When the dinner-bell rang, we assembled, along with twenty or thirty other chance guests, at two long tables, and, to our surprise, the brotherhood ate with us. The meal, though plain, was generous in quantity, and they kept pressing us to eat more with true hospitality. We found our hosts very interesting to talk to. One old man took a profound interest in America, especially in the St. Louis exposition, and plied us with questions about it. Naturally we were more interested in asking about their life and mission, which seemed to us a delightful but highly incongruous survival of medievalism. They admitted that the Hospice served no very useful purpose in summer, but it did a big charity work spring and fall when thousands of Italian laborers were tramping into Switzerland and back, who could not afford to stop at the hotel, and during winter, when the hotel was closed, though travelers were few, the Hospice became a life-saving necessity to those who did go over the pass. After dinner they showed us the portrait of himself that Napoleon had given the Hospice and a few other treasured relics.
There is no charge whatever made for meals and lodging at the Hospice, and the offering one puts into the almsbox is entirely voluntary. We had to ask where this box was, and I do not think it would have been brought to our attention in any way had we failed to do so. I imagine many fail, or unduly consult economy in their offerings, for we noticed that our hosts, who had been most kind throughout, became positively effusive after we had deposited in the box—no princely sum at all, but just about what we calculated we would have expended at the hotel. I must say most of our fellow guests looked as if they deserved Frater’s characterization of “dead beats,” and yet the brothers told us that travelers often found fault with their accommodations! Probably the less they paid, the more fault they found. But even this sordid company could not spoil the sentiment of the place for us, and the memory of our night at the Hospice remains one of the jewels in our casket.
XI
Next morning, after dipping large hunks of dry bread into big steaming bowls of coffee and milk, along with the rest of the beneficiaries, we took a cordial farewell of our good hosts, and set out on our way. We soon reached the highest point of the pass (six thousand five hundred and ninety feet) and began the down grade with long swinging steps. This day, indeed, we could not afford to loiter very much, for we had a two o’clock train to catch at Brieg, fifteen miles away, and we must get our luncheon somewhere along the road in the meantime.
The scenery was pretty, even beautiful, but nowhere approaching grandeur on this day’s walk.
We caught that train—just, having run the last two blocks of the way, bought our tickets on the fly, and clambered aboard breathless and warm at the very last permissible moment. We felt quite pleased at the Americanness of our proceeding.
It was a very short ride to Visp, where we had to wait some time for the train to Zermatt. Here we were back in the Rhone valley, twenty odd miles below where we had left it at Ulrichen three days before! It was fairly palpitating with the heat that particular afternoon. In fact it seemed to be doing so whenever we met it.