After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 524 pages of information about After Waterloo.

After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 524 pages of information about After Waterloo.

By way of shewing how fond the Bernois are of old institutions and customs, they have been at the trouble to catch three or four bears and keep them in a walled pit in the city, where they are well fed and taken care of.  The popular superstition is that the bears entertained in this manner contribute to the safety of the commonwealth; and this establishment continued ever in full force, until the dissolution of the old Confederacy took place and the establishment in its place of the Helvetic Republic under the influence of the French directorial government.  The custom, then, appearing absurd and useless, was abolished, and the bears were sold.  But since the peace of 1814 other bears have been caught and are nourishd, as the former ones were, at the expence of the state.

Bern derives its name from Bueren, the German word for Bears (plural number).  Only the French spell Berne, with an e at the end of it.

There are no theatrical amusements going forward here.  Cards and now and then a little music form the evening recreations.

In the inn at Bern I became acquainted with a most delightful Milanese lady
and her son.  Her name is L------; she is the widow of an opulent banker at
Milan and has a large family of children.  She was about thirty-eight years
of age and is still a remarkably handsome woman.  Time has made very little
impression on her and she unites very pleasing manners with a great taste
for litterature.  She is greatly proficient in the English language and
litterature, which she understands thoroughly, tho’ she speaks it with
difficulty.  She is an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, Milton and
Byron.  She had been to Zurich for her son, who was employed in a commercial
house there, in order to take him back with her into Italy.  She spoke
French as well as Italian, and her son had a very good knowledge of German. 
She offered me a seat in her carriage, on the understanding that I was
going to Lausanne, where she intended to stop a day or two.  An offer of the
kind made by so elegant and fascinating a woman you may be assured I did
not scruple to accept, and I was in hopes of improving on this acquaintance
and renewing it at Milan.  Indeed, did not business oblige me to remain some
weeks at Lausanne, I should certainly offer my services to escort her all
the way to Milan.  She had letters of introduction for Lausanne, and during
her stay there I acted as her cicerone, to point out the most interesting
objects and points of view, which the place affords.

[104] Louis Charles Joseph Gravier, vicomte de Vergennes d’Alonne, was the
    son of the Comte de Vergennes, who was minister under the reign of
    Louisi XVI.  Born at Constantinople in 1766, he took service at the
    early age of thirteen, was promoted captain in 1782 and colonel in
    1788.  Having emigrated in 1791, he served in Conde’s army, then took
    service in England from 1795

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After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.