Upon the second floor are the “family rooms,” the Duke’s bed-chamber and the boudoir of the Duchess. This last is not large, and so badly-lighted, that she must have required candles on the toilette-table, except in the brightest weather. The walls are covered with what masons style a “scratch-coat” of mortar. It was hung with tapestry when Chillon was a ducal palace. This boudoir is immediately above the chamber of torture. When we exclaimed at the proximity, the girl explained, naïvely, that their Highnesses did not live here all the year, having other residences. Probably, the operation of rack, spiked helmet and collar, thumb-screw and scourging-post was subject to the convenience of the Duchess. All the same, we wondered how she slept with but the plank flooring between her and what she knew of, down there.
The window of her room frames a superb view, on fine days, of the “wide, long lake,” the towering heights of the Savoy side, and the “small, green isle” with its three trees. Looking out of it, now, we saw only the water darkening under the wreathing mists that had chased us all the way from Nyon, and ruffled by the wind. In the spacious Knight’s Hall to which we went next, we could barely discern the stains on the walls that were once frescos, and make out the design of the carved mantel around the mighty-mouthed chimney-place. The windows are all toward the lake and deeply recessed, with broad inner ledges. Within one of these embrasures we sat, gazing upon the slowly-gathering storm, and listening to the “knocking”—Byron used the right word,—of the sullen waves, our little Savoyard attending motionless upon our pleasure. We were going no further than Montreux that night, and our carriage would wait. We would see—we did see—Chillon upon brighter days and in merrier company. It suited us to linger and dream, in the weird twilight, of what had been in the isolated stronghold,—of what, pray Heaven! could never be again.
The girl brought a lamp to guide us to the Duke’s private chapel. The altar is gone, but the choristers’ seats of carved oak are left. Benches are disposed in orderly rows for the Protestant service, held here twice in the month. Chillon Castle is still a prison,—a cantonal penitentiary,—in plainer English—a county jail. Upon each alternate Sabbath, the inmates are gathered into the chapel, and one of the neighborhood pastors ministers to them.
In the court-yard we stopped to gather some yellow-blossomed moss sprouting between the stones, and our Savoyard damsel added to my bouquet of prison-flowers, scarlet and brown leaves from the woodbine running rankly over the tower in which is the torture-chamber. She stood upon the drawbridge as we drove away, a stalwart young turnkey at her side,—who, by the way, had narrowly missed locking us into the lower cells by mistake. Her smiling face, red bodice and white apron were the only spots of brightness in the gray-and-black picture of the frowning fortress, close-folded in the mists and the rolling glooms of the water.
We thought of the Marguerites in the dungeon.
FINIS.
A NEW VOLUME
In the “Common Sense in the Household” Series.
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THE DINNER YEAR-BOOK.