We regained Vevay by the mountains, and I proposed to M. de
Montmorency to proceed as far as the entrance of the Valais, which I
had never seen. We stopped at Bex, the last Swiss village, for the
Valais was already united to France. A Portuguese brigade had left
Geneva to go and occupy the Valais: singular state of Europe, to
have a Portuguese garrison at Geneva going to take possession of a
part of Switzerland in the name of France! I had a curiosity to see
the Cretins of the Valais, of whom I had so often heard. This
miserable degradation of man affords ample subject for reflection;
but it is excessively painful to see the human countenance thus
become an object of horror and repugnance. I remarked, however, in
several of these poor creatures, a degree of vivacity bordering on
astonishment, produced on them by external objects. As they never
recognize what they have already seen, they feel each time fresh
surprize, and the spectacle of the world, with all its details, is
thus for ever new to them; it is, perhaps, the compensation for
their sad state, for certainly there is one. It is some years since
a Cretin, having committed assassination, was condemned to death: as
he was led to the scaffold, he took it into his head, seeing himself
surrounded with a crowd of people, that he was accompanied in this
manner to do him honor, and he laughed, held himself erect, and put
his dress in order, with the idea of rendering himself more worthy
of the fete. Was it right to punish such a being for the crime which
his arm had committed?

There is at three leagues from Bex, a famous cascade, where the
water falls from a very lofty mountain. I proposed to my friends to
go and see it, and we returned before dinner. It is true that this
cascade was upon the territory of the Valais, consequently then upon
the French territory, and I forgot that I was not allowed more of
that than the small space of ground which separates Coppet from
Geneva. When I returned home, the prefect not only blamed me for
having presumed to travel in Switzerland, but made it the greatest
proof of his indulgence to keep silence on the crime I had
committed, in setting my foot on the territory of the French empire.
I might have said, in the words of Lafontaine's fable:

*Je tondu de ce pre la largeur de ma langue

(I grazed of this meadow the breadth of my tongue.) But I confessed
with great simplicity the fault I had committed in going to see this
Swiss casc