In other respects, these Trappists were not, in the deep vales of the Canton of Fribourg, such strangers to politics as their residence and their habit would lead one to believe.

I have since learned that they served as a medium for the correspondence of the French clergy with the pope, then a prisoner at Savonne.  Certainly, although this does not at all excuse the rigor with which they were treated by Bonaparte, it gives a sufficient explanation of it.  (End of editor’s note.)

I know not of what M. de L’Estrange was accused; but it is scarcely probable that such a man should have meddled with the affairs of the world, much less the monks, who never quitted their solitude.  The Swiss government caused search to be made every where for M. de L’Estrange, and I hope for its honor, that it took care not to find him.  However, the unfortunate magistrates of countries which are called allies of France, are very often employed to arrest persons designated to them, ignorant whether they are delivering innocent or guilty victims to the great Leviathan, which thinks proper to swallow them up.  The property of the Trappists was seized, that is to say, their tomb, for they hardly possessed any thing else, and the order was dispersed.  It is said, that a Trappist at Genoa had mounted the pulpit to retract the oath of allegiance which he had taken to the emperor, declaring that since the captivity of the pope, he considered every priest as released from this oath.  At his coming out from performing this act of repentance, he was, report also says, tried by a military commission, and shot.  One would think that he was sufficiently punished, without rendering the whole order responsible for his conduct.

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?