A Ride on Horseback to Florence Through France and Switzerland. Vol. 2 of 2

he beam-The interment in the lake-Bonnivard-His misfortunes-His prison-The first pillar having its own story-Sketches on the wall made by a captive-His escape-Drowned in the attempt two months before

rated-The banner of Berne-Laws of the Simmenthal-The Bernese attacking Gruyères-Count Pierre's danger-Plague described by Boccaccio-The Flagellans-The murdered Jews-Last of the Count

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glimpse as we rode by of its ruined ancient castle, pillaged and burned by order of Berne, in punishment for having allowed the passage of foreign soldiers to Lausanne,

d walnut-trees, and opposite the rock on which Chillon stands, with its towers and tall keep, the most picturesque of feudal castles. We crossed the covered wooden bridge, where the gendarmes stand, smiling welcome; and the horses consigned, each to the care of two, and left in a dark stable to be dusted with walnut branches, we were sufficiently tranquil as to their comfort to follow our guide, who was the wife of the concierge. She led across two courts, and opened a heavy prison door; it was "out of the sun and into a grave." I obeyed her injunction to hold fast her hand, when, having scrambled over rubbish, and through partial darkness, she drew me to the brink of a square hole, and pointed down a depth of eighty-six feet. It was

urbon, who married the green count Amedée the Sixth, about 1355. The two carved oaken chests with their curious locks, at the bottom of the room, are of the same date. The view from these windows is beautiful beyond praise, and there is "the little isle-the only one in view," lying in the lake like a floating basket of flowers. Our last visit was to the dungeons: the first is the most modern, and least sad, as its loopholes are longer and less narrow. On one of the sills they form in the thick wall sat a Swiss girl, the light falling on her picturesque dress, touching her smiling face and bare arms,-she animated the dim prison house. Between this first dungeon and that of Bonnivard, there is one smaller and darker, though light enough for its destination: for a few moments' stay allows the eye to distinguish, crossing a space between its pillars, a heavy beam, whose upper part is, in several places, deeply worn by the ropes which, upholding heavy weights, were bound round it; and a few paces behind, the steps of the narrow stair which conducts to the fatal door of the justice hall. The opposite wall, against which the lake ripples or foams in its various moods, has a square cavity, now closed with stones; the bodies of those who died unheard and unseen were cast forth there, and beneath the waves which told no tales. A narrow portal opens on the dungeon where Bonnivard lay. I think I reminded you before that he was prior

illars of Go

er; the floor of rock round, worn by the uneasy pacing of four years: on the column, among more perishing names, is that of Byron. I noticed that of Alexander Dumas, so high above, that to engrave its enormous letters he must have mounted a ladder. The space on either side the range of columns which support the roof's groined arches, forms a sombre aisle, the inner wall left as nature made it, irregular masses of living rock; that towards the lake intersected with a few narrow loopholes high from the ground, which are rather slits in the stone, so small that in the morning it is a dark vault, and only when the beams shine low they come "creeping over the floor." At sunset, however, "the imprisoned ray" is not "dull:" for, as if it acquired force from its concentration, it falls like a streak of fire on the pillars and blocks of stone. As we saw it, the effect was splendid, but partial, as at the extreme end an artist was sketching by the light of candles, being otherwise in perfect obscurity. It is to carry his materials that the young Swiss, whom we saw as we passed again, comes daily. Last summer, an amateur, an English gentleman, visited Chillon with the intention of painting not only the dungeon, but Bonnivard! for this purpose he chose a gendarme of spare habit, having a long beard and sallow face, chained hi

f a view of the lake, with the "Isle's tall trees;" of walking from the oubliettes to the torture chamber, and resting under the potence, and in Bonnivard's dungeon, a lodging of three chambers, looking on the lake, whi

a bough, in the places where we had left them, like the warriors in the Belle au Bois dormant. As I mounted Fanny, the chatelaine asked permi

omantic castle, and my eye lighted on the chapel roof. "

D--, looking

re any

nk I might fear to order dinner, from dread of some mischance in the chimney, and to ride Fanny, lest her shoes should strike fire

ht had completely closed, and we, who had never seen the road till that afternoon, were puzzled. Fanny was not so;

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hin doors; we hope to leave th

ple and pretty, of the thirteenth century. Ludlow's monument, raised by his widow, is within it, built against the wall; Broughton's tombstone forms part of the pavement near

at he might still be held there in the light of an assassin, he thought it more prudent to return to Vevay. H

lum fort

but a shor

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from a good one for horses, being for a considerable distance a painful succession of hills, paved and steep, but from which the views

the young girls with their hair braided across their brows, and the black riband dividing it from the enormous mass behind, for they wear their own tresses plaited over a foundation of wool, which gives them an unnatural bulk; but as they are commonly fresh and good-looking, not absolutely unbecoming. A few ancient ladies, dressed after this fashion, looked far less well. With all this attention to toilette, the poverty and dirt of the dwellings whence they issued was melancholy. They have here a character more entirely Swiss

ll to Bulle is covered with rich pasture, stretchin

t, the castle tower and its heavy walls, gilded by the sunset,-the road below, which wound on towards Gruyères; its cottages with their galleries and jutting roofs, and outside stair, advancing or retreating on either side, and between green trees, their background a mountain range, whose pine forests were blue in the di

e through the streets to the chapel of the Capucin convent, which has a strange altar, I think of gilt crockery, and a pulpit wh

ed towards Gruyères, along the winding road as far as the wooden bridge which crosses the torrent of Trême, near the tower which bea

s defiles. Its early possessors depended for their revenues on agriculture only; their wars were with the wolves, and their proudest conquests the cultivation of a desert. The younger branches of their house owned as their inheritance the forest-castl

ileges. In 1341 Count Pierre mortgaged for ten years to the inhabitants of Gruyères the duties they were wont to pay on each head of cattle, those on forage, ch

teaux belonged to the lords of Weissenburg and others, having been built by their ancestry. Count Pierre of Gruyères marched against Weissenburg; Banneret Peter Wendschaz commanded the Bernese against him. At that spot of the Simmenthal there are heights which narrow the passage, and the Bernese, who had strayed to plunder cattle, received a sore punishment

presumed that the offended might defend himself against a blow, the offender was fined one livre only; the man who uttered abuse was fined four,

r de Trême, when the men of Berne and Fribourg, with a force superior to his own, surprised the count himself in the oak-tree meadow. Pierre fought with the heroism of his antique race, but the numbers had well nigh overpowered him, when two of his vassals, Clarembold and Ulric Bras de fer, resolved to save him at all hazards, flung themselves before his person, favoured his retreat, and guarding the narrow defile through which he had passed, kept

gions were left desert, and lordships abandoned and unclaimed by friend or foe. Struck with terror, men strove to avert the scourge by the various and horrid means prompted by fear and fanaticism. It was then that numerous travelling societies, the Flagellans, wandered from canton to canton, inflicting blows and torment on themselves, for the sins of the world. Where they passed, the

ates of Switzerland. But for their insatiable ambition, the counts of Gruyères might have been the happiest of mortals; but they looked from their tall towers on the height, less to rejoice in their possessions than to mourn that they saw their boundary. Not being kings themselves, they strove t

y. They had rendered good service to the king of France, but Henry the Second, under various pretences, refused to pay the immense sums he owed to Gruyères; and Michel saw his country depopulated in vain, his debts accumulating, though he had received a large loan from his neighbours and sold his subjects a portion of his lordly privilege, till

Aug

y a noble looking ruin. The peasantry here are almost German, and therefore perhaps a milder and more amiable race than the French or Genevese. They issued from their cottages and ran from their work in the fields to see us pass by, but always took off their hats and wished good evening. The clouds had threatened rain, but the wind, which whistled in the firs, blew it over us and left only a fine stormy sky above the mountains, partly hiding their white heads, while the sun was brilliant in the valley. As we passed the meadows where the cows were grazing, and the little cowherd lay almost hid in the clover, we thought of Lord Byron's praise of the bells; their tones, differing and harmonizing, tinkled sweet music. Nearer Fribourg is a fair view into the gorge from the road, which hangs over it wher

e the streets, narrow and ill-paved, are curious and of great age, as are the quaint fountains; at the summit of whose gilt and painted columns figure grotesque saints and Virgins. A

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he Gotteron. Not far from the h?tel on the Place, and opposite the town hall, which is built on the site of the palace of Duk

red a bough as he passed, and waved it over his head in token of rejoicing. Arrived at this place, where the townsmen were assembled, he faltered forth his news and sunk down to die. They planted on the very spot his lime-tree branch, and it lived and grew h

rty of the feudal lord, taxed each house, and levied a duty on all merchandise; and also, when a subject died without heirs, inherited a third of his possessions. The citizens were tried by twelve or twenty-four of their own body, presided, over by an "avoyer" elected yearly, and sentence pronounced in accordance with the facts proved by a sufficient number of witnesses. Each townsman was, during his life, master of his own property, and it fell to his widow in case of his demise. The whole town took care of the orphans. The feudal lord cou

nsel of various barons. It became inhabited; boasting freedom, but certainly not equality, for the nobles, as yet unused to citizenship, kept the line of demarcation so strongly marked as even to fix on a separate place of burial, and, in consequence of this, six hundred years passed without so confounding distinctions, a

construction; from this spot the Zahringen h?tel seems a real castle in the air. We crossed the Saarine, and turned to the left, and under an old archway of Duke Berthhold's time, which forms the entrance to the gorge of the Gotteron. It is a lonely and beautiful glen, sunk deep between wooded crags which barely allow room for a path way beside the stream, which bounds brightly on, flashing in the sun, while it turns the heavy wheels of rustic mills, as if gl

the cathedral, which in itself is only gaudy, but whose organ and organ player are most wonderful. Listening to the higher tones, it was difficult to persuade myself that I did not hear a chorus of sw