YOUTH AND EARLY TRAVELS 73 



De Saussure points out the need of some winter occupation 

 for the men. Wood-carving, he says, has never taken root in 

 Savoy as in the Bernese Oberland. Many in the larger villages 

 spend most of their time in drinking -shops, and gamble even for 

 high stakes. In the more remote hamlets the evenings pass as 

 in the play of the Soiree Villageoise. At nightfall everyone meets 

 round the fire in the largest room, the women sew and card flax, 

 or tell stories ; the men make bowls and spoons or other such 

 articles in wood, and the mistress of the house is at no expense 

 beyond providing a jug of water and a bowl of apples cooked in 

 the cinders to serve as supper. 



' Their wits,' adds de Saussure, ' are keen and penetrating, their 

 character is li vely and given to mockery ; they fasten with singular 

 shrewdness on any eccentricities in strangers, and mimic them between 

 themselves in the most amusing way. Nevertheless, they are capable 

 of serious reflection. Many of them have attacked me on questions 

 of religion or metaphysics, not so much on the points of difference 

 between one religion and another as on general questions, in a way 

 which showed that they had ideas of their own apart from those they 

 had been brought up in.' [ Voyages, 744.] 



De Saussure proceeds to tell an affecting tale that has been 

 already quoted more than once in connection with his travels : 



' Nothing of the sort surprised me more than a woman of Argentiere 

 whose home I entered to ask for milk when coming down from the 

 glacier in March 1764. The village had suffered from an epidemic of 

 dysentery, which, some months previously, had carried off her father, 

 her husband, and her brothers, so that she was left alone with three 

 children in infancy. Her figure had something noble about it, and 

 her countenance bore traces of a calm and deep sorrow which made it 

 interesting. After she had given me the milk she asked who I was, 

 and what I came for at that season. When she learned that I was 

 Genevese, she said she could not believe that Protestants would be 

 damned, that there were among us many honest people, and that 

 God was too good and just to condemn us indiscriminately. Then 

 after a moment's reflection, she added, shaking her head : " But what 

 is very strange is that of so many who have gone, not one should 

 have returned ; I," she added with an accent of sorrow, " who have 

 so deeply mourned my husband and my brothers, who have never 

 ceased thinking of them, who every night implore them with the 

 utmost earnestness to tell me where they are, and in what state ah ! 



