"Clarens! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love!"
which Sir Edward Bridges pronounces "exquisite." Yet not the natural beauty of Clarens itself—
"'tis lone,
And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound,
And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone
Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a throne"
—nor the associations with Rousseau and Byron, could save this "little nook of mountain ground" from being sacrificed to the dictates of a thoughtless and idle fashion. "You have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva."
One is glad indeed that the famous Castle of Chillon, with which we must now conclude our perambulation of the north shore of the lake, and the little walled town of Villeneuve, which now, however, notwithstanding its name, seems ancient and venerable indeed in comparison with this gay modernity that pulsates at its doors, should lie just beyond the limit of this land of ruined Edens, and should thus restore us to the right mood in which to take farewell of the Lake of Geneva. Chillon is far from the finest castle, considered merely as a building, in Switzerland (an honour due to Vufflens), nor, in fact, is it even the most beautifully situated (an honour surely due to the crag-perched residence of the old Bishop-Princes of the Valais on the towering rock of Sion). Its chief curiosity of site is the immense depth of water that lies immediately below its walls, which is sometimes said (I cannot vouch for so astonishing a statement) to have been "fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure"—
"Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement;"
but it is due neither to its value as a specimen of military architecture, nor to its charm of situation, nor to this marvel of subterraneous precipice, that Chillon maintains the extended reputation that renders it perhaps the most visited and best known of all the many famous castles of the world. Its cult is rather due to its association with Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," which was written, as we have seen, in the old Ancre Inn at Ouchy in the short course of a couple of days in 1816. Byron himself has entitled this a "fable," and it has certainly little or nothing to do with the historical Bonnivard, who was certainly imprisoned here for six years, between 1530 and 1536, but was released in the latter year, and subsequently became a Protestant, and married four wives in succession! Byron, however, in the last six lines of another poem—the "Sonnet on Chillon"—has paid a stately tribute to the actual Bonnivard, which will be recalled with interest in the striking, half-subterranean dungeon in which he was confined for more than four years of his captivity:
"Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar—for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if the cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God."
I do not know whether these footmarks are still visible, or, indeed, were ever visible; but if we choose to imagine them—Bonnivard was chained to the fifth pillar from the entrance—we shall not do much amiss. At least it would be better thus to err on the side of imagination than to imitate the English lady of whom Byron complained when he visited Chillon, not for the first time, on September 18, 1816, that he met her on his return fast asleep in her carriage—"fast asleep in the most anti-narcotic spot in the world."