and time-stained chalets of the
mountains, still more surprising is the scene which greets his arrival
by the precipitous road, past the double towered gateway, within the
city walls. Expressly set it seems for a theatrical _decor_ in its
smiling gayety, its faultlessly pictorial effect. Every window in the
blazoned houses is blossoming with brightest flowers, as for a perpetual
fete. The voices of the people are soft with a strange Italianate
patois, and the women at the fountain, the children at their play, the
old men sunning themselves beside the deep carved doorways are seemingly
living the happy holiday life which belongs to the picture. The one
street in the city, opening widely in a long oval _place_, is bounded by
stone houses fortified without and bearing suspended galleries for
observation and defence, forming thus a continuous rampart along the
whole extent of the hillside.

At the eastern extremity of this enclosure beyond the slender belfrey of
the Hotel de Ville and the ancient shrine where a great crucifix looks
down upon the scene, a flagged pathway rises sharply under a tall clock
tower within the enceinte of the castle set at the steep extremity of
the ridge. There behind strong walls a terrace looks from a crenelated
parapet over the descending sunset plains, a prospect as fair as any in
all Italy. Within a second rampart, semi-circular in form, the castle
with its interior court looks eastward and southward over the encircling
valley with its winding river, up to the surrounding nether heights of
the Bernese Oberland. Walls twelve feet in thickness tell the history of
its ancient construction, and chambers cut in the massive stone
foundations recall the rude life of the early knights and vassals who
defended this _chateau-fort_ from the Saracen invasion. Noble halls,
later superimposed upon the earlier foundations, with stone benches
flanking the walls and recessed windows overlooking the jousting court,
evoke the glittering days of chivalry and the vision of the sovereign
race of counts who here held their court.

Ten centuries have passed over this castle on the hill; six told the
story of its sovereignty over the surrounding country, but unlike most
of the chateaux of Switzerland it has been carefully restored and
maintains its feudal character. The caparisoned steeds no longer gallop
along the ancient road, the crested knights no longer break their lances
in the jousting court; but in the wide