Chapter 8

The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve!
Long streams of light, o'er glancing waves expand,
Now lads on shore may sigh and maids believe:
Such be our fate when we return to land!

Byron.

The approach of the Winkelried had been seen from Vévey throughout the
afternoon and evening. The arrival of the Baron de Willading and his
daughter was expected by many in the town, the rank and influence of the
former in the great canton rendering him an object of interest to more
than those who felt affection for his person and respect for his upright
qualities. Roger de Blonay had not been his only youthful friend, for the
place contained another, with whom he was intimate by habit, if not from a
community of those principles which are the best cement of friendships.

The officer charged with the especial supervision of the districts or
circles, into which Berne had caused its dependent territory of Vaud to be
divided, was termed a _bailli_, a title that our word bailiff will
scarcely render, except as it may strictly mean a substitute for the
exercise of authority that is the property of another, but which, for the
want of a better term, we may be compelled occasionally to use. The
bailli, or bailiff, of Vévey was Peter Hofmeister, a member of one of
those families of the bürgerschaft, or the municipal aristocracy of the
canton, which found its institutions venerable, just, and, and if one
might judge from their language, almost sacred, simply because it had been
in possession of certain exclusive privileges under their authority, that
were not only comfortable in their exercise but fecund in other worldly
advantages. This Peter Hofmeister was, in the main, a hearty,
well-meaning, and somewhat benevolent person, but, living as he did under
the secret consciousness that all was not as it should be, he pushed his
opinions on the subject of vested interests, and on the stability of
temporal matters, a little into extremes, pretty much on the same
principle as that on which the engineer expends the largest portion of his
art in fortifying the weakest point of the citadel, taking care that there
shall be a constant flight of shot, great and small, across the most
accessible of its approaches. By one of the exclusive ordinances of those
times, in which men were glad to get relief from the violence and rapacity
of the baron and the satellite of the prince, ordinances that it was the
fashion of the day to term liberty, the family of Hofmeister had come into
the exercise of a certain charge, or monopoly, that, in truth, had always
constituted its wealth and importance, but of which it was accustomed to
speak as forming its principal claim to the gratitude of the public, for
duties that had been