“Is there any danger?”
“There might be;” and thereupon we both commenced enumerating all our memories held of powder mishaps; till at last I began to think I might fear to order dinner, from dread of some mischance in the chimney, and to ride Fanny, lest her shoes should strike fire against the stones of the court-yard. We talked the pour and the contre the whole way, and arrived at the most perfect indecision.
We had a splendid view of a stormy sunset, of golden lake and blackening mountains, and when we reached Vevay, night had completely closed, and we, who had never seen the road till that afternoon, were puzzled. Fanny was not so; she assumed her wisest manner, wound through the crooked streets, and stopped at the stable of the Trois Couronnes.
17th.
Rain all day, detaining us within doors; we hope to leave the 20th for Berne and Fribourg.
We walked this evening up the steep road which leads to the church of St. Martin, as its terrace has a view no one should fail to see before quitting Vevay. The church is simple and pretty, of the thirteenth century. Ludlow’s monument, raised by his widow, is within it, built against the wall; Broughton’s tombstone forms part of the pavement near. The former’s memoirs, in which he so prides himself on his crime as regicide, were first published at Vevay, where he lived under the protection of the magistrates of Berne.
When William the Third ascended the throne, he returned to England, and to London, but finding it possible that he might still be held there in the light of an assassin, he thought it more prudent to return to Vevay. He was seventy-three when he died; his house is still shown, and the inscription he engraved above its doorway,
“Omne solum forti patria,”
was effaced but a short time since.
18th August.