Part 13 (1/2)
We had plenty of time to go there. We could see its towers and spire high in the driving clouds, and its roof, which reminded me of a Western political-convention hall. Considering that it was built so early as the Tenth Century, it ought to have the deepest historical interest. Probably the Emperor Conrad, who founded it, would probably hardly recognize it, so much has it been altered since his stormy life closed. No wonder he wanted a cathedral in those Alps which he was for ever crossing. As soon as he got out of sight down in Italy his German subjects revolted; then when he had returned and punished them the Italians would try to throw off his yoke. Life was not smooth for him either as King of the Germans, or as Emperor of the Romans or as ruler of the Burgundians, but five years before he died he saw his cathedral consecrated. Something happened to it a couple of hundred of years later (about the middle of the eighteenth century): it was probably enlarged. Then its Romanesque style of architecture was made ridiculous by a Corinthian portico.
A Corinthian portico, being Greek, perhaps was not theoretically so out of place if Don Gregorio Seti was right in telling us that ”Saint Peter's Church was in ancient times dedicated to Apollo, as is to be seen in some very old inscriptions.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: SWISS MEDIAEVAL CARVINGS.]
We went into the venerable edifice and my nephew suggested that I had better initiate myself first of all by sitting down in the sacred chair that once belonged to John Calvin. If there had been any risk of inoculating myself with his grim and forbidding theology by sitting in the seat of the Calvinists, be sure I should have refrained. Calvin was a wonderful man, but at heart a tyrant. He could not endure contradiction. Jerome Bolsec found that out when he got the better of him in his argument on predestination: ”You make G.o.d the author of sin,” said he, ”for you say in your Inst.i.tution, 'G.o.d foresaw Adam's Fall and in this Fall the ruin of all mankind; but He willed it, He ordered it and predetermined it in His eternal plan. G.o.d willed that the Israelites should wors.h.i.+p the golden calf and that men should be guilty of the sins that they commit every day.' G.o.d being a simple and changeless Being, how can He be in accord with Himself, since in Him are two things contrary, Will and Not-will? How can He order and forbid the same thing? On the other hand, if the Will of G.o.d is the substance of G.o.d Himself, it is the cause of the sins committed by men; consequently G.o.d is the author of evil.”
Calvin tried to creep out of the dilemma by saying:--”I have said that G.o.d's will as a supernatural cause is the necessity for all things; but I have declared at the same time that G.o.d does what He does with such justice that even the wicked are constrained to glorify Him.”
Bolsec, who could see no equity in such a justice as that, would not give in and Calvin used his power to exile him. He was forbidden to return under pain of being whipped through all the squares of the city.
It is wonderful what an influence and for so long a time was exercised by Calvin. Certainly during all the years while the fortifications stood and the gates were shut at night no one dared contravene the strict regulations which his theocracy enjoined.
There are other famous people buried in the Cathedral of Saint Peter.
Near the main entrance is a tablet commemorating Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, the Huguenot adviser to Henry IV who spent the last twenty years of his life in Geneva and died there in 1630. He was the grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, wife of a poet and wife of a king.
We noted the black tombstone to Cardinal Jean de Brogny who built the lovely Gothic Chapelle des Macchabees, now excellently restored. ”Anno 1628,” says our friend Signior Seti, ”was interred Emilia of Na.s.sau and sometime after the Princess her sister, both Sisters to the Prince of Orange, Emilia being Wife to Don Antonio, King of Portugal, who was banished by the Spaniards. In another Chappel lies the Body of the Duke of Rohan, buried in the year 1638 in a most magnificent monument built by the Dutchess, who was laid there also near her husband in the year 1660, as their son Tancred was in the year 1661.”
Perhaps the ”magnificent monument” is the black marble sarcophagus, but the statue of the duke who was leader of the French Protestants and fell at the battle of Rheinfelden is modern--the work of Iguel.
His ”Dutchess” was the daughter of the famous ”reformer of finances,”
the Duc de Sully, whose great scheme for an International Amphyctionic Council supplied by the fifteen Christian States of Europe seems to have fore-shadowed the modern Interparliamentary Union.
By rare good fortune some one was practising on the excellent organ.
Whoever it was played a prelude and fugue of Bach and a brilliant piece which I recognized as by Saint-Saens.
On our way back from the cathedral we swung round by the English Garden and the National Monument with its two figures representing symbolically Helvetia and Geneva. Like most such colossal sculptures the farther away one gets the better it looks: that may be carried to its logical extreme! Then we crossed the long Pont du Mont Blanc but his Majesty was wholly hidden in the clouds. There were people fis.h.i.+ng, however, just as they have always fished from the beginning of time. What says Signior Seti?--”Fis.h.i.+ng in the Lake of this City is very considerable both for the profit and pleasure; they commonly take trouts of four score pound weight at twelve ounces the pound and in the Middle of the River opposite it the Town preserve their fish alive for use on two little deal board houses made for that purpose. In the Summer time it is a very pleasant recreation to go a Fis.h.i.+ng here and both strangers and Citizens mightily delight in it.”
Not then, but at another time, I amused myself watching the dozens of washerwomen by the riverside, in booths roofed over and closed at the ends--leaning forward on their bare arms and spending more time gossiping in their terrible dialect or watching the little boats flying by. The Billingsgate of a Genevan _blanchisseuse_ is not so melodious as the notes of a Vallombrosan nightingale, but it has a picturesque quality all its own.
As it was still raining we decided not to go out after dinner. But in spite of the rain I confessed to myself that I liked my first sight of Geneva and cherished a sneaking regret in my heart that Will and Ruth had not chosen their residence there instead of locating at Lausanne.
Any place that is cheerful in a rain-storm is the place for me, and I thought Geneva actually smiled through her tears, if I may so express myself.
CHAPTER XIII
SUNRISE AND ROUSSEAU
The weather showed unusual good humour by clearing in the night.
Geneva woke up to bright sparkling suns.h.i.+ne. I went out before breakfast, indeed before sunrise, on the bridge, and had a most glorious view up the lake and up to the very summit of Mont Blanc.
White as sugar, it lifted its aerial head into the azure--a solid cloud which looked as if it might at any moment take wings and fly away. A well-informed policeman told me the names of the other peaks: L'Aiguille du Midi, nearly a thousand meters lower than the crowning height: La Dent du Geant; Les Grandes Jora.s.ses (from that same word, _joux_, meaning rock); Les Aiguilles Rouges; La Mole, contrasting with the sharp peak of the Aiguille d'Argentiere, rightly suggesting silver. If any one is satisfied with a distant prospect of mountains, his eye would never weary of that glorious sight; but there is an attractive power in the great mountain-ma.s.ses. They beckon, they say:--”Come to us; we want you; you are ours.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: LES GRANDES JORa.s.sES.]
That is, however, a wholly modern conception. If in the old days human consciousness felt the call, heard the summons, it was with the horror with which a bird feels the impulse to fly into the serpent's jaws.
Not so many years ago the popular imagination filled the ravines of the higher mountains with other terrors besides the frost. Dragons haunted caverns; with bated breath men told of having seen the dance of Wotan on the Diablerets, or of having heard fiends playing nine-pins with great stones which, when they missed their mark, went das.h.i.+ng and cras.h.i.+ng down into the valleys. What herdsman would dare approach the Grotte de Balme, that cavern, hollowed out in the limestone rock, where dark-skinned fairies, with no heels to their feet, but with long, rippling hair, lured young men to their destruction! There was the spectral ram of Monthey; there was the three-legged horse of Sion; there was the giant ox of Zauchet, with glowing horns and flaming torch of a tail; there was the blue-haired donkey of Zermatt. Down from the mountains to Neuchatel there used to come a ghost, wearing a cloth dripping with blood, and vanis.h.i.+ng toward the lake. It was that of the widow of Walther, Comte de Rochefort, publicly accused of forgery and beheaded in 1412. The sight of her presaged a conflagration.