; and not till midnight did we run down a rather steep pass upon
the shore of a lake, which, from its apparent vastness in the moonless
obscurity, I could only suppose to be the Lake of Geneva once again.
About two hundred yards to the left we saw through the rain a large
pile, apparently risen straight out of the lake, looking ghostly livid,
for it was of white stone, not high, but an old thing of complicated
white little turrets roofed with dark red candle extinguishers, and
oddities of Gothic nooks, window slits, and outline, very like a
fanciful picture. Round to this we went, drowned as rats, Leda sighing
and bedraggled, and found a narrow spit of low land projecting into the
lake, where we left the car, walked forward with the bag, crossed a
small wooden drawbridge, and came upon a rocky island with a number of
thick-foliaged trees about the castle. We quickly found a small open
portal, and went throughout the place, quite gay at the shelter,
everywhere lighting candles which we found in iron sconces in the rather
queer apartments: so that, as the castle is far seen from the shores of
the lake, it would have appeared to one looking thence a place suddenly
possessed and haunted. We found beds, and slept: and the next day it
turned out to be the antique Castle of Chillon, where we remained five
long and happy months, till again, again, Fate overtook us.

* * * * *

The morning after our coming, we had breakfast--our last meal
together--on the first floor in a pentagonal room approached from a
lower level by three little steps. In it is a ponderous oak table
pierced with a multitude of worm eaten tunnels, also three mighty high
backed chairs, an old oak desk covered still with papers, arras on the
walls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a grandfathers clock:
it is at about the middle of the chateau, and contains two small, but
deep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with white
stone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edge
of the island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tiny
island containing four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shore
of the lake interrupted by the mouths of a river which turned out to be
the Rhone, then upon a white town on the slopes which turned out to be
Villeneuve, then upon the great mountains back of Bouveret and St.
Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a resurrection just
comp