"Madame admires the mountains," she said.
I assented.
"Yes," she added, "strangers always admire our mountains."
"And don't you admire them?" said I, looking, I suppose, rather amused into her bright eyes.
"No," she said, laughing. "Strangers come from hundreds of miles to see them all the time; but we peasants don't care for them, no more than the dust of the road."
I could but half believe the bright little puss when she said so; but there was a lumpish, soggy fellow accompanying her, whose nature appeared to be sufficiently unleavened to make almost any thing credible in the line of stupidity. In fact, it is one of the greatest drawbacks to the pleasure with which one travels through this beautiful country, to see what kind of human beings inhabit it. Here in the Alps, heaven above and earth beneath, tree, rock, water, light and shadow, every form, and agent, and power of nature, seem to be exerting themselves to produce a constant and changing poem and romance; every thing is grand, noble, free, and yet beautiful: in all these regions there is nothing so repulsive as a human dwelling.
A little further on we stopped at a village to refresh the horses. The auberge where we stopped was built like a great barn, with an earth floor, desolate and comfortless. The people looked poor and ground down, as if they had not a thought above the coarsest animal wants. The dirty children, with their hair tangled beyond all hope of combing, had the begging whine, and the trick of raising their hands for money, when one looked at them, which is universal in the Catholic parts of Switzerland. Indeed, all the way from the Sardinian frontier we had been dogged by beggars continually. Parents seemed to look upon their children as valuable only for this purpose; the very baby in arms is taught to make a pitiful little whine, and put out its fat hand, if your eye rests on it. The fact is, they are poor—poor because invention, enterprise, and intellectual vigor—all that surrounds the New England mountain farmer with competence and comfort—are quenched and dead, by the combined influence of a religion and government whose interest it is to keep people stupid that they may be manageable. Yet the Savoyards, as a race, it seems to me, are naturally intelligent; and I cannot but hope that the liberal course lately adopted by the Sardinian government may at last reach them. My heart yearns over many of the bright, pretty children, whose little hands have been up, from time to time, around our carriage. I could not help thinking what good schools and good instruction might do for them. It is not their fault, poor little things, that they are educated to whine and beg, and grow up rude, uncultured, to bring forth another set of children just like themselves; but what to do with them is the question. One generally begins with giving money; but a day or two of experience shows that it would be just about as hopeful to feed the locusts of Egypt on a loaf of bread. But it is hard to refuse children, especially to a mother who has left five or six at home, and who fancies she sees, in some of these little eager, childish faces, something now and then that reminds her of her own. For my part, I got schooled so that I could stand them all, except the little toddling three-year olds—they fairly overcame me. So I supplied my pocket with a quantity of sugar lozenges, for the relief of my own mind. I usually found the little fellows looked exceedingly delighted when they discovered the nature of the coin. Children are unsophisticated, and like sugar better than silver, any day.
In this auberge was a little chamois kid, of which fact we were duly apprised, when we got out, by a board put up, which said, "Here one can see a live chamois." The little live representative of chamoisdom came skipping out with the most amiable unconsciousness, and went through his paces for our entertainment with as much propriety as a New England child says his catechism. He hopped up on a table after some green leaves, which were then economically used to make him hop down again. The same illusive prospect was used to make him jump over a stick, and perform a number of other evolutions. I could not but admire the sweetness of temper with which he took all this tantalizing, and the innocence with which he chewed his cabbage leaf after he got it, not harboring a single revengeful thought at us for the trouble we had given him. Of course the issue of the matter was, that we all paid a few sous for the sight—not to the chamois, which would have been the most equitable way, but to those who had appropriated his gifts and graces to eke out their own convenience.
"Where's his mother?" said I, desiring to enlarge my sphere of natural history as much as possible.
"On a tué sa mere"—"They have killed his mother," was the reply, cool enough.