“Landing, I suppose,” said the American, “among the lumber in the great square?”

“Monsieur is mistaken.  He broke his boat’s nose against that wall; and the next day, a piece of her, big enough to make a thole-pin, was not to be found.  He might as well have sounded the heavens!”

“The lake has a bottom, notwithstanding?”

“Your pardon, monsieur.  The lake has no bottom.  The sea may have a bottom, but we have no bottom here.”

There was little use in disputing the point.

Monsieur Descloux then spoke of the revolutions he had seen.  He remembered the time when Vaud was a province of Berne.  His observations on this subject were rational, and were well seasoned with wholesome common sense.  His doctrine was simply this.  “If one man rule, he will rule for his own benefit, and that of his parasites; if a minority rule, we have many masters instead of one,” (honest Jean had got hold here of a cant saying of the privileged, which he very ingeniously converted against themselves,) “all of whom must be fed and served; and if the majority rule, and ruled wrongfully, why the minimum of harm is done.”  He admitted, that the people might be deceived to their own injury, but then, he did not think it was quite as likely to happen, as that they should be oppressed when they were governed without any agency of their own.  On these points, the American and the Vaudois were absolutely of the same mind.

From politics the transition to poetry was natural, for a common ingredient in both would seem to be fiction.  On the subject of his mountains, Monsieur Descloux was a thorough Swiss.  He expatiated on their grandeur, their storms, their height, and their glaciers, with eloquence.  The worthy boatman had some such opinions of the superiority of his own country, as all are apt to form who have never seen any other.  He dwelt on the glories of an Abbaye des Vignerons, too, with the gusto of a Vevaisan, and seemed to think it would be a high stroke of state policy, to get up a new, fete of this kind as speedily as possible.  In short, the world and its interests were pretty generally discussed between these two philosophers during an intercourse that extended to a month.

Our American was not a man to let instruction of this nature easily escape him.  He lay hours at a time on the seats of Jean Descloux’s boat, looking up at the mountains, or watching some lazy sail on the lake, and speculating on the wisdom of which he was so accidentally made the repository.  His view on one side was limited by the glacier of Mont Velan, a near neighbor of the celebrated col of St. Bernard; and on the other, his eye could range to the smiling fields that surround Geneva.  Within this setting is contained one of the most magnificent pictures that Nature ever drew, and he bethought him of the human actions, passions, and interests of which it might have been the scene.  By a connexion that was natural enough to the situation, he imagined a