CHAPTER X
GRUYÈRE WITHOUT ITS COUNTS
early four hundred years have passed since the fall of its counts, but the merciless march of democracy, although changing the government of Gruyère has left the people strangely unaltered. In spite of the injunctions of the Lutheran Bernois, they still danced and sang, and until the dawn of the present century still spoke their musical patois. The château, long used as the residence of a préfet of Fribourg, was offered for sale when in the middle of the 19th century the prefecture was transferred to Bulle. For a long time left to decay, it was finally doomed to demolition, when for the same sum offered by a housebreaker of Vevey, it was happily purchased by M. Bovy of Geneva. His brother, a painter and pupil of Ingres, devoted the remaining strength left to him after a disabling paralysis, to the restoration of the château, and in this enthusiastic service exhausted the family fortune. His friends and companions in Paris gathered about him, and to the beautiful frescoes with which he adorned the walls of the Hall of the Chevaliers were added the landscape vignettes of the salon. Thus several Corot canvases are strangely found in this out of the way corner in the Swiss mountains, a lovely tribute of the great modern master to the long past glories of Gruyère. In the jousting court flowers bloom bravely through the passing seasons, the old well with its moss covered roof jewels the terrace with its emerald green; through the chapel windows the painted light streams over walls where in silver on scarlet still flies the Grue. On the clock tower, still circling, the hands mark the passing of time and the bells in the church still ring out their summons to prayer. At Easter the "Bénichons" bring the people together for their old dances and songs, and in the long "Veillées" the lads and the maids through the summer nights or in winter beside their bright fires, watch the dawning of love. The maidens, like Juliet, lean from low vine-covered windows, and with beckoning candles invite their lovers to climb. The spring pastures still blossom with marjolaine and narcissus, with cowslips and rue, the orchards still redden in autumn with ripe fruit which falls with the breeze, with tressed wheat, goats, and cows black and white; the green fertile country abounds, and as in Provence a Mireille is the poet's dream of its maids, so is "Marie la Tresseuse" in poems and tales the wheat weaving girl of Gruyère. The "Armaillis" still drive their herds to the mountains, still singing "Le ranz des vaches," the song which among all others best reveals the soul of their race. "Lioba," "Lioba," one should hear the refrain as it echoes from the valleys and hills, the same cry, musical, lingering, melancholy, which through century after century has been sung by generations of Gruyère herdsmen.
"Le Ranz des Vaches."
The herdsmen of the Colombettes,
To milk the cows arose.
Ha! Ha! Lioba.
Come! Come! Large and small,
The black, the white, the short, the tall,
Starry forehead, red and gold,
All the young and all the old.
Under the oak tree come!
Ha! Ha! Lioba.
Bells came first,
Jet black came last,
But at the stream they stopped aghast.
Ha! Ha! Lioba.
Alas, poor Pierre! what will you do?
Trouble enough you have, 'tis true.
Ha! Ha! Lioba.