I went for excursions into Savoy, ascended La Grande Salève on
donkey-back, and from the top looked down at the full length of the
Leman.
I drove to the valley of Chamounix, sixty-eight miles, in a diligence
and four; about every other hour we had relays of horses and a new
driver. Whenever possible, we went at a rattling galop. Half-way I
heard the first Italian. It was only the word _quattro_; but it filled
me with delight. Above the high, wooded mountains, the bare rock
projected out of the earth, at the very top. The wide slopes up which
the wood ascended, until it looked like moss on stone, afforded a view
miles in extent. The river Arve, twisting itself in curves, was
frequently spanned by the roadway; it was of a greyish white, and very
rapid, but ugly. Splendid wooden bridges were thrown over it, with
abysms on both sides. Midway, after having for some time been hidden
behind the mountains, Mont Blanc suddenly appeared in its gleaming
splendour, positively tiring and paining the eye. It was a new and
strange feeling to be altogether hemmed in by mountains. It was
oppressive to a plain-dweller to be shut in thus, and not to be able to
get away from the immutable sheet of snow, with its jagged summits.
Along the valley of the stream, the road ran between marvellously fresh
walnut-trees, plane-trees, and avenues of apple trees; but sometimes we
drove through valleys so narrow that the sun only shone on them two or
three hours of the day, and there it was cold and damp. Savoy was
plainly enough a poor country. The grapes were small and not sweet;
soil there was little of, but every patch was utilised to the best
advantage. In one place a mountain stream rushed down the rocks; at a
sharp corner, which jutted out like the edge of a sloping roof, the
stream was split up and transformed into such fine spray that one could
perceive no water at all; afterwards the stream united again at the
foot of the mountain, and emptied itself with frantic haste into the
river, foaming greyish white, spreading an icy cold around. The changes
of temperature were striking. Under shelter, hot Summer, two steps
further, stern, inclement Autumn, air that penetrated to the very
marrow of your bones. You ran through every season of the year in a
quarter of an hour.
The other travellers were English people, all of one pattern,
unchangeable, immovable. If one of them had buttoned up his coat at the
beginning of the drive, he did not unbutton it on the way, were he
never so warm, and if he had put leather gloves on, for ten hours they
would not be off his hands. The men yawned for the most part; the young
ladies jabbered. The English had made the whole country subservient to
them, and at the hotels one Englishman in this French country was paid
more attention to than a dozen Frenchmen.
Here I understood two widely different poems: Hauch's Swiss Peasant,
and Björnson's Over the Hills and Far Away. Hauch had felt this scenery
and the nature of these people, by virtue of his Norwegian birth and
his gift of entering into other people's thought; Björnson had given
unforgettable expression to the feeling of imprisoned longing. But for
the man who had been breathing street dust and street sweepings for
four months, it was good to breathe the strong, pure air, and at last
see once more the clouds floating about and beating against the
mountain sides, leaning, exhausted, against a declivity and resting on
their journey. Little children of eight or ten were guarding cattle,
children such as we know so well in the North, when they come with
their marmots; they looked, without exception, like tiny rascals,
charming though they were.
I rode on a mule to Montanvert, and thence on foot over the Mer de
Glace, clambered up the steep mountain side to Chapeau, went down to
the crystal Grotto and rode from there back to Chamounix. The ride up
in the early hours of the morning was perfect, the mountain air so
light; the mists parted; the pine-trees round the fresh mountain path
exhaled a penetrating fragrance. An American family with whom I had
become acquainted took three guides with them for four persons. One
worthy old gentleman who was travelling with his young daughter, would
not venture upon this feat of daring, but his daughter was so anxious
to accompany us that when I offered to look after her she was entrusted
to my care. I took two mules and a guide, thinking that sufficient.
From Montanvert and down to the glacier, the road was bad, a steep,
rocky path, with loose, rolling stones. When we came to the Ice Sea,
the young lady, as was natural, took the guide's hand, and I, the last
of the caravan, strode cautiously along, my alpenstock in my hand, over
the slippery, billow-like ice. But soon it began to split up into deep
crevasses, and farther on we came to places where the path you had to
follow was no wider than a few hands' breadth, with yawning precipices
in the ice on both sides. I grew hot to the roots of my hair, and
occasionally my heart stood still. It was not that I was actually
afraid. The guide shouted to me: "Look neither to right nor left; look
at your feet, and turn out your toes!" I had only one thought--not to
slip!--and out on the ice I grew burningly hot. When at last I was
across, I noticed that I was shaking. Strangely enough, I was trembling
at the _thought_ of the blue, gaping crevasses on both sides of me,
down which I had barely glanced, and yet I had passed them without a
shudder. The beginning of the crossing had been comparatively easy; it
was only that at times it was very slippery. But in the middle of the
glacier, progress was very uncomfortable; moraines, and heaps of
gigantic blocks lay in your path, and all sorts of stone and gravel,
which melted glaciers had brought down with them, and these were nasty
to negotiate. When at last you had them behind you, came le _Mauvais
Pas_, which corresponded to its name. You climbed up the precipitous
side of the rock with the help of an iron railing drilled into it. But
foothold was narrow and the stone damp, from the number of rivulets
that rippled and trickled down. Finally it was necessary at every step
to let go the railing for a few seconds. The ascent then, and now, was
supposed to be quite free from danger, and the view over the glaciers
which one gained by it, was a fitting reward for the inconvenience.
Even more beautiful than the summit of Mont Blanc itself, with its
rounded contours, were the steep, gray, rocky peaks, with ice in every
furrow, that are called _l'Aiguille du Dru_. These mountains, which as
far as the eye could range seemed to be all the same height, although
they varied from 7,000 to 14,800 feet, stretched for miles around the
horizon.
The ice grotto here was very different from the sky-blue glacier grotto
into which I had wandered two years earlier at Grindelwald. Here the
ice mass was so immensely high that not the slightest peep of daylight
penetrated through it into the excavated archway that led into the ice.
It was half-dark inside, and the only light proceeded from a row of
little candles stuck into the crevices of the rock. The ice was jet
black in colour, the light gleaming with a golden sheen from all the
rounded projections and jagged points. It was like the gilt
ornamentation on a velvet pall.
When I returned from Chamounix to Geneva, the proprietor of the hotel
was standing in the doorway and shouted to me: "The whole of the French
army, with the Emperor, has been taken prisoner at
Sedan!"--"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "It is quite certain," he replied;
"it was in the German telegrams, and so far there has not come a single
unveracious telegram from the Germans."
The next day a Genevese paper published the news of the proclamation of
the Republic in France.
Simultaneously arrived a letter from Julius Lange, attacking me for my
"miserly city politics," seriously complaining that "our declaration of
war against Prussia had come to nothing," and hoping that my stay in
France had by now made me alter my views.
In his opinion, we had neglected "an opportunity of rebellion, that
would never recur."