Here I am, sitting at my window, overlooking Lake Leman. Castle
Chillon, with its old conical towers, is silently pictured in the
still waters. It has been a day of a thousand. We took a boat, with
two oarsmen, and passed leisurely along the shores, under the cool,
drooping branches of trees, to the castle, which is scarce a stone's
throw from the hotel. We rowed along, close under the walls, to the
ancient moat and drawbridge. There I picked a bunch of blue bells,
"les clochettes," which were hanging their aerial pendants from every
crevice--some blue, some white.
[Illustration: _of blue bell flowers with sharp-bladed leaves._]
I know not why the old buildings and walls in Europe have this
vivacious habit of shooting out little flowery ejaculations and
soliloquies at every turn. One sees it along through France and
Switzerland, every where; but never, that I remember, in America.
On the side of the castle wall, in a large white heart, is painted the
inscription, _Liberté et Patrie_!
We rowed along, almost touching the castle rock, where the wall
ascends perpendicularly, and the water is said to be a thousand feet
deep. We passed the loopholes that illuminate the dungeon vaults, and
an old arch, now walled up, where prisoners, after having been
strangled, were thrown into the lake.
Last evening we walked over the castle. An interesting Swiss woman,
who has taught herself English for the benefit of her visitors, was
our _cicerone_. She seemed to have all the old Swiss vivacity of
attachment for "_liberté et patrie_."
[Illustration: _of a interior space of hewn stone with high vaulted
gothic arches._]
She took us first into the dungeon, with the seven pillars, described
by Byron. There was the pillar to which, for protecting the liberty of
Geneva, BONNEVARD was chained. There the Duke of Savoy kept him for
six years, confined by a chain four feet long. He could take only
three steps, and the stone floor is deeply worn by the prints of those
weary steps. Six years is so easily said; but to _live_ them,
alone, helpless, a man burning with all the fires of manhood, chained
to that pillar of stone, and those three unvarying steps! Two thousand
one hundred and ninety days rose and set the sun, while seedtime and
harvest, winter and summer, and the whole living world went on over
his grave. For him no sun, no moon, no star, no business, no
friendship, no plans--nothing! The great millstone of life emptily
grinding itself away!
What a power of vitality was there in Bonnevard, that he did not sink
in lethargy, and forget himself to stone! But he did not; it is said
that when the victorious Swiss army broke in to liberate him, they
cried,--
"Bonnevard, you are free!"
"_Et Genève?_"
"Geneva is free also!"
You ought to have heard the enthusiasm with which our guide told this
story!
Near by are the relics of the cell of a companion of Bonnevard, who
made an ineffectual attempt to liberate him. On the wall are still
seen sketches of saints and inscriptions by his hand. This man one day
overcame his jailer, locked him in his cell, ran into the hall above,
and threw himself from a window into the lake, struck a rock, and was
killed instantly. One of the pillars in this vault is covered with
names. I think it is Bonnevard's pillar. There are the names of Byron,
Hunt, Schiller, and many other celebrities.
After we left the dungeons we went up into the judgment hall, where
prisoners were tried, and then into the torture chamber. Here are the
pulleys by which limbs were broken; the beam, all scorched with the
irons by which feet were burned; the oven where the irons were heated;
and there was the stone where they were sometimes laid to be
strangled, after the torture. On that stone, our guide told us, two
thousand Jews, men, women, and children, had been put to death. There
was also, high up, a strong beam across, where criminals were hung;
and a door, now walled up, by which they were thrown into the lake. I
shivered. "'Twas cruel," she said; "'twas almost as cruel as your
slavery in America."
Then she took us into a tower where was the _oubliette_. Here the
unfortunate prisoner was made to kneel before an image of the Virgin,
while the treacherous floor, falling beneath him, precipitated him
into a well forty feet deep, where he was left to die of broken limbs
and starvation. Below this well was still another pit, filled with
knives, into which, when they were disposed to a merciful hastening of
the torture, they let him fall. The woman has been herself to the
bottom of the first dungeon, and found there bones of victims. The
second pit is now walled up.
"All this," she said, "was done for the glory of God in the good old
times."
The glory of God! What has not been done in that name! Yet he keeps
silence; patient he watches; the age-long fever of this world, the
delirious night, shall have a morning. Ah, there is an unsounded depth
in that word which says, "He is long-suffering." This it must be at
which angels veil their faces.
On leaving the castle we offered the woman the customary gratuity.
"No;" she would "have the pleasure of showing it to me as a friend."
And she ran into a charming little garden, full of flowers, and
brought me a bouquet of lilies and roses, which I have had in my room
all day.
To-night, after sunset, we rowed to Byron's "little isle," the only
one in the lake. O, the unutterable beauty of these mountains--great,
purple waves, as if they had been dashed up by a mighty tempest,
crested with snow-like foam! this purple sky, and crescent moon, and
the lake gleaming and shimmering, and twinkling stars, while far off
up the sides of a snow-topped mountain a light shines like a star--
some mountaineer's candle, I suppose.
In the dark stillness we rowed again over to Chillon, and paused under
its walls. The frogs were croaking in the moat, and we lay rocking on
the wave, and watching the dusky outlines of the towers and turrets.
Then the spirit of the scene seemed to wrap me round like a cloak.
Back to Geneva again. This lovely place will ever leave its image on
my heart. Mountains embrace it. Strength and beauty are its
habitation. The Salève is a peculiar looking mountain, striped with
different strata of rock, which have a singular effect in the hazy
distance; so is the Mole, with its dark marked outline, looking
blacker in clear weather, from being set against the snow mountains
beyond.
There is one peculiarity about the outline of Mont Blanc, as seen from
Geneva, which is quite striking. There is in certain positions the
profile of a gigantic head visible, lying with face upturned to the
sky. Mrs. F. was the first to point it out to me, calling it a head of
Napoleon. Like many of these fanciful profiles, I was some time in
learning to see it; and after that it became to me so plain that I
wondered I had not seen it before. I called it not Napoleon, however,
but as it gained on my imagination, lying there so motionless, cold,
and still, I thought of Prometheus on Mount Caucasus; it seemed as if,
his sorrows ended, he had sunk at last to a dreamless sleep on that
snowy summit. This sketch may, perhaps, give you some faint idea of
how such an outline might be formed in one's imagination.
[Illustration: _of Mont Blanc in the distance._]
We walked out the other evening, with M. Fazy, to a beautiful place,
where Servetus was burned. Soft, new-mown meadow grass carpets it, and
a solemn amphitheatre of mountains, glowing in the evening sky, looked
down--Mont Blanc, the blue-black Mole, the Saleve! Never was deed done
in a more august presence chamber! Ere this these two may have
conferred together of the tragedy, with far other thoughts than then.
The world is always unjust to its progressive men. If one fragment of
past absurdity cleaves to them, they celebrate the absurdity as a
personal peculiarity. Hence we hear so much of Luther's controversial
harshness, of Calvin's burning Servetus, and of the witch persecutions
of New England.
Luther was the poet of the reformation, and Calvin its philosopher.
Luther fused the mass, Calvin crystallized. He who fuses makes the
most sensation in his day; he who crystallizes has a longer and wider
power. Calvinism, in its essential features, never will cease from the
earth, because the great fundamental facts of nature are Calvinistic,
and men with strong minds and wills always discover it. The
predestination of a sovereign will is written over all things. The old
Greek tragedians read it, and expressed it. So did Mahomet, Napoleon,
Cromwell. Why? They found it so by their own experience; they tried
the forces of nature enough to find their strength. The strong swimmer
who breasts the Rhone is certain of its current. But Ranke well said,
that in those days when the whole earth was in arms against these
reformers, they had no refuge except in exalting God's sovereignty
above all other causes. To him who strives in vain with the giant
forces of evil, what calm in the thought of an overpowering will, so
that will be crowned by goodness! However grim, to the distrusting,
looks this fortress of sovereignty in times of flowery ease, yet in
times when "the waters roar and are troubled, and the mountains shake
with the swelling thereof," it has been always the refuge of God's
people. All this I say, while I fully sympathize with the causes which
incline many fine and beautiful minds against the system.
The wife of De Wette has twice called upon me--a good, plain,
motherly, pious old lady as any in Andover. She wanted me to visit her
daughter, who, being recently deprived of her only little girl, has
since been wholly lost to life. The only thing in which she expressed
any interest was Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she was earnestly desiring to
see me. So I went. I found Mrs. De Wette in a charming saloon, looking
out upon the botanic gardens. A very beautiful picture of a young lady
hung on the wall. "That _was_ my poor Clara," said Mrs. De
Wette, "but she is so altered now!"
After a while Clara came in, and I was charmed at a glance--a most
lovely creature, in deep mourning, with beautiful manners; so much
interested for the poor slaves! so full of feeling, inquiring so
anxiously what she could do for them!
"Do ministers ever hold slaves?" she said.
"0, yes; many."
"0! But how can they be Christians?"
"They reason in this way," said I; "they say, 'These people are not
fit to take care of themselves; therefore we must hold them, and
educate them, till they are fit to be free.'"
"I wish," said she, looking very pretty and fierce, "that they might
all be sold themselves, and see how they would like it."
Her husband, who speaks only French, now asked what we were talking
about, and she repeated the conversation.
"I would shoot every one of them," said he, with a significant
movement.
"Now, see," said Mrs. De Wette, "Clara would sell them, and her
husband would _shoot_ them; for my part, I would rather
_convert_ them." We all laughed at this sally.
"Ah," said Clara, "the last thing my little darling looked at was the
pictures in Uncle Tom; when she came to the death of Eva, she said,
'Now I am weary, I will go to sleep;' and so closed her eyes, and
never opened them more."
Clara said she had met the Key in Turin and Milan. The Cabin is made a
school reading book in Sardinia, for those who wish to learn English,
with explanatory notes in Italian. The feeling here on the continent
for the slave is no less earnest than in England and Scotland. I have
received most beautiful and feeling letters from many Christians of
Switzerland, which I will show you.
I am grieved to say, that there are American propagandists of slavery
here, who seem to feel it incumbent on them to recognize this hideous
excrescence as a national peculiarity, and to consider any reflection
upon it, on the part of the liberty-loving Swiss, as an insult to the
American nation. The sophisms by which slaveholding has been justified
from the Bible have left their slimy track even here. Alas! is it thus
America fulfils her high destiny? Must she send missionaries abroad to
preach despotism?
Walking the other evening with M. Fazy, who is, of course, French in
education, we talked of our English literature. He. had Hamlet in
French--just think of it. One never feels the national difference so
much as in thinking of Shakspeare in French! Madame de Stael says of
translation, that music written for one instrument cannot be played
upon another. I asked if he had read Milton.
"Yes."
"And how did you like him?"
"0," with a kind of shiver, "he is so cold!"
Now, I felt that the delicate probe of the French mind had dissected
out a shade of feeling of which I had often been conscious. There is a
coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind
that blows from, the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene
his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering
soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the
fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is
the only one who weeps.
"For millions of spirits for his fault amerced,
And from eternal splendors flung."
God does not care, nor his angels. Ah, quite otherwise is God revealed
in Him who wept over Jerusalem, and is touched with the feeling of our
infirmities.
I went with Mrs. Fazy the other night to call on Mrs. C.'s friend,
Pastor C. They were so affectionate, so full of beautiful kindness!
The French language sounds sweetly as a language of affection and
sympathy: with all its tart vivacity, it has a richness in the gentler
world of feeling. Then, in the evening, I was with a little circle of
friends at the house of the sister of Merle d'Aubigne, and they prayed
and sang together. It was beautiful. The hymn was one on the following
of Jesus, similar to that German one of old Godfrey Arnold, which is
your favorite. These Christians speak with deep sorrow of our slavery;
it grieves, it distresses them, for the American church has been to
them a beloved object. They have leaned towards it as a vine inclines
towards a vigorous elm. To them it looks incomprehensible that such a
thing could gain strength in a free Christian republic.
I feel really sorry that I have had to withdraw so much from proffered
kindness here, and to seem unwilling to meet feeling; but so it has
been. Yet, to me, apparently so cold, many of these kind Genevese have
shown most considerate attention. Fruit and flowers have been sent in
anonymously; and one gentleman offered to place his garden at my
disposal for walks, adding that, if I wished to be entirely private,
neither he nor his family would walk there. This, I thought, was too
much kindness.
One social custom here is new to me. The husband, by marriage, takes
the wife's name. Thus M. Fazy, our host, is known as M. Fazy Meyer--
Meyer being his wife's name--a thing which at first perplexed me. I
was often much puzzled about names, owing to this circumstance.
From the conversation I hear I should think that democracy was not
entirely absolute in Switzerland. I hear much about _patrician_
families, particularly at Berne, and these are said to be quite
exclusive; yet that the old Swiss fire still burns in Switzerland, I
see many indications.
The other day I visited Beautte's celebrated watch and jewelry store,
and saw all the process of making watches, from the time the case is
cut from a sheet of gold, on through the enamelling, engraving, and
finishing. Enamel is metallic paint, burned on in a furnace. Many
women are employed in painting the designs. The workmen looked
intelligent and thoughtful, like men who can both think and do. Some
glimpses showed their sympathy with republicanism--as one should see
fire through a closed door.
I have had full reason to observe that difference between Protestant
and Catholic cantons on which Horace Greeley commented while here.
They are as different as our slave and free states, and in the same
ways. Geneva seems like New England--the country around is well
cultivated, and speaks of thrift. But, still, I find no land, however
beautiful, that can compare with home--Andover Hill, with its arched
elms, its blue distance pointing with spires, its Merrimac crowned
with labor palaces, and, above all, an old stone house, brown and
queer, &c. Good by.