If I am disposed to dwell at unreasonable length upon details that seem vapid and irrelevant to any other readers, I cry them, “pardon.” The lapse may be overlooked in one whose life cannot show many such peaceful seasons; to whom the time and opportunity to renew health and youth beside such still waters had not been granted in two decades.
Rome was rest. Geneva was recuperation. I have likened the air of Switzerland to iced champagne. But the buoyancy begotten by it had no reaction: the vigor was stable. I had not quite appreciated this fact when, at Lucerne, I talked with fair tourists from my own land who “would have died of fatigue,” if compelled to walk a couple of miles, at home, yet boasted, and truly, of having tramped up the Rigi and back—a distance of three leagues. But when I walked upon my own feet into Geneva after an afternoon at Ferney, and experienced no evil effects from the feat, we began to discredit scientific analyses, dealing with the preponderance of ozone in the atmosphere, and to revert to tales of fountains of perpetual youth and the Elixir of Life.
The town of Ferney is a mean village four miles-and-a-half from Geneva, and over the French frontier. The château is half-a-mile further;—a square, two-storied house set in extensive and handsome grounds, gardens, lawn, park and wood. It is now the property of a French gentleman who uses it as a country-seat, his chief residence being in Paris. A liveried footman opened the gate at the clang of the bell and showed two apartments that remain as Voltaire left them. These are on the first floor, the entrance-hall, or salon, being the largest. The floor is of polished wood inlaid in a cubic pattern. An immense stove of elaborate workmanship stands against the left wall; a monument of black and gray marble in a niche to the right. A tablet above the urn on the top of this odd construction is inscribed:—
“Mon esprit est partout,
Mon cœur est ici.”
Below is the very French legend:—“Mes manes sont consolés, puisque mon cœur est au milieu de vous.”
“The stove of Voltaire! His monument!” pronounced the servant in slow, distinct accents.
“But his heart is not really there?”
“But no, monsieur. He is interred in Paris. Madame comprehends that this is only an epitaph.”
Inferentially,—a lie.