The Spell of Switzerland Part 18

"Near here is a little lake which seems to have neither inflow nor outflow. The weather became perfectly clear and as we reached the foot of the Dent de Baulion we found here the northerly end of a large lake which, as it turns toward the west, has its outlet into the little one through a dam over which is built a bridge. The village above it is called Le Pont. The lay of the little lake is, as it were, in its own little valley, which one might call a very neat arrangement. At the western end is a noteworthy mill constructed in a cleft of the rock which once the little lake filled. Now it is dammed away and the mill is built over the chasm. The water runs through sluices to the millwheels and from there dashes down into the clefts of the rocks, where it is swallowed up, and a mile away joins the Valorbe, where it once more takes the name of the upper stream.

"These sluices (_entonniers_) have to be kept clear, else the water would rise and fill up the cleft again and drown the mill, as has happened more than once. Men were busy at work, some removing the decomposed limestone, some strengthening the structure.

"We rode back over the bridge to Le Pont and took a guide to La Dent.

As we mounted we had a fine view of the large lake below us in its whole extent. To the eastward Le Noir Mont forms its boundary; behind that the bald head of the Dole comes into sight; to the westward the precipitous crags, quite naked toward the lake, confine it.

"The sun grew hot; it was between eleven and noon. Gradually we began to get a prospect over the whole valley and could recognize in the distance Le Lac des Rousses, and coming up to our feet the region through which we had been riding and the road which still remained for us to accomplish. As we mounted higher we talked about the vast extent of land and of the rulers which could be distinguished from that height and with such thoughts we attained the summit; but another drama was there prepared for us. Only the lofty mountain chains were visible under a clear and cheerful sky; all the regions below were bedecked with a white woolly sea of fog which stretched from Geneva northward to the very horizon and gleamed in the sun. Out of this to the east arose the whole unbroken range of snow and ice-covered mountains, without respect to the names of the nations and princes who lay claim to the possession of them, subjected only to one great Overlord and to the glance of the sun, which painted them a lovely rosy hue.

"Mont Blanc over opposite to us was evidently the highest; the ice-mountains of Valais and of the Oberland came next and finally closed in the lower mountain of the Canton of Bern. Toward the west in one place the sea of fog was unbounded; to the left in the farthest distance the mountains of Solothurn showed themselves; nearer still those of Neuchatel; directly before us a few of the lower peaks of the Jura; below us lay some of the houses of Baulion whereto La Dent belongs and whence it gets the name. Toward the west the whole horizon is shut off by the Franche-Comte with a stretch of low wooded mountains, one of which stood out quite alone by itself toward the northwest. In front was a lovely view.

"Here is the sharp point which gives this peak the name of a tooth. It slopes down steeply and, if anything, bends inward a little; in the depths a little fir-wood valley with fine gra.s.sy meadows is shut in; directly beyond lies the valley called Valorbe, where one can see the Orbe springing from the rocks and follow in imagination its downward course under the ground to the little lake.

"The village of Valorbe also lies in this valley.

"Reluctantly we turned to descend. If we could have waited a few hours longer, until the fog in accordance with its custom should have entirely dissipated, we should have been able to distinguish the country still farther down the lake; but in order that enjoyment may be perfect there must still be something left to be desired. Looking down we had the whole valley in all distinctness before us; at Pont we mounted our horses, rode along the easterly side of the lake, came through l'Abbaye de Joux, which is now a village, but was formerly the seat of the monks to whom the whole valley belonged. About four o'clock we reached our quarters and found a meal which our hostess a.s.sured us had been good at midday but which we found tasted remarkably good."

For their return they decided to make the ascent of the second highest peak of the Jura, the Dole, though it was then supposed to be the highest.

"We packed a luncheon of cheese, b.u.t.ter, bread and wine and started away about eight o'clock. Our route took us now through the upper part of the valley under the shadow of Le Noir Mont. It was very cold; there had been a h.o.a.r frost and it had frozen; we had still an hour to ride in the Bernese territory where the _chaussee_, which has just been completed, comes to an end. We entered French territory, pa.s.sing through a small fir forest. Here the scene abruptly changes. What first struck our attention was the bad roads. The ground is very stony; great heaps of rocks lay all about; then again for a s.p.a.ce it is very swampy and full of springs; the forests all about are in bad condition; the houses and inhabitants have the appearance not exactly of dest.i.tution but still of very straitened circ.u.mstances. They are almost in the condition of serfs to the Canonici of Saint Claude; they are bound to the soil; many imposts are laid upon them....

"Yet this part of the valley is also a good deal built up. The natives work hard to support themselves and yet they love their country; they are in the habit of stealing the wood from the Bernese peasants and of selling it again in the country. The first district is called Le Bois d'Amont and we pa.s.sed through this into the parish of Les Rousses, where we saw lying before us the little Lake des Rousses and Les Sept Moncels--seven little connected hills of varied forms, the southern boundary of the valley. We soon came to the new road which leads from the Pays de Vaud toward Paris. We followed it for a while downwards and were soon out of our valley. The bald head of La Dole lay before us. We dismounted; our horses proceeded along the road to Saint-Cergues, and we kept on our way up La Dole.

"It was about noon; the sun seemed hot but a cool midday wind was blowing. When, in order to get breath, we turned around to look, we had Les Sept Moncels behind us; we could still see a part of Le Lac des Rousses and built around it the scattered houses of the parish. Le Noir Mont hid from us all the rest of the valley; mounting higher we once more saw the same prospect over La Franche-Comte and nearer to us the last mountains and valleys of the Jura toward the south. We took great pains to avoid allowing some turn in the ascent to give us a prospect of the region for the sake of which we were actually climbing the mountain. I was somewhat troubled by the fog; yet I made favorable prognostications from the aspect of the sky above.

"At last we attained the topmost peak and beheld with the greatest delight that what had been denied us the day before was now vouchsafed to us. The whole Pays de Vaud and Pays de Gex lay before us like a map; all the landed estates with green hedges marked off like the beds of a parterre. We were so high that the heights and depressions of the country in the foreground did not appear. Villages, towns, chateaux, vineyards, and higher up, where forest and Alps begin, chalets, for the most part painted white and bright, shone in the sun.

The fog had lifted entirely from Lake Leman; we could see the nearer sh.o.r.e clearly; we entirely looked over the so-called Pet.i.t Lac, where the great lake narrows and draws toward Geneva, which lay directly opposite us, and the country beyond, shutting it in, began to disclose itself. Above all, however, the prospect of the ice and snow-mountains a.s.serted its rights.

"We protected ourselves from the cold blast by the shelter of the rocks and let the sun pour down directly upon us; food and drink tasted excellently good! We looked down on the fog as it gradually dispersed; each of us discovered something, or claimed to discover something. Gradually Lausanne began to show with all its chateaux; Vevey and the Castle of Chillon came out distinctly; the mountains that shut us off from sight of the entrance to Valais, sloping down into the lake; from there along the Savoy coast--Evian, Ripaille, Thonon; villages and chateaux, all cl.u.s.tered together; Geneva came finally out of the fog at the right; but farther toward the south, toward Le Mont Credo and Mont Vuache, where the Fort l'Ecluse lies hidden, it still lingered.

"When we turned to the left again, then the whole country from Lausanne as far as Solothurn lay in a faint haze. The nearer mountains and heights, wherever there were white houses, could be easily recognized; some one pointed out to us the Castle of Chanvan as it lay gleaming at the left by the Lake of Neuburg, and we could make out its situation, but the castle itself we could not distinguish in the blue haze.

"Words fail to describe the magnitude and beauty of this view; at such a moment one is scarcely conscious of gazing; one only calls out the names and lofty forms of well-known cities and places and rejoices in an intoxicating recognition that those white spots before one's eyes are the places themselves.

"And the ranges of gleaming ice-mountains kept attracting the eye and the soul. The sun turned more toward the west and illuminated their mighty sides. What black shoulders of rock, teeth, towers and walls in multifold ranks swept up from the lake before them! forming wild, monstrous, impenetrable vestibules! As they lie there in their purity and clarity, manifold in the free air, one willingly yields all pretentions to the infinite, since one can never be done with the finite in contemplation and thought (_Anschauen und Gedanken_).

"Before us we saw a fruitful inhabited land; the soil on which we were standing, a high, bald mountain, still bears gra.s.s, fodder for cattle, from which man draws sustenance. This the conceited Lord of the World can claim as his own; but those mountains yonder are like a holy array of virgins whom the Spirit of Heaven cherishes in inaccessible regions for himself alone in everlasting chast.i.ty.

"We stayed there, in eager rivalry, striving now with the naked eye, now with the telescope, to make out cities, mountains and localities, and we did not start to descend until the sun in its waning again allowed the fog to spread its evening breath over the lake. Just at sunset we came to the ruins of Le Fort de Saint-Cergues. Even down below in the valley our eyes were still fastened upon the ice-mountains far across. The farthest away, at the left in the Oberland, seemed to be melting in a thin fiery vapor; those nearest still stood with well-marked red sides facing us; gradually they grew white, green, grey. It looked almost disquieting. As a mighty body dies from without in toward the heart, so all of them slowly grew pale up toward Mont Blanc, whose broad bosom still glowed rosy and seemed to preserve for us a reddish glow.

"At last reluctantly now we had to take our departure. We found the horses at Saint-Cergues and, in order that there might be nothing lacking, the moon rose and gave us light on our way to Nyon, while, as we rode, our excited senses once more grew calm and a.s.sumed their wonted tone, so that we were able with fresh enjoyment to find pleasure in looking out of the windows of our inn on the wide spreading reflection of the moon in the perfectly unruffled lake."

It makes one realize the flight of time to read a little farther on of Goethe's visit to the ill.u.s.trious De Saussure, through whose initiative the ascent of Mont Blanc was accomplished nearly seven years later. Goethe wanted to a.s.sure himself that it was feasible so late in the season to go from Geneva by way of Cluse and Salanches into the Valley of Chamonix and from there by way of Valorsine and Trient into Martinach in the Valais. De Chaussure encouraged him to do so, and in company still with the Duke Charles Augustus of Weimar he made his famous trip which included a visit to Sion and the peak of the Saint-Gothard.

Just a hundred years after Gray and sixty years after Goethe penetrated these mountains still another great poet enriched his imagination by experiences in the Alps. Curiously enough all three of them related their adventures and their sensations in the form of letters. Victor Hugo was at Geneva and at Lausanne in September. He had been at Lucerne, at Bern and upon the Rigi. He, too, was impressed by the wonders of the Alpine mists. He, too, describes a sunset:--

"At this moment the abyss was growing magnificent. The sun was going down behind the notched crest of Pilatus. Its rays rested only on the highest summits of all the mountains and its level rays lay across these monstrous pyramids like golden architraves.

"All the mighty valleys of the Alps were filling with mists; it was the hour when eagles and Lammergeier seek their eyries.

"I had stepped forward to the edge of the precipice above which rises the cross and from which Goldau is visible. I was alone, with my back turned toward the sunset. I know not what the others were looking at; what I saw was sublime enough for me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ALL THE MIGHTY VALLEYS OF THE ALPS WERE FILLING WITH MISTS."]

"The immense cone of shadow projected by the Rigi, clearly outlined by its edges and, because of the distance, free from any visible penumbra, gradually mounted, rock by rock, tree by tree, the steep side of the Rossberg. The shadow mountain was devouring the sunlight mountain. This vast dark triangle, the base of which was lost beneath the Rigi and the apex of which was each instant coming nearer and nearer the summit of the Rossberg, has already embraced Art, Goldau, ten valleys, ten villages, half of the Lake of Zug and the whole Lake of Lowerz. Clouds of reddish copper color floated across it and changed into pewter. In the depths of the ravine Art floated in a twilight glow starred here and there by lighted windows. Already poor women were sewing down there by their lighted lamps. Art lives in the night; the sun sets for its inhabitants at two o'clock.

"A moment later the sun had disappeared, the wind blew cold, the mountains were grey. Not a cloud was in the sky. The Rigi had become solitary once more, with a boundless blue sky arching above.

"In one of my earlier letters I spoke of 'these granite waves called Alps.' I had no idea I had hit it so accurately. The image which came into my mind appeared to me in all its vividness on the summit of the Rigi after the sun had gone down. These mountains are really billows, but giant billows. They have all the forms of the sea; there are green, dark swells, which are the crests covered with evergreens; blond and earthy seas, which are the granite slopes gilded with lichens; on the loftiest undulations the snow is torn off and falls in ma.s.ses into black ravines as the foam does. You might think you saw a mighty ocean solidified in the midst of a tempest by the breath of Jehovah.

"What would become of the horizon and the mind of man should these enormous billows be suddenly set in motion again?"

CHAPTER XVII

A FORMER WORKER OF SPELLS

A small boulder rolling down into a river may quite change its course.

The sand begins immediately to bank up against it; the current is insensibly turned away toward the other side, and from where the boulder began to build a whole new area of intervale may in time spread its bright green pasturage.

Such a boulder was Dr. Tissot in Swiss life. He was not by any means the first Lausanne physician to attract patients from abroad. In the Sixteenth Century a Jean Volat de Chambery, after having been a Protestant minister at Lonay, practised medicine and became famous, and in 1543 Jacques Blecheret was named medecin to the city. But all before or since were insignificant compared to the great Dr. Tissot, whom a well-known lady of his day in her enthusiasm called the G.o.d of medicine. My nephew declared that his very name carried with it a sound of infallibility--which was certainly subtle. He brought me a copy of Tissot's famous book: "Avis au Peuple sur sa Sante." The first edition came out in August, 1761, and it was soon translated into German, Dutch, Flemish, English, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish and Polish. It was dedicated "Aux tres-ill.u.s.tres, tres-n.o.bles, et magnifiques Seigneurs les Seigneurs Presidens et Conseilers de la Chambre de Sante de la Ville et Republique de Berne."

It was a _vade mec.u.m_ for people who lived far from doctors. "Il faut seigner" was one of his prescriptions: in those days they resorted to heroic measures; _vesicatoires_--whether made with Spanish flies or not does not appear--were recommended for sore eyes; Hofmann's drops for catarrhal fevers, stomach-cramps, colds and bronchitis. Every one talked about Tissot and his remedies. He had them drink mineral waters, especially recommending those of Rolle which he said had a styptic taste and were "bonne pour obstructions du foie et de rate, les galles, dartres, et autres maux de la peau." He gave excellent advice about cleanliness and fresh air.

It was needed in those days, for if quackery is rampant in this our day of grace, how much more flagrant was it then. Some of the remedies were amazing. Here is a decoction warranted to restore the vital forces and animate the mind: It is made up of aloes from the island of Socotora, a gross of Zodoaire, a gross each of gentian, safran, fine rhubarb, theriaque de Venise; all which when compounded was to be powdered, sifted through a parchment sieve; then when it should have fermented nine days in the shade, shaken night and morning, it was to be put into a pint of brandy. Another doctor claimed to cure the stone by a dose of _tartines de miel_ for breakfast and supper; that sounds more appetizing than a decoction of Italian scorpions. Madame de Severy had an attack of nerves: Dr.

Tissot gave her for this unpleasant malady a bitter bouillon made of dandelion, chicory and soapwort. But his chief recommendation was to eat slowly and chew carefully--an antic.i.p.ation of Fletcherism.

Auguste Tissot, of an old Italian family which came to Vaud in 1400, was born at Grancy in March, 1728. He was educated at l'Isle by his uncle, a Protestant pastor. Then he studied medicine at Montpellier, and early won a reputation by his skill in curing smallpox. He was a p.r.o.nounced advocate of inoculation and wrote a book about it. He became a professor at Lausanne in 1766 and both the King of Poland and Maria Theresa tried in vain to woo him away to be their court physician. George III wanted him in England. Napoleon wrote him about his gouty uncle. He attended Frederic the Great in his last illness.

Venice offered him a chair in the University of Padua. Finally, through the friendly offices of the Emperor Joseph II, whom he had cured, he was induced to become a professor in Pavia, where he gave lectures in Latin for two years and then resigned to return to his beloved Lausanne. After his death in 1797 the Pavians erected a monument to him. Angelica Kauffman at Rome painted the portrait of him which is still at the Chateau de Crissier. The picture portrays him with gallooned b.u.t.tons; he holds a pen in his hand and his mouth is slightly parted. Under an engraved portrait of him is this stanza:--

"Son coeur cherit l'humanite, Son esprit le guide et l'eclaire; Profond dans ses secrets, en instruisant la terre Il vole a l'immortalite."

He married a daughter of the learned Professor d'Apples de Charriere, who brought him only four thousand livres.

Tissot was the magnet that attracted the magnates. They came from all lands and were of every rank:--"the Englishes" came, haughty lords and ladies of high degree; French financiers, to say nothing of ducs and vicomtes; German princes and kings and emperors in state or incog. The streets, narrow, and not at that time well fitted for carriages, were often blocked, and lively scenes took place; postilions would be swearing in every known tongue, children squealing, horses falling and threatening to roll down to Ouchy, whips cracking, and, as always, the small boy taking great delight in the excitement. One day an Irish prelate came in an equipage of three six-horse coaches, preceded by many lackeys; then arrived a Russian princess with hard face, witty and cultivated, speaking all languages. Some one tried to point out to her the beauty of the view; _elle meprisait tout_.

Another of his patients was la Comtesse de Brionne, widow of the Prince Louis de Lorraine, beloved by the Duc de Choiseul; she stayed in Lausanne a long time with her son, the Prince de Lambesc. Another was the Countess Potocka, regarded as the loveliest woman in the world and rousing wonder and admiration by her extraordinary head-dresses, one of which was compared to the beautiful city of Lausanne--with its three hills, _la cite en aigrette_, La Rue du Pre represented by the parting in the middle, the Faubourgs de Saint-Francois and d'Estraz by the two _papillons_ or b.u.t.terfly arrangements and the Rue de Bourg by a ribbon.

In 1792 the Princess Alexander Liubomirska came. Her maitre d'hotel was overheard uttering some impertinences about the government and the bailiff had him arrested and put into jail. The princess was wrathful and uttered worse impertinences, declaring that the country was governed by tyrants. M. d'Erlach, who was really a great wit and quite broad-minded, remarked that in a _tete-a-tete_ he could bear any sort of reproaches from a pretty woman but _devant le monde_--that was another matter.

He gave the princess orders to leave town within twenty-four hours.

She hastened to Paris vowing that she would raise an army and come back to avenge herself and her outraged maitre d'hotel.

Prince Gregory Orlof, the favourite of Catharine the Great, came with a suite of twenty-one, and his wife, the Princess Orlova-Zinovieva, who in spite of the doctor's remedies died there and was buried in the Cathedral. In 1782 the Duke of Gloucester, brother to George III, came with a numerous suite and the asthma. He swore he would give an arm or a leg to be free of it. He was very ill-favoured but good-natured. His morganatic wife was with him--a tall, handsome, cold-looking lady--also a little girl of nine and as a companion to her a Lady Carpenter who was also haughty and handsome, with a mouthful of superb teeth which she liked to show when she laughed. The Grand Duke Paul of Russia came as Comte du Nord and put up at the Lion d'Or Inn with his wife Marya Feodorovna, Princesse de Wurtemberg. As a special favour it was permitted to see them eat. That was a part of the menagerie of royalty. They went up to Le Signal where they had luncheon like ordinary mortals, and they slept at Vevey. In 1782 the Princesse de Courland, first wife of the much married Pierre de Courland, died at Mon Repos, much regretted for her charity and the lavish expenditure in which she indulged. She, too, was buried in the Cathedral. Another of Dr. Tissot's patients was the terrible dandy Baron Auget de Montyon, intendant to the Duc d'Auvergne. Years afterwards he founded the Montyon prizes for a virtue which he did not possess. Of course Dr. Tissot was frequently called in to a.s.suage the discomforts caused by Gibbon's "ebullitions" of the gout.