It was the first but not the last disappointment we suffered in
Switzerland. A friend in London had congratulated us upon going to the
Vaud in the grape season. "For thruppence," he said, "they will let you
go into the vineyards and eat all the grapes you can hold." Arrived upon
the ground, we learned that it was six francs fine to touch a grape in
the vineyards; that every field had a watch set in it, who popped up
between the vines from time to time, and interrogated the vicinity with
an eye of sleepless vigilance; and that small boys of suspicious
character, whose pleasure or business took them through a vineyard, were
obliged to hold up their hands as they passed, like the victims of a Far
Western road agency. As the laws and usages governing the grape culture
run back to the time of the Romans, who brought the vine into the Vaud,
I was obliged to refer my friend's legend of cheapness and freedom to an
earlier period, whose customs we could not profit by. In point of fact,
I could buy more grapes for thruppence in London than in the Vaud; and
the best grapes we had in Switzerland were some brought from Italy, and
sold at a franc a pound in Montreux to the poor foreigners who had come
to feast upon the wealth of the local vineyards.
It was the rain that spoiled the grapes, they said at Montreux, and
wherever we complained; and indeed the vines were a dismal show of
sterility and blight, even to the spectator who did not venture near
enough to subject himself to a fine of six francs. The foreigners had
protected themselves in large numbers by not coming, and the natives who
prosper upon them suffered. The stout lady who kept a small shop of
ivory carvings at Montreux continually lamented their absence to me:
"Die Fremden kommen nicht, dieses regenes Wetter! Man muss Geduldt
haben! Die Fremden kommen nicht!" She was from Interlaken, and the
accents of her native dialect were flavored with the strong waters which
she seemed always to have been drinking, and she put her face close up
to that of the good, all-sympathizing Amerikaner who alone patronized
her shop, and talked her sorrows loudly into him, so that he should not
misunderstand.
[Illustration: _Entrance to Villeneuve_]