The women dress in a distinct, but perhaps not otherwise very remarkable, manner, save that an occasional “Turk’s-Head” turban is seen, quite as Oriental as the culotte of the men. A blend of Spain, of Arabia, of Persia and of Turkey could not present a costume more droll than that of the “Chizerots,” as these people are known.
Another petit pays, and one of the most remarkably disposed, politically, of all the old provinces which go to make up modern France, is what is known even to-day as the Pays de Gex. It belonged successively to the house of Joinville, to the Comté de Savoie and to the States of Berne and Geneva. The Duc de Savoie, by the treaty of 1601, ceded it to France, but a strip is still neutral ground for both Switzerland and France, which by common accord allows Geneva full access to the territory in order to establish its communications with Swiss territory on the west and south shores of Lac Leman, particularly to that region beyond Saint-Gingolphe.
The name Gex is evolved from the Latin Gesium, the capital of a kingdom owning but a length of six leagues and a width of about half as much. The Bernese and the Genevois conquered it in turn, and to-day its personality is nil except that one recalls it as the head centre for the trade in Gruyère cheese, the kind which we commonly call Swiss cheese. It is in the Pays de Gex, on the railway line from Gex to Geneva, that one notes the name of Fernay and endeavours to recall for just what it stands. At last it comes to one. Fernay possesses a literary shrine of note that all who pass this way may well remember. The wonder is that one did not recall it with less effort.
The whole town is virtually a monument to Voltaire. It was he who built the town, practically; that is, he furnished the land and the means to erect many of the meaner houses which surround the chateau which he came himself to inhabit, and from which, for a time, the rays of his brilliant wit were shed over the whole literary world of the eighteenth century.
After his flight from Berlin, Voltaire, the Seigneur de Fernay, founded Fernay, within six kilometres of the frontier and Geneva, and sought to attract Swiss watch-makers thither that a similar industry might there be established on French soil. Surely Voltaire was more of a benefactor of his race than he is usually considered.
The Voltaire manor, or chateau, albeit that it is nothing grandly monumental, still exists with
