“‘That is just what I want to know,’ replies the V. C. A., with all the assurance of innocence.”
And Tartarin is set free. Verily, we look among the names scribbled on the walls—names of great writers and men of less distinction—Rousseau, Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Shelley, Eugène Sue—for the immortal autograph of Tartarin de Tarascon. It must have been carried off bodily, like the picture of Mona Lisa! But Tartarin himself is just as much an inhabitant of the vaults as Byron’s Bonivard. And was not the policeman whom we caught sight of on the quai at Montreux the very one whose long blue capote was turned so persistently toward the omnibus in which rode the Tarasconian quartet?
[CHAPTER VIII]
LORD BYRON AND THE LAKE
LORD BYRON, in 1816, landed on this very spot with his friend John Cam Hobhouse. They came over from Clarens, probably in a naue, whose name, as well as its shape, harked back to olden days. Byron wrote about it:—
“I feel myself under the charm of the spirit of this country. My soul is repeopled with Nature. Scenes like this have been created for the dwelling-place of the Gods. Limpid Leman, the sail of thy barque in which I glide over the surface of thy mirror appears to me a silent wing which separates me from a noisy life. I loved formerly the warring of the furious ocean; but thy soft murmuring affects me like the voice of a sister.
“Chillon! thou art a sacred place. Thy pavement is an altar, for the footsteps of Bonivard have left their traces there. Let these traces remain indelible. They appeal to God from the tyranny of man.”