Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/240

256 There was nothing left for me but to pay, and take my property, or leave it in these thievish hands, and go away without it. I chose the latter, because this conduct appeared to me unjustifiable. How the poor Savoyard managed, I know not. Probably he was obliged to pay what they demanded, and whether or not he reached his vessel in time, I was not able to ascertain, for I was scarcely on board of mine when it was set in motion.

The scene, of which I here witness, really annoyed me. I love Swiss freedom, and the Swiss people; and it grieves me when I see its free men not taking the pains to be honest and humane men, in its best significance, “gentlemen!” The rude block may become an Apollo-statue, but it must not imagine that it is equally good in its first condition.

At Montreux I wished to see the vintage which was now in progress. In the neighborhood where Rousseau laid the scene of his “Nouvelle Heloise,” at Montreux, just opposite the rocks of Meillerie, at Clarens, where people still wander in “bosquets de Julie,” there, I thought, the most beautiful rural festival of the year would have an especially romantic character. But I deceived myself. Nothing could be more prosaic than the vintage in this district. Both men and women went gravely and silently into the vineyards, gathered the clusters from the vinestocks, bruised them in churns in the fields, loaded them in carts, and drove them away to the wine-presses. There was nothing about it to distinguish it from any other labor. In this harvesting of that which God gives to make glad the heart of man, there was no enjoyment of life.