Babette’s godmother was staying, with her daughters and a young kinsman, in Montreux, for visitors from Bex one of the nearest towns that form, together with Clarens, Vernex and Crin, a garland round Lake Geneva’s north-eastern corner. They were newly ensconced there, yet the miller had already paid them a visit, and relayed Babette’s engagement, telling them about Rudy and the eaglet, and the visit to Interlaken, telling them in short the whole story. And they were delighted by it and consumed with interest in Rudy and Babette, and in the miller as well. They absolutely must, all three of them, come on over, and therefore come on over they did. Babette would see her godmother, her godmother would see Babette.
The steamer which takes half-an-hour to reach Vernex, immediately below Montreux, was docked at the little town of Villeneuve, at the extreme eastern end of Lake Geneva. This shoreline is more celebrated in literature than almost any other. Here, beneath the walnut trees, beside the deep blue-green lake, Byron sat and wrote his melodious verses about the prisoner in the sinister fortress of Chillon. Over there, where Clarens with its weeping willows is reflected in the water, Rousseau wandered dreaming about Heloïse. The River Rhône glides forth beneath the Savoy’s high, snow-clad mountains, and here, at no great distance from its outlet into the lake, lies a little island. It’s so small that from the shore you could well fancy it was a boat out there. It is a piece of rocky ground which a hundred years earlier its mistress decided should be dyked with stones, covered with soil, and planted with three acacia trees. These now overshadow the whole island. Babette was altogether thrilled by this little spot. For her it was the most beautiful part of the entire boat trip. They really should get out onto it, they simply must go onto it; being there would be beautiful beyond words, she thought. But the steamer went on past and set them down, as programmed, at Vernex.
From here the little company strolled uphill between the white, sunlit walls that surround the vineyards immediately below the little mountain town of Montreux, where fig trees cast shadows in front of the smallholders’ houses, and laurels and cypresses grow in the gardens. Halfway up the hill stood the pension where Godmother was staying.
Their reception was cordial in the extreme. Godmother was a friendly old lady, with a round, smiling face. As a child she must have been a truly Raphaelesque cherub, but now she had a venerable cherub-head all beset by silvery-white curly hair. Her daughters were well turned out, fashion-conscious, tall and slim. The young male cousin who was with them and who was dressed entirely in white from top to toe, with gilded hair and gilded sideburns so profuse they could have been shared out among three gentlemen, gave little Babette his utmost attention from the very start.
Handsome clothbound books, sheets of music and drawings all lay spread out on top of the large table. The balcony door stood open to the beautiful lake that stretched out in front so bright and calm that the Savoy Mountains with their villages, forests and snow-peaks were mirrored in it upside down.
Rudy, who in other circumstances was always bold, lively and confident, felt not in the least at his ease, as people call it. He moved about here as if he were walking on peas across a slippery floor. How hard it was to get through the time! It was like being on a treadmill – and now it was decided they should all go for a walk!! That went by so slowly. Two steps forwards and one step back was how Rudy managed to keep the same pace as the others.
They all went down to Chillon, the grim castle on the rocky island, to look at torture instruments and condemned cells, at rusty chains attached to the rock-wall, stone beds for those on death row, trapdoors through which the unfortunate were pushed down to be impaled on iron spikes sticking up from the lake-surf. And they called looking at all this a pleasure! It was a place of execution elevated by Byron’s song into the world of poetry. But for Rudy it was merely a place of execution. He leaned out of the window’s large stone frame, gazing down into the deep, blue-green water and then across to the beautiful little island with the three acacias, where he wished he were by himself, free of this whole chattering company. But Babette was feeling extremely happy. She had enjoyed herself enormously, she said later; she found the English cousin ‘perfect’.
‘Yes, a perfect nincompoop!’ said Rudy, and that was the first time Rudy had said anything that did not please her. The young Englishman had made her a present of a little book as a memento of Chillon. It was Byron’s poem The Prisoner of Chillon translated into French so Babette could read it.
‘The book might be good enough,’ said Rudy, ‘but personally I don’t take to the smart-combed dandy who gave you it at all.’
‘He looks like a sack of flour without the flour!’ said the miller and laughed at his own wit. Rudy laughed too, and said a truer word was never spoken.