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"But it waxes late 'tis near three o'clock:" let us hasten past the casinos, cafes, reading-rooms, Turkish baths and American drinking-bars which flourish on the quays, and make our way to the Promenade des Anglais, by this time alive with fashionables. The "Promenade," as I have said, is nearly four miles long, and faces the sea. It is very broad, and has on one side a row of villas and hotels on the other a walk shaded by oleanders and palm trees, through the openings of which are obtained magnificent views of the Mediterranean. Some of these villas are remarkably beautiful, especially that of the Princes Stirby, the former sovereigns of Wallachia, which is surrounded with exquisite gardens abounding with noble camellia trees, some of which produce as many as fifteen hundred flowers. The Villa de Dempierre is very pretty, and is the property of the countess of that name, who is a most noteworthy person. Madame de Dempierre belongs to one of the most ancient and wealthy families of France. She was once a great beauty, and is still a brilliant wit and charming artist. Some years ago she visited the empress of Russia, then residing at Nice, where she died. Her Imperial Majesty, who was noted for her habit of making personal remarks, said bluntly, "Madame la comtesse, how beautiful you must have been!" "Majesty," answered the spirituelle Madame de Dempierre, "you were complaining of the nearness of your sight: since you can distinguish my beauty through the vista of so many years, I think you enjoy long-sightedness in a remarkable degree." The empress wrinkled her nose, and presently observed: "I think, countess, I remember to have seen your husband, General de Dempierre, in Russia." "Doubtless Your Majesty did so: he was the first Frenchman that entered the Kremlin." The czarina was silent: the fall of Moscow was not a pleasant subject of conversation to the wife of Nicholas. The Villa de Diesbach comes next, the winter residence of the historical family of that name, into which married a few years since a tall, gazelle-eyed American belle, Miss Meta McCall. Then follows the pretty Villa Bouxhoevden, the property of a Corlandese count of a very noble house, whose wife hails from New Jersey. The countess is much the fashion, and her hospitable house is a rendezvous of the elite of the foreign and American colony. She is a tall, graceful woman, with a pale and interesting countenance, shadowed with clusters of light-brown curls, which reminds one of Vandyke's portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria a likeness somewhat increased by costumes admirably suited to her style long flowing robes of rich silk trimmed with ermine and costly lace. Then there is Mrs. Williams's garden, with Indian creepers and gaudy Eastern plants, sent to her by her gallant son, the Crimean hero, from the slopes of the Himalayas. Here on a Sunday gathers a pleasant circle to drink five-o'clock tea and listen to the bright remarks of Madame de la Caume, the daughter of the hostess, who knows more about French politics than many a deputy at Versailles. But whilst we have been looking in at villa-gardens the Promenade has filled up rapidly. A continuous stream of carriages occupies the centre of the road, a throng of gay folks animate with their showiest toilets the oleander walk and the Jardin Publique, where a tolerable band plays for two or three hours thrice a week. The marble stairs of the Casino are crowded with loungers, and the windows and balconies of every villa are filled with well-dressed men and women. Nowhere, perhaps, excepting in Rotten Row or the Bois de Boulogne, can so many celebrated and beautiful women and handsome or famous men be seen parading up and down together as on the Promenade des Anglais of a fine afternoon in the season. Here gathers the crême de la crême of two worlds, the Old and the New, Europe and America. In the winter of 1870 the town was crowded to excess. Never before were there so many notabilities assembled at Nice never was there so much gossip, so much cancan and small talk. It was amusing to sit in the shade of a palm tree on the promenade and review the personæ of this Vanity Fair. Frederick Charles of Prussia and his princess in a landau, with two Nubians on the box; the crown-princess Victoria of England and her sister of Hesse-Darmstadt, on a trip from Cannes, where they were then visiting; Her Grace of Newcastle; De Villemessant of the Figaro, in an invalid's chair, the most accomplished of causeurs; Count Montalivet, the former minister of Louis Philippe, and by him, for a few days at the full of the season, a little old gentleman with a squeaky voice, M. Adolphe Thiers. Next comes a group of ladies, the three daughters of the Hispano-Mexican duchess De Fernan-Nuñez; all three looking exactly alike, tall and dark; all three of a height; all three invariably dressed in black, with lofty Tyrolese hats and cocks' feathers; all three unmarried; all three marriageable, and worth Croesus only knows how many millions; all three invariably alone a fact which made old Madame Colaredo scream out of her window one day, "Tiens! voil
Martin of Tours, is chosen as Intercessor for Gerster, wearing the prescribed chasuble for this office. And it seems likely that the addition to his mitre of the figure of St. Nicholas was Gerster's wish, in order to specially associate the name-saint of his friend Nicholas von Diesbach with this intercession.
Many admirable varieties, like Jacqueminot, Anne de Diesbach, Alfred Colomb, Madame Plantier, and all the climbers, do so well on their own roots that it is foolish to take the risk of budded plants, the worse side of which is a tendency to decay at the point of juncture. Tea roses, being of rapid growth and flowering wholly upon new wood, are perfectly satisfactory when rooted from cuttings.
To know that the power of deciding lay with the present leaders of the Bernese, made the prospect intolerable to Zwingli. He found in the schultheiss Diesbach, their general, a lukewarm friend of the Reformation, and in him and most of the others advocates, rather than opposers, of pension-taking.
Those immense beds of sandstone that cover the Llanos of the Lower Orinoco and the Amazon well deserve the attention of travellers. In appearance they approximate to the pudding-stones of the molassus stratum, in which calcareous vestiges are also often wanting, as at Schottwyl and Diesbach in Switzerland; but they appeared to me by their position to have more relation to red sandstone.
The Catholics brought together their chief force in the country of Baar. Their little army swelled to eight thousand. That of the Zurichers was strengthened from the Thurgau and St. Gall. A third just as important, that of the Bernese aided by Basel, Biel and Muehlhausen, under the schultheiss Von Diesbach, had reached Bremgarten.
Many circumstances which cannot be given here make it pretty evident that in 1522 Gerster, probably under the advice of the Probst, the Coadjutor Nicholas von Diesbach, made this picture an expiatory offering for some secret sin of grave proportions.
"My God, what is all this!" cried Francis I., seeing them waver, and he dashed towards them to lead them back into action; but neither his efforts, nor those of John of Diesbach and the Lord of Fleuranges, who were their commanders, were attended with success.
The foreign regiments were stationed in the environs of Paris, regiments whose very names were an irritation to the Parisians, regiments of Reisbach, of Diesbach, of Nassau, Esterhazy, and Roehmer. Reenforcements of Swiss were sent to the Bastille between whose crenels already since the 30th of June were to be seen the menacing mouths of loaded cannon.
Royal-Etranger, Reinach, Nassau, Esterhazy, Royal-Allemand, Royal-Cravate, Diesbach, such were some of the names of the regiments sent by Louis XVI to persuade his good people of Paris into submission. No wonder that the crowd shouted when Desmoulins told them that the Germans would sack Paris that night if they did not defend themselves.
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