 | CHAPTER V. The headsman, or, The Abbaye des Vignerons |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries.
Tempest.
The day dawned clear and cloudless on the
Leman, the morning that succeeded the Abbaye
des Vignerons. Hundreds among the frugal and
time-saving Swiss had left the town before the
appearance of the light, and many strangers were
and cheerfully over the rounded and smiling summits
of the neighboring côtes. At this early hour, all in
and around the rock-seated castle of Blonay were
astir, and in motion. Menials were running, with
hurried air, from room to room, from court to terrace,
and from lawn to tower. The peasants in the adjoining
fields rested on their utensils of husbandry, in
gaping, admiring attention to the preparations of
their superiors. For though we are not writing of a
strictly feudal age, the events it is our business to record
took place long before the occurrence of those
great political events, which have since so materially
changed the social state of Europe. Switzerland
was then a sealed country to most of those
who dwelt even in the adjoining nations, and the
present advanced condition of roads and inns was
quite unknown, not only to these mountaineers, but
throughout the rest of what was then much more
properly called the exclusively civilized portion of
the globe, than it is to-day. Even horses were
not often used in the passage of the Alps, but recourse
was had to the surer-footed mule by the
traveller, and, not unfrequently, by the more practised
carrier and smuggler of those rude paths.
Roads existed, it is true, as in other parts of Europe,
in the countries of the plain, if any portion
of the great undulating surface of that region deserve
the name; but once within the mountains,
with the exception of very inartificial wheel-tracks
in the straitened and glen-like valleys, the hoof
alone was to be trusted or indeed used.
The long train of travellers, then, that left the
gates of Blonay just as the fog began to stir on the
wide alluvial meadows of the Rhone, were all in
the saddle. A courier, accompanied by a sumpter-mule,
had departed over-night to prepare the
way for those who were to follow, and active
time, charged with different orders, issued in behalf
of their comforts.
As the cavalcade passed beneath the arch of the
great gate, the lively, spirit-stirring horn sounded
a fare well air, to which custom had attached the
signification of good wishes. It took the way towards
the level of the Leman by means of a winding
and picturesque bridle-path that led, among
alpine meadows, groves, rocks, and hamlets, fairly
to the water-side. Roger de Blonay and his two
principal guests rode in front, the former seated
on a war-horse that he had ridden years before as
a soldier, and the two latter well mounted on beasts
prepared for, and accustomed to, the mountains.
Adelheid and Christine came next, riding by themselves,
in the modest reserve of their maiden condition.
Their discourse was low, confidential, and
renewed at intervals. A few menials followed,
and then came Sigismund at the side of the Signor
Grimald's friend, and one of the family of Blonay,
the latter of whom was destined to return with
the baron, after doing honor to their guests by
seeing them as far as Villeneuve. The rear was
brought up by muleteers, domestics, and those who
led the beasts that bore the baggage. All of the
former who intended to cross the Alps carried the
fire-arms of the period at their saddle-bows, and
each had his rapier, his couteau de chasse, or his
weapon of more military fashion, so disposed
about his person as to denote it was considered an
arm for whose use some occasion might possibly
occur.
As the departure from Blonay was unaccompanied
by any of those leave-takings which usually
impress a touch of melancholy on the traveller,
most of the cavalcade, as they issued into the pure
and exhilarating air of the morning, were sufficiently
and to indulge in the cheerfulness and delight
that a scene so glorious is apt to awaken, in
all who are alive to the beauties of nature.
Adelheid gladly pointed out to her companion the
various objects of the view, as a means of recalling
the thoughts of Christine from her own particular
griefs, which were heightened by regret
for the loss of her mother, from whom she was
now seriously separated for the first time in her
life, since their communications, though secret,
had been constant during the years she had dwelt
under another roof. The latter gratefully lent herself
to the kind intentions of her new friend, and
endeavored to be pleased with all she beheld,
though it was such pleasure as the sad and mourning
admit with a jealous reservation of their own
secret causes of woe.
“Yonder tower, towards which we advance, is
Châtelard,” said the heiress of Willading to the
daughter of Balthazar, in the pursuit of her kind
intention; “a hold, nearly as ancient and honorable
as this we have just quitted, though not so constantly
the dwelling of the same family; for these
of Blonay have been a thousand years dwellers
on the same rock, always favorably known for
their faith and courage.”
“Surely, if there is anything in life that can
compensate for its every-day evils,” observed Christine,
in a manner of mild regret and perhaps with
the perversity of grief, “it must be to have come
from those who have always been known and honored
among the great and happy! Even virtue,
and goodness, and great deeds, scarce give a respect
like that we feel for the Sire de Blonay, whose
family has been seated, as thou hast just said, a
thousand years on that rock above us!”
Adelheid was mute. She appreciated the feeling
a reflection like this, and she felt the difficulty of
applying balm to a wound as deep as that which
had been inflicted on her companion.
“We are not always to suppose those the most
happy that the world most honors,” she at length
answered; “the respect to which we are accustomed
comes in time to be necessary, without being
a source of pleasure; and the hazard of incurring
its loss is more than equal to the satisfaction
of its possession.”
“Thou wilt at least admit that to be despised
and shunned is a curse to which nothing can reconcile
us.”
“We will speak now of other things, dear. It
may be long ere either of us again sees this grand
display of rock and water, of brown mountain and
shining glacier; we will not prove ourselves ungrateful
for the happiness we have, by repining for
that which is impossible.”
Christine quietly yielded to the kind intention of
her new friend, and they rode on in silence, picking
their way along the winding path, until the
whole party, after a long but pleasant descent,
reached the road, which is nearly washed by the
waters of the lake. There has already been allusion,
in the earlier pages of our work, to the extraordinary
beauties of the route near this extremity
of the Leman. After climbing to the height
of the mild and healthful Montreux, the cavalcade
again descended, under a canopy of nut-trees, to
the gate of Chillon, and, sweeping around the
margin of the sheet, it reached Villeneuve by the
hour that had been named for an early morning
repast. Here all dismounted, and refreshed themselves
awhile, when Roger de Blonay and his attendants,
after many exchanges of warm and sincere
good wishes, took their final leave.
The sun was scarcely yet visible in the deep
glens, when those who were destined for St. Bernard
were again in the saddle. The road now
necessarily left the lake, traversing those broad
alluvial bottoms which have been deposited during
thirty centuries by the washings of the Rhone,
aided, if faith is to be given to geological symptoms
and to ancient traditions, by certain violent
convulsions of nature. For several hours our
travellers rode amid such a deep fertility, and
such a luxuriance of vegetation, that their path
bore more analogy to an excursion on the wide
plains of Lombardy, than to one amid the usual
Swiss scenery; although, unlike the boundless expanse
of the Italian garden, the view was limited
on each side by perpendicular barriers of rock,
that were piled for thousands of feet into the heavens,
and which were merely separated from each
other by a league or two, a distance that dwindled
to miles in its effect on the eye, a consequence of
the grandeur of the scale on which nature has
reared these vast piles.
It was high-noon when Melchior de Willading
and his venerable friend led the way across the
foaming Rhone, at the celebrated bridge of St.
Maurice. Here the country of the Valais, then,
like Geneva, an ally, and not a confederate of the
Swiss cantons, was entered, and all objects, both
animate and inanimate, began to assume that mixture
of the grand, the sterile, the luxuriant, and
the revolting, for which this region is so generally
known. Adelheid gave an involuntary shudder,
her imagination having been prepared by rumor
for even more than the truth would have given
reason to expect, when the gate of St. Maurice
swung back upon its hinges, literally inclosing the
party in this wild, desolate, and yet romantic region.
As they proceeded along the Rhone, however,
the scene was new, were constantly wondering
at some unlooked-for discrepancy, that drove them
from admiration to disgust—from the exclamations
of delight to the chill of disappointment. The
mountains on every side were dreary, and without
the rich relief of the pastured eminences, but most
of the valley was rich and generous. In one spot
a sac d'eau, one of those reservoirs of water which
form among the glaciers on the summits of the
rocks, had broken, and, descending like a waterspout,
it had swept before it every vestige of cultivation,
covering wide breadths of the meadows
with a débris that resembled chaos. A frightful
barrenness, and the most smiling fertility, were
in absolute contact: patches of green, that had
been accidentally favored by some lucky formation
of the ground, sometimes appearing like oases
of the desert, in the very centre of a sterility that
would put the labor and the art of man at defiance
for a century. In the midst of this terrific picture
of want sat a crétin, with his semi-human attributes,
the lolling tongue, the blunted faculties,
and the degraded appetites, to complete the desolation.
Issuing from this belt of annihilated vegetation,
the scene became again as pleasant as the
fancy could desire, or the eye crave. Fountains
leaped from rock to rock in the sun's rays; the
valley was green and gentle; the mountains began
to show varied and pleasing forms; and happy
smiling faces appeared, whose freshness and regularity
were perhaps of a cast superior to that of
most of the Swiss. In short, the Valais was then,
as now, a country of opposite extremes, but in
which, perhaps, there is a predominance of the
repulsive and inhospitable.
It was fairly nightfall, notwithstanding the trifling
distance they had journeyed, when the travellers
been made for their reception during the hours
of sleep. Here preparations were made to seek
their rest at an early hour, in order to be in readiness
for the fatiguing toil of the following day.
Martigny is situated at the point where the great
valley of the Rhone changes its direction from a
north and south to an east and west course, and it
is the spot whence three of the celebrated mountain
paths diverge, to make as many passages of
the upper Alps. Here are the two routes of the
great and little St. Bernard, both of which lead
into Italy, and that of the Col-de-Balme, which
crosses a spur of the Alps into Savoy toward the
celebrated valley of Chamouni. It was the intention
of the Baron de Willading and his friend to
journey by the former of these roads, as has so
often been mentioned in these pages, their destination
being the capital of Piedmont. The passage
of the great St. Bernard, though so long known by
its ancient and hospitable convent, the most elevated
habitation in Europe, and in these later times
so famous for the passage of a conquering army,
is but a secondary alpine pass, considered in reference
to the grandeur of its scenery. The ascent,
so inartificial even to this hour, is long and comparatively
without danger, and in general it is sufficiently
direct, there being no very precipitous
rise like those of the Gemmi, the Grimsel, and
various other passes in Switzerland and Italy, except
at the very neck, or col, of the mountain,
where the rock is to be literally climbed on the
rude and broad steps that so frequently occur
among the paths of the Alps and the Apennines.
The fatigue of this passage comes, therefore,
rather from its length, and the necessity of unremitted
diligence, than from any excessive labor
demanded by the ascent; and the reputation
an army across its summit, has been obtained
more by the military combinations of which it
formed the principal feature, the boldness of the
conception, and the secrecy and promptitude with
which so extensive an operation was effected, than
by the physical difficulties that were overcome.
In the latter particular, the passage of St. Bernard,
as this celebrated coup-de-main is usually called,
has frequently been outdone in our own wilds; for
armies have often traversed regions of broad
streams, broken mountains, and uninterrupted
forests, for weeks at a time, in which the mere
bodily labor of any given number of days would
be found to be greater than that endured on this
occasion by the followers of Napoleon. The estimate
we attach to every exploit is so dependent on
the magnitude of its results, that men rarely come
to a perfectly impartial judgment on its merits;
the victory or defeat, however simple or bloodless,
that shall shake or assure the interests of civilized
society, being always esteemed by the world an
event of greater importance, than the happiest
combinations of thought and valor that affect only
the welfare of some remote and unknown people.
By the just consideration of this truth, we come
to understand the value of a nation's possessing
confidence in itself, extensive power, and a unity
commensurate to its means; since small and divided
states waste their strength in acts too insignificant
for general interest, frittering away their
mental riches, no less than their treasure and
blood, in supporting interests that fail to enlist the
sympathies of any beyond the pale of their own
borders. The nation which, by the adverse circumstances
of numerical inferiority, poverty of
means, failure of enterprise, or want of opinion,
cannot sustain its own citizens in the acquisition
most indispensable elements of greatness; glory,
like riches, feeding itself, and being most apt to be
found where its fruits have already accumulated.
We see, in this fact, among other conclusions, the
importance of an acquisition of such habits of
manliness of thought, as will enable us to decide
on the merits and demerits of what is done among
ourselves, and of shaking off that dependence on
others which it is too much the custom of some
among us to dignify with the pretending title of
deference to knowledge and taste, but which, in
truth, possesses some such share of true modesty
and diffidence, as the footman is apt to exhibit
when exulting in the renown of his master.
This little digression has induced us momentarily
to overlook the incidents of the tale. Few who
possess the means, venture into the stormy regions
of the upper Alps, at the late season in which the
present party reached the hamlet of Martigny,
without seeking the care of one or more suitable
guides. The services of these men are useful in a
variety of ways, but in none more than in offering
the advice which long familiarity with the signs
of the heavens, the temperature of the air, and the
direction of the winds, enables them to give. The
Baron de Willading, and his friend, immediately
dispatched a messenger for a mountaineer, of the
name of Pierre Dumont, who enjoyed a fair name
for fidelity, and who was believed to be better acquainted
with all the difficulties of the ascent and
descent, than any other who journeyed among the
glens of that part of the Alps. At the present day,
when hundreds ascend to the convent from curiosity
alone, every peasant of sufficient strength and
intelligence becomes a guide, and the little community
of the lower Valais finds the transit of the
idle and rich such a fruitful source of revenue,
very useful and just ordinances; but at the period
of the tale, this Pierre was the only individual,
who, by fortunate concurrences, had obtained a
name among affluent foreigners, and who was at
all in demand with that class of travellers. He
was not long in presenting himself in the public
room of the inn—a hale, florid, muscular man of
sixty, with every appearance of permanent health
and vigor, but with a slight and nearly imperceptible
difficulty of breathing.
“Thou art Pierre Dumont?” observed the baron,
studying the open physiognomy and well-set
frame of the Valaisan, with satisfaction. “Thou
hast been mentioned by more than one traveller in
his book.”
The stout mountaineer raised himself in pride.
and endeavored to acknowledge the compliment in
the manner of his well-meant but rude courtesy;
for refinement did not then extend its finesse and
its deceit among the glens of Switzerland.
“They have done me honor, Monsieur,” he said:
“it has been my good fortune to cross the Col with
many brave gentlemen and fair ladies—and in two
instances with princes.” (Though a sturdy republican,
Pierre was not insensible to worldly
rank.) “The pious monks know me well; and
they who enter the convent are not the worse received
for being my companions. I shall be glad
to lead so fair a party from our cold valley into
the sunny glens of Italy, for, if the truth must be
spoken, nature has placed us on the wrong side of
the mountain for our comfort, though we have our
advantage over those who live even in Turin and
Milan, in matters of greater importance.”
“What can be the superiority of a Valaisan,
over the Lombard, or the Piedmontese?” demanded
the Signor Grimaldi quickly, like a man who
should seek all kind of knowledge, and I take this
to be a newly-discovered fact.”
“Liberty, Signore! We are our own masters;
we have been so since the day when our fathers
sacked the castles of the barons, and compelled
their tyrants to become their equals. I think of
this each time I reach the warm plains of Italy,
and return to my cottage a more contented man,
for the reflection.”
“Spoken like a Swiss, though it is uttered by
an ally of the cantons!” cried Melchior de Willading,
heartily. “This is the spirit, Gaetano, which
sustains our mountaineers, and renders them more
happy amid their frosts and rocks, than thy Genoese
on his warm and glowing bay.”
“The word liberty, Melchior, is more used than
understood, and as much abused as used;” returned
the Signor Grimaldi gravely. “A country
on which God hath laid his finger in displeasure as
on this, needs have some such consolation as the
phantom with which the honest Pierre appears to
be so well satisfied.—But, Signor guide, have many
travellers tried the passage of late, and what dost
thou think of our prospects in making the attempt?
We hear gloomy tales, sometimes, of thy alpine
paths in that Italy thou hold'st so cheap.”
“Your pardon, noble Signore, if the frankness
of a mountaineer has carried me too far. I do not
undervalue your Piedmont, because I love our
Valais more. A country may be excellent, even
though another should be better. As for the travellers,
none of note have gone up the Col of late,
though there have been the usual number of vagabonds
and adventurers. The savor of the convent
kitchen will reach the noses of these knaves
here in the valley, though we have a long twelve
other.”
The Signor Grimaldi waited until Adelheid and
Christine, who were preparing to retire for the
night, were out of hearing, and he resumed his
questions.
“Thou hast not spoken of the weather?”
“We are in one of the most uncertain and
treacherous months of the good season, Messieurs.
The winter is gathering among the upper Alps, and
in a month in which the frosts are flying about like
uneasy birds that do not know where to alight, one
can hardly say whether he hath need of his cloak
or not.”
“San Francesco! Dost think I am dallying
with thee, friend, about a thickness more or less of
cloth! I am hinting at avalanches and falling
rocks—at whirlwinds and tempests!”
Pierre laughed and shook his head, though he
answered vaguely as became his business.
“These are Italian opinions of our hills, Signore,”
he said; “they savor of the imagination.
Our pass is not as often troubled with the avalanche
as some that are known, even in the melting snows.
Had you looked at the peaks from the lake, you
would have seen that, the hoary glaciers excepted,
they are still all brown and naked. The snow
must fall from the heavens before it can fall in the
avalanche, and we are yet, I think, a few days
from the true winter.”
“Thy calculations are made with nicety, friend,”
returned the Genoese, not sorry, however, to hear
the guide speak with so much apparent confidence
of the weather, “and we are obliged to thee in
proportion. What of the travellers thou hast
named? Are there brigands on our path?”
“Such rogues have been known to infest the
place, but, in general, there is too little to be gained
sight among our rocks; and you well know,
Signore, that there may be too few, as well as too
many, on a path, for your freebooter.”
The Italian was distrustful by habit on all such
subjects, and he threw a quick suspicious glance
at the guide. But the frank open countenance
of Pierre removed all doubt of his honesty, to
say nothing of the effect of a well-established
reputation.
“But thou hast spoken of certain vagabonds
who have preceded us?”
“In that particular, matters might be better;”
answered the plain-minded mountaineer, dropping
his head in an attitude of meditation so naturally
expressed as to give additional weight to his
words. “Many of bad appearance have certainly
gone up to-day; such as a Neapolitan named
Pippo, who is anything but a saint—a certain pilgrim,
who will be nearer heaven at the convent
than he will be at the death—St. Pierre pray for
me if I do the man injustice!—and one or two
more of the same brood. There is another that
hath gone up also, post haste, and with good reason
as they say, for he hath made himself the but
of all the jokers in Vévey on account of some
foolery in the games of the Abbaye—a certain
Jacques Colis.”
The name was repeated by several near the
speaker.
“The same, Messieurs. It would seem that the
Sieur Colis would fain take a maiden to wife in
the public sports, and, when her birth came to be
be known, that his bride was no other than th
child of Balthazar, the common headsman of
Berne!”
A general silence betrayed the embarrassment
of most of the listeners.
“And that tale hath already reached this glen,”
said Sigismund, in a tone so deep and firm as to
cause Pierre to start, while the two old nobles
looked in another direction, feigning not to observe
what was passing.
“Rumor hath a nimbler foot than a mule,
young officer;” answered the honest guide. “The
tale, as you call it, will have travelled across the
mountains sooner than they who bore it—though
I never knew how such a miracle could pass—but
so it is; report goes faster than the tongue that
spreads it, and if there be a little untruth to help it
along, the wind itself is scarcely swifter. Honest
Jacques Colis has bethought him to get the start of
his story, but, my life on it, though he is active
enough in getting away from his mockers, that he
finds it, with all the additions, safely housed at the
inn at Turin when he reaches that city himself.”
“These, then, are all?” interrupted the Signor
Grimaldi, who saw, by the heaving bosom of Sigismund,
that it was time in mercy to interpose.
“Not so, Signore—there is still another and one
I like less than any. A countryman of your own,
who, impudently enough, calls himself Il Maledetto.”
“Maso!”
“The very same.”
“Honest, courageous Maso, and his noble dog!”
“Signore, you describe the man so well in some
things, that I wonder you know so little of him in
others. Maso hath not his equal on the road for
activity and courage, and the beast is second only
to our mastiffs of the convent for the same qualities;
but when you speak of the master's honesty,
you speak of that for which the world gives him
little credit, and do great disparagement to the
brute, which is much the best of the two, in this
respect.”
“This may be true enough,” rejoined the Signore
Grimaldi, turning anxiously towards his companions:—“man
is a strange compound of good
and evil; his acts when left to natural impulses are
so different from what they become on calculation
that one can scarcely answer for a man of
Maso's temperament. We know him to be a most
efficient friend, and such a man would be apt to
make a very dangerous enemy! His qualities
were not given to him by halves. And yet we
have a strong circumstance in our favor; for he
who hath once done the least service to a fellow-creature
feels a sort of paternity in him he hath
saved, and would be little likely to rob himself of
the pleasure of knowing, that there are some of
his kind who owe him a grateful recollection.”
This remark was answered by Melchior de Willading
in the same spirit, and the guide, perceiving
he was no longer wanted, withdrew.
Soon after, the travellers retired to rest.
| CHAPTER V. The headsman, or, The Abbaye des Vignerons | |