THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.
The party of boys walked along the road very pleasantly together, each
one with his knapsack on his back and his pikestaff in his hand. Rollo
talked with them by the way--with some in English, and with others in
French; but inasmuch as it happened that whichever language was used,
one or the other of the parties to the conversation was very imperfectly
acquainted with it, the conversation was necessarily carried on by means
of very short and simple sentences, and the meaning was often helped out
by signs, and gestures, and curious pantomime of all sorts, with an
accompaniment, of course, of continual peals of laughter.
Rollo, however, learned a good deal about the boys, and about the
arrangements they made for travelling, and also learned a great many
particulars in respect to the adventures they had met with in coming
over the mountains.
Rollo learned, for example, that every boy had a fishing line in his
knapsack, and that when they got tired of walking, and wished to stop to
rest, if there was a good place, they stopped and fished a little while
in a mountain stream or a lake.
Another thing they did was to watch for butterflies, in order to catch
any new species that they might find, to add to the teacher's cabinet of
natural history. For this purpose one of the boys had a gauze net on the
end of a long but light handle; and when a butterfly came in sight that
seemed at all curious or new, one of the boys set off with the rest to
catch him. If the specimen was found valuable, it was preserved. The
specimens thus kept were secured with a pin in the bottom of a broad,
but flat and very light box, which one of the older boys carried with
his knapsack. The boy opened this box, and showed Rollo the butterflies
which they had taken. They had quite a pretty collection. There were
several that Rollo did not recollect ever to have seen before.
Talking in this way, they went on till they came to the part of the road
which was opposite to the Hotel Byron. The hotel was on an eminence
above the road, and back from the lake. Broad gravelled avenues led up
to it. There were also winding walks, and seats under the trees, and
terraces, and gardens, and parties of ladies and gentlemen walking
about, and children playing here and there, under the charge of their
nurses.
The boys gave only a passing glance at these things as they went by.
They were much more interested in gazing up from time to time at the
stupendous cliffs and precipices which they saw crowning the mountain
ranges which seemed to border the road; and on the other side, in
looking out far over the water of the lake at the sail boats, or the
steamer, or the little row boats which they beheld in the offing.
The road went winding on, following the little indentations of the
shore, till at length it reached the castle. It passed close under the
castle walls, or, rather, close along the margin of the ditch which
separated the foundations of the castle from the main land. There was a
bridge across this ditch. This bridge was enclosed, and a little room
was built upon it, with windows and a door. The outer door was, of
course, towards the road, and it was open when the boys arrived at the
place.
The teacher led the way in by this door, and the boys followed him.
There was a man there, dressed in the uniform of a soldier. He was a
sort of sentinel, to keep the door of the castle. He had a table on one
side, with various engravings spread out upon it, representing
different views of the castle, both of the interior and of the exterior.
There were also little books of description, giving an account of the
castle and of its history, and copies of Byron's poem, the Prisoner of
Chillon. All these things were for sale to the visitors who should come
to see the castle.
The engravings were kept from being blown away by the wind by means of
little stone paper weights made of rounded pebble stones, about as large
as the palm of the hand, with views of the castle and of the surrounding
scenery painted on them. The paper weights were for sale too.
The boys looked at these things a moment, but did not seem to pay much
attention to them. They walked on, following their teacher, to the end
of the bridge room, where they came to the great castle gates. These
were open, too, and they went in. They found themselves in a paved
courtyard, with towers, and battlements, and lofty walls all around
them. There was a man there, waiting to receive them in charge, and show
them into the dungeons.
He led the way through a door, and thence down a flight of stone steps
to a series of subterranean chambers, which were very dimly lighted by
little windows opening towards the lake. The back sides of the rooms
consisted of the living rock; the front sides were formed of the castle
wall that bordered the lake.
"Here is the room," said the guide, "where the prisoners who were
condemned to death in the castle in former times spent the last night
before their execution. That stone was the bed where they had to lie."
So saying, the guide pointed to a broad, smooth, and sloping surface of
rock, which was formed by the ledge on the back side of the dungeon. The
stone was part of the solid ledge, and was surrounded with ragged crags,
just as they had been left by the excavators in making the dungeon; but
whether the smooth and sloping surface of this particular portion of the
rock was natural or artificial, that is, whether it had been expressly
made so to form a bed for the poor condemned criminal, or whether the
rock had accidentally broken into that form by means of some natural
fissure, and so had been appropriated by the governor of the castle to
that use, the boys could not determine.
The guide led the boys a little farther on, to a place where there was a
dark recess, and pointing up towards the ceiling, he said,--
"There is where the criminals were hung. Up where I point there is a
beam built into the rock; and from that the rope was suspended."
The boys all crowded round the spot, and looked eagerly up, but they
could not see any beam.
"You cannot see it," said the guide, "now, because you have just come
out from the light of day. We shall come back this way pretty soon, and
then you will be able to see it; for your eyes will then get accustomed
a little to the darkness of the dungeon."
So the guide went on, and the boys followed him.
They next came into a very large apartment. The front side and the back
side of it were both curved. The back side consisted of the living rock.
The front side was formed of the outer castle wall, which was built on
the rock at the very margin of the water. In the centre was a range of
seven massive stone columns, placed there to support the arches on which
rested the floor of the principal story of the castle above. The roof of
this dungeon of course was vaulted, the arches and groins being carried
over from this range of central pillars towards the wall in front, and
towards the solid rock behind. All this you will plainly see represented
in the engraving.
[Illustration: THE DUNGEON IN THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.]
This great dungeon was lighted by means of very small loopholes cut in
the wall, high up from the floor. The light from these windows,
instead of coming _down_, and shining upon the floor, seemed to go _up_,
and to lose itself in a faint attempt to illuminate the vaulted roof
above. The reason was, that at the particular hour when the boys made
their visit, the beams of the sun which shone directly from it in the
sky were excluded, and only those that were reflected upward from the
waters of the lake could come in.
The guide led the boys to one of the central pillars, and pointed to an
iron ring which was built into the stone. He told them that there was
the place where one prisoner was confined in the dungeon for six years.
He was chained to that ring by a short chain, which enabled him only to
walk to and fro a few steps each way about the pillar. These steps had
worn a place in the rock.
After the boys had looked at this pillar, and at the iron ring, and at
the place worn in the floor by the footsteps of the prisoner, as long as
they wished, they followed the guide on to the end of the dungeon, where
they were stopped by the solid rock. Here the guide brought them to a
dark and gloomy place in a corner, where, by standing a little back,
they could see all the pillars in a row; and he said that if they would
count them they would find that there were exactly seven. The boys did
so, and they found that there were seven; but they did not understand
why the number was of any importance. But the teacher explained it to
them. He said that Byron had mentioned seven as the number of the
pillars in his poem, and that most people who had read the poem were
pleased to observe the correspondence between his description and the
reality.
The teacher quoted the lines. They were these:--
"In Chillon's dungeons, deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull, imprisoned ray--
A sunbeam that hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp."
In repeating these lines, the teacher spoke in a strong foreign accent.
All the boys listened attentively while he spoke, though of course only
Rollo and those of the boys who had studied English could understand
him.
After this the boys came back through the whole range of dungeons, by
the same way that they had come in. They could now see the beam from
which the condemned criminals were hung. It passed across from rock to
rock, high above their heads, in a dark and gloomy place, and seemed
perfectly black with age.
When the party came out of the dungeons, a young woman took them in
charge, to show them the apartments above. She conducted them up a broad
flight of stone stairs to a massive doorway, which led to the principal
story of the castle. Here the boys passed through one after another of
several large halls, which were formerly used for various purposes when
the castle was inhabited, but are employed now for the storage of brass
cannons, and of ammunition belonging to the Swiss government. When the
castle was built, the country in which it stands belonged to a
neighboring state, called Savoy; and it was the Duke of Savoy, who was a
sort of king, that built it, and it was he that confined the prisoners
in it so cruelly. Many of them were confined there on account of being
accused of conspiring against his government. At length, however, the
war broke out between Switzerland and Savoy, and the Swiss were
victorious. They besieged this castle by an army on the land and by a
fleet of galleys on the lake, and in due time they took it. They let all
the prisoners which they found confined there go free, and since then
they have used the castle as a place of storage for arms and ammunition.
One of the halls which the boys went into, the guide said, used to be a
senate house, and another was the court room where the prisoners were
tried. There was a staircase which led from the court room down to the
dungeon below, where the great black beam was, from which they were to
be hung.
The boys, however, did not pay a great deal of attention to what the
guide said about the former uses of these rooms. They seemed to be much
more interested in the purposes that they were now serving, and so went
about examining very eagerly the great brass cannons and the ammunition
wagons that stood in them.
At length, however, they came to something which specially attracted
their attention. It was a small room, which the guide said was an
ancient torturing room. There was a large wooden post in the centre of
the room, extending from the floor to the vault above. The post was worn
and blackened by time and decay, and there were various hooks, and
staples, and pulleys attached to it at different heights, which the
guide said were used for securing the prisoners to the post, when they
were to be tortured. The post itself was burned in many places, as if by
hot irons.
The boys saw another place in a room beyond, which was in some respects
still more dreadful than this. It was a place where there was an
opening in the floor, near the wall of the room, that looked like a trap
door. There was the beginning of a stone stair leading down. A small
railing was built round the opening, as if to keep people from falling
in. The boys all crowded round the railing, and looked down.
They saw that the stair only went down three steps, and then it came to
a sudden end, and all below was a dark and dismal pit, which seemed
bottomless. On looking more intently, however, they could at length see
a glimmer of light, and hear the rippling of the waves of the lake, at a
great depth below. The guide said that this was one of the _oubliettes_,
that is, a place where men could be destroyed secretly, and in such a
manner that no one should ever know what became of them. They were
conducted to this door, and directed to go down. It was dark, so that
they could only see the first steps of the stair. They would suppose,
however, that the stair was continued, and that it would lead them down
to some room, where they were to go. So they would walk on carefully,
feeling for the steps of the stair; but after the third there would be
no more, and they would fall down to a great depth on ragged rocks, and
be killed. To make it certain that they would be killed by the fall,
there were sharp blades, like the ends of scythes, fixed in the rock,
far below, to cut them in pieces as they fell.
It seems these tyrants, hateful and merciless as they were, did not
wish, or perhaps did not dare, to destroy the souls as well as the
bodies of their victims, and so they contrived it that the last act
which the poor wretch should perform before going down into this
dreadful pit should be an act of devotion. To this end there was made a
little niche in the wall, just over the trap door, and there was placed
there an image of the Virgin Mary, who is worshipped in Catholic
countries as divine. The prisoner was invited to kiss this image as he
passed by, just as he began to descend the stair. Thus the very last
moment of his life would be spent in performing an act of devotion, and
thus, as they supposed, his soul would be saved. What a strange
combination is this of superstition and tyranny!
After seeing all these things, the boys returned towards the entrance of
the castle. They met several parties of ladies and gentlemen coming in;
and just as they got to the door again, the carriage containing Mr. and
Mrs. Holiday drove up. So Rollo bade the teacher and all the boys good
by, after accompanying them a few minutes, as they walked along the road
towards the place where they were to go. By this time his father and
mother had descended from their carriage, and were ready to go in. So
Rollo joined them, and went through the castle again, and saw all the
places a second time.
When they came out, and were getting into the carriage, Mr. Holiday said
that it was a very interesting place.
"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday; "and we have seen all that Byron speaks of in
his poem, except the little island. Where is the little island?"
Mr. Holiday pointed out over the water of the lake, where a group of
three tall trees seemed to be growing directly out of the water, only
that there was a little wall around them below. They looked like three
flowers growing in a flower pot set in the water.
"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday, "that must certainly be it. It corresponds
exactly." So she repeated the following lines from Byron's poem, which
describes the island in the language of one of the prisoners, who saw it
from his dungeon window,
"And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile--
The only one in view;
A small green isle, it seemed no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor;
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue."
"That's pretty poetry," said Rollo.
"Very pretty indeed," said his father.
The horse now began to trot along the road. The little island continued
in view for a while, and then disappeared, and afterwards came into view
again, as the road went turning and winding around, following the
indentations of the shore.
At length, after a short but very pleasant ride, the party arrived
safely at the inn again at Villeneuve.