That was my experience in midsummer. Now we were to see not only the great mountain tops, but the whole country, in the undisputed grasp of Winter. When we reached Lucerne, not only the high Alps, but all the mountains and hills, far as the eye could reach, were covered with snow. When we visited Thorwaldsen's celebrated Lion of Lucerne we found workmen with scaffolding and ladders against the cliff, carefully boxing it in with boards to prevent it from being injured by the freezing of water trickling down upon it during the winter now at hand. But we were in time, just in time, to see it, and we all agreed that few monuments in Europe are so impressive. The great figure, twenty-eight feet in length, I believe, carved in the living rock, represents the king of beasts lying slain, pierced by an arrow, with broken spear and shield beneath, and over that shield, which bears the lilies of France, the huge paws are thrown, as if guarding it still in death. It commemorates the devotion of the Swiss guard who, in 1792, were appointed to keep the palace at Versailles, and receiving no orders to retire, preferred to die at their post rather than betray their trust. The glacier gardens near by, with their ingenious and realistic illustration of the action of the falling water in grinding the boulders in the glacier pots, interested us greatly. We paid some attention to the shops also, and the old cathedral, and the quaint old bridges. But we did not tarry long at Lucerne. It was too cold. We took the steamer down the lake, though, cold as it was, for we had no idea of missing entirely the magnificent scenery which gives this body of water easy preëminence among the Swiss lakes. We spent the night, bitter cold, at Fluelen, then took the fastest train we could get for Milan, only to meet there another disappointment in the matter of the weather.
November 26, 1902.
Italy Gives us Little Relief.
We had seen the ice floating in great blocks down the Neckar at Heidelberg, and had felt the stinging winds on the hills above the old castle; we had stamped our feet on the stone floors of the cathedral at Strasburg to renew the circulation in our benumbed extremities while waiting for the crowing of the rooster and the marching of the puppets, and the striking of the bells on the famous clock; we had seen vast fields of snow covering the Alps in every direction as we passed through Switzerland, and had shivered in the searching cold as we steamed down Lake Lucerne, unable to tear ourselves from the glorious beauty that lay open to our view on every hand from the steamer's decks; we had caught the wintry glitter of gigantic icicles against the cliffs on either side as our train climbed the wild St. Gothard pass—and, in short, we had had a surfeit of cold weather, and for days and weeks we had been sighing for Sunny Italy. Imagine our disappointment, then, when we emerged from the Alps and entered the land of balmy climate and blue skies (as most of us had always ignorantly thought it to be even in winter) to find the whole world still white around us, to run along the side of Lake Lugano and Lake Como in a whirling snow-storm, and to arrive at Milan in a fog so thick that it looked like it could be cut into blocks, so opaque that at times we could not see the mighty Cathedral from our hotel, though but little more than a block away, and so persistent that it did not lift during the whole of our stay. Add to these conditions the slush in the streets and the penetrating quality of the damp, cold air, and our desire to push on at once to the farther south in search of more genial skies will not seem unnatural. And we might have done so, notwithstanding the attraction of the Cathedral and of Leonardo's picture of the "Last Supper" (which, however, we expected to see on our return to Northern Italy in the spring), had it not been for our anxiety to get a sight of the Iron Crown of Lombardy at Monza, a few miles north of Milan. And see it we did, in spite of the weather, as I shall tell you more fully in a later letter. We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at Milan, visited again and again the white marble Cathedral, whose delicate stone lace work was touched into marvellous and weird beauty by the snow clinging to its pinnacles and projections and statues, saw Leonardo's picture, and the other principal sights, and then took the train for Venice.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Venice, Bologna, Florence and Pisa.
December 8, 1902.
Though still cool, the weather was milder in Venice, so we remained a week or so, yielding ourselves to the pensive charm of that—