Gérard de Nerval

Travels in the Near East (Voyage en Orient, 1843)

Part I: Introduction – Towards the Orient (1839-40, 1842-43)

From Paris to Cythera: Chapters 1-5

View of Villa Diodati, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, c. 1835 - c. 1863

View of Villa Diodati, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, c. 1835 - c. 1863
Rijksmuseum

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Chapter 1: The Route to Geneva (addressed to a friend).
Chapter 2: The Ambassador’s Attaché.
Chapter 3: Switzerland.
Chapter 4: Lake Constance - Augsburg.
Chapter 5: A Day in Munich.

Translator’s Introduction

Gérard de Nerval was the pen-name of Gérard Labrunie (1808-1855), essayist, translator, poet, playwright, and travel writer. He was a major figure during the era of French Romanticism, and is best known for his novellas and poetry, especially the collection Les Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire), which contained a set of eight novellas, including Sylvie, and a selection of poems including El Desdichado. Nerval played a major role in introducing French readers to the works of German Romantic authors, including Goethe and Schiller, initially through his prose translation of the first part of Goethe’s Faust. His later work, merging poetry and journalism in a fictional manner, influenced Proust, particularly Sylvie which explored the theme of time lost and recalled. His last novella, Aurélia ou Le Rêve et La Vie, which drew on his interest in the significance of dreams, also influenced André Breton and the Surrealist movement.

At college, he met Théophile Gautier, who became a lifelong friend, and later, in 1836, accompanied Gautier on a trip to Belgium. In 1840 he took over the latter’s column in La Presse.

He began to experience serious mental health problems in 1841. In December 1842, Nerval departed for the Near East, later publishing articles deriving from his travels, and the work translated here, Voyage en Orient, which expanded on his journey. Between 1844 and 1847, Nerval travelled to Belgium, the Netherlands, and London, writing about his experiences. At the same time, he was writing novellas and opera librettos, and translating the poems of his friend Heinrich Heine, publishing a selection of translations in 1848. His last years were troubled by severe emotional and financial problems, and he sadly took his own life in January 1855. In 1867, Gautier wrote a touching reminiscence of him, ‘La Vie de Gérard’, which was included in his Portraits et Souvenirs Littéraires of 1875.

It should be noted that Gérard did not traverse the complete route described in the later chapters of his Introduction to Voyage en Orient. In October 1839, he travelled from Paris to Vienna, passing through Geneva, but then returned to Paris in 1840. It was in December 1842, after the end of his first bout of mental problems, that he travelled from Paris, via Marseilles, to Malta, Syros, Egypt (Cairo), Lebanon (Beirut), and Turkey (Istanbul/Constantinople), then returned via Syros, Malta, Naples, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, before arriving in Marseilles in December 1843, and reaching Paris in January 1844. He failed for example to visit Cythera, and so a degree of creative freedom should be anticipated when reading the whole work. The idea of the Orient was as important to his efforts as the reality.

His own anti-hero, Gérard stumbles, intelligently and endearingly, through a Levant on the brink of change. His Cairo, Beirut, and Istanbul are rooted in the past, but increasingly touched by modernity. His main focus of interest is the various people who inhabit them, as he chases his personal dream which is fated to endlessly vanish, in accord with the lasting theme of his life and work, unrequited love. An heir to, and exponent of, Romanticism he therefore set the scene for the poetic and literary movements to follow, in which reality and disillusionment increasingly outweighed the claims of individual aspiration.

This enhanced translation of Voyage en Orient has been designed to offer maximum compatibility with current search engines. Among other modifications, the proper names of people and places, and the titles given to literary and other works etc, have been fully researched, modernised, and expanded; comments in parentheses have been added, here and there, to provide a reference, or clarify the meaning; while minor typographic or factual errors, for example incorrect attributions, in the original text, have been eliminated from this new translation.

Chapter 1: The Route to Geneva (addressed to a friend)

I doubt you will find much to interest you in the peregrinations of a traveller departing Paris in mid-November. The tale is a sad enough litany of mishaps, a poor enough subject for description, a picture without horizon or landscape, where little or no use can be made of the three or four views of Switzerland and Italy I conceived before leaving: those melancholy reveries gazing at the sea, that vague poetry of the lakes, the alpine studies, and all the poetic flora of those climates beloved by the sun, that yield the bourgeoisie of Paris so much bitter regret at not being able to go further than Montreuil or Montmorency.

Indeed, the ground is everywhere covered with snow, and, on top of the snow that fell yesterday, heavy rain falls today. One traverses Melun, Montereau, and Joigny, and dines in Auxerre; there is nothing particularly piquant about this. Only imagine the imprudence of a traveller who, too capricious to agree to following the railway’s well-nigh straight line, abandons himself to the vagaries of stagecoaches, all more or less full, in which he will spend the next few days! This bold fellow, abandoning, without regret, the swift diligence of Laffitte, Caillard and Co. (general couriers whose routes traversed France at the time, in competition with the railway), which has borne him to a well-served inn, smiles at the misfortune of the other guests, forced to leave half their dinner and drink, peacefully, with the three or four regular residents of the establishment, who still have an hour to spend at table. Content with his own ideas, he enquires further about the delights of the city, and is attracted finally to the debut of a certain Monsieur Auguste in Buridan (a historical character in Dumas’ play ‘Le Tour de Nesle’), performed in the choir of a church transformed into a theatre.

Next day, our man wakes at his usual hour; he has experienced two nights worth of sleep, thus, the Générale (coach service) has already departed. Why not join Laffitte, Caillard and Co. again, having done so the day before? He lunches: Laffitte passes by, and only has room on the cab.

‘There is still the Berline de Commerce (commercial sedan),’ says the host, eager to satisfy the traveller.

The Berline arrives at four o’clock, full of a company of weavers traveling to Lyon. It seems a very cheerful carriage: it sings and smokes along the road; but is already bearing two layers of travellers.

— ‘There is still the Chalonaise.’

— ‘Which is?’

— ‘The oldest coach service in France. It won’t leave till five; you’ve time for dinner.’

The reasoning is attractive; I reserve a seat, and find myself, two hours later, in the coupé beside the driver.

The man is amiable; he was at the inn, and seemed in no hurry to leave. It is because he knew his carriage only too well!

— ‘Driver, the city paving is atrocious!’

— ‘Oh! Sir, don’t tell me about it! A lot of the folk on the council don’t get along too well any more.... They were offered English surfacing, macadam, wooden paving blocks, édredons (spreads) of paving stones; well, they prefer pebbles, and rubble; whatever they can find to destroy a carriage!’

— ‘But, driver, here we are on the flat, and we’re bouncing about just as much’.

— ‘Sir, I hardly noticed... It’s because the horse is trotting.’

— ‘The horse?’

— ‘Why, yes; but we’ll harness another for the climb.’

At this thought, I shudder...

— ‘In truth, what is this Chalonaise?’

— ‘Oh! It’s famous; it’s France’s premier carriage.’

— ‘The oldest?’

— ‘Exactly.’

At the next relay station, I descend, in order to examine the Chalonaise, this work of great antiquity. It is fit to be exhibited in a museum, alongside flintlock rifles, stone cannon-balls, and wooden presses: the Chalonaise is perhaps today the only carriage in France which lacks a suspension.

So, you’ll comprehend the remainder; resting only by hanging, momentarily, to the straps of the imperial (luggage-rack), taking a thirty-six-hour lesson in trotting without needing a mount, and ending by being deposited, neatly, on the pavement, in Chalon-sur-Sôane, at two in the morning, amidst one of the finest storms of the season.

— ‘The steamboat leaves at five.’

— ‘Very well.’

Nothing is open. Is this truly Chalon-sur-Saône? Châlons-sur-Marne (now Châlons-en-Champagne), perhaps! No, indeed, it is the port of Chalon-sur-Saône, with its pebbled paths, over which you slide, pleasantly, towards the river, where two rival boats rest, side by side, waiting to compete in swiftness; one of them managed to sink its opponent quite recently. Perhaps it should be upgraded to a warship, and sent to the East.

Already the steamboat is filling with bulky tradesmen, the English, travelling salesmen, and those happy workers from the berline. All of them are travelling towards France’s second city (Lyon); but I shall disembark at Mâcon. Mâcon! I passed close to the town five years ago, at a happier time; I was heading for Italy, and the girls, in well-nigh Swiss costume, who appeared on the bridge offering monstrous bunches of grapes, were the first pretty country girls I had seen since Paris. Indeed, the Parisian has no idea of the beauty of the rural women, the female workers, as are seen in the towns of the South. Mâcon is a half-Swiss, half-southern French city, and in truth quite ugly.

I was shown Alphonse de Lamartine’s house, which is large and sombre; there is a pretty church on the hill. A glimpse of the sun came to liven for a moment the flat roofs, with their rounded tiles, and cause a few yellowed vine-leaves on the walls to fall; the promenade with its leafless trees still smiled beneath the shaft of light.

The carriage for Bourg-en-Bresse left at two; it visited every corner of Mâcon; we were soon driving slowly through the monotonous countryside of Bresse, so cheerful in summer; we arrived, at about eight o’clock, at Bourg.

Bourg deserves to be noted for its church, of the most charming architecture; Byzantine, if I divined it correctly at night, or perhaps the quasi-Renaissance style of Saint-Eustache, in Paris, that is so admired. You will kindly excuse a traveller, still recovering from the Chalonaise, for not being able to resolve my doubts, being in complete darkness.

I had studied my route carefully on the map. As regards couriers, Laffitte carriages, the post-office stagecoach, in a word, according to the official route, I could have let myself be transported to Lyon, and then taken the coach for Geneva; but the road in that direction formed an enormous angle. I know Lyon well and knew nothing of Bresse. I took, as they say, the by-road... is the highway shorter?

O, Alphonse Karr! O, Jules Janin! The problem would interest you, undoubtedly; but what does that matter to me? I’m no novelist.

If the naive diary of an enthusiastic traveller has any interest for those who run the risk of becoming one, then understand that there is no direct coach from Bourg to Geneva. Take a detour of about forty-five miles to Lyon, and return on the Lyon coach for Geneva, a distance of thirty-five miles or so, to reach Pont-d’Ain, and you will solve the problem, while losing a mere ten hours.

However, it is much simpler to go from Bourg to Pont-d’Ain, and there await the coach from Lyon.

— ‘You are right,’ I am told, ‘the coach passes at eleven o’clock; you will be there by three in the morning.’

A two-wheeler arrived at the appointed time, and, four hours later, the driver dropped me beside the main road with my luggage at my feet.

It was raining a little; the road was in darkness; I could see neither houses nor lights.

— ‘Follow the road straight ahead’, the driver said to me, in a kindly manner. ‘About a mile further on you’ll find an inn; they’ll open up for you, if they’re not asleep.’

And the carriage continued its journey in the direction of Lyon.

I pick up my suitcase, and hat-box.... I arrive at the designated inn; I knock loudly for an hour it seems.... But, once inside, my troubles are all forgotten....

The inn at Pont-d’Ain, is a house of plenty. Descending the stairs, the next morning, I found myself in a vast, grandiose kitchen. Poultry was turning on spits, fish were frying on the stove. A well-stocked table brought together a group of lively huntsmen. The host was a big man, and the hostess a sturdy woman, both very friendly.

I was somewhat worried about the coach for Geneva.

— ‘It will pass by, dear sir,’ they said, ‘tomorrow, about two.’

— ‘Oh! Oh, no!’

— ‘But there is the mail-coach this evening.’

— ‘The mail?’

— ‘Yes, the mail’.

— ‘Ah! Very well.’

I merely have to stroll about all day. I admire the appearance of the inn, a brick building with stone corners, dating from the time of Louis XIII. I visit the village, consisting of a single street crowded with cattle, children, and drunken villagers; it is a Sunday; and return along the banks of the Ain, a magnificent bluish river, whose swift current turns a host of mills.

At ten in the evening, the courier arrives. While he eats, I am taken, so as reserve my place, to the shed where his carriage awaits.

Surprise, surprise! It comprises a basket.

Yes, a simple basket suspended on a carriage frame, excellent for holding packages and letters; but a passenger must travel in it like any old parcel.

A tearful young lady in mourning had arrived from Grenoble in this incredible vehicle; I had to take the seat next to her.

The impossibility of finding a stable position, among the packages, necessarily confused our destinies: the lady ended up putting a stop to her tears, caused by the death of her uncle in Grenoble. She was returning to Ferney, her family’s dwelling place.

We talked of Voltaire, a good deal. We were travelling slowly, because of the continual ascents and descents. The courier below us, too disdainful of his carriage to take a seat himself, whipped the horse, who brushed the edge of the precipice from time to time.

The Rhône flowed to our right, a few hundred feet below the road; customs-posts were visible here and there among the cliffs, since the border with Savoy was on the far side of the river

From time to time, we stopped for a moment in small towns, in villages where we could only hear the cries of creatures awakened by our passage. The courier threw packages to invisible hands or paws, and then we set off again at a brisk trot behind his little horse.

Towards daybreak, we saw, from the top of the mountains, a large sheet of water, of vast size, like a sea traversing the distant horizon: it was Lake Geneva.

An hour later, we were having coffee in Ferney, while waiting for the Geneva coach.

From there, in two hours, through a charming countryside, still verdant, passing gardens and cheerful villas, I arrived in the homeland of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

It is rightly agreed that Europe today is perfectly well-known to all; a traveller can therefore only describe his itinerary, chronicle his adventures, and, if necessary, transcribe his dinner menu, as Louis XVIII did, in the most interesting itinerary ever made (See, Louis XVIII: ‘A Narrative of the Journey to Brussels and Coblentz in 1791’). For example, is it not of interest to know that in Geneva it is very difficult to obtain trout, and that these fish are as rare in Lake Geneva as oysters at Ostend, and carp on the Rhine? Last year, at an inn in Mannheim, I wondered aloud at never being served carp, as I like it so much. (It should also be added that I was unable to obtain cider in Rouen, and liver pâté in Strasbourg, on the pretext that it was not the right season.)

— ‘Sir,’ replied a German, from that good town of Mannheim, ‘do you think one can fish a carp from the Rhine just like that?’

‘I was shown,’ I replied coolly, ‘at Germain Chevet’s shop in Paris, some such creatures which he claimed dwelt there.’

— ‘I am not saying, sir,’ observed the German, ‘that there are no carp in the Rhine...’

— ‘Say so, if you wish, sir; in Paris, we would call it a paradox; but, here, it may be perfectly true.’

— ‘Sir, said the German, the Rhine carp are very fine; a treat for crowned heads. We know how many there are, and the Rhine fishermen, who formed a corporation, have shared them among themselves for many a day. They know them all; and, when a fisherman meets one, he says: “Look, this is so-and-so’s carp,” and, to show his honesty returns it to the river.’

I believe the same is true of Lake Geneva’s trout. However, the cuisine is fairly good in Geneva, and the company very pleasant. Everyone speaks French perfectly, but with an accent that is somewhat reminiscent of Marseille pronunciation. The women are very pretty, and almost all possess a physiognomy that distinguishes them from others. They generally have black or brown hair; but their complexion is dazzlingly white and fine; their features are regular, their cheeks possess colour, their eyes are beautiful and calm. It seemed to me that the most beautiful were those of a certain age, or rather a settled age. Thus, their arms and shoulders were admirable, but their waists a little full. They were women whose ideas are those of Sainte-Beuve; Laker beauties (The Lakers, was Byron’s scornful epithet for the English Lake Poets); yet, if there are blue-stockings among them, they contain the loveliest of legs.

Chapter 2: The Ambassador’s Attaché

You have not yet asked me where I’m heading: do I know, myself? I wish to see places I’ve not yet seen; and then, at this time of year, there is scarcely a choice of routes; you have to take those that snow, flooding, or brigands have not blocked. (You don’t believe in brigands? Nor do I; I’ve never seen one though I’ve often imagined them.) Well, there are people here who believe in them; and the newspapers assure us that Bavaria is infested with them. But as regards the snow, we hear dreadful stories. Sometimes a guide disappears before the very eyes of the traveller, like a demon plunging beneath a trapdoor; elsewhere, a stagecoach remains submerged for seventeen days; travellers are forced to eat the horses; furthermore, an Englishman, who was seeking the Spring in Italy, was lost in the snow, and failed to be saved by a dog from the Saint-Bernard Pass, since the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique (on Boulevard du Temple, Paris), which, as you know, is currently staging a play on such a theme, had neglected to return them to their post. But the tales of flooding are, by far, the most terrible. I recently heard one, the circumstances of which are so odd I can’t resist the urge to relate them.

A courier burdened with dispatches crossed the border in recent days, heading for Italy. He was a simple attaché, flattered to ride, at the State’s expense, in a brand-new post-chaise, while well stocked with money and necessaries; in a word, a young man in a fine position, with his valet behind, both wrapped in their cloaks.

The light was fading, the road was submerged in water, in several places; they came to a torrent more powerful than the others; the postilion hoped to cross it in the usual way; not at all, the water carried away the carriage, and the horses were obliged to swim; the postilion, keeping his head, managed to unyoke the team, but was never seen again.

The valet threw himself from his seat, swam two fathoms, and reached the bank. Meanwhile, the post-chaise, brand-new, as we said, and well-shuttered, quietly floated downriver. And, what was the attaché doing?... The happy youth was asleep.

However, he awoke as the carriage was buffeted. Considering the matter calmly, he judged the carriage would sink before long, hastened to remove his clothing, lowered the window which the water had not yet reached, gripped his dispatches in his teeth, and, being slender of figure, clambered out, swiftly.

Having swum bravely to shore, his valet had now gone to seek help. So, arriving on the bank, our diplomatic envoy found himself alone, and naked as our father Adam. As for the carriage, it was sailing along, far downriver.

Walking the margin for a while, the young man had the good fortune to find a Savoyard cottage, and hastened to seek refuge there. The sole inhabitants were two women, an aunt and her niece. You can imagine the cries and the signs of the cross they made when they saw this gentleman drawing near, disguised as a model at the Academy!

The attaché managed to explain the cause of his misadventure, and, seeing a pile of logs near the hearth, told the aunt to add them to the fire, and he would recompense her well.

— ‘But how can you?’ said the aunt. ‘You’re quite naked; you’ve not a penny.’

Her reasoning was unassailable. Fortunately, the servant arrived, having discovered where his master must be, and the situation was altered. The logs were added, the attaché wrapped himself in a blanket, and he and his servant held council.

They had no other recourse: this house was the only one within two leagues; it was therefore necessary to regain the border to seek help.

— ‘You’ve money?’ the attaché asked of his Frontin (a stock-character, of the opéra-comique, the sly and witty servant).

The latter rummaged in his pockets, like Alceste’s valet (Dubois; see Moliere’s ‘Le Misanthrope’, Act IV, Scene IV), bringing forth only a deck of cards, a piece of string, a button, and some small change, all soaking wet.

— ‘Sir,’ he cried, ‘an idea! I’ll wrap myself in your blanket, you take my trousers and coat. Walk vigorously, and you’ll be at A*** in four hours, and there you’ll find the good General T... who was so hospitable when we passed by.’

The attaché shuddered at the thought of donning his servant’s livery and, dressed as a valet, going off to introduce himself to the inhabitants of A***, the General, and his wife! He had seen enough performances of Ruy Blas (see Hugo’s ‘Ruy Blas’ Act III, Scene IV) to shun adopting such means.

— ‘Dear lady,’ he said to the Savoyarde, ‘I’ll to bed, and await the return of my servant, whom I’ve sent to A*** to obtain funds.’

The Savoyarde was none too happy; moreover, she and her niece slept in the only bed; However, our envoy’s diplomacy ultimately triumphed over this further obstacle. The servant left, and the master resumed, as best he could, that sleep, so rudely disturbed, of an hour before.

At daybreak he awoke to the sounds of knocking at the door. It was his valet, followed by seven lancers. The general had believed he must do no less for his young friend.... but sent no money.

The attaché leapt from the bed.

— ‘What the devil does the General want me to do with seven lancers? I’m not here to conquer Savoy!’

— ‘Why, sir,’ said the servant, ‘they’re here to retrieve the carriage.’

— ‘And where is the carriage?’

It was, in fact, scattered about the countryside. The torrent flowed on majestically, no trace of the vehicle remained. The Savoyards were concerned. Fortunately, our young diplomat did not lack for ideas. Dispatches in hand, he convinced the lancers of the importance of not losing an hour, and one of them agreed to lend him his uniform, and take his place in the bed, or before the fire, wrapped in the blanket, as he chose.

In the end, the attaché left for A***, the lancer remaining, as a pledge, with the Savoyards (we must hope nothing untoward resulted to trouble the harmony existing between their two governments). Reaching the town, he went off to find the General, who had difficulty recognising him dressed as a lancer.

— ‘General, I need clothes, and some funds.’

— ‘So, your carriage is lost?’ asked the General.

— ‘There’s no news yet; but give me some money, I’ll pay the locals to find it.’

— ‘Why the locals? Since you’ve lancers, who cost us nothing.’

— ‘But, General, lancers mustn’t be used so! Lend me some other clothes....

— ‘Keep the uniform you have on; we’ve plenty in store....’

— ‘Well then, advance me some funds; I’ll return there.’

— ‘I’m sorry, my friend, I’ve nothing to offer except what the military places at your disposal....

— ‘For God’s sake, general, talk no more of your lancers!... I’ll arrange some funds in the town, but am no less obliged to you for the rest.’

— ‘At your service, my friend.’

The attaché failed to impress the town’s mayor and the notary, especially given the clothes he wore. He was forced to go to the nearest sub-prefecture, where, after many a negotiation, he obtained what he needed. The carriage was removed from the water, the lancer was relieved of his role, the Savoyards were well recompensed for their hospitality, and our diplomat left by the mail coach.

I trust he found a better carriage than the one that brought me to Ferney. Then there were the two days lost in delivering the dispatches, and who knows how many complications that might have been caused regarding the matter.

One could make a whole comedy of the tale, albeit eliminating certain details. The lancer, left there as a pledge, can’t hide in bed throughout: the young Savoyard must leave him the blanket. It would work well. Plenty of laughter; a marriage devised, and the attaché pays the dowry.

But only in the theatre are there tidy endings: reality never provides one.

Do you wish to know the attaché’s name?... It was my cousin Henri, who left Paris at the same time as I did, and was more uncomfortable in his post chaise than I was in the humble vehicles I encountered.

Deep down, these tales of misfortune terrify me; why should I not wait for spring in this good city of Geneva, where the women are so pretty, the cuisine passable, the wines are our wines of France, and I lack for nothing except, alas, fresh oysters, and carp from Lake Geneva, those which we see here being from Paris.

If I alter my resolution, I’ll write to you.

Chapter 3: Switzerland

So, I’ve reached Geneva: by what roads, alas! And in what vehicles! But, in truth, what would I have to write about, if I travelled like everyone else, in a good post-chaise or coupé, wrapped in a muffler, overcoat, and shawl, with a muff, and a footrest beneath me?... I like to sacrifice a little to chance: the accuracy of railway timetables, the precision with which steamboats arrive at a fixed hour on the day expected, hardly renders a poet, or a painter, joyful, nor even a simple archaeologist, or a mere collector of experiences such as I.

This indolent life in Geneva has completely repaired my initial fatigue. — Where shall I go? Where else could one wish to go in winter? I go to meet the Spring; I go to meet the Sun.... It blazes before my eyes midst the rainbow mists of the Orient. — The idea came to me while walking on the upper terraces of this city, which form a sort of hanging garden. The sunset view is magnificent from there.

I no longer possess the desire to amuse you with my moments of danger or misadventure, like the famous author of The Journey to Saint-Cloud (Louis-Balthazar Néel, author of ‘Le Voyage de Saint-Cloud par Mer et par Terre’, 1748). Yet you cannot prevent me from regretting those fine, if difficult, journeys through old France, as one finds them depicted by Cyrano de Bergerac, the Sieur d’Assoucy (Charles Coypeau d’Assoucy), or even the gastronomic travels of Bachaumont (François Le Coigneux de Bachaumont) and Chapelle (Claude Emmanuel L’Huilier Chapelle). Do you remember the joyful Adventures of Baron de Foeneste (by Agrippa d’Aubigné), who was careful to recover his expenses, when staying at inns, by taking, as a minimum, from his room, the towels, soap, and even the chamber-pot if it was made of tin? And, in the first chapters of Marianne (‘La Vie de Marianne’ by Pierre de Marivaux), what a journey the Bordeaux stagecoach made, that took three weeks to reach Paris, was overturned five or six times en route, and was attacked at least twice by thieves!

These are pleasures we no longer enjoy, a great source of interest now lost to modern traveller’s tales. Once I leave France, I hope to strike such a vein again, especially in mountainous regions. But, alas, how rare is the unexpected, even in Switzerland, where people travel on foot half the time! The unexpected, that is to say a torrent which turns your carriage into a boat (let us not forget the attaché); an avalanche that buries you; a Bernese bear that comes to sniff at you as you pass by; a floe in a sea of ice, giving way beneath your feet, or perhaps (as strongly recommended), a brief encounter with brigands....

Forgive me, I wander too far astray; you no longer believe in brigands; brigands no longer exist, and you know, as well as I, that we are obliged to pay wretched people to declare themselves criminals, so that the magistrates, king’s prosecutors, lawyers, and local gendarmerie have a reason for existing, and receiving their salaries, and so the galleys and prisons are still occupied. Such are the little comedies that play out, in the plain light of day, between the black robes and the jackets with holes in, and we can see by reading court papers how much invention and wit are expended there.

But, in the absence of any adventures, description at least remains to the literary tourist; he counts the stones of the monuments, the leaves in the forest; he sketches landscapes, receding views, horizons; the daguerreotype is now here, it cuts the ground from beneath him; already, in every town, we now encounter two or three such pieces of equipment, waiting only for a ray of sunlight to function; but the sun is rare in the season we are now in, and our automated landscapers are reduced to seeking it above the clouds, by engaging in perilous ascents.

For those, indeed, are the high Alps one sees on the horizon on every side. I admit I have never seen them till now. Someone claimed to show them to me, in Lyon, from the top of Fourvières; and in Nice, from the top of a mountain which dominates the city; but I had only the slightest, vaguest idea of them. So here I am facing Mont Blanc! I would like to remember the twenty lines of Delille which rendered it famous; but I only remember those which immortalise coffee:

‘And, I believe, genius, now awakening,

Drinks a ray of sunshine from every drop!’

(Jacques Delille: ‘Le Café’)

And are in no way applicable! He was a most helpful poet, in times past, nailing a beautiful Alexandrine epigraph to each landscape. All nature was labelled as in a Botanical Garden. People everywhere encountered a ready-made welcome therein, like a set of pleasant New Year greetings. There are still many admirers of Delille in Geneva.

So, I sought Mont Blanc all evening; I followed the shores of the lake, I climbed the highest terraces of the city; I traversed the ramparts, not daring to ask: ‘Which is Mont Blanc?’ And I ended up admiring it in the form of an immense white sunlit cloud, which fulfilled the idea of it I had imagined. Sadly, while I was assessing the danger involved in planting a tricolour on the top, all the while imagining black bears padding around on the immaculate snow of its summit, my mountain suddenly lacked a base, found itself truncated and suspended in the sky, like the floating island of Laputa (see Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’: III, ‘Voyage to the Island of Laputa’); as for the real Mont Blanc, you understand, it made little impression on me.

But the Geneva promenade was very beautiful in the setting sun, with its views of the immense horizon, and its old lime-trees with leafless branches. The area of the city that one sees when turning to glance behind is also very tidy, presenting an amphitheatre of streets and terraces, more pleasant to look at than walk through.

I visited the theatre (Théâtre de Neuve), which is quite large, but appears not to be flourishing; three vaudevilles were being enacted there by a troupe of dramatic invalids, whose talent I was unable to sufficiently appreciate. Geneva has the same disadvantage Belgium has, of finding itself French without desiring to be so; these ‘mock’ Frances are always unfortunate, through servile deference or a pretension to individuality. Since 1830, France has given a helping hand to the one, and a kick to the other; which means that the French are scarcely liked in either place. In Geneva as in Brussels, I saw many caricatures of the French; most relate to the time of the threat of war, in 1836. There is one which represents a French light infantryman advancing upon the border, with the look of an extremely ferocious cavalryman with his sabre. On the Swiss side, a small but intrepid volunteer from Geneva is shown, who shouts at him:

I am young, it is true,

but in souls, noble too, etc.

I found it remarkable that these gentlemen had turned against us, like cannon, two lines by Corneille (See ‘Le Cid’, Act II, Scene II). I must admit, however, that it is less harsh than the famous caricature of the invasion of Belgium by Fransquillons (French-speakers).

Descending from the theatre towards the lake, I followed the main, Parisian-looking, street, the Rue de la Corraterie, where the most expensive shops are. The Rue du Rhône, which is at an angle with the latter, part of which enjoys the view of the port, is however the most commercial and the most lively. As for the rest, Geneva, like all the towns of the South, is paved with stone. Bitumen is appearing here and there; and, in fact, in many countries where sandstone is lacking, bitumen, of which Paris has tired so quickly, still has a bright future. Long dark passages, in ancient fashion, enable communication between the streets. The factories, which hide the end of the lake and the source of the Rhône, also grant the city an original appearance.

Shall I tell you of the new district, located on the far side of the Rhône, built wholly in the style of the Rue de Rivoli; and of the palace of the philanthropist Jean-Gabriel Eynard, countless lithographed portraits of whom you will know which were once sold for the benefit of Greeks and Africans? It is preferable to halt, in the middle of the bridge, at a level area planted with trees, where the statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (by James Pradier) is located. The great man is there, draped like a Roman, in the position of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf; only, Rousseau is on foot, as befits a philosopher. He follows with his eyes the course of the Rhône, which emerges, beautifully clear and swift, from the lake – so blue, that it recalled, to the Russian Emperor Alexander, the River Neva, also blue as the sea!

The tip of Lake Geneva, nestling within the city quays, is partly covered with those ugly huts which serve as water-mills or laundry-rooms, and offers a spectacle more varied than imposing. On the other hand, when one turns one’s back on the city and faces Lausanne, while the steamboat leaves the port crowded with little vessels, the view presented gives one the illusion of a wide sea. One never loses sight of the twin shores completely, but the lake cuts the horizon with an azure blade; white sails sway in the distance, and the banks fade to a violet hue, while palaces and villas show forth at intervals, as the sun rises; it is a paler image of the smiling straits of the Gulf of Naples, which one follows for so long before approaching the city. Yet, why describe the illustrious lake that Victor Hugo traversed twenty-five years after Byron? Why speak of Vevey, Clarens, Chillon, which, moreover, I failed to see? Before reaching those immortal places, the boat halts at Lausanne, and deposits me on the shore, with all my luggage, and into the arms of the customs officers. When it becomes clear that I am not importing French cigars (strictly controlled) for which Switzerland has an appetite, I am handed over to four customs agents, who wish to divide my possessions. One carries my suitcase, the other my hat, the other my umbrella, the last nothing at all. Then, they give me to understand with some difficulty, since use of the French language apparently ceases there, that I am involved in walking a long mile, forever ascending. An hour later, by treading the roughest yet pleasantest road in the world, I arrive in Lausanne, and cross the charming area that serves as a public promenade, and as a garden to the Casino.

The view from there is admirable. The lake extends to the right as far as the eye can see, sparkling in the sunlight, while to the left it seems almost like a river, lost between high mountains, and obscured by their long shadows. Peaks of snow crown this opera perspective, while below the terrace, at one’s feet, yellowing vines extend in a carpet to the edge of the lake. As an artist would say, the view is a cliché, an archetype of Swiss scenery: from decorations to watercolours, one finds it everywhere; all that is lacking are the locals in costume; but the latter only dress so when the English arrive for the season; otherwise, they are clad like you and I. Don’t think Lausanne the most ridiculous city in the world. It is not so. But Lausanne is a city full of stairways; the districts are constructed in levels; the cathedral is on the seventh at least. It is a most beautiful Gothic church, spoiled and stripped today, for Protestant use, like all the cathedrals of Switzerland; magnificent on the outside, cold and bare within. When I entered, there was a queue at one of the doors, involving a certain amount of squabbling: the local gamins had arrived to secure their polling cards; because it seems that the sacristy acts as a branch of the municipality. I was surprised to see such little brats adorned with voting rights.

The view is even more beautiful from the belfry tower; the whole quirky town looks a little like Blois. Even the bell towers look awkward and provincial. There are a host of tin weather-vanes and pointed roofs, of a most cheerful appearance.

Though I was thinking about dining, on leaving the church I was told by all that it was not yet the hour so to do. I ended by visiting the Casino, as being the most obvious place to find a meal; there, the proprietor, accustomed to the strange whims of the English, merely smiled at my request, and proved willing to kill a chicken for me.

Not knowing how to spend the rest of the evening till the car left Berne, I settled into a café, where I found that its copies of Le Constitutionnel and Le Siècle were those from the day of my departure, which again forced me to depend on the local papers. The politics of smaller countries are most amusing, in the sense that they have the same nuances, the same divisions, the same angers, the same commonplaces as ours; it is a revolution in a teacup. Religious quarrels still create complexities that we no longer see; it appears, according to the Premier-Lausanne that I have before my eyes, that there are still Straussians in many places. The party of Strauss (David Friedrich Strauss), defeated in Zurich at one time, has raised its head in Lausanne; the Grand Council has struck a mighty blow. There is a certain Professor Scherr there, a declared Straussian, on whom the city bestows, as well as on the other professors, fifty gold louis, free lodging, a garden, and a supply of firewood: to punish him for an unorthodox speech, he has lost the garden, and, if he speaks again, he will lose the firewood; and so on. These temperate means are certainly more effective than a great parade of arms in Zurich, and better calculated to convince the schismatics. Formerly, they would have been treated more harshly, in a canton where John Calvin had Michael Servetus roasted with green wood so that his torment would last longer. Today, they are content to take away the wood supply; instead of having them burned in the public square, they are left to freeze in their houses.

I am so idle here that I soon pass from politics to the announcements. I find some of them very amusing; I would be happy to broadcast them further, but it would aid them little now. Their judicial notices are presented in a completely paternal manner; so, let me merely recommend the form of their epistles to our own investigating judges; it will reduce the number of police required, since, if criminals read the newspapers, they could not fail to be touched by such polite warnings.

The papers being none too entertaining after all, I was delighted to board the diligence, and to nestle warmly between two substantial ladies from Lausanne who were also travelling to Berne. Did I not say recently that all the women in Geneva seem forty years old? This is doubtless due to the fact that, the ladies there being generally very pretty, Paris collects them for their beauty, and only returns them to their own country when they are a little faded, and reduced.... There they remain for a few years, subject to their lost illusions, they go and admire their blue stockings in the blue lake; the vigorous school of Rousseau, Madame de Staël, and Benjamin Constant is still maintained there. Then, when the forty years in which they remain thirty begin to border on half a century, these beauties one day remove from Geneva to Lausanne by a gentle passage across Lake Geneva. There, the school is that of Étienne de Senancour, Barbara von Krüdener, Isabelle de Charrière, etc. which turns out fallen angels, dethroned, despondent, and distressed, to an extraordinary degree; till Balzac raises them up one day with his powerful breath. The fifty-year-old women seek to lean on our friend’s cane. I simply transmit the wish to him, so as to let him know how greatly loved and longed-for he is in this country.

At last, I am departing this mystical, dreamy little version of France, which has endowed us with a whole literature and politics; I am off to savour the real Switzerland. We are passing Lake Neuchâtel on our left, which, all night long, casts its silver gleams towards us. We ascend and descend, we traverse woodlands and plains, the white serration of the Alps always shining on the horizon. At daybreak, we roll over a beautiful paved road, pass under several gates, and admire the large stone bears carved everywhere, like the bears of Bradwardine in Waverley (see Walter Scott’s novel, chapter VIII): they are the insignia of Bern. I must therefore be in Bern, the most beautiful city in Switzerland.

Nothing is open. I walk along a wide street, a whole mile in length, lined with ponderous arcades which support enormous houses; here and there large square towers support vast clock-dials. This is a city where one always knows the time of day. In the centre of the pavement, a broad stream covered over with boards links a series of monumental fountains spaced about a hundred yards apart. Each is defended by a handsome sculpted knight brandishing his lance. The houses, of a rococo taste as regards architecture, are also decorated with coats of arms and their attributes: Berne has a semi-bourgeois, semi-aristocratic appearance which suits it, however, in every way. The other streets, less wide, are in more or less the same style. Descending to the left, I encounter the deeply entrenched river Aare, its bank covered in wooden huts, like Lake Geneva; There are some that display the title Baths, but are in no better state than the others. I am reminded of a chapter of Casanova’s Memoirs (entitled ‘Berne, La Mate’), which claims that one is assisted there by naked attendants, chosen from among the most innocent girls of the canton. They refrain from leaving the water, out of a sense of modesty, having no other veil; but they frolic around you like Rubens’ naiads (compare Ruben’s painting ‘The Arrival of Marie de Médicis at Marseilles’). I doubt, despite the attestations of more modern travellers, that this Bernese custom of the eighteenth century is still maintained. Besides, a cold bath at this time of year would be such as to destroy any feeling of pleasure.

As I return to the main street, I think about lunching, and for this purpose enter the Auberge des Gentilshommes, an aristocratic inn if ever there was one, decked out with coats of arms and mantling; I am told that it is not yet lunchtime: an echo of supper-time in Lausanne. I therefore decide to visit the other half of the city. The houses are still tall and heavy, the paving stones fine, the doors excellent, in short, a well-to-do city, as merchants say. The Gothic cathedral is as beautiful as that of Lausanne, but in a more severe style. A terraced walk, like all the walks in Switzerland, looks out over a vast horizon of valleys and mountains; the same river Aare I have already seen this morning also curves around this side of the town; the magnificent houses or palaces situated along this bank have terraced gardens which descend three or four levels to its rocky bed. It is a very fine sight of which one cannot tire. Once you know that Berne possesses a casino, a theatre, and many booksellers; that it is the residence of the diplomatic corps, and the palladium of the Swiss aristocracy; that only German is spoken there, and that the cuisine is rather poor, you will have learned all that is necessary, and will be in a hurry to make your way to Zurich.

Forgive me for covering so swiftly, and describing so poorly, places of such importance; but since Switzerland is so well known to you, and since I consulted in advance all the landscape paintings and all the various impressions of the travel-writers, we have no need to deviate from the road to view its curiosities.

I merely seek to observe the country’s roads, the sturdiness of the carriages, and what is said, done and eaten, here and there, at the present time.

For example, I avoided asking for steak, fearing that it might have come from a bear; and having learned that, in the chalets, those hospitable huts, a cup of milk cost four francs, I refused to consume it. The experience of past travellers is thus invaluable: which is what should recommend this narrative to your attention.

So, having left Berne, and spent a tedious day traversing woods consisting of birch and fir-trees, adorned with mediocre chalets, and two large crowded villages with a population less beautiful than at the Opéra, you will be happy to take supper, at about eleven o’clock, at Aarau, at the house of a very pretty hostess, in a low-cut dress, wearing (out of pure kindness to you) the national costume. There, for a reasonable number of batz (the batz was a coin worth four kreutzers), you purchase a meal which lacks nothing, and which involves the true trout of the Swiss lakes and torrents, the small blue trout, striped with red, a strawberry of the animal kingdom, modest, delicate, and perfumed, which one must be careful not to confuse with the Geneva trout, which, assuming that it still exists, is nothing but a disguised salmon.

The walls of the dining room were decorated with views of Aarau, among which I noticed a depiction of the house of Heinrich Zschokke, the illustrious novelist. I was sad to finally leave that pleasant inn, where I would have liked, in many ways, to spend the night. The hostess gives one a gracious welcome, and I blushed when leaving, at slipping into her hand, the humble currency that Switzerland calls the batz. We will doubtless speak again of the currency, in connection with the German kreutzer, no less confusing to the traveller.

The uneven paving stones of Zurich woke me at five in the morning. Here was the famous city which recalled the days of William Tell by opposing the insolent David Strauss; here were those mountains from which choruses of armed peasants descended; here is the beautiful lake which resembles that created by Eugène Cicéri (see his set design for Fromental Halévy’s ‘La Juive’). As for the rest, the place is as vulgar as possible. Except for a few old houses, decorated with serrations and convoluted sculptures, with railings and balconies of marvellous workmanship, the city fails to take advantage of its natural position. Its lake and mountains present superb views. The road leading to Lake Constance dominates this vast panorama for a long while, and the traveller’s day is passed amidst the most beautifully contrasting valleys and mountains.

The landscape had already taken on a new character: offering less the tormented aspect of verdant Swabia, more the undulating gorges of the Black Forest, always immense, though cleared in parts to make way for roads and crops. Towards noon, we passed through the last Swiss town, whose main street glittered with gilded signs. It possessed a wholly German physiognomy; the houses were painted; the women were pretty; the taverns were filled with smokers and beer drinkers. Farewell, then, to Switzerland, and with scant regret. An hour later, our postilion’s colours changed from blue to yellow. The rampant lion of Zähringen gleamed on the road posts, or on its field of gules, marking the border of the two countries. Now we were in the district of Constance, and already its lake sparkled in the gaps between the mountains.

Chapter 4: Lake Constance - Augsburg

Constance! A beautiful name and a most beautiful memory! The city’s situation is the best in Europe, a splendid seal which unites the north of Europe with the south, west and east. Five nations come to drink from its lake, out of which the Rhine flows, already a river, as the Rhône from Lake Geneva. Constance is a little Constantinople, lying at the entrance to the immense lake, on both banks of the Rhine, as yet still at peace. One descends towards the reddish plain slowly, by way of slopes covered with those excellent vines whose produce spreads its name throughout the world; the horizon is immense, and the river, lake, and city offer a thousand marvellous aspects. Only, as one approaches the houses, one finds the cathedral somewhat less imposing than one had imagined, the houses modern, the streets, narrow as in the Middle Ages, displaying a commonplace lack of cleanliness. However, the beauty of the women amends this impression a little; they are worthy descendants of those who provided so many beautiful companions for prelates and cardinals of the Council: I mean as regards their charms; I have no cause to insult their morals.

The Brochet’s table is really very well served. The company was amiable and brilliant that evening. I found myself seated close to a pretty English lady whose husband requested a bottle of champagne for dessert; his wife wished to dissuade him, saying that it would upset his stomach. In fact, the Englishman seemed to be in poor health. He insisted however, and the bottle was brought. Scarcely had his glass been filled, when the pretty lady seized the bottle, and offered some to her neighbours. The Englishman, persisting, asked for another; his wife hastened to use the same means, without the invalid, who was most polite, daring to show annoyance. At the appearance of a third bottle, we were about to thank him; the Englishwoman begged us not to abandon him to his pious intention. The host finally understood her signs, and, at the request for a fourth, replied to milord that he was out of champagne, and those three bottles had been the last. It was high time, for there were only two of us left at the table with the lady, and our companionship was dangerously near to compromising our reason. The Englishman rose, with a cold expression, dissatisfied with having drunk only three glasses from his three bottles, and retired to bed. The host informed us that the pair were on their way to Italy, via Bregenz, to restore his health. I doubted whether his most intelligent better half would succeed so happily, in future, as regards keeping him to his diet.

Tomorrow, at five in the morning, the steamer will bear me to chilly Bavaria, and I am warned the crossing will be stormy. I would like to endure a fine tempest on Lake Constance; but it would be sad, having once escaped the abysses of the Mediterranean, to be drowned in a lake!

You will ask me why I chose not to stay a day longer in Constance, in order to see the cathedral, the council hall, the square where John Huss was burned at the stake, and so many other historical curiosities that our Englishman at the inn had admired at leisure. In truth it was because I had no wish to mar my imaginings in regard to Constance. I have told you how, in descending the mountain gorges of the Zurich canton, covered with thick forest, I had seen the town from afar, lit by a lovely sunset, amidst a vast landscape flooded with reddish rays, bordering the lake and river, like a western Istanbul; I have also told you how, on approaching, I found the city unworthy of its fame and its marvellous situation. I thought to see, I confess, the bluish cathedral, the squares with ornamented houses, the bizarre, winding streets, and all the picturesqueness of the Middle Ages with which our Opéra set designers have poetically endowed it; well, all that proved only a dream, an invention of my own: instead of Constance, imagine Pontoise, and you would be closer to the truth. Now, I feared the council hall would prove a hideous barn, the cathedral as mean inside as outside, and John Huss the victim of some country stove. Let us hasten, then, to quit Constance before daylight, and at least retain some doubt on the matter, with the hope that less strict travellers will later be able to say: ‘But you passed through too swiftly! You saw nothing!’

Indeed, it is a painful experience, as one travels more widely, to lose, city by city, and country by country, all the beautiful universe one created for oneself when young, through reading, looking at pictures, and in dreams. The world that is thus created in children’s heads is so rich, so beautiful, one knows not whether it is the exaggerated result of received ideas, or the memory of a previous existence and the enchanted landscapes of an unknown planet. However admirable certain aspects and certain countries may seem, there are none by which the imagination is completely amazed, and which present one with the astonishing and unheard-of. I make an exception as regards English tourists, who seem never to have seen or imagined anything at all.

The conscientious host of the Brochet awakened, in the dead of night, all the travellers destined to embark on the lake. The rain had stopped; but it was very windy, and we walked to the port by the light of lanterns. The boat began to raise steam; we were directed to the cabin, and resumed our interrupted sleep on its benches. Two hours later, grey daylight penetrated the room; the waters of the lake were dark and agitated; on the left, the lake stretched to the horizon; on the right, the shore was merely a mire. We were thus constrained to the pleasures of society; few in number. The captain of the ship, a pleasant young man, conversed gallantly with two German ladies, who had come from the same hotel as I. As he was seated next to the younger one, I had no recourse but to entertain the elder, who was drinking coffee on my left. I began with a few rather well-turned sentences in German concerning the harsh temperature, and the uncertain weather.

— ‘Do you speak French?’ the German lady asked.

— ‘Yes, madam,’ I answered, a little humiliated; ‘indeed, I also speak French.’

We now communicated far more readily.

It must be said that the German tongue, as pronounced in various countries, presents great difficulties to a Frenchman who has only learned the language from books. In Austria, it becomes almost a whole other language, differing as much from German as Provençal does from French. What further contributes to a delay in the traveller’s education, in this regard, is that everywhere he is addressed in his own language, and involuntarily yields to that ease of use which makes his conversation more instructive to others than himself.

The storm having increased, the captain thought it necessary to assume a concerned but firm air, and departed to issue his orders, in order to reassure the ladies. This naturally led us to talk about maritime novels. The younger lady seemed very familiar with the genre, all of English or French import, Germany barely possessing a navy. We were not long in touching on Eugène Scribe and Paul de Kock. It must be confessed that, thanks to the European success of those two gentlemen, foreigners have a singular idea of Parisian society and conversation. The elderly lady spoke very well, moreover: she had seen Les Français in her time, as she said gaily; but the younger had a pretension to fashionable language, which sometimes led her to a strange deployment of new words.

— ‘Sir,’ she said to me, ‘know that Passau, where we live, is in no way behind in things; we have the most ficelée society in Bavaria. Munich is so boring at present that all the people de la haute visit Passau; they give parties of astonishing chic there! ...

Oh, Monsieur Paul de Kock! So, this is the French you teach our neighbours! But perhaps those of us who speak German trop bien fall into the same idiocies! I am not in such a state yet, fortunately.

‘There’s no company so good, one can’t dispense with it!’ said King Dagobert to his dogs ... as he threw them out of the window. May that ancient proverb, which I quote verbatim, serve as a means of transition between the departure of several of passengers who left us at Saint-Gall, and the picture, which I shall attempt to draw, of the entertainment our crew indulged in on deck, while waiting for the boat to resume its course towards Meersburg. The nature of it was trivial, but cheerfully conducted, and worthy of being deployed in maritime literature. There were three dogs on the steamboat. One of them, an improvident poodle, having come too close to the galley, a cabin boy took it into his head to dip his beautiful plume of a tail in the sauce. The dog resumed his perambulations; one of the others rushed after him and bit his tail ardently. Seeing this farcical result, the third hastened to do the same to the second, then the first bit the third and there were the unfortunate animals turning in a circle without letting go, all eager to bite and furious at being bitten. ‘A fine dog’s tale!’ as the Seigneur de Brantôme (Pierre de Bourdeille) might have said.... But what else is there to tell of, on crossing Lake Constance, in bad weather? The water was black as ink, the shore was everywhere flat, and the villages that passed by revealed nothing remarkable except their onion-shaped bell towers, adorned with scaly tin tiles, and bearing orbs of hard copper at their tips.

The most amusing thing about the voyage was that at each little jetty where one stops one becomes acquainted with a new nation. The Duchy of Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, and Switzerland pose there, from time to time, as maritime powers...of fresh water. Their navies hunt down, specifically, the wretched French and Swiss newspapers which flutter about the lake under a neutral flag; there is one, rightly called the Feuilles du Lac, a progressive German newspaper, which, I believe, escapes the various censors only by being printed aboard, and distributed to its subscribers from boat to boat, without ever touching shore.

‘The freedom of the waves!’ as Byron cried (see the opening lines of The Corsair ‘O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free’).

Turning to larboard, along the Baden shoreline, we finally saw the misty cliffs of the kingdom of Württemberg. A forest of masts, interspersed with pointed spires and bell-towers, soon announced the only port of Bavaria; Lindau, that is; further on, Austria possesses its Bregenz.

We were not subjected to quarantine; but the strict customs officers had our trunks transported to a large warehouse. While waiting for collection time, we were allowed to go and eat. It was noon: which is the hour when people still dine throughout Germany. I therefore made my way to the most visible inn, whose gilded sign shone from the midst of a bouquet of freshly cut fir-branches. The whole house was celebrating, and the numerous guests were dressed in their gala clothes. At the open windows I saw pretty girls, with gleaming hair in long blond braids, who called to others racing back from the church or market; the men sang and drank; some mountaineers intoned their plaintive calls of tirily.

The musicians dominated this din, while in the courtyard sheep were bleating. It was simply that I had arrived on market day. The host asked me if I would prefer to be served in my room.

— ‘What do you take me for, venerable Bavarian? I never sit down to eat except at the inn table!’

And what a table! It covered all sides of the immense room. Those good people smoke while eating; the women waltz (also while eating) in the space between the seats. Moreover, there are Bohemian acrobats still, who go about the room creating human pyramids, so that one risks at any moment having a straw mattress fall onto one’s plate.

Here was noise, enthusiasm, gaiety; the girls were beautiful, the peasants well-dressed; it was nothing like the miserable orgies of our guinguettes; wine and bitter competed for the honour of enlivening such wild joyfulness, and Homeric dishes disappeared in the blink of an eye. I therefore entered Germany under cheerful auspices; the meal done with, I walked through the city, every street and square of which was adorned with stalls and fairground booths, and admired on all sides pretty girls from the surrounding countryside, dressed like queens, with their bonnets of gold weave cloth, and their gleaming bodices. Here at least was a country where women had not yet adopted the tasteless rags of our grisettes; such surprises are rare in travel writings, and will rarely appear in mine.

It was now a question of choosing a vehicle to journey to Augsburg; but I was not required to choose: it was the Royal post, everywhere the post; nowhere, on that side of the lake, were there any private diligences; no competitor whose rivalry one need fear — the horses manage the roads, the postilions manage the horses, the drivers manages the coaches, and all belongs to the State — no one is in a hurry to arrive, yet one always does arrive in the end; the river of life runs slower in these regions and takes on a majestic air. ‘Why make a fuss?’ as the old woman says in Goethe’s Werther.

Each of the governors of Germany therefore has a monopoly on traffic; I except the small countries of the confederation, criss-crossed by the network of feudal post stations belonging to the Prince of Thurn und Taxis. This prince, whose name you must have often heard repeated, is the Marquis of Carabas (the fictional nobleman in the fairytale ‘Le Chat Botté’) of Germany. You ask whose castle that might be? — The Prince of Thurn und Taxis — To whom those horses, carriages, newspapers, etc. belong? — The answer is the same (for he also owns newspapers in various countries, always on a feudal basis, notably the Gazette des Postes and the Journal de Francfort). His industrial holdings are innumerable. This prince, whose principality goes unnoticed, has the income of a powerful monarch; his host of postilions, writers and workers, seem to live happily under his laws, which are in effect over a distance of perhaps three hundred miles, north to south. Moreover, he enjoys such good fortune, that having a doctor always by his side, whom he had made one of his ministers, what do you imagine happened but lately? The doctor it was who died! The prince mourns him and does not seek another. He will never die; and yet they await his end so that a host of railway lines can be completed, whose execution his feudal rights hinder everywhere.

What can I tell you of the countryside I am travelling through at this moment? The road is rather monotonous: plains, mountains or rather ascents, and always, always, fir-trees; the greater part of Germany is like this; it is what renders it so green in poetic song. Let us hasten to arrive at Augsburg, a beautiful old city, such as we shall see few of in these parts, which reminds me of those fine cities on the banks of the Rhine. Augsburg deserves a river or a lake bathing its walls, yet lacks even a stream. Its cathedral is very beautiful; the streets are charming, their large houses frescoed from top to bottom by unknown Michelangelos and Caravaggios, whose works are abraded by rain every day; there are endless galleries of vast sacred or profane paintings, pierced by doors and windows, the sight of which delights the eyes of the passer-by; the majority of these paintings belong to the Rococo style of the last two centuries, and are often enhanced with dazzling sculptures and gilding. In the longest street, which is almost a lengthened square, one comes across the town hall, where foreigners are shown the famous Golden Chamber, all gleaming with gold and carved wood, and lit by an infinite number of windows. A large fountain of marble and bronze, in the Renaissance style, adorns the square next to this palace; it is one of the richest and most elegant that I have seen, and is enough to put to shame the groups of naiads and tritons in cast-iron with which we decorate, most economically, our squares in Paris.

After admiring all these beauties and even visiting the offices of the Augsburg Gazette, the finest of Germany’s newspapers, I desired to round off my evening with a piece of theatre. There were two posters on every street corner: one announced the incidental music written by Weber for the drama Preciosa, and the other a performance of Doctor Faust at the Marionette Theatre. I had the misplaced idea of neglecting an opportunity of seeing the naive and childish drama which inspired Goethe to write his eternal masterpiece, and instead took a stall seat at the Opera House. First, an act translated from a French vaudeville piece was played. This sort of thing opens the performance, throughout all Germany. Then, in the interval, a principal opera singer from Vienna was announced; in fact, the vaudeville done with, a door at the rear opened, and an enormous woman dressed in black appeared. She sang a verse in a superb bass voice. Could it be a man in disguise? Not at all: she sang the second verse with a soprano higher than Virginie Déjazet’s. What kind of musical monster was this? In the third verse, she sang the first line in her bass voice, the second in her soprano voice, and so on. After this incredible feat, the audience’s enthusiasm burst forth, the large woman was covered with flowers, and there were plenty of them. Then they began Preciosa. But I quickly noticed that the actors were simply declaiming the verses of the poem, while the orchestra played Weber’s music in a muted tone. I hurried from the theatre, hoping to find the Marionette theatre still open, but arrived only to hear the last detonation amidst which Faust was borne away to Hell.

I, however, ultimately arrived in Munich, by train from Augsburg.

Chapter 5: A Day in Munich

In the days when people travelled less, for want of steamboats, railways, branch lines, and even simple roads, there were writers, such as Charles d’Assoucy, René Le Pays, and Cyrano de Bergerac, who rendered so-called fabulous voyages fashionable. These bold tourists described the moon, sun, and planets, and developed the fancies of Lucian of Samosata, Merlino Coccajo (Teofilo Folengo), and Rabelais. I remember reading, in one of these authors, the description of a planet that was peopled by poets. On their world, the currency was well-minted verses; one dined on an ode, and supped on a sonnet; those who had an epic poem in their portfolio disposed of a vast estate.

Another realm of this kind was inhabited only by painters; everything was governed there after their manner, and the various schools sometimes engaged in pitched battles. Moreover, all the types created by the great artists of the earth had material existence there, and one could converse with Caravaggio’s Judith, Albrecht Durer’s Melencolia, or Rubens’ Mary Magdalene.

Entering Munich, one would think oneself suddenly transported to that extravagant planet. The poet-king who resides there (Ludwig I of Bavaria) could just as well have realised an alternative dream, and enriched his colleagues forever like Apollo; but he loves only painters, they alone have the privilege of minting coins on their palette. Daubers flourish in this capital which he proclaims the modern Athens; but the poets turn away and cast upon it the curse of Minerva; there is nothing there for them.

On descending from the coach, and exiting the vast building of the Royal Post Office, you find yourself in front of the palace, on the most beautiful square in the city (Max-Joseph-Platz); you have to take out your binoculars and guide-book in haste; for the gallery is already open, paintings cover the walls, everything gleams and flickers in the open air, in broad daylight.

The new palace (the Königsbau) is built on the exact model of the Pitti Palace, in Florence; the theatre, after the Odeon in Rome; the post office, after some other classical model; the whole painted from top to bottom in red, green and sky blue. The square resembles those impossible stage-sets that theatres sometimes risk; a solid monument of bronze placed at the centre, and representing King Maximilian I, alone disturbs the illusion. The post office, painted in an oxblood red, called antique red, against which its yellow columns stand out, is brightened by frescoes in the style of Pompeii, representing equestrian subjects. The Odeon exhibits on its pediment an immense fresco in which blue and pink tones dominate, and which recalls our domestic screens of fifteen years ago; as for the king’s palace, it is uniformly painted in a beautiful soft green. The fourth side of the square is occupied by houses in various hues. Following the street, which they indicate and which widens out further on, one traverses a second facade of the palace, older and more beautiful than the other, whose two immense doors are decorated with bronze statues and trophies. of a mannered but grandiose taste. Then the street widens further; bell-towers and graceful spires appear in the distance; to the left, a row of modern palazzos stretches as far as the eye can see, capable of satisfying admirers of our Rue de Rivoli; to the right, a vast building adjoining the palace, which, on the street side, is lined with brilliant boutiques and, on the garden side, presents an arcade that almost entirely encloses them. All this claims to resemble our arcades of the Palais-Royal; the cafes, the fashion merchants, the jewellers, the booksellers, are in the Parisian style. But a long series of frescoes representing the heroic splendour of Bavaria interspersed with views of Italy testify, from arcade to arcade, to King Ludwig’s passion for painting; for all painting, it would seem. These frescoes, the guide-book admits, were created by mere students. It is a great saving of canvas; the walls bear all.

The royal garden, surrounded by these instructive galleries, is planted in a quincunx pattern and is of moderate extent; the palace facade which gives on this side, and has just been completed, presents a rather imposing colonnade; traversing the garden, one encounters another facade composed of irregular buildings, among which the basilica takes its place, the most successful of Munich’s modern monuments.

This pretty church (the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche), though indeed quite small, is a real jewel; built on a Byzantine model, it sparkles inside with paintings on a gold background, executed in the same style. The interior forms a marvellous ensemble in every respect; what is not gold or painting is marble or precious wood; the visitor mars such a splendid interior, to which, in all Europe, one can compare only the Medici Chapel in Florence.

Leaving the basilica, in only a few steps, one reaches the new theatre. Since we have just circled the palace which all these buildings immediately adjoin, why not enter that vast residence? The king is just about to dine, and it is the time when visitors are admitted into the rooms where he, of course, is not.

One is first received in the guardroom, fully furnished with halberds, but guarded only by two sentries and as many ushers. This room is painted in grisaille, depicting bas-reliefs, columns and imaginary statues, according to the surprising and economical methods of Abel de Pujol. Seated on a bench that awaits us, we watch the comings and goings of the officers and courtiers. And they are, in fact, courtiers of stage-comedy, on the outside at least. When Eugène Scribe displays for us, at the Opéra-Comique, the interiors of German courts, the costumes and attitudes of the company are much more exact than one would think. A lady of the palace, who passed by in a hat surmounted by a bird of paradise, a ruff, a dress with tails, and wearing yellow diamonds, reminded me entirely of the soprano Marie-Julie Boulanger. Chamberlains decked out with medals seemed ready to perform some refrain of Daniel Auber’s.

At last, the king’s dinner service passed, escorted by two guards. It was then that we were able to enter the other rooms. I greatly pity his majesty, who denies being a constitutional monarch, for having imposed on himself the custom of admitting thirty people or so into his home twice a day. When he leaves the table, he finds his floors and furniture marked by alien footprints: what he touches has just been touched; the air is still full of impure breath; Englishmen have furtively engraved their names on the mirrors, and on the marble consoles. Who knows what has been taken, or what remains? Which reminds me that one day at the Trianon I was shown the Duke of Nemours’ washbasin, next to that of Josephine, and a small piece of soap which the prince had used the last time he slept there!

I will refrain from describing in detail the interior of the Munich Palace, whose artistic riches have been enumerated in all the travel guides. What is most noteworthy is the hall decorated with frescoes, by Julius Schnorr to the designs of Peter von Cornelius; the subjects borrowed from the great Germanic epic of the Nibelungenlied. These paintings, though admirably composed, are of a somewhat heavy and garish execution, and the eye has difficulty in grasping their vagaries; moreover, the ceilings, loaded with gigantic and furious figures, crush the mean and poorly-decorated rooms; it seems that everywhere in Munich painting costs nothing, but marble, stone and gold are employed more sparingly. Thus, this superb palace is built of brick, to which plaster and whitewash give the appearance of hard, rough-cut stone; approach the dazzling walls, the columns of Siena and portor marble, strike them with your finger, all is stucco. As for the furniture, it is of the most excessively Empire taste that I know: mirrors are rare; the chandeliers and candelabras seem to belong to the adornments of a provincial club or casino; the riches are above on the ceiling, a dreamlike setting, wherein the poet-king can pursue, in passing, the magnificence of Olympus or the vague splendours of Valhalla.

I am far from wishing to belittle the beauty of the Residenz, and the Bavarian king’s taste for the plastic arts is scarcely cause for ridicule; but I wonder if it is indeed true that Cornelius, when he visited Paris a few years ago, was unamazed by the riches of Versailles, and that he spoke more or less like that Gascon who found the Louvre much resembled the stables in his father’s castle; I believe him to be a man of too much taste and feeling for the story to prove accurate, especially as, if the palace of Munich displays incontestably beautiful works, it is Cornelius’ talents alone that were engaged thereon, and it is for us alone to add to his glory.

The king’s dinner being over, we can begin ours; there is only one restaurateur in the city, who is a Frenchman; otherwise, we must be careful to note the hours for dining. The cooking is quite good in Munich, the meat is tasty; that is a more important comment than one thinks as regards a foreign country. It is insufficiently known that half Europe is deprived of passable steaks and chops, and that veal dominates with a deplorable uniformity in certain countries. Reflect, Parisians, on the fact that Spain and Italy are absolutely lacking in butter! Perhaps, you have never paid much attention to that humble ingredient, butter. Well, when the steamboat from Naples arrives at Nice, a passenger’s first thought is to head for the Café Royal on the main square, and there breakfast greedily, with butter and milk provided. Milk! Do you know how Italian ladies make their morning coffee, moreover? Those unfortunate women mix egg whites into their coffee for want of milk, and drink the result. Behold what few know!

Munich lacks oysters and fish from the sea, naturally; its wines are mediocre and expensive; but it boasts of its beer, which, indeed, has a great reputation throughout all Germany. One cannot speak of Munich beers among travellers who have only drunk Belgian and English. Faro, ale, and lambic are beers which one has no idea of, even in Paris; they are true wines of the North, which cheer and intoxicate more quickly than wine itself. The imperial and royal beers of Austria and Bavaria bear no relation to these noble drinks. Thus, they compete with tobacco for the privilege of numbing and stupefying, to a greater and greater extent, the vast body of German people.

You will forgive me this culinary hors d’oeuvre, which is, however, not out of place; for travellers are forever heroically hungry, and food is an undeniable feature of travel. The two cafés of the Royal Gallery are not very interesting, and lack French newspapers. A large reading room and a sort of casino, which is called the Museum, contain, on the other hand, most of the French papers that the censor allows to enter freely. From time to time, it is true, an edition is missed, and subscribers are left to read a notice instead, saying that a particular copy has been seized in Paris, at the post office, and in official places. This is repeated so often, that we suspect the Munich prosecutor’s office of slandering that of Paris. As a result of this subterfuge, the brave Müncheners have continual doubts about the tranquility of our capital; theirs is so peaceful, so pleasant, and so open, that they fail to understand the simplest disturbance to our political and civil life; the population make no noise, the carriages roll dully on the dusty and unpaved roads. A Frenchman is recognized everywhere by the fact that he declaims, or hums, while walking; in the café, he speaks loudly; he forgets to take of his coat at the theatre; when sleeping, he rolls about constantly, and German bedmaking fails to last even ten minutes. Imagine sheets as big as towels, a blanket that cannot be tucked in, a massive eiderdown that balances above the sleeper. Well, a German goes to bed, and all remains neatly on top of him till morning; moreover, in his wisdom, he is granted charming pillows, embroidered round the edges in lace on a background of red or green silk. The poorest inn beds gleam with such innocent luxury.

Since I am talking of pillows, let me speak at once about stoves. Bavarian stoves are the most beautiful in the world; their construction is architectural, and their ornaments are, in truth, sculpture. If German stoves were well-known in Paris, we would no longer need fireplaces. They are a most beautiful piece of furniture, suitable for a bedroom as well as for a palace hall. I saw a German stove in the castle of Rastatt, enriched, I confess, with paintings and porcelain, which was estimated to be worth a hundred thousand florins. The most beautiful of these monuments are gradually vanishing from Germany, since princes and aristocrats are almost everywhere adopting the French fireplace; but the bourgeoisie still hold on to their old stoves, and they are right.

I can sense that you are eager to visit the Glyptothek and the Alte Pinakothek; but those museums are far from the city centre, and it takes time reach them. In desiring the indefinite enlargement of his capital, King Ludwig has taken care to build his principal monuments at vast distances from each other, at least those around which, it is hoped, houses will one day come to be grouped. The city of Munich was originally a small city, about the size of Augsburg at most; the Amphion’s lyre of this poet-king has raised its walls and created superb buildings. Like Amphion, he would have moved great stones for this mighty work, but there was a lack of good building stone in his country. That is the great misfortune of this improvised capital of a kingdom in its infancy; hence the brick with painted stone edges, hence the stucco and papier-mâché imitations of stonework, hence the muddy or dusty streets, according to the season. Sandstone is lacking; the authorities hesitate between various projects submitted by the bitumen companies, the city balks at the expense, and Munich is still paved, like Hell, with good intentions only.

After many sites barely marked-out, many streets merely traced on the ground, whereon land is freely given, as in the outposts of America, to those who wish to build, one arrives at the Glyptothek, that is to say the museum of statuary. Munich is so Greek, that Athens has had to become Bavarian; at least that is what the Greeks themselves complain of.... The building is so classical in its proportions, that the steps leading to the entrance could only be climbed by titans; a small staircase hidden in a corner amends this inconvenience, which we will refrain from calling a defect of construction. Inside, the rooms are vast and practically the height of the building. They are coated everywhere with a dark madder dye, which the booklets continue to claim as true antique red. The ornamentation is in that Pompeian style that we weary of in our cafes, our arcades, and the decorations of the Gymnase Dramatique. One therefore has the right to reject our poor Parisian taste, especially when care is taken (in the authorised, and uncensored guide-book) to point out that the King of Bavaria, in the decoration of his palaces and museums, has always distanced himself from the bad taste which dominated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This seems directed against Versailles, and several allusions, which I no longer have to hand, confirm me in that thought.

The artists have indulged in the intemperate use of colour on the ceilings of the Glyptothek, which are far from meeting with my approval. The magnificent bas-reliefs by Phidias, the Silenus, and the pure marble sculptures by Canova, which one encounters further on, should have put to shame the pretentious compositions of the Germanic painters. We always except those of Peter von Cornelius, which were, in fact, only designed and not painted by him. He has decorated an entire room with subjects taken from the Iliad, the drawings of which have been on view in Paris. I need not repeat what everyone knows today, that the drawings sent there as copies of frescoes of the Munich school give only a very false idea of the effect of the original paintings; there is not a traveller who has not made this same observation.

The Glyptothek contains a valuable collection of antiques and masterpieces by Canova, among which are La Frileuse, the Venus Borghese (Venus Victrix), a bust of Napoleon, and another of Prince Eugène. Some statues by the all-too-famous Bertel Thorwaldsen share, with those of Canova, the honour of an individual room, where their names are conflated with those of Phidias and Michelangelo. The French sculptors Pierre Puget and Jean Goujon are probably unknown in Munich.

The Alte Pinakothek, that is to say the art museum, is situated a short distance from the Glyptothek. Its exterior is much more imposing, although the Greek style presented is less pure. The two buildings are by the architect Leo von Klenze. For the Pinakothek, I have nothing but praise; the rooms are large and adorned only with paintings by old masters. An external gallery, recently opened to the public, is very gracefully painted and decorated, and the antique ornamentation has been interpreted in the Italian manner with richness and lightness. It would take too long to enumerate all the masterpieces that the Alte Pinakothek contains. Suffice it to say that the main gallery contains about sixty select paintings by Rubens, and his largest canvases. It is there that the Last Judgment of this master is found, to accommodate which it was necessary to raise the ceiling by ten feet. There also is the original of The Battle of the Amazons. After having traversed the large rooms devoted to large paintings, one returns through a series of small rooms divided in the same way, by school, where the smaller canvases are placed. This intelligent arrangement is very favourable as regards the effect of the paintings.

What remains to be seen of this city? One tires of all those newly-built edifices, of their Greek architecture, brightened by fresh paintings in classical style. For an Englishman, there are yet six ministries, with and without columns, to admire; a school for aristocratic girls; the library; several hospices or barracks; an obelisk the size of ours, but covered in bronze, intended to preserve the memory of thirty thousand Bavarians who lost their lives in the Russian campaign; a Romanesque church; another in the Byzantine style; another in that of the Renaissance; and then another, Gothic, one. The latter is in the suburbs; one can see its sharp spire from afar. You would scorn me for failing to visit a Gothic church built in 1839. So, I left the city, passing beneath a triumphal arch in the style of the Italian fourteenth century, decorated with a large fresco representing Bavarian battles, and a quarter of a league further on, came to the church, built, like all the other monuments, of brick edged with plaster imitating stonework. The church is small and not entirely finished inside. A crowd of little saints can be found there, statuettes in painted plaster. Papier-mâché stonework dominates; which is a great calamity. The stained-glass windows are better than the Gothic; since by utilising innovative processes, realised through fresh discoveries made in chemistry, it is now possible to depict large subjects on a single pane of glass instead of using small, leaded stained-glass panels; the pavement is of coloured bitumen, the wooden sculptures are perfectly done in coloured paste, the torches and crucifixes are of English metalwork, which cleans like silver. — I was able to ascend the spire, entirely built of cast iron, according to modern techniques, and which reminded me of that of Rouen cathedral, rebuilt by Jean-Antoine Alavoine. The latter spire is a work of which the people of Rouen are very proud. We know that the old Rouen spire, a rival of those in Strasbourg and Antwerp, was lost to fire a few years ago. The municipal council of Rouen decided that it would be rebuilt in cast iron, which was done. Now, the spire will last longer than the church itself; it is light, economical, and incombustible; it can be dismantled by undoing the bolts, it can be resold by weight. It is only that, seen from below, the bell-tower is slight and mean; a spidery bell tower; it looks like a mast furnished with rigging; it is a skinny, emaciated spire; it spoils the view of Rouen, already spoiled to a great extent by its iron bridge and its quay lined with fine houses. — But let us return to Munich: let us not blame it too much for this sacrifice to progress. For, on the other hand, it still has the two beautiful towers of its cathedral, the only ancient monument it possesses, which can be seen from twenty miles away. At the time when that noble edifice was built, it took centuries to accomplish such works; they were made of solid stone, granite or marble; then, indeed, one could not improvise in a mere ten years a capital city that appears like an opera stage-set, ready to collapse at the sound of the stagehand’s whistle. May the poet-king forgive me these harsh criticisms; before building monuments, he wrote books signed with his royal name, with the arms of Bavaria on the frontispiece; he has therefore always recognised himself as being subject to criticism.

Moreover, I accept that the old Duchy of Bavaria, which became a kingdom by the grace of Napoleon, has had the courage to make a capital out of a little old badly constructed town, while lacking stone for the masons; but even Napoleon could not have increased the population to match the excessive size of the new city; he might have simply deported families here, but they would have died of boredom; he could not have made a river out of the humble stream (the Isar) that flows through Munich and is tormented, in vain, by dams, embankments of wooden planks, and booms, so as to be able one day to bridge it, in the Roman style. Alas, Sovereign Lord of Bavaria, it is a great consolation to the lower orders; you are king, absolute prince, head of a monarchy ruling over several states, which you beg us not to confuse with our constitutional monarchy; but you cannot make water fill your river, or stone appear from the ground on which you build!

On entering the city, we came across several new monuments designed to immortalise Bavarian glory in all its forms. One notices above all, as I have said, an obelisk (by Von Klenze, in the Karolinenplatz) wholly similar to ours, but all in dark bronze like the statue of Maximilian. It is dedicated to the thirty thousand Bavarians who lost their lives in Napoleon’s Russian campaign; I do not object to it.

At the theatre they were giving a vaudeville, in translation, and a performance of Medea, a prose melodrama, played by the soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, who is said to be the premier tragedienne in Germany. She reminded me of Joséphine Duchesnois at the end of her career. The play was a farce, full of staged battles, fire, and mayhem, and ended with a firework display with Bengal flames. Is this, then, what dramatic art, in Germany too, has been reduced to? But at least our authors of the boulevard do not choose classical subjects. A melodrama entitled Medea would find scant success at the Porte Saint-Martin theatre.

I spent only a day in Munich, having met, at the dining-table of the Poule d’Or, my excellent cousin Henri, of whom I have already spoken; I took a seat in his post-chaise, and left for Vienna, whence I hope to reach Constantinople by descending the Danube. I saw Salzburg, where Mozart was born, and where his room is shown, at a chocolatier’s. The city is a sort of sculpted rock, whose tall fortress dominates an admirable landscape. But Vienna calls to me, and will grant, I hope, a foretaste of the Orient.

The End of Part I of Gérard de Nerval’s ‘Travels in the Near East’

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