A little beyond, the Rhone rushed
frothing and foaming out of the lake. From my window I could see in the
distance the dazzling snow peak of Mont Blanc.
After Paris, Geneva looked like a provincial town. The cafes were like
servants' quarters or corners of cafes. There were no people in the
streets, where the sand blew up in clouds of dust till you could hardly
see out of your eyes, and the roads were not watered. In the hotel, in
front of the mirror, the New Testament in French, bound in leather; you
felt that you had come to the capital of Calvinism.
The streets in the old part of the town were all up and down hill. In
the windows of the booksellers' shops there were French verses against
France, violent diatribes against Napoleon III. and outbursts of
contempt for the nation that had lost its virility and let itself be
cowed by a tyrant. By the side of these, portraits of the Freethinkers
and Liberals who had been driven from other countries and found a refuge
in Switzerland.
I sailed the lake in every direction, enraptured by its beauty and the
beauty of the surrounding country. Its blueness, to which I had never
seen a parallel, altogether charmed me in the changing lights of night
and day. On the lake I made the acquaintance of a very pleasant Greek
family, the first I had encountered anywhere.
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