THE LAKE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
GENEVA.
Grandly the view changes. A light fleecy cloud floats languidly past the summit, casting a weird shadow on the spotless white. That delicate lace-like cloud, beautiful in form and color, is followed by another, darker and more threatening. Another and another comes, each darker and more forbidding, until suddenly the whole is overcast. Mont Blanc is enveloped in a sable mantle from which, presently, issues a low rumbling noise that foretells in unmistakable language what is to come. Now long jagged flashes of lightning rend the gloomy masses of fast scudding clouds, that turned the bright day into darkness, the wind sweeps down from the mountain with a wail half human; the rain comes down in torrents, not in fitful gusts but in a steady, angry stream. The placid waters of the lake, only a moment before laughing in the bright sunlight, are lashed to a fury, as the storm increases in violence. Terrific peals of thunder that seem to shake the earth, break directly overhead and then go rolling and rumbling away up the valley, until they exhaust themselves and die away with one final crash. All the elements seem to combine to produce a grand spectacle that strikes the beholder with awe-tempered admiration.
As quickly as it came the storm died away, and in a short time all nature smiled again and seemed to feel better after the display of its ability in getting up grand sights on short notice. The sun came out with renewed splendor and tinged Mont Blanc forty miles away, with a rosy hue, that lasted all the afternoon, long until the other and less pretentious peaks had become mere outlines in the twilight that presaged the coming night. And then even the King of Peaks began to fade. Gradually but constantly the pink tints turned lighter until it was ashen. Then it became darker and darker until at length its massive proportions faded entirely away and were lost in the darkness that had come so gradually that its presence was hardly felt.
Geneva is a curious old city, one of the links that connect the dead past with the terribly active and quite distinct present. Its memories are of monks and opposers of monks; its present is of watches and music boxes. However, the Genevan has been shrewd enough to carefully preserve the dust of the past, out of which, combined with its delightful situation, it gathers many shekels from the horde of tourists who sweep over Europe every year. Everybody must and does see Geneva. It is the capital of the smallest canton in Switzerland but one, the entire territory being but fifteen miles long by as many square, a large portion of this being taken up by the lake. Its population is less than fifty thousand, but, nevertheless, it is the largest city in Switzerland, and one which has the most of historical interest attached to it.
The land is so nearly perpendicular in Switzerland that large cities are impossible.
So small was the canton of Geneva that Voltaire said of it: “When I shake my wig, I powder the whole Republic,” and when some commotion occurred in the little Republic the Emperor Paul said of it: “It is a tempest in a glass of water.”