ded to the milk and coffee. We dined at one
o'clock, and at six or seven we supped upon a meal that had left off
soup and added tea, in order to differ from the dinner. For all this,
with our rooms, we paid what we should have paid at a New Hampshire
farm-house; that is, a dollar a day each.

But the air was such as we could not have got in New Hampshire for twice
the money. It restored one completely every twenty-four hours, and it
not only stimulated but supported one throughout the day. Our own air is
quite as exciting, but after stirring one up, it leaves him to take the
consequences, whereas that faithful Swiss air stood by and helped out
the enterprise. I rose fresh from my forenoon's writing and eager to
walk; I walked all afternoon, and came in perfectly fresh to supper. One
can't speak too well of the Swiss air, whatever one says of the Swiss
sun.

[Illustration: _Post-office, Villeneuve_]

VII

Whenever it came out, or rather whenever the rain stopped, we pursued
our explorations of the neighborhood. It had many interesting features,
among which was the large Hotel Byron, very attractive and almost empty,
which we passed every day on our way to the post-office in Villeneuve,
and noted two pretty American shes in eye-glasses playing croquet amid
the wet shrubbery, as resolutely cheerful and as young-manless as if
they had been in some mountain resort of our own. In the other direction
there were simple villas dropped along the little levels and ledges, and
vineyards that crept to the road's edge everywhere. There was also a
cement factory, busy and prosperous; and to make us quite at home, a
saw-mill. Above all, there was the Castle of Chillon; and one of the
first Sundays after our arrival we descended the stone staircased steps
of our gardened terrace, dripping with ivy and myrtle, and picked our
steps over the muddy road to the old prison-fortress, where, in the
ancient chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, we heard an excellent sermon from
the _pasteur_ of our parish. The castle was perhaps a bow-shot from our
pension: I did not test the distance, having left my trusty cross-bow
and cloth-yard shafts in Boston; but that is my confirmed guess. In
point of time it is much more remote, for, as the reader need not be
reminded, it was there, or some castle like it, almost from the
beginning, or at least from the day when men first began to fight for
the possession of the land. The lake-dwellers are imagined to hav