Eberard had many friends among the guests, and this and other sarcasms, which reached their ears, raised their choler, long restrained,—and some started from the banquet and drew their swords. A fearful tumult arose instantly. The furious guests, dividing themselves into two parties, rushed madly at each other, and Hartmann was killed by chance and in the obscurity on the steps of the tower stair. It was unknown whether the instrument of this involuntary murder was Eberard in person; but at the moment when the citizens of Thun, who, attracted by the extraordinary noise, had armed in haste, rushed up the hill to the castle to know its cause, the body of Count Hartmann, flung by some violent hand from a window of the castle, made them an awful reply. The greater number at once turned and fled; the few who lingered were taken prisoners as a measure of precaution; and Eberard, giving orders to close the gates, sent ambassadors to Berne, offering to become, himself and those of his house, citizens of her city for ever, and to cede to her, with a portion of his remaining possessions, the fief of Thun. The Bernese marched thither without loss of time, took possession with little difficulty, and confirmed the count in the place of power occupied by his ancestors, on condition of his paying them a contribution of one mark yearly.
August.
We have of late borne with some days of Swiss rain, unintermitting from morning to night. A pension has one disadvantage: for its inmates depend not on their own resources, but on the forced companions of its breakfast, early dinner, and long evening. We are fortunate in an agreeable party, particularly so in the acquaintance of an English clergyman and his charming young wife, who, with her rosy children round her, forms the prettiest picture imaginable. The vie de pension consists in breakfasting, in irregular order, between eight and twelve; dining at three, which interferes sadly with excursions or occupations; drinking tea at eight; talking till ten; and going to bed to re-commence on the morrow. This is bearable during sunshine; but when we are shut up in bad weather, and deprived of our home occupations, with torrents falling all day, and the moon shining at night in the valley on so dense and white a fog that I at first took it for the lake, which is a mile off, as has been the case the last few days, we form in groups, and have recourse to a leetle scandal (as I once saw it written), which commences in the kitchen among the scourges thither imported by the victims, their masters, and steals by degrees among ourselves, where it sometimes finds somebody
“To point a moral or adorn a tale.”
And should we all be good naturedly-minded and charitable to our neighbours, we pounce upon the cookery, and wonder that Madame Rufenacht should be so niggardly an old personage, and how long will last her dynasties of hard ducks and bony pigeons. An addition to our circle, and an improving one, arrived to-day, in the persons of a gentleman and lady from Marseilles, and whose conversation induced us to let the poultry die and be served up in peace. I was amused by his account of their passage on board the steamer, from Geneva to Lausanne. Of the party was a lady speaking French imperfectly, and sketching with remarkable assiduity, as she went along, notwithstanding the velocity of the boat’s motion. Monsieur R——, though not professionally so, is really an artist; the lady was a sketcher,—like one who described to me that he never made more than two perpendicular and three horizontal lines for any view, filling up the vacuum after; or like another who, having sketched the falls of the Rhine, showed them to a lady, who exclaimed—“Oh! that is the beautiful field we just now walked through, and the stile we jumped over.”
This lady had united to a very faint idea of their geographical position a strong desire of bearing away in her album drawings of all the mountains in Switzerland; and the young French gentleman could not resist the opportunity for amusement: he had been her interpreter already. Mont Blanc, she heard all voices echo, and used her pencil in haste. The Buet, with its white round head, was in sight also, and the lady said in an interrogatory tone, “Mont Cenis, Monsieur?”
“Oui, Madame,” said her deceiver gravely, and she hurried to mark down the shape of the mountain, and write under it “Mont Cenis,”—extract the leaf from her book, and with due care lay it in her portfolio. She looked about again.
“Mont Pilatre, Monsieur?” said she, forgetting that Lucerne was not there; and pointing to the Voiron,—
“Bien loin, Madame; bien haut,” said the artist, and a cloud above the Voiron was again marked down, and inscribed Mont Pilatre. The steamer was passing Coppet, and Monsieur R—— pointed out the château, giving it its proper name.
“Ha!” said the lady, cutting her pencil, “Coppet château, Madame Staël.”