The Spell of Switzerland. Dole Nathan Haskell
Oncle Américain! We became great friends on the spot!
How delightful it is, after weeks of desultory meals at restaurants and hotels, to sit once more at a well-ordered home table! The dining-room was a large, stately apartment, with wide window-recesses. There was fine stained glass in the windows. A number of admirable chamois heads with symmetrical horns were attached to the walls. In one corner stood a superb example of the ancient pottery stoves. It was of white and blue faïence à émail stannifère with gaily painted flowers in the four corner vases. An inscription informed those that could read the quaint lettering that it was made at Winterthür in 1647. How many generations of men it had warmed and comforted! How many happy families had gathered about its huge flanks! What stories it might relate of the days of yore! In spite of its artistic and antiquarian charm, however, it does not compare to the old New England or English open fireplace with fire-dogs supporting great logs of flaming wood which, as they burn down, turn into visions of rose-red palaces. I wonder how many of these old stoves are to be found in Switzerland. The art of making them is said to have been brought from Germany, but it soon acquired an individuality of its own. I am told that there are superb specimens of them in the various museums. The stannifer enamel is made by including some of the oxide of tin in the biscuit. It makes the enamel opaque.
After luncheon Will asked me if I would like to go over to the University, where he said he had a little business. I was very glad to do so. The Avenue de Collanges passes by the Free Theological Institute, the Ecole de Saint Roche, and, after joining with the Rue Neuve, leads into the Place de la Riponne, facing which stands the Palais de Rumine in which are the offices of the University.
After the Reformed Church was established in Lausanne there was a great demand for ministers, and a sort of theological school was founded in 1536. Pierre Viret, a tailor’s son, was active in this work. The famous Konrad von Gesner, the following year, became professor of Greek there, though he was only twenty-one. He won his great reputation as a zoölogist and botanist. An indefatigable investigator, he published no less than seventy-two works and left eighteen partly completed. They covered medicine, mineralogy and philology, as well as botany. He collected more than five hundred different plants which the ancients knew nothing about.
Another of the early professors was Theodore de Bèze. I remembered seeing his name on my Greek Testament but I had forgotten what an interesting character he was. It is a tremendous change from being a dissipated cavalier at the court of François I, writing witty and improper verses, to teaching Greek and morals at Lausanne; but it was brought about by an illness which made him see a great light. While teaching at Lausanne he wrote a Biblical drama, entitled, “Abraham’s Sacrifice.” I am sorry to say he approved of the sacrifice of Servetus. He was at Lausanne for ten years and then was called to Geneva, where he became Calvin’s right-hand man and ultimately succeeded him. I wonder if he kept a copy of his early verses and read them over with mingled feelings.
It is rather odd that one of Bèze’s successors, Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, who is regarded in Lausanne as the greatest of all her professors, had a somewhat similar experience. He, too, was gay and dissipated and wrote rollicking verses when he was a young man; he, like old Omar, urged his friends to empty the wine-cup (or rather the bottle, as it rhymed better) and let destiny go hang: “The god that watches o’er the trellis is now our only reigning king.” Perhaps, later, he may have found a hidden spiritual meaning in his references. Ascetics converted from rather free living have been known thus to argue. Vinet, Will told me, began by teaching theology; but he demanded greater freedom of utterance than the directors of the Academy were prepared to allow. He detested the Revivalists and called them lunatics. He opposed any established church. He was simply ahead of his day. He was a brilliant preacher, and his lectures on literature were highly enjoyed; but, after the Revolution of 1845, he was obliged to resign. Two years later he died. He, too, wrote many valuable books, mostly theological works, half a dozen of which have been translated into English.
Talking about these early days, we had reached the Palais Rumine, that monument of Russian generosity – a new building – one might call it almost a parvenu building – compared with the old Gothic cathedral, only a few steps farther on.
In a way, however, the cathedral is even later than the palace, because its restoration, in accordance with plans designed by the famous French architect, Viollet-le-Duc, was not completed until 1906, two years after the other building was dedicated to its present uses. The palace, which was built from the fifteen hundred thousand francs left by Gavriil Riumin (to spell the name in the Russian way), contains the various offices of the University, as well as picture galleries and museums.
“So this is the famous University of Lausanne,” I exclaimed, as we entered the learned portal.
“It has been a University for only about a quarter of a century,” remarked Will. “Gibbon and others wanted the Academy raised to a University more than a hundred years ago; but there seemed to be some prejudice against it. Its various schools were added at intervals. There has been a Special Industrial School ‘of Public Works and Constructions’ for about sixty years. In 1873 a school of pharmacy was started, and in 1888, when the Academy became a full-fledged University, it established a medical school. Theology still stands first; then come the schools of letters, of law, of science, of pedagogy, and of chemistry. Instruction is given in design, fencing, riding and gymnastics, and the University grants three degrees, the baccalaureate, the licentiate and the doctorate. It has an excellent library.”
“My errand will take me only a moment,” he added. “It is too fine a day to waste indoors; we shall have plenty of times when the atmosphere is not so clear, for the museums and the cathedral. I propose we stretch our legs by walking up to the Signal. Are you fit for such a climb?”
“What do you take me for?” I asked, with a fine show of indignation. “It is only about four hundred feet above where we are now.”
I had not studied the guide-book for nothing.
There may be a great exhilaration and excitement and delight in climbing to the top of lofty mountains, but, when one has achieved the summit, even if the view be not cut off by clouds, the distances are so enormous that for poor mortal eyes the result is most unsatisfactory. Huddled together, peak with peak, an indistinguishable mass, lie other mountains and ranges of mountains, with bottomless valleys; the effect is as unsatisfactory as the air is rare. One can see nothing clearly; one is out of one’s element, so to speak; one can hardly breathe.
But from a height of a thousand feet, or so, one gets a comprehensive view of the world; one can distinguish the habitations of men; their farms and fields are marked off with fences; the rivers and brooks are not voiceless. It is a satisfying experience. Such is the impression that I got from the top of the Signal. The city is fascinating, seen from above. There is the great bulk of the cathedral with its massive tower and the tall slender spire; the red roofs of innumerable houses; chimneys of factories in the lower town; then the exquisite lake; and, beyond it, the singularly silent and solemn masses of Les Diablerets, Le Grand Muveran and the jagged teeth of the Savoy Mountains, biting into the sky. They are so high that they shut off the grand bulk of Mont Blanc. It was certainly most thoughtful of my Lord Rhône to pause in the great valley and make a sky-blue lake for the delectation of mortals! Like swans with raised wings are the sail-boats. How far the wake made by that excursion steamboat extends across the placid water; it is curved like a scimetar of damascened steel!
“What a host of hotels!” I exclaimed. “I wonder how many foreigners are staying at Lausanne.”
“There must be five or six thousand regular residents from other parts of the world, besides the multitude of transients; Lausanne is a convenient stopping-place for several routes, to say nothing of the Simplon Tunnel line to Italy. There are probably fourteen hundred students at the University, and half of that number are Germans, Russians and Poles. The German Minister of Public Instruction permits students of the Empire to spend the first three semesters at certain of the Swiss universities. But a suspicion arose in some Vaterland circles that these young men were being corrupted by Russian radicalism and Vaudois democracy – undermining their monarchical principles. There was also some jealousy, especially in the Law School. Herr Kuhlenbeck and Herr Vleuten were the so-called treaty professors, and the fees were not equally distributed. The Rundschau