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                                   A

                           RIDE ON HORSEBACK

                                   TO

                                FLORENCE

                                THROUGH

                        FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND.

                    DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS

                                   BY

                                A LADY.

  "I will not change my horse for any that treads but on four pasterns:
he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn
of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes; he is the prince
of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his
countenance enforces homage: nay, the man hath no wit that cannot from
the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb vary deserved praise
on my palfrey."--SHAKSPEARE, _King Henry the Fifth_.

                           _IN TWO VOLUMES._
                                VOL. II.

                                LONDON:
                     JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
                                 1842.


                                LONDON:
                  Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS,
                            Stamford Street.

                    A ride on horseback to Florence


                                CONTENTS
                              OF VOL. II.


                  *       *       *       *       *

                               CHAPTER I.

                                                                  Page 1

RIDE to Chillon--Castle of La Tour du
  Peil--Chastellar--Chillon--Attentive gendarmes--Oubliettes--Destiny
  of their inhabitants--Salle de Justice--Torture room--Eating hall
  with its fleurs-de-lis--The dungeons--The beam--The interment in the
  lake--Bonnivard--His misfortunes--His prison--The first pillar having
  its own story--Sketches on the wall made by a captive--His
  escape--Drowned in the attempt two months before Bonnivard's
  deliverance--Alexander Dumas' name above that of Byron--The English
  amateur's painting--The fat gendarme--A bad Bonnivard--Our
  determination to inhabit Chillon--Changed by thoughts of
  powder--Fanny our conductress--Ludlow's house and tomb--Contrast
  between Protestant and Catholic cantons--Bulle--The bony hand holding
  a crucifix--The Counts of Gruyeres--Fines paid for crimes
  perpetrated--The banner of Berne--Laws of the Simmenthal--The Bernese
  attacking Gruyeres--Count Pierre's danger--Plague described by
  Boccaccio--The Flagellans--The murdered Jews--Last of the Counts of
  Gruyeres--Leaving Bulle--Fribourg--Battle of Morat--The lime tree--A
  monument of the young messenger--Berthhold, founder of Fribourg--Line
  drawn between plebeian and noble--Bridge--Organ


                              CHAPTER II.

                                                                      29

Canton of Berne--Village where the Swiss troops obtained a victory over
  the French force in '98--Berne--Bears in all forms--Their revenues
  diminished--Their new baptism--Foundation of Berne--Rodolph of
  Erlach--Laupen--Rodolph chosen guardian of orphans of the Count of
  Nidau--Murdered by his own son-in-law--Cathedral--Monument to Duke
  Berthhold--His wife's execution--Charles Louis of Erlach massacred by
  his own soldiers during French invasion--Treatment of Berne by the
  French--Thun--Privileges--Castle of Thun--The brothers--The
  banquet--The murder--The "pension"--An acquaintance--The sketcher in
  haste--A Marseilles story--Spietz--The golden manor--Adrian of
  Bubenberg--His saving Morat--His embassy--His return as a
  minstrel--Unterseen--Unspunnen once the property of the Eschenbach
  family--Walter of Eschenbach--Confidant of the parricide Duke
  John--Murder of the Emperor Albert--Vengeance of Queen
  Agnes--Walter's son spared--Walter a shepherd--Lauterbrunnen--The
  cascade--Grindelwald--A buried chapel in the glacier--The Harder--The
  grave of an only son--Return to Thun


                              CHAPTER III.

                                                                      74

Leave Thun--Zweizemmen--The wrong road--Chateau d'OEx--Gruyeres--The
  Prefet's ball--Anniversary of the Virgin's leaving school