next day, a piece of her, big enough to make a thole-pin, was not to be
found. He might as well have sounded the heavens!"

"The lake has a bottom, notwithstanding?"

"Your pardon, monsieur. The lake has no bottom. The sea may have a bottom,
but we have no bottom here."

There was little use in disputing the point.

Monsieur Descloux then spoke of the revolutions he had seen. He remembered
the time when Vaud was a province of Berne. His observations on this
subject were rational, and were well seasoned with wholesome common sense.
His doctrine was simply this. "If one man rule, he will rule for his own
benefit, and that of his parasites; if a minority rule, we have many
masters instead of one," (honest Jean had got hold here of a cant saying
of the privileged, which he very ingeniously converted against
themselves,) "all of whom must be fed and served; and if the majority
rule, and ruled wrongfully, why the minimum of harm is done." He admitted,
that the people might be deceived to their own injury, but then, he did
not think it was quite as likely to happen, as that they should be
oppressed when they were governed without any agency of their own. On
these points, the American and the Vaudois were absolutely of the same
mind.

From politics the transition to poetry was natural, for a common
ingredient in both would seem to be fiction. On the subject of his
mountains, Monsieur Descloux was a thorough Swiss. He expatiated on their
grandeur, their storms, their height, and their glaciers, with eloquence.
The worthy boatman had some such opinions of the superiority of his own