Kitabı oku: «The Spell of Switzerland», sayfa 14
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 Chambéry, after having been a Protestant minister at Lonay, practised medicine and became famous, and in 1543 Jacques Blécheret was named médecin 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 god 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 Santé.” 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 très-illustres, très-nobles, et magnifiques Seigneurs les Seigneurs Presidens et Conseilers de la Chambre de Santé de la Ville et Republique de Berne.”
It was a vade mecum for people who lived far from doctors. “Il faut seigner” was one of his prescriptions: in those days they resorted to heroic measures; vésicatoires– 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, thériaque 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 Sévery 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 anticipation 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 pronounced 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 Château de Crissier. The picture portrays him with gallooned buttons; he holds a pen in his hand and his mouth is slightly parted. Under an engraved portrait of him is this stanza: —
“Son cœur chérit l’humanité,
Son esprit le guide et l’éclaire;
Profond dans ses secrets, en instruisant la terre
Il vole à l’immortalité.”
He married a daughter of the learned Professor d’Apples de Charrière, 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 méprisait 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 cité en aigrette, La Rue du Pré represented by the parting in the middle, the Faubourgs de Saint-François and d’Estraz by the two papillons or butterfly arrangements and the Rue de Bourg by a ribbon.
In 1792 the Princess Alexander Liubomirska came. Her maître d’hôtel 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 tête-à-tête 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 maître d’hôtel.
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 Würtemberg. 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 assuage the discomforts caused by Gibbon’s “ebullitions” of the gout.
In Eynard’s “Life of Tissot” there is an amusing account of Gibbon’s dancing the minuet: —
“A German highly educated, but naturally ardent and enthusiastic, presented himself, furnished with excellent letters of recommendation, to one of our professors at Lausanne, and expressed to him his desire to make the acquaintance of the immortal author of the ‘Avis au Peuple.’ The professor was going that evening to visit Madame de Chavrière, who received the most agreeable people of Lausanne. He proposed to the gentleman to introduce him there; it was in the country.
“At the moment when they arrived at Madame de Chavrière’s the company had just been playing games and were paying the forfeits. One of the company was playing on a violin, while a gentleman of remarkable corpulence appeared to be searching the room for something he could not find. At length the violin gave forth louder sounds, and the stout gentleman – it was no less a personage than the illustrious Gibbon – came and took the hand of M. Tissot, whose figure, tall, dignified, and cold, formed the most complete contrast with his own. But this was not enough; the violin continued to play, and they were both obliged to dance several figures of a minuet, to the great delight of the whole assemblage. It was the payment of a forfeit due from Gibbon, whose jovial temperament readily lent itself to this form of pleasantry.
“But the German whose sensibility and emotion at this spectacle had been plainly visible did not realize what it meant. The following year there was great astonishment at Lausanne to learn that he had taken it all seriously and that in the account of his travels which he had just printed, he cited as one of the most remarkable of his experiences the advantage of having seen the celebrated historian of Rome and the illustrious philanthropist, the benefactor of humanity, intertwining dances and harmonious steps, thus recalling the beautiful days of Arcadia, all whose antique virtues and simplicity they possessed.”
It is evident that Tissot was not only the physician to all these great people; they were proud to own him as a friend. And since most of his friends and patients were rich his rivals charged him with being a charlatan and occupied only in making money. He did make money, and some of his titled patients sent him splendid presents.
Among the most interesting of M. Tissot’s fair consultants was the lively and piquante Madame de Genlis who arrived at Lausanne with her father-in-law. She spent nearly a fortnight under his care, but the fêtes, the balls, the concerts at which she displayed her charming voice, and played the harp, the sails on the lake, the trips across to La Meillerie, and a multitude of other dissipations might well have undone all the doctor’s prescriptions. But they were for her mother not for her. Madame de Genlis had long sworn by his medical book. She tells in her memoirs how she practised, in an amateur way, on or among the villagers. M. Racine, the barber, always came to consult with her whenever any one was ill.
“We went together to visit them,” she says. “My prescriptions were confined to simple teas and broths which I usually sent from the château. I was at least instrumental in moderating the zeal of M. Racine for the emetics which he prescribed for almost every ill. I had perfected myself in the art of bleeding; the peasants often came and asked me to bleed them which I did; but as it was known that I always gave them from twenty-four to thirty sous after a bleeding, I soon had a great number of patients and I suspected that they were attracted by the thirty sous.”
She gives an entertaining account of her arrival at Lausanne, where, as she was sitting in her carriage, wearily waiting for her servant to find lodgings, the young Prince of Holstein recognized her and introduced her to Madame de Crousaz, the authoress, who procured for her at the house of her father-in-law, M. de Crousaz, “charming rooms with an enchanting view of the Lake of Geneva.”
CHAPTER XVIII
TO CHAMONIX
WHILE I was reading about Madame de Genlis after breakfast one morning, Ruth came into the library and we talked about the advantage of foreign travel. Does the broadening effect come from seeing new scenes or does it proceed from the intercourse which it favours with men and women of entirely different habits and modes of thought?
I said that my belief was that a person living in an isolated country town, by reading books of travel, especially those furnished with illustrations, and by attending “moving-picture shows,” might attain to as complete a knowledge of any given foreign country as he would by merely travelling through it armed with a Baedecker. The generality of travellers carry with them the individual aura of their own conceit which is quite impermeable to new ideas, and what they have seen does not soak into their inner consciousness at all. But for the average person, if there be such a person, stay-at-home travel is more advantageous than actual peregrinations. Rushing from one country to another or from one place to another is not seeing a country.
Ruth called my attention to what Lord Bacon said about travel. In his day “the grand tour” was the culmination of a young nobleman’s education, and Italy was the goal. Switzerland was merely an obstacle on the way, to be crossed with more or less discomfort and with little thought of its picturesqueness. Ruth took down a handsome edition of the “Essays” and turned to the one which treats of this subject and read it aloud to me.
It was not in accordance with his scheme to fill the mind with pictures of beautiful scenery, though he realized that for young men it is a part of education and for their elders a part of experience. He says: – “He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school and not to travel.” He would not object for young men to travel provided they take a tutor who knows languages and “may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen in the country where they go, what acquaintances they are to seek, what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth; for else young men shall go hooded and look abroad little.”
He believed in keeping diaries. He tells us that the things to be seen and observed are: – “the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns; and so the havens and harbors, antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures where any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and pleasure, near great cities; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, burses, warehouses, exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes; cabinets and rarities; and to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they go, after all which the tutors or servants ought to make diligent inquiry. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions and such shows, men need not to be put in mind of them; yet they are not to be neglected.”
He did not believe in staying long in any one city or town; but “more or less as the place deserveth, but not long,” nor staying in any one part of a town: “Let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town to another, which is a great adamant of acquaintance.” And he advised “sequestering himself from the company of his countrymen and diet in such places where there is good company of the nation where he travelleth.” Acquaintance was the thing to cultivate, especially secretaries and attachés or, as Bacon called them, “employed men of ambassadors,” and the reason for this was that he might “suck the experience of many.”
“When a traveller returneth home,” he says in conclusion, “let him not leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether behind him, but maintain a correspondence by letter with those of his acquaintance which are of most worth; and let his travel appear rather in his discourse than in his apparel or gesture, and in his discourse let him be rather advised in his answers than forward to tell stories, and let it appear that he doth not change his country manners for those of foreign parts but only prick in some flowers of that he hath learned abroad into the customs of his own country.”
I remarked that Ralph Waldo Emerson found to his disappointment on his first trip abroad that he could not rid himself of himself. It was the same Emerson in Rome, in Paris and in London, as in Boston. How much would travel do for such a man? The great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, never ventured more than sixty miles from Königsberg and he was lost if varied from the daily routine of shuttle-like attendance on his lectures – back and forth, back and forth.
“Yet,” said I, “Kant wrote remarkably accurate descriptions of Switzerland in his Physical Geography. He could never have seen the Alps except in his imagination.
“What better description can you find than in his ‘Comparison of the Beautiful with the Pleasant and the Good’ where he says: – ‘Bold, overhanging and as it were threatening rocks; clouds up-piled in the heavens; moving along with flashes of lightning and peals of thunder; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; tornadoes with their swath of devastation; the limitless ocean in a state of uproar and similar spectacles exhibit our power of resistance as insignificantly puny compared to their might. But the spectacle of them is the more fascinating, the more terrible it is and we are prone to call these objects sublime, because they raise the powers of the soul above their accustomed height and discover in us a power of resistance of an entirely different sort – one which gives us the courage to pit ourselves against the apparently infinite power of Nature.’”
“That is fine,” said Ruth, “I had forgotten, indeed I never knew that Kant was such a poet.”
“Speaking of poetry,” said I, “did you know that Coleridge, who wrote the ‘Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni,’ had never seen Chamonix or Mont Blanc in his life? Being a poet, he did not need to see with his actual eyes. Moreover he had a model in Frederika Brunn’s ‘Chamouni at Sunrise,’ which runs with a rhythm reminding me of some of Richard Wagner’s verses. Do you remember her poem?”
“No, but it is in a note to Coleridge’s.”
“Please read it.”
“‘Aus tiefen Schatten des schweigenden Tannenhains,
Erblick’ ich bebend dich, Scheitel der Ewigkeit,
Blendender Gipfel, von dessen Höhe
Ahnend mein Geist ins Unendliche schwebet.
“‘Wer senkte den Pfeiler in der Erde Schoss,
Der, seit Jahrtausenden, fest deine Masse stützt?
Wer türmte hoch in des Aethers Wölbung
Mächtig und kühn dein umstrahltes Antlitz?
“‘Wer goss Euch hoch aus der ewigen Winters Reich?
O Zackenströme, mit Donnergetös’ herab?
Und wer gebietet laut mit der Allmacht Stimme:
‘Hier sollen ruhen die starrenden Wogen?’
“‘Wer zeichnet dort dem Morgensterne die Bahn?
Wer kränzt mit Blüten des ewigen Frostes Saum?
Wem tönt in schrecklichen Harmonieen,
Wilder Arveiron, dein Wogengetümmel?
“‘Jehovah! Jehovah! kracht’s im berstenden Eis;
Lavinendonner rollen’s die Kluft hinab:
Jehovah rauscht’s in den hellen Wipfeln,
Flüstert’s an rieselnden Silberbächen.’
“I think that expression, ‘Scheitel der Ewigkeit’ is ludicrous,” said Ruth.
“Coleridge always improved on his originals when he translated, but it looked rather odd for him to have discussed the elements of the scenery in the Alps when he had never been in Savoy. It looks as if he tried to throw dust in people’s eyes. But tell me, Ruth, which do you like best the Coleridge ‘Hymn’ or Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc,’ which also claims to have been written in the Vale of Chamonix? First you read the lines you like best in Coleridge and then I will read a few passages from Shelley.”
Ruth took the volume of Coleridge and began. “I like the first twelve lines,” she said: —
“‘Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.’”
“Yes,” I said, “that ‘bald awful head’ is better than ‘Scheitel der Ewigkeit,’ but I don’t like the immediate repetition of ‘awful’ two lines below; ‘as with a wedge,’ too, is weak. But go on!”
“‘Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn!
“‘Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
O, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth’s rosy star and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?’”
Again I interrupted: – “I think it is far-fetched to call the mountain ‘Earth’s rosy star,’ and again he uses the word ‘rosy’ just below: ‘who filled thy countenance with rosy light?’ That is a weak line, don’t you think? ‘Visited all night by troops of stars’ however is masterly. But go on.”
“‘And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest.
Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain —
“‘Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice
And stopt at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
“‘Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth God and fill the hills with praise!
“‘Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast —
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me – Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky
And tell the stars and tell yon rising sun
Earth with her thousand voices praises God!’”
“I think it ends pretty feebly,” said I. “He compares Mont Blanc first with a vapoury cloud, then to a cloud of incense; then calls it a kingly Spirit throned, then a dread ambassador and then a Great Hierarch. What could be more mixed in its metaphors? But now let us take Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc.’”
“I think it begins with a curious mixture,” said Ruth. “He says the everlasting universe of things flows through the mind, where from secret springs the source of human thought brings its tribute of waters with a sound but half its own such as a feeble brook assumes in the wild woods. How can the eternal universe of things rolling rapid waves diminish itself to a feeble brook? But it goes on: —
“‘In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap forever
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.’”
“It seems to me a hopeless mixture. The description of the Vale is better: —
“‘Thus thou, Ravine of Arve – dark, deep Ravine —
Thou many-colored, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting thro’ these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning thro’ the tempest; – thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odors and their mighty swinging
To hear – an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretcht across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity; —
Thy caverns, echoing to the Arve’s commotion,
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound —
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind which passively
Now renders…’”
“Oh stop, stop! Uncle, I can’t follow it!”
“Very good, I will skip to where he tells how he is gazing on the naked countenance of earth. Listen: —
“‘The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains
Slow rolling on…’”
“What are rolling on, snakes, avalanches or far fountains?”
“‘There many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing…’”
“Oh, what a rhyme – ruin and strewin’. Do you suppose Shelley dropped his ‘g’’s?”
“Don’t be irreverent. Listen: —
“‘vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world…’
“I will omit about a dozen rather blind lines about man and his puniness and begin: —
“‘Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms a tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River
The breath and blood of distant lands, forever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air.’
“Now he comes to Mont Blanc itself: —
“‘Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: – the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart thro’ them: – Winds contend
Silently there and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently and like vapor broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits there!
And what were thou and earth and stars and sea
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?’
“Well, what do you say? Which is the truer poetry?” I asked.
“I think that Shelley would have done better if he had not tried to rhyme his verses,” said Ruth. “The attempt to find rhymes led him on and on into meanings that he didn’t mean. But there are fine lines in both. By the way,” she added with an abrupt dislocation of our literary talk, and yet it was suggested by it, “Will and I propose to take you to Chamonix. Would you like that?”
“Of course I would.”
“We will get an early start to-morrow – that is, if the weather prove propitious.”
The weather could not have been more kindly disposed. We started early in the morning and reached Villeneuve in less than an hour. Thence we rode up the at first broad and then ever narrowing valley of the mystic Rhône. I wished that I might see some of the strange things that it is said to conceal. Juste Olivier tells of its sandy nonchalant banks, its marshes and creeks of almost stagnant waters, the little bridges carrying fascinating paths, which later, glittering with silvery dust, suddenly plunge under long vaults where the light scarcely penetrates the green cool arches.
“Here and there,” he says, “there are fantastic clearings. Old trunks of ancient willows, oddly wrapt around and still more oddly crowned now with creepers, now with young bushes which have climbed to their tops, and now with their own branches contorted and interlaced. Immense oaks loved by adventurous pairs of the wild pigeons which fill the solitude with their plaintive notes. Young alders countless in number and growing so closely the heifers can with difficulty force a way through between their smooth even trunks. In a word, a forest variegated by marshes, by patches of sand, by yellowish fields where the water contributes its murmur, the desert its solemnity, the infinite its mystery, the unknown its charm.
