From The Market-Place We Carried Away A Basket Of
Cherries And Fruit, As A Consolation.
Dined at Lausanne, and visited
the cathedral and picture gallery, where was an exquisite _Eva._
Slept at Meudon.
Tuesday, July 19. Rode through Payerne to Freyburg. Stopped at the
Zahringer Hof - most romantic of inns. Our gentlemanly host ushered us
forth upon a terrace overhanging the deep gorge of the Saaerine,
spanned, to the right and left of us, by two immense suspension
bridges, one of which seemed to spring from the hotel itself. Ruins of
ancient walls and watch towers lined the precipice.
After dinner we visited the cathedral to hear the celebrated organ.
The organist performed a piece descriptive of a storm. We resigned
ourselves to the illusion. Low, mysterious wailings, swelling, dying
away in the distance, seeming at first exceedingly remote, drew
gradually near. Fitful sighings and sobbings rose, as of gusts of
wind; then low, smothered roarings. Anon came flashes of lightning,
rattling hail, and driving rain, succeeded by bursts of storm, and
howlings of a hurricane - fierce, furious, frightful. I felt myself
lost in a snow storm in winter, on the pass of Great St. Bernard.
One note there was of strange, terrible clangor - bleak, dark, yet of a
lurid fire - that seemed to prolong itself through all the uproar, like
a note of doom, cutting its way to the heart as the call of the last
archangel. Yes, I felt myself alone, lost in a boundless desert,
beyond the abodes of man; and this was a call of terror-stern, savage,
gloomy - the call as of fixed fate and absolute despair.
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