Loitering in Pleasant Paths

by Marion Harland

The air was still cool, as was natural in the last week of September, but as exhilarating as iced champagne. Respiration became suddenly easy, and motion, impulse, not duty. We walked up the Quai Eaux Vives to the first breakwater that checks the too-heavy roll of the waves in stormy weather; watched the wondrous, witching sheen of ultramarine and emerald and pearly bands upon the blue lake; down the broad quay by the English Gardens, through streets of maddening shop-windows, a brilliant display of all that most surely coaxes money from women’s pockets;—jewelry, mosaics, laces, carvings in wood and in ivory, photographs, music-boxes,—a distracting medley, showed to best advantage by the crystalline atmosphere. We crossed to Rousseau’s Island in the middle of the lake by a short chain-bridge attaching it to the Pont des Bergues, and fed the swans who live, eat and sleep upon the water; marked the point where the Rhone shoots in arrowy flight from the crescent-shaped lake to its marriage with the slower Arve below the city. Thence, we wound by way of the Corraterie, a busy street, formerly a fosse, to the Botanical Gardens; skirted the Bastions from which the Savoyards were thrown headlong at the midnight surprise of the “Escalade,”—and were in the “Old Town.” This is an enchanting tangle of narrow, excursive streets, going up and down by irregular flights of stone steps; of antique houses with bulging upper stories and hanging balconies and archways, and courts with fountains where women come to draw water and stay to gossip and look picturesque, in dark, full skirts, red boddices and snowy caps. We passed between the National Cathedral of St. Pierre and the plain church where Père Hyacinthe preached every Sabbath to crowds who admired his eloquence and had no sympathy with his chimerical Reformed Catholicism; along more steep streets into a newer quarter, built up with handsome mansions,—across an open space, climbed a long staircase and were upon the hill on which stands the new Russian Church.

It is a diminutive fabric, made the most of by a gilded dome and four gilt minarets, and by virtue of its situation, contrives to look twice as big as it is, and almost half as large as the old Cathedral which dates from 1024.

Geneva was below us, and diverging from it in every direction, like veins from a heart, were series of villas, châteaux and humbler homes, separated and environed by groves, pleasure-grounds and hedge-rows. The laughing lake, which seldom wears the same expression for an hour at a time, was dotted with boats that had not ventured out of harbor while the wind-storm prevailed. Most of these carried the pretty lateen sail. The illusion of these “goose-winged” barques is perfect and beautiful, especially when a gentle swell of the waves imparts to them the flutter of birds just dipping into, or rising from the surface;—birds statelier than the swans, more airy than the grebe circling above and settling down upon the Pierres du Niton. These are two flat boulders near the shore whereon tradition says Julius Cæsar once sacrificed to Neptune,—probably to propitiate the genius of the bise. Across the water and the strip of level country, a few miles in breadth, were the Juras, older than the Alps, but inferior in grandeur, their crests already powdered with snow. On our side of the lake behind town and ambitious little church,—outlying campagnes (country-seats) and dozens of villages, arose the dark, horizontal front of the Saléve. It is the barrier that excludes from Geneva the view of the chain of Alps visible from its summit. Mont Blanc overtops it, and, to the left of its gleaming dome, the Aiguilles du Midi pierce the sky. Others of the “Mont Blanc Group” succeed, carrying on the royal line as far as the unaided eye can reach. Between these and the city rises the Mole, a rugged pyramid projecting boldly from the plain.

Chamouny, the Mer de Glace, Martigny, Lausanne, Vevay, Chillon, Coppet, Ferney! To all these Geneva was the key. And in itself it was so fair!

We talked less confidently of Italian journeyings, as we descended the hill; more doubtfully with each day of fine weather and rapidly-returning strength. Still, we had no definite purpose of wintering in Geneva, contrary to the advice of physicians and friends. It was less by our own free will than in consequence of a chain of coincident events, which would be tedious in the telling, that December saw us, somewhat to our astonishment, settled in the “Pension Magnenat,” studying and working as systematically as if Italy were three thousand watery miles away.

That a benignant Providence detained us six months in this place we recognize cheerfully and thankfully. I question if Life has in reserve for us another half-year as care-free and as evenly happy. There are those who rate Geneva as “insufferably slow;” the “stupidest town on the Continent,” “devoid of society except a mélée of Arabs, or the stiffest of exclusive cliques.” Our American “clique” may have been exceptionally congenial that year, but it supplied all we craved, or had leisure to enjoy of social intercourse. Foreigners who remain there after the middle of December, do so with an object. The facilities for instruction in languages, music and painting are excellent. Lectures, scientific and literary, are given throughout the season by University professors and other savans. The prices of board and lessons are moderate, and—an important consideration with us and other families of like views and habits—Sabbath-school and church were easy of access and well-conducted.

There were no “crush” parties, and had they been held nightly, our young people were too busy with better things to attend them. But what with music and painting-classes; German and French “evenings;” reading-clubs in the English classics; the “five o’clock tea” served every afternoon in our salon for all who would come, and of which we never partook alone; what with Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas merry-making, when our rooms were bowers of holly and such luxuriant mistletoe as we have never seen elsewhere; with New Year Reception and birth-day “surprise;” daily walks in company, and, occasionally a good concert, our happy-family-hood grew and flourished until each accepted his share in it as the shelter of his own vine and fig-tree. We were a lively coterie, even without the divertissements of the parties of pleasure we got up among ourselves to Coppet, Ferney, Chillon and the Saléve. Shall we ever again have such pic-nics as those we made to the top of the Grand Saléve—our observatory-mountain, driving out to the base in strong, open wagons, then ascending on foot or on donkeys?

There are those who will read this page with smiles chastened by tender thoughts of vanished joys, as one by one, the salient features of those holiday excursions recur to mind. Donkeys that would not go, and others that would not stop. The insensate oaf of a driver who walked far ahead of the straggling procession and paid no attention to the calls of bewildered women. The volunteer squad of the stronger sex who strode between the riders and the precipice, and beat back the beasts when they sheered dangerously close to the edge. The gathering of the whole company for rest and survey of the valley, at the stone cross half-way up. The explorations of straggling couples in quest of “short cuts” to the crown of the upper hill, and their return to the main road by help of the bits of paper they had attached to twigs on their way into the labyrinth of brushwood and stones. Who of us can forget the luncheons eaten under the three forlorn trees that feigned to shade the long, low hut on the summit? When, no matter how liberal our provision, something always gave out before the onward rush of appetites quickened by the keen air? How we devoured black bread bought in the Châlet where we had our coffee boiled, and thought it sweeter than Vienna rolls! Do you remember—friends belovéd—now so sadly and widely sundered—the basket of dried thistles proffered gravely, on one occasion, and to whom, when the cry for “bread” was unseemly in vociferation and repetition? And that, when our hunger was appeased, we, on a certain spring day, roamed over the breast of the mighty mount, gathering gentians, yellow violets, orchis and scraggy sprays of hawthorn, sweet with flowers, until tired and happy, we all sat down on the moss-cushions of the highest rocks, and looked at Mont Blanc—so near and yet so far,—stern, pure, impassive,—and hearkened to the cuckoo’s song?

I know, moreover, because I recollect it all so well, that you have not forgotten the as dear delights of talking over scene and adventure and mishap—comic, and that only in the rehearsal,—on the next rainy afternoon. When we circled about the wood-fire, tea-cups in hand, raking open the embers and laying on more fuel that we might see each others’ faces, yet not be obliged to light the lamps while we could persuade ourselves that it was still the twilight-hour. We kept no written record of the merry sayings and witty repartees and “capital” stories of those impromptu conversaziones, but they are all stored up in our memories,—other, and holier passages of our intercourse, where they will be yet more faithfully kept—in our hearts.