My Novel, Book V by Edward Bulwer-lytton — Read

The Great Day arrived at last; and Mr. Richard Avenel, from his dressing- room window, looked on the scene below as Hannibal or Napoleon looked from the Alps on Italy. It was a scene to gratify the thought of conquest, and reward the labours of ambition. Placed on a little eminence stood the singers from the mountains of the Tyrol, their high- crowned hats and filigree buttons and gay sashes gleaming in the sun. Just seen from his place of watch, though concealed from the casual eye, the Hungarian musicians lay in ambush amidst a little belt of laurels and American shrubs. Far to the right lay what had once been called /horresco referens/ the duckpond, where -- "Dulce sonant tenui gutture carmen aves. " But the ruthless ingenuity of the head-artificer had converted the duck-pond into a Swiss lake, despite grievous wrong and sorrow to the /assuetum innocuumque genus/, -- the familiar and harmless inhabitants, who had been all expatriated and banished from their native waves.

Large poles twisted with fir branches, stuck thickly around the lake, gave to the waters the becoming Helvetian gloom. And here, beside three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined to startle the shades with the /Ranz des Vaches/. To the left, full upon the sward, which it almost entirely covered, stretched the great Gothic marquee, divided into two grand sections, -- one for the dancing, one for the dejeune.