108.]
* * * * *
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GLACIERE AND NEIGIERE OF ARC-SOUS-CICON.
The beauties of the Val de Travers end only with the valley itself, at
the head of which a long tunnel ushers the traveller into a tamer
country,--a preparation, as it were, for France. After the border is
passed, the scenery begins to improve again, and the effect of the two
castles of Joux, the new and the old, crowning the heights on either
side of the narrow gorge through which the railway runs, is very fine.
The guide-books inform us that the Chateau of Joux was the place of
imprisonment of the unfortunate Toussaint L'Ouverture, and that there he
died of neglect and cold; and it was in the same strong fortress that
Mirabeau was confined by his father's desire. The old castle, however,
is more interesting from its connection with the history of Charles the
Bold, who retired to La Riviere after the battle of Morat, and spent
here those sad solitary weeks of which Philip de Comines tells with so
many moral reflections; weeks of bodily and mental distress, which left
him a mere wreck, and led to his wild want of generalship and his
miserable death at Nancy.
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