A notice upon the door of the Cathedral informed us that the organ would not be played until evening. We held a council of war, and decided to go on. Just over our heads, as we stood before the entrance, was a representation of the Last Judgment, cut in the stone, in which the good, very scantily attired, and of most self-satisfied countenances, trotted off after St. Peter, who carried the father of all keys, to the door of a castle representing heaven, while the poor wicked were borne away in a Swiss basket, strapped upon the back of a pig-headed devil, to a great pot over a blazing fire, which a little imp was vigorously blowing up with a pair of bellows. The wicked seeming to outnumber the good (this was designed many centuries ago), and the pot not being large enough to hold them all, the surplus were thrust into the jaws of a patient crocodile near by. Seated in an arm-chair, above all this, the devil looked down with an expression of entire satisfaction.
The interior of the Cathedral was in no way remarkable. In the choir (which you know, perhaps, is not a place where girls stand in their best bonnets to sing on Sundays, but the corner of these great cathedrals in which the church service is held) were some fine stained glass windows; but even here, horrible monkeys and hideous animal figures, life-size, were cut from the wood, and made to stand or crouch above the stalls where the priests sit. Those old ecclesiastic artists must have believed in a personal devil, who assumed many forms.
A threatened shower hastened our steps to the station some time before the arrival of the train, which seemed to come and go without regard to the hour appointed. While waiting, we read the advertisements framed and hanging upon the walls, of hotels, shops, &c. One of the latter, in a triumph of English, ran,—
Wood Carwings;
Choose as nowhere else.
We reached Berne before night, and drove to the Hotel ——. If it could by some happy chance have been turned inside out, how comfortable we might have been! The exterior was most inviting. A German waiter of Irish face, who had a polyglot manner of speech, difficult to be understood, showed us to our rooms; and the table d'hôte, to which we descended an hour later, was made up of an uncommon array of prim-visaged individuals. Dickens's Mr. Chadband, in a very stiff, white neckcloth, was my vis-à-vis. I looked every moment for his lips to open, and—"Wherefore air we gathered here, my friends?" to issue forth.
The guide-book had informed us that the greatest attraction of Berne to strangers was the fine view of the Bernese Alps to be gained from here; but a curtain of cloud hung before them during all our stay. Still we were interested in the queer old city, with the second story of the houses, through many of the streets, projecting over the sidewalk, forming gloomy arcades, and bright red cushions in the window seats, where pretty girls sat and sewed, and watched the passers down below. I remember it rained, and there was a market held out in the square before the hotel windows in the early morning, where the umbrellas made every old woman to dwell in her own tent for the time. When it was over, and the rain had ceased to fall, we waited in front of the old clock-tower before driving out through the pleasant suburbs, with market women, baskets on their arms, stray children, idle loungers, and alert tourists, for the feeble puppet-show heralded by the asthmatic crow of a rheumatic cock. Of course it was a procession of bears. Everything in Berne is, or has to do with, a bear, since the city was founded upon the spot where somebody killed a bear. Bears surmount most of the stone fountains in the streets; they ornament the monuments erected to heroes. Cut from wood, they are offered for sale as souvenirs; stuffed, they are exhibited at the zoölogical gardens; and, to crown all, government supports in luxury a whole family of bruins. We left the carriage upon the Nydeck bridge, to look down into the immense circular basin where they are kept. It must be a dull life, even for a bear. They are ugly creatures, with reddish fur, and spend their time climbing a leafless semblance of a tree, with no object but to descend again, or in sitting up to beg for biscuits of visitors. So universal has the custom of begging become in Switzerland, that even the bears take to it quite naturally.
The mountains obstinately refusing to appear, we left Berne for Thun, passing through a lovely country. Only occasionally did a road appear; then it would seem to extend for long miles, bordered by immense, close-planted trees. Neither fences nor hedges were there to divide the fields; but patches of grain were thrown down anywhere and at any angle. Potatoes were sown like grass instead of being planted in hills, and were devoured this year by rot—the worst feature in the landscape. All through the early summer we had seen hemp growing everywhere. Now it was cut, and lying outspread upon the ground in odd regularity, an occasional head only being left to run to seed.
There was nothing to visit in Thun. But the whole town is like a story. Not an elegant, high-toned story, to be sure, though a picturesque old castle and church lifted themselves aristocratically above the more humble town. The streets are narrow, and as picturesque as they are dirty, with a sidewalk sometimes above the first, low, projecting story of the houses.
It is a mile from the town to the lake of the same name. Close by the steamer landing, where we were to embark for Newhaus, is the hotel Bellevue. Within the garden enclosure were several little châlets; one to serve as reading-room, another as salle à manger, while a third, beyond the pond, where swan were sailing, displayed Swiss wares for sale. Here we lunched and rested for an hour, before going up the lake. It is a voyage of an hour and a half to its head, past beautiful villas upon one side, and precipitous rocks upon the other. Once landed at Newhaus,—where there was not a new house that we could see, but only a scanty collection of little huts,—we searched about, with the mud ankle deep, among the crowd of waiting vehicles, for the omnibus which was to bear us the two miles and a half to Interlaken and the hotel Jung Frau. If you recall your geography lessons, you will perhaps know that the two lakes, Thun and Brienz, are separated by a strip of land, upon which is this village of Interlaken. It is hardly more than one long street, with green fields and a row of trees upon one side, and a line of houses standing back upon the other. In full view from the windows of these summer hotels, when the sky is clear, rises the Jung Frau, between two great mountain peaks. This is the only sight in Interlaken, and yet the town throngs with visitors. It must be intolerably hot here at times, lying low among the mountains as does this valley. In the fields, behind the grand hotels, is a long, low Kursaal, a rustic affair, with a wide piazza. You may lunch, and read the newspapers; but government has prohibited the gambling. There are delightful excursions to be made from here, which accounts, perhaps, for the crowded hotels. And there are several fine shops, where you may buy all or any of the curiosities for which the country is well known.
A rainy day crowded these shops and the hotel parlors, and made a busy scene the length of the street, which is very like a country road. But the second morning after our arrival, we rose early, to prepare for an excursion over the Wengern Alp. The Jung Frau, hidden the day before, appeared in full view with the rolling away of the clouds, and we desired to approach nearer to the shy maiden. All the listlessness of the day before was past. As we stepped out of the little châlet, in the hotel garden, where—the hotel being full—we had slept in a room only vacated for the night, with a pair of immense red slippers behind the door, and Madame's gowns hanging from pegs on the wall, everybody was astir. More than one party was sipping their scalding coffee as we entered the hotel breakfast-room, while, under the great trees outside, guides and saddled horses waited impatiently.