Mrs. Isaacs (who, by the way, is not one of the children of Israel, if her husband was) went yesterday to Berne. The Vicomte says she carried the Almanac de Gotha instead of Baedeker, and that the porter at the hotel who bought her ticket declared that her ultimate destination is Vienna. So that I suppose they are looking up Count Albert.
The Vicomte has been like a bear with a sore head ever since Count Fosca automobiled from Paris. He behaves so childishly, as if no one in the world should have an automobile but himself. He spends several hours a day fencing with an Italian; you know duelling is his other occupation in Paris, and I expect he is going to take it up seriously till he gets a new automobile. He glares at Count Fosca and mutters "So" under his breath like a German, and I am expecting to hear daily that they are going to fight, and all over an automobile!
Ball at Schloss Gessler
But people are too much excited over the ball at Schloss Gessler on the day after to-morrow to pay much attention to the Vicomte and his grievances. Mr. Wertzelmann told me to-day that if people talked so much about the ball before it came off he wondered what they would say about it after. He never did things by halves, and this was a ball which should be remembered for years to come. It is to cost thousands of francs, and if the Russian boyar (don't ask me his name, I know it has an itch at the end of it) who is Mrs. Wertzelmann's devoted admirer, and practically runs Schloss Gessler, does his duty properly, I have no doubt it will be, as Mr. Wertzelmann says, something to remember.
It will be the end of the season here, and, as we have stayed longer than we intended, we shall hurry home after it. We really have managed to do other things besides frivol. We have seen the Lion and we have been to Fluëlen and drove to Schloss Sonnenburg, but there was little of the country or scenery we saw on that occasion, owing to the flies and the dust. Yesterday we added to our knowledge of the Lake of the Four Cantons by spending the night on the top of the Stanzerhorn.
The Stanzerhorn
Quite late in the afternoon Sir Charles came over to the National to ask us if we would come with him then and there to see the sunset and sunrise in the Alps from the Stanzerhorn. He assured us we would find a good hotel and that it was worth the trouble, and as we had nothing better to do we went. Thérèse filled two handbags with necessaries and we caught the last boat from Lucerne. There was nobody we knew on the boat, and Blanche said she felt game for anything, and game we were before we saw our comfortable rooms at the National again and our indispensable Thérèse and dear, dear Paquin.
As Sir Charles had described it as a "rough and ready jaunt," and "a picnic in the clouds," and turned up at the National in snuff-coloured "knickers" that looked as if Bijou had been introducing them to the gravel-path, and carrying a brand-new alpenstock with "Lucerne" and "Gütsch" and "Sonnenburg" burnt into it, we decided to wear our serge walking skirts and men's shirts and straw-hats. Blanche looked very well in hers, for it is a style that suits her, but I nearly wept at my own reflection, and I was delighted there was to be no one else of the party but Sir Charles. Blanche said my skirt was positively indecent; it came just to the tops of my boots, and was really made for bicycling and not for walking. I felt like a Gordon Highlander, and Blanche declared that if the skirt was a plaid I would have looked like one. Thérèse too went into fits of laughter, and said she was sure that Sir Charles would not recognise me. I was half inclined to give up the excursion, but Blanche said it was ridiculous, and that I couldn't possibly take Paquin to the top of the Stanzerhorn, and that I looked charming from my waist up.
I tried to discover a blush somewhere in my veins when we stood in the hall of the hotel, but somehow I couldn't find one. Fortunately for my vanity we got on to the steamboat without being recognised, and I made a mental vow that I would never employ a Taunton seamstress again. The Italian boy with the monkey and the post-cards that we saw the first day we arrived, and whom Blanche declared was a nobleman in disguise, was on board. He went second-class, and was talking to a Swiss peasant with goitre just below us. The monkey travelled first all the way to Alpnacht, for the steamboat people didn't dare touch it; it ate apples at Blanche's feet when it wasn't frightening people out of their wits by bounding about the deck. The disguised nobleman, who can't be more than seventeen, recognised us, and gave such a smile and bow! Blanche put a franc into the tin cup round the monkey's neck, and when we got off at Stanz the boy brushed off the gangplank before we stepped on it, with his cap, though the plank was spotless. As Blanche said, it gave her quite a Sir-Walter-Raleigh-Queen-Elizabeth-and-the-Cloak feeling, and we declared he was the most picturesque tramp we had ever seen, but Sir Charles, who hasn't a scrap of romance in him, said he looked as if he belonged to an Anarchist Society.
Stanz is a funny little town, and people only come to it to leave it. Some Germans with ropes and pick-axes over their shoulders, and who looked as if they meant business, got off at Stanz, and as one makes the ascent of Titlis from here, we concluded that was their destination. Sir Charles made us walk to the little platz to see the statue to Arnold von Winkelreid, but we preferred Tell's at Altdorf. The funicular to the top of the Stanzerhorn makes one feel goose-pimply all over; it is not only steep, but when you get near the top you look out of the car window over a sheer precipice of two thousand feet. There are two cars attached to an endless cable, and while one creeps up the mountain like a horrid antediluvian bug the other crawls down. If the cable should break, one would catapult little Stanz to atoms and the other would Jules Verne itself to the top of the Stanzerhorn.