look upon such of our fellow-countrymen as we might see there, after our
long seclusion at Villeneuve; and we easily found all the splendor and
compatriotism we wanted. The hotel we chose stood close upon the lake,
with a superb view of the mountains, and its evergreens in tubs stood
about the gravelled spaces in a manner that consoled us with a sense of
being once more in the current of polite travel. The waiter wanted none
of our humble French, but replied to our timorous advances in that
tongue in a correct and finally expensive English. Under the stimulus of
this experience we went to a bric-à-brac shop and bought a lot of
fascinating old pewter platters and flagons, and then we went recklessly
shopping about in all directions. We even visited an exhibition of Swiss
paintings, which, from an ethical and political point of view, were
admirable; and we strolled delightedly about through the market, where
the peasant women sat and knitted before their baskets of butter, fruit,
cheese, flowers, and grapes, and warbled their gossip and their bargains
in their angelic Suissesse voices, while their husbands priced the
cattle and examined the horses. It was all very picturesque, and
prophesied of the greater picturesqueness of Italy, which we were soon
to see.


V

In fact, there was a great deal to make one think of Italy in that
region; but the resemblance ended mostly with the Southern architecture
and vegetation. Our lake coast had its own features, one of the most
striking of which was its apparent abandonment to the use and pleasure
of strangers. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the water was
everywhere bordered by hotels and pensions. Such large places as Vevay
and Lausanne had their proper life, of course, but of smaller ones, like