En route for Tarascon. The Lake of Geneva. Tartarin proposes
a visit to the dungeon of Bonnivard. Short dialogue amid the
roses. The whole band under lock and key. The unfortunate
Bonnivard. Where the rope made at Avignon was found.
As a result of the ascension, Tartarin’s nose peeled, pimpled, and
his cheeks cracked. He kept to his room in the Hôtel Bellevue for five
days--five days of salves and compresses, the sticky unsavouriness
and ennui of which he endeavoured to elude by playing cards with the
delegates or dictating to them a long, circumstantial account of his
expedition, to be read in session, before the Club of the Alpines and
published in the _Forum_. Then, as the general lumbago had disappeared
and nothing remained upon the noble countenance of the P. C. A. but a
few blisters, sloughs and chilblains on a fine complexion of Etruscan
pottery, the delegation and its president set out for Tarascon, via
Geneva.
Let me omit the episodes of that journey, the alarm cast by the Southern
band into narrow railway carriages, steamers, _tables d’hôte_, by
its songs, its shouts, its overflowing hilarity, its banner, and its
alpenstocks; for since the ascension of the P. C. A. they had all
supplied themselves with those mountain sticks, on which the names
of celebrated climbs were inscribed, burnt in, together with popular
verses.
Montreux!
Here the delegates, at the suggestion of their master, decided to halt
for two or three days in order to visit the famous shores of Lake Leman,
Chillon especially, and its legendary dungeon, where the great patriot
Bonnivard languished, and which Byron and Delacroix have immortalized.
At heart, Tartarin cared little for Bonnivard, his adventure with
William Tell having enlightened him about Swiss legends; but in passing
through Interlaken he had heard that Sonia had gone to Montreux with
her brother, whose health was much worse, and this invention of an
historical pilgrimage was only a pretext to meet the young girl again,
and, who knows? persuade her perhaps to follow him to Tarascon.
Let it be fully understood, however, that his companions believed,
with the best faith in the world, that they were on their way to render
homage to a great Genevese citizen whose history the P. C. A. had
related to them; in fact, with their native taste for theatrical
manifestations they were desirous, as soon as they landed at Montreux,
of forming in line, banner displayed and marching at once to Chillon
with repeated cries of “Vive Bonnivard!” The president was forced to
calm them: “Breakfast first,” he said, “and after that we ‘ll see
about it.” So they filled the omnibus of some Pension Müller or other,
situated, with many of its kind, close to the landing.
“_Vé!_ that gendarme, how he looks at us,” said Pascalon, the last to
get in, with the banner, always very troublesome to install. “True,”
said Bravida, uneasily; “what does he want of us, that gendarme? Why
does he examine us like that?”
“He recognizes me, _pardi!_” said the worthy Tartarin modestly; and he
smiled upon the soldier of the Vaudois police, whose long blue hooded
coat followed perseveringly behind the omnibus as it threaded its way
among the poplars on the shore.
It was market-day at Montreux. Rows of little booths were open to the
winds of the lake, displaying fruit, vegetables, laces very cheap, and
that white jewellery, looking like manufactured snow or pearls of ice,
with which the Swiss women ornament their costumes. With all this were
mingled the bustle of the little port, the jostling of a whole flotilla
of gayly painted pleasure-boats, the transshipment of casks and sacks
from large brigantines with lateen sails, the hoarse cries, the bells
of the steamers, the stir among the cafés, the breweries, the traffic of
the florists and the second-hand dealers who lined the quay. If a ray of
sun had fallen upon the scene, one might have thought one’s self on the
marina of a Mediterranean resort between Mentone and Bordighera. But sun
was lacking, and the Tarasconese gazed at the pretty landscape through a
watery vapour that rose from the azure lake, climbed the steep path and
the pebbly little streets, and joined, above the houses, other clouds,
black and gray that were clinging about the sombre verdure of the
mountain, big with rain.
“_Coquin de sort!_ I’m not a lacustrian,” said Spiridion Excourbaniès,
wiping the glass of the window to look at the perspective of glaciers
and white vapours that closed the horizon in front of him...
“Nor I, either,” sighed Pascalon, “this fog, this stagnant water...
makes me want to cry.”
Bravida complained also, in dread of his sciatic gout.
Tartarin reproved them sternly. Was it nothing to be able to relate,
on their return, that they had seen the dungeon of Bonnivard, inscribed
their names on its historic walls beside the signatures of Rousseau,
Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Eugène Sue? Suddenly, in the middle of
his tirade, the president interrupted himself and changed colour... He
had just caught sight of a little round hat on a coil of blond hair.
Without stopping the omnibus, the pace of which had slackened in going
up hill, he sprang out, calling back to the stupefied Alpinists: “Go on
to the hotel...”
“Sonia!.. Sonia!..”
He feared that he might not be able to catch her, she walked so rapidly,
the delicate silhouette of her shadow falling on the macadam of the
road. She turned at his call and waited for him. “Ah! is it you?” she
said; and as soon as they had shaken hands she walked on. He fell into
step beside her, much out of breath, and began to excuse himself for
having left her so abruptly... arrival of friends... necessity of
making the ascension (of which his face was still bearing traces)...
She listened without a word, hastening her pace, her eyes strained and
fixed. Looking at her profile, she seemed to him paler, her features no
longer soft with childlike innocence, but hard, a something resolute
on them which till now had existed only in her voice and her imperious
will; and yet her youthful grace was there, and the gold of her waving
hair.
“And Boris, how is he?” asked Tartarin, rather discomfited by her
silence and coldness, which began to affect him.
“Boris?..” she quivered: “Ah! true, you do not know... Well then! come,
come...”
They followed a country lane leading past vineyards sloping to the
lake, and villas with gardens, and elegant terraces laden with clematis,
blooming with roses, petunias, and myrtles in pots. Now and then they
met some foreigner with haggard cheeks and melancholy glance, walking
slowly and feebly, like the many whom one meets at Mentone and Monaco;
only, away down yonder the sunshine laps round all, absorbs all, while
beneath this lowering cloudy sky suffering is more apparent, though the
flowers seem fresher.
“Enter,” said Sonia, pushing open the railed iron door of a white marble
façade on which were Russian words in gilded letters.
At first Tartarin did not understand where he was. A little garden was
before him with gravelled paths very carefully kept, and quantities of
climbing roses hanging among the green of the trees, and bearing great
clusters of white and yellow blooms, which filled the narrow space
with their fragrance and glow. Among these garlands, this lovely
efflorescence, a few stones were standing or lying with dates and names;
the newest of which bore the words, carved on its surface:
“Boris Wassilief.
22 years.”
He had been there a few days, dying almost as soon as they arrived at
Montreux; and in this cemetery of foreigners the exile had found a sort
of country among other Russians and Poles and Swedes, buried beneath the
roses, consumptives of cold climates sent to this Northern Nice, because
the Southern sun would be for them too violent, the transition too
abrupt.
They stood for a moment motionless and mute before the whiteness of that
new stone lying on the blackness of the fresh-turned earth; the young
girl, with her head bent down, inhaling the breath of the roses, and
calming, as she stood, her reddened eyes.
“Poor little girl!” said Tartarin with emotion, taking in his strong
rough hands the tips of Sonia’s fingers. “And you? what will you do
now?”
She looked him full in the face with dry and shining eyes in which the
tears no longer trembled.
“I? I leave within an hour.”
“You are going?..”
“Bolibine is already in St. Petersburg... Manilof is waiting for me
to cross the frontier... I return to the work. We shall be heard from.”
Then, in a low voice, she added with a half-smile, planting her blue
glance full into that of Tartarin, which avoided it: “He who loves me
follows me.”
Ah! _vaï_, follow her! The little fanatic frightened him. Besides, this
funereal scene had cooled his love. Still, he ought not to appear to
back down like a scoundrel. So, with his hand on his heart and the
gesture of an Abencerrage, the hero began: “You know me, Sonia...”
She did not need to hear more.
“Gabbler!” she said, shrugging her shoulders. And she walked away, erect
and proud, beneath the roses, without once turning round... Gabbler!..
not one word more, but the intonation was so contemptuous that the
worthy Tartarin blushed beneath his beard, and looked about to see if
they had been quite alone in the garden so that no one had overheard
her.
Among our Tarasconese, fortunately, impressions do not last long. Five
minutes later Tartarin was going up the terraces of Montreux with a
lively step in quest of the Pension Müller and his Alpinists, who must
certainly be waiting breakfast for him; and his whole person breathed a
relief, a joy at getting rid finally of that dangerous acquaintance.
As he walked along he emphasized with many energetic nods the eloquent
explanations which Sonia would not wait to hear, but which he gave to
himself mentally: _Bé!_.. yes, despotism certainly... He didn’t deny
that... but from that to action, _boufre!_.. And then, to make it his
profession to shoot despots!.. Why, if all oppressed peoples applied to
him--just as the Arabs did to Bombonnel whenever a panther roamed round
their village--he couldn’t suffice for them all, never!
At this moment a hired carriage coming down the hill at full speed cut
short his monologue. He had scarcely time to jump upon the sidewalk with
a “Take care, you brute!” when his cry of anger was changed to one of
stupefaction: “_Quès aco!.. Boudiou!_.. Not possible!..”