“In the stable, and I dare say ready for dinner.”
The hint took her to the door, but I unhappily undid the valise, and she rushed back to the table and asked what was in it. I answered rather impatiently, that she had better wait while I unpacked it, so she took me at my word, and when it was quite empty said, “bien,” and went away. The air was insupportable; but for this there would have been little to complain of, for the people are civil,—the landlady’s inquisitiveness, perhaps, excepted,—and the cooking excellent. I imagine the unusual light dinner they served us might be accounted for, by our arriving so late; we commenced dining to the sound of a sweet chime, which was the Angelus ringing in Savoy. To sleep was out of the question; for as I told you, the post stables were on a level with us, and over our heads was lodged a commis voyageur, who started at daybreak. D—— saw his saddle and portmanteaux, weighing altogether three hundred pounds! The landlord strove hard to induce us to stay; we are driven out to breathe. Madame, who peeped into my room before I was up this morning, came to inquire, “whether I kept a regular note of expenses along the road, as everybody ought.” Monsieur praised the excursions within the reach of horse travellers; but the inn stable, large and handsome as it is, is choked at its entrance by heaps of rotting manure, and into it is emptied all the kitchen refuse. I mounted Fanny in a hurry, for close to me in the yard were two enormous tubs of water, into which a man was emptying (there to take their breakfast) bags full of leeches, which arrived last night en poste! I should think no other animal would feel an appetite here.
Away we went to the frontier. The tiny bridge, with the French sentinel on one side and the Savoy soldier opposite, seems a strange division of countries to those used to sea and sickness. Here were formalities to go through on account of the horses. D—— received back the fifty-five francs paid at Calais, and deposited seventeen francs duty on entering Savoy. There is a lovely glimpse from the bridge of the Guier, gurgling along the bottom of its ravine. We were detained some time at the Savoy douane, though they were not at all troublesome, but the horses’ description was to be copied; and (witness the wisdom of the King of Sardinia, or his delegates) notwithstanding that Savoy is so poor a country, they receive ungraciously, and would eject unceremoniously, strangers who bring English horses. The custom-house officers were in the first instance about to bind us to quitting the territory within three days; however, when D—— represented that I required some rest, and asked for ten, they consistently inserted two months.
The road from the pont is very good, and the country fertile and lovely as we ascended the hill, and the Guier wound far below in its wild ravine. The mountains at every step grow more grand; the fine trees, which abound, are mostly chestnut; and the cottages, now built in the Swiss style, with jutting roofs and outside stairs and galleries, hide themselves among them, sometimes betrayed only by a stream of light smoke. Their gardens are even neater than in England, and we have a luxury which you perhaps will hardly comprehend, in cooling our horses’ feet in the innumerable mountain streams which sparkle along at every step. Arrived at the summit of the hill, look back towards the pont and France, (an extensive and fertile view,) before the road turns suddenly, and the scene, the very air changes at the narrow road, with its giant wall of rock on the left hand, and on the other a low parapet, from which the precipice goes sheer down to the Guier, foaming angrily at its bottom, and warring with the crags, which, towering again on the other side, have opened hardly enough to leave it way. This is the Pass of Chailles, very grand, and I thought rather fearful, as Fanny continually started from the cliff and towards the parapet. The road, such as I have described it, winds a considerable way, and before us, in the space the advancing rocks leave, were mountains white with snow, which an old peasant said were those near La Chartreuse. The mountain wind was chill certainly, but we confessed it had a “freshness and life” which revived. The sky, which had been cloudless, suddenly changed, and the clouds came rolling over the crags, bringing a muttering of thunder and then a loud clap, augmented and prolonged by all the échos. The horses trembled, and promised to be troublesome, and we got on faster; but the storm had rushed on above our heads, and settled on the top of a purple peak far away, before we reached the cottage, which stands where this wild pass ends, and the roaring Guier becomes a quiet stream. Fear, I suppose, had made me thirsty and hungry; I bought some fresh milk in a clean bowl, and Fanny sprang aside from a yoke of oxen, and covered her mane and my habit.
We had intended sleeping at Les Échelles but, as at La Tour du Pin, the inn looked unpromising, and we merely fed the horses and went on to Chambéry. Last Thursday was the Fête Dieu, and the wreaths of box, which only a few feet asunder hung across the narrow street above our heads, looked uncommonly pretty. The Valley des Échelles opened before us as we left the town. Fancy the long fertile vale surrounded by mountains, which enclose it except at the spot where you enter—behind you and the town they are towering and snowy, while those which skirt the road you pursue the whole length of the valley are milder and green and cultivated, a contrast to the range of bare and broken cliffs on your right and parallel to them.
In front at the extremity of the vale, which it crosses like its barrier, is the hill which terminates it; the road you must travel cut along its edge and crossing two bridges; the last so high that the head turns to look at it, for it arches over a mountain stream, and its white line seen from below looks like a branch of bent osier. A gradual ascent leads to it, and, arrived there, you have no terror left but much wonder, for fifty paces beyond the road seems to terminate. The rock is before, and the precipice below, and you forget the grotto cut through.
Beneath the bridge the stream rushes turbulently down, forcing a narrow passage among trees and stones, and gushing far under the stone arch into the valley; the loveliest view of the valley itself is from this high bridge: you see it terminated by distant snow peaks and guarded by its mighty frontier of rocks having strange forms, in which you may fancy castle towers and cathedral portals, contrasting with the sweet mild plain below them, every yard cultivated; the glittering church spire rising among clumps of trees, and the river alternately hiding itself among its own fringes, or shining like a white riband through luxuriant corn-fields and meadows resembling flower-gardens; patches of turf under the fine old trees like dark green velvet, and cottages which, as you look down on them, make you say of each—“I could live there;” it is like the happy valley, only one would not want wings to fly out of it.
The gallery is at no great distance from a kind of passage formerly used by foot-passengers to arrive at the long ladders which were then the road to the valley, a descent of more than fifty metres; they gave it its name, des Échelles.
The entrance to the grotto is, as I told you, but a few steps further; a magnificent project nobly accomplished: it was finished only in 1813, for the passage constructed by Charles Emanuel in 1670 was not at this spot; it exists, and is still visited for its romantic beauty, but we did not see it. The grotto is blown through the solid rock, which forms its walls, and its arched roof, and is about eight hundred feet long; as it receives no light save through its two apertures, it was so dark about the centre that I could see the ground, over which Fanny trod very unwillingly, only where it shone with pools of water, which distils through the crevices and dripped on our heads all the way. Issuing from it, we found a wilder and less beautiful road, without verdure or habitation, winding among masses of grey rock, which must have a savage aspect in winter, but are now covered with purple columbine and the red ragged robin. Here and there we saw a feeble beggar or young peasant herding the few sheep or small cows perched among the crags. After a time these crags are interrupted by green knolls and brushwood, then by old trees and cottages, and we came again on a river winding through a wooded dell, a magnified copy of the Dargle in Wicklow. The road thence to Chambéry is varied and beautiful beyond expression, always good for our horses’ feet, but sometimes very ill protected from precipices, which, if not the most terrible in Savoy, are sufficiently so to break the neck of horse and rider. Not far from Chambéry is the Cascade of Cous, falling from the rock on the right about two hundred and fifty feet. It has no great volume of water, but is exceedingly picturesque, foaming or shining as it breaks against the uneven stones on the cliff’s side, or springs over them and down to the clear pool at its foot, whence it throws up a spray light as smoke, and then supplies the bright stream which passes beneath the road to the river, which we had followed some time, and was here still on the left, dashing through wooded defiles, turning romantic mills and murmuring down diminutive falls. Where the road is narrowest, some solitary peaks of granite stand by its side among trees and bushes, detached from the crags behind them like their outposts. We crossed a handsome bridge and broader stream before we caught sight of Chambéry, which lies embosomed in mountains; a bold and beautiful view, but not matching that of the Échelles. Behind the town, which lay before us, rises a line of fine frowning mountains—the Beauges; that which seems to hang over Chambéry, presenting at its summit a succession of seeming towers and ramparts like a mighty fortification. Far away to the left shone the lake of Bourget, on the road to Geneva. The valley is fertile, and the vines trained in arbours. The road close to the town has been changed, and as we crossed the new broad bridge, the abandoned one made a pretty feature in the landscape.
Entering Chambéry, we rode under the old palace of the Counts and Dukes of Savoy, with its high terrace shaded by magnificent horse-chestnuts, and a still most royal looking tower, which stands alone, and whose hollow walls have defied time and two fires. The governor’s palace is modern, and joins at its extremity another portion of the ancient building, which must once, from the traces remaining, have occupied the entire platform. The chapel remains, that part which rises above the narrow street, built in the Gothic style: the façade has been altered to the Italian taste and spoiled. We passed before fine boulevards and extensive barracks, containing at present three thousand men; and, unlike travellers worn and weary, entered the town at a gallop.