cannot walk or drive in any direction without coming to them, some in ruins, but most of them well preserved or carefully restored, and habitable; some, like beautiful Blonay, holding descendants of their ancient owners. From the top of our hotel, with a gla.s.s, one could pick out as many as half a dozen, possibly twice that number. They were just towers of defense originally, the wings and other architectural excursions being added as peace and prosperity and family life increased. One very old and handsome one, la Tour de Peilz, now gives its name to a part of Vevey, though in the old days it is said that venomous little wars used to rage between Vevey proper and the village which cl.u.s.tered about the chateau de Peilz. Readers of _Little Women_ will remember la Tour de Peilz, for it was along its lake wall that Laurie proposed to Amy.

But a little way down the lake there is a more celebrated chateau than la Tour de Peilz; the chateau of Chillon, which Byron's poem of the prisoner Bonivard has made familiar for a hundred years.[12] Chillon, which stands not exactly on the lake, but on a rock _in_ the lake, has not preserved the beginning of its history. Those men of the bronze age camped there, and, if the evidences shown are genuine, the Romans built a part of the foundation. Also, in one of its lower recesses there are the remains of a rude altar of sacrifice.

It is a fascinating place. You cross a little drawbridge, and through a heavy gateway enter a guardroom and pa.s.s to a pretty open court, where to-day there are vines and blooming flowers. Then you descend to the big barrack room, a hall of ponderous masonry, pa.s.s through a small room, with its perfectly black cell below for the condemned, through another, where a high gibbet-beam still remains, and into a s.p.a.cious corridor of pillars called now the "Prison of Bonivard."

There are seven pillars of gothic mold In Chillon's dungeons deep and old;...

Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, A sunbeam which has lost its way ...

And in each pillar there is a ring And in each ring there is a chain.

That iron is a cankering thing, For in these limbs its teeth remain....

Bonivard's ring is still there, and the rings of his two brothers who were chained, one on each side of him; chained, as he tells us, so rigidly that

We could not move a single pace; We could not see each other's face.

We happened to be there, once, when a sunbeam that "had lost its way"

came straying in, a larger sunbeam now, for the narrow slits that serve for windows were even narrower in Bonivard's time, and the place, light enough to-day in pleasant weather, was then somber, damp, and probably unclean.

Bonivard was a Geneva patriot, a political prisoner of the Duke of Savoy, who used Chillon as his chateau. Bonivard lived six years in Chillon, most of the time chained to a column, barely able to move, having for recreation shrieks from the torture chamber above, or the bustle of execution from the small adjoining cell. How he lived, how his reason survived, are things not to be understood. Both his brothers died, and at last Bonivard was allowed more liberty. The poem tells us that he made a footing in the wall, and climbed up to look out on the mountains and blue water, and a little island of three trees, and the "white-walled distant town"--Bouveret, across the lake. He was delivered by the Bernese in 1536, regaining his freedom with a sigh, according to the poem. Yet he survived many years, dying in 1570, at the age of seventy-four.

On the columns in Bonivard's dungeon many names are carved, some of them the greatest in modern literary history. Byron's is there, Victor Hugo's, Sh.e.l.ley's, and others of the sort. They are a tribute to the place and its history, of course, but even more to Bonivard--the Bonivard of Byron.

Prisoners of many kinds have lived and died in the dungeons of Chillon--heretics, witches, traitors, poor relations--persons inconvenient for one reason or another--it was a vanishing point for the duke's undesirables, who, after the execution, were weighted and dropped out a little door that opens directly to an almost measureless depth of blue uncomplaining water. Right overhead is the torture chamber, with something ghastly in its very shape and color, the central post still bearing marks of burning-irons and clawing steel. Next to this chamber is the hall of justice, and then the splendid banquet hall; everything handy, you see, so that when the duke had friends, and the wine had been good, and he was feeling particularly well, he could say, "Let's go in and torture a witch"; or, if the hour was late and time limited, "Now we'll just step down and hang a heretic to go to bed on." The duke's bedroom, by the way, was right over the torture chamber. I would give something for that man's conscience.

One might go on for pages about Chillon, but it has been told in detail so many times. It is the pride to-day of this sh.o.r.e--pictures of it are in every window--postal cards of it abound. Yet, somehow one never grows tired of it, and stops to look at every new one.

For a thousand years, at least, Chillon was the scene of all the phases of feudalism and chivalry; its history is that of the typical castle; architecturally it is probably as good an example as there is in Switzerland. It has been celebrated by other authors besides Byron. Jean Jacques Rousseau has it in his _Nouvelle Helose_, Hugo in _Le Rhin_, and it has been pictured more or less by most of the writing people who have found their way to Leman's pleasant sh.o.r.e. These have been legion.

The Vevey and Montreux neighborhood has been always a place for poor but honest authors. Rousseau was at Vevey in 1732, and lodged at the Hotel of the Key, and wrote of it in his _Confessions_, though he would seem to have behaved very well there. The building still stands, and bears a tablet with a medallion portrait of Rousseau and an extract in which he says that Vevey has won his heart. In his _Confessions_ he advises all persons of taste to go to Vevey, and speaks of the beauty and majesty of the spectacle from its sh.o.r.e.

When Lord Byron visited Lake Leman he lodged in Clarens, between Vevey and Montreux, and a tablet now identifies the house. Voltaire also visited here, lodging unknown. Dumas the elder was in Vevey in the thirties of the last century, and wrote a book about Switzerland--a book of extraordinary interest, full of duels, earthquakes, and other startling things, worthy of the author of _Monte Cristo_ and _The Three Musketeers_. Switzerland was not so closely reported in those days; an imagination like Dumas' had more range. Thackeray wrote a portion of the _Newcomes_ at the hotel Trois Couronnes in Vevey, and it was on the wide terrace of the same gay hostelry that Henry James's _Daisy Miller_ had her parasol scene. We have already mentioned Laurie and Amy on the wall of Tour de Peilz, and one might go on citing literary a.s.sociations of this neighborhood. Perhaps it would be easier to say that about every author who has visited the continent has paused for a little time at Vevey, a statement which would apply to travelers in general.

Vevey is not a great city; it is only a picturesque city, with curious, winding streets of constantly varying widths, and irregular little open s.p.a.ces, all very clean, also very misleading when one wishes to go anywhere with direction and dispatch. You give that up, presently. You do not try to save time by cutting through. When you do, you arrive in some new little rectangle or confluence, with a floral fountain in the middle, and neat little streets winding away to nowhere in particular; then all at once you are back where you started. In this, as in some other points of resemblance, Vevey might be called the Boston of Switzerland. Not that I pretend to a familiarity with Boston--n.o.body has that--but I have an aunt who lives there, and every time I go to see her I am obliged to start in a different direction for her house, though she claims to have been living in the same place for thirty years. Some people think Boston is built on a turn-table. I don't know; it sounds reasonable.

To come back to Vevey--it is growing--not in the wild, woolly, New York, Chicago, and Western way, but in a very definite and substantial way.

They are building new houses for business and residence, solid structures of stone and cement, built, like the old ones, to withstand time. They do not build flimsy fire-traps in Switzerland. Whatever the cla.s.s of the building, the roofs are tile, the staircases are stone. We always seem to court destruction in our American residential architecture. We cover our roofs with inflammable shingles to invite every spark, and build our stairways of nice dry pine, so that in the event of fire they will be the first thing to go. This encourages practice in jumping out of top-story windows.

By day Vevey is a busy, prosperous-looking, though unhurried, place, its water-front gay with visitors; evening comes and glorifies the lake into wine, turns to rose the snow on _Grammont_, the _Dents de Midi_, and the _Dents de Morcles_. As to the sunset itself, not many try to paint it any more. Once, from our little balcony we saw a monoplane pa.s.s up the lake and float into the crimson west, like a great moth or bird. Night in Vevey is full of light and movement, but not of noise. There is no wild clatter of voices and outbursts of nothing in particular, such as characterize the towns of Italy and southern France. On the hilltops back of Vevey the big hotels are lighted, and sometimes, following the dimmer streets, we looked up to what is apparently a city in the sky, suggesting one's old idea of the New Jerusalem, a kind of vision of heaven, as it were--heaven at night, I mean.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Written at the Anchor Inn, Ouchy, Lausanne, in 1817.

Chapter XIX

MASHING A MUD GUARD

One does not motor a great deal in the immediate vicinity of Vevey; the hills are not far enough away for that. One may make short trips to Blonay, and even up Pelerin, if he is fond of stiff climbing, and there are wandering little roads that thread cozy orchard lands and lead to secluded villages tucked away in what seem forgotten corners of a bygone time. But the highway skirts the lake-front and leads straight away toward Geneva, or up the Rhone Valley past Martigny toward the Simplon Pa.s.s. It has always been a road, and in its time has been followed by some of the greatest armies the world has ever seen--the troops of Caesar, of Charlemagne, of Napoleon.

We were not to be without our own experience in motor mountain climbing.

We did not want it or invite it; it was thrust upon us. We were returning from Martigny late one Sunday afternoon, expecting to reach Vevey for dinner. It was pleasant and we did not hurry. We could not, in fact, for below Villeneuve we fell in with the homing cows, and traveled with attending herds--beside us, before us, behind us--fat, sleek, handsome animals, an escort which did not permit of haste. Perhaps it was avoiding them that caused our mistake; at any rate, we began to realize presently that we were not on our old road. Still, we seemed headed in the right direction and we kept on. Then presently we were climbing a hill--climbing by a narrow road, one that did not permit of turning around.

Very well, we said, it could not be very high or steep; we would go over the hill. But that was a wrong estimate. The hill was high and it was steep. Up and up and up on second speed, then back to first, until we were getting on a level with the clouds themselves. It was a good road of its kind, but it had no end. The water was boiling in the radiator--boiling over. We must stop to reduce temperature a little and to make inquiries. It was getting late--far too late to attempt an ascension of the Alps.

We were on a sort of bend, and there was a peasant chalet a few rods ahead. I went up there, and from a little old woman in short skirts got a tub of cool water, also some information. The water cooled off our engine, and the information our enthusiasm for further travel in that direction. We were on the road to Chateau d'Oex, a hilltop resort for winter sports.

We were not in a good place to turn around, there on the edge of a semi-precipice, but we managed to do it, and started back. It was a steep descent. I cut off the spark and put the engine on low speed, which made it serve as a brake, but it required the foot and emergency brake besides. It would have been a poor place to let the car get away.

Then I began to worry for fear the hind wheels were sliding, which would quickly cut through the tires. I don't know why I thought I could see them, for mud guards make that quite impossible. Nevertheless I leaned out and looked back. It was a poor place to do that, too. We were hugging a wall as it was, and one does not steer well looking backward.

In five seconds we gouged into the wall, and the front guard on that side crumpled up like a piece of tinfoil. I had to get out and pull and haul it before there was room for the wheel to turn.

I never felt so in disgrace in my life. I couldn't look at anything but the disfigured guard all the way down the mountain. The pa.s.sengers were sorry and tried to say comforting things, but that guard was fairly shrieking its reproach. What a thing to go home with! I felt that I could never live it down.

Happily it was dark by the time we found the right road and were drawing into Montreux--dark and raining. I was glad it was dark, but the rain did not help, and I should have been happier if the streets had not been full of dodging pedestrians and vehicles and blinding lights. The streets of Montreux are narrow enough at best, and what with a busy tram and all the rest of the medley, driving, for a man already in disgrace, was not real recreation. A railway train pa.s.sed us just below, and I envied the engineer his clear right of way and fenced track, and decided that his job was an easy one by comparison. One used to hear a good deal about the dangers of engine driving, and no doubt an engineer would be glad to turn to the right or left now and then when meeting a train head on--a thing, however, not likely to happen often, though I suppose once is about enough. All the same, a straight, fenced and more or less exclusive track has advantages, and I wished I had one, plunging, weaving, diving through the rain as we were, among pedestrians, cyclists, trams, carriages, other motors, and the like; misled by the cross lights from the shops, dazzled by oncoming headlights, blinded by rain splashing in one's face.

It is no great distance from Montreux to Vevey, but in that night it seemed interminable. And what a relief at last were Vevey's quiet streets, what a path of peace the semi-private road to the hotel, what a haven of bliss the seclusion of the solid little garage! Next morning before anybody was astir I got the car with that maltreated mud guard to the shop. It was an awful-looking thing. It had a real expression. It looked as if it were going to cry. I told the repair man that the roads had been wet and the car had skidded into a wall. He did not care how it happened, of course, but I did; besides, it was easier to explain it that way in French.

It took a week to repair the guard. I suppose they had to straighten it out with a steam roller. I don't know, but it looked new and fine when it came back, and I felt better. The bill was sixteen francs. I never got so much disgrace before at such a reasonable figure.

Chapter XX

JUST FRENCH--THAT'S ALL

Perhaps one should report progress in learning French. Of course Narcissa and the Joy were chattering it in a little while. That is the way of childhood. It gives no serious consideration to a great matter like that, but just lightly accepts it like a new game or toy and plays with it about as readily. It is quite different with a thoughtful person of years and experience. In such case there is need of system and strategy. I selected different points of a.s.sault and began the attack from all of them at once--private lessons; public practice; daily grammar, writing and reading in seclusion; readings aloud by persons of patience and p.r.o.nunciation.

I hear of persons picking up a language--grown persons, I mean--but if there are such persons they are not of my species. The only sort of picking up I do is the kind that goes with a shovel. I am obliged to excavate a language--to loosen up its materials, then hoist them with a derrick. My progress is geological and unhurried. Still, I made progress, of a kind, and after putting in five hours a day for a period of months I began to have a sense of results. I began to realize that even in a rapid-fire conversation the sounds were not all exactly alike, and to distinguish sc.r.a.ps of meaning in conversations not aimed directly at me, with hard and painful distinctness. I began even to catch things from persons pa.s.sing on the street--to distinguish French from patois--that is to say, I knew, when I understood any of it, that it was not patois. I began to be proud and to take on airs--always a dangerous thing.

One day at the pharmacy I heard two well-dressed men speaking. I listened intently, but could not catch a word. When they went I said to the drug clerk--an Englishman who spoke French:

"Strange that those well-dressed men should use patois."

He said: "Ah, but that was not patois--that was very choice French--Parisian."

I followed those men the rest of the afternoon, at a safe distance, but in earshot, and we thus visited in company most of the shops and sights of Vevey. If I could have followed them for a few months in that way it is possible--not likely, but possible--that their conversation might have meant something to me.

Which, by the way, suggests the chief difference between an acquired and an inherited language. An acquired language, in time, comes to _mean_ something, whereas the inherited language _is_ something. It is bred into the fiber of its possessor. It is not a question of considering the meaning of words--what they convey; they do not come stumbling through any anteroom of thought, they are embodied facts, forms, sentiments, leaping from one inner consciousness to another, instantaneously and without friction. Probably every species of animation, from the atom to the elephant, has a language--perfectly understood and sufficient to its needs--some system of signs, or sniffs, or grunts, or barks, or vibrations to convey quite as adequately as human speech the necessary facts and conditions of life. Persons, wise and otherwise, will tell you that animals have no language; but when a dog can learn even many words of his master's tongue, it seems rather unkind to deny to him one of his own. Because the oyster does not go shouting around, or annoy us with his twaddle, does not mean that he is deprived of life's lingual interchanges. It is not well to deny speech to the mute, inglorious mollusk. Remember he is our ancestor.

To go back to French: I have acquired, with time and heavy effort, a sort of next-room understanding of that graceful speech--that is to say, it is about like English spoken by some one beyond a part.i.tion--a fairly thick one. By listening closely I get the general drift of conversation--a confusing drift sometimes, mismeanings that generally go with eavesdropping. At times, however, the part.i.tion seems to be thinner, and there comes the feeling that if somebody would just come along and open a door between I should understand.

It is truly a graceful speech--the French tongue. Plain, homely things of life--so bald, and bare, and disheartening in the Anglo-Saxon--are less unlovely in the French. Indeed, the French word for "rags" is so pretty that we have conferred "chiffon" on one of our daintiest fabrics.

But in the grace of the language lies also its weakness. It does not rise to the supreme utterances. I have been reading the bible texts on the tombstones in the little cemetery of Chardonne. "_L'eternel est mon berger_" can hardly rank in loftiness with "The Lord is my shepherd,"