University of Virginia Library

113. LETTER CXIII.

Whether it was that I had offended the genius of
the spot, by coming in an omnibus, or from a desire I
never can resist in such places, to travesty and ridicule
the mock solemnity with which they are exhibited,
certain it is that I left Ferney, without having encountered,
even in the shape of a more serious thought,
the spirit of Voltaire. One reads the third canto of
Childe Harold in his library, and feels as if “Lausanne
and Ferney” should be very interesting places to
the traveller, and yet when he is shown Gibbon's bower
by a fellow scratching his head and hitching up his
trousers the while, and the nightcap that enclosed the
busy brain from which sprang the fifty brilliant tomes
on his shelves, by a country-girl, who hurries through
her drilled description, with her eye on the silver
douceur in his fingers, he is very likely to rub his hand
over his eyes, and disclaim, quite honestly, all pretensions
to enthusiasm. And yet, I dare say, I shall have
a great deal of pleasure in remembering that I have
been at Ferney. As an English traveller would say,
“I have done Voltaire!”

Quite of the opinion that it was not doing justice to
Geneva to have made but a three days' stay in it, regretting
not having seen Sismondi and Simond, and a
whole coterie of scholars and authors, whose home it
is, and with a mind quite made up to return to Switzerland,
when my beaux jours of love, money, and leisure,
shall have arrived, I crossed the Rhone at sunrise,
and turned my face toward Paris.

The Simplon is much safer travelling than the pass
of the Jura. We were all day getting up the mountains
by roads that would make me anxious if there
were a neck in the carriage I would rather should not
be broken. My company, fortunately, consisted of
three Scotch spinsters, who would try any precipice
of the Jura, I think, if there were a lover at the bottom.
If the horses had backed in the wrong place, it
would have been to all three, I am sure, a deliverance
from a world in whose volume of happiness

As to my own neck and my friend's, there is a special
providence for bachelors, even if they were of importance
enough to merit a care. Spinsters and bachelors,
we all arrived safely at Rousses, the entrance to
France, and here, if I were to write before repeating
the alphabet, you would see what a pen could do in a
passion.

The carriage was stopped by three custom-house
officers, and taken under a shed, where the doors were
closed behind it. We were then required to dismount
and give our honors that we had nothing new in the
way of clothes; no “jewelry; no unused manufactures
of wool, thread, or lace; no silks or floss silk;
no polished metals, plated or varnished; no toys, (ex
cept a heart each); nor leather, glass, or crystal manufactures.”
So far, I kept my temper.

Our trunks, carpet-bags, hat-boxes, dressing-cases,
and portfeuilles, were then dismounted and critically
examined—every dress and article unfolded; shirts,
cravats, unmentionables and all, and searched thoroughly
by two ruffians, whose fingers were no improvement
upon the labors of the washerwoman. In
an hour's time or so we were allowed to commence repacking.
Still, I kept my temper.

We were then requested to walk into a private room,
while the ladies, for the same purpose, were taken, by
a woman, into another. Here we were requested to
unbutton our coats, and, begging pardon for the liberty,
these courteous gentlemen thrust their hands into
our pockets, felt in our bosoms, pantaloons, and shoes,
examined our hats, and even eyed our “pet curls”
very earnestly, in the expectation of finding us crammed
with Geneva jewelry. Still, I kept my temper.

Our trunks were then put upon the carriage, and a
sealed string put upon them, which we were not to cut
till we arrived in Paris. (Nine days!) They then demanded
to be paid for the sealing, and the fellows who
had unladen the carriage were to be paid for their labor.
This done, we were permitted to drive on. Still
I kept my temper!

We arrived, in the evening, at Morez, in a heavy
rain. We were sitting around a comfortable fire, and
the soup and fish were just brought upon the table.
A soldier entered and requested us to walk to the police-office.
“But it rains hard, and our dinner is just
ready.” The man in the mustache was inexorable.
The commissary closed his office at eight, and we
must go instantly to certify to our passports, and get
new ones for the interior. Cloaks and umbrellas were
brought, and, bon gre, mal gre, we walked half a mile
in the mud and rain to a dirty commissary, who kept
us waiting in the dark fifteen minutes, and then, making
out a description of the person of each, demanded
half a dollar for the new passport, and permitted us
to wade back to our dinner. This had occupied an
hour, and no improvement to soup or fish. Still, I
kept my temper—rather!

The next morning, while we were forgetting the
annoyances of the previous night, and admiring the
new-pranked livery of May by a glorious sunshine, a
civil arretez vous brought up the carriage to the door
of another custom-house! The order was to dismount,
and down came once more carpet-bags, hat-boxes, and
dressing-cases, and a couple of hours were lost again
in a fruitless search for contraband articles. When it
was all through, and the officers and men paid as before,
we were permitted to proceed with the gracious
assurance that we should not be troubled again till we
got to Paris! I bade the commissary good morning,
felicitated him on the liberal institutions of his country
and his zeal in the exercise of his own agreeable
vocation, and—I am free to confess—lost my temper!
Job and Xantippe's husband! could I help it!

I confess I expected better things of France. In
Italy, where you come to a new dukedom every half-day,
you do not much mind opening your trunks, for
they are petty princes and need the pitiful revenue of
contraband articles and the officer's fee. Yet even
they leave the person of the traveller sacred; and
where in the world, except in France, is a party travelling
evidently for pleasure subjected twice at the
same border to the degrading indignity of a search!
Ye “hunters of Kentucky”—thank heaven that you
can go into Tennessee without having your “plunder”
overhauled and your pockets searched by successive
parties of scoundrels, whom you are to pay “by order
of the government” for their trouble!

The Simplon, which you pass in a day, divides two
nations, each other's physical and moral antipodes.

The handsome, picturesque, lazy, unprincipled Italian,
is left in the morning in his own dirty and exorbitant
inn; and, on the evening of the same day, having
crossed but a chain of mountains, you find yourself
in a clean auberge, nestled in the bosom of a Swiss
valley, another language spoken around you, and in
the midst of a people who seem to require the virtues
they possess to compensate them for more than their
share of uncomeliness. You travel a day or two down
the valley of the Rhone, and when you are become
reconciled to cretins and goitres, and ill-dressed and
worse formed men and women, you pass in another
single day the chain of the Jura, and find yourself in
France—a country as different from both Switzerland
and Italy as they are from each other. How is it that
these diminutive cantons preserve so completely their
nationality? It seems a problem to the traveller who
passes from one to the other without leaving his carriage.

One is compelled to like France in spite of himself.
You are no sooner over the Jura than you are enslaved,
past all possible ill-humor, by the universal politeness.
You stop for the night at a place, which, as
my friend remarked, resembles an inn only in its in
attention, and after a bad supper, worse beds, and every
kind of annoyance, down comes my lady-hostess in
the morning to receive her coin, and if you can fly
into a passion with such a cap, and such a smile, and
such a “bon jour,” you are of less penetrable stuff
than man is commonly made of.

I loved Italy, but detested the Italians. I detest
France, but I can not help liking the French. “Politeness
is among the virtues,” says the philosopher.
Rather, it takes the place of them all. What can you
believe ill of a people whose slightest look toward you
is made up of grace and kindness.

We are dawdling along thirty miles a day through
Burgundy, sick to death of the bare vine-stakes, and
longing to see a festooned vineyard of Lombardy.
France is such an ugly country! The diligences
lumber by, noisy and ludicrous; the cow-tenders wear
cocked hats; the beggars are in the true French extreme,
theatrical in all their misery; the climate is
rainy and cold, and as unlike that of Italy as if a
thousand leagues separated them, and the roads are
long, straight, dirty, and uneven. There is neither
pleasure nor comfort, neither scenery nor antiquities,
nor accommodations for the weary—nothing but politeness.
And it is odd how it reconciles you to it all.