And were obliged to recruit by sending
down into the valleys for some they had given away. One of the monks
told us that, when they went out after the dogs in the winter storms,
all they could see of them was their tails moving along through the
snow. The monks themselves can stand the climate but a short time, and
then they are obliged to go down and live in the valleys below, while
others take their places.
They told us that there were over a hundred people in the
_hospice_ when we were there. They were mostly poor peasants and
some beggars. One poor man came up to me, and uncovered his neck,
which was a most disgusting sight, swollen with goitre. I shut my
eyes, and turned another way, like a bad Christian, while our
Augustine friend walked up to him, spoke in a soothing tone, and
called him "my son." He seemed very loving and gentle to all the poor,
dirty people by whom we were surrounded.
I went into the chapel to look at the pictures. There was St. Bernard
standing in the midst of a desolate, snowy waste, with a little child
on one arm and a great dog beside him.
This St. Bernard, it seems, was a man of noble family, who lived nine
hundred and sixty-two years after Christ. Almost up to that time a
temple to Jupiter continued standing on this spot. It is said that the
founding of this institution finally rooted out the idolatrous
worship.
On Monday we returned to Martigny, and obtained a _voiture_ for
Villeneuve. Drove through the beautiful Rhone valley, past the
celebrated fall of the Pissevache, and about five o'clock reached the
Hotel Byron, on the shore of the lake.
LETTER XXXVII.
HOTEL BYRON.
MY DEAR: -
Here I am, sitting at my window, overlooking Lake Leman. Castle
Chillon, with its old conical towers, is silently pictured in the
still waters. It has been a day of a thousand. We took a boat, with
two oarsmen, and passed leisurely along the shores, under the cool,
drooping branches of trees, to the castle, which is scarce a stone's
throw from the hotel. We rowed along, close under the walls, to the
ancient moat and drawbridge. There I picked a bunch of blue bells,
"les clochettes," which were hanging their aerial pendants from every
crevice - some blue, some white.
[Illustration: _of blue bell flowers with sharp-bladed leaves._]
I know not why the old buildings and walls in Europe have this
vivacious habit of shooting out little flowery ejaculations and
soliloquies at every turn. One sees it along through France and
Switzerland, every where; but never, that I remember, in America.
On the side of the castle wall, in a large white heart, is painted the
inscription, _Liberte et Patrie_!
We rowed along, almost touching the castle rock, where the wall
ascends perpendicularly, and the water is said to be a thousand feet
deep.
