The morning after our coming, we had breakfast—our last meal together—on the first floor in a pentagonal room approached from a lower level by three little steps. In it is a ponderous oak table pierced with a multitude of worm eaten tunnels, also three mighty high backed chairs, an old oak desk covered still with papers, arras on the walls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a grandfathers clock: it is at about the middle of the château, and contains two small, but deep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with white stone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edge of the island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tiny island containing four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shore of the lake interrupted by the mouths of a river which turned out to be the Rhone, then upon a white town on the slopes which turned out to be Villeneuve, then upon the great mountains back of Bouveret and St. Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a resurrection just completed, everything new washed in dyes of azure, ultramarine, indigo, snow, emerald, that fresh morning: so that one had to call it the best and holiest place in the world. These five old room walls, and oak floor, and two oriels, became specially mine, though it was really common ground to us both, and there I would do many little things. The papers on the desk told that it had been the bureau of one R.E. Gaud, 'Grand Bailli,' whose residence the place no doubt had been.
She asked me while eating that morning to stay here, and I said that I would see, though with misgiving: so together we went all about the house, and finding it unexpectedly spacious, I consented to stop. At both ends are suites, mostly small rooms, infinitely quaint and cosy, furnished with heavy Henri Quatre furniture and bed draperies; and there are separate, and as it were secret, spiral stairs for exit to each: so we decided that she should have the suite overlooking the length of the lake, the mouths of the Rhone, Bouveret and Villeneuve; and I should have that overlooking the spit of land behind and the little drawbridge, shore cliffs, and elmwood which comes down to the shore, giving at one point a glimpse of the diminutive hamlet of Chillon; and, that decided, I took her hand in mine, and I said:
'Well, then, here we stay, both under the same roof—for the first time. Leda, I will not explain why to you, but it is dangerous, so much so that it may mean the death of one or other of us: deadly, deadly dangerous, my poor girl. You do not understand, but that is the fact, believe me, for I know it very well, and I would not tell you false. Well, then, you will easily comprehend, that this being so, you must never on any account come near my part of the house, nor will I come near yours. Lately we have been very much together, but then we have been active, full of purpose and occupation: here we shall be nothing of the kind, I can see. You do not understand at all—but things are so. We must live perfectly separate lives, then. You are nothing to me, really, nor I to you, only we live on the same earth, which is nothing at all—a mere chance. Your own food, clothes, and everything that you want, you will procure for yourself: it is perfectly easy: the shores are crowded with mansions, castles, towns and villages; and I will do the same for myself. The motor down there I set apart for your private use: if I want another, I will get one; and to-day I will set about looking you up a boat and fishing tackle, and cut a cross on the bow of yours, so that you may know yours, and never use mine. All this is very necessary: you cannot dream how much: but I know how much. Do not run any risks in climbing, now, or with the motor, or in the boat ... little Leda ...'
I saw her under-lip push, and I turned away in haste, for I did not care whether she cried or not. In that long voyage, and in my illness at Venice, she had become too near and dear to me, my tender love, my dear darling soul; and I said in my heart: 'I will be a decent being: I will turn out trumps.'
Under this castle is a sort of dungeon, not narrow, nor very dark, in which are seven stout dark-grey pillars, and an eighth, half-built into the wall; and one of them which has an iron ring, as well as the ground around it, is all worn away by some prisoner or prisoners once chained there; and in the pillar the word 'Byron' engraved. This made me remember that a poet of that name had written something about this place, and two days afterwards I actually came upon three volumes of the poet in a room containing a great number of books, many of them English, near the Grand Bailli's bureau: and in one I read the poem, which is called 'The Prisoner of Chillon.' I found it very affecting, and the description good, only I saw no seven rings, and where he speaks of the 'pale and livid light,' he should speak rather of the dun and brownish gloom, for the word 'light' disconcerts the fancy, and of either pallor or blue there is there no sign. However, I was so struck by the horror of man's cruelty to man, as depicted in this poem, that I determined that she should see it; went up straight to her rooms with the book, and, she being away, ferreted among her things to see what she was doing, finding all very neat, except in one room where were a number of prints called La Mode, and débris of snipped cloth, and medley. When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly presented myself, 'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I took her down through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, with revolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets—evidently some official or cantonal magazine—and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon, the ring, the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale of cruelty, while the splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heard with a strange and tragic sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow.
'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her face at the same time reddened with indignation.
'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising if monsters were cruel.'
And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with a new-born smile.
'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she.