WALK TO AIGLE.
"Now, Rollo," said Mr. Holiday, as the party sallied forth from the inn
to commence their walk up the valley, "we depend entirely on you. This
is your excursion, and we expect you will take care and see that every
thing goes right."
"Well, sir," said Rollo. "Come with me. I'll show you the way."
On the borders of the village they passed to a high stone bridge which
crossed a small stream. This stream came in a slow and meandering course
through the meadows, and here emptied into the lake. Farther back it was
a torrent leaping from rock to rock and crag to crag, for many thousand
feet down the mountain side; but here it flowed so gently, and lay so
quietly in its bed, that pond lilies grew and bloomed in its waters.
Just above the bridge there was a square enclosure in the margin of the
water, with a solid stone wall all around it. A man stood on the wall
with a net in his hand. The net was attached to a pole. The man was just
dipping the net into the water when Rollo, with his father and mother,
came upon the bridge.
"Let us stop a minute, and see what that man is going to do," said
Rollo. "I saw that square wall yesterday, and I could not imagine what
it was for."
The man put his net down to the bottom of the reservoir, and after
drawing it along on the bottom, he took it out again. There was nothing
in it. He then repeated the operation, and this time he brought up two
large fishes that looked like trout. They were both more than a foot
long.
The man uttered a slight exclamation of satisfaction, and then lifting
the net over the wall, he let the fish fall into a basket which he had
placed outside. He then went away, carrying the basket with one hand,
and the net on his shoulder with the other.
"That's a very curious plan," said Rollo. "I suppose they catch the fish
in the lake, and then put them in that pen and keep them there till they
are ready to eat them."
So they walked on.
Presently Rollo saw some of the pond lilies growing in the stream, the
course of which was here, for a short distance, near the road.
"I wish very much, mother," said he, "that I could get one of those pond
lilies for you, but I cannot. I tried yesterday, but they are too far
from the shore, and it is so finished, and smooth, and nice about here
that there is no such thing as a pole or a stick to be found any where
to reach with."
Presently, however, Rollo came to a boy who was fishing on the bank of
the stream, and he asked him if he would be good enough to hook in one
of those lilies for him with his pole and line. The boy was very willing
to do it. He threw a loop of his line over one of the pond lilies, and
drew it in. Rollo thanked the boy for his kindness, and gave the pond
lily to his mother.
Perhaps there are no flowers that give a higher pleasure to the
possessors than those which a boy of Rollo's age gathers for his mother.
The party walked on. Mrs. Holiday's attention was soon strongly
attracted to the various groups of peasants which she saw working in the
fields, or walking along the road. First came a young girl, with a
broad-brimmed straw hat on her head, driving a donkey cart loaded with
sheaves of grain. Next an old and decrepit-looking woman, with a great
bundle of sticks on her head. It seemed impossible that she could carry
so great a load in such a manner. As our party went by, she turned her
head slowly round a little way, to look at them; and it was curious to
see the great bundle of sticks--which was two feet in diameter, and four
or five feet long--slowly turn round with her head, and then slowly turn
back again as she went on her way.
Next Mrs. Holiday paused a moment to look at some girls who were hoeing
in the field. The girls looked smilingly upon the strangers, and bade
them good morning.
"Ask them," said Mrs. Holiday to Rollo, "if their work is not very
hard."
So Rollo asked them the question. Mrs. Holiday requested him to do it
because she did not speak French very well, and so she did not like to
try.
The girls said that the work was not hard at all. They laughed, and went
on working faster than ever.
Next they came to a poor wayfaring woman, who was sitting by the
roadside with an infant in her arms. Rollo immediately took out one of
the little cakes from the parcel in his knapsack, and handed it to the
child. The mother seemed very much pleased. She bowed to Rollo, and
said,--
"She thanks you infinitely, sir."
Thus they went on for about three quarters of an hour. During all this
time Mrs. Holiday's attention was so much taken up with what she
saw,--sometimes with the groups of peasants and the pretty little views
of gardens, cottages, and fields which attracted her notice by the road
side, ever and anon by the glimpses which she obtained of the stupendous
mountain ranges that bordered the valley on either hand, and that were
continually presenting their towering crags and dizzy precipices to view
through the opening of the trees on the plain,--that she had not time to
think of being fatigued. At length Rollo asked her how she liked the
walk.
"Very well," said she; "only I think now I have walked full as far as I
should ever have to go at home, when making calls, before coming to the
first house. So as soon as you can you may find me a place to sit down
and rest a little while."
"Well," said Rollo, "I see a grove of trees by the roadside, on ahead a
little way. When we get there we will sit down in the shade and rest."
So they went on till they came to the grove. The grove proved to be a
very pretty one, though it consisted of only four or five trees; but
unfortunately there was no place to sit down in it. Rollo looked about
for some time in vain, and seemed quite disappointed.
"Never mind," said his mother; "sometimes, when I make a call, I find
that the lady I have called to see is not at home; and then, even if I
am tired and want to rest, I have to go on to the next house. We will
suppose that at this place the lady is not at home."
Rollo laughed and walked on. It was not long before they reached a place
where there was a kind of granary, or some other farm building of that
sort, near the road, with a little yard where some logs were lying.
Rollo found excellent seats for his father and mother on these logs.
They sat on one of them, and leaned their backs against another that was
a little higher up. They were in the shade of the building, too, so that
the place was very cool.
"This is a very nice place to rest," said Mrs. Holiday; "and while we
are sitting, we can amuse ourselves in looking at the people that go
by."
The first person that came was a pretty-looking peasant girl of about
seventeen, who had a tub upon her head. What was in the tub Rollo could
not see. With such a burden on her head, however, it is plain that the
girl could not wear her hat in the ordinary manner, and so she carried
it tied to the back of her neck, with its broad brim covering her
shoulders. This, Mr. Holiday said, seemed to him to be carrying the
modern fashion of wearing the bonnet quite to an extreme.
[Illustration: THE BASKET RIDE.]
The Swiss women have other ways of bearing burdens, besides loading them
upon their heads. They carry them upon their backs, sometimes, in
baskets fitted to their shoulders. A woman came by, while Rollo and his
father and mother were sitting upon the logs, with her child taking a
ride in such a basket on her back. As soon as this woman was past,
Rollo was so much struck with the comical appearance that the child
made, sitting upright in the basket, and looking around, that he took
out some paper and a pencil immediately from his portfolio, and asked
his mother to make a drawing of the woman, with the child in the basket
on her back. This Mrs. Holiday could easily do, even from the brief
glimpse which she had of the woman as she went by; for the outlines of
the figure and dress of the woman and of the basket and child were very
simple. Mrs. Holiday afterwards put in some of the scenery for a
background.
When the drawing was finished, Rollo told his mother that he calculated
that they had come one third of the way, and asked her if she felt
tired; and she said she did not feel tired at all, and so they rose and
went on.
In a short time they came to a village. It consisted of a narrow street,
with stone houses on each side of it. The houses were close together and
close to the street. In one place several people were sitting out before
the door, and among them was a poor, sickly child, such as are found
very often in the low valleys of Switzerland, of the kind called
_cretins_. These children are entirely helpless, and they have no
reason, or at least very little. The one which Rollo saw was a girl,
and appeared to be about ten years old; but it did not seem to have
strength enough to sit up in its chair. It was continually lolling and
falling about on this side and that, and trying to look up. The mother
of the child sat by her, and kept her from falling out of the chair. She
was talking, the mean while, with the neighbors, who were sitting there
on a bench, knitting or sewing.
The face of the child was deformed, and had scarcely a human expression.
Both Rollo and his mother were much shocked at the spectacle.
"It is a _cretin_--is it not?" said Mrs. Holiday to her husband, in a
whisper, as soon as they had passed by.
"Yes," said Mr. Holiday.
"Mother," said Rollo, "would you give that poor little thing a cake?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday; "I would."
"Do you think she will understand?" asked Rollo.
"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday; "I think she will; and at any rate her mother
will."
Rollo had by this time taken out his cake. He went back with it to the
place where the women were sitting, and held it out, half, as it were,
to the mother, and half to the child, so that either of them might take
it, saying, at the same time, to the mother, in French,--
"For this poor little child."
The mother smiled, and looked very much pleased. The cretin, whose eyes
caught a glimpse of the cake, laughed, and began to try to reach out her
hand to take it. It seemed hard for her to guide her hand to the place,
and she fell over from side to side all the time while attempting to do
so. She would have fallen entirely if her mother had not held her up. At
length she succeeded in getting hold of the cake, which she carried
directly to her mouth, and then laughed again with a laugh that seemed
scarcely human, and was hideous to see.
"Does she understand?" asked Rollo.
"Yes," said the mother; "she understands, but she can't speak, poor
thing. But she is very much obliged to you indeed."
So Rollo bowed to the mother of the child, and to the other women, and
then went on and rejoined his father and mother.
They passed through the village, and then came into the open country
again. Sometimes the mountains that bordered the valley receded to some
distance; at other times they came very near; and there was one place
where they formed a range of lofty precipices a thousand feet high, that
seemed almost to overhang the road. Here Rollo stopped to look up. He
saw, near a rounded mass of rock, half way up the mountain, two young
eagles that had apparently just left their nest, and were trying to
learn to fly. The old eagles were soaring around them, screaming. They
seemed to be afraid that their young ones would fall down the rocks and
get killed. Rollo wished that they would fall down, or at least fly
down, to where he was, in order that he might catch one of them. But
they did not. They took only short flights from rock to rock and from
thicket to thicket, but they did not come down. So, after watching them
for a time, Rollo went on.
Next they came to a place where the valley took a turn so as to expose
the mountain side to the sun in such a manner as to make a good place
there for grapes to grow and ripen. The people had accordingly terraced
the whole declivity by building walls, one above another, to support the
earth for the vineyards; and when Rollo was going by the place he looked
up and saw a man standing on the wall of one of the terraces, with the
tool which he had been working with in his hand. He seemed suspended in
mid air, and looked down on the road and on the people walking along it
as a man would look down upon a street in London from the gallery under
the dome of St. Paul's.
"That's a pleasant place to work," said Rollo, "away up there, between
the heavens and the earth."
"Yes," said his mother; "and I should think that taking care of vines
and gathering the grapes would be very pretty work to do."
There was a little building on the corner of one of the terraces, which
Mr. Holiday said was a watch tower. There were windows on all the sides
of it.
"When the grapes begin to ripen," said he, "there is a man stationed
there to watch all the vineyards around, in order to prevent people from
stealing the grapes."
"I should think there would be danger of their stealing the grapes,"
said Rollo.
After going on a little way beyond this, they began to approach the town
of Aigle. Mrs. Holiday was surprised that she could have come so far
with so little fatigue. Rollo told her that it was because she had
walked along so slowly.
"Yes," said Mr. Holiday; "and because there have been so many things to
take up our attention by the way."
When they arrived at the village they went directly to the inn. The inns
in these country towns in Switzerland are the largest and most
conspicuous looking buildings to be seen. Rollo went first, and led the
way. He went directly to the dining room.
The dining rooms in these inns, as I have already said, are the public
rooms, where the company always go, whether they wish for any thing to
eat or not. There is usually one large table, for dinner, in the centre
of the room, and several smaller tables at the sides or at the windows,
for breakfasts and luncheons, and also for small dinner parties of two
or three. Besides these tables, there is often one with a pen and ink
upon it for writing, and another for knapsacks and carpet bags; and
there are sofas for the company to repose upon while the waiter is
setting the table for them.
Rollo accordingly led the way at once to the dining room of the inn, and
conducted his mother to a sofa.
"Now, Rollo," said Mr. Holiday, "order us a dinner."
So Rollo went to the waiter, and after talking with him a little while,
came back and said that he had ordered some fried trout, some veal
cutlets, fried potatoes, an omelette, and some coffee.
"And besides that," said Rollo, "he is going to give us some plums and
some pears. This is a famous place for plums and pears."
"And for grapes, too, in the season of them," said Mr. Holiday.
This was very true. Indeed, on looking about the walls of the room, to
see the maps and the pretty pictures of Swiss scenery that were there,
Rollo found among the other things an advertisement of what was called
the _grape cure_. It seems that eating ripe grapes was considered a cure
for sickness in that country, and that people were accustomed to come to
that very town of Aigle to procure them. There was no place in
Switzerland, the advertisement said, where the grapes were richer and
sweeter than there.
The advertisement went on to say that the season for the grape cure was
in September, October, and November; that there were a number of fine
vineyards in the vicinity of the town which produced the most delicious
grapes; and that these vineyards were placed at the disposal of the
guests of the hotel at the rate of a franc a day for each person; so
that for that sum they could have every day as many as they could eat;
and this was to be their medicine, to make them well.
Rollo read this advertisement aloud to his father and mother, with a
tone of voice which indicated a very eager interest in it.
"Father," said he, "I wish you would come here and try it. Perhaps it
would make you well."
The advertisement was in French, and Rollo translated it as he read it.
He succeeded very well in rendering into English all that was said about
the grapes, and the manner of taking them, and the terms for boarders at
the hotel; but when he came to the names of the diseases that the grapes
would cure, he was at a loss, as most of them were learned medical
words, which he had never seen before. So he read off the names in
French, and concluded by asking his father whether he did not think it
was some of those things that was the matter with him.
"Very likely," said his father.
"Then, father," said Rollo, "I wish you would come here in October, and
try the grape cure, and bring me too."
"Very likely I may," said his father. "This is on the great road to
Italy, and we may conclude to go to Italy this winter."
Just at this time the door of the dining room opened, and a new party
came in. It consisted of a gentleman and lady, who seemed to be a new
married pair. They came in a carriage. Rollo looked out the window, and
saw the carriage drive away from the door to go to the stable.
The gentleman put his haversack and the lady's satchel and shawl down
upon the table, and then took a seat with her upon another sofa which
was in the room.
The dinner which Rollo had ordered was soon ready, and they sat down to
eat it with excellent appetites. While they were at dinner, Rollo
inquired of the waiter what time the omnibus went to Villeneuve, and he
learned that it did not go for some hours. So Mr. Holiday told his wife
that she might either have a chamber, and lie down and rest herself
during that time, or they might go out and take a walk.
Mrs. Holiday said that she did not feel at all fatigued, and so she
would like to go and take a walk.
There was a castle on a rising ground just in the rear of the village,
which had attracted her attention in coming into the town, and she was
desirous of going to see it.
So they all set off to go and see the castle. They found their way to it
without any difficulty. It proved to be an ancient castle, built in the
middle ages, but it was used now for a prison. The family of the jailer
lived in it too. It looked old and gone to decay.
When they entered the court yard, a woman looked up to the windows and
called out _Julie!_ Presently a young girl answered to the call, and the
woman told her that here were some people come to see the castle. So
Julie came down and took them under her charge.
The party spent half an hour in rambling over the castle. They went
through all sorts of intricate passages, and up and down flights of
stone stairs, steep, and narrow, and winding. They saw a number of
dismal dungeons. Some were dark, so that the girl had to take a candle
to light the way. The doors were old, and blackened by time, and they
moved heavily on rusty hinges. The bolts, and bars, and locks were all
rusted, too, so that it was very difficult to move them.
The visitors did not see all the dungeons and cells, for some of them
had prisoners in them then, and those doors Julie said she was not
allowed to open, for fear that the prisoners should get away.
After rambling about the old castle as much as they desired to do, and
ascending to the tower to view the scenery, the party came down again,
and returned to the inn.
They found the dining room full of boys. These boys were sitting at a
long table, eating a luncheon. They were the boys of a school. The
teacher was at the head of the table. Rollo talked with some of the
boys, for he found two or three that could talk French and English,
though their English was not very good.
In due time the omnibus came to the door, and then Rollo conducted his
father and mother to it, and assisted them to get in. The sun was now
nearly down, and the party had a delightful ride, in the cool air of the
evening, back to Villeneuve.
The next day they embarked on board the steamer, and returned to Geneva.