334 PRÆTERITA-II

“Well, the black bread’s two months old, and there’s nothing else but potatoes.”

“There must be milk, anyhow.”

Yes, there was milk, he supposed.

“You can sop your bread in it then; what could be nicer?”

But Gordon’s downcast mien did not change; and I had to admit myself, when supper-time came, that one might almost as hopelessly have sopped the Matterhorn as the loaf.

98. Thus the Christian peasant had lived in the Alps, unthought of, for two thousand years-since Christ broke bread for His multitude;¹ and lived thus under the direct care of the Catholic Church-for Sion, the capital of the Valais, is one of the grandest of old bishoprics; and just below this valley of black bread, the little mountain towns of Visp and Brieg are more groups of tinkling towers and convent cloisters than civic dwelling-places. As for the Catholic State, for a thousand years, while at every sunset Monte Rosa glowed across the whole Lombard plain, not a Lombard noble knew where the mountain was.

Yet, it may be, I err in my pity. I have many things yet to say of the Valais;² meantime this passage from Saussure³ records a social state in 1796, which, as compared with that of the poor in our great capitals, is one neither of discomfort nor disgrace:-

“La sobriété, compagne ordinaire de l’amour du travail, est encore une qualité remarquable des habitants de ces vallées. Ce pain de seigle, dont j’ai parlé, qu’on ne mange que six mois après qu’il est cuit, on le ramollit dans du petit lait ou dans du lait de beurre, et cette espèce de soupe fait leur principale nourriture; le fromage et un peu de vieille vache ou de chèvre salées, se réservent pour les jours de fête ou pour le temps de grands travaux; car pour la viande fraîche, ils n’en mangent jamais, c’est un mets trop dispendieux. Les gens riches du pays vivent avec la même

¹ [Matthew xv. 32 seq.]

² [There is a passing reference to the Valais below, p. 435; much had been said in Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. pp. 410, 435 seq.).]

³ [Voyages dans les Alpes (Neuchatel, 1796), § 2244, vol. iv. pp. 387-388. Saussure is writing of the valleys of Monte Rosa.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]