We passed La Grande Maison, a low inn by the road-side, and a little further, arrived at one of those sweet spots which make landmarks in one’s memory—the entrance of a village, beyond which the mountains meet again; where a one-arched bridge spans the river before a mass of black rock, and the remains of one which former storms swept away, and is now scarce visible through the vegetation which covers it; and cottages on the shore, with trellised vines and gay flower gardens sloping to the water.
We had lingered on the way, and it was late and the fog rising, when we entered the marshy valley in which stands Aiguebelle, at whose entrance among the trees which cover its summit may still be traced the ruins of Carbonaria, or, as the Savoyards call it, the Castle of La Charbonnière, which was the birthplace and the residence of the first counts of Savoy, but, taken by Henry the Fourth, was razed to the ground. At no great distance from Aiguebelle, is, or rather was, the village of Randans, on which a mass of rock, detached from that of Combes, slipped suddenly down in June, 1750. The soil is now on a level with the steeple of the church, through whose windows it is possible to enter the buried edifice. The inn of Aiguebelle (la Posta) good and comfortable.
A morning of clouds and vapour floating over the hills, and hardly favourable to the cold on my chest, which causes me some suffering; a road all rises and falls, mud and stones, but looking down on a fair valley, whose wooded hillocks are again crowned with ruined castles. Maltaverne, or Chateauneuf, as it is called, may possess a good inn, but it looks unpromising; I should be more inclined to try the Balance at St. Ambrose, a little farther. At last, from this narrow road which winds between green hedges, descending abruptly, we come on the rock of Montmeillan, (of whose importance you can only on this side be aware,) the high cliff commanding it, and the broad bed of the Isère below. From the bridge which crosses the latter Mont Blanc was not to-day visible, hid in clouds called up by the north-easter. The road skirts the dirty town, and is carried across the lower portion of the rock, (D—— said a surly No! to the innkeeper who summoned us to his bad inn,) and we rode on to Chambéry, through scenery changed and saddened in the four months which have elapsed since we left it, amongst leafless walnut-trees and fading yellow poplars. Found on the muddy road the white-haired and half blind beggar, who was our pensioner. He thanked me for my return gift, with “Merci, mon garçon,” and entering by the Faubourg Montmeillan, Fanny made no mistake, but passing scornfully the Europe and Petit Paris, entered her own inn-yard.
11th November.
Though really ill when I arrived, the comfortable bed I found ready, and the care of these kind people, who made tisanes innumerable, has already worked a cure. So having found no letters, and having three days borne with the anxiety the want of them occasioned, I decided on leaving for Geneva, where I had also desired they might be sent on. As we were about to start this morning, an employé of the post-office appeared bearer of three, whose arrival took place before our own, and my mind being at ease, we are to take the road over the Mont du Chat, eleven posts shorter than that by Geneva.
To Bourget, the first post, we crossed the plain, commencing only to ascend when we had passed its village and ruined castle on the lake shore. To us who expected a quiet promenade on a hill-side, the Mont du Chat was a surprise; its bold zigzags, often without parapets, leading to the very summit, the eye looking perpendicularly down to the blue water, and the autumnal foliage of the chestnut trees which cover a portion of its base, and among which hides Hautecombe.
Beyond the abbey the foot of the Mont du Chat is barren and wild, a mass of grey rock descending to the lake without relief or verdure. Aix, and the range of mountains at its back, the Mont d’Azi, and the Dent de Nivolet, lie on the opposite shore, Chambéry and his snowy mountains behind, faintly outlined to-day through mists called up by the hottest sun which ever shone in November. Each bend of the zigzags of this splendid road is supported by a rounded wall from beneath, resembling towers, and the first of which deceived me, then on the look out for a Roman ruin, and so determined on its discovery, as to believe that this might be a part of the temple raised to Mercury, whose foundations may really be traced still on the little plain at the summit of the pass. Not far beyond this level of a few yards we rode by a ruin of another date, being the remnant of a Gothic portal. Descending once more, though the view had lost its chief charm with the bright glory of the lake of Bourget, it yet possessed boldness and grandeur, looking over broken hills topped by towns, strangely grouped, and barren, and terminated by the mountain of Tarare, recalling Scott’s descriptions of border country. On our path, beneath the jagged line of white cliff on the left, were green pastures, hiding in nooks, belted with rocks and patches of woodland through which peeped cottage chimneys, and streams fringed with trees, the trunks of prostrate elms serving for bridge over them, and fair fresh children watching the cattle which browsed on the strips of turf along their banks. Arrived at the foot of the Mont du Chat, we soon after reached Yenne, a prettily-situated but most ill-favoured town, beyond which the road continued level till it suddenly crossed the bed of a torrent, one of the Rhone’s tributaries. This being the diligence route, they talk of building a bridge, but the width of the winter bed would render it a work of difficulty, though to-day the stream was but about forty feet wide, and barely reached our horses’ knees. A few steps further brought us to the brink of the Rhone, and within a most stern and solitary glen, a valley of stone. On our left, where its wall rose, its cold grey only varied by stains the weather has made, bare of leaf or living thing; on the right, and the river’s opposite shore, greenly feathered to the summit, and a mere line of crag, showing white among the brushwood, like an embattled wall. A sudden bend of the river parts it from the road, which, scarcely broad enough for one carriage, winds under and among tall crags, scattered over turf like velvet, till it enters a gallery formed by two of these, which might serve for portal to Dante’s Inferno. The sides are so high, and the aperture they leave so narrow, that no sunshine penetrates to dissipate its chill or darkness; and down the face of its upper portion, and through the more opaque mass which projects below, a winter torrent, which now only trickles, has worn itself a deep groove and circular passage.
Emerging from the few yards of obscurity, we were again on the bank of the rapid Rhone, the frontier fortress of Pierre Châtel crowning the high grand cliff opposite, and before us the light suspension bridge gracefully crossing the river, uniting Savoy to France. Half way up the cliff side and imbedded in it, a picturesque object among trees and briars which spring round, is a loopholed wall flanked by two low towers, the private entrance to the fort, to which conducts a stair cut in the living rock. Arrived at the bridge, two stupid Savoy douaniers detained us twenty minutes ere they could understand our non-possession of receipts for horse-duty, taken from us when the money was returned. On the French shore, the men said, that being a festival, they could not tell whether Monsieur would or would not descend from his pavilion to give the acquit à caution. We observed that, if that were the case, he would do well to build an inn. The old gentleman appeared on his terrace shrugging his shoulders in sign of impatience, but at last thought proper to come down, and the horses being measured and the fifty-five francs paid, we were allowed to ride on, having lost an hour.
Pierre Châtel, now a fortress, was once a fortified monastery, raised by Amedée the Sixth, in the fourteenth century, who founded the order of the collar of Savoy, now named of the Annonciade, the Chartreuse of Pierre Châtel serving as chapel and place of assembly for the knights of the order. It was only when Bresse and Bugey had been ceded by Charles Emmanuel to Henry the Fourth of France, that the meetings of the knights of the order were transferred to Montmeillan, and not very long since the armorial bearings of those received during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were still hung in one of the vast halls.