dogs; many freeze to death, and the monks have piled their unidentified bodies up out there in the stone dead-house. There is not enough soil on this rocky height for a grave. And the air is so rarefied that graves are not needed; the dead simply dry away at last, or, in their half-frozen condition, remain like unembalmed mummies. The high air is ruinous to health, and the monks after a few short years go down into the Rhone valley to die, while others for another little space take their places.
The next morning I climbed through an open window into the dead-house. The dead found on the pass during twenty years either lay on the floor or stood against the wall. It was a hideous spectacle, and yet numerous of the bodies were lifelike in every feature. They were placed in there just as they were found. All have the clothes on they wore when they were lost. Many are in the same attitude of despair and agony they had when the storm closed them in its icy embrace. I saw a man with form bent and arms extended as if groping to find his way. A dead woman sat in the corner with her frozen child in her arms. She has been there these dozen years. Some of the faces could yet be recognized had any friend in the world come to look at them.
After breakfast we had a play with a number of the noble dogs that have saved human lives on this pass, time and again. They were very large, mostly tawny colored, extremely intelligent and kind.
The devoted lives of these monks, and these dogs, is something pathetically noble.
A pretty chapel or church is built on to the hospice, and in there one sees a fine marble statue of Marshal Saxe, the hero of Marengo, put there by the order of Napoleon.
*****
There are few large farms in Switzerland. Yet, we stayed last week at one that would do credit in size even to the United States--a couple of hundred acres, mostly given up to grass and stock; every foot as carefully looked after as if it were a gentleman’s lawn in London. The owner is what they call a rich Bauer. He is a romantic-looking character, the red-cheeked, burly man, as he goes about among his hired people in the picturesque costume of other days. His wife and daughter also dress in unique costume. They all look very striking on the green meadows away up here on a mountain side, half as high as the Rigi. All this peasant’s immediate ancestors were born in this old stone house, and, though he has grown rich here, his life is unchanged from theirs. There are many long, round-paned windows to the rooms, through which the sun pours in and warms the bright-colored flowers with which the window shelves are filled. An old eight-day clock of his grandfather’s stands in the corner counting the seconds for these two hundred years. There is not a carpet or a table cloth in the house, but in their stead are old chests, wardrobes and chairs of rare carving, and queer pewter mugs of another age are on the walls.
Their lives are very simple. At dinner they gather around an uncovered pine table, and the family dip soup from the same big bowl. They have an abundance of sour wine, black bread, and such butter, cheese and milk as would make an epicure glad.
The high mountain air about them is bracing; they seem happy and healthful, and, more than most peasants, enjoy the grand scene of Alps and lakes around them.
They set a little side table for us in another room, where we had all the good things a farm affords for two francs a day. Over on the Rigi, just across the lake from us, the tourists and the fashionables are paying ten to twenty francs for food not so wholesome.
October 9, 1871.--“Chicago has burned to the ground and all your houses are burned with it,” was the telegram that came to me for Brentano three nights ago. I went to his house at midnight, but he was gone to Freiburg. When he came back, he simply telegraphed, “Commence to rebuild at once.” The Americanism of the order set all his Swiss friends to talking. “Had Chicago burned up in Europe,” they said, “we would have spent a year mourning over it. Over there they simply rebuild the same day and say nothing.”
I commenced a subscription list to help the unfortunate of Chicago, two weeks ago. I have raised 60,000 francs in sums as low as two cents each. I think no town of its population in Europe has given so liberally. To-morrow the cash goes on.
CHAPTER V
1872
LOUIS BLANC, THE STATESMAN--HIS NOVEL COURTSHIP--HIS APPEARANCE--INVITES US TO PARIS--JUST MISS VICTOR HUGO--HIS SPEECH AT MADAME BLANC’S GRAVE--LETTER FROM LOUIS BLANC--ALABAMA ARBITRATORS--SEE GAMBETTA AND JULES FAVRE.
May 9, 1872.--On this day Louis Blanc, the French statesman and historian, called. It was to thank me for a favor I had done on a time for his nephew, but the visit resulted in a friendship that lasted till his death, ten years later.
Louis Blanc had been to the old French Republic (1848) what Brentano had been to the revolution of South Germany. At one time he was the most powerful member of the French Assembly. His writings, more than all things else, brought about the revolution that for a time made him President. In this 1872, he is again in the Assembly of a new republic.
While he stayed at Zurich, we came to know his friend, the vivacious English writer and traveler, Hepworth Dixon. We met often. Once Louis Blanc gave us all a dinner in the Neptun, and Dixon kept the table in a roar, telling of his ridiculous experiences in American overland coaches, in Texas and elsewhere. Of Texas, he had views alarmingly like those of Sheridan. If he owned hell and Texas, he certainly would rent out Texas and live in hell. “And do you tell us that is manners down South in the United States?” queried Mr. Louis Blanc, in the naivest manner. “Indeed I do; surely, surely,” said the traveler, glancing at Mrs. Blanc, “I saw it a hundred times. Pistols, bowie-knives and swearing. Nothing else in Texas.” The kind Frenchman believed it all, for he believed all men honest as himself; only at the close of the dinner did Mr. Dixon let him know that part of his talk was good-natured champagne chaff.
Louis Blanc was the smallest big man I ever saw. He was only five feet high. His head was big enough for Alexander the Great. He was only fifty-nine years old now, but it seemed to me his life and actions went back to the Revolution. His hair was long and black and straight as an Indian’s. He had no beard. His face was rosy as a girl’s. His little hands were white as his white cravat; his feet were like a boy’s; his eyes brown, large, and full of kindness; his voice sweet as a woman’s. He dressed in full black broadcloth and wore a tall silk hat. He looked, when walking in the street, like a rosy-faced boy in man’s clothes.
His little stature and apparent innocence of half that was going on about him, kept Madame Blanc in a constant worry for fear he would be run over by passing wagons when we were out walking together. “Now run over here quick,” she would say to him at a crossing. “Do, my dear, be careful. See the horses coming.” Out of doors, or on our little excursions to the mountains, he was perpetually and literally under her wing. She knew the treasure she had in him.
I constantly thought of the story of his past; for was not this little, low-voiced man, walking with us, he who had written “The Ten Years” that had helped destroy Louis Philippe; was not this the same voice that had enchained assemblies, and led France?
Once in a little log schoolhouse in the backwoods of the West, where, as a young fellow, I was teaching, I had read some of his books. Poor as I was, I would have given a month’s salary then, to have taken Louis Blanc by the hand. How little I dreamed that some day I should not only take him by the hand, but have his warm friendship.
Louis Blanc’s head was all there was to him--that and a great heart.
His
