Chapter XII.
The Castle of Chillon.
The party of boys walked along the road very pleasantly together, each one with his knapsack on his back and his pikestaff in his hand. Rollo talked with them by the way—with some in English, and with others in French; but inasmuch as it happened that whichever language was used, one or the other of the parties to the conversation was very imperfectly acquainted with it, the conversation was necessarily carried on by means of very short and simple sentences, and the meaning was often helped out by signs, and gestures, and curious pantomime of all sorts, with an accompaniment, of course, of continual peals of laughter.
Rollo, however, learned a good deal about the boys, and about the arrangements they made for travelling, and also learned a great many particulars in respect to the adventures they had met with in coming over the mountains.
Rollo learned, for example, that every boy had a fishing line in his knapsack, and that when they got tired of walking, and wished to stop to rest, if there was a good place, they stopped and fished a little while in a mountain stream or a lake.
Another thing they did was to watch for butterflies, in order to catch any new species that they might find, to add to the teacher's cabinet of natural history. For this purpose one of the boys had a gauze net on the end of a long but light handle; and when a butterfly came in sight that seemed at all curious or new, one of the boys set off with the rest to catch him. If the specimen was found valuable, it was preserved. The specimens thus kept were secured with a pin in the bottom of a broad, but flat and very light box, which one of the older boys carried with his knapsack. The boy opened this box, and showed Rollo the butterflies which they had taken. They had quite a pretty collection. There were several that Rollo did not recollect ever to have seen before.
Talking in this way, they went on till they came to the part of the road which was opposite to the Hotel Byron. The hotel was on an eminence above the road, and back from the lake. Broad gravelled avenues led up to it. There were also winding walks, and seats under the trees, and terraces, and gardens, and parties of ladies and gentlemen walking about, and children playing here and there, under the charge of their nurses.