Ladies who are fain to take their bath with daintiness and decency can repair to Baden with confidence, for they will be alone in the bath, which is like an elegant cabinet, light, with glazed windows, painted panelling, and clean flooring. Everywhere are chairs and small tables for reading or gaming while in the bath. The bather may empty and fill the bath as often as he likes, and will find a chamber adjoining. There are fine walks along the river, besides artificial ones under galleries. These baths are placed in a valley commanded by the slopes of high mountains, which nevertheless are fertile and well cultivated. The water when drunk tastes rather flat and soft, like water heated up, and there is a smell of sulphur about it, and a certain prickling flavour of salt. Amongst the people of the place it is chiefly used in the bath, in which they subject themselves also to cupping and bleeding, so that I have at times seen the water in the two public baths the colour of blood. Those who drink it by habit take a glass or two at the most. The guests as a rule stay six or seven weeks, and some or other frequent the baths all through the summer. No country sends so many visitors as Germany, from whence come great crowds.
The practice of bathing here is of high antiquity and is remarked by Tacitus,[42] who searched to the utmost to find the chief spring, but could get no knowledge thereof; but apparently the springs rise from a great depth below the level even of the river. The water is less clear than that of the other springs we have seen, and when drawn from the spring it shows certain minute fibres. Moreover, it contains no sparkling bubbles like other sulphurous waters when the glass is filled; like those of Spa, for instance, of which M. de Maldonat told us. M. de Montaigne took some of it on the Monday morning after we arrived, seven small glasses, and on the next day five large glasses, amounting to ten of the aforesaid. On this same day, Tuesday, at nine in the morning, while the others were at table, he took a bath and fell into a heavy sweat in bed afterwards, having stayed in the bath only half-an-hour. The people of the country, who stay all day in the bath playing and drinking, stand only up to the middle in water, but M. de Montaigne lay full length and was covered to the neck.[43]
On this day departed from the baths a certain Swiss gentleman, an excellent servant of our State, who all the day before had held converse with M. de Montaigne concerning Swiss affairs, and had shown him a letter which the French ambassador, son of our President du Harlay, had written from Souleure, where he was staying, committing to him the king’s interests while he himself should be absent. The ambassador had been summoned by the queen to meet her at Lyons, in order to devise some plan of checkmating the schemes of Spain and the late Duke of Savoy. The duke shortly before his death had allied himself with certain of the cantons, an alliance which our king had resisted, alleging that the cantons, being already pledged to him, could incur no fresh obligations without his leave. Some of the cantons, when this was pointed out to them by the Swiss gentleman aforesaid, drew back from the alliance. Indeed, all through this country they showed great respect and friendship to our king’s name and the utmost civility to ourselves. The Swiss gentleman had a train of four horses. His son, who is also in the king’s service, on one, a valet on another, his daughter, a tall, handsome girl, on another, with a horsecloth and footboard in French fashion, a trunk on the crupper, and a bonnet box on the saddle-bow, without any waiting-maid, though they were two long days’ journey from their abode, which is in a town where the gentleman aforesaid was the governor. He himself rode the remaining horse.
The common dress of the women does not seem to me so becoming as that usually worn in France, nor the headgear either. This is a bonnet, à la cognard, turned up before and behind, and having in front a slight peak enriched with stripes of silk and fur trimmings. The hair hangs down behind in a braid. If you should jestingly take off this bonnet—for it is lightly attached as with us—they will show no offence, and you will see the head quite uncovered. The younger women wear simple garlands in lieu of a bonnet. There is little difference of attire to make the distinction of classes, and the habit is to salute by kissing the hand, and by offering to touch the lady’s. Otherwise, if in passing you give a greeting and bow they will generally make no sign of acknowledgment, according to ancient usage, but some will bow the head slightly by way of returning the salutation. They are for the most part well-favoured women, tall, and fair.
As a nation they have an excellent disposition, even towards those who [do not][44] agree with them. M. de Montaigne, in order to make full trial of diverse manners and customs of the countries he visited, always conformed to local usage, however greatly such a usage may have irked him. Nevertheless, in Switzerland he said that he suffered no inconvenience except that he had at table, by way of napkin, only a piece of linen half a foot long: moreover, the Swiss themselves only unfold this napkin at dinner when many sauces and divers sorts of soup are served; but, on the other hand, they always provide as many wooden spoons with silver handles as there are guests. And a Swiss will always be provided with a knife with which he will eat everything, and never put his fingers in his plate.
In almost all the towns the proper arms of the place are displayed, and above them those of the Emperor and of the house of Austria, but the greater part of the towns have been detached from the archduke aforesaid by ill policy. They say that all members of the Austrian house, except the Catholic king, have been brought to great poverty, even the Emperor,[45] who is held very lightly in Germany. On the Wednesday the host bought a large quantity of fish, and being asked by M. de Montaigne the reason why, he replied that the greater part of the people of Baden ate fish on Wednesdays on religious grounds, a remark which confirmed what he had before heard on this subject: to wit, that those who have remained Catholics are confirmed in their faith by the fact that they have to reckon on an opposition. The host added, when division and religious strife shows itself in a particular town, and infects the governing body, the bond of good feeling is loosened, and the effect of this admixture is felt in individual families, as has been manifested in Augsburg and in the imperial cities. But when a town has one central government—and every Swiss town has its separate laws and administration, is dependent on its neighbours for the preservation of order, and keeps up alliance and union only for purposes affecting the whole community—those towns which possess special civic rights, with a separate civil government complete in all parts, find therein a support for their strengthening and upholding. Towns in this case undoubtedly become stronger, closing their ranks and recruiting their forces through the contagious shock of conflicts near at hand.
Their custom of warming the houses by stoves pleased us greatly, and none of our company complained thereof; for, after you have taken in a breath or two of the air which indeed may seem strange on entering a room, you are sensible only of a soft and regular heat. M. de Montaigne, who slept in a room with a stove, was loud in its praises, saying that all night he felt a pleasant moderate warmth. In warming yourself you burn neither your face nor your boots, and are free from the smoke of a French fireplace. At home we put on our warm furred dressing-gowns when we enter our apartments, but here people appear in doublet and bareheaded in the warm rooms, and put on thick garments before going into the air. On the Thursday M. de Montaigne drank the same quantity of water, which acted well and rid him of a small amount of gravel. Still, he found these waters more powerful than any others which he had ever tried—whether from the strength of the water itself or from the present habit of his body—and accordingly he drank them more sparingly.
On this same Thursday he held discourse with a minister from Zürich, a native of that city, and heard from him that the religion there was formerly Zwinglian, but that now it had come nearer to Calvinism, a somewhat milder creed. Being questioned as to predestination, he replied that they kept the mean between Geneva and Augsburg, but that their people were free to debate this question. For his own part he inclined rather to the side of Zwingli, praising him highly as one who came the nearest to primitive Christianity.
On Friday, October 7th, at seven in the morning, after breakfast, we quitted Baden; and, before we set out, M. de Montaigne drank the same quantity of the water as he had taken on five previous occasions. With regard to the operation of the same, concerning which he was more sanguine than he was in the case of any other bath he had visited (both as to the bathing and the drinking), he was free in his praise of these baths beyond all the rest, not only because the place itself, and the baths and the private apartments, are comfortably and conveniently managed, but also because, in all apartments, visitors are always able to go to their own rooms without passing through the rooms of other people. Moreover, persons of small means may find quarters to suit them quite as easily as those who are rich. Bathrooms, kitchens, cabinets, and chapels may be hired for a large retinue, and at the house adjacent to our own, the Cour de la Ville—ours being the Cour de derrière—there are public apartments belonging to the cantonal authorities, and occupied by lodgers. This same house has several chimneys built in French fashion, and there are stoves in all the chief apartments. The demand for payment from strangers is a little arbitrary, as in all countries and notably in our own. Four furnished chambers, with nine beds in all, two of which had stoves and one bath besides, cost us a crown a day for the masters, and for the servants four batzen:[46] that is to say, a little more than nine sous apiece; the horses cost six batzen, about four sous, but in addition to this they added certain nonsensical charges which were not customary. A guard is kept in the town and even in the bath quarter, which is nothing but a village, and every night two sentinels make the round of the houses, not so much to keep off the foe, as for fear of fire or other disturbance. When the hour strikes one of them is bound to cry out at the top of his voice to the other, and ask what is the hour, whereupon the other in like manner tells him the hour, and adds that he is keeping good watch. The women do their washing in the open in the public place, bringing out their little wooden tubs to the river side where they heat water and do their work excellently; they also clean the earthenware far better than do our French women in the inns. Here each chambermaid and each valet has a special charge.
One disadvantage of travel is that with ever so great diligence it is impossible for a stranger to ascertain from the people of the country whom he may meet—I speak of the cultivated folk as well as the vulgar—what objects of interest may be worthy of a visit, and to make them understand what he may ask. I write thus because, after we had spent five days at Baden, and had inquired curiously concerning everything there which might be worth seeing, we were told naught about a certain object of interest which we saw by chance afterwards as we were leaving the town. This was a stone, about the height of a man, apparently a portion of some column, without adornment or workmanship, placed at the angle of a house, and easily visible to any passer-by on the high-road. There was a Latin inscription, which I was not able to decipher fully, but it seemed to be a simple dedication to the Emperors Nerva and Trajan. We crossed the Rhine at Kaiserstuhl, a Catholic town and allied to the Swiss, and onward thence we traversed a fine flat country until we came to some rapids where the river is broken up by rocks, which they call cataracts, like those of the Nile. And below Schaffhausen there is in the Rhine a gulf full of vast rocks where it becomes rapid, and farther down, amongst the same rocks, it comes to a fall of two pikes’ length, where it makes a mighty leap, foaming and roaring marvellously. This fall stops the boats, and interrupts the navigation of the river. We travelled four leagues at a stretch, and came in time for supper to Schaffhausen.