They are good cooks, of fish especially. In fine weather or in storm their houses have no other protection from the weather than bare glass windows without wooden shutters. The houses are well windowed and very light, both below and in the chambers, the windows being rarely closed even at night. Their service at table differs greatly from ours. They never mix water with their wine, and they are justified in this practice, for their wines are so thin that our gentlemen found them less potent than those of Gascony when diluted. They are, however, very light and delicate.
The body-servants dine either at their master’s table or at one close by, one valet being enough to attend to the high table, seeing that each gentleman has always his own goblet or silver cup beside him, wherefore the servant only needs to fill this as soon as it may be empty, without moving it. For this purpose they use a vessel of pewter or wood with a long spout. As to the meat, they serve only two or three dishes thereof, cut in slices. Unlike our fashion, they serve in the same dish divers sorts of well-dressed meats; sometimes indeed they bring to table one course with the other, using certain appliances of iron made with long legs, in which they carry one dish above and one below. Some of their tables are round and some square, but all are very wide, so that it is very difficult to place the dishes thereon. The valet, however, can easily manage dishes arranged as above named, letting them follow, two by two, up to six or seven changes.
A fresh dish is never served till the foregoing one shall have been finished; and as to the plates, as soon as the service of viands has come to an end and the dessert is ready, the valet puts on the table a large wicker basket on a vessel of painted wood into which the chief person present first puts his plate; the others follow suit, the order of rank being closely observed. The valet removes this vessel without difficulty, and then serves the fruit in two dishes all mixed together like the other courses. At this stage they often serve radishes, and with your roast meat you will most likely have been offered cooked pears. Amongst other edibles they give a high place to the crayfish, and honour it by serving it in a covered dish, a tribute they pay to hardly any other viand. The whole country abounds in these fish, and they are served every day, and rated as a delicacy.
They take no care to wash on sitting down or on rising from table. Most people go to a little laver, set in a corner of the room as in a monastery. In most places they use wooden plates and pots, clean and white as they can be made; but in some they set on the wooden plates others of pewter, until they serve the fruit, for which wood is always used. They serve this wooden ware only from custom, for in the same houses where it is seen they give their guests silver goblets in any quantity. They clean and polish their wooden furniture with great care and even the boards of their chambers. The beds are so high that steps are generally needed to mount the same, and nearly everywhere small beds are placed beside the large ones.
Seeing that they are such excellent smiths, nearly all their spits are made to revolve by springs, or by weights like clocks, or even by wooden fans fixed in the chimney and made to turn by the draught of the smoke and the vapour of the fire. These appliances cause the roast to revolve gently and slowly. They over-roast their meat somewhat. These smoke-jacks[35] are only worked in large hostelries which burn great fires, as at Baden, and they turn at a uniform and steady pace. After leaving Lorrenne we found the chimneys built in a fashion different from ours. They build up the hearths in the middle or in the corner of the kitchen, using almost the entire width of the place for the chimney flue. This is a vast opening seven or eight paces square, which becomes narrower as it rises to the top of the house. This structure gives them the chance to place in position their large wheel, which, in chimneys built like ours, would occupy so much room in the flue that the smoke would not be able to find a passage. The lightest repasts last three or four hours, because of the method of service aforesaid, and in sooth these people eat vastly more leisurely than we do, and in more healthful manner. There is everywhere abundance of provisions, of flesh and fish, and every table is sumptuously spread—at least this was our experience. On Fridays no flesh is served, and report says that in these parts the people willingly abstain therefrom entirely, the practice of fasting being similar to that in France round about Paris. As a rule they give their horses more fodder than they can eat. We travelled four leagues and arrived in time for bed at Hornes.
This is a small village in the duchy of Austria. On the morrow, as it was Sunday, we went to Mass, and observed that in church the women sat on the left-hand side of the church and the men on the right, without mixing. The women have several rows of seats, set reversed, one behind the other, of a convenient height for sitting, and upon these they kneel, and not upon the ground, wherefore they seem to be upright. The men have also pieces of wood in front of them to lean upon, and they only kneel upon the chairs which are in front of them. Instead of joining the hands as we do at the elevation, they stretch them out apart, and open and keep them thus raised until the priest exhibits the pyx. They assigned to M. d’Estissac and M. de Montaigne the third bench on the men’s side, while those of less worship in our company were afterwards given seats amongst the lesser folk; and the same on the women’s side. It seemed to us that the front rows were not held in the highest honour. The interpreter and guide whom we engaged at Basle, a sworn messenger of the city, went to the Mass with us, and showed by his carriage that he had come there with great longing and devout feeling. After dinner we crossed the river Arat[36] to Broug, a fair little town belonging to the seigniory of Berne, and beyond that we went to see an abbey which Queen Catherine of Hungary gave to the lords of Berne in 1524,[37] where are buried Leopold, Archduke of Austria, and a great number of gentlemen who were overthrown by the Swiss in 1386. Their arms and names are there inscribed, and their remains kept with great care. M. de Montaigne held converse with the Bernese gentleman in charge of the place, who ordered that everything should be shown to him. In this abbey slices of bread and soup are always ready at hand for any wayfarer who may demand the same, and no refusal has ever been made by the heads of the abbey. From this place we crossed by a boat, which is attached by an iron pulley to a rope stretched high above the Reix,[38] a river flowing out of the Lake of Lucerne, and arrived, after a journey of four leagues, at Baden, a little town with a suburb adjoining, where there are baths.
BADEN EN ARGOW
To face p. 76, vol. i.
Baden is a Catholic town, under protection of the eight[39] Swiss cantons, in which divers great gatherings of princes have taken place. We did not lodge in the town but in the suburb, which lies at the foot of the mountain on the bank of the Limmat, a stream, or rather torrent, which flows out of the Lake of Zürich. There are two or three uncovered public baths, which are frequented only by poor folk. Of the other kind there are great number within the houses, divided into small private rooms, both closed and open, which are let with the lodgings, and are as dainty and well fitted as possible, hot water being drawn from the water-courses for each bath. The lodgment is magnificent. In the house where we stayed three hundred mouths had to be fed every day; and, while we were there, beds were made for a hundred-and-seventy sojourners. It possessed seventeen stoves and eleven kitchens, and in the house adjoining were fifty furnished chambers, the walls of all the rooms being hung with the coats-of-arms of the gentry who had lodged therein. The town, perched high on the crest of a hill, is small and very fair, like almost all the towns of this country. Moreover, they build their streets wider and more open than ours, and their market-places more ample, and there is a wealth of richly-glazed windows everywhere. They paint almost all the houses outside with various devices, and the towns consequently are very pleasant to look upon. Again, there is scarcely a town without running water in the streets, and at every cross-street will be found a handsome fountain, built either in stone or in wood, and on this account their towns are much fairer to view than those of France. The water of the baths gives out an odour of sulphur like those of Aigues-Caudes[40] and certain others. The heat is tempered as at Barbotan[41] or Aigues-Caudes, and for this reason the baths are very soft and pleasant.