'The regulations prescribed the dress materials which each class of
society might wear, and permitted none but the nobility to appear
in gold-embroidered stuffs, brocades, collars of Paris point lace,
and lace-embellished shoes. The women of the middle classes were
forbidden to wear caps costing more than ten crowns, or any sort of
false hair, or more than one petticoat at a time. One regulation
settled the size of men's wigs, and another determined how low a
lady's bodice might be cut. There was a continual battle between
authority and fashion, and fashion was always contriving to evade
the law. The purpose of the magistracy was not only to maintain
the privileges of the upper classes, but also to fortify domestic
morality against the imperious demands of vanity. A special
government department was instituted to stop the use of tobacco. The
baillis alone considered that the law did not apply to them; but one
day, when one of these officials opened his snuff-box in church, the
preacher interrupted him. "Here," he said, "one only snuffs the Word
of God." Above all things, however, morality was the object of the
jealous care of the magistrates of Vaud. So it was with an outburst
of holy wrath that they heard that there was at Vevey "a dancing
master, a Catholic, whose presence caused great scandals, at balls,
in the evenings, between the two sexes." The stranger was banished,
and the town was censured for its criminal toleration.'
[Illustration: MORGES AND THE LAKE FROM THE ROAD TO VUFFLENS]
Such was the régime, and though, in externals, it resembled
the régime at Geneva, there was one very significant difference.
The Genevan discipline was self-imposed, and at least expressed the
will of a working majority of the people. The Lausanne discipline
represented the will of a conqueror imposed upon a subject race, and
the conqueror had a rough and heavy hand, and rigorously excluded the
subject people from participation in public affairs. The consequences
can be traced in their history, habits, and manners.
There was one poor feeble attempt at revolt. A certain Major Davel,
after whom one of the steamboats on the lake is called--a Pietist,
and perhaps a religious maniac--a soldier of fortune, whose merits
had attracted the attention of such good judges as the Duke of
Marlborough and Prince Eugène, mustered the militia of Cully and
marched into Lausanne, declaring that he had come to set the Canton
free. Asked for explanations, he replied that he had been guided by
direct inspiration from on high. The defence did not save him, and he
perished on the scaffold in 1723. The revolution at which he aimed
was not to be accomplished for another eighty years, and the event
constitutes almost the whole of the political history of Lausanne
during the period under review.
CHAPTER II
EMIGRANTS AND IMMIGRANTS
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