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Chapter XVI
INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE

It is a rare and beautiful drive to Aix-les-Bains, and it takes one by Lake Bourget, the shimmering bit of blue water from which Mark Twain set out on his Rhone trip. We got into a street market the moment of our arrival in Aix, a solid swarm of dickering people. In my excitement I let the engine stall, and it seemed we would never get through. Aix did not much interest us, and we pushed on to Annecy with no unnecessary delay, and from Annecy to Thones, a comfortable day's run, including, as it did, a drive about beautiful ancient Annecy, chief city of the Haute-Savoie. We might have stayed longer at Annecy, but the weather had an unsettled look, and there came the feeling that storms and winter were gathering in the mountains and we would better be getting along somewhere else. Also a woman backed her donkey cart into us at Annecy and put another dent in our mudguard, which was somehow discouraging. As it was, we saw the lake, said to be the most beautiful in France, though no more beautiful, I think, than Bourget; an ancient château, now transformed into barracks; the old prison built out in the river; the narrow, ancient streets; and a house with a tablet that states that Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived there in 1729, and there developed his taste for music.

The Haute-Savoie is that billowy corner of far-eastern France below Lake Geneva – a kind of neutral, no man's territory hemmed by the huge heights of Switzerland and Italy. Leaving Annecy, we followed a picturesque road through a wild, weird land, along gorges and awesome brinks, under a somber sky. At times we seemed to be on the back of the world; at others diving to its recesses. It was the kind of way that one might take to supernatural regions, and it was the kind of evening to start.

Here and there on the slopes were flocks and herds, attended by grave-faced women, who were knitting as they slowly walked. They barely noticed us or their charges. They never sat down, but followed along, knitting, knitting, as though they were patterning the fates of men. Sometimes we met or passed a woman on the road, always knitting, like the others. It was uncanny. Probably for every human being there is somewhere among those dark mountains a weird woman, knitting the pattern of his life. That night at Thones, a forgotten hamlet, lost there in the Haute-Savoie, a storm broke, the wind tore about our little inn, the rain dashed fearsomely, all of which was the work of those knitting women, beyond doubt.

But the sun came up fresh and bright, and we took the road for Geneva. For a time it would be our last day in France. All the forenoon we were among the mountain peaks, skirting precipices that one did not care to look over without holding firmly to something. But there were no steep grades and the brinks were protected by solid little walls.

At the bottom of a long slope a soldier stepped out of a box of a house and presented arms. I dodged, but his intent was not sanguinary. He wanted to see our papers – we were at the frontier – so I produced our customs receipts, called triptyques, our T. C. de F. membership card, our car license, our driving license, and was feeling in my pocket for yet other things when he protested, "Pas nécessaire, pas nécessaire" and handed all back but the French triptyque, which he took to his bureau, where, with two other military attachés, he examined, discussed, finally signed and witnessed it, and waved us on our way.

So we were not passing the Swiss customs yet, but only leaving the French outpost. The ordeal of the Swiss douane was still somewhere ahead; we had entered the neutral strip. We wished we might reach the Swiss post pretty soon and have the matter over with. We had visions of a fierce person looking us through, while he fired a volley of French questions, pulled our baggage to pieces, and weighed the car, only to find that the result did not tally with the figures on our triple-folded sheet. I had supplied most of those figures from memory, and I doubted their accuracy. I had heard that of all countries except Russia, Switzerland was about the most particular. So we went on and on through that lofty scenery, expecting almost anything at every turn.

But nothing happened – nothing except that at one place the engine seemed to be running rather poorly. I thought at first that there was some obstruction in the gasoline tube, and my impulse was to light a match and look into the tank to see what it might be. On second thought I concluded to omit the match. I remembered reading of a man who had done that, and almost immediately his heirs had been obliged to get a new car.

We passed villages, but no douane. Then all at once we were in the outskirts of a city. Why, this was surely Geneva, and as we were driving leisurely along a fat little man in uniform came out and lifted his hand. We stopped. Here it was, then, at last.

For a moment I felt a slight attack of weakness, not in the heart, but about the knees. However, the little man seemed friendly. He held out his hand and I shook it cordially. But it was the papers he was after, our Swiss triptyque. I said to myself, "A minute more and we probably shall be on the scales, and the next in trouble." But he only said, "Numero de moteur." I jerked open the hood, scrubbed off the grease, and showed it to him. He compared it, smiled, and handed back our paper. Then he waved me to a bureau across the street. Now it was coming; he had doubtless discovered something wrong at a glance.

There was an efficient-looking, sinister-looking person in the office who took the triptyque, glanced at it, and threw something down before me. I thought it was a warrant, but it proved to be a copy of the Swiss law and driving regulations, with a fine road map of Switzerland, and all information needed by motorists; "Price, 2 Frs." stamped on the cover. I judged that I was required to buy this, but I should have done it, anyway. It was worth the money, and I wished to oblige that man. He accepted my two francs, and I began to feel better. Then he made a few entries in something, handed me my triptyque, said "Bonjour, et bon voyage," and I was done.

I could hardly believe it. I saw then what a nice face he had, while the little fat man across the street was manifestly a lovely soul. He had demanded not a thing but the number of the motor. Not even the number of the car had interested him. As for the weight, the bore of the cylinders, the number of the chassis, and all those other statistics said to be required, they were as nonexistent to him as to me. Why, he had not even asked us to unstrap our baggage. It was with feelings akin to tenderness that we waved him good-by and glided across the imaginary line of his frontier into Switzerland.

We glided very leisurely, however. "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland" – every stranger, that is – for breaking the speed laws. This, at least, was our New York information. So we crept along, and I kept my eye on the speedometer all the way through Geneva, for we were not going to stop there at present, and when we had crossed our old friend, the Rhone, variously bridged here, skirted the gay water-front and were on the shore road of that loveliest of all lakes – Lake Léman, with its blue water, its snow-capped mountains, its terraced vineyards, we still loafed and watched the gendarmes to see if they were timing us, and came almost to a stop whenever an official of any kind hove in sight. Also we used the mellow horn, for our book said that horns of the Klaxon type are not allowed in Switzerland.

We were on soft pedal, you see, and some of the cars we met were equally subdued. But we observed others that were not – cars that were just bowling along in the old-fashioned way, and when these passed us, we were surprised to find that they were not ignorant, strange cars, but Swiss cars, or at least cars with Swiss number-plates and familiar with the dangers. As for the whistles, they were honking and snorting and screeching just as if they were in Connecticut, where there is no known law that forbids anything except fishing on Sunday. Indeed, one of the most sudden and violent horns I have ever heard overtook us just then, and I nearly jumped over the windshield when it abruptly opened on me from behind.

"Good G – , that is, goodness!" I said, "this is just like France!" and I let out a few knots and tooted the Klaxonette, and was doing finely when suddenly a mounted policeman appeared on the curve ahead. I could feel myself scrouging as we passed, going with great deliberation. He did not offer to molest me, but we did not hurry again – not right away. Not that we cared to hurry; the picture landscape we were in was worth all the time one could give it. Still, we were anxious to get to Lausanne before dusk, and little by little we saw and heard things which convinced us that "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland" is a superstition, the explosion of which was about due. Fully half the people we met, all that passed us, could properly have been arrested anywhere. By the time we reached Lausanne we should have been arrested ourselves.

Chapter XVII
SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS

Now, when one has reached Switzerland, his inclination is not to go on traveling, for a time at least, but to linger and enjoy certain advantages. First, of course, there is the scenery; the lakes, the terraced hills, and the snow-capped mountains; the châteaux, chalets, and mossy villages; the old inns and brand-new, heaven-climbing hotels. And then Switzerland is the land of the three F's – French, Food, and Freedom, all attractive things. For Switzerland is the model republic, without graft and without greed; its schools, whether public or private, enjoy the patronage of all civilized lands, and as to the matter of food, Switzerland is the table d'hôte of the world.

Swiss landlords are combined into a sort of trust, not, as would be the case elsewhere, to keep prices up, but to keep prices down! It is the result of wisdom, a far-seeing prudence which says: "Our scenery, our climate, our pure water – these are our stock in trade. Our profit from them is through the visitor. Wherefore we will encourage visitors with good food, attractive accommodations, courtesy; and we will be content with small profit from each, thus inviting a general, even if modest, prosperity; also, incidentally, the cheerfulness and good will of our patrons." It is a policy which calls for careful management, one that has made hotel-keeping in Switzerland an exact science – a gift, in fact, transmitted down the generations, a sort of magic; for nothing short of magic could supply a spotless room, steam heated, with windows opening upon the lake, and three meals – the evening meal a seven-course dinner of the first order – all for six francs fifty (one dollar and thirty cents) a day.⁹

It is a policy which prevails in other directions. Not all things are cheap in Switzerland, but most things are – the things which one buys oftenest – woolen clothing and food. Cotton goods are not cheap, for Switzerland does not grow cotton, and there are a few other such items. Shoes are cheap enough, if one will wear the Swiss make, but few visitors like to view them on their own feet. They enjoy them most when they hear them clattering along on the feet of Swiss children, the wooden soles beating out a rhythmic measure that sounds like a coopers' chorus. Not all Swiss shoes have wooden soles, but the others do not gain grace by their absence.

Swiss cigars are also cheap. I am not a purist in cigars, but at home I have smoked a good many and seldom with safety one that cost less than ten cents, straight. One pays ten centimes, or two cents, in Switzerland, and gets a mild, evenly burning article. I judge it is made of tobacco, though the head of the family suggested other things that she thought it smelled like. If she had smoked one of them, she would not have noticed this peculiarity any more. Wine is cheap, of course, for the hillsides are covered with vines; also, whisk – but I am wandering into economic statistics without really meaning to do so. They were the first things that impressed me.

The next, I believe, was the lack of Swiss politics. Switzerland is a republic that runs with the exactness of a Swiss watch, its machinery as hermetically concealed. I had heard that the Swiss Republic sets the pattern of government for the world, and I was anxious to know something of its methods and personnel. I was sorry that I was so ignorant. I didn't even know the name of the Swiss President, and for a week was ashamed to confess it. I was hoping I might see it in one of the French papers I puzzled over every evening. But at the end of the week I timidly and apologetically inquired of our friendly landlord as to the name of the Swiss Chief Executive.

But then came a shock. Our landlord grew confused, blushed, and confessed that he didn't know it, either! He had known it, he said, of course, but it had slipped his mind. Slipped his mind! Think of the name of Roosevelt, or Wilson, or Taft slipping the mind of anybody in America – and a landlord! I asked the man who sold me cigars. He had forgotten, too. I asked the apothecary, but got no information. I was not so timid after that. I asked a fellow passenger – guest, I mean, an American, but of long Swiss residence – and got this story. I believe most of it. He said:

"When I came to Switzerland and found out what a wonderful little country it was, its government so economical, so free from party corruption and spoils, from graft and politics, so different from the home life of our own dear Columbia, I thought, 'The man at the head of this thing must be a master hand; I'll find out his name.' So I picked out a bright-looking subject, and said:

"'What is the name of the Swiss President?'

"He tried to pretend he didn't understand my French, but he did, for I can tear the language off all right – learned it studying art in Paris. When I pinned him down, he said he knew the name well enough, parfaitement, but couldn't think of it at that moment.

"That was a surprise, but I asked the next man. He couldn't think of it, either. Then I asked a police officer. Of course he knew it, all right; 'oh oui, certainement, mais' – then he scratched his head and scowled, but he couldn't dig up that name. He was just a plain prevaricator —toute simplement– like the others. I asked every man I met, and every one of them knew it, had it right on the end of his tongue; but somehow it seemed to stick there. Not a man in Vevey or Montreux could tell me the name of the Swiss President. It was the same in Fribourg, the same even in Berne, the capital. I had about given it up when one evening, there in Berne, I noticed a sturdy man with an honest face, approaching. He looked intelligent, too, and as a last resort I said:

"'Could you, by any chance, tell me the name of the Swiss President?'

"The effect was startling. He seized me by the arm and, after looking up and down the street, leaned forward and whispered in my ear:

"'Mon Dieu! c'est moi! I am the Swiss President; but – ah non, don't tell anyone! I am the only man in Switzerland who knows it!'

"You see," my friend continued, "he is elected privately, no torchlight campaigns, no scandal, and only for a year. He is only a sort of chairman, though of course his work is important, and the present able incumbent has been elected a number of times. His name is – is – is – ah yes, that's my tram. So sorry to have to hurry away. See you to-night at dinner."

One sees a good many nationalities in Switzerland, and some of them I soon learned to distinguish. When I saw a man with a dinky Panama hat pulled down about his face, and wearing a big black mustache or beard, I knew he was a Frenchman. When I met a stout, red-faced man, with a pack on his back and with hobnailed shoes, short trousers, and a little felt hat with a feather stuck in it, I knew him for a German. When I noticed a very carefully dressed person, with correct costume and gaiters – also monocle, if perfect – saying, "Aw – Swiss people – so queah, don't you know," I was pretty sure he was an Englishman. When I remarked a tall, limber person, carrying a copy of the Paris Herald and asking every other person he met, "Hey, there! Vooly voo mir please sagen – " all the rest incomprehensible, I knew him for an American of the deepest dye. The Swiss themselves have no such distinguishing mark. They are just sturdy, plainly dressed, unpretentious people, polite and friendly, with a look of capability, cleanliness, and honesty which invites confidence.

An Englishwoman said to me:

"I have heard that the Swiss are the best governed and the least intelligent people in the world."

I reflected on this. It had a snappy sound, but it somehow did not seem to be firm at the joints. "The best governed and the least intelligent" – there was something drunken about it. I said:

"It doesn't quite seem to fit. And how about the magnificent Swiss public-school system, and the manufacturing, and the national railway, with all the splendid engineering that goes with the building of the funiculars and tunnels? And the Swiss prosperity, and the medical practice, and the sciences? I always imagined those things were in some way connected with intelligence."

"Oh, well," she said, "I suppose they do go with intelligence of a kind; but then, of course, you know what I mean."

But I was somehow too dull for her epigram. It didn't seem to have any sense in it. She was a grass widow and I think she made it herself. Later she asked me whereabouts in America I came from. When I said Connecticut, she asked if Connecticut was as big as Lausanne. A woman like that ought to go out of the epigram business.¹⁰

As a matter of fact, a good many foreigners are inclined to say rather peevish things about sturdy little, thriving little, happy little Switzerland. I rather suspect they are a bit jealous of the pocket-de-luxe nation that shelters them, and feeds them, and entertains them, and cures them, cheaper and better and kindlier than their home countries. They are willing to enjoy these advantages, but they acknowledge rather grudgingly that Switzerland, without a great standing army, a horde of grafters, or a regiment of tariff millionaires to support, can give lessons in national housekeeping to their own larger, more pretentious lands.

I would not leave the impression, by the way, that the Swiss are invariably prosperous. Indeed, some of them along the lake must have been very poor just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in succession, and with many of them their vineyard is their all. But there was no outward destitution, no rags, no dirt, no begging. Whatever his privation, the Swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve.

Switzerland has two other official languages besides French – German and Italian. Government documents, even the postal cards, are printed in these three languages. It would seem a small country for three well-developed tongues, besides all the canton dialects, some of which go back to the old Romanic, and are quite distinct from anything modern. The French, German, and Italian divisions are geographical, the lines of separation pretty distinct. There is rivalry among the cantons, a healthy rivalry, in matters of progress and education. The cantons are sufficiently a unit on all national questions, and together they form about as compact and sturdy a little nation as the world has yet seen – a nation the size and shape of an English walnut, and a hard nut for any would-be aggressor to crack. There are not many entrances into Switzerland, and they would be very well defended. The standing army is small, but every Swiss is subject to a call to arms, and is trained by enforced, though brief, service to their use. He seems by nature to be handy with a rifle, and never allows himself to be out of practice. There are regular practice meets every Sunday, and I am told the government supplies the cartridges. Boys organize little companies and regiments and this the government also encourages. It is said that Switzerland could put half a million soldiers in the field, and that every one would be a crack shot.¹¹ The German Kaiser, once reviewing the Swiss troops, remarked, casually, to a sub-officer, "You say you could muster half a million soldiers?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And suppose I should send a million of my soldiers against you. What would you do then?"

"We should fire two shots apiece, Your Majesty."

In every Swiss town there are regular market days, important events where one may profitably observe the people. The sale of vegetables and flowers must support many families. In each town there is an open square, which twice a week is picturesquely crowded, and there one may buy everything to eat and many things to wear; also, the wherewith to improve the home, the garden, and even the mind; for besides the garden things there are stalls of second-hand books, hardware, furniture, and general knick-knacks. Flanking the streets are displays of ribbons, laces, hats, knitted things, and general dry-goods miscellany; also antiques, the scrapings of many a Swiss cupboard and corner.

But it is in the open square itself that the greater market blooms – really blooms, for, in season, the vegetables are truly floral in their rich vigor, and among them are pots and bouquets of the posies that the Swiss, like all Europeans, so dearly love. Most of the flower and vegetable displays are down on the ground, arranged in baskets or on bits of paper, and form a succession of gay little gardens, ranged in long narrow avenues of color and movement, a picture of which we do not grow weary. Nor of the setting – the quaint tile-roofed buildings; the blue lake, with its sails and swans and throng of wheeling gulls; the green hills; the lofty snow-capped mountains that look down from every side. How many sights those ancient peaks have seen on this same square! – markets and military, battles and buffoonery. There are no battles to-day, but the Swiss cadets use it for a drill ground, and every little while lightsome shows and merry-go-rounds establish themselves in one end of it, and the little people skip about, and go riding around and around to the latest ragtime, while the mountains look down with their large complaisance, just as they watched the capering ancestors of these small people, ages and ages ago; just as they will watch their light-footed descendants for a million years, maybe.

The market is not confined entirely to the square. On its greater days, when many loads of wood and hay crowd one side of it, it overflows into the streets. Around a floral fountain may be found butter, eggs, and cheese – oh, especially cheese, the cheese of Gruyère, with every size and pattern of holes, in any quantity, cut and weighed by a handsome apple-faced woman who seems the living embodiment of the cheese industry. I have heard it said – this was in America – that the one thing not to be obtained in Switzerland is Swiss cheese. The person who conceived that smartness belongs with the one who invented the "intelligence" epigram.

On the market days before Christmas our square had a different look. The little displays were full of greenery, and in the center of the market place there had sprung up a forest of Christmas trees. They were not in heaps, lying flat; but each, mounted on a neat tripod stand, stood upright, as if planted there. They made a veritable Santa Claus forest, and the gayly dressed young people walking among them, looking and selecting, added to this pretty sight.

The Swiss make much of Christmas. Their shop windows are overflowing with decorations and attractive things. Vevey is "Chocolate Town." Most of the great chocolate factories of Europe are there, and at all holiday seasons the grocery and confectionary windows bear special evidence of this industry. Chocolate Santa Clauses – very large – chickens, rabbits, and the like – life size; also trees, groups, set pieces, ornaments – the windows are wildernesses of the rich brown confection, all so skillfully modeled and arranged.

The toy windows, too, are fascinating. You would know at once that you were looking into a Swiss toy window, from the variety of carved bears; also, from the toy châteaux – very fine and large, with walled courts, portcullises, and battlements – with which the little Swiss lad plays war. The dolls are different, too, and the toy books – all in French. But none of these things were as interesting as the children standing outside, pointing at them and discussing them – so easily, so glibly – in French. How little they guessed my envy of them – how gladly I would buy out that toy window for, say, seven dollars, and trade it to them for their glib unconsciousness of gender and number and case.

On the afternoon before Christmas the bells began. From the high mountainsides, out of deep ravines that led back into the hinterland, came the ringing. The hills seemed full of bells – a sound that must go echoing from range to range, to the north and to the south, traveling across Europe with the afternoon. Then, on Christmas Day, the trees. In every home and school and hotel they sparkled. We attended four in the course of the day, one, a very gorgeous one in the lofty festooned hall of a truly grand hotel, with tea served and soft music stealing from some concealed place – a slow strain of the "Tannenbaum," which is like our "Maryland," only more beautiful – and seemed to come from a source celestial. And when one remembered that in every corner of Europe something of the kind was going on, and that it was all done in memory and in honor of One who, along dusty roadsides and in waste places, taught the doctrine of humility, one wondered if the world might not be worth saving, after all.