CHAPTER XI.
ST. CLAUDE: THE BISHOPRIC IN THE MOUNTAINS.
I was prepared to be fascinated with St. Claude, to find it wholly
unique and bewitching, to greet it with enthusiasm, and bid it farewell
with regret. It has been described so glowingly by different
writers--alike its history, site, and natural features are so curious
and poetic, such a flavour of antiquity clings to it, that perhaps no
other town in the Jura is approached with equal expectation. Nor can any
preconceived notion of the attractiveness of St. Claude, however high,
be disappointed, if visited in fine weather. It is really a marvellous
place, and takes the strangest hold on the imagination. The antique
city, so superbly encased with lofty mountains, is as proud as it is
singular, depending on its own resources, and not putting on a smile to
attract the stranger. Were a magician to sweep away these humming
wheels, hammering mill-stones, gloomy warehouses, and put smiling
pleasure-grounds and coquettish villas in their place, St. Claude might
become as fashionable a resort as the most favourite Swiss or Italian
haunts. But in its present condition it does not lay itself out to
please, and the town is built in the only way building was possible, up
and down, on the edge of the cliffs here, in the depths of a hollow
there, zig-zag, just anyhow.
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