ÉVIAN
Another property once belonging to the same proprietor, and known as the Manoir de Blonay, a name continually recurring in the annals of the Chablais, is to be noted beyond the town, near the little village of Maxilly.
Beyond Évian is “La Tour Ronde,” a name given to a structure on the edge of the lake. The nomenclature explains itself. A dismantled donjon of the conventional build rises grim and militant among a serried row of coquettish villas, chalets and hotels, but uncouth as it is, using the word in a liberal sense, it forms a contrasting note which redounds to its benefit as compared with the latest craze for fantastic building which has been incorporated into many of the houses which line the shores of the lake. Your modern tourist often cares as much for an armoured cement, green tiled villa with a plaster cat on its ridge pole as he does for a great square manoir of classic outline, or a donjon with a chemin de rond at its sky line and a half-lowered portcullis at its entrance.
Meillerie, just beyond the Tour Ronde, is ever under the glamour cast over it by Jean Jacques Rousseau. A souvenir of the hero of “La Nouvelle Heloise” is here, the vestiges of the grotto where Saint Preux sought a refuge. As a sight it may compare favourably with other grottos of its class, but that is not saying that it is anything remarkable.
CHAPTER XIX
THE MOUNTAIN BACKGROUND OF SAVOY
“LA SAVOIE,” say the French, is “La Suisse Française,” and indeed it is, as anyone can see and appreciate. With respect to topography, climate and nearly all else this is true. And its historic souvenirs, if sometimes less romantic, are more definite and far more interesting, in spite of the fact that the sentimentally inclined have not as yet overrun the region; it may with confidence be said that they have not even discovered it.