[CHAPTER II]
1869

IN SWITZERLAND​--​THE ALPS​--​EMBARRASSMENT IN NOT KNOWING THE LANGUAGE​--​CELEBRATED EXILES MEET IN A CERTAIN CAFE​--​BRENTANO​--​WAGNER​--​KINKEL​--​SCHERR​--​KELLER​--​AND OTHERS.

We stayed in Paris for a week. Then, one night, we crossed the plains of France, and at daylight saw with beating hearts the Jura Mountains. They were as a high wall of cliff and forest, green, deep valleys and running rivers, between France and the land of William Tell. The afternoon of that day saw us at our journey’s end. We were in beautiful Zurich. “Next to Damascus,” said Dixon, the English traveler, “I adore Zurich.”

That day the Glarus Alps, that usually shine so gloriously in front of the city, were obscured with clouds. But the beautiful lake was there, and old walls, and ivy-covered towers, and all the story of a thousand years.

Zurich.​--​[Page 20.]

Zurich was half a mediæval city in 1869. Years have since changed it; its walls and towers have been torn down, and granite blocks and fashionable modern streets take the place, in part, of its picturesqueness, as we saw it at that time.

Pretty soon I was, in a way, representing my country in a republic five times as old as our own. My predecessor recognized that he had been “rotated” out of office. He knew American party customs and turned over to me a few chairs, a desk, some maps, a flag, some books, some accounts and an enormous shield that hung over the door with a terrible-looking eagle on it, holding a handful of arrows. This was the coat of arms.

Living was cheap in Switzerland in the seventies. For one whole year we stayed in the “Pension Neptune,” a first-class place in every sense. Our apartment included a finely furnished salon, a bedroom, and a large room for the consulate. For these rooms, with board for two persons, we paid only $3.00 per day. Just outside the pension, workmen were laying street pavements of stone. They worked from daylight till dark, for forty cents a day. The servants in the pension were getting ninety cents a week and board. The clerk in the consulate was working for $300 a year, without board. Good wine, and we had it always at dinner, was a franc a bottle. Things have changed since then. Switzerland is a dear country to live in now.

In the “Neptune” we found the interesting family of Healy, the American artist. He had painted half the famous men of Europe, even then. There, too, was the family of Commander Crowninshield, distinguished of late days as an adviser of the President in the Spanish War.