[358] {304} [Claire, afterwards Madame Orbe, is Julie's cousin and confidante. She is represented as whimsical and humorous. It is not impossible that "Claire," in _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, "bequeathed her name" to Claire, otherwise Jane Clairmont.] [359] [Byron and Shelley sailed round the Lake of Geneva towards the end of June, 1816. Writing to Murray, June 27, he says, "I have traversed all Rousseau's ground with the _Héloïse_ before me;" and in the same letter announces the completion of a third canto of _Childe Harold_. He revisited Clarens and Chillon in company with Hobhouse in the following September (see extracts from a Journal, September 18, 1816, _Life_, pp. 311, 312).] [360] [Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Evian.] [361] {305} [Byron mentions the "squall off Meillerie" in a letter to Murray, dated Ouchy, near Lausanne, June 27, 1816. Compare, too, Shelley's version of the incident: "The wind gradually increased in violence until it blew tremendously; and as it came from the remotest extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam.... I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture of sensations, among which terror entered, though but subordinately. My feelings would have been less painful had I been alone; but I know that my companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine."--_Letters from Abroad_, etc.; _Essays_, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, 1840, ii. 68, 69.] [362] [Byron and Shelley slept at Clarens, June 26, 1816. The windows of their inn commanded a view of the _Bosquet de Julie_. "In the evening we walked thither. It is, indeed, Julia's wood ... the trees themselves were aged but vigorous.... We went again (June 27) to the _Bosquet de Julie_, and found that the precise spot was now utterly obliterated, and a heap of stones marked the place where the little chapel had once stood. Whilst we were execrating the author of this brutal folly, our guide informed us that the land belonged to the Convent of St. Bernard, and that this outrage had been committed by their orders. I knew before that if avarice could harden the hearts of men, a system of prescriptive religion has an influence far more inimical to natural sensibility. I know that an isolated man is sometimes restrained by shame from outraging the venerable feelings arising out of the memory of genius, which once made nature even lovelier than itself; but associated man holds it as the very sacrament of this union to forswear all delicacy, all benevolence, all remorse; all that is true, or tender, or sublime."--_Essays, etc._, 1840, ii. 75.] * * * * * CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. CANTO THE FOURTH.