Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/249

Rh certain of the fortunate termination of the war for Switzerland, without a sword being drawn.

Louis Napoleon was a citizen of Switzerland; ever since his childhood, which was passed on the banks of Lake Constance, in the Castle of Arenaburg, has he been regarded as a son of the country. They had given him an asylum there at the time when his life and liberty were in danger; they had refused to surrender him to Louis Philippe, and now, in its hour of danger, Louis Napoleon could not disappoint the land which had been so faithful to him in his hour of need; and he, who was already in his childhood known for a kind of gentle self-willedness, by means of which he managed to carry out all his schemes, so that his mother Queen Hortense, used to call him mon doux têla,—would not he, now that he was a man, and seated on the throne of France, find or devise the means of accomplishing his will in so good a cause? Of this I was certain; and I therefore felt quite easy about Switzerland. It was, however, interesting to me, in the mean time, to see the general rising, the general spirit, in the Confederate States; the unity of feeling for the common native-land in these Cantons, most of which, however, knew very little of the rest, excepting that they were Sworn-Confederates.

“If this war should go forward,” I wrote in my diary, in the month of December, “it will lead to a more inward union of the Swiss Cantons, than would fifty years of peace!”

In the Free Church, special meetings and prayers were held, for the averting of the threatened danger.

Neither did the ladies remain inactive. They