Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands Volume Ii Part 14

There I had been walking from Versailles, and waiting for a parade some two hours after it was all over, among crowds of people who could have told me at once if I had not been so excessively modest as not to ask.

About that time an American might have been seen precipitately seeking the railroad. I had _not_ seen the elephant. It was hot, dusty, and there was neither cab nor _caleche_ in reach.

I arrived at the railroad station just in time to see the train go out at one end as I came in at the other. This was conducive to a frame of mind that scarcely needs remark. Out of that depot (it was half past four, and at six they dine in Paris) with augmented zeal and decision I pitched into a cab.

"_A l'autre station, vite, vite!_"--To the other station, quick, quick! He mounted the box, and commenced las.h.i.+ng his Rosinante, who was a subject for crows to mourn over, (because they could hope for nothing in trying to pick him,) and in an ambling, scrambling pace, composed of a trot, a canter, and a kick, we made a descent like an avalanche into the station yard. There Richard was himself again. I a.s.sumed at once the air of a gentleman who had seen the review, and walked about with composure and dignity. No doubt I had seen the emperor and all the troops. I succeeded in getting home just in the middle of dinner, and by dint of hard eating caught up at the third course with the rest.

That I consider a very white day. Some might call it _green_, but I mark such days with white always.

In the evening we attended the _salon_ of Lady Elgin, a friend of our hostess. Found there the Marquis de M., whose book on the spiritual rappings comes out next week. We conversed on the rappings _ad nauseam_.

By the way, her ladys.h.i.+p rents the Hotel de la Rochefoucauld, in the Rue de Varenne, Faubourg St. Germain.

St. Germain is full of these princely, aristocratic mansions.

Mournfully beautiful--desolately grand. Out of the stern, stony street, we entered a wide, square court, under a ma.s.sive arched gateway, then through the Rez-de-Chaussee, or lower suite of rooms, pa.s.sed out into the rear of the house to find ourselves in the garden, or rather a kind of park, with tall trees, flooded in moonlight, bathed in splendors, and with their distant, leafy arches (cut with artistic skill) reminding one of a Gothic temple. Such a magnificent forest scene in the very heart of Paris!

Sat.u.r.day, June 18. After breakfast rode out to Arc de Triomphe--de l'Etoile, and thence round the exterior barriers and boulevards to Pere la Chaise.

At every entrance to the city past the barriers, (which are now only a street,) there is a gate, and a building marked "Octroi," which means customs.

No carriage can pa.s.s without being examined, though the examination is a mere form.

Pere la Chaise did not interest me much, except that from the top of the hill I gained a good view of the city. It is filled with tombs and monuments, and laid out in streets. The houses of the dead are smaller than the houses of the living, but they are made like houses, with doors, windows, and an empty place inside for an altar, crucifix, lamps, wreaths, &c. Tombs have no charm for me. I am not at all interested or inspired by them. They do not serve with me the purpose intended, viz., of calling up the memory of the departed. On the contrary, their memory is a.s.sociated with their deeds, their works, the places where they wrought, and the monuments of themselves they have left. Here, however, in the charnel house is commemorated but the event of their deepest shame and degradation, their total vanquishment under the dominion of death, the triumph of corruption.

Here all that was visible of them is insulted by the last enemy, in the deepest, most humiliating posture of contumely.

From Pere la Chaise I came home to dinner at six. H., meanwhile, had been sitting to M. Belloc.

After dinner H. and the two Misses C. rode out to the Bois de Boulogne, the fas.h.i.+onable drive of Paris.

We saw all the splendid turnouts, and all the _not_ splendid. Our horse was noted for the springhalt. It is well to have something to attract attention about one, you know.

Sabbath, June 19. After breakfast went with Miss W. to the temple St.

Marie, to hear Adolphe Monod. Was able to understand him very well.

Gained a new idea of the capabilities of the French language as the vehicle of religious thought and experience. I had thought that it was a language incapable of being made to express the Hebrew mind and feeling of Scripture. I think differently. The language of Canaan can make its way through all languages, and in the French it has a pathos, point, and simplicity which are wonderful. There were thoughts in the sermon which I shall never forget. I feel myself highly rewarded for going.

The congregation was as large as the church could possibly hold, and composed of very interesting and intelligent-looking people. His subject was, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of G.o.d, who giveth willingly, and without upbraiding," &c. It was most touchingly adapted to the wants of the unhappy French, and of all poor sinners; and it came home to me in particular, as if it had been addressed to me singly, so that I could not help crying.

The afternoon and evening spent at home, reading. H. went in the morning with Madame de T. to the Catholic service, at the church St.

Germaine l'Auxerrois, and her companion pointed out the different parts of the service.

H. said she was moved with compa.s.sion towards these mult.i.tudes, who seem so very earnest and solemn. Their prayer books contain much that is excellent, if it was not mixed with so much that is idolatrous.

Monday, June 20. Went to have our pa.s.sport _vised_. The sky was black, and the rain pouring in torrents. As I reached the quay the Seine was rus.h.i.+ng dark, and turbidly foaming. I crept into a fiacre, and was amused, as we rattled on, to see the plight of gay and glittering Paris. One poor organ grinder, on the Pont National, sat with his umbrella over his head, and his body behind the parapet, grinding away, in the howling storm. It was the best use for a hand organ I ever saw. The gardens of the Tuileries presented a sorry sight. The sentries slunk within their boxes. The chairs were stacked and laid on their sides. The paths were flooded; and the cla.s.sic statues looked as though they had a dismal time of it, in the general shower bath.

My pa.s.sport went through the office of the American emba.s.sy, prefecture of the police, and the _bureau des affaires etrangeres_, and the Swiss legation, and we were all right for the frontier.

Our fair hostesses are all Alpine mountaineers, posted up in mountain lore. They make you look blank one moment with horror at some escape of theirs from being dashed down a precipice; the next they run you a rig indeed over the Righi; anon you shamble through Chamounix, and break your neck over the Col-de-balme, and, before you are aware, are among the lacking at Interlachen.

Wednesday, June 22. Adieu to Paris! Ho for Chalons sur Saone! After affectionate farewells of our kind friends, by eleven o'clock we were rus.h.i.+ng, in the pleasantest of cars, over the smoothest of rails, through Burgundy that was; I reading to H. out of Dumas'

_Impressions de Voyage_, going over our very route. We arrived at Chalons at nine in the evening, and were soon established in the Hotel du Park, in two small, brick-floored chambers, looking out upon the steamboat landing.

Thursday, 23. Eight o'clock A. M. Since five we have had a fine bustle on the quay below our windows. There lay three steamers, shaped, for all the world, like our last night's rolls. One would think Ichabod Crane might sit astride one of them and dip his feet in the water.

They ought to be swift. _L'Hirondelle_ (the Swallow) flew at five; another at six. We leave at nine.

Eleven o'clock. Here we go, down the Saone. Cabin thirty feet by ten, papered and varnished in invitation of maple. Ladies knitting, netting, nodding, napping; gentlemen yawning, snoring; children frolicking; dogs whining. Overhead a constant tramping, stamping, and screeching of the steam valve. H. suggests an excursion forward. We heave up from Hades, and cautiously thread the crowded _Al Sirat_ of a deck. The day is fine; the air is filled with golden beams.

More and more beautiful grows the scene as we approach the Rhone--the river broader, hills more commanding, and architecture tinged with the Italian. Bradshaw says it equals the Rhine.

At Lyons there was a scene of indescribable confusion. Out of the hold a man with a rope and hook was hauling baggage up a smooth board.

Three hundred people were sorting their goods without checks. Porters were shouldering immense loads, four or five heavy trunks at once, corded together, and stalking off Atlantean. Hatboxes, bandboxes, and valises burst like a meteoric shower out of a crater. "_A moi, a moi!_" was the cry, from old men, young women, soldiers, shopkeepers, and _pretres_, scuffling and shoving together.

Careless at once of grammar and of grace, I pulled and shouted with the best, till at length our plunder was caught, corded and poised on an herculean neck. We followed in the wake, H. trembling lest the cord should break, and we experience a pre-Alpine avalanche. At length, however, we breathed more freely in rooms _au quatrieme of Hotel de l'Univers_.

After dinner we drove to the cathedral. It was St. John's eve. "At twelve o'clock to-night," said H., "the spirits of all who are to die this year will appear to any who will go alone into the dark cathedral and summon them"! We were charmed with the interior. Twilight hid all the dirt, cobwebs, and tawdry tinsel; softened the outlines, and gave to the immense arches, columns, and stained windows a strange and thrilling beauty. The distant tapers, seeming remoter than reality, the kneeling crowds, the heavy vesper chime, all combined to realize, H. said, her dreams of romance more perfectly than ever before. We could not tear ourselves away. But the clash of the s.e.xton's keys, as he smote them together, was the signal to be gone. One after another the tapers were extinguished. The kneeling figures rose; and shadowily we flitted forth, as from some gorgeous cave of grammarye.

Sat.u.r.day, June 25. Lyons to Geneve. As this was our first experience in the diligence line, we noticed particularly every peculiarity. A diligence is a large, heavy, strongly-built, well-hung stage, consisting of five distinct departments,--coupe, berline, omnibus, banquette, and baggage top.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _of a diligence coach drawn by four horses._]

After setting up housekeeping in our berline, and putting all "to rights," the whips cracked, bells jingled, and away we thundered by the arrowy Rhone. I had had the idea that a diligence was a rickety, slow-moulded antediluvian nondescript, toiling patiently along over impa.s.sable roads at a snail's pace. Judge of my astonishment at finding it a full-blooded, vigorous monster, of unscrupulous railway momentum and imperturbable equipoise of mind.

Down the macadamized slopes we thundered at a prodigious pace; up the hills we trotted with six horses, three abreast; madly through the little towns we burst, like a whirlwind, cras.h.i.+ng across the pebbled streets, and out upon the broad, smooth road again. Before we had well considered the fact that we were out of Lyons, we stopped to change horses. Done in a jiffy; and whoop, crick, crack, whack, rumble, b.u.mp, whirr, whisk, away we blazed, till, ere we knew it, another change, and another.

"Really, H.," said I, "this is not slow. The fact is, we are going ahead. _I_ call this travelling--never was so comfortable in my life."

"Nor I," quoth she. "And, besides, we are unwinding the Rhone all along."

And, sure enough, we were; ever and anon getting a glimpse of him spread mazily all abroad in some beautiful vale, like a midguard anaconda done in silver.

At Nantua, a sordid town, with a squalid inn, we dined, at two, deliciously, on a red shrimp soup; no, not soup, it was a _potage_; no, a stew; no, a creamy, unctuous mess, muss, or whatever you please to call it. Sancho Panza never ate his olla podrida with more relish. Success to mine host of the jolly inn of Nantua!

Then we thunderbolted along again, shot through a grim fortress, crossed a boundary line, and were in Switzerland. Vive Switzerland!

land of Alps, glaciers, and freemen!

As evening drew on, a wind sprang up, and a storm seemed gathering on the Jura. The rain dashed against the panes of the berime, as we rode past the grim-faced monarch of the "misty shroud." A cold wind went sweeping by, and the Rhone was rus.h.i.+ng far below, discernible only in the distance as a rivulet of flas.h.i.+ng foam. It was night as we drove into Geneva, and stopped at the Messagerie. I heard with joy a voice demanding if this were Monsieur Besshare. I replied, not without some scruples of conscience, "_Oui, monsieur, c'est moi,_" though the name did not sound exactly like the one to which I had been wont to respond. In half an hour we were at home, in the mansion of Monsieur Fazy.

Geneve, Monday, June 27. The day dawned clear over this palace of enchantment. The mountains, the lake, the entire landscape on every side revealed itself from our lofty windows with transparent brilliancy. This house is built on high ground, at the end of the lake near where the Rhone flows out. It is very high in the rooms, and we are in the fourth story, and have distant views on all four sides. The windows are very large, and open in leaves, on hinges, like doors, leaving the entire window clear, as a frame for the distant picture.

In the afternoon we rode out across the Rhone, where it breaks from the lake, and round upon the ascending sh.o.r.e. It is seldom here that the Alps are visible. The least mist hides them completely, so that travellers are wont to record it in their diaries as a great event, "I saw Mont Blanc to-day." Yesterday there was nothing but clouds and thick gloom; but now we had not ridden far before H. sprang suddenly, as if she had lost her senses--her cheeks flushed, and her eye flas.h.i.+ng. I was frightened. "There," said she, pointing out of the side of the carriage across the lake, "there he is--there's Mont Blanc." "Pooh," said I, "no such thing." And some trees for a moment intervened, and shut out the view. Presently the trees opened, and H.

cried, "There, that _white_; don't you see?--there--there!"

pointing with great energy, as if she were getting ready to fly. I looked and saw, sure enough, behind the dark ma.s.s of the Mole, (a huge blue-black mountain in the foreground,) the granite ranges rising gradually and grim as we rode; but, further still, behind those gray and ghastly barriers, all bathed and blazing in the sun's fresh splendors, undimmed by a cloud, unveiled even by a filmy fleece of vapor, and oh, so white--so intensely, blindingly white! against the dark-blue sky, the needles, the spires, the solemn pyramid, the transfiguration cone of Mont Blanc. Higher, and still higher, those apocalyptic splendors seemed lifting their spectral, spiritual forms, seeming to rise as we rose, seeming to start like giants hidden from behind the black brow of intervening ranges, opening wider the amphitheatre of glory, until, as we reached the highest point in our road, the whole unearthly vision stood revealed in sublime perspective. The language of the Revelation came rus.h.i.+ng through my soul. This is, as it were, a door opened in heaven. Here are some of those everlasting mountain ranges, whose light is not of the sun, nor of the moon, but of the Lord G.o.d and of the Lamb. Here is, as it were, a great white throne, on which One might sit before whose face heaven and earth might flee; and here a sea of gla.s.s mingled with fire. Nay, rather, here are some faint shadows, some dim and veiled resemblances, which bring our earth-imprisoned spirits to conceive remotely what the disenc.u.mbered eye of the ecstatic apostle gazed upon.

With solemn thankfulness we gazed--thankfulness to G.o.d for having withdrawn his veil of clouds from this threshold of the heavenly vestibule, and brought us across the Atlantic to behold. And as our eyes, blinded by the dazzling vision,--which we might reside here years without beholding in such perfection,--filled with tears, we were forced to turn them away and hide them, or fasten them upon the dark range of Jura on the other side of us, until they were able to gaze again. Thus we rode onward, obtaining new points of view, new effects, and deeper emotions; nor can time efface the impressions we received in the depths of our souls.

A lady, at whose door we alighted for a moment to obtain a particular point of view, told us that at sunset the mountain a.s.sumed a peculiar transparency, with most mysterious hues of blue and purple; so that she had seen irreligious natures, frivolous and light, when suddenly called out to look, stand petrified, or rather exalted above themselves, and irresistibly turning their faces, their thoughts, their breathings of adoration up to G.o.d.

I do not wonder that the eternal home of the glorified should be symbolized by a Mount Zion. I do not wonder that the Psalmist should say, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the _hills,_ from whence cometh my help!" For surely earth cannot present, nor una.s.sisted fancy conceive, an object more profoundly significant of divine majesty than these mountains in their linen vesture of everlasting snow.

Tuesday, June 28. The morning dawned clear, warm, and cloudless. A soft haze rested on the distant landscape, without, however, in the least dimming its beauty.