Chapter XXXI Chillon
The Castle of Chillon is a whitey-gray pile, with towers of varying heights and black, pointed roofs, like extinguishers, clustering about the central and tallest. The lake washes the base on all sides. A wooden bridge, once a “draw,” joins the fortress to the shore. This was the scene of the casualty to Julie’s child, and his rescue by the mother, resulting in the death of the latter, narrated by Rousseau in the concluding chapters of “La Nouvelle Héloïse.”
In spring and summer, the aspect of the storied prison is not forbidding. The walk from the steamboat is pleasantly shaded throughout much of its length. Trees grow down in the old moat; pretty creeping plants drop in festoons and knots from the top and face of the shore-wall; birds hop and sing in bending branches that dip in the water. The “thousand years of snow on high” are verdant slopes below. “The white-walled distant town,” “the channeled rock,” “the torrent’s leap and gush”—are as familiar to Byron’s reader as the fields and hills about his childhood’s home, distinct as a photograph painted by Swiss sunshine.
The scenery near Chillon is the grandest on Lake Leman, reminding one of the snow-capped ramparts of Lucerne. When, at eleven o’clock of the last day of October, we left the steamboat dock in front of the Hôtel Russie in Geneva, sky and wave were still and smiling. Mont Blanc drew a cowl over his face by the time we touched the Nyon pier. But the ugly old town had never been more nearly sightly. The five Roman towers of the ancient castle were softly outlined against the blue; the browns, grays and blacks of the houses, crowding into the lake, were foil and relief to the scarlet and gold of massy vines, the russet and purple and lemon-yellow of the trees on the esplanade and the steep, winding streets. The cowl unfolded into mantling mist upon “the left bank” (our right) as we sailed by Vevay, the “livest” town on the upper lake. A company of school-boys in uniform were drilling in the parade-ground close to the wharf, to the music of drum and fife, a herd of gamins peering enviously at them between the pales of the fence. Window-gardens were flush with petunias, salvias and pelargoniums. Woodbine streamed, as with living blood, from hotel-balconies and garden-walls. The “grape-cure” was over and the bulk of the vintage gathered, but purple bunches hung still among the dying leaves,—luscious gleanings for the peasant-children trampling the mellow soil with bare toes, and cheering shrilly as the boat glided by. Clarens—“Julie’s” home—a village of pink, buff and pea-green houses, more like painted sugar châteaux than human habitations, harmonized better with the autumnal tints of aspen and poplar than with their vernal green. The chestnut copse, known as the “Bosquet de Julie,”—where she gave the first kiss to her lover, was like fine gold for depth and brilliancy of hue. Montreux lies in the hollow of a crescent-shaped cove, sheltered from adverse winds from whatever quarter, a warm covert for invalids, where roses blossom eternally in sight of never-melted snows. The bristly spines of mountains are its rear-guard, and upon their lower terraces are hedges of evergreen laurels, orchards of figs and pomegranates.
Thus far, we had sunshine and color with us, while, upon the other shore, the stealing fogs kept pace with our progress,—a level line at the lower edge which rested mid-way up the sides of the nearer mountains, but gradually encroaching upon the blue above, until, when we stepped ashore at Chillon, the sun began to look wan. The days were shortening rapidly at this season. To save time, we took a carriage at the wharf and drove directly to the Château through the hamlet that has taken its name.
“God bless the ingoers and outcomers!” is the German legend above the entrance, put there by the pious Bernese in 1643.
Our guide was a rosy Savoyard girl in blue skirt, scarlet bodice and white apron. Dangling a bunch of ponderous keys from her forefinger, she tripped across a courtyard shut in by the tall buildings and peaked roofs, and paved with round stones, to a flight of cellar-steps. Just such cellar-steps as are used by farmers’ wives and dairymaids in going to and from buttery and cream-room. The descent of six or eight stairs, worn and uneven, brought us to the subterranean chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, a long, low room floored with roughened stones, the ceiling supported by four thick pillars, and so dim, on the windowless side, as to cast doubt upon the received theory of its original uses. Although Religion, as understood and practised by thirteenth century lordlings and their vassals, was a thing that lurked in and filled the dark places of the earth. Next, was a small room, not eight feet square, where the condemned by the worshipers in the adjoining chapel, passed the night preceding his execution. A niche in the rear wall was filled to half its height by a sloping ledge,—a rocky bed, inclining upward at the head. On this, the doomed wretch lay until the morning looked in upon his misery through the slit in the outer wall. This series of vaults was supplied with all the ancient improvements for executions. In the third apartment a black bar, extending across the cell, was the gallows, and in the wall near the floor an aperture, now closed with rude masonry, finished the drama with business-like promptness, being the “chute” into eight hundred feet of water.
“Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls,
A thousand feet in depth below,
Its massy waters meet and flow.”
Two hundred feet, more or less, do not materially alter the story, or diminish or increase the horror.
Bonnivard’s prison—the dungeon of Chillon—is beyond the cell of execution and the last of the grim suite of basement state-apartments. The Prisoner of Chillon may have been the child of the poet’s brain. Bonnivard was not a myth. Three times in arms against the ravening beasts of war, known by the courtesy of history, as Dukes of Savoy, and twice a prisoner, he was, at his second capture, immured in the Castle of Chillon. Six weary years were spent by him in this rocky dungeon. During two of these, he was chained to one of the “seven pillars of Gothic mold” upbearing the ceiling. A stone of irregular shape is embedded in the floor at its base. I sat down upon it; put my feet into the hollow worn by his, as he rested thus, night after night, day by day, year upon year!
The girl had disappeared, in answer to a call from the outer-room. Caput leaned against the pillar beside me. We could just trace the circle beaten out of the solid stone by the prisoner’s measured pacing, around the pillar as far as the chain would let him go,—then, back again. It is plain enough by day, but the light was failing where we were. Caput struck a match and held it close to the mournful little track;—another, that we might decipher Byron’s name upon the “autograph column.” Then, the blue flame expired, and the gloom was deeper than before. We hearkened silently to the lap of the lake against the foundation-stones, and the moan of the rising wind; watched the glimmering slits, without glass or shutters, that admitted light and air.
“A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made—and like a living grave!”
quoted Caput. “It is worse! The dead do not dream!”
“Or hear!” I shuddered. “That dull ‘wash! wash!’ would drive me mad in a week!”
Our little maid reäppeared, all out of breath, brimful of excuses for having left us so long. We were quitting the dungeon when I detected gleams, as of soft eyes, in the darkest corner.
“Mes fleurs!” smiled the girl. “They are safe here from frost and need rest after blooming so well all summer. I bring them in every winter. Would madame like some?”
She clipped and broke until I checked her liberality. The gleams that had caught my eye were large Marguerites, with lissome, white petals, that scarcely discolored in the pressing and drying.
“If they were mine I should rather leave them to the winds and frost than have them winter here!” I said, touching the branches compassionately.
“Plaît-il?” answered the Savoyard, with wide, innocent eyes.
Across the court-yard, upon the ground-floor of another building, is the chamber of torture. This, too, has its memorial pillar, a slender, wooden post in the middle of the room. To this, the prisoner was bound for scourging.
“Sometimes they used whips,” said the guide. “Sometimes,——” she pointed to scorched places on the seasoned wood.
The flesh tingles at sight of these dumb records, burned in upon the memories of Protestants of that day, as they are into the surface of the post. The scourge, in the cases of extreme offenders against ducal and ecclesiastical law, was of fine wire, tipped with red-hot iron or steel. When these missed the back of the victim, they wrote legibly and lastingly upon the pillar of flagellation. There were other “ancient improvements” here once, but they have been removed.
One of note was exhibited in another room,—“the oubliettes,” sometimes called, “the well of promise.” Both names are significant enough. It is an opening in the floor, fenced in with stout rails. Four stone steps slant downward from the brink. The eye cannot pierce the obscurity of the chasm. To the edge of this, then undefended well, the tried and secretly-condemned prisoner was led, blindfolded, and instructed to step down a staircase that would lead him into the outer air and to liberty. The abyss is eighty feet deep. The bottom was set with sharp knives.
Upon the second floor are the “family rooms,” the Duke’s bed-chamber and the boudoir of the Duchess. This last is not large, and so badly-lighted, that she must have required candles on the toilette-table, except in the brightest weather. The walls are covered with what masons style a “scratch-coat” of mortar. It was hung with tapestry when Chillon was a ducal palace. This boudoir is immediately above the chamber of torture. When we exclaimed at the proximity, the girl explained, naïvely, that their Highnesses did not live here all the year, having other residences. Probably, the operation of rack, spiked helmet and collar, thumb-screw and scourging-post was subject to the convenience of the Duchess. All the same, we wondered how she slept with but the plank flooring between her and what she knew of, down there.
The window of her room frames a superb view, on fine days, of the “wide, long lake,” the towering heights of the Savoy side, and the “small, green isle” with its three trees. Looking out of it, now, we saw only the water darkening under the wreathing mists that had chased us all the way from Nyon, and ruffled by the wind. In the spacious Knight’s Hall to which we went next, we could barely discern the stains on the walls that were once frescos, and make out the design of the carved mantel around the mighty-mouthed chimney-place. The windows are all toward the lake and deeply recessed, with broad inner ledges. Within one of these embrasures we sat, gazing upon the slowly-gathering storm, and listening to the “knocking”—Byron used the right word,—of the sullen waves, our little Savoyard attending motionless upon our pleasure. We were going no further than Montreux that night, and our carriage would wait. We would see—we did see—Chillon upon brighter days and in merrier company. It suited us to linger and dream, in the weird twilight, of what had been in the isolated stronghold,—of what, pray Heaven! could never be again.
The girl brought a lamp to guide us to the Duke’s private chapel. The altar is gone, but the choristers’ seats of carved oak are left. Benches are disposed in orderly rows for the Protestant service, held here twice in the month. Chillon Castle is still a prison,—a cantonal penitentiary,—in plainer English—a county jail. Upon each alternate Sabbath, the inmates are gathered into the chapel, and one of the neighborhood pastors ministers to them.
In the court-yard we stopped to gather some yellow-blossomed moss sprouting between the stones, and our Savoyard damsel added to my bouquet of prison-flowers, scarlet and brown leaves from the woodbine running rankly over the tower in which is the torture-chamber. She stood upon the drawbridge as we drove away, a stalwart young turnkey at her side,—who, by the way, had narrowly missed locking us into the lower cells by mistake. Her smiling face, red bodice and white apron were the only spots of brightness in the gray-and-black picture of the frowning fortress, close-folded in the mists and the rolling glooms of the water.
We thought of the Marguerites in the dungeon.
Notes
A “Je désire que mes cendres reposent sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple François que j’ai tant aimé.”
B Merivale, vol. vi., p. 176.