you see it serenely blue, smiling, cloudless. The rush becomes more and
more violent; it comes nearer, the ground trembles, the trees bend and
break with a sharp crack; enormous stones and blocks of ice are carried
away like gravel; and the mighty avalanche, with a crash like a train
running off the rails over a precipice, drops to the foot of the
mountain, destroying, crushing down everything before it, and covering
the ground with a bed of snow from thirty to fifty feet deep.
When a stream of water wears a passage for itself under this compact
mass, it is sometimes hollowed out into an arched way, and the snow
becomes so solid that carriages and horses can go through without
danger, even in the middle of summer. But often the water does not find
a course by which to flow away; and then, when the snow begins to melt,
the water seeps into the fissures, loosens the mass that chokes up the
valley, and carries it down, rending its banks as it goes, carrying away
bridges, mills, and trees, and overthrowing houses. The avalanche has
become an inundation.
The mountaineers make a distinction between summer and winter
avalanches. The former are solid avalanches, formed of old snow that
has almost acquired the consistency of ice. The warm breath of spring
softens it, loosens it from the rocks on which it hangs, and it slides
down into the valleys. These are called "melting avalanches." They
regularly follow certain tracks, and these are embanked, like the course
of a river, with wood or bundles of branches. It is in order to protect
the alpine roads from these avalanches that those long open galleries
have been built on the face of the precipice.
The most dreaded and most terrible avalanches, those of dry, powdery
snow, occur only in winter, when sudden squalls and hurricanes of
snow throw the whole atmosphere into chaos. They come down in sudden
whirlwinds, with the violence of a waterspout, and in a few minutes
whole villages are buried....
Here, in the Grisons, the whole village of Selva was buried under an
avalanche. Nothing remained visible but the top of the church steeple,
looking like a pole planted in the snow. Baron Munchausen might have
tied his horse there without inventing any lie about it. The Val
Verzasca was covered for several months by an avalanche of nearly 1,000
feet in length and 50 in depth. All communication through the valley
was stopt; it was impossible to organize help; and the alarm-bell was
incessantly sounding over the immense white desolation like a knell for
the dead.
In the narrow defile in which we now are, there are many remains of
avalanches that neither the water of the torrent nor the heat of the sun
has had power to melt. The bed of the river is strewn with displaced and
broken rocks, and great stones bound together by the snow as if with
cement; the surges dash against these rocky obstacles, foaming angrily,
with the blind fury of a wild beast. And the moan of the powerless water
flows on into the depth of the valley, and is lost far off in a hollow
murmur.
HUNTING THE CHAMOIS[61]
BY VICTOR TISSOT
Schmidt swept with his cap the snow which covered the stones on which
we were to seat ourselves for breakfast, then unpacked the provisions;
slices of veal and ham, hard-boiled eggs, wine of the Valtelline. His
knapsack, covered with a napkin, served for our table. While we sat, we
devoured the landscape, the twelve glaciers spreading around us their
carpet of swansdown and ermine, sinking into crevasses of a magical
transparency, and raising their blocks, shaped into needles, or into
Gothic steeples with pierced arches. The architecture of the glacier is
marvelous. Its decorations are the decorations of fairyland. Quite near
us marks of animals in the snow attracted our attention. Schmidt said to
us:
"Chamois have been here this morning; the traces are quite fresh. They
must have seen us and made off; the chamois are as distrustful, you see,
as the marmots, and as wary. At this season they keep on the glaciers by
preference. They live on so little! A few herbs, a few mosses, such as
grow on isolated rocks like this. I assure you it is very amusing to see
a herd of twenty or thirty chamois cross at a headlong pace a vast field
of snow, or glacier, where they bound over the crevasses in play.
"One would say they were reindeers in a Lapland scene. It is only at
night that they come down into the valleys. In the moonlight they come
out of the moraines, and go to pasture on the grassy slopes or in the
forest adjoining the glaciers. During the day they go up again into the
snow, for which they have an extraordinary love, and in which they skip
and play, amusing themselves like a band of scholars in play hours.
They tease one another, butt with their horns in fun, run off,
return, pretend new attacks and new flights with charming agility and
frolicsomeness.
"While the young ones give themselves up to their sports, an old female,
posted as sentinel at some yards distance, watches the valley and scents
the air. At the slightest indication of danger, she utters a sharp cry;
the games cease instantly, and the whole anxious troop assembles round
the guardian, then the whole herd sets off at a gallop and disappears in
the twinkling of an eye....
"Hunting on the névés and the glaciers is very dangerous. When the snow
is fresh it is with difficulty one can advance. The hunters use wooden
snowshoes, like those of the Esquimaux.
"One of my comrades, in hunting on the Roseg, disappeared in the bottom
of a crevasse. It was over thirty feet deep. Imagine two perfectly
smooth sides; two walls of crystal. To reascend was impossible. It was
certain death, either from cold or hunger; for it was known that when he
went chamois-hunting he was often absent for several days. He could not
therefore count on help being sent; he must resign himself to death.
"One thing, however, astonished him; it was to find so little water in
the bottom of the crevasse. Could there be then an opening at the bottom
of the funnel into which he had fallen? He stooped, examined this grave
in which he had been buried alive, discovered that the heat of the sun
had caused the base of the glacier to melt. A canal drainage had been
formed. Laying himself flat, he slid into this dark passage, and after
a thousand efforts he arrived at the end of the glacier in the moraine,
safe and sound."
We had finished breakfast. We wanted something warm, a little coffee.
Schmidt set up our spirit-lamp behind two great stones that protected it
from the wind. And while we waited for the water to boil, he related to
us the story of Colani, the legendary hunter of the upper Engandine.
"Colani, in forty years, killed two thousand seven hundred chamois. This
strange man had carved out for himself a little kingdom in the mountain.
He claimed to reign there alone, to be absolute master. When a stranger
penetrated into his residence, within the domain of 'his reserved
hunting-ground,' as he called the regions of the Bernina, he treated him
as a poacher, and chased him with a gun....
"Colani was feared and dreaded as a diabolical and supernatural
being; and indeed he took no pains to undeceive the public, for the
superstitious terrors inspired by his person served to keep away all the
chamois-hunters from his chamois, which he cared for and managed as a
great lord cares for the deer in his forests. Round the little house
which he had built for himself on the Col de Bernina, and where he
passed the summer and autumn, two hundred chamois, almost tame, might be
seen wandering about and browsing. Every year he killed about fifty old
males."
THE CELEBRITIES OF GENEVA[62]
BY FRANCIS H. GRIBBLE
It has been remarked as curious that the Age of Revolution at Geneva
was also the Golden Age--if not of Genevan literature, which has never
really had any Golden Age, at least of Genevan science, which was of
world-wide renown.
The period is one in which notable names meet us at every turn. There
were exiled Genevans, like de Lolme, holding their own in foreign
political and intellectual circles; there were emigrant Genevan pastors
holding aloft the lamps of culture and piety in many cities of England,
France, Russia, Germany, and Denmark; there were Genevans, like François
Lefort, holding the highest offices in the service of foreign rulers;
and there were numbers of Genevans at Geneva of whom the cultivated
grand tourist wrote in the tone of a disciple writing of his master. One
can not glance at the history of the period without lighting upon names
of note in almost all departments of endeavor. The period is that of
de Saussure, Bourrit, the de Lucs, the two Hubers, great authorities
respectively on bees and birds; Le Sage, who was one of Gibbon's rivals
for the heart of Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod; Senebier, the librarian
who wrote the first literary history of Geneva; St. Ours and Arlaud,
the painters; Charles Bonnet, the entomologist; Bérenger and Picot,
the historians; Tronchin, the physician; Trembley and Jallabert, the
mathematicians; Dentan, minister and Alpine explorer; Pictet, the editor
of the "Bibliothèque Universelle," still the leading Swiss literary
review; and Odier, who taught Geneva the virtue of vaccination.
It is obviously impossible to dwell at length upon the careers of all
these eminent men. As well might one attempt, in a survey on the same
scale of English literature, to discuss in detail the careers of all the
celebrities of the age of Anne. One can do little more than remark that
the list is marvelously strong for a town of some 30,000 inhabitants,
and that many of the names included in it are not only eminent, but
interesting. Jean André de Luc, for example, has a double claim upon our
attention as the inventor of the hygrometer and as the pioneer of the
snow-peaks. He climbed the Buet as early as 1770, and wrote an account
of his adventures on its summit and its slopes which has the true charm
of Arcadian simplicity. He came to England, was appointed reader to
Queen Charlotte, and lived in the enjoyment of that office, and in the
gratifying knowledge that Her Majesty kept his presentation hygrometer
in her private apartments, to the venerable age of ninety.
Bourrit is another interesting character--being, in fact, the spiritual
ancestor of the modern Alpine Clubman. By profession he was Precentor
of the Cathedral; but his heart was in the mountains. In the summer he
climbed them, and in the winter he wrote books about them. One of
his books was translated into English; and the list of subscribers,
published with the translation, shows that the public which Bourrit
addrest included Edmund Burke, Sir Joseph Banks, Bartolozzi, Fanny
Burney, Angelica Kauffman, David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, George
Augustus Selwyn, Jonas Hanway and Dr. Johnson. His writings earned him
the honorable title of Historian (or Historiographer) of the Alps. Men
of science wrote him letters; princes engaged upon the grand tour called
to see him; princesses sent him presents as tokens of their admiration
and regard for the man who had taught them how the contemplation of
mountain scenery might exalt the sentiments of the human mind.
Tronchin, too, is interesting; he was the first physician who recognized
the therapeutic use of fresh air and exercise, hygienic boots, and
open windows. So is Charle Bonnet, who was not afraid to stand up
for orthodoxy against Voltaire; so is Mallet, who traveled as far as
Lapland; and so is that man of whom his contemporaries always spoke,
with the reverence of hero-worshipers, as "the illustrious de
Saussure."...
The name of which the Genevans are proudest is probably that of
Rousseau, who has sometimes been spoken of as "the austere citizen of
Geneva." But "austere" is a strange epithet to apply to the philosopher
who endowed the Foundling Hospital with five illegitimate children; and
Geneva can not claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from the
town of his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples. It
was, indeed, at Geneva that Jean Jacques received from his aunt the
disciplinary chastisement of which he gives such an exciting account in
his "Confessions"; and he once returned to the city and received the
Holy Communion there in later life. But that is all. Jean Jacques was
not educated at Geneva, but in Savoy--at Annecy, at Turin, and at
Chambéry; his books were not printed at Geneva, tho' one of them was
publicly burned there, but in Paris and Amsterdam; it is not to Genevan
but to French literature that he belongs.
We must visit Voltaire at Ferney, and Madame de Staël at Coppet. Let the
patriarch come first. Voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled
on the shores of the lake, where he was to remain for another
four-and-twenty years; and he did not go there for his pleasure. He
would have preferred to live in Paris, but was afraid of being locked
up in the Bastille. As the great majority of the men of letters of
the reign of Louis XV. were, at one time or another, locked up in the
Bastille, his fears were probably well founded.
Moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears. "I dare not ask you to
dine," a relative said to him, "because you are in bad odor at Court."
So he betook himself to Geneva, as so many Frenchmen, illustrious
and otherwise, had done before, and acquired various properties--at
Prangins, at Lausanne, at Saint-Jean (near Geneva), at Ferney, at
Tournay, and elsewhere.
He was welcomed cordially. Dr. Tronchin, the eminent physician,
cooperated in the legal fictions necessary to enable him to become a
landowner in the republic. Cramer, the publisher, made a proposal for
the issue of a complete and authorized edition of his works. All the
best people called. "It is very pleasant," he was able to write, "to
live in a country where rulers borrow your carriage to come to dinner
with you."
Voltaire corresponded regularly with at least four reigning sovereigns,
to say nothing of men of letters, Cardinals, and Marshals of France;
and he kept open house for travelers of mark from every country in the
world. Those of the travelers who wrote books never failed to devote a
chapter to an account of a visit to Ferney; and from the mass of such
descriptions we may select for quotation that written, in the stately
style of the period, by Dr. John Moore, author of "Zeluco," then making
the grand tour as tutor to the Duke of Hamilton.
"The most piercing eyes I ever beheld," the doctor writes, "are those of
Voltaire, now in his eightieth year. His whole countenance is expressive
of genius, observation, and extreme sensibility. In the morning he has a
look of anxiety and discontent; but this gradually wears off, and after
dinner he seems cheerful; yet an air of irony never entirely forsakes
his face, but may always be observed lurking in his features whether he
frowns or smiles. Composition is his principal amusement. No author who
writes for daily bread, no young poet ardent for distinction, is more
assiduous with his pen, or more anxious for fresh fame, than the wealthy
and applauded Seigneur of Ferney. He lives in a very hospitable manner,
and takes care always to have a good cook. He generally has two or three
visitors from Paris, who stay with him a month or six weeks at a time.
When they go, their places are soon supplied, so that there is a
constant rotation of society at Ferney. These, with Voltaire's own
family and his visitors from Geneva, compose a company of twelve or
fourteen people, who dine daily at his table, whether he appears or not.
All who bring recommendations from his friends may depend upon being
received, if he be not really indisposed. He often presents himself to
the strangers who assemble every afternoon in his ante-chamber, altho
they bring no particular recommendation."
It might have been added that when an interesting stranger who carried
no introduction was passing through the town, Voltaire sometimes sent
for him; but this experiment was not always a success, and failed most
ludicrously in the case of Claude Gay, the Philadelphian Quaker, author
of some theological works now forgotten, but then of note. The meeting
was only arranged with difficulty on the philosopher's undertaking to
put a bridle on his tongue, and say nothing flippant about holy things.
He tried to keep his promise, but the temptation was too strong for him.
After a while he entangled his guest in a controversy concerning the
proceedings of the patriarchs and the evidences of Christianity, and
lost his temper on finding that his sarcasms failed to make their usual
impression. The member of the Society of Friends, however, was not
disconcerted. He rose from his place at the dinner-table, and replied:
"Friend Voltaire! perhaps thou mayst come to understand these matters
rightly; in the meantime, finding I can do thee no good, I leave thee,
and so fare thee well."
And so saying, he walked out and walked back to Geneva, while Voltaire
retired in dudgeon to his room, and the company sat expecting something
terrible to happen.
A word, in conclusion, about Coppet!
Necker[63] bought the property from his old banking partner, Thelusson,
for 500,000 livres in French money, and retired to live there when the
French Revolution drove him out of politics. His daughter, Madame de
Staël, inherited it from him, and made it famous.
Not that she loved Switzerland; it would be more true to say that she
detested Switzerland. Swiss scenery meant nothing to her. When she was
taken for an excursion to the glaciers, she asked what the crime was
that she had to expiate by such a punishment; and she could look out on
the blue waters of Lake Leman, and sigh for "the gutter of the Rue du
Bac." Even to this day, the Swiss have hardly forgiven her for that, or
for speaking of the Canton of Vaud as the country in which she had been
"so intensely bored for such a number of years."
What she wanted was to live in Paris, to be a leader--or, rather, to be
"the" leader--of Parisian society, to sit in a salon, the admired of
all admirers, and to pull the wires of politics to the advantage of
her friends. For a while she succeeded in doing this. It was she who
persuaded Barras to give Talleyrand his political start in life. But
whereas Barras was willing to act on her advice, Napoleon was by no
means equally amenable to her influence. Almost from the first he
regarded her as a mischief-maker; and when a spy brought him an
intercepted letter in which Madame de Staël exprest her hope that none
of the old aristocracy of France would condescend to accept appointments
in the household of "the bourgeois of Corsica," he became her personal
enemy, and, refusing her permission to live either in the capital or
near it, practically compelled her to take refuge in her country seat.
Her pleasance in that way became her gilded cage.
Perhaps she was not quite so unhappy there as she sometimes represented.
If she could not go to Paris, many distinguished and brilliant Parisians
came to Coppet, and met there many brilliant and distinguished Germans,
Genevans, Italians, and Danes. The Parisian salon, reconstituted,
flourished on Swiss soil. There visited there, at one time or another,
Madame Récamier and Madame Krüdner; Benjamin Constant, who was so
long Madame de Staël's lover; Bonstetten, the Voltairean philosopher;
Frederika Brun, the Danish artist; Sismondi, the historian; Werner, the
German poet; Karl Ritter, the German geographer; Baron de Voght; Monti,
the Italian poet: Madame Vigée Le Brun; Cuvier; and Oelenschlaeger. From
almost every one of them we have some pen-and-ink sketch of the life
there. This, for instance, is the scene as it appeared to Madame Le
Brun, who came to paint the hostess's portrait:
"I paint her in antique costume. She is not beautiful, but the animation
of her visage takes the place of beauty. To aid the expression I wished
to give her, I entreated her to recite tragic verses while I painted.
She declaimed passages from Corneille and Racine. I find many persons
established at Coppet: the beautiful Madame Récamier, the Comte de
Sabran, a young English woman, Benjamin Constant, etc. Its society is
continually renewed. They come to visit the illustrious exile who is
pursued by the rancor of the Emperor. Her two sons are now with her,
under the instruction of the German scholar Schlegel; her daughter is
very beautiful, and has a passionate love of study; she leaves her
company free all the morning, but they unite in the evening. It is only
after dinner that they can converse with her. She then walks in her
salon, holding in her hand a little green branch; and her words have an
ardor quite peculiar to her; it is impossible to interrupt her. At these
times she produces on one the effect of an improvisation."
And here is a still more graphic description, taken from a letter
written to Madame Récamier by Baron de Voght:
"It is to you that I owe my most amiable reception at Coppet. It is no
doubt to the favorable expectations aroused by your friendship that I
owe my intimate acquaintance with this remarkable woman. I might have
met her without your assistance--some casual acquaintance would no doubt
have introduced me--but I should never have penetrated to the intimacy
of this sublime and beautiful soul, and should never have known how much
better she is than her reputation. She is an angel sent from heaven to
reveal the divine goodness upon earth. To make her irresistible, a pure
ray of celestial light embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable from
every point of view.
"At once profound and light, whether she is discovering a mysterious
secret of the soul or grasping the lightest shadow of a sentiment,
her genius shines without dazzling, and when the orb of light has
disappeared, it leaves a pleasant twilight to follow it.... No doubt
a few faults, a few weaknesses, occasionally veil this celestial
apparition; even the initiated must sometimes be troubled by these
eclipses, which the Genevan astronomers in vain endeavor to predict.
"My travels so far have been limited to journeys to Lausanne and
Coppet, where I often stay three or four days. The life there suits me
perfectly; the company is even more to my taste. I like Constant's
wit, Schlegel's learning, Sabran's amiability, Sismondi's talent and
character, the simple truthful disposition and just intellectual
perceptions of Auguste,[64] the wit and sweetness of Albertine[65]--I
was forgetting Bonstetten, an excellent fellow, full of knowledge of
all sorts, ready in wit, adaptable in character--in every way inspiring
one's respect and confidence.
"Your sublime friend looks and gives life to everything. She imparts
intelligence to those around her. In every corner of the house some
one is engaged in composing a great work.... Corinne is writing her
delightful letters about Germany, which will, no doubt, prove to be the
best thing she has ever done.
"The 'Shunamitish Widow,' an Oriental melodrama which she has just
finished, will be played in October; it is charming. Coppet will be
flooded with tears. Constant and Auguste are both composing tragedies;
Sabran is writing a comic opera, and Sismondi a history; Schlegel is
translating something; Bonstetten is busy with philosophy, and I am busy
with my letter to Juliette."
Then, a month later:
"Since my last letter, Madame de Staël has read us several chapters of
her work. Everywhere it bears the marks of her talent. I wish I could
persuade her to cut out everything in it connected with politics, and
all the metaphors which interfere with its clarity, simplicity, and
accuracy. What she needs to demonstrate is not her republicanism, but
her wisdom. Mlle. Jenner played in one of Werner's tragedies which was
given, last Friday, before an audience of twenty. She, Werner, and
Schlegel played perfectly....
"The arrival in Switzerland of M. Cuvier has been a happy distraction
for Madame de Staël; they spent two days together at Geneva, and
were well pleased with each other. On her return to Coppet she found
Middleton there, and in receiving his confidences forgot her troubles.
Yesterday she resumed her work.
"The poet whose mystical and somber genius has caused us such profound
emotions starts, in a few days' time, for Italy.
"I accompanied Corinne to Massot's. To alleviate the tedium of the
sitting, a Mlle. Romilly played pleasantly on the harp, and the studio
was a veritable temple of the Muses....