The Spell of Switzerland

In front was a terrace with steps at the left leading down to the water. On each side of the stately main entrance, which reached to the roof, well adorned with chimneys, were three generous windows on each floor. In front there was a wide and beautifully kept lawn. The property was sold in 1810 for one hundred and seventy thousand francs. It came into the hands of Jacques-Daniel Cornaz, who, in 1877, sold it again for two hundred thousand. It now belongs to the Commune and is used for the écoles séculaires. The wall that once surrounded it has disappeared and the prosperous farms once attached to it were sold.

There is nothing in the literature of domestic life more fascinating than the diary and letters of Catherine de Chandieu, who married Salomon de Charrière de Sévery. They inherited the charming estate of Mex with its châteaux, and one of them, with a queer-shaped apex at each corner and a fascinating piazza, became their summer home. Another of these fine old places was the Château de Saint-Barthélemy, which belonged to the Lessert family for three or four generations; then came into the possession of the famous Karl Viktor von Bonstetten, the author and diplomat, and was bought in 1909 by M. Gaston de Cerjat. In the hall hung pictures of several French kings, probably presented because of diplomatic services. Many of these old manor-houses on the shores of the Lakes of Geneva and of Neuchâtel have come into the possession of wealthy foreigners who have modernized them; others are now asylums, or schools, or boarding-houses.

But in those days they were filled with a cultivated and hospitable gentry who were always paying and receiving visits.

Really there is no end to the romance of these old houses; yet, curiously enough, most of them were carefully set down in little valleys which protected them from cold winds, but also from the magnificent views which they might have had. Even when they were on hills, trees were so planted as to hide the enchanting landscape, the lake and the gleaming mountains. Albrecht von Haller, the Bernese poet and novelist, Charles de Bonnet of Geneva, and Rousseau at Paris, “lifted the veil from the mountains” and made the world realize that the lake was something else than a trout-pond.

It was time for us to be getting back. While we were on Le Signal some aerial Penelope had woven a web of delicate cloud and spread it out half-way up the Savoy Mountains across the lake; everything had changed as everything will in a brief half-hour. There were different gorges catching sunbeams, and tossing out shadows; there was another tint of violet over the waters. I suggested a plan for describing mountain views. It was to gather together all the adjectives that would be appropriate – high, lofty, massive, portentous, frowning, cloud-capped, craggy, granitic, basaltic, snow-crowned, delectable and so on, just as Lord Timothy Dexter did with his punctuation-marks, delegating them to the end of his “Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” so that people might “pepper and salt” it as they pleased. If I wrote a book about Switzerland – that is, if I find that my impressions, jotted down like a diary, are worth publishing, I mean to add an appendix to contain a sort of armory of well-fitting adjectives and epithets for the use of travellers and sentimental young persons. In this way I may be recognized as a benefactor and philanthropist.

“Do you know what is the origin of the name, Lausanne?” asked Will, arousing me from a revery caused by the compelling beauty of those gem-like peaks, that rippling ridge of violet-edged magnificences that loomed above the glorious carpet of the lake. The pedigree of names is always interesting to me. Philology has always been a hobby of mine.

“Why, yes,” said I, “that is an easy one. It comes from the former name of the river, Flon. The Romans used to call the settlement here Lousonna. Almost all names of rivers have the primitive word meaning water, or flow, hidden in them. The Aa, the Awe, the Au, the Ouse, the Oise, the Aach and the English Avon, and a lot more, come from the Old High German aha, and that is nothing but the Latin aqua. The Greek hudor is seen in the Oder, the Adour, the Thur, the Dranse and even in the Portuguese Douro; and the Greek rheo, ‘I flow,’ is in the Rhine and the Rhône and the Reuss and in the Rye.”

“So I suppose you derive Lausanne from the French l’eau.”

As I passed in silent contempt such an atrocious joke as that, he seized the opportunity to tell me about the Frenchman who had some unpleasant associations with the inhabitants and declared it was derived from les ânes– the asses.

“From all I have read about them,” I replied, “they must have been a pretty narrow-minded, bigoted set of people here. Way back in 1361 an old sow was tried and condemned to be hanged for killing a child; and about the middle of the next century a cock was publicly burned for having laid a basilisk’s egg. One of the worthy bishops of Lausanne, – did you ever hear? – went down to the shores of the lake and recited prayers against the bloodsuckers that were killing the salmon.”

“Was that any more superstitious than for present-day ministers to pray for rain?”

“I suppose not; only it seems more trivial,” I replied absently, as I gazed down upon the housetops. “I did not realize Lausanne was so large.”

“The city is growing, Uncle. Toward the south and the west you can see how it is spreading out. There is something tragic to me in the outstretch of a city. It is like the conquest of a lava-flow, such as I once saw on the side of Kilauea, in the Hawaiian Islands; it cuts off the trees, it sweeps away the natural beauties. Lausanne has trebled its population in fifty years. It must have been much more picturesque when Gibbon lived here. For almost eighty years they have been levelling off the hills. It took five years to build the big bridge which Adrien Pichard began, but did not live to finish. The bridge of Chauderon has been built less than ten years.”

“They must have had a tremendous lot of filling to do.”

“They certainly have, and they have given us fine streets and squares – especially those of La Riponne and Saint-François. It was too bad they destroyed the house of the good Deyverdun, where Gibbon spent the happiest days of his life. It had too many associations with the historic past of Lausanne. They ought to have kept the whole five acres as a city park. What is a post office or a hotel, even if it is named after a man, compared to the rooms in which he worked, the very roof that sheltered him?”

“We have still time enough,” said I, consulting the elevation of the sun; “let us go down by way of the cathedral. I should like to see it in the afternoon light.”

“We can take the funiculaire down; that will get us there quicker.”

We did so, and then the Rue l’Industrie brought us, by way of the Rue Menthon, to the edifice itself.

“I want you to notice the stone of which the cathedral is built,” said Will.

“Yes, it’s sandstone.”

“It is called Lausanne stone. A good many of the old houses are built of it, and it came from just one quarry, now exhausted, I believe. It seems to have run very unevenly. Some of the big columns are badly eaten by the tooth of time; in others the details are just as fresh as if they had been done yesterday. Notice those quaint little figures kneeling and flying in the ogives of the portal; some are intact, others look as if mice had gnawed them. It is just the same with some of the fine old houses; one will be shabby and dilapidated; the very next will be well-preserved.”

“I think it is a rather attractive colour – that greyish-green with the bluish shadows.”

We stood for a while outside and looked up at the mighty walls and the noble portal. We walked round on the terrace from which one gets such a glorious view.

There is something solemn and almost disquieting in a religious edifice which has witnessed so many changes during a thousand years. Its very existence is a curious and pathetic commentary on the superstitions of men. Westerners, interpreting literally the symbolism of the Orient, believed that the world would come to an end at the end of the first millennium. It was a terrible, crushing fear in many men’s minds. When the dreaded climacteric had passed and nothing happened, and the steady old world went on turning just as it had, the pious resolved to express their gratitude by erecting a shrine to the Virgin Mother of God. Before it was completed its founder was assassinated. In the thirteenth century it was thrice devastated by fires which were attributed by the superstitious to the anger of God at the sins of the clergy and of the people. The statue of the Virgin escaped destruction and the church was rebuilt between 1235 and 1275. When it was consecrated, in October, 1275, Pope Gregory X, with the Emperor, Rudolf of Hapsburg, his wife and their eight children, and a brilliant crowd of notables, cardinals, dukes, princes and vassals of every degree, were present. The great entrance on the west was completed in the fifteenth century. The nave is three hundred and fifty-two feet long; its width is one hundred and fifty feet and it is divided into eight aisles. There are seventy windows and about a thousand columns, many of them curiously carved.

The well-known Gate of the Apostles is in the south transept. It commemorates only seven of them, though why that invidious distinction should have been made no one knows. Old Testament characters fill up the quota. These worthies stand on bowed and cowed demons or other enemies of the Faith.

In the south wall is the famous rose-window, containing representations of the sun and the moon, the seasons and the months, the signs of the zodiac and the sacred rivers of Paradise, and quaint and curious wild beasts which probably are visual traditions of the antidiluvian monsters that once inhabited the earth, and were still supposed to dwell in unexplored places.

The vaulting of the nave is sixty-two feet high. It gave plenty of room for the two galleries which once surmounted the elaborately carved façade. One of them was called the Monks’ Garden, because it was covered with soil and filled with brilliant flowers.

Back of the choir is a semicircular colonnade. The amount of detail lavished on the various columns is a silent witness of the cheapness of skilled labour and of the time people had to spend. The carved choir stalls, completed in 1506, were somehow spared by the vandal iconoclasts of the Reformation; but thirty years later Bern, when taking possession of Lausanne, carried off eighteen wagon-loads of paintings, solid gold and silver statues, rich vestments, tapestries, and all the enormous wealth contributed to the treasures of the church.

We were fortunate to find the cathedral still open, and in the golden afternoon light we slowly strolled through the silent fane – the word fane always sounds well. We paused in front of the various historic tombs. Especially interesting was that dedicated to the memory of Otho de Grandson, who, having been charged with having instigated the murder of Amadée VII, was obliged to enter into a judicial duel with Gérard d’Estavayer, the brother of the fair Catherine d’Estavayer whom he expected to marry.

Gérard apparently stirred up great hatred against him. Otho had in his favour the Colombiers, the Lasarraz, the Corsonex, and the Rougemonts; while with Gérard were the Barons de Bussy, de Bonvillar, de Bellens, de Wuisternens, de Blonay and, especially, representatives of the powerful family of d’Illens whose great, square castle is still pointed out, beetling over the Sarine opposite Arconciel. These men were probably jealous of Otho. His friends wore a knot of ribbons on the tip of their pointed shoes, while his enemies carried a little rake over their shoulders.

Otho shouted out his challenge to Gérard: “You lie and have lied every time you have accused me. I swear it by God, by Saint Anne and by the Holy Rood. But come on! I will defend myself and I will so press forward that my honour will be splendidly preserved. But you shall be esteemed as a liar.”

So Otho made the sign of the Cross and threw down the battle-gage. But, although he was undoubtedly innocent, the battle went against him. His effigy is still to be seen in the cathedral. The hands resting on a stone cushion are missing but this probably was due to some accident and not to any symbolism. This all happened about a hundred years before Columbus discovered America – in 1398.

Here, too, lies buried, under a monument by Bartolini, Henrietta, the first wife of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, minister from England to Switzerland. She died in 1818.

There are monuments also commemorating the Princess Orlova, who was poisoned by Catharine II of Russia, and Duc Amadée VIII, who caused Savoy to be erected into a duchy and became Pope Felix V in 1439, after he had lived for a while in a hermitage on the other shore of the lake. He is not buried in the cathedral but his intimate connection with the history of Lausanne is properly memorialized by his monument.

A city is like an iceberg. Its pinnacles and buttresses tower aloft and glitter in the sun; it seems built to last for ever. But it is not so; its walls melt and flow away and are put to other uses. A temple changes into a palace, and a fortification is torn down to make a park. Where are the fifty chapels that once flanked Notre Dame de Lausanne? Where is the fortified monastery of Saint Francis? Where is the lofty tower of La Grotte, and the moat in which it was reflected?

A great pageant took place in the cathedral in 1476. After Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, had been defeated at Grandson, he collected what remained of his army of 50,000 men, and encamped in the plains of Le Loup. Then on Easter Sunday, he attended high mass. The cathedral was lavishly decorated and a brilliant throng “assisted” at the ceremonies. The Duchess Yolande of Savoy came from Geneva, bringing her whole court and an escort of three thousand horsemen. The Pope’s legate and the emperor’s ambassadors brought their followers, while representatives of other courts were on hand, for the occasion was made memorable by the proclamation of peace between the duke and the emperor. There was a great clanging of bells and fanfare of trumpets and the whole city was overrun with soldiers. The commissary department was strained to feed such multitudes. It is said that an English knight, serving in the duke’s army, was reduced to eating gold; at any rate his skull was found some years ago with a rose noble tightly clenched between its teeth!

A few months later the battle of Morat was fought; the duke was defeated and Lausanne was doubly sacked, first by the Comte de Gruyère and, a few hours later, by his allies, the Bernese troops, who spared neither public nor private edifices.

Just sixty years later Lausanne fell definitely into the hands of the Bernese, and they, by what seems an almost incredible revival of the judicial duel – only with spiritual instead of carnal weapons – ordered a public dispute on religion to decide whether Catholicism or Protestantism should be the religion of the city.

The comedian of the occasion seems to have been the lively Dr. Blancherose, who was constantly interrupting and interpolating irrelevant remarks, to the annoyance of the other disputants and to the amusement of the audience which packed the cathedral. On one occasion he declared that the word cephas was Greek and meant head; Viret replied that it was a Syriac word and meant stone. The Pope could have well dispensed with such an advocate.

The superiority of the Protestant debaters resulted in converting some of the opposite party, and the establishment of the Academy of Lausanne was the direct outcome of this debate, which was declared in all respects favourable to the Reformers.

The day after the decision was rendered, a crowd of bigots broke into the cathedral, overturned the altars and the crucifix, and desecrated the image of the Virgin. Workmen were paid for fifteen days at the rate of four and one sixth sous a day to clear Notre Dame of its altar-stones. And yet Jean François Naegueli (or Nägeli), when he took possession of Lausanne, had promised to protect the two Christian faiths.

It is a question whether one would rather live in those days under the easy-going régime of the superstitious Catholics or under that of the stern, forbidding bigotry of the Protestants. Geneva could not endure the latter and banished Farel and Calvin two years later; but back they came and established the tyranny more solidly than ever. Calvin drove Castellio out of Geneva, caused Jacques Gruet to be tortured and put to death, mainly because he danced at a wedding and wore new-fangled breeches, and had Servetus burned at the stake. It was a cruel age.

A cloud evidently passed over the face of the sun; the colours in the great rose window grew almost pallid. We left the church and again stood on the terrace.

“We are just about one hundred and fifty-two meters above the lake,” said Will. “Do you know, in the harbour of Geneva there are two big rocks which the early inhabitants of this region used to worship. They are granite, or protogen, and must have been brought down from some distant mountain, probably from the Saint-Bernard, by a glacier. In the old Roman days they were worshipped. On the top of one of them is a bronze plaque, put there in 1820 by General Dufour, and regarded as the standard, or rather the base, for all Swiss hypsometry. If you want to know how high above the level of the sea the Dent du Midi is, you will find it on the map ‘R. P. N.’ plus its height above the plaque. For instance the Cathedral here is R. P. N. plus a little more than one hundred and fifty-two meters. But the queer thing is that no two people who have tried to correct or verify General Dufour’s reckoning of the height of the plaque have been able to agree. General Dufour made it a fraction over three hundred and seventy-six meters and a half, which would give the level of the lake as three hundred and seventy-five meters; but it has since been corrected to a bit less than three hundred and seventy-three meters – a loss of almost ten feet.”

“What does that mean – that the scientists blundered?”

“It looks to me as if the whole level of the valley had perhaps settled. Every one knows that it is changing all the time – but come on, I want you to see the cathedral from the Place de Saint Laurent. It isn’t far from here.”

When we got there Will stopped and said:

“There! Isn’t that worth coming for? I wonder if there is any other cathedral in the world that has a more magnificent site.”

We paused for some time, looking up at its solid bulk, which seemed to touch the gathering clouds.

“I brought you here especially,” continued Will, “because one of Switzerland’s few poets praises its aspect from this spot. He says something like this: ‘It is a great crag fixt there. Contemplate it when heavy clouds are passing over. Standing below it and letting your eye follow the radiant field which creeps up to its flanks, you imagine that it grows larger amid the wild clouds which it tears as they fly over, leaving it unshaken. You might believe yourself in some Alpine valley, over which towers a solitary peak while around it cluster the mists driven by the wind.’ He grows still more enthusiastic at the beauty of it when the chestnut-trees are in bloom, contrasting with the violet roofs below and surrounded by the azure aureole of the lake and the mountains and he speaks of its ‘graceful energy’ against the golden background.”

“Who is the poet?” I asked.

“Oh, Juste Olivier. I will introduce you to him some day – I mean to his works. He himself died in 1876, if I am not mistaken. I have the two volumes which his friends edited as a sort of memorial to him.”

“I didn’t suppose there were any Swiss poets – I mean great Swiss poets. Of course I know Hebel – ”

“Yes, back in Gibbon’s time, the society founded by his friend Deyverdun discussed the question, ‘Why hasn’t the Pays de Vaud produced any poets?’ Juste Olivier deliberately set to work to fill the gap.”

“Did he succeed? He is not much known outside of Switzerland, is he?”

“Probably not; you shall see for yourself. But I remember one stanza on Liberty which has a fine swing to it —

 
“‘La Liberté depuis les anciens ages
Jusqu’à ceux où flottent nos destins
Aime à poser ses pieds nus et sauvages
Sur les gazons qu’ombragent nos sapins.
Là, sa voix forte éclate et s’associe
Avec la foudre et ses roulements sourds.
Nous qui t’aimons, Helvétie, Helvétie,
Nous qui t’aimons, nous t’aimerons toujours.’
 

“That is a fine figure – Liberty loving to set her foot on the soil shaded by the Swiss pines, – and so is that of Helvetia mingling her voice with the rolling of the thunder. That stanza has been praised as one of the finest of the century.”

As we leisurely strolled homeward my nephew called my attention to the northern slope of the Flon, just beyond the magnificent bridge, Chauderon-Montbénon. “That,” he remarked, “is called Boston.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know, unless to commemorate the fact that Lausanne is built on three hills. The north part was called La Cité, that to the south was le Bourg – the Rue du Bourg was the court end of the town, and had especial privileges – and the western side was called Saint-Laurent. It was only a little town when Gibbon came here to live; but it had unusually good society and there was a great deal of wealth, as you can imagine from the fine old houses.”

“Where did they get their money?”

“A good many of them through fortunate speculation. The men used to seek service in foreign countries. It is surprising how many of them became tutors to royal or princely families, or, if they were trained in the profession of arms, got commissions as officers in Russia, France, Spain and Holland. Some of them even went to India and America. A good many of them returned, if they returned at all, with handsome fortunes.”

“Isn’t it strange that a country which is always supposed to stand for liberty and patriotism should, next the Hessians, furnish the very best type of the mercenary! For a hundred years the French kings had to protect themselves with a Swiss guard, and the Pope’s fence of six-footers have been recruited from Lucerne and the Inner Cantons during more than four centuries.”

“Do you remember what Rousseau said about mercenary military service? It runs something like this: ‘I think every one owes his life to his country; but it is wrong to go over to princes who have no claim on you, and still worse to sell yourself and turn the noblest profession in the world into that of a vile mercenary.’ But Lausanne’s best contribution to foreign countries was education. The Academy, or college as they used to call it, attracted many people from abroad. Ever since it was founded – and the Protestants deserve that credit – it provided remarkably good professors and lecturers. The old families that had country estates got into the habit of spending their winters in town. They were wonderfully interrelated and many of them, through marriage, had several baronies. They were enormously proud of their titles and position. I have recently been reading Rousseau – especially his ‘Nouvelle Héloïse’ – you know about a year ago they were celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, – and I was struck with what he makes My Lord Edward Bomston say about the petty aristocracy of this Pays de Vaud: ‘Why does this noblesse of which you are so proud claim such honors? What does it do for the glory of the country or for the happiness of the human race? Mortal enemy of laws and of liberty, what has it ever produced except tyrannical power and the oppression of the people? Do you dare in a republic boast of a condition destructive of the virtues and of humanity, a condition which produces slavery and makes one blush at being a man?’”

“It seems to have been a regular feudalism.”

“It was. Gibbon was much struck by the unfairness of the régime which obtained in his day, and he speaks somewhere of three hundred families born to command and of a hundred thousand, of equally decent descent, doomed to subjection. They used to have a queer custom here, for a man, when he married, to add the wife’s name to his own…”

“Just as in Spain,” I interpolated.

“Yes, only hyphenated. They worked the particle de to death. As almost every one of the great families was related more or less closely to every other, and the estates were constantly passing from one branch to another, a man would at one time be Baron de Something-or-other, and the next year, perhaps, would appear with quite a different appellation. For instance, there was Madame Secretan, whose family name was taken from the Seigneurie d’Arnex-sur-Orbe. Antoine d’Arnay – he spelt his name phonetically – was Seigneur de Montagny-la-Corbe, co-seigneur de Luxurier, Seigneur de Saint-Martin-du-Chêne and Seigneur de Mollondin. And the husband of the famous Madame de Warens appears under several aliases. It is very confusing.

“When the nobles returned with hundreds of thousands of francs,” he added, “they spent their money royally. Many of these houses are filled with splendid carved furniture and tapestries. As long as Bern was suzerain of Vaud, and governed it, there was small chance for Government service and this state of things led to a peculiar atmosphere – one of frivolity and pleasure-seeking. The men hadn’t anything to do except to amuse themselves and few were the years when some foreign prince was not studying here and spending any amount of money in dinners and dances.”

“Yes,” said I, “considering that Lausanne was in the very centre of Calvinism, it must have been pretty gay. I suppose the influence of France was even stronger than that of Geneva or Bern.”

By this time we had reached our own street and were climbing the flight of steps that led to the handsomely arched portal.