I.

"Well, Mademoiselle Isaline," I said, strolling out into the garden,

"and who is the young _cavalier_ with the black moustache?"

"What, monsieur," answered Isaline; "you have seen him? You have been

watching from your window? We did not know you had returned from the

Aiguille."

"Oh, yes, I've been back for more than an hour," I replied; "the snow

was so deep on the Col that I gave it up at last, and made up my mind

not to try it without a guide."

"I am so glad," Isaline said demurely. "I had such fears for monsieur.

The Aiguille is dangerous, though it isn't very high, and I had been

very distractedly anxious till monsieur returned."

"Thanks, mademoiselle," I answered, with a little bow. "Your solicitude

for my safety flatters me immensely. But you haven't told me yet who is

the gentleman with the black moustache."

Isaline smiled. "His name is M. Claude," she said; "M. Claude Tirard,

you know; but we don't use surnames much among ourselves in the Pays de

Vaud. He is the schoolmaster of the commune."

"M. Claude is a very happy man, then," I put in. "I envy his good

fortune."

Isaline blushed a pretty blush. "On the contrary," she answered, "he has

just been declaring himself the most miserable of all mankind. He says

his life is not worth having."

"They always say that under those peculiar circumstances," I said.

"Believe me, mademoiselle, there are a great many men who would be glad

to exchange their own indifferently tolerable lot for M. Claude's

unendurable misery."

Isaline said nothing, but she looked at me with a peculiar inquiring

look, as if she would very much like to know exactly what I meant by it,

and how much I meant it.

And what _did_ I mean by it? Not very much after all, I imagine; for

when it comes to retrospect, which one of us is any good at analyzing

his own motives? The fact is, Isaline was a very pretty little girl, and

I had nothing else to do, and I might just as well make myself agreeable

to her as gain the reputation of being a bear of an Englishman. Besides,

if there was the safeguard of M. Claude, a real indigenous suitor, in

the background, there wasn't much danger of my polite attentions being

misunderstood.

However, I haven't yet told you how I came to find myself on the farm at

Les Pentes at all. This, then, is how it all came about. I was sick of

the Temple; I had spent four or five briefless years in lounging about

Brick Court and dropping in casually at important cases, just to let the

world see I was the proud possessor of a well-curled wig; but even a wig

(which suits my complexion admirably) palls after five years, and I said

to myself that I would really cut London altogether, and live upon my

means somewhere on the Continent. Very small means, to be sure, but

still enough to pull through upon in Switzerland or the Black Forest.

So, just by way of experiment as to how I liked it, I packed up my

fishing-rod and my portmanteau (the first the most important), took the

7.18 express from the Gare de Lyon for Geneva, and found myself next

afternoon comfortably seated on the verandah of my favourite hotel at

Vevay. The lake is delightful, that we all know; but I wanted to get

somewhere where there was a little fishing; so I struck back at once

into the mountain country round Chateau d'Oex and Les Avants, and came

soon upon the exact thing I wanted at Les Pentes.

Picture to yourself a great amphitheatre of open alp or mountain pasture

in the foreground, with peaks covered by vivid green pines in the middle

distance, and a background of pretty aiguilles, naked at their base, but

clad near the summit with frozen masses of sparkling ice. Put into the

midst of the amphitheatre a clear green-and-white torrent, with a church

surrounded by a few wooden farmhouses on its slope, and there you have

the commune of Les Pentes. But what was most delightful of all was this,

that there was no hotel, no _pension_, not even a regular lodging-house.

I was the first stranger to discover the capabilities of the village,

and I was free to exploit them for my own private advantage. By a stroke

of luck, it so happened that M. Clairon, the richest farmer of the

place, with a pretty old-fashioned Vaudois farmhouse, and a pretty,

dainty little Vaudoise daughter, was actually willing to take me in for

a mere song per week. I jumped at the chance; and the same day saw me

duly installed in a pretty little room, under the eaves of the pretty

little farmhouse, and with the pretty little daughter politely attending

to all my wants.

Do you know those old-fashioned Vaudois houses, with their big

gable-ends, their deep-thatched roofs, their cobs of maize, and smoked

hams, and other rural wealth, hanging out ostentatiously under the

protecting ledges? If you don't, you can't imagine what a delightful

time I had of it at Les Pentes. The farm was a large one for the Pays

de Vaud, and M. Clairon actually kept two servants; but madame would

have been scandalized at the idea of letting "that Sara" or "that

Lisette" wait upon the English voyager; and the consequence was that

Mademoiselle Isaline herself always came to answer my little tinkling

hand-bell. It was a trifle awkward, for Mademoiselle Isaline was too

much of a young lady not to be treated with deferential politeness; and

yet there is a certain difficulty in being deferentially polite to the

person who lays your table for dinner. However, I made the best of it,

and I'm bound to say I managed to get along very comfortably.

Isaline was one of those pretty, plump, laughing-eyed, dimple-cheeked,

dark little girls that you hardly ever see anywhere outside the Pays de

Vaud. It was almost impossible to look at her without smiling; I'm sure

it was quite impossible for her to look at any one else and not smile at

them. She wore the prettiest little Vaudois caps you ever saw in your

life; and she looked so coquettish in them that you must have been very

hard-hearted indeed if you did not straightway fall head over ears in

love with her at first sight. Besides, she had been to school at

Lausanne, and spoke such pretty, delicate, musical French. Now, my good

mother thought badly of my French accent; and when I told her I meant to

spend a summer month or two in western Switzerland, she said to me, "I

_do_ hope, Charlie dear, you will miss no opportunity of conversing with

the people, and improving yourself in colloquial French a little." I am

certainly the most dutiful of sons, and I solemnly assure you that

whenever I was not fishing or climbing I missed no opportunity

whatsoever of conversing with pretty little Isaline.

"Mademoiselle Isaline," I said on this particular afternoon, "I should

much like a cup of tea; can Sara bring me one out here in the garden?"

"Perfectly, monsieur; I will bring you out the little table on to the

grass plot," said Isaline. "That will arrange things for you much more

pleasantly."

"Not for worlds," I said, running in to get it myself; but Isaline had

darted into the house before me, and brought it out with her own white

little hands on to the tiny lawn. Then she went in again, and soon

reappeared with a Japanese tray--bought at Montreux specially in my

honour--and a set of the funniest little old China tea-things ever

beheld in a London bric-a-brac cabinet.

"Won't you sit and take a cup with me, mademoiselle?" I asked.

"_Ma foi_, monsieur," answered Isaline, blushing again, "I have never

tasted any except as _pthisane_. But you other English drink it so,

don't you? I will try it, for the rest: one learns always."

I poured her out a cup, and creamed it with some of that delicious

Vaudois cream (no cream in the world so good as what you get in the Pays

de Vaud--you see I am an enthusiast for my adopted country--but that is

anticipating matters), and handed it over to her for her approval. She

tasted it with a little _moue_. English-women don't make the _moue_, so,

though I like sticking to my mother tongue, I confess my inability to

translate the word. "Brrrr," she said. "Do you English like that stuff!

Well, one must accommodate one's self to it, I suppose;" and to do her

justice, she proceeded to accommodate herself to it with such

distinguished success that she asked me soon for another cup, and drank

it off without even a murmur.

"And this M. Claude, then," I asked; "he is a friend of yours? Eh?"

"Passably," she answered, colouring slightly. "You see, we have not much

society at Les Pontes. He comes from the Normal School at Geneva. He is

instructed, a man of education. We see few such here. What would you

have?" She said it apologetically, as though she thought she was bound

to excuse herself for having made M. Claude's acquaintance.

"But you like him very much?"

"Like him? Well, yes; I liked him always well enough. Bat he is too

haughty. He gives himself airs. To-day he is angry with me. He has no

right to be angry with me."

"Mademoiselle," I said, "have you ever read our Shakespeare?"

"Oh, yes, in English I have read him. I can read English well enough,

though I speak but a little."

"And have you read the 'Tempest'?"

"How? Ariel, Ferdinand, Miranda, Caliban? Oh, yes. It is beautiful."

"Well, mademoiselle," I said, "do you remember how Miranda first saw

Ferdinand?"

She smiled and blushed again--she was such a little blusher. "I know

what you would say," she said. "You English are blunt. You talk to young

ladies so strangely."

"Well, Mademoiselle Isaline, it seems to me that you at Les Pentes are

like Miranda on the island. You see nobody, and there is nobody here to

see you. You must not go and fall in love, like Miranda, with the very

first man you happen to meet with, because he comes from the Normal

School at Geneva. There are plenty of men in the world, believe me,

beside M. Claude."

"Ah, but Miranda and Ferdinand both loved one another," said Isaline

archly; "and they were married, and both lived happily ever afterward."

I saw at once she was trying to pique me.

"How do you know that?" I asked. "It doesn't say so in the play. For all

I know, Ferdinand lost the crown of Naples through a revolution, and

went and settled down at a country school in Savoy or somewhere, and

took to drinking, and became brutally unsociable, and made Miranda's

life a toil and a burden to her. At any rate, I'm sure of one thing; he

wasn't worthy of her."

What made me go on in this stupid way? I'm sure I don't know. I

certainly didn't mean to marry Isaline myself: ... at least, not

definitely: and yet when you are sitting down at tea on a rustic garden

seat, with a pretty girl in a charming white crimped cap beside you, and

you get a chance of insinuating that other fellows don't think quite as

much of her as you do, it isn't human nature to let slip the opportunity

of insinuating it.

"But you don't know M. Claude," said Isaline practically, "and so you

can't tell whether _he_ is worthy of _me_ or not."

"I'm perfectly certain," I answered, "that he can't be, even though he

were a very paragon of virtue, learning, and manly beauty."

"If monsieur talks in that way," said Isaline, "I shall have to go back

at once to mamma."

"Wait a moment," I said, "and I will talk however you wish me. You know,

you agree to give me instruction in conversational French. That

naturally includes lessons in conversation with ladies of exceptional

personal attractions. I must practise for every possible circumstance of

life.... So you have read Shakespeare, then. And any other English

books?"

"Oh, many. Scott, and Dickens, and all, except Byron. My papa says a

young lady must not read Byron. But I have read what he has said of our

lake, in a book of extracts. It is a great pleasure to me to look down

among the vines and chestnuts, there, and to think that our lake, which

gleams so blue and beautiful below, is the most famous in poetry of all

lakes. You know, Jean Jacques says, 'Mon lac est le premier,' and so it

is."

"Then you have read Jean Jacques too?"

"Oh, mon Dieu, no. My papa says a young lady must especially not read

Jean Jacques. But I know something about him--so much as is

_convenable_. Hold here! do you see that clump of trees down there by

the lake, just above Clarens? That is Julie's grove--'le bosquet de

Julie' we call it. There isn't a spot along the lake that is not thus

famous, that has not its memories and its associations. It is for that

that I could not choose ever to leave the dear old Pays de Vaud."

"You would not like to live in England, then?" I asked. (What a fool I

was, to be sure.)

"Oh, ma foi, no. That would make one too much shiver, with your chills,

and your fogs, and your winters. I could not stand it. It is cold here,

but at any rate it is sunny.... Well, at least, it would not be

pleasant.... But, after all, that depends.... You have the sun, too,

sometimes, don't you?"

"Isaline!" cried madame from the window. "I want you to come and help me

pick over the gooseberries!" And, to say the truth, I thought it quite

time she should go.