HOTEL BYRON.
MY DEAR:—
Here I am, sitting at my window, overlooking Lake Leman. Castle Chillon, with its old conical towers, is silently pictured in the still waters. It has been a day of a thousand. We took a boat, with two oarsmen, and passed leisurely along the shores, under the cool, drooping branches of trees, to the castle, which is scarce a stone's throw from the hotel. We rowed along, close under the walls, to the ancient moat and drawbridge. There I picked a bunch of blue bells, "les clochettes," which were hanging their aerial pendants from every crevice—some blue, some white.
[Illustration: of blue bell flowers with sharp-bladed leaves.]
I know not why the old buildings and walls in Europe have this vivacious habit of shooting out little flowery ejaculations and soliloquies at every turn. One sees it along through France and Switzerland, every where; but never, that I remember, in America.
On the side of the castle wall, in a large white heart, is painted the inscription, Liberté et Patrie!
We rowed along, almost touching the castle rock, where the wall ascends perpendicularly, and the water is said to be a thousand feet deep. We passed the loopholes that illuminate the dungeon vaults, and an old arch, now walled up, where prisoners, after having been strangled, were thrown into the lake.
Last evening we walked over the castle. An interesting Swiss woman, who has taught herself English for the benefit of her visitors, was our cicerone. She seemed to have all the old Swiss vivacity of attachment for "liberté et patrie."
[Illustration: of a interior space of hewn stone with high vaulted gothic arches.]
She took us first into the dungeon, with the seven pillars, described by Byron. There was the pillar to which, for protecting the liberty of Geneva, BONNEVARD was chained. There the Duke of Savoy kept him for six years, confined by a chain four feet long. He could take only three steps, and the stone floor is deeply worn by the prints of those weary steps. Six years is so easily said; but to live them, alone, helpless, a man burning with all the fires of manhood, chained to that pillar of stone, and those three unvarying steps! Two thousand one hundred and ninety days rose and set the sun, while seedtime and harvest, winter and summer, and the whole living world went on over his grave. For him no sun, no moon, no star, no business, no friendship, no plans—nothing! The great millstone of life emptily grinding itself away!