run back to the time of the Romans, who brought the vine into the Vaud,
I was obliged to refer my friend's legend of cheapness and freedom to an
earlier period, whose customs we could not profit by. In point of fact,
I could buy more grapes for thruppence in London than in the Vaud; and
the best grapes we had in Switzerland were some brought from Italy, and
sold at a franc a pound in Montreux to the poor foreigners who had come
to feast upon the wealth of the local vineyards.

It was the rain that spoiled the grapes, they said at Montreux, and
wherever we complained; and indeed the vines were a dismal show of
sterility and blight, even to the spectator who did not venture near
enough to subject himself to a fine of six francs. The foreigners had
protected themselves in large numbers by not coming, and the natives who
prosper upon them suffered. The stout lady who kept a small shop of
ivory carvings at Montreux continually lamented their absence to me:
"Die Fremden kommen nicht, dieses regenes Wetter! Man muss Geduldt
haben! Die Fremden kommen nicht!" She was from Interlaken, and the
accents of her native dialect were flavored with the strong waters which
she seemed always to have been drinking, and she put her face close up
to that of the good, all-sympathizing Amerikaner who alone patronized
her shop, and talked her sorrows loudly into him, so that he should not
misunderstand.

[Illustration: _Entrance to Villeneuve_]


IV

But one must not be altogether unreasonable. When we first came in sight
of the lake the rain lifted, and the afternoon sun gushed out upon a