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"... and as to what may be in this book, do not feel timid nor
hesitate to enter. There are more mountains than mole-hills. . . ."

THE

PATH TO ROME

H. BELLOC

1 V.
AUTHOR OF "DANTON," "ROBESPIERRE," "PARIS," ETC.

" . . amore
Antiqui rltus, alto sub numine Roma: "

NEW YORK

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN

IQ02

C<">

1902

3LASS OU XXc. No.
COPY B.

UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

MISS R. H. BUSK

PRAISE OF THIS BOOK

To every honest reader that may purchase, hire, or
receive this book, and to the reviewers also (to whom
it is of triple profit), greeting — and whatever else
can be had for nothing.

If you should ask how this book came to be
written, it was in this way. One day as I was
wandering over the world I came upon the valley
where I was born, and stopping there a moment to
speak with them all — when I had argued politics
with the grocer, and played the great lord with the
notary-public, and had all but made the carpenter
a Christian by force of rhetoric — what should I note
(after so many years) but the old tumble-down and
gaping church, that I love more than mother-church
herself, all scraped, white, rebuilt, noble and new,
as though it had been finished yesterday. Knowing
very well that such a change had not come from the

Vlll

PRAISE OF THIS BOOK

skinflint populace, but was the work of some just
artist who knew how grand an ornament was this
shrine (built there before our people stormed
Jerusalem), I entered, and there saw that all
within was as new, accurate, and excellent as the
outer part ; and this pleased me as much as though
a fortune had been left to us all ; for one's native
place is the shell of one's soul, and one's church is
the kernel of that nut.

Moreover, saying my prayers there, I noticed
behind the high altar a statue of Our Lady, so
extraordinary and so different from all I had ever
seen before, so much the spirit of my valley, that
I was quite taken out of myself and vowed a vow
there to go to Rome on Pilgrimage and see all
Europe which the Christian Faith has saved ; and I
said, " I will start from the place where I served in
arms for my sins ; I will walk all the way and take
advantage of no wheeled thing ; I will sleep rough
and cover thirty miles a day, and I will hear Mass
every morning ; and I will be present at High Mass
in St. Peter's on the Feast of St. Peter and St.
Paul."

Then I went out of the church still having that
Statue in my mind, and I walked again farther into
the world, away from my native valley, and so ended

PRAISE OF THIS BOOK ix

some months after in a place whence I could fulfil
my vow; and I started as you shall hear. All my
other vows I broke one by one. For a faggot must
be broken every stick singly. But the strict vow I
kept, for I entered Rome on foot that year in time,
and I heard High Mass on the Feast of the Apostles,
as many can testify — to wit : Monsignor this, and
Chamberlain the other, and the Bishop of so-and-
so — o — polls in partibus infidelium ; for we were all
there together.

And why (you will say) is all this put by itself in
what Anglo-Saxons call a Foreword, but gentlemen
a Preface? Why, it is because I have noticed that
no book can appear without some such thing tied
on before it; and as it is folly to neglect the fashion,
be certain that I read some eight or nine thousand
of them to be sure of how they were written and to
be safe from generalising on too frail a basis.

And having read them and discovered first, that
it was the custom of my contemporaries to belaud
themselves in this prolegomenaical ritual (some
saving in few words that they supplied a want, others
boasting in a hundred that they were too grand to
do any such thing, but most of them baritoning
their apologies and chanting their excuses till one
knew that their pride was toppling over) — since, I

x PRAISE OF THIS BOOK

say, it seemed a necessity to extol one's work, I wrote
simply on the lintel of my diary, " Praise of this Book,"
so as to end the matter at a blow. But whether
there will be praise or blame I really cannot tell,
for I am riding my pen on the snaffle, and it has a
mouth of iron.

Now there is another thing book writers do in
their Prefaces, which is to introduce a mass of
nincompoops of whom no one ever heard, and to say
" my thanks are due to such and such " all in a
litany, as though any one cared a farthing for the
rats ! If I omit this believe me it is but on account
of the multitude and splendour of those who have
attended at the production of this volume. For the
stories in it are copied straight from the best authors
of the Renaissance, the music was written by the
masters of the eighteenth century, the Latin is
Erasmus' own ; indeed, there is scarcely a word that
is mine. I must also mention the Nine Muses, the
Three Graces ; Bacchus, the Maenads, the Panthers,
the Fauns ; and I owe very hearty thanks to
Apollo.

Yet again, I see that writers are for ever anxious
of their style, thinking (not saying) —

" True, I used c and which ' on page 47, but
Martha Brown the stylist gave me leave ; " or :

PRAISE OF THIS BOOK xi

" What if I do end a sentence with a preposition ?
I always follow the rules of Mr. Twist in his
' 'T is Thus 'T was Spoke,' Odd's Body an' I do
not ! "

Now this is a pusillanimity of theirs (the book
writers) that they think style power, and yet never
say as much in their Prefaces. Come, let me do so
. . . Where are you? Let me marshal you, my
regiments of words !

Rabelais ! Master of all happy men ! Are you
sleeping there pressed into desecrated earth under
the doss-house of the Rue St. Paul, or do you
not rather drink cool wine in some elysian Chinon
looking on the Vienne where it rises in Paradise?
Are you sleeping or drinking that you will not lend
us the staff of Friar John wherewith he slaughtered
and bashed the invaders of the vineyards, who are
but a parable for the mincing pedants and blood-
less thin-faced rogues of the world ?

Write as the wind blows and command all words
like an army ! See them how they stand in rank
ready for assault, the jolly, swaggering fellows !

First come the Neologisms, that are afraid of no
man ; fresh, young, hearty, and for the most part
very long-limbed, though some few short and strong.

xii PRAISE OF THIS BOOK

There also are the Misprints to confuse the enemy
at his onrush. Then see upon the flank a company
of picked Ambiguities covering what shall be a feint
by the squadron of Anachronisms led by old Ana-
chronos himself; a terrible chap with nigglers and
a great murderer of fools.

But here see more deeply massed the ten thousand
Egotisms shining in their armour and roaring for
battle. They care for no one. They stormed
Convention yesterday and looted the cellar of Good-
Manners, who died of fear without a wound; so they
drank his wine and are to-day as strong as lions and
as careless (saving only their Captain, Monologue,
who is lantern-jawed).

Here are the Aposiopaesian Auxiliaries, and
Dithyramb that killed Punctuation in open fight ;
Parenthesis the giant and champion of the host, and
Anacoluthon that never learned to read or write but
is very handy with his sword ; and Metathesis and
Hendiadys, two Greeks. And last come the noble
Gallicisms prancing about on their light horses:
cavalry so sudden that the enemy sicken at the mere
sight of them and are overcome without a blow.
Come then, my hearties, my lads, my indefatigable
repetitions, seize you each his own trumpet that
hangs at his side and blow the charge ; we shall soon

PRAISE OF THIS BOOK xiii

drive them all before us headlong, howling down
together to the Pichrocholian Sea.

So ! That was an , interlude. Forget the
clamour.

But there is another matter ; written as yet in no
other Preface : peculiar to this book. For without
rhyme or reason, pictures of an uncertain kind
stand in the pages of the chronicle. Why?

Because it has become so cheap to photograph on
zinc.

In old time a man that drew ill drew not at all.
He did well. Then either there were no pictures in
his book, or (if there were any) they were done by
some other man that loved him not a groat and
would not have walked half a mile to see him
hanged. But now it is so easy for a man to scratch
down what he sees and put it in his book that any
fool may do it and be none the worse — many others
shall follow. This is the first.

Before you blame too much, consider the alterna-
tive. Shall a man march through Europe dragging
an artist on a cord ? God forbid !

Shall an artist write a book ? Why no, the
remedy is worse than the disease.

Let us agree then, that, if he will, any pilgrim

XIV

PRAISE OF THIS BOOK

may for the future draw (if he likes) that most
difficult subject, snow hills beyond a grove of trees ;

that he may draw whatever he comes across in order
to enliven his mind (for who saw it if not he?
And was it not his loneliness that enabled him to
see it?), and that he may draw what he never saw,
with as much freedom as you readers so very con-
tinually see what you never draw. He may draw
the morning mist on the Grimsel, six months after-
wards ; when he has forgotten what it was like :
and he may frame it for a masterpiece to make the
good draughtsman rage.

The world has grown a boy again this long time
past, and they are building hotels (I hear) in the

PRAISE OF THIS BOOK

place where Acedes discovered the Water of Youth
in a hollow of the hill Epistemonoscoptes.

Then let us love one another and laugh. Time
passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer — and
meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest
men are at siege upon us all around. Let us suffer
absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another.

Nor let us be too hard upon the just but anxious
fellow that sat down dutifully to paint the soul of
Switzerland upon a fan.

THE PATH TO ROME

When that first Proverb- Maker who has imposed
upon all peoples by his epigrams and his fallacious
half-truths, his empiricism and his wanton appeals
to popular ignorance, I say when this man (for I
take it he was a man, and a wicked one) was passing
through France he launched among the French one
of his pestiferous phrases, " Ce nest que le premier pas
qui coute" ; and this in a rolling-in-the-mouth self-
satisfied kind of a manner has been repeated since his
day at least seventeen million three hundred and
sixty-two thousand five hundred and four times by
a great mass of Ushers, Parents, Company Officers,
Elder Brothers, Parish Priests, and authorities in
general whose office it may be and whose pleasure
it certainly is to jog up and disturb that native
slumber and inertia of the mind which is the true
breeding soil of Revelation.

For when boys or soldiers or poets, or any other
blossoms and prides of nature, are for lying steady in

2 THE DIFFICULTY OF BEGINNING

the shade and letting the Mind commune with its
Immortal Comrades, up comes Authority busking
about and eager as though it were a duty to force
the said Mind to burrow and sweat in the matter
of this very perishable world, its temporary habi-
tation.

"Up," says Authority, "and let me see that
Mind of yours doing something practical. Let me
see Him mixing painfully with circumstance, and
botching up some Imperfection or other that shall
at least be a Reality and not a silly Fantasy."

Then the poor Mind comes back to Prison again,
and the boy takes his horrible Homer in the real
Greek (not Church's book, alas !) ; the Poet his
rough hairy paper, his headache, and his cross-
nibbed pen; the Soldier abandons his inner pic-
ture of swaggering about in ordinary clothes, and
sees the dusty road and feels the hard places in his
boot, and shakes down again to the steady pressure
of his pack ; and Authority is satisfied, knowing
that he will get a smattering from the Boy, a
rubbishy verse from the Poet, and from the Soldier
a long and thirsty march. And Authority, when
it does this, commonly sets to work by one of
these formulae : as, in England north of Trent,
by the manifestly false and boastful phrase, "A

CHARACTER OF PROVERB-MAKER 3

thing begun is half ended," and in the south
by "The Beginning is half the Battle"; but in
France by the words I have attributed to the
Proverb- Maker, " Ce nest que le premier pas qui
coute."

By this you may perceive that the Proverb-
Maker, like every other Demagogue, Energumen,
and Disturber, dealt largely in metaphor — but this
I need hardly insist upon, for in his vast collection
of published and unpublished works it is amply
evident that he took the silly pride of the half-
educated in a constant abuse of metaphor. There
was a sturdy boy at my school who, when the
master had carefully explained to us the nature
of metaphor, said that so far as he could see a
metaphor was nothing but a long Greek word for
a lie. And certainly men who know that the mere
truth would be distasteful or tedious commonly
have recourse to metaphor, and so do those false
men who desire to acquire a subtle and unjust
influence over their fellows, and chief among them,
the Proverb-Maker. For though his name is lost
in the great space of time that has passed since he
flourished, yet his character can be very clearly
deduced from the many literary fragments he has
left, and that is found to be the character of a

4 CHARACTER OF PROVERB-MAKER

pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly lacking
in foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous
enthusiasm — in matters of the Faith a prig or a
doubter, in matters of adventure a poltroon, in
matters of Science an ignorant Parrot, and in
Letters a wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for
alliteration ; a wilful liar (as, for instance, " The
longest way round is the shortest way home"), a
startling miser (as, "A penny saved is a penny
earned"), one ignorant of largesse and human
charity (as, " Waste not, want not "), and a shocking
boor in the point of honour (as, " Hard words
break no bones " — he never fought, I see, but
with a cudgel).

But he had just that touch of slinking humour
which the peasants have, and there is in all he said
that exasperating quality for which we have no
name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is
quite the opposite of judgment, yet which catches
the mind as brambles do our clothes, causing us
continually to pause and swear. For he mixes up
unanswerable things with false conclusions, he is
perpetually letting the cat out of the bag and
exposing our tricks, putting a colour to our actions,
disturbing us with our own memory, indecently
revealing corners of the soul. He is like those

HIS PARTIAL SUCCESSES 5

men who say one unpleasant and rude thing about
a friend, and then take refuge from their disloyal
and false action by pleading that this single accusa-
tion is true ; and it is perhaps for this abominable
logicality of his and for his malicious cunning
that I chiefly hate him : and since he himself
evidently hated the human race, he must not
complain if he is hated in return.

Take, for instance, this phrase that set me
writing, " Ce nest que le premier pas qui coute!' It
is false. Much after a beginning is difficult, as
everybody knows who has crossed the sea, and as
for the first step a man never so much as remem-
bers it; if there is difficulty it is in the whole
launching of a thing, in the first ten pages of a
book, or the first half-hour of listening to a ser-
mon, or the first mile of a walk. The first step
is undertaken lightly, pleasantly, and with your
soul in the sky ; it is the five-hundredth that
counts. But I know, and you know, and he
knew (worse luck) that he was saying a thorny
and catching thing when he made up that phrase.
It worries one of set purpose. It is as though one
had a voice inside one saying : —

" I know you, you will never begin anything.
Look at what you might have done ! Here you

6 THE SHAME OF INDOLENCE

are, already twenty-one, and you have not yet
written a dictionary. What will you do for fame?
Eh ? Nothing : you are intolerably lazy — and
what is worse, it is your fate. Beginnings are
insuperable barriers to you. What about that
great work on The National Debt? What about
that little lyric on Wincheisea that you thought
of writing six years ago ? Why are the few lines
still in your head and not on paper? Because
you can't begin. However, never mind, you can't
help it, it's your one great flaw, and it's fatal.
Look at Jones! Younger than you by half a year,
and already on the Evening Yankee taking bribes
from Company Promoters ! And where are you ? "
&c, &c, — and so forth.

So this threat about the heavy task of Begin-
ning breeds discouragement, anger, vexation, irrita-
bility, bad style, pomposity and infinitives split from
helm to saddle, and metaphors as mixed as the
Carlton. But it is just true enough to remain
fast in the mind, caught, as it were, by one finger.
For all things (you will notice) are very difficult
in their origin, and why, no one can understand.
Omne <Trinum : they are difficult also in the shock
of maturity and in their ending. Take, for in-
stance, the Life of Man, which is the Difficulty

THE GRAND CLIMACTERIC 7

of Birth, the Difficulty of Death, and the Diffi-
culty of the Grand Climacteric.

Lector. What is the Grand Climacteric?

Auctor. I have no time to tell you, for it would
lead us into a discussion on Astrology, and then
perhaps to a question of physical science, and then
you would find I was not orthodox, and perhaps
denounce me to the authorities.

I will tell you this much; it is the moment (not
the year or the month, mind you, nor even the
hour, but the very second) when a man is grown
up, when he sees things as they are (that is, back-
wards), and feels solidly himself. Do I make myself
clear ? No matter, it is the Shock of Maturity,
and that must suffice for you.

But perhaps you have been reading little brown
books on Evolution, and you don't believe in Catas-
trophes, or Climaxes, or Definitions ? Eh ? Tell
me, do you believe in the peak of the Matterhorn,
and have you doubts on the points of needles ?
Can the sun be said truly to rise or set, and is
there any exact meaning in the phrase, " Done
to a turn" as applied to omelettes? You know
there is; and so also you must believe in Cate-
gories, and you must admit differences of kind
as well as of degree, and you must accept exact

8 GRAND CLIMACTERIC IN A BOOK

definition and believe in all that your fathers did,
that were wiser men than you, as is easily proved
if you will but imagine yourself for but one moment
introduced into the presence of your ancestors, and
ask yourself which would look the fool. Espe-
cially must you believe in moments and their im-
portance, and avoid with the utmost care the
Comparative Method and the argument of the
Slowly Accumulating Heap. I hear that some
scientists are already beginning to admit the reality
of Birth and Death — let but some brave few make
an act of Faith in the Grand Climacteric and all
shall yet be well.

Well, as I was saying, this Difficulty of Begin-
ning is but one of three, and is Inexplicable, and
is in the Nature of Things, and it is very especially
noticeable in the Art of Letters. There is in every
book the Difficulty of Beginning, the Difficulty of
the Turning-Point (which is the Grand Climacteric
of a Book)

Lector. What is that in a Book ?

Auctor. Why, it is the point where the reader
has caught on, enters into the Book and desires to
continue reading it.

Lector. It comes earlier in some books than
in others.

DIFFICULTY OF ENDING A BOOK 9

Auctor. As vou say. • . . And finally there
is the Difficulty of Ending.

Lector. I do not see how there can be any
difficulty in ending a book.

Auctor. That shows very clearly that you
have never written one, for there is nothing so
hard in the writing of a book — no, not even the
choice of the Dedication — as is the ending of it.
On this account only the great Poets, who are above
custom and can snap their divine fingers at forms,
are not at the pains of devising careful endings.
Thus, Homer ends with lines that might as well
be in the middle of a passage ; Hesiod, I know not
how ; and Mr. Bailey, the New Voice from Eurasia,
does not end at all, but is still going on.

Panurge told me that his great work on Con-
chology would never have been finished had it not
been for the Bookseller that threatened law; and
as it is, the last sentence has no verb in it. There
is always something more to be said, and it is
always so difficult to turn up the splice neatly at
the edges. On this account there are regular
models for ending a book or a Poem, as there are
for beginning one; but, for my part, I think the
best way of ending a book is to rummage about
among one's manuscripts till one has found a bit

io DEVICES FOR ENDING BOOKS

of Fine Writing (no matter upon what subject), to
lead up the last paragraphs by no matter what
violent shocks to the thing it deals with, to intro-
duce a row of asterisks, and then to paste on to
the paper below these the piece of Fine Writing one
has found.

I knew a man once who always wrote the end
of a book first, when his mind was fresh, and so
worked gradually back to the introductory chapter,
which (he said) was ever a kind of summary, and
could not be properly dealt with till a man knew
all about his subject. He said this was a sovran
way to write History. But it seems to me that this
is pure extravagance, for it would lead one at last
to beginning at the bottom of the last page, like
the Hebrew Bible and (if it were fully carried out)
to writing one's sentences backwards till one had
a style like the London School of Poets: a very
horrible conclusion.

However, I am not concerned here with the
ending of a book, but with its beginning; and I
say that the beginning of any literary thing is hard,
and that this hardness is difficult to explain. And
I say more than this — I say that an interminable
discussion of the difficulty of beginning a book is
the worst omen for going on with it, and a trashy

INTRODUCTORY RAMBLING n

subterfuge at the best. In the name of all decent,
common, and homely things, why not begin and
have done with it?

It was in the very beginning of June, at evening,
but not yet sunset, that I set out from Toul by the
Nancy gate ; but instead of going straight on past
the parade-ground, I turned to the right immedi-
ately along the ditch and rampart, and did not
leave the fortifications till I came to the road that
goes up alongside the Moselle. For it was by the
valley of this river that I was to begin my pilgrim-
age, since, by a happy accident, the valley of the
Upper Moselle runs straight towards Rome, though
it takes you but a short part of the way. What a
good opening it makes for a direct pilgrimage can
be seen from this little map, where the dotted line
points exactly to Rome. There1 are two bends
which take one a little out of one's way, and these
bends I attempted to avoid, but in general, the
valley, about a hundred miles from Toul to the
source, is an evident gate for any one walking from
this part of Lorraine into Italy. • And this map is
also useful to show what route I followed for my
first three days past Epinal and Remiremont up to
the source of the river, and up over the great hill,
the Ballon d' Alsace. I show the river valley like

12 THE VALLEY OF THE MOSELLE

a trench, and the hills above it shaded, till the
mountainous upper part, the Vosges, is put in
black. I chose the decline of the day for setting
out, because of the great heat a little before noon

ft.t mil Levant

and four hours after it. Remembering this, I
planned to walk at night and in the mornings and
evenings, but how this design turned out you shall
hear in a moment.

THE FIRST GARRISON 13

I had not gone far, not a quarter of a mile, along
my road leaving the town, when I thought I would
stop and rest a little and make sure that I had
started propitiously and that I was really on my
way to Rome ; so I halted by a wall and looked
back at the city and the forts, and drew what I
saw in my book. It was a sight that had taken
a firm hold of my mind in boyhood, and that will
remain in it as long as it can make pictures for
itself out of the past. I think this must be true
of all conscripts with regard to the garrison in
which they have served, for the mind is so fresh at
twenty-one and the life so new to every recruit as
he joins it, he is so cut off from books and all
the worries of life, that the surroundings of the
place bite into him and take root, as one's school
does or one's first home. And I had been especially
fortunate since I had been with gunners (notoriously
the best kind of men) and not in a big place but
in a little town, very old and silent, with more
soldiers in its surrounding circle than there were
men, women, and children within its useless ramparts.
It is known to be very beautiful, and though I had
not heard of this reputation, I saw it to be so at
once when I was first marched in, on a November
dawn, up to the height of the artillery barracks.

i4 THE VIEW OF TOUL

I remembered seeing then the great hills surround-
ing it on every side, hiding their menace and protec-
tion of guns, and in the south and east the silent
valley where the high forests dominate the Moselle,
and the town below the road standing in an island
or ring of tall trees. All this, I say, I had perma-
nently remembered, and I had determined, whenever
I could go on pilgrimage to Rome, to make this

': • I)
J

place my starting-point, and as I stopped here
and looked back, a little way outside the gates,
I took in again the scene that recalled so much
laughter and heavy work and servitude and pride
of arms.

I was looking straight at the great fort of St.
Michel, which is the strongest thing on the frontier,
and which is the key to the circle of forts that
make up this entrenched camp. One could see

ON JUSTICE IN ARMIES 15

little or nothing of its batteries, only its hundreds
of feet of steep brushwood above the vineyards,
and at the summit a stunted wood purposely
planted. Next to it on the left, of equal height,
was the hog back of the Cote Barine, hiding a
battery. Between the Cote Barine and my road and
wall, I saw the rising ground and the familiar
Barracks that are called (I know not why) the
Barracks of Justice, but ought more properly to
be called the Barracks of petty tyrannies and good
fellowship, in order to show the philosophers that
these two things are the life of armies; for of all
the virtues practised in that old compulsory home
of mine Justice came second at least if not third,
while Discipline and Comradeship went first; and
the more I think of it the more I am convinced
that of all the suffering youth that -was being there
annealed and forged into soldiery none can have
suffered like the lawyers. On the right the high
trees that stand outside the ramparts of the town
went dwindling in perspective like a palisade, and
above them, here and there, was a roof showing the
top of the towers of the Cathedral or of St. Gengoult.
Ail this I saw looking backwards, and, when I
had noticed it and drawn it, I turned round again
and took the road.

16 CHARMING VILLAGE OF BRULE

I had, in a small bag or pocket slung over my
shoulder, a large piece of bread, half a pound of
smoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist papers,
and a quart of the wine of Brule — which is the
most famous wine in the neighbourhood of the
garrison, yet very cheap. And Brule is a very good
omen for men that are battered about and given to
despairing, since it is only called Brule on account
of its having been burnt so often by Romans,
Frenchmen, Burgundians, Germans, Flemings, Huns
perhaps, and generally all those who in the last few
thousand years have taken a short cut at their
enemies over the neck of the Cote Barine. So
you would imagine it to be a tumble-down, weak,
wretched, and disappearing place ; but, so far from
this, it is a rich and proud village, growing, as I
have said, better wine than any in the garrison.
Though Toul stands in a great cup or ring of hills,
very high and with steep slopes, and guns on all of
them, and all these hills grow wine, none is so good
as Brule wine. And this reminds me of a thing
that happened in the Manoeuvres of 1891, quorum
pars magna; for there were two divisions employed
in that glorious and fatiguing great game, and
more than a gross of guns — to be accurate, a
hundred and fifty-six — and of these one (the sixth

STORY OF THE GREAT BARREL 17

piece of the tenth battery of the eighth — I
wonder where you all are now? I suppose I shall
not see you again ; but you were the best com-
panions in the world, my friends) was driven by
three drivers, of whom I was the middle one, and
the worst, having on my Livret the note " con-
ducteur mediocre." But that is neither here nor
there ; the story is as follows, and the moral is that
the commercial mind is illogical.

When we had gone some way, clattering through
the dust, and were well on on the Commercy road,
there was a short halt, and during this halt there
passed us the largest Tun or Barrel that ever went
on wheels. You talk of the Great Tun of Heidel-
berg, or of those monstrous Vats that stand in cool
sheds in the Napa Valley, or of the vast barrels in
the Catacombs of Rheims ; but all these are built
in situ and meant to remain steady, and there is no
limit to the size of a Barrel that has not to travel.
The point about this enormous Receptacle of
Bacchus and cavernous huge Prison of Laughter,
was that it could move, though cumbrously, and it
was drawn very slowly by stupid, patient oxen, who
would not be hurried. On the top of it sat a
strong peasant, with a face of determination, as
though he were at war with his kind, and he kept

is STORY OF THE GREAT BARREL

on calling to his oxen, " Han," and lk Hu," in the
tones of a sullen challenge, as he went creaking
past. Then the soldiers began calling out to him
singlv, " Where are you off to, Father, with all that
battery:" and "Why carry eold water to Com-
mercy ? They have only too much as it is " ; and
" What have you got in the little barrelkin, the
barrellet, the eantiniere's brandy-flask, the gourd,
the tirkin : "

He stopped his oxen fiercely and turned round
to us and said : —

lk I will tell you what 1 have here. I have so
many hectolitres of Brule wine which 1 made myself,
and which 1 know to he the best wine there is, and
1 am taking it about to see it" I cannot tame and
break these proud fellows who are tor ever beating
down prices and mocking me. It is worth eight
'scutcheons the hectolitre, that is, eight sols the
litre; what do 1 say? it is worth a Louis a cup:
but 1 will sell it at the price I name, and not a
penny less. But whenever 1 come to a village
the innkeeper begins bargaining and chaffering and
offering six sols and seven sols, and I answer,
' 1 ight sols, take it or leave it,' and when he seems
tor haggling again 1 get up and drive away. I
know the worth ot my wine, and I will not be

STORY OF THE GREAT BARREL 19

beaten down though I have to go out of Lorraine
into the Barrois to sell it."

So when we caught him up again, as we did
shortly after on the road, a sergeant cried as we
passed, " I will give you seven, seven and a quarter,
seven and a half," and we went on laughing and
forgot all about him.

For many davs we marched from this place to
that place, and fired and played a confused game
in the hot sun till the train of sick horses was a
mile long, and till the recruits were all as deaf as
so many posts ; and at last, one evening, we came
to a place called Heiltz le Maurupt, which was
like heaven after the hot plain and the dust, and
whose inhabitants are as good and hospitable as
Angels ; it is just where the champagne begins.
When we had groomed and watered our horses,
and the stable guard had been set, and we had all
an hour or so's leisure to stroll about in the cool
darkness before sleeping in the barns, we had a
sudden lesson in the smallness of the world, for
what should come up the village street but that
monstrous Barrel, and we could see by its move-
ment that it was still quite full.

We gathered round the peasant, and told him
how grieved we were at his ill fortune, and agreed

20 STORY OF THE GREAT BARREL

with him that all the people of the Barrois were
thieves or madmen not to buy such wine for such
a song. He took his oxen and his barrel to a
very high shed that stood by, and there he told
us all his pilgrimage, and the many assaults his
firmness suffered, and how he had resisted them
all. There was much more anger than sorrow in
his accent, and I could see that he was of the
wood from which tyrants and martyrs are carved.
Then suddenly he changed and became elo-
quent : —

" Oh, the good wine ! If only it were known and
tasted ! . . . Here, give me a cup, and I will ask
some of you to taste it, then at least I shall have
it praised as it deserves. And this is the wine I
have carried more than a hundred miles, and every-
where it has been refused ! "

There was one guttering candle on a little stool.
The roof of the shed was lost up in the great
height of darkness; behind, in the darkness, the oxen
champed away steadily in the manger. The light
from the candle flame lit his face strongly from
beneath and marked it with dark shadows. It
flickered on the circle of our faces as we pressed
round, and it came slantwise and waned and dis-
appeared in the immense length of the Barrel. He

STORY OF THE GREAT BARREL 21

stood near the tap with his brows knit as upon
some very important task, and all we, gunners and
drivers of the battery, began unhooking our mugs
and passing them to him. There were nearly a
hundred, and he filled them all ; not in jollity, but
like a man offering up a solemn sacrifice. We
also, entering into his mood, passed our mugs
continually, thanking him in a low tone and keeping
in the main silent. A few linesmen lounged at the
door; he asked for their cups and filled them.
He bade them fetch as many of their comrades as
cared to come ; and very soon there was a circulating
crowd of men all getting wine of Brule and mur-
muring their congratulations, and he was willing
enough to go on giving, but we stopped when we
saw fit and the scene ended. I cannot tell what
prodigious measure of wine he gave away to us all
that night, but when he struck the roof of the cask
it already sounded hollow. And when we had made
a collection which he had refused, he went to sleep
by his oxen, and we to our straw in other barns.
Next day we started before dawn, and I never saw
him again.

This is the story of the wine of Brule, and it
shows that what men love is never money itself
but their own way, and that human beings love

22 THE LAKE OF THE MOSELLE

sympathy and pageant above all things. It also
teaches us not to be hard on the rich.

I walked along the valley of the Moselle, and as
I walked the long evening of summer began to fall.
The sky was empty and its deeps infinite ; the clear-
ness of the air set me dreaming. I passed the turn

where we used to halt when we were learning how
to ride in front of the guns, past the little house
where, on rare holidays, the boys could eat a
matelotte, which is fish boiled in wine, and so on
to the place where the river is held by a weir and
opens out into a kind of lake.

Here I waited for a moment by the wooden
railing, and looked up into the hills. So far I had
been at home, and I was now poring upon the last
familiar thing before I ventured into the high woods

THE COMING OF EVENING 23

and began my experience. I therefore took a
leisurely farewell, and pondered instead of walking
farther. Everything about me conduced to re-
miniscence and to ease. A flock of sheep passed
me with their shepherd, who gave me a good-night.
I found myself entering that pleasant mood in which
all books are conceived (but none written) ; I was
" smoking the enchanted cigarettes " of Balzac, and
if this kind of reverie is fatal to action, yet it is so
much a factor of happiness that I wasted in the
contemplation of that lovely and silent hollow many
miles of marching. I suppose if a man were alto-
gether his own master and controlled by no neces-
sity, not even the necessity of expression, all his
life would pass away in these sublime imaginings.

This was a place I remembered very well. The
rising river of Lorraine is caught and barred, and it
spreads in a great sheet of water that must be very
shallow, but that in its reflections and serenity
resembles rather a profound and silent mere. The
steeps surrounding it are nearly mountainous, and
are crowned with deep forests in which the province
reposes, and upon which it depends for its local
genius. A little village which we used to call
"St. Peter of the Quarries," lies up on the right
between the steep and the water, and just where

24 THE GOOD-NIGHT IN THE VALLEY

the hills end a flat that was once marshy and is
now half fields, half ponds, but broken with
luxuriant trees, marks the great age of its civili-
sation. Along this flat runs, bordered with rare
poplars, the road which one can follow on and on
into the heart of the Vosges. I took from this
silence and this vast plain of still water the repose
that introduces night. It was all consonant with
what the peasants were about : the return from
labour, the bleating folds, and the lighting of lamps
under the eaves. In such a spirit I passed along
the upper valley to the spring of the hills.

In St. Pierre it was just that passing of daylight
when a man thinks he can still read ; when the
buildings and the bridges are great masses of purple
that deceive one, recalling the details of daylight,
but when the night birds, surer than men and less
troubled by this illusion of memory, have discov-
ered that their darkness has conquered.

The peasants sat outside their houses in the
twilight accepting the cool air ; every one spoke
to me as I marched through, and I answered them
all, nor was there in any of their salutations the
omission of good fellowship or of the name of
God. Saving with one man, who was a sergeant
of artillery on leave, and who cried out to me

THE NIGHT IN THE FOREST 25

in an accent that was very familiar and asked me
to drink, but I told him I had to go up into the
forest to take advantage of the night since the
days were so warm for walking. As I left the
last house of the village I was not secure from
loneliness, and when the road began to climb up
the hill into the wild and the trees I was wonder-
ing how the night would pass.

With every step upward a greater mystery sur-
rounded me. A few stars were out, and the brown
night mist was creeping along the water below,
but there was still light enough to see the road,
and even to distinguish the bracken in the deserted
hollows. The highway became little better than
a lane ; at the top of the hill it plunged
under tall pines, and was vaulted over with dark-
ness. The kingdoms that have np walls, and are
built up of shadows, began to oppress me as the
night hardened. Had I had companions, still we
would only have spoken in a whisper, and in that
dungeon of trees even my own self would not raise
its voice within me.

It was full night when I had reached a vague
clearing in the woods, right up on the height of
that flat hill. This clearing was called " The
Fountain of Magdalen." I was so far relieved by

26 THE NIGHT IN THE FOREST

the broader sky of the open field that I could
wait and rest a little, and there, at last, separate
from men, I thought of a thousand things. The
air was full of midsummer, and its mixture of
exaltation and fear cut me off from ordinary living.
I now understood why our religion has made sacred
this season of the year; why we have, a little later,
the night of St. John, the fires in the villages, and
the old perception of fairies dancing in the rings of
the summer grass. A general communion of all
things conspires at this crisis of summer against us
reasoning men that should live in the daylight, and
something fantastic possesses those who are foolish
enough to watch upon such nights. So I, watch-
ing, was cut off. There were huge, vague summits,
all wooded, peering above the field I sat in, but
they merged into a confused horizon. I was on a
high plateau, yet I felt myself to be alone with the
immensity that properly belongs to plains alone.
I saw the stars, and remembered how I had looked
up at them on just such a night when I was dose
to the Pacific, bereft of friends and possessed with
solitude. There was no noise ; it was full dark-
ness. The woods before and behind me made a
square frame of silence, and I was enchased here
in the clearing, thinking of all things.

THE NIGHT IN THE FOREST 27

Then a little wind passed over the vast forests
of Lorraine. It seemed to wake an indefinite sly
life proper to this seclusion, a life to which I was
strange, and which thought me an invader. Yet
I heard nothing. There were no adders in the long
grass nor any frogs in that dry square of land, nor
crickets on the high part of the hill ; but I knew
that little creatures in league with every nocturnal
influence, enemies of the sun, occupied the air and
the land about me ; nor will I deny that I felt a
rebel, knowing well that men were made to work in
happy dawns and to sleep in the night, and every-
thing in that short and sacred darkness multiplied
my attentiveness and my illusion. Perhaps the
instincts of the sentry, the necessities of guard, come
back to us out of the ages unawares during such
experiments. At any rate the night oppressed and
exalted me. Then I suddenly attributed such ex-
altation to the need of food.

" If we must try this bookish plan of sleeping by
day and walking by night," I thought, " at least one
must arrange night meals to suit it."

I therefore, with my mind still full of the forest,
sat down and lit a match and peered into my sack,
taking out therefrom bread and ham and chocolate
and Brule wine. For seat and table there was a

28 THE SINGING SOLDIERS

heathery bank still full of the warmth and savour
of the last daylight, for companions these great
inimical influences of the night which I had met and
dreaded, and for occasion or excuse there was hunger.
Of the Many that debate what shall be done with
travellers, it was the best and kindest Spirit that
prompted me to this salutary act. For as I drank
the wine and dealt with the ham and bread, I felt
more and more that I had a right to the road ; the
stars became familiar and the woods a plaything. It
is quite clear that the body must be recognised and
the soul kept in its place, since a little refreshing
food and drink can do so much to make a man.

On this repast I jumped up merrily, lit a pipe,
and began singing, and heard, to my inexpressible
joy, some way down the road, the sound of other
voices. They were singing that old song of the
French infantry which dates from Louis XIV., and
is called." Aupres de ma blonde." I answered their
chorus, so that, by the time we met under the wood,
we were already acquainted. They told me they
had had a forty-eight hours' leave into Nancy, the
four of them, and had to be in by roll-call at a
place called Villey the Dry. I remembered it after
all those years.

It is a village perched on the brow of one

THE UNHAPPY VILLAGE 29

of these high hills above the river, and it found
itself one day surrounded by earthworks, and a
great fort raised just above the church. Then,
before they knew where they were, they learnt
that (1) no one could go in or out between
sunset and sunrise without leave of the officer
in command ; (2) that from being a village they
had become the " buildings situate within Fort
No. 18 ;" (3) that they were to be deluged with
soldiers ; and (4) that they were liable to evacuate
their tenements on mobilisation. They had become
a fort unwittingly as they slept, and all their streets
were blocked with ramparts. A hard fate ; but they
should not have built their village just on the brow
of a round hill. They did this in the old days,
when men used stone instead of iron, because the
top of a hill was a good place to hold against
enemies ; and so now, these 73,426 years after, they
find the same advantage catching them again to
their hurt. And so things go the round.

Anyway Villey the Dry is a fort, and there my
four brothers were going. It was miles off, and they
had to be in by sunrise, so I offered them a pull of
my wine, which, to my great joy, they refused, and
we parted courteously. Then I found the road
beginning to fall, and knew that I had crossed the

3o THE FALLING ROAD

hills. As the forest ended and the sloping fields
began, a dim moon came up late in the east in the
bank of fog that masked the river. So by a sloping
road, now free from the woods, and at the mouth of
a fine untenanted valley under the moon, I came
down again to the Moselle, having saved a great
elbow by this excursion over the high land. As I
swung round the bend of the hills downwards and
looked up the sloping dell, I remembered that these
heathery hollows were called " vallons " by the
people of Lorraine, and this set me singing the
song of the hunters, " Entends tu dans nos vallons,
le chasseur sonner du clairon," which I sang loudly
till I reached the river bank, and lost the exhilara-
tion of the hills.

I had now come some twelve miles from my
starting-place, and it was midnight. The plain,
the level road ( which often rose a little ), and the
dank air of the river began to oppress me with
fatigue. I was not disturbed by this, for I had
intended to break these nights of marching by occa-
sional repose, and while I was in the comfort of
cities — especially in the false hopes that one got
by reading books — I had imagined that it was a
light matter to sleep in the open. Indeed, I had
often so slept when I had been compelled to it in

THE CRY FOR A BED 31

Manoeuvres, but I had forgotten how essential was
a rug of some kind, and what a difference a fire and
comradeship could make. Thinking over it all,
feeling my tiredness, and shivering a little in the
chill under the moon and the clear sky, I was very
ready to capitulate and to sleep in bed like a Chris-
tian at the next opportunity. But there is some
influence in vows or plans that escapes our power
of rejudgment. All false calculations must be paid
for, and I found, as you will see, that having said I
would sleep in the open, I had to keep to it in
spite of all my second thoughts.

I passed one village and then another in which
everything was dark, and in which I could waken
nothing but dogs, who thought me an enemy, till at
last I saw a great belt of light in the fog above the
Moselle. Here there was a kind of town or large
settlement where there were ironworks, and where,
as I thought, there would be houses open, even after
midnight. I first found the old town, where just
two men were awake at some cooking work or other.
I found them by a chink of light streaming through
their door ; but they gave me no hope, only advising
me to go across the river and try in the new town
where the forges and the ironworks were. " There,"
they said, " I should certainly find a bed."

2i THE SUSPICIOUS LION-TAMER

I crossed the bridge, being now much too weary
to notice anything, even the shadowy hills, and the
first thing I found was a lot of waggons that be-
longed to a caravan or fair. Here some men were
awake, but when I suggested that they should let
me sleep in their little houses on wheels, they told
me it was never done ; that it was all they could do
to pack in themselves ; that they had no straw ; that
they were guarded by dogs ; and generally gave me
to understand (though without violence or unpolite-
ness) that I looked as though I were the man to steal
their lions and tigers. They told me, however, that
without doubt I should find something open in the
centre of the workmen's quarter, where the great
electric lamps now made a glare over the factory.

I trudged on unwillingly, and at the very last
house of this detestable industrial slavery, a high
house with a gable, I saw a window wide open, and
a blonde man smoking a cigarette at a balcony. I
called to him at once, and asked him to let me a
bed. He put to me all the questions he could
think of. Why was I there ? Where had I come
from ? Where (if I was honest) had I intended to
sleep ? How came I at such an hour on foot ? and
other examinations. I thought a little what excuse
to give him, and then, determining that I was too

THE FULL CURSE 33

tired to make up anything plausible, I told him the
full truth ; that I had meant to sleep rough, but
had been overcome by fatigue, and that I had
walked from Toul, starting at evening. I conjured
him by our common Faith to let me in. He told
me that it was impossible, as he had but one room
in which he and his family slept, and assured me
he had asked all these questions out of sympathy
and charity alone. Then he wished me good-night,
honestly and kindly, and went in.

By this time I was very much put out, and began
to be angry. These straggling French towns give no
opportunity for a shelter. I saw that I should have
to get out beyond the market gardens, and that it
might be a mile or two before I found any rest.
A clock struck one. I looked up and saw it was
from the belfry of one of those new chapels which
the monks are building everywhere, nor did I forget
to curse the monks in my heart for building them.
I cursed also those who started smelting works in
the Moselle valley ; those who gave false advice to
travellers ; those who kept lions and tigers in cara-
vans, and for a small sum I would have cursed the
whole human race, when I saw that my bile had
hurried me out of the street well into the country-
side, and that above me, on a bank, was a patch of

34 ON BREAKFASTS

orchard and a lane leading up to it. Into this I
turned, and, finding a good deal of dry hay lying
under the trees, I soon made myself an excellent
bed, first building a little mattress, and then piling
on hay as warm as a blanket.

I did not lie awake (as when I planned my pil-
grimage I had promised myself I would do), look-
ing at the sky through the branches of trees, but
I slept at once without dreaming, and woke up to
find it was broad daylight, and the sun ready to
rise. Then, stiff and but little rested by two hours
of exhaustion, I took up my staff and my sack and
regained the road.

I should very much like to know what those
who have an answer to everything can say about
the food requisite to breakfast ? Those great men
— Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser
before him — drank beer at rising, and tamed it with
a little bread. In the regiment we used to drink
black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great
hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the
halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of '93
were fought upon such unsubstantial meals ; for the
Republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being
in this quite unlike the Ten Thousand. Sailors,

ON EARLY WINE 3$

I know, eat nothing for some hours — I mean those
who turn out at four in the morning; I could give
the name of the watch, but that I forget it and
will not be plagued to look up technicalities.
Dogs eat the first thing they come across, cats take
a little milk, and gentlemen are accustomed to get
up at nine, and eat eggs, bacon, kidneys, ham, cold
pheasant, toast, coffee, tea, scones, and honey, after
which they will boast that their race is the hardiest
in the world and ready to bear every fatigue in
the pursuit of Empire. But what rule governs
all this ? Why is breakfast different from all other
things, so that the Greeks called it the best thing
in the world, and so that each of us in VB^ague
way knows that he would eat at breakfast rrething
but one special kind of food, and that he could not
imagine breakfast at any other hour- in the day ?

The provocation to this inquiry (which I have
here no time to pursue) lies in the extraordinary
distaste that I conceived that morning for Brule
wine. My ham and bread and chocolate I had
consumed overnight. I thought, in my folly, that
I could break my fast on a swig of what had
seemed to me, only the night before, the best re-
vivifler and sustenance possible. In the harsh dawn
it turned out to be nothing but a bitter and intoler-

36 THE FURTHER VALLEY

able vinegar. I make no attempt to explain this,
nor to say why the very same wine that had seemed
so good in the forest (and was to seem so good
again later on by the canal) should now repel me.
I can only tell you that this heavy disappointment
convinced me of a great truth that a Politician once
let slip in my hearing, and that I have never since
forgotten. " Man," said the Director of the State,
"man is but the creature of circumstance"

As it was, I lit a pipe of tobacco and hobbled
blindly along for miles under and towards the
brightening east. Just before the sun rose I turned
and l^ked backward from a high bridge that re-
cross^BWIe river. The long effort of the night had
taken^vne well on my way. I was out of the
familiar region of the garrison. The great forest-
hills that I had traversed stood up opposite the dawn,
catching tiUe new light ; heavy, drifting but white
clouds, rare at such an hour, sailed above them.
The valley of the Moselle, which I had never
thought of save as a half mountainous region, had
fallen, to become a kind of long garden, whose
walls were regular, low and cultivated slopes. The
main waterway of the valley was now not the river
but the canal that fed from it.

The tall grasses, the leaves, and poplars bordering

ENTRY INTO FLAVIGNY

the river and the canal seemed dark close to me,
but the valley as a whole was vague, a mass of trees
with one Lorraine church-tower showing, and the
delicate slopes bounding it on either side.

Descending from this bridge I found a sign-post,
that told me I had walked thirty-two kilometres —
which is twenty miles — from Toul ; that it was one
kilometre to Flavigny, and heaven knows how much
to a place called Charmes. The sun rose in the mist
that lay up the long even trends of the vale, between
the low and level hills, and I pushed on my thousand
yards towards Flavigny. There, by a special provi-
dence, I found the entertainment and companionship
whose lack had left me wrecked all these early hours.

38 ON FRENCH FOLK-LORE

As I came into Flavigny I saw at once that it was
a place on which a book might easily be written,
for it had a church built in the seventeenth century,
when few churches were built outside great towns,
a convent, and a general air of importance that
made of it that grand and noble thing, that primary
cell of the organism of Europe, that best of all
Christian associations — a large village.

I say a book might be written upon it, and there
is no doubt that a great many articles and pamph-
lets must have been written upon it, for the French
are furiously given to local research and reviews,
and to glorifying their native places; and when
they cannot discover folk-lore they enrich their
beloved homes by inventing it.

There was even a man (I forget his name) who
wrote a delightful book called " Popular and Tra-
ditional Songs of my Province," which book, after
he was dead, was discovered to be entirely his own
invention, and not a word of it familiar to the
inhabitants of the soil. He was a large, laughing
man that smoked enormously, had great masses of
hair, and worked by night ; also he delighted in the
society of friends, and talked continuously. I wish
he had a statue somewhere, and that they would

HOW TO WRITE RHYMES 39

pull down to make room for it any one of those
useless bronzes that are to be found even in the
little villages, and that commemorate solemn,
whiskered men, pillars of the state. For surely
this is the habit of the true poet, and marks the
vigour and recurrent origin of poetry, that a man
should get his head full of rhythms and catches, and
that they should jumble up somehow into short
songs of his own. What could more suggest (for
instance) a whole troop of dancing words and lovely
thoughts than this refrain from the Tourdenoise —

"... Son beau corps est en terre
Son ame en Paradis

Tu ris ?
Et ris, tu ris, ma Bergere,
Ris, ma Bergere, tu ris."

That was the way they set to work in England
before the Puritans came, when men were not
afraid to steal verses from one another, and when
no one imagined that he could live by letters, but
when every poet took a patron, or begged or robbed
the churches. So much for the poets.

Flavigny then, I say (for I seem to be digress-
ing), is a long street of houses all built together as
animals build their communities. They are all very
old, but the people have worked hard since the Revo-

4o THE SMELL OF MORNING

lution, and none of them are poor, nor are any of
them very rich. I saw but one gentleman's house,
and that, I am glad to say, was in disrepair. Most
of the peasants' houses had, for a ground floor,
cavernous great barns out of which came a delight-
ful smell of morning — that is, of hay, litter, oxen,
and stored grains and old wood ; which is the true
breath of morning, because it is the scent that all
the human race worth calling human first meets
when it rises, and is the association of sunrise in
the minds of those who keep the world alive : but
not in the wretched minds of townsmen, and least
of all in the minds of journalists, who know noth-
ing of morning save that it is a time of jaded
emptiness when you have just done prophesying
(for the hundredth time) the approaching end of
the world, when the floors are beginning to tremble
with machinery, and when, in a weary kind of way,
one feels hungry and alone: a nasty life and usually
a short one.

To return to Flavigny. This way of stretching a
village all along one street is Roman, and is the
mark of civilisation. When I was at college I was
compelled to read a work by the crabbed Tacitus on
the Germans, where, in the midst of a deal that is
vague and fantastic nonsense and much that is wil-

THE HAY-MAKING NUNS 41

ful lying, comes this excellent truth, that barbarians
build their houses separate, but civilised men to-
gether. So whenever you see a lot of red roofs
nestling, as the phrase goes, in the woods of a
hillside in south England, remember that all that
is savagery, but when you see a hundred white-
washed houses in a row along a dead straight road,
lift up your hearts, for you are in civilisation again.
But I continue to wander from Flavigny. The
first thing I saw as I came into the street and noted
how the level sun stood in a haze beyond, and how
it shadowed and brought out the slight irregularities
of the road, was a cart drawn by a galloping donkey,
which came at and passed me with a prodigious
clatter as I dragged myself forward. In the cart
were two nuns, each with a scythe ; they were
going out mowing, and were up the first in the
village, as Religious always are. Cheered by this
happy omen, but not yet heartened, I next met a
very old man leading out a horse, and asked him if
there was anywhere where I could find coffee and
bread at that hour, but he shook his head mourn-
fully and wished me good-morning in a strong
accent, for he was deaf and probably thought I was
begging ; so I went on still more despondent till
I came to a really merry man of about middle age

42 THE VALUE OF BAKERS

who was going to the fields, singing, with a very
large rake over his shoulder. When I had asked
him the same question he stared at me a little and
said of course coffee and bread could be had at the
baker's, and when I asked him how I should know
the baker's he was still more surprised at my
ignorance, and said, " By the smoke coming from
the large chimney." This I saw rising a short way
off on my right, so I thanked him and went and
found there a youth of about nineteen who sat at
a fine oak table and had coffee, rum, and a loaf
before him. He was waiting for the bread in the
oven to be ready ; and meanwhile he was very
courteous, poured out coffee and rum for me and
offered me bread.

It is a matter often discussed why bakers are such
excellent citizens and good men. For while it is
admitted in every country I was ever in that
cobblers are argumentative and atheists (I except
the cobbler under Plinlimmon, concerning whom
would to heaven I had the space to tell you all here,
for he knows the legends of the mountain), while it
is public that barbers are garrulous and servile, that
millers are cheats (we say in Sussex that every honest
miller has a large tuft of hair on the palm of his
hand), yet — with every trade in the world having

THE BAKER BOY 43

some bad quality attached to it — bakers alone are
exempt, and every one takes it for granted that they
are sterling : indeed, there are some societies in
which, no matter how gloomy and churlish the con-
versation may have become, you have but to mention
bakers for voices to brighten suddenly and for
a good influence to pervade every one. I say this is
known for a fact, but not usually explained ; the
explanation is, that bakers are always up early in the
morning and can watch the dawn, and that in this
occupation they live in lonely contemplation enjoy-
ing the early hours.

So it was with this baker of mine in Flavigny, who
was a boy. When he heard that I had served at
Toul he was delighted beyond measure ; he told me
of a brother of his that had been in the same regi-
ment, and he assured me that he was himself going
into the artillery by special enlistment, having got
his father's leave. You know very little if you
think I missed the opportunity of making the guns
seem terrible and glorious in his eyes. I told him
stories enough to waken a sentry of reserve, and if
it had been possible (with my youth so obvious) I
would have woven in a few anecdotes of active
service and described great shells bursting under my
horses and the teams shot down, and the gunners all

44 THE RIDICULOUS TOWN-HALL

the while impassive ; but as I saw I should not be
believed I did not speak of such things, but confined
myself to what he would see and hear when he
joined.

Meanwhile the good warm food and the rising
morning had done two things ; they had put much
more vigour into me than I had had when I
slunk in half-an-hour before, but at the same time
( and this is a thing that often comes with food and
with rest) they had made me feel the fatigue of so
long a night. I rose up, therefore, determined to
find some place where I could sleep. I asked this
friend of mine how much there was to pay, and he
said " fourpence." Then we exchanged ritual salu-
tations, and I took the road. I did not leave the
town or village without noticing one extraordinary
thing at the far end of it, which was that, whereas
most places in France are proud of their town hall
and make a great show of it, here in Flavigny they
had taken a great house and written over it Ecole
Communale in great letters, and then they had
written over a kind of lean-to or out-house of this
big place the words " Hotel deviiie- in very small letters,
so small that I had a doubt for a moment if the
citizens here were good republicans — a treasonable
thought on all this frontier.

THE HEAT OF MORNING 45

Then, a mile onward, I saw the road cross the
canal and run parallel to it. I saw the canal run
another mile or so under a fine bank of deep woods.
1 saw an old bridge leading over it to that inviting
shade, and as it was now nearly six and the sun was
gathering strength, I went, with slumber overpower-
ing me and my feet turning heavy beneath me, along
the tow-path, over the bridge, and lay down on the
moss under these delightful trees. Forgetful of
the penalty that such an early repose would bring,
and of the great heat that was to follow at midday,
I quickly became part of the life of that forest and
fell asleep.

When I awoke it was full eight o'clock, and the
sun had gained great power. I saw him shining at
me through the branches of my trees like a patient
enemy outside a city that one watches through the
loopholes of a tower, and I began to be afraid of
taking the road. I looked below me down the
steep bank between the trunks and saw the canal
looking like black marble, and I heard the buzzing
of the flies above it, and I noted that all the mist
had gone. A very long way off, the noise of its
ripples coming clearly along the floor of the water,
was a lazy barge and a horse drawing it. From

46 THE MORNING MASS

time to time the tow-rope slackened into the still
surface, and I heard it dripping as it rose. The
rest of the valley was silent except for that under-
humming of insects which marks the strength of
the sun.

Now I saw clearly how difficult it was to turn
night into day, for I found myself condemned either
to waste many hours that ought to be consumed on
my pilgrimage, or else to march on under the
extreme heat; and when I had drunk what was left
of my Brule wine ( which then seemed delicious ),
and had eaten a piece of bread, I stiffly jolted down
the bank and regained the highway.

In the first village I came to I found that Mass
was over, and this justly annoyed me; for what is a
pilgrimage in which a man cannot hear Mass every
morning ? Of all the things I have read about St.
Louis which make me wish I had known him to
speak to, nothing seems to me more delightful than
his habit of getting Mass daily whenever he marched
down south, but why this should be so delightful I
cannot tell. Of course there is a grace and influence
belonging to such a custom, but it is not of that
I am speaking but of the pleasing sensation of order
and accomplishment which attaches to a day one has
opened by Mass : a purely temporal, and, for all I

THE MORNING MASS 47

know, what the monks back at the ironworks would
have called a carnal feeling, but a source of continual
comfort to me. Let them go their way and let me
go mine.

This comfort I ascribe to four causes (just above
you will find it written that I could not tell why
this should be so, but what of that?), and these
causes are : —

1. That for half-an-hour just at the opening of
the day you are silent and recollected, and have to
put off cares, interests, and passions in the repetition
of a familiar action. This must certainly be a great
benefit to the body and give it tone.

2. That the Mass is a careful and rapid ritual.
Now it is the function of all ritual (as we see in
games, social arrangements and so forth) to relieve
the mind by so much of responsibility and initiative
and to catch you up (as it were) into itself, leading
your life for you during the time it lasts. In this
way you experience a singular repose, after which
fallowness I am sure one is fitter for action and
judgment.

3. That the surroundings incline you to good and
reasonable thoughts, and for the moment deaden the
rasp and jar of that busy wickedness which both
working in one's self and received from others is the

48 THE TRADITION OF MANKIND

true source of all human miseries. Thus the time
spent at Mass is like a short repose in a deep and
well-built library, into which no sounds come and
where you feel yourself secure against the outer
world.

4. And the most important cause of this feeling
of satisfaction is that you are doing what the human
race has done for thousands upon thousands upon
thousands of years. This is a matter of such
moment that I am astonished people hear of it so
little. Whatever is buried right into our blood
from immemorial habit that we must be certain to
do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown
man or woman can really be very happy for long —
but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more im-
portant, decent and secure of our souls. Thus one
should from time to time hunt animals, or at the
very least shoot at a mark ; one should always drink
some kind of fermented liquor with one's food — and
especially deeply upon great feast-days ; one should
go on the water from time to time ; and one should
dance on occasions ; and one should sing in chorus.
For all these things man has done since God put him
into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with
a soul. Similarly some teacher or ranter or other,
whose name I forget, said lately one very wise thing

ON ORDINARY LIVING 49

at least, which was that every man should do a little
work with his hands.

Oh ! what good philosophy this is, and how much
better it would be if rich people instead of raining
the influence of their rank and spending their money
on leagues for this or that exceptional thing, were to
spend it in converting the middle-class to ordinary
living and to the tradition of the race. Indeed, if I
had power for some thirty years I would see to it
that people should be allowed to follow their inbred
instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink,
sing, dance, sail, and dig, and those that would not
should be compelled by force.

Now in the morning Mass you do all that the race
needs to do and has done for all these ages where
religion was concerned : there you have the sacred
and separate Enclosure, the Altar, the Priest in his
Vestments, the set ritual, the ancient and hierachic
tongue, and all that your nature cries out for in the
matter of worship.

From these considerations it is easy to understand
how put out I was to find Mass over on this first
morning of my pilgrimage. And I went along the
burning road in a very ill-humour till I saw upon
my right, beyond a low wall and in a kind of park, a
house that seemed built on some artificial raised

^ffe

50 THE SENSIBLE SQUIRE

ground surrounded by a wall, but this may have
been an illusion, the house being really only very

tall. At any rate I drew it,
and in the village just beyond
it I learnt something curious
about the man that owned it.
For I had gone into a house
to take a third meal of bread
and wine and to replenish my
TO»V3J!' bottle when the old woman of

the house, who was a kindly person, told me she
had just then no wine. " But," said she, "Mr. So
and so that lives in the big house sells it to any one
who cares to buy even in the smallest quantities,
and you will see his shed standing by the side of
the road."

Everything happened just as she had said. I
came to the big shed by the park wall, and there
was a kind of counter made of boards, and several
big tuns and two men : one in an apron serving, and
the other in a little box or compartment writing. I
was somewhat timid to ask for so little as a quart, but
the apron man in the most business-like way filled
my bottle at a tap and asked for fourpence. He
was willing to talk, and told me many things : of
good years in wine, of the nature of their trade, of

THE REPUBLICAN WINE-SELLER 51

the influence of the moon on brewing, of the im-
portance of spigots, and what not ; but when I tried
to get out ot him whether the owner were an
eccentric private gentleman or a merchant that had
the sense to earn little pennies as well as large ones,
I could not make him understand my meaning; for
his idea of rank was utterly different from mine and
took no account of idleness and luxury and daftness,
but was based entirely upon money and clothes.
Moreover we were both of us Republicans, so the
matter was of no great moment. Courteously
saluting ourselves we parted, he remaining to sell
wine and I hobbling to Rome, now a little painfully
and my sack the heavier by a quart of wine, which,
as you probably know, weighs almost exactly two
pounds and a half.

It was by this time close upon eleven, and I had
long reached the stage when some kinds of men
begin talking of Dogged Determination, Bull-dog
pluck, the stubborn blood of the island race, and so
forth, but when those who can boast a little of the
sacred French blood are in a mood of set despair
(both kinds march on, and the mobility of either
infantry is much the same), I say I had long got to
this point of exhaustion when it occurred to me
that I should need an excellent and thorough meal

THE LAST MILE

at midday. But on looking at my map I found
that there was nothing nearer than this town of
Charmes that was marked on the milestones, and
that was the first place I should come to in the
department of the Vosges.

It would take much too long to describe the
dodges that weary men and stiff have recourse to
when they are at the close of a difficult task : how

they divide it up in lengths in their minds, how they
count numbers, how they begin to solve problems
in mental arithmetic : I tried them all. Then I
thought of a new one, which is really excellent and
which I recommend to the whole world. It is to
vary the road, suddenly taking now the fields, now
the river, but only occasionally the turnpike. This
last lap was very well suited for such a method.
The valley had become more like a wide and shallow
trench than ever. The hills on either side were low

CHARMES S3

and exactly even. U p the middle of it went the river,
the canal and the road, and these two last had only
a field between them ; now broad, now narrow.

First on the tow-path, then on the road, then on
the grass, then back on the tow-path, I pieced out the
last baking mile into Charmes that lies at the foot
of a rather higher hill, and at last was dragging
myself up the street just as the bell was ringing the
noon Angelus ; nor, however tedious you may have
found it to read this final effort of mine, can you
have found it a quarter as wearisome as I did to
walk it ; and surely between writer and reader there
should be give and take, now the one furnishing the
entertainment and now the other.

The delightful thing in Charmes is its name. Of
this name I had indeed been thinking as I went
along the last miles of that dusty and deplorable
road — that a town should be called " Charms."

Not but that towns if they are left to themselves
and not hurried have a way of settling into right
names suited to the hills about them and recalling
their own fields. I remember Sussex, and as I re-
member it I must, if only for example, set down my
roll-call of such names, as — Fittleworth, where the
Inn has painted panels; Amberley in the marshes;

54 THE NAMES OF SUSSEX

delicate Fernhurst, and Ditchling under its hill ;
Arundel, that is well known to every one ; and
Climping, that no one knows, set on a lonely beach
and lost at the vague end of an impassable road ;
and Barlton, and Burton, and Duncton, and Cold-
watham that stand under in the shadow and look
up at the great downs ; and Petworth, where the
spire leans sideways ; and Timberley, that the floods
make into an island ; and No Man's Land, where
first there breaks on you the distant sea. I never
knew a Sussex man yet but, if you noted him such
a list, would answer : " There I was on such and
such a day ; this I came to after such and such a
run; and that other is my home." But it is not
his recollection alone which moves him, it is sound
of the names. He feels the accent of them, and all
the men who live between Hind-head and the Chan-
nel know these names stand for Eden ; the noise
is enough to prove it. So it is also with the hidden
valleys of the He de France ; and when you say
Jouy or Chevreuse to a man that was born in those
shadows he grows dreamy — yet they are within a
walk of Paris.

But the wonderful thing about a name like
Charmes is that it hands down the dead. For some
dead man gave it a keen name proceeding from his

THE DESOLATE JUNCTION ss

own immediate delight, and made general what had
been a private pleasure, and, so to speak, be-
queathed a poem to his town. They say the Arabs
do this ; calling one place " the rest of the warriors,"
and another " the end," and another " the surprise
of J:he horses": let those who know them speak
for it. I at least know that in the west of the Co-
tentin (a sea-garden) old Danes married to Gaulish
women discovered the just epithet, and that you
have " St. Mary on the Hill " and " High Town
under the Wind " and " The Borough over the
Heath," which are to-day exactly what their name
describes them. If you doubt that England has
such descriptive names, consider the great Truth
that at one junction on a railway where a mournful
desolation of stagnant waters and treeless, stone-
walled fields threatens you with experience and awe,
a melancholy porter is told off to put his head into
your carriage and to chant like Charon, " Change
here for Ashton under the Wood, Moreton on the
Marsh, Bourton on the Water, and Stow in the
Wold."

Charmes does not fulfil its name nor preserve
what its forgotten son found so wonderful in it.
For at luncheon there a great commercial traveller
told me fiercely that it was chiefly known for its

56 NATURE OF TEMPTING DEVILS

breweries, and that he thought it of little account.
Still even in Charmes I found one marvellous
corner of a renaissance house, which I drew ; but
as I have lost the drawing, let it go.

When I came out from the inn of Charmes the
heat was more terrible than ever, and the prospect
of a march in it more intolerable. My head hung,
I went very slowly, and I played with cowardly
thoughts, which were really (had I known it) good
angels. I began to look out anxiously for woods,
but saw only long whitened walls glaring in the sun,
or, if ever there were trees, they were surrounded
by wooden palisades which the owners had put
there. But in a little time (now I had definitely
yielded to temptation) I found a thicket.

You must know that if you yield to entertaining
a temptation, there is the opportunity presented to
you like lightning. A theologian told me this, and
it is partly true : but not of Mammon or Belphegor,
or whatever Devil it is that overlooks the Currency
(I can see his face from here) : for how many have
yielded to the Desire of Riches and professed them-
selves very willing to revel in them, yet did not get
an opportunity worth a farthing till they died ?
Like those two beggars that Rabelais tells of, one
of whom wished for all the gold that would pay

THE DEVIL INDOLENCE 57

for all the merchandise that had ever been sold in
Paris since its first foundation, and the other for
as much gold as would go into all the sacks that
could be sewn by all the needles (and those of
the smallest size) that could be crammed into
Notre-Dame from the floor to the ceiling, filling
the smallest crannies. Yet neither had a crust that
night to rub his gums with.

Whatever Devil it is, however, that tempts men
to repose — and for my part I believe him to be
rather an iEon than a Devil : that is, a good-natured
fellow working on his own account neither good
nor ill — whatever being it is, it certainly suits one's
mood, for I never yet knew a man determined to be
lazy that had not ample opportunity afforded him,
though he were poorer than the cure of Maigre,
who formed a syndicate to sell at a scutcheon a gross
such souls as were too insignificant to sell singly.
A man can always find a chance for doing nothing
as amply and with as ecstatic a satisfaction as the
world allows, and so to me (whether it was there
before I cannot tell, and if it came miraculously, so
much the more amusing) appeared this thicket. It
was to the left of the road ; a stream ran through
it in a little ravine ; the undergrowth was thick
beneath its birches, and just beyond, on the plain

58 I FALL LAME

that bordered it, were reapers reaping in a field. I
went into it contentedly and slept till evening my
third sleep ; then refreshed by the cool wind that
went before the twilight, I rose and took the road
again, but I knew I could not go far.

I was now past my fortieth mile, and though the
heat had gone, yet my dead slumber had raised a
thousand evils. I had stiffened to lameness, and
had fallen into the mood when a man desires com-
panionship and the talk of travellers rather than
the open plain. But (unless I went backward,
which was out of the question) there was nowhere
to rest in for a long time to come. The next
considerable village was Thayon, which is called
" Thayon of the Vosges," because one is nearing
the big hills, and thither therefore I crawled mile
after mile.

But my heart sank. First my foot limped, and
then my left knee oppressed me with a sudden
pain. I attempted to relieve it by leaning on my
right leg, and so discovered a singular new law in
medicine which I will propose to the scientists.
For when those excellent men have done investi-
gating the twirligigs of the brain to find out where
the soul is, let them consider this much more prac-
tical matter, that you cannot relieve the pain in one

RELIGION OF THE LAUNDRY 59

limb without driving it into some other ; and so I
exchanged twinges in the left knee for a horrible
great pain in the right. I sat down on a bridge,
and wondered ; I saw before me hundreds upon
hundreds of miles, painful and exhausted, and I
asked heaven if this was necessary to a pilgrimage.
(But, as you shall hear, a pilgrimage is not wholly
subject to material laws, for when I came to Epinal
next day I went into a shop which, whatever it was
to the profane, appeared to me as a chemist's shop,
where I bought a bottle of some stuff called "balm,"
and rubbing myself with it was instantly cured.)

Then I looked down from the bridge across the
plain and saw, a long way off beyond the railway,
the very ugly factory village of Thayon, and
reached it at last, not without noticing that the
people were standing branches of trees before their
doors, and the little children noisily helping to
tread the stems firmly into the earth. They told
me it was for the coming of Corpus Christi, and so
proved to me that religion, which is as old as these
valleys, would last out their inhabiting men. Even
here, in a place made by a great laundry, a modern
industrial row of tenements, all the world was
putting out green branches to welcome the Pro-
cession and the Sacrament and the Priest. Com-

6o VOWS THOROUGHLY BROKEN

forted by this evident refutation of the sad nonsense
I had read in Cities from the pen of intellec-
tuals — nonsense I had known to be nonsense,
but that had none the less tarnished my mind — I
happily entered the inn, eat and drank, praised
God, and lay down to sleep in a great bed. I
mingled with my prayers a firm intention of doing
the ordinary things, and not attempting impossi-
bilities, such as marching by night, nor following
out any other vanities of this world. Then, having
cast away all theories of how a pilgrimage should
be conducted, and broken five or six vows, I
slept steadily till the middle of the morning. I
had covered fifty miles in twenty-five hours, and if
you imagine this to be but two miles an hour, you
must have a very mathematical mind, and know
little of the realities of living. I woke and threw
my shutters open to the bright morning and the
masterful sun, took my coffee, and set out once
more towards Epinal, the stronghold a few miles
awav — delighted to see that my shadow was so
short and the road so hot to the feet and eyes. For
I said, " This at least proves that I am doing like
all the world, and walking during the day."

It was but a couple of hours to the great garrison.
In a little time I passed a battery. Then a captain

OF MOUNTAIN TOWNS 61

went by on a horse, with his orderly behind him.
Where the deep lock stands by the roadside — the
only suggestion of coolness — I first heard the
bugles ; then I came into the long street and deter-
mined to explore Epinal, and to cast aside all haste
and folly.

There are many wonderful things in Epinal.
As, for instance, that it was evidently once, like
Paris and Melun and a dozen other strongholds of
the Gauls, an island city. For the rivers of France
are tull of long, habitable islands, and these were
once the rallying-places of clans. Then there are
the forts which are placed on high hills round the
town and make it even stronger than Toul ; for
Epinal stands just where the hills begin to be very
high. Again, it is the capital of a mountain district,
and this character always does something peculiar
and impressive to a town. You may watch its
effect in Grenoble, in little Aubusson, and, rather
less, in Geneva.

For in such towns three quite different kinds
of men meet. First there are the old plain-men,
who despise the highlanders and think themselves
much grander and more civilised ; these are the
burgesses. Then there are the peasants and wood-

62 EPINAL CHURCH

cutters who come in from the hill-country to
market, and who are suspicious of the plain-men
and yet proud to depend upon a real town with a
bishop and paved streets. Lastly, there are the
travellers who come there to enjoy the mountains
and to make the city a base for their excursions, and
these love the hill-men and think they understand
them, and they despise the plain-men for being so
middle-class as to lord it over the hill-men : but in
truth this third class, being outsiders, are equally
hated and despised by both the others, and there is
a combination against them and they are exploited.

And there are many other things in which Epinal
is wonderful, but in nothing is it more wonderful
than in its great church.

I suppose that the high Dukes of Burgundy
and Lorraine and the rich men from Flanders and
the House of Luxemburg and the rest, going, to
Rome, the centre of the world, had often to pass
up this valley of the Moselle, which (as I have
said) is a road leading to Rome, and would halt
at Epinal and would at times give money for its
church ; with this result, that the church belongs
to every imaginable period and is built anyhow,
in twenty styles, but stands as a whole a most
enduring record of past forms and of what has

EPINAL CHURCH 63

pleased the changing mind when it has attempted
to worship in stone.

Thus the transept is simply an old square barn
of rough stone, older, I suppose, than Charlemagne
and without any ornament. In its lower courses I
thought I even saw the Roman brick. It had once
two towers, northern and southern ; the southern is
ruined and has a wooden roof, the northern remains
and is just a pinnacle or minaret too narrow for
bells.

Then the apse is pure and beautiful Gothic
of the fourteenth century with very tall and fluted
windows like single prayers. The ambulatory is per-
fectly modern, Gothic also, and in the manner that
Viollet le Due in France and Pugin in England
have introduced to bring us back to our origins
and to remind us of the place whence all we Euro-
peans came. Again, this apse and ambulatory are
not perpendicular to the transept, but set askew,
a thing known in small churches and said to be
a symbol, but surely very rare in large ones. The
western door is purely Romanesque, and has Byzan-
tine ornaments and a great deep round door. To
match it there is a northern door still deeper, with
rows and rows of inner arches full of saints, angels,
devils, and flowers ; and this again is not straight,

64 EPINAL CHURCH

but so built that the arches go aslant as you some-
times see railway bridges when they cross roads at
an angle. Finally, there is a central tower which is
neither Gothic nor Romanesque but pure Italian,
a loggia, with splendid round airy windows taking
up all its walls and with a flat roof and eaves. This
some one straight from the south must have put on
as a memory of his wanderings.

The barn-transept is crumbling old grey stone,
the Romanesque porches are red, like Strasburg,
the Gothic apse is old white as our cathedrals are,
the modern ambulatory is of pure white stone just
quarried, and thus colours as well as shapes are
mingled up and different in this astonishing
building.

I drew it from that point of view in the market-
place to the north-east which shows most of these
contrasts at once, and you must excuse the extreme
shakiness of the sketch, for it was taken as
best I could on an apple-cart with my book resting
on the apples — there was no other desk. Nor
did the apple-seller mind my doing it, but on
the contrary gave me advice and praise, saying
such things as —

<c Excellent ; you have caught the angle of the
apse. . . . Come now, darken the edge of that

THE APPLE MAN

«5

pillar. ... I fear you have made the tower a
little confused," and so forth.

7 ' I

Plfl ' '

If hi ! " i| tr,i

I offered to buy a few apples of him, but he
gave me three instead, and these, as they incom-
moded me, I gave later to a little child.

Indeed the people of Epinal, not taking me for
a traveller but simply for a wandering poor man,
were very genial to me, and. the best good they

66 BALM

did me was curing my lameness. For, seeing an
apothecary's shop as I was leaving the town, I went
in and said to the apothecary —

" My knee has swelled and is very painful, and
I have to walk far ; perhaps you can tell me how
to cure it, or give me something that will."

" There is nothing easier," he said ; " I have
here a specific for the very thing you complain of."

With this he pulled out a round bottle, on the
label of which was printed in great letters, " Balm."

" You have but to rub your knee strongly and
long with this ointment of mine," he said, " and
you will be cured." Nor did he mention any
special form of words to be repeated as one did it.

Everything happened just as he had said. When
I was some little way above the town I sat down
on a low wall and rubbed my knee strongly and
long with this balm, and the pain instantly dis-
appeared. Then, with a heart renewed by this
prodigy, I took the road again and began walking
very rapidly and high, swinging on to Rome.

The Moselle above Epinal takes a bend out-
wards, and it seemed to me that a much shorter
way to the next village (which is called Archettes,
or " the very little arches " because there are no arches

THE LITTLE RUNNEL 67

there) would be right over the hill round which the
river curved. This error came from following
private judgment and not heeding tradition, here
represented by the highroad which closely follows
the river. For though a straight tunnel to Ar-
chettes would have saved distance, yet a climb
over that high hill and through the pathless wood
on its summit was folly.

I went at first over wide, sloping fields, and some
hundred feet above the valley I crossed a little
canal. It was made on a very good system, and
I recommend it to the riparian owners of the Upper
Wye, which needs it. They take the water from
the Moselle (which is here broad and torrential and
falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little
swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an
even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven
descent of the river. In this way they have a con-
tinuous stream running through fields that would
otherwise be bare and dry but that are thus nourished
into excellent pastures.

Above these fields the forest went up steeply.
I had not pushed two hundred yards into its
gloom and confusion when I discovered that I
had lost my way. It was necessary to take the
only guide I had and to go straight upwards

68 THE MAN IN COLORADO

wherever the line of greatest inclination seemed
to lie, for that at least would take me to a summit
and probably to a view of the valley, whereas if
I tried to make for the shoulder of the hill (which
had been my first intention) I might have wandered
about till nightfall.

It was an old man in a valley called the Curi-
cante in Colorado that taught me this, if one lost
one's way going upwards to make at once along
the steepest line, but if one lost it going down-
wardsy to listen for water and reach it and follow
it. I wish I had space to tell all about this old
man who gave me hospitality out there. He
was from New England and was lonely, and had
brought out at great expense a musical box to
cheer him. Of this he was very proud, and
though it only played four silly hymn tunes, yet,
as he and I listened to it, heavy tears came into
his eyes and light tears into mine, because these
tunes reminded him of his home. But I have no
time to do more than mention him and must return
to my forest.

I climbed, then, over slippery pine needles and
under the charged air of those trees, which was
full of dim, slanting light from the afternoon sun,
till, nearly at the summit, I came upon a clearing

THE FALSE BATTERY 69

which I at once recognised as a military road, lead-
ing to what we used to call a " false battery," that
is, a dug-out with embrasures into which guns could
be placed but in which no guns were. For ever
since the French managed to produce a really
mobile heavy gun they have constructed any amount
of such auxiliary works between the permanent
forts. These need no fixed guns to be emplaced,
since the French can use now one such parapet, now
another, as occasion serves, and the advantage is
that your guns are never useless, but can always be
brought round where they are needed, and that thus
six guns will do more work than twenty used to do.

This false battery was on the brow of the hill,
and when I reached it I looked down the slope, over
the brushwood that hid the wire entanglements,
and there was the whole valley of the Moselle at
my feet.

As this was the first really great height, so this
was the first really great view that I met with on
my pilgrimage. I drew it carefully, piece by piece,
sitting there a long time in the declining sun and
noting all I saw. Archettes, just below ; the flat
valley with the river winding from side to side; the
straight rows of poplar trees ; the dark pines on
the hills, and the rounded mountains rising farther

7o THE GREAT VIEW

and higher into the distance until the last I saw, far
off to the south-east, must have been the Ballon
d' Alsace at the sources of the Moselle — the hill
that marked the first full stage in my journey and
that overlooked Switzerland.

Indeed, this is the peculiar virtue of walking to
a far place, and especially of walking there in a

straight line, that one gets these visions of the
world from hill-tops.

When I call up for myself this great march I see
it all mapped out in landscapes, each of which I
caught from some mountain, and each of which
joins on to that before and to that after it, till I can
piece together the whole road. The view here from
the Hill of Archettes, the view from the Ballon
d' Alsace, from Glovelier Hill, from the Weissen-
stein, from the Brienzer Grat, from the Grimsel,

THE TROUT INN 71

from above Bellinzona, from the Principessa, from
Tizzano, from the ridge of the Apennines, from
the Wall of Siena, from San Quirico, from Ra-
dicofani, from San Lorenzo, from Montefiascone,
from above Viterbo, rrom Roncigleone, and at last
from that lift in the Via Cassia, whence one
suddenly perceives the City. They unroll them-
selves all in their order till I can see Europe, and
Rome shining at the end.

But you who go in railways are necessarily shut
up in long valleys and even sometimes by the walls
of the earth. Even those who bicycle or drive see
these sights but rarely and with no consecution,
since roads also avoid climbing save where they are
forced to it, as over certain passes. It is only by
following the straight line onwards that any one can
pass -from ridge to ridge and have this full picture
of the way he has been.

So much for views. I clambered down the hill
to Archettes and saw, almost the first house, a
swinging board " At the sign of the Trout of the
Vosges," and as it was now evening I turned in
there to dine.

Two things I noticed at once when I sat down
to meat. First, that the people seated at that
inn table were of the middle-class of societv, and,

72 APOLOGY FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS

secondly, that I, though of their rank, was an im-
pediment to their enjoyment. For to sleep in
woods, to march some seventy miles, the latter part
in a dazzling sun, and to end by sliding down an
earthy steep into the road stamps a man with all
that this kind of people least desire to have thrust
upon them. And those who blame the middle-
class for their conventions in such matters, and
who profess to be above the care for cleanliness and
clothes and social ritual which marks the middle-
class, are either anarchists by nature or fools who
take what is but an effect of their wealth for a
natural virtue.

I say it roundly ; if it were not for the puncti-
liousness of the middle-class in these matters all
our civilisation would go to pieces. They are the
conservators and the maintainers of the standard,
the moderators of Europe, the salt of society.
For the kind of man who boasts that he does
not mind dirty clothes or roughing it, is either a
man who cares nothing for all that civilisation has
built up and who rather hates it, or else (and this
is much more common) he is a rich man, or
accustomed to live among the rich, and can afford
to waste energy and stuff because he feels in a vague
way that more clothes can always be bought, that at

APOLOGY FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS 73

the end of his vagabondism he can get excellent
dinners, and that London and Paris are full of
luxurious baths and barber shops. Of all the cor-
rupting effects of wealth there is none worse than
this, that it makes the wealthy (and their parasites)
think in some way divine, or at least a lovely charac-
ter of the mind, what is in truth nothing but their
power of luxurious living. Heaven keep us all
from great riches — I mean from very great riches.

Now the middle-class cannot afford to buy new
clothes whenever they feel inclined, neither can they
end up a jaunt by a Turkish bath and a great feast
with wine. So their care is always to preserve intact
what they happen to have, to exceed in nothing, to
study cleanliness, order, decency, sobriety, and a
steady temper, and they fence all this round and
preserve it in the only way it can be preserved, to
wit, with conventions, and they are quite right.

I find it very hard to keep up to the demands of
these my colleagues, but I recognise that they are
on the just side in the quarrel ; let none of them go
about pretending that I have not defended them in
this book.

So I thought of how I should put myself right
with these people. I saw that an elaborate story
(as, that I had been set upon by a tramp who

74 APPEASEMENT OF MIDDLE CLASS

forced me to change clothes : that I dressed thus
for a bet : that I was an officer employed as a spy,
and was about to cross the frontier into Germany
in the guise of a labourer : that my doctor forbade
me to shave — or any other such rhodomontade) :
I saw, I say, that by venturing upon any such ex-
cuses I might unwittingly offend some other un-
known canon of theirs deeper and more sacred
than their rule on clothes ; it had happened to
me before now to do this in the course of expla-
nations.

So J took another method, and said, as I sat
down —

" Pray excuse this appearance of mine. I have
had a most unfortunate adventure in the hills,
losing my way and being compelled to sleep out
all night, nor can I remain to get tidy, as it is
essential that I should reach my luggage (which is
at Remiremont) before midnight."

I took great care to pay for my glass of white
wine before dinner with a bank note, and I showed
my sketches to my neighbour to make an impres-
sion. I also talked of foreign politics, of the coun-
tries I had seen, of England especially, with such
minute exactitude that their disgust was soon turned
to admiration.

THE CUNNING GUESTS 75

The hostess of this inn was delicate and courteous
to a degree, and at every point attempting to over-
reach her guests, who, as regularly as she attacked,
countered with astonishing dexterity.

Thus she would say : " Perhaps the joint would
taste better if it were carved on the table, or do the
gentlemen prefer it carved aside ? "

To which a banker opposite me said in a deep
voice : " We prefer, madam, to have it carved
aside."

Or she would put her head, in and say —

" I can recommend our excellent beer. It is
really preferable to this local wine."

And my neighbour, a tourist, answered with
decision —

" Madame, we find your wine excellent. It
could not be bettered."

Nor could she get round them on a single point,
and I pitied her so much that I bought bread and
wine off her to console her, and I let her over-
charge me, and went out into the afterglow with
her benediction, followed also by the farewells of
the middle-class, who were now taking their coffee
at little tables outside the house.

I went hard up the road to Remiremont. The
night darkened. I reached Remiremont at mid-

76 OF DORMITORY TREES

night, and feeling very wakeful I pushed on up the
valley under great woods of pines ; and at last,
diverging up a little path, I settled on a clump of
trees sheltered and, as I thought, warm, and lay
down there to sleep till morning; but, on the con-
trary, I lay awake a full hour in the fragrance and
on the level carpet of the pine needles looking up
through the dark branches at the waning moon,
which had just risen, and thinking of how suitable
were pine-trees for a man to sleep under.

" The beech," I thought, " is a good tree to sleep
under, for nothing will grow there, and there is
always dry beech-mast ; the yew would be good if
it did not grow so low, but, all in all, pine-trees are
the best." I also considered that the worst tree to
sleep under would be the upas-tree. These thoughts
so nearly bordered on nothing that, though I was not
sleepy, yet I fell asleep. Long before day, the moon
being still lustrous against a sky that yet contained
a few faint stars, I awoke shivering with cold.

In sleep there is something diminishes us. This
every one has noticed ; for who ever suffered a night-
mare awake, or felt in full consciousness those awful
impotencies which lie on the other side of slumber?
When we lie down we give ourselves voluntarily,
yet by the force of nature, to powers before which

THE COLD OF SLEEP 77

we melt and are nothing. And among the strange
frailties of sleep I have noticed cold.

Here was a warm place under the pines where I
could rest in great comfort on pine needles still full
of the day ; a covering for the beasts underground
that love an even heat — the best of floors for a
tired man. Even the slight wind that blew under
the waning moon was warm, and the stars were
languid and not brilliant, as though everything
were full of summer, and I knew that the night
would be short; a midsummer night; and I had
lived halt of it before attempting repose. Yet, I
say, I woke shivering and also disconsolate, needing
companionship. I pushed down through tall, rank
grass, drenched with dew, and made my way across
the road to the bank of the river. By the time I
reached it the dawn began to occupy the east.

For a long time I stood in a favoured place, just
above a bank of trees that lined the river, and
watched the beginning of the day, because every
slow increase of light promised me sustenance.

The faint, uncertain glimmer that seemed not so
much to shine through the air as to be part of it,
took all colour out of the woods and fields and the
high slopes above me, leaving them planes of grey
and deeper grey. The woods near me were a

THE DAWN

silhouette, black and motionless, emphasising the
east beyond. The river was white and dead, not
even a steam rose from it, but out of the further
pastures a gentle mist had lifted up and lay all even

along the flanks of the hills, so that they rose out of
it, indistinct at their bases, clear-cut above against
the brightening sky ; and the farther they were the
more their mouldings showed in the early light, and
the most distant edges of all caught the morning.

At this wonderful sight I gazed for quite half-an-
hour without moving, and took in vigour from it as
a man takes in food and wine. When I stirred and
looked about me it had become easy to see the
separate grasses ; a bird or two had begun little

THE HILL-MEN

interrupted chirrups in the bushes, a day-breeze
broke from up the valley ruffling the silence, the
moon was dead against the sky, and the stars had
disappeared. In a solemn mood I regained the
road and turned my face towards the neighbouring
sources of the river.

I easily perceived with each laborious mile that I
was approaching the end of my companionship with
the Moselle, which had become part of my
adventure for the last eighty miles. It was now
a smail stream, mountainous and uncertain, though
in parts still placid and slow. There appeared also
that which I take to be an infallible accompaniment
of secluded glens and of the head waters of rivers
(however canalised or even overbuilt they are), I
mean a certain roughness all about them and the
stout protest of the hill-men : their stone cottages
and their lonely paths off the road.

So it was here. The hills had grown much
higher and come closer to the
river-plain; up the gullies I '"'"■—*?

would catch now and then an -& <rf? ' .-^V5
aged and uncouth bridge with mM^^^^^&i^
a hut near it all built of endur- "5^Mfes8r

ing stone : part of the hills.
Then again there were present here and there on

80 THE SPECIAL CHAPELS

the spurs lonely chapels, and these in Catholic
countries are a mark of the mountains and of the
end of the riches of a valley. Why this should be
so I cannot tell. You find them also sometimes in
forests, but especially in the lesser inlets of the sea-
coast and, as I have said, here in the upper parts of
valleys in the great hills. In such shrines Mass
y .."' is to be said but rarely,

""J".. ^ J-IV7 " sometimes but once a year

'"/?'"'%* IP^^Vi m a special commemora-

Ijif^1^^' tion. The rest of the

J?W- ;* ^'~- ^'gZM'L* time they stand empty,

§&*■*'■!.■■'■ #-*Ci- 'S :-1z" , r i i j

JTa. -Ad>>a' and some or the older or

P^ '' '"* ^?|ft_ simpler, one might take

for ruins. They mark everywhere some strong
emotion of supplication, thanks, or reverence, and
they anchor these wild places to their own past,
making them up in memories what they lack in
multitudinous life.

I broke my fast on bread and wine at a place
where the road crosses the river, and then I deter-
mined I would have hot coffee as well, and seeing in
front of me a village called Rupt, which means " the
cleft" (for there is here a great cleft in the hillside),
I went up to it and had my coffee. Then I dis-
covered a singular thing, that the people of the

ON LOCAL NAMES 81

place are tired of making up names and give
nothing its peculiar l)aptism. This I thought
really very wonderful indeed, for I have noticed
wherever I have been that in proportion as men
are remote and have little to distract them, in
that proportion they produce a great crop of
peculiar local names for every stream, reach, tuft,
hummock, glen, copse and gully for miles around ;
and often when I have lost my way and asked
it of a peasant in some lonely part I have
grown impatient as he wandered on about " leav-
ing on your left the stone we call the Nug-
gin, and bearing round what some call Holy
Dyke till you come to what they call Mary's
Ferry "... and so forth. Long-shoremen and
the riparian inhabitants of dreadful and lonely
rivers near the sea have just such a habit, and
I have in my mind's eye now a short stretch
of tidal water in which there are but five shoals,
yet they all have names and are called " The
House, the Knowle, Goodman's Plot, Mall, and
the Patch."

But here in Rupt, to my extreme astonishment
there was no such universal and human instinct.
For I said to the old man who poured me out
my coffee under the trellis (it was full morning,

82 THE NAMELESS HILL

the sun was well up, and the clouds were all dappled
high above the tops of the mountains) : " Father,
what do you call this hill ? " And with that
I pointed to a very remarkable hill and summit
that lie sheer above the village.

"That," he said, "is called the hill over above
Rupt."

" Yes, of course," I said, " but what is its
name ? "

" That is its name," he answered.

And he was quite right, for when I looked at
my map, there it was printed, " Hill above Rupt."
I thought how wearisome it would be if this
became a common way of doing things, and if
one should call the Thames " the River of Lon-
don," and Essex " the North side," and Kent
" the South side" ; but considering that this fantas-
tic method was only indulged in by one wretched
village, I released myself from fear, relegated
such horrors to the colonies, and took the road
again.

All this upper corner of the valley is a garden.
It is bound in on every side from the winds, it is
closed at the end by the great mass of the Ballon
d'Alsace, its floor is smooth and level, its richness
is used to feed grass and pasturage, and knots of

THE YOUTH OF RIVERS 83

trees grow about it as though they had been planted
to please the eye.

Nothing can take from the sources of rivers their
character of isolation and repose. Here what are
afterwards to become the influences of the plains
are nurtured and tended as though in an orchard,
and the future life of a whole fruitful valley with
its regal towns is determined. Something about
these places prevents ingress or spoliation. They
will endure no settlements save of peasants ; the
waters are too young to be harnessed; the hills for-
bid an easy commerce with neighbours. Through-
out the world I have found the heads of rivers to
be secure places of silence and content. And as
they are themselves a kind of youth, the early
home of all that rivers must at last become — I
mean special ways of building and a separate state
of living, a local air and a tradition of history, for
rivers are always the makers of provinces — so they
bring extreme youth back to one, and these upper
glens of the world steep one in simplicity and
childhood.

It was my delight to lie upon a bank of the road
and to draw what I saw before me, which was the
tender stream of the Moselle slipping through fields
quite flat and even and undivided by fences ; its

THE YOUNG MOSELLE

banks had here a strange effect of Nature copying
man's art : they seemed a park, and the river
wound through it full of the positive innocence
that attaches to virgins : it nourished and was
guarded by trees.

■ .Aj

There was about that scene something of crea-
tion and of a beginning, and as I drew it, it gave
me like a gift the freshness of the first experiences
of living and filled me with remembered springs.
I mused upon the birth of rivers, and how they

THE PIOUS WOMAN 85

were persons and had a name — were kings, and
grew strong and ruled great countries, and how at
last they reached the sea.

But while I was thinking of these things, and
seeing in my mind a kind of picture of The River
Valley, and of men clustering around their home
stream, and of its ultimate vast plains on either
side, and of the white line of the sea beyond all, a
woman passed me. She was very ugly, and was
dressed in black. Her dress was stiff and shining,
and, as I imagined, valuable. She had in her hand
a book known to the French as " The Roman
Parishioner," which is a prayer-book. Her hair
was hidden in a stiff cap or bonnet ; she walked
rapidly, with her eyes on the ground. When I saw
this sight it reminded me suddenlv, and I cried out
profanely, " Devil take me ! It is -Corpus Christi,
and my third day out. It would be a wicked
pilgrimage if I did not get Mass at last."
For my first day (if you remember) I had slept
in a wood beyond Mass-time, and my second
(if you remember) I had slept in a bed. But
this third day, a great Feast into the bargain, I
was bound to hear Mass, and this woman hurry-
ing along to the next village proved that I was
not too late.

86 THE JEWS IN THE HILLS

So I hurried in her wake and came to the village,
and went into the church, which was very full, and
came down out of it (the Mass was low and short
— they are a Christian people) through an avenue
of small trees and large branches set up in front of
the houses to welcome the procession that was to
be held near noon. At the foot of the street was
an inn where I entered to eat, and finding there
another man — I take him to have been a shop-
keeper — I determined to talk politics, and began
as follows : —

" Have you any anti-Semitism in your town ? "

" It is not my town," he said, "but there is anti-
Semitism. It flourishes."

" Why then ? " I asked. " How many Jews have
you in your town ? "

He said there were seven.

"But," said I, "seven families of Jews "

" There are not seven families," he interrupted ;
" there are seven Jews all told. There are but two
families, and I am reckoning in the children. The
servants are Christians."

" Why," said I, " that is only just and proper
that the Jewish families from beyond the frontier
should have local Christian people to wait on them
and do their bidding. But what I was going to

THE STRANGE SACRIFICE 87

say was that so very few Jews seem to me an insuffi-
cient fuel to fire the anti-Semites. How does their
opinion flourish ? "

" In this wav," he answered. "The Jews, you
see, ridicule our young men for holding such super-
stitions as the Catholic. Our young men, thus
brought to book and made to feel irrational, admit
the justice of the ridicule, but nourish a hatred
secretly for those who have exposed their folly.
Therefore they feel a standing grudge against the
Jews."

When he had given me this singular analysis of
that part of the politics of the mountains, he added,
after a short silence, the following remarkable
phrase —

" For my part I am a liberal, and would have
each go his own way : the Catholic to his Mass, the
Jew to his Sacrifice."

I then rose from my meal, saluted him, and went
musing up the valley road, pondering upon what
it could be that the Jews sacrificed in this remote
borough, but I could not for the life of me imagine
what it was, though I have had a great many Jews
among my friends.

I was now arrived at the head of this lovely vale,
at the sources of the river Moselle and the base of

88 THE BALLON D'ALSACE

the great mountain the Ballon d' Alsace, which
closes it in like a wall at the end of a lane. For
some miles past the hills had grown higher and
higher upon either side, the valley floor narrower,
the torrent less abundant; there now stood up be-
fore me the marshy slopes and the enormous forests
of pine that forbid a passage south. Up through
these the main road has been pierced, tortuous and
at an even gradient mile after mile to the very top
of the hill ; for the Ballon d' Alsace is so shaped
that it is impossible for the Moselle valley to com-
municate with the Gap of Belfort save by some
track right over its summit. For it is a mountain
with spurs like a star, and where mountains of
this kind block the end of main valleys it becomes
necessary for the road leading up and out of the
valley to go over their highest point, since any
other road over the passes or shoulders would in-
volve a second climb to reach the country be-
yond. The reason of this, my little map here,
where the dark stands for the valley and the
light for the high places, will show better than a
long description. Not that this map is of the
Ballon d' Alsace in particular, but only of the
type of hill I mean.

Since, in crossing a range, it is usually possible to

SUMMIT ROADS

find a low point suitable for surmounting it, such
summit roads are rare, but when one does get them

they are the finest travel in the world, for they fur-
nish at one point (that is, at the summit) what ordi-
nary roads going through passes can never give you :
a moment of domination. From their climax you

9o THE FOREST IN RANK

look over the whole world, and you feel your jour-
ney to be adventurous and your advance to have
taken some great definite step from one province
and people to another.

I would not be bound by the exaggerated zig-
zags of the road, which had been built for artillery,
and rose at an easy slope. I went along the bed of
the dell before me and took the forest by a little
path that led straight upward, and when the path
failed, my way was marked by the wire of the
telegraph that crosses to Belfort. As I rose I
saw the forest before me grow grander. The pine
branches came down from the trunks with a greater
burden and majesty in their sway, the trees took
on an appearance of solemnity, and the whole rank
that faced me — for here the woods come to an
even line and stand like an army arrested upon a
downward march — seemed something unusual and
gigantic. Nothing more helped this impression of
awe than the extreme darkness beneath those aged
growths and the change in the sky that introduced
my entry into the silence and perfume of so vast
a temple. Great clouds, so charged with rain that
you would have thought them lower than the hills
(and yet just missing their tops), came covering me
like a tumbled roof and gathered all around ; the

THE INNER DARKNESS 91

heat of the day waned suddenly in their shade : it
seemed suddenly as though summer was over or as
though the mountains demanded an uncertain sum-
mer of their own, and shot the sunshine with the
chill of their heights. A little wind ran along the
grass and died again. As I gained the darkness of
the first trees, rain was falling.

The silence of the interior wood was enhanced
by a rare drip of water from the boughs that stood
out straight and tangled I know not how far above
me. Its gloom was rendered more tremendous by
the half-light and lowering of the sky which the
ceiling of branches concealed. Height, stillness,
and a sort of expectancy controlled the memories
of the place, and I passed silently and lightly
between the high columns of the trees from night
(as it seemed) through a kind of- twilight forward
to a near night beyond. On every side the per-
spective of these bare innumerable shafts, each
standing apart in order, purple and fragrant,
merged into recesses of distance where all light
disappeared, yet as I advanced the slight gloaming
still surrounded me, as did the stillness framed
in the drip of water, and beneath my feet was the
level carpet of the pine needles deadening and
making distant every tiny noise. Had not the trees

92 THE KNOT OF EUROPE

been so much greater and more enduring than my
own presence, and had not they overwhelmed me
by their regard, I should have felt afraid. As it
was I pushed upward through their immovable
host in some such catching of the breath as men
have when they walk at night straining for a sound,
and I felt myself to be continually in a hidden
companionship.

When I came to the edge of this haunted forest
it ceased as suddenly as it had begun. I left behind
me such a rank of trees aligned as I had entered
thousands of feet below, and I saw before me,
stretching shapely up to the sky, the round dome-
like summit of the mountain — a great field of
grass. It was already evening; and, as though
the tall trees had withdrawn their virtue from
me, my fatigue suddenly came upon me. My
feet would hardly bear me as I clambered up the
last hundred feet and looked down under the roll-
ing clouds, lit from beneath by the level light
of evening, to the three countries that met at my
feet.

For the Ballon d' Alsace is the knot of Europe,
and from that gathering up and ending of the
Vosges you look down upon three divisions of
men. To the right of you are the Gauls. I do

THE THREE RACES 93

not mean that mixed breed of Lorraine, silent,
among the best of people, but I mean the true
Gauls who are hot, ready, and born in the plains
and in the vineyards. They stand in their old
entrenchments on either side of the Saone and
are vivacious in battle ; from time to time a
spirit urges them, and they go out conquering
eastward in the Germanies, or in Asia, or down
the peninsulas of the Mediterranean, and then
they suck back like a tide homewards, having
accomplished nothing but an epic.

Then on the left you have all the Germanies, a
great sea of confused and dreaming people, lost
in philosophies and creating music, frozen for the
moment under a foreign rigidity, but some day to
thaw again and to give a word to us others. They
cannot long remain apart from visions.

Then in front of you southward and eastward, if
you are marching to Rome, come the Highlanders.
I had never been among them, and I was to see
them in a day ; the people of the high hills, the race
whom we all feel to be enemies, and who run straight
across the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
understanding each other, not understood by us.
I saw their first rampart, the mountains called the
Jura, on the horizon, and above my great field of

94 THE INN AT EVENING

view the clouds still tumbled, lit from beneath with
evening.

I tired of these immensities, and, feeling now
my feet more broken than ever, I very slowly
and in sharp shoots of pain dragged down the
slope towards the main road : I saw just below me

the frontier stones of the Prussians, and imme-
diately within them a hut. To this I addressed
myself.

It was an inn. The door opened of itself, and I
found there a pleasant woman of middle age, but
frowning. She had three daughters, all of great
strength, and she was upbraiding them loudly in
the German of Alsace and making them scour and
scrub. On the wall above her head was a great
placard which I read very tactfully, and in a distant
manner, until she had restored the discipline of her
family. This great placard was framed in the three

THE THRIFTY DEMOCRATS 95

colours which once brought a little hope to the
oppressed, and at the head of it in broad black
letters were the three words, " Freedom, Brother-
hood, and an Equal Law." Underneath these was
the emblematic figure of a cock, which I took to
be the gallic bird, and underneath him again was
printed in enormous italics —

" Quand ce coq chant era
hi credit /' 'on /"era."

Which means —

*« When you hear him crowing
Then 's the time for owing.
Till that day —
Pay."

While I was still wondering at this epitome of
the French people, and was attempting to combine
the French military tradition with the French tem-
per in the affairs of economics ; while I was also
delighting in the memory of the solid coin that I
carried in a little leathern bag in my pocket, the
hard-working, God-fearing, and honest woman that
governs the little house and the three great daugh-
ters, within a yard of the frontier, and on the top
of this huge hill, had brought back all her troops
into line and had the time to attend to me. This
she did with the utmost politeness, though cold by

96 THE COMMON FAITH

race, and through her politeness ran a sense of what
Teutons called Duty, which would once have re-
pelled me ; but I have wandered over a great part
of the world and 1 know it now to be a distorted
kind of virtue.

She was of a very different sort from that good
tribe of the Moselle valley beyond the hill ; yet she
also was Catholic — (she had a little tree set up
before her door for the Corpus Christi : see what
religion is, that makes people of utterly different
races understand each other ; for when I saw that
tree I knew precisely where I stood. So once all
we Europeans understood each other, but now we
are divided by the worst malignancies of nations and
classes, and a man does not so much love his own
nation as hate his neighbours, and even the twilight
of chivalry is mixed up with a detestable patronage

of the poor. But as I was saying ) she also was

a Catholic, and I knew myself to be with friends.
She was moreover not exactly of — what shall I say ?
the words Celtic and Latin mean nothing — not of
those who delight in a delicate manner; and her
good heart prompted her to say, very loudly —

" What do you want ? "

" I want a bed," I said, and I pulled out a silver
coin. " I must lie down at once."

THE CONFLICTING MINDS 97

Then I added, " Can you make omelettes ? "

Now it is a curious thing, and one I will not
dwell on —

Lector. You do nothing but dwell.

Auctor. It is the essence of lonely travel ; and
if you have come to this book for literature you
have come to the wrong booth and counter. As
I was saying : it is a curious thing that some
people (or races) jump from one subject to another
naturally, as some animals (I mean the noble deer)
go by bounds. While there are other races (or
individuals — heaven forgive me, I am no ethnolo-
gist) who think you a criminal or a lunatic unless
you carefully plod along from step to step like a
hippopotamus out of water. When, therefore, I
asked this family-drilling, house-managing, moun-
tain-living woman whether she could make ome-
lettes, she shook her head at me slowly, keeping
her eyes fixed on mine, and said in what was the
corpse of French with a German ghost in it, " The
bed is a franc."

" Motherkin," I answered, "what I mean is that
I would sleep until I wake, for I have come a pro-
digious distance and have last slept in the woods.
But when I wake I shall need food, for which," I
added, pulling out yet another coin, " I will pay

98 THE SINGLE BEVERAGE

whatever your charge may be ; for a more delight-
ful house I have rarely met with. I know most
people do not sleep before sunset, but I am par-
ticularly tired and broken."

She showed me my bed then much more kindly,
and when I woke, which was long after dusk, she
gave me in the living room of the hut eggs beaten
up with ham, and I ate brown bread and said grace.

Then (my wine was not yet finished, but it is an
abominable thing to drink your own wine in another
person's house) I asked whether I could have some-
thing to drink.

" What you like," she said.

"What have you? " said I.

" Beer," said she.

"Anything else?" said I.

" No," said she.

" Why, then, give me some of that excellent beer."

I drank this with delight, paid all my bill (which
was that of a labourer), and said good-night to
them.

In good-nights they had a ceremony; for they
all rose together and curtsied. Upon my soul I
believe such people to be the salt of the earth. I
bowed with real contrition, for at several moments
I had believed myself better than they. Then I

THE SHARP MORNING 99

went to my bed and they to theirs. The wind
howled outside ; my boots were stiff like wood
and I could hardly take them off; my feet were
so martyrised that I doubted if I could walk at all
on the morrow. Nevertheless I was so wrapped
round with the repose of this family's virtues that I
fell asleep at once. Next day the sun was rising
in angry glory over the very distant hills of Ger-
many, his new light running between the pinnacles
df the clouds as the commands of a conqueror
might come trumpeted down the defiles of moun-
tains, when I fearlessly forced my boots on to my
feet and left their doors.

The morning outside came living and sharp after
the gale — almost chilly. Under a scattered but
clearing sky I first limped, then, as my blood
warmed, strode down the path that led between the
trees of the farther vale and was soon following a
stream that leaped from one fall to another till it
should lead me to the main road, to Belfort, to the
Jura, to the Swiss whom I had never known, and
at last to Italy.

But before I call up the recollection of that
hidden valley, I must describe with a map the
curious features of the road that lay before me
into Switzerland. I was standing on the summit

L.ofC.

ioo THE TRACK TO SWITZERLAND

of that knot of hills which rise up from every
side to form the Ballon d'Alsace, and make an
abrupt ending to the Vosges. Before me, south-
ward and eastward, was a great plain with the
fortress of Belfort in the midst of it. This plain
is called by soldiers " the Gap of Belfort," and is
the only break in the hill frontier that covers
France all the way from the Mediterranean to
Flanders. On the farther side of this plain run
the Jura mountains, which are like a northern wall
to Switzerland, and just before you reach them is
the Frontier. The Jura are fold on fold of high
limestone ridges, thousands of feet high, all parallel,
with deep valleys, thousands of feet deep, between
them ; and beyond their last abrupt escarpment is
the wide plain of the river Aar.

Now the straight line to Rome ran from where I
stood, right across that plain of Belfort, right across
the ridges of the Jura, and cut the plain of the Aar
a few miles to the west of a town called Solothurn
or Soleure, which stands upon that river.

It was impossible to follow that line exactly, but
one could average it closely enough by following
the highroad down the mountain through Belfort
to a Swiss town called Porrentruy or Portrut — so
far one was a little to the west of the direct line.

THE TRACK TO SWITZERLAND 101

From Portrut, by picking one's way through
forests, up steep banks, over open downs, along
mule paths, and so forth, one could cross the first
rido-e called the " Terrible Hill," and so reach the
profound gorge of the river Doubs, and a town
called St. Ursanne. From St. Ursanne, by following
a mountain road and then climbing some rocks and
tracking through a wood, one could get straight
over the second ridge to Glovelier. From Glo-
velier a highroad took one through a gap to Under-
velier and on to a town called Moutier or Munster.
Then from Munster, the road, still following more
or less the line to Rome but now somewhat to the
east of it, went on southward till an abrupt turn in
it forced one to leave it. Then there was another
rough climb by a difficult path up over the last ridge,
called the Weissenstein, and from its high edge and
summit it was but a straight fall of a mile or two
on to Soleure.

So much my map told me, and this mixture of
roads and paths and rock climbs that I had planned
out, I exactly followed, so as to march on as directly
as possible towards Rome, which was mv goal. For
if I had not so planned it, but had followed the
highroads, I should have been compelled to zig-zag
enormously for days, since these ridges of the Jura

io2 THE MAP OF THE TRACK

Porrentruy.

Solothurn

are but little broken, and
the roads do not rise
above the crests, but fol-
low the parallel valleys,
taking advantage only
here and there of the
rare gaps to pass from
one to another.

Here is a sketch of the
way I went, where my
track is a white line, and
the round spots in it are
the towns and villages
whose names are written
at the side. In this sketch
the plains and low valleys
are marked dark, and the
crests of the mountains
left white. The shading
is lighter according to
the height, and the con-
tour lines (which are very
far from accurate) re-
present, I suppose, about
a thousand feet between
each, or perhaps a little

THE SECLUDED VALLEY 103

more ; and as for the distance, from the Ballon
d' Alsace to Soleure might be two long days march
on a flat road, but over mountains and up rocks
it was all but three, and even that was very good
going. My first stage was across the plain of
Belfort, and I had determined to sleep that night
in Switzerland.

I wandered down the mountain. A little secret
path, one of many, saved me the long windings
of the road. It followed down the central hollow
of the great cleft and accompanied the stream. All
the way for miles the water tumbled in fall after
fall over a hundred steps ot rock, and its noise
mixed with the freshness of the air, and its splashing
weighted the overhanging branches of the trees. A
little rain that fell from time to time through the
clear morning seemed like a sister to the spray of
the waterfalls ; and what with all this moisture and
greenery, and the surrounding silence, all the valley
was inspired with content. It was a repose to
descend through its leaves and grasses, and find the
lovely pastures at the foot of the descent, a narrow
floor between the hills. Here there were the first
houses of men ; and, from one, smoke was already
going up thinly into the morning. The air was
very pure and cold ; it was made more nourishing

104 THE RETURN TO THE PLAINS

and human by the presence and noise of the waters,
by the shining wet grasses and the beaded leaves all
through that umbrageous valley. The shreds of
clouds which, high above that calm, ran swiftly in
the upper air, fed it also with soft rains from time
to time as fine as dew; and through those clear and
momentary showers one could see the sunlight.

When I had enjoyed the descent through this
place for but a few miles, everything changed.
The road in front ran straight and bordered — it led
out and onwards over a great flat, set here and
there with hillocks. The Vosges ended abruptly.
Houses came more thickly, and by the ceaseless
culture of the fields, by the flat slate roofs, the
whitewashed walls, and the voices, and the glare, I
knew myself to be once more in France of the
plains ; and the first town I came to was Giromagny.

Here, as I heard a bell, I thought I would go up
and hear Mass ; and I did so, but my attention at
the holy office was distracted by the enormous
number of priests that I found in the church, and I
have wondered painfully ever since how so many
came to be in a little place like Giromagny. There
were three priests at the high altar, and nearly one
for each chapel, and there was such a buzz of Masses
going on, beginning and ending, that I am sure I

THE MANY PRIESTS 105

need not have gone without my breakfast in my
hurry to get one. With all this there were few
people at Mass so early ; nothing but these priests
going in and out, and continual little bells. I am
still wondering. Giromagny is no place for relics
or for a pilgrimage, it cures no one, and has nothing
of a holy look about it, and all these priests

Lector. Pray dwell less on your religion,
and

Auctor. Pray take books as you find them,
and treat travel as travel. For you, when you go
to a foreign country, see nothing but what you
expect to see. But I am astonished at a thousand
accidents, and always find things twenty-fold as
great as I supposed they would be, and far more
curious; the whole covered by a strange light of
adventure. And that is the peculiar value of this
book. Now, if you can explain these priests

Lector. I can. It was the season of the year,
and they were swarming.

Auctor. So be it. Then if you will hear
nothing of what interests me, I see no reason for
setting down with minute care what interests you,
and I may leave out all mention of the Girl who
could only speak German, of the Arrest of the
Criminal, and even of the House of Marshal Turenne

106 THE GREAT GARRISONS

— this last something quite exceptionally enter-
taining. But do not let us continue thus, nor push
things to an open quarrel. You must imagine for
yourself about six miles of road, and then

— then in the increasing heat, the dust rising in
spite of the morning rain, and the road most
wearisome, I heard again the sound of bugles and
the sombre excitement of the drums.

It is a thought-provoking thing, this passing from
one great garrison to another all the way down the
frontier. I had started from the busy order of
Toul ; I had passed through the silence and peace
of all that Moselle country, the valley like a long
garden, and I had come to the guns and the tramp
of Epinal. I had left Epinal and counted the miles
and miles of silence in the forests, I had crossed the
great hills and come down into quite another plain
draining to another sea, and I heard again all the
clamour that goes with soldiery, and looking
backward then over my four days, one felt — one
almost saw — the new system of fortification. The
vast entrenched camps each holding an army, the
ungarnished gaps between.

As I came nearer to Belfort, I saw the guns
going at a trot down a side road, and, a little later,

THE STRANGE WINE 107

I saw marching on my right, a long way off, the
irregular column, the dust and the invincible gaiety
of the French line. The sun here and there glinted
on the ends of rifle barrels and the polished pouches.
Their heavy pack made their tramp loud and
thudding. They were singing a song.

I had already passed the outer forts ; I had noted
a work close to the road ; I had gone on a mile
or so and had entered the long and ugly suburb
where the tramway lines began, when, on one of
the ramshackle houses of that burning, paved, and
noisy, endless street, I saw written up the words,

" Wine ; shut or open."

As it is a great rule to examine every new thing,
and to suck honey out of every flower, I did not —
as some would — think the phrase odd and pass on.
I stood stock-still gazing at the house and imagin-
ing a hundred explanations. I had never in my
life heard wine divided into shut and open wine. I
determined to acquire yet one more great experi-
ence, and going in I found a great number of tin
cans, such as the French carry up water in, with-
out covers, tapering to the top, and standing about
three feet high ; on these were pasted large printed
labels, " 30," " 40," and " 50," and they were brim-

108 EXCELLENCE OF THE WINE

ming with wine. I spoke to the woman, and point-
ing at the tin cans, said —

" Is this what you call open wine ? "

" Why, yes," said she. " Cannot you see for
yourself that it is open ? "

That was true enough, and it explained a great
deal. But it did not explain how — seeing that if
you leave a bottle of wine uncorked for ten minutes
you spoil it — you can keep gallons of it in a great
wide can, for all the world like so much milk,
milked from the Panthers of the God. I deter-
mined to test the prodigy yet further, and choosing
the middle price, at fourpence a quart, I said —

" Pray give me a hap'orth in a mug."

This the woman at once did, and when I came to
drink it, it was delicious. Sweet, cool, strong, lift-
ing the heart, satisfying, and full of all those things
wine merchants talk of, bouquet, and body, and
flavour. It was what I have heard called a very
pretty wine.

I did not wait, however, to discuss the marvel,
but accepted it as one of those mysteries of which
this pilgrimage was already giving me examples, and
of which more were to come — (wait till you hear
about the brigand of Radicofani). I said to myself —

" When I get out of the Terre Majeure, and

ON BUILDING BRIDGES 109

awav from the strong and excellent government of
the Republic, when I am lost in the Jura Hills
to-morrow there will be no such wine as this."

So I bought a quart of it, corked it up very-
tight, put it in my sack, and held it in store against
the wineless places on the flanks of the hill called
Terrible, where there are no soldiers, and where
Swiss is the current language. Then I went on
into the centre of the town.

As I passed over the old bridge into the market-
place, where I proposed to lunch, (the sun was
terrible — it was close upon eleven,) I saw them
building parallel with that old bridge a new one to
replace it. And the way they build a bridge in
Belfort is so wonderfully simple, and yet so new,
that it is well worth telling.

In most places when a bridge has to be made,
there is an infinite pother and worry about building
the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else.
Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and
some try to throw an arch of one span from side to
side. There are a thousand different tricks. In
Belfort they simply wait until the water has run
away. Then a great brigade of workmen run down
into the dry bed of the river and dig the founda-
tions feverishly, and begin building the piers in

no THE LION OF BELFORT

great haste. Soon the water comes back, but the
piers are already above it, and the rest of the work
is done from boats. This is absolutely true. Not
only did I see the men in the bed of the river,
but a man whom I asked told me that it seemed
to him the most natural way to build bridges,
and doubted if they were ever made in any other
fashion.

There is also in Belfort a great lion carved in
rock to commemorate the siege of 1870. This
lion is part of the precipice under the castle, and
is of enormous size — how large I do not know,
but I saw that a man looked quite small by one
of his paws. The precipice was first smoothed
like a stone slab or tablet, and then this lion was
carved into and out of it in high relief by Bar-
tholdi, the same man that made the statue of
Liberty in New York Harbour.

The siege of 1870 has been fixed for history
in yet another way, and one that shows you how
the Church works on from one stem continually.
For there is a little church somewhere near or in
Belfort (I do not know where, I only heard of it)
which a local mason and painter being told to deco-
rate for so much, he amused himself by painting
all round it little pictures of the siege — of the cold,

THE SAD ECONOMISTS in

and the wounds, and the heroism. This is indeed
the way such things should be done, I mean by
men doing them for pleasure and of their own
thought. And I have a number of friends who
agree with me in thinking this, that art should
not be competitive or industrial, but most of them
go on to the very strange conclusion that one
should not own one's garden, nor one's beehive,
nor one's great noble house, nor one's pigsty,
nor one's railway shares, nor the very boots on
one's feet. I say, out upon such nonsense. Then
they say to me, what about the concentration of
the means of production ? And I sav to them,
what about the distribution of the ownership of
the concentrated means of production ? And they
shake their heads sadly, and say it would never
endure ; and I say, try it first and see. Then they
fly into a rage.

When I lunched in Belfort (and at lunch, by
the way, a poor man asked me to use all my in-
fluence for his son, who was an engineer in the
navy, and this he did because I had been boast-
ing of my travels, experiences, and grand acquaint-
ances throughout the world) — when, I say, I had
lunched in a workman's cafe at Belfort, I set out

ii2 THE POWDER-MAGAZINE

again on my road, and was very much put out
to find that showers still kept on falling.

In the early morning, under such delightful
trees, up in the mountains, the branches had given
me a roof, the wild surroundings made me part
of the out-of-doors, and the rain had seemed to
marry itself to the pastures and the foaming beck.
But here, on a road and in a town, all its tradi-
tion of discomfort came upon me. I was angry,
therefore, with the weather and the road for some
miles, till two things came to comfort me. First it
cleared, and a glorious sun showed me from a
little eminence the plain of Alsace and the moun-
tains of the Vosges all in line ; secondly, I came
to a vast powder-magazine.

To most people there is nothing more subtle
or pleasing in a powder-magazine than in a re-
servoir. They are both much the same in the
mere exterior, for each is a flat platform, sloping
at the sides and covered with grass, and each has
mysterious doors. But, for my part, I never see
a powder-magazine without being filled at once
with two very good feelings — laughter and com-
panionship. For it was mv good fortune, years and
years ago, to be companion and friend to two
men who were on sentry at a powder-magazine just

THE JOY IN IT 113

after there had been some anarchist attempts (as
they call them) upon such depots — and for the
matter of that I can imagine nothing more luscious
to the anarchist than seven hundred and forty-
two cases of powder and fifty cases of melinite all
stored in one place. And to prevent the enor-
mous noise, confusion, and waste that would have
resulted from the over-attraction of this base of
operations to the anarchists, my two friends, one of
whom was a duty-doing Burgundian, but the other
a loose Parisian man, were on sentry that night.
They had strict orders to challenge once and then
to fire.

Now, can you imagine anything more exquisite
to a poor devil of a conscript, fagged out with
garrison duty and stale sham-fighting, than an
order of that kind ? So my friends took it, and
in one summer night they killed a donkey and
wounded two mares, and broke the thin stem of a
growing tree.

This powder-magazine was no exception to my
rule, for as I approached it I saw a round-faced
corporal and two round-faced men looking eagerly
to see who might be attacking their treasure, and
I became quite genial in my mind when I thought
of how proud these boys felt, and of how I was

1 14 GREAT PAIN IN THE LEG

of the " class of ninety, rifled and mounted on
its carriage" (if you don't see the point of the
allusion, I can't stop to explain it. It was a good
gun in its time — now they have the seventy-five
that doesn't recoil — requiescat), and of how they
were longing for the night, and a chance to shoot
anything on the sky line.

Full of these foolish thoughts, but smiling in
spite of their folly, I went down the road.

Shall I detail all that afternoon ? My leg horri-
fied me with dull pain, and made me fear I should
never hold out, I do not say to Rome, but even to
the frontier. I rubbed it from time to time with
balm, but, as always happens to miraculous things,
the virtue had gone out of it with the lapse of time.
At last I found a side road going off from the
main way, and my map told me it was on the whole
a short cut to the frontier. I determined to take
it for those few last miles, because, if one is suffer-
ing, a winding lane is more tolerable than a wide
turnpike.

Just as I came to the branching of the roads I
saw a cross put up, and at its base the motto that
is universal to French crosses —

"Ave Crux Spes Unica."

THE LAST OF THE VOSGES 115

I thought it a good opportunity for recollection,
and sitting down, I looked backward along the
road I had come.

There were the high mountains of the Vosges
standing up above the plain of Alsace like sloping

WlMH *'■

cliffs above a sea. I drew them as they stood, and
wondered if that frontier were really permanent.
The mind of man is greater than such accidents,
and can easily overleap even the high hills.

Then having drawn them, and in that drawing
said a kind of farewell to the influences that had fol-
lowed me for so many miles — the solemn quiet, the

n6 THE PONDS

steady industry, the self-control, the deep woods, of
Lorraine — I rose up stiffly from the bank that had
been my desk, and pushed along the lane that ran
devious past neglected villages.

The afternoon and the evening followed as I put
one mile after another behind me. The frontier
seemed so close that I would not rest. I left my
open wine, the wine I had found outside Belfort,
untasted, and I plodded on and on as the light
dwindled. I was in a grand wonderment for Switzer-
land, and I wished by an immediate effort to
conquer the last miles before night, in spite of
my pain. Also, I will confess to a silly pride in
distances, and a desire to be out of France on my
fourth day.

The light still fell, and my resolution stood,
though my exhaustion undermined it. The line of
the mountains rose higher against the sky, and there
entered into my pilgrimage for the first time the
loneliness and the mystery of meres. Something of
what a man feels in East England belonged to this
last of the plain under the guardian hills. Every-
where I passed ponds and reeds, and saw the level
streaks of sunset reflected in stagnant waters.

The marshy valley kept its character when I had
left the lane and regained the highroad. Its isola-

WHAT IS THE SOUL? 117

tion dominated the last effort with which I made
for the line of the Jura in that summer twilight,
and as I blundered on my whole spirit was caught
or lifted in the influence of the waste waters and
of the birds of evening.

I wished, as I had often wished in such oppor-
tunities of recollection and of silence, for a complete
barrier that might isolate the mind. With that wish

came in a puzzling thought, very proper to a pilgrim-
age, which was : " What do men mean by the desire
to be dissolved and to enjoy the spirit free and with-
out attachments?" That many men have so de-
sired there can be no doubt, and the best men, whose
holiness one recognises at once, tell us that the joys
of the soul are incomparably higher than those of
the living man. In India, moreover, there are great
numbers of men who do the most fantastic things
with the object of thus unprisoning the soul, and
Milton talks of the same thing with evident con-

n8 WHAT IS IT?

viction, and the Saints all praise it in chorus. But
what is it ? For my part I cannot understand so
much as the meaning of the words, for every
pleasure I know comes from an intimate union
between my body and my very human mind, which
last receives, confirms, revives, and can summon up
again what my body has experienced. Of pleasures,
however, in which my senses have had no part I
know nothing, so I have determined to take them
upon trust and see whether they could make the
matter clearer in Rome.

But when it comes to the immortal mind, the
good spirit in me that is so cunning at forms and
colours and the reasons of things, that is a very
different story. That, I do indeed desire to have to
myself at whiles, and the waning light of a day or
the curtains of autumn closing in the year are often
to me like a door shutting after one, as one comes in
home. For I find that with less and less impression
from without the mind seems to take on a power of
creation, and by some mystery it can project songs
and landscapes and faces much more desirable than
the music or the shapes one really hears and sees.
So also memory can create. But it is not the soul
that does this, for the songs, the landscapes, and the
faces are of a kind that have come in by the senses,

DISASTER OF THE WINE 119

nor have I ever understood what could be higher
than these pleasures, nor indeed how in anything
formless and immaterial there could be pleasure at all.
Yet the wisest people assure us that our souls are as
superior to our minds as are our minds to our inert
and merely material bodies. I cannot understand
it at all.

As I was pondering on these things in this land of
pastures and lonely ponds, with the wall of the Jura
black against the narrow bars of evening — (my pain
seemed gone for a moment, yet I was hobbling
slowly) — I say, as I was considering this complex
doctrine, I felt my sack suddenly much lighter, and
I had hardly time to rejoice at the miracle when I
heard immediately a very loud crash, and turning
half round I saw on the blurred white of the twilit
road my quart of Open Wine all broken to atoms.
My disappointment was so great that I sat down on
a milestone to consider the accident and to see if a
little thought would not lighten my acute annoyance.
Consider that I had carefully cherished this bottle
and had not drunk throughout a painful march all
that afternoon, thinking that there would be no
wine worth drinking after I had passed the frontier.

I consoled myself more or less by thinking about
torments and evils to which even such a loss as this

120 ENTRY INTO SWITZERLAND

was nothing, and then I rose to go on into the night.
As it turned out I was to find beyond the frontier a
wine in whose presence this wasted wine would have
seemed a wretched jest, and whose wonderful taste
was to colour all my memories of the Mount
Terrible. It is always thus with sorrows if one will
only wait.

So, lighter in the sack but heavier in the heart, I
went forward to cross the frontier in the dark. I
did not quite know where the point came : I only
knew that it was about a mile from Delle, the last
French town. I supped there and held on my way.
When I guessed that I had covered this mile I saw
a light in the windows on my left, a trellis and the
marble tables of a cafe. I put my head in at the
door and said —

" Am I in Switzerland ? "

A German-looking girl, a large heavy man, a
Bavarian commercial traveller, and a colleague of
his from Marseilles all said together in varying
accents : " Yes."

" Why then," I said, " I will come in and drink."

This book would never end if I were to attempt
to write down so much as the names of a quarter
of the extraordinary things that I saw and heard

THE PHOCEAN 121

on my enchanted pilgrimage, but let me at least
mention the Commercial Traveller from Marseilles.

He talked with extreme rapidity for two hours.
He had seen all the cities in the world and he
remembered their minutest details. He was ex-
tremely accurate, his taste was abominable, his
patriotism large, his vitality marvellous, his wit
crude but continual, and to his German friend, to
the host of the inn, and to the blonde serving-girl,
he was a familiar god. He came, it seems, once
a year, and for a day would pour out the torrent
of his travels like a waterfall of guide-books (for
he gloried in dates, dimensions, and the points
of the compass in his descriptions), then he dis-
appeared for another year, and left them to feast on
the memory of such a revelation.

For my part, I sat silent, crippled with fatigue,
trying to forget my wounded feet, drinking stoup
after stoup of beer and watching the Phocean. He
was of the old race you see on vases in red and
black. Slight, very wiry, with a sharp, eager, but
well-set face, a small, black, pointed beard, brilliant
eyes like those of lizards, rapid gestures and a
vivacity that played all over his features as sheet
lightning does over the glow of midnight in June.

That delta of the Rhone is something quite

122 THE PHOCEAN

separate from the rest of France. It is a wedge
of Greece and of the East thrust into the Gauls.
It came north a hundred years ago and killed the
monarchy. It caught the value in, and created,
the great war song of the Republic.

I watched the Phocean. I thought of a man of
his ancestry three thousand years ago sitting here
at the gates of these mountains talking of his
travels to dull, patient, and admiring northerners,
and travelling for gain up on into the Germanies,
and I felt the changeless form of Europe under
me like a rock.

When he heard I was walking to Rome, this
man of information turned off his flood into an-
other channel, as a miller will send the racing water
into a side sluice, and he poured out some such tor-
rent as this : —

" Do not omit to notice the famous view SE.
from the Villa So and So on Monte Mario ; visit
such and such a garden, and hear Mass in such and
such a church. Note the curious illusion produced
on the piazza of St. Peter's by the interior measure-
ments of the trapezium, which are so many yards
and so many yards, . . ." &c, and so forth . . .
exactly like a mill.

I meanwhile sat on still silent, still drinking beer

THE NEW COUNTRY 123

and watching the Phocean ; gradually suffering the
fascination that had captured the villagers and the
German friend. He was a very wonderful man.

He was also kindly, for I found afterwards that
he had arranged with the host to give me up his
bed, seeing my weariness. For this, most unluckily,
I was never able to thank him, since the next
morning I was off before he or any one else was
awake, and I left on the table such money as I
thought would very likely satisfy the innkeeper.

It was broad day, but not yet sunrise (there were
watery thin clouds left here and there from the day
before, a cold wind drove them) when, with extreme
pain, going slowly one step after the other and
resting continually, I started for Porrentruy along
a winding road, and pierced the gap in the Jura.
The first turn cut me off from France, and I was
fairly in a strange country.

The valley through which I was now passing
resembled that of the lovely river Jed where it runs
down from the Cheviots, and leads like a road into
the secret pastures of the lowlands. Here also, as
there, steep cliffs of limestone bounded a very
level dale, all green grass and plenty ; the plateau
above them was covered also with perpetual woods,

i24 AGE IN ALL THINGS

only here, different from Scotland, the woods ran
on and upwards till they became the slopes of high
mountains ; indeed, this winding cleft was a natural
passage through the first ridge of the Jura ; the
second stood up southward before me like a deep
blue storm.

I had, as I passed on along this turning-way,
all the pleasures of novelty ; it was quite another
country from the governed and ordered France
which I had left. The road was more haphazard,
less carefully tended, and evidently less used. The
milestones were very old, and marked leagues in-
stead of kilometres. There was age in everything.
Moss grew along the walls, and it was very quiet
under the high trees. I did not know the name
of the little river that went slowly through the
meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of
its French neighbours on the watershed, and was
called by some such epithet as hangs to all the
waters in that gap of Belfort, that plain of ponds
and marshes : for they are called " the Sluggish,"
" the Muddy," or " the Laggard." Even the name
of the Saone, far off, meant once " Slow Water."

I was wondering what its name might be, and
how far I stood from Porrentruy (which I knew
to be close by), when I saw a tunnel across the

DE GERMANIA 125

valley, and I guessed by the trend of the higher hills
that the river was about to make a very sharp
angle. Both these signs, I had been told, meant
that I was quite close to the town ; so I took
a short cut up through the forest over a spur of
hill — a short cut most legitimate, because it was
trodden and very manifestly used — and I walked
up and then on a level for a mile, along a lane
of the woods and beneath small, dripping trees.
When this short silence of the forest was over, I
saw an excellent sight.

There, below me, where the lane began to fall,
was the first of the German cities.

Lector. How " German " ?

Auctor. Let me explain. There is a race
that stretches vaguely, without defined boundaries,
from the Baltic into the high hills of the south.
I will not include the Scandinavians among them,
for the Scandinavians (from whom we English also
in part descend) are long-headed, lean, and fierce,
with a light of adventure in their pale eyes. But
beneath them, I say, there stretches from the Baltic
to the high hills a race which has a curious unity.
Yes; I know that great patches of it are Catholic,
and that other great patches hold varying philo-
sophies; I know also that within them are counted

126 THE GERMAN PEOPLE

long-headed and round-headed men, dark and fair,
violent and silent ; I know also that they have
continually fought among themselves and called
in Welch allies ; still I go somewhat by the lan-
guage, for I am concerned here with the develop-
ment of a modern European people, and I say
that the Germans run from the high hills to the
northern sea. In all of them you find (it is not
race, it is something much more than race, it is
the type of culture) a dreaminess and a love of
ease. In all of them you find music. They are
those Germans whose countries I had seen a long
way off, from the Ballon d'Alsace, and whose lan-
guage and traditions I now first touched in the
town that stood before me.

Lector. But in Porrentruy they talk French !

Auctor. They are welcome ; it is an excellent
tongue. Nevertheless, they are Germans. Who
but Germans would so preserve — would so rebuild
the past? Who but Germans would so feel the
mystery of the hills, and so fit their town to the
mountains? 1 was to pass through but a narrow
wedge of this strange and diffuse people. They
began at Porrentruy, they ended at the watershed
of the Adriatic, in the high passes of the Alps ;
but in that little space of four days I made ac-

THE ENORMOUS TOWER 127

quaintance with their influence, and I owe them a
perpetual gratitude for their architecture and their
tales. I had come from France, which is full of
an active memory of Rome. I was to debouch
into those larger plains of Italy, which keep about
them an atmosphere of Rome in decay. Here in
Switzerland, for four marches, I touched a northern,
exterior and barbaric people ; for though these
mountains spoke a distorted Latin tongue, and
only after the first day began to give me a teutonic
dialect, yet it was evident from the first that they
had about them neither the Latin order nor the
Latin power to create, but were contemplative and
easily absorbed by a little effort.

The German spirit is a marvel. There lay Por-
rentruy. An odd door with Gothic turrets marked
the entry to the town. To the right of this gate-
way a tower, more enormous than anything I re-
membered to have seen, even in dreams, flanked the
approach to the city. How vast it was, how pro-
tected, how high, how eaved, how enduring ! I
was told later that some part of that great bastion
was Roman, and I can believe it. The Germans
hate to destroy. It overwhelmed me as visions
overwhelm, and I felt in its presence as boys feel
when they first see the mountains. Had I not been

i28 WINE OF THE HILLS

a Christian, I would have worshipped and propitiated
this obsession, this everlasting thing.

As it was I entered Porrentruy soberly. I passed
under its deep gateway and up its steep hill. The
moment I was well into the main street, something
other of the Middle Ages possessed me, and I
began to think of food and wine. I went to the
very first small guest-house I could find, and asked
them if they could serve me food. They said that
at such an early hour (it was not yet ten) they
could give me nothing but bread, yesterday's meat,
and wine. I said that would do very well, and all
these things were set before me, and by a custom
of the country I paid before I ate. (A bad
custom. Up in the Limousin, when I was a boy,
in the noisy valley of the Torrent, on the Vienne,
I remember a woman that did not allow me to pay
till she had held the bottle up to the light, measured
the veal with her finger, and estimated the bread
with her eye ; also she charged me double. God
rest her soul ! ) I say I paid. And had I had to
pay twenty or twenty-three times as much it would
have been worth it for the wine.

I am hurrying on to Rome, and I have no time
to write a georgic. But, oh ! my little friends of
the north ; my struggling, strenuous, introspective,

THE ASTOUNDING WINE 129

self-analysing, autoscopic, and generally reentrant
friends, who spout the " Hue! Pater, oh ! Lenae ! "
without a ghost of an idea what you are talking
about, do you know what is meant by the god ?
Bacchus is everywhere, but if he has special sites to
be ringed in and kept sacred, I say let these be
Brule, and the silent vineyard that lies under the
square wood by Tournus, the hollow underplace of
Heltz le Maurupt, and this town of Porrentruy.
In these places if I can get no living friends to
help me, I will strike the foot alone on the genial
ground, and I know of fifty maenads and two
hundred little attendant gods by name that will
come to the festival.

What a wine !

I was assured it would not travel. " Neverthe-
less," said I, "give me a good quart bottle of it,
for I have to go far, and I see there is a providence
for pilgrims."

So they charged me fourpence, and I took my
bottle of this wonderful stuff, sweet, strong, suffi-
cient, part of the earth, desirable, and went up on
my way to Rome.

Could this book be infinite, as my voyage was in-
finite, I would tell you about the shifty priest whom

i3o THE ERRONEOUS ANARCHIST

I met on the platform of the church where a cliff
overhangs the valley, and of the Anarchist whom I
met when I recovered the highroad — he was a sad,
good man, who had committed some sudden crime
and so had left France, and his hankering for France
all those years had soured his temper, and he said he
wished there were no property, no armies, and no
governments.

But I said that we live as parts of a nation,
and that there was no fate so wretched as to be
without a country of one's own — what else was
exile which so many noble men have thought worse
than death, and which all have feared? I also told
him that armies fighting in a just cause were the
happiest places for living, and that a good battle
for justice was the beginning of all great songs ; and
that as for property, a man on his own land was the
nearest to God.

He therefore not convinced, and I loving and
pitying him, we separated ; I had no time to
preach my full doctrine, but gave him instead a
deep and misty glass of cool beer, and pledged
him brotherhood, freedom, and an equal law. Then
I went on my way, praying God that all these
rending quarrels might be appeased. For they
would certainly be appeased if we once again had a

THE ECONOMIC SCIENCE 131

united doctrine in Europe, since economics are but
an expression of the mind and do not (as the poor
blind slaves of the great cities think) mould the
mind. What is more, nothing makes property run
into a few hands but the worst of the capital sins, and
you who say it is " the modern facility of distribu-
tion " are like men who cannot read large print
without spectacles ; or again, you are like men who
should say that their drunkenness was due to their
drink, or that arson was caused by matches.

But, frankly, do you suppose I came all this way
over so many hills to talk economics ? Very far
from it ! I will pray for all poor men when I get
to St. Peter's in Rome (I should like to know what
capital St. Peter had in that highly capitalistic first
century), and, meanwhile, do you discuss the mar-
gin of production while I go on the open way ;
there are no landlords here, and if you would learn
at least one foreign language, and travel but five
miles off a railway, you town-talkers, you would
find how much landlordism has to do with your
" necessities " and your " laws."

Lector. I thought you said you were not going
to talk economics.

Auctor. Neither am I. It is but the back
wash of a wave. . . . Well, then, I went up the

132 THE MOUNT TERRIBLE

open way, and came in a few miles of that hot after-
noon to the second ridge of the Jura, which they
call "the Terrible Hill," or "the Mount Terrible"
— and, in truth, it is very jagged. A steep, long
crest of very many miles lies here between the vale
of Porrentruy and the deep gorge of the Doubs.
The highroad goes off a long way westward, seek-
ing for a pass or neck in the chain, but I determined
to find a straight road across, and spoke to some
wood-cutters who were felling trees just where the
road began to climb. They gave me this curious
indication. They said —

" Go you up this muddy track that has been made
athwart the woods and over the pastures by our
sliding logs " (for they had cut their trunks higher
up the mountains), " and you will come to the sum-
mit easily. From thence you will see the Doubs
running below you in a very deep and dark ravine."

I thanked them, and soon found that they had
told me right. There, unmistakable, a gash in the
forest and across the intervening fields of grass was
the run of the timber.

When I had climbed almost to the top, I looked
behind me to take my- last view of the north. I
saw just before me a high isolated rock ; between me
and it was the forest. I saw beyond it the infinite

THE MOUNT TERRIBLE i

plain of Alsace and the distant Vosges. The cliff
of limestone that bounded that height fell sheer
upon the tree-tops ; its sublimity arrested me, and
compelled me to record it.

" Surely," I said, " if Switzerland has any gates
on the north they are these."

„ -

LlHl if II

Then, having drawn the wonderful outline of
what I had seen, I went up, panting, to the sum-
mit, and, resting there, discovered beneath me the
curious swirl of the Doubs, where it ran in a dark
gulf thousands of feet below. The shape of this
extraordinary turn I will describe in a moment.
Let me say, meanwhile, that there was no precipice or

134 THE KNITTING WOMAN

rock between me and the river, only a down, down,
down through other trees and pastures, not too
steep for a man to walk, but steeper than our steep
downs and fells in England, where a man hesitates
and picks his way. It was so much of a descent,
and so long, that one looked above the tree-tops.
It was a place where no one would care to ride.

I found a kind of path, sideways on the face
of the mountain, and followed it till I came to
a platform with a hut perched thereon, and men
building. Here a good woman told me just how
to go. I was not to attempt the road to Brune-
Farine — that is, " Whole-Meal Farm " — as I had
first intended, foolishly trusting a map, but to take
a gully she would show me, and follow it till I
reached the river. She came out, and led me
steeply across a hanging pasture ; all the while she
had knitting in her hands, and I noticed that on the
levels she went on with her knitting. Then, when
we got to the gully, she said I had but to follow it.
I thanked her, and she climbed up to her home.

This gully was the precipitous bed of a stream ;
I clanked down it — thousands of feet — warily; I
reached the valley, and at last, very gladly, came
to a drain, and thus knew that I approached a
town or village. It was St. Ursanne.

THE BENT WINDOWS 135

The very first thing I noticed in St. Ursanne
was the extraordinary shape of the lower windows
of the church. They lighted a crypt and ran
along the ground, which in itself was sufficiently
remarkable, but much more remarkable was their
shape, which seemed to me
to approach that of a horse-
shoe ; I never saw such a
thing before. It looked as
though the weight of the
church above had bulged
these little windows out, and
that is the way I explain it. Some people would
say it was a man coming home from the Crusades
that had made them this eastern way, others that
it was a symbol of something or other. But I
say

Lector. What rhodomontade and pedantry is
this talk about the shape of a window?

Auctor. Little friend, how little you know !
To a building windows are everything ; they are
what eyes are to a man. Out of windows a build-
ing takes its view ; in windows the outlook of its
human inhabitants is framed. If you were the lord
of a very high tower overlooking a town, a plain,
a river, and a distant hill (I doubt if you will ever

136

PRAISE OF WINDOWS

have such luck !), would you not call your architect
up before you and say —

" Sir, see that the windows of
my house are tally narrow, thick,
and have a round top to them " ?

Of course you would, for thus
you would best catch in separate
pictures the sunlit things outside
your home.

Never ridicule windows. It is
out of windows that many fall to
their death. By windows love often
enters. Through a window went
the bolt that killed King Richard.
King William's father spied Arlette
from a window (I have looked
through it myself, but not a soul did I see washing
below). When a mob would rule England, it
breaks windows, and when a patriot would save her,
he taxes them. Out of windows we walk on to
lawns in summer and meet men and women, and
in winter windows are drums for the splendid
music of storms that makes us feel so masterly
round our fires. The windows of the great cathe-
drals are all their meaning. But for windows we
should have to go out-of-doors to see davlight.

THE BEAR-SAINT 137

After the sun, which they serve, I know of nothing
so beneficent as windows. Fie upon the ungrateful
man that has no window-god in his house, and
thinks himself too great a philosopher to bow down
to windows! May he live in a place without
windows for a while to teach him the value of
windows. As for me, I will keep up the high
worship of windows till I come to the windowless
grave. Talk to me of windows !

Yes. There are other things in St. Ursanne. It
is a little tiny town, and yet has gates. It is full of
very old houses, people, and speech. It was
founded (or named) by a Bear Saint, and the statue
of the saint with his bear is carved on the top of a
column in the market-place. But the chief thing
about it, so it seemed to me, was its remoteness.

The Gorge of the Doubs, of which I said a word
or two above, is of that very rare shape which
isolates whatever may be found in such valleys. It
turns right back upon itself, like a very narrow U,
and thus cannot by any possibility lead any one
anywhere ; for though in all times travellers have
had to follow river valleys, yet when they come to
such a long and sharp turn as this, they have always
cut across the intervening bend.

GORGE OF THE DOUBS

Here is the shape of this valley with the high
hills round it and in its core, which will show better

•

than description what I mean. The little picture
also shows what the gorge looked like as I came
down on it from the heights above.

THE TEMPTING BRIDGE 139

In the map the small white " A " shows where
the railway bridge was, and in this map as in the
others the dark is for the depth and the light is for
the heights. As for the picture it is what one sees
when one is coming over the ridge at the north or
top of the map, and when one first catches the river
beneath one.

I thought a good deal about what the Romans
did to get through the Mont Terrible, and how
they negotiated this crook in the Doubs (for they
certainly passed into Gaul through the gates of
Porrentruy, and by that obvious valley below it). I
decided that they probably came round eastward by
Delemont. But, for my part, I was on a straight
path to Rome, and as that line lay just along the
top of the river bend I was bound to take it.

Now outside St. Ursanne, if one would go along
the top of the river bend and so up to the other
side of the gorge, is a kind of subsidiary ravine —
awful, deep, and narrow — and this was crossed, I
could see, by a very high railway bridge.

Not suspecting any evil, and desiring to avoid
the long descent into the ravine, the looking for a
bridge or ford, and the steep climb up the other side,
I made in my folly for the station which stood just
where the railway left solid ground to go over this

i4o ON TERROR

high, high bridge. I asked leave of the station-
master to cross it, who said it was strictly forbidden,
but that he was not a policeman, and that I might
do it at my own risk. Thanking him, therefore,
and considering how charming was the loose habit
of small uncentralised societies, I went merrily on
to the bridge, meaning to walk across it by stepping
from sleeper to sleeper. But it was not to be so
simple. The powers of the air, that hate to have
their kingdom disturbed, watched me as I began.

I had not been engaged upon it a dozen yards
when I was seized with terror.

I have much to say further on in this book
concerning terror : the panic that haunts high places
and the spell of many angry men. This horrible
affection of the mind is the delight of our modern
scribblers ; it is half the plot of their insane " short
stories," and is at the root of their worship of
what they call " strength," a cowardly craving for
protection, or the much more despicable fascination
of brutality. For my part I have always disregarded
it as something impure and devilish, unworthy of
a Christian. Fear I think, indeed, to be in the
nature of things, and it is as much part of my
experience to be afraid of the sea or of an un-
tried horse as it is to eat and sleep ; but terror,

THE DREADFUL BRIDGE 141

which is a sudden madness and paralysis of the soul,
that I say is from hell, and not to be played with
or considered or put in pictures or described in
stories. All this I say to preface what happened,
and especially to point out how terror is in the
nature of a possession and is unreasonable.

For in the crossing of this bridge there was
nothing in itself perilous. The sleepers lay very
close together — I doubt it a man could have
slipped between them ; but, I know not how many
hundred feet below, was the flashing of the torrent,
and it turned my brain. For the only parapet
there was a light line or pipe, quite slender and
low down, running from one spare iron upright to
another. These rather emphasised than encouraged
my mood. And still as I resolutely put one foot
in front of the other, and resolutely kept my eyes
off the abyss and fixed on the opposing hill, and as
the long curve before me was diminished by suc-
cessive sharp advances, still my heart was caught
half-way in every breath, and whatever it is that
moves a man went uncertainly within me mechanical
and half-paralysed. The great height with that
narrow unprotected ribbon across it was more than
I could bear.

I dared not turn round and I dared not stop.

i42 VOW OF A CANDLE

Words and phrases began repeating themselves in
my head as they will under a strain : so I know
at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller
makes a kind of litany of his instructions. The
central part was passed, the three-quarters ; the
tension of that enduring effort had grown intoler-
able, and I doubted my ability to complete the
task. Why ? What could prevent me ? I cannot
say ; it was all a bundle of imaginaries. Perhaps
at bottom what I feared was sudden giddiness and
the fall .

At any rate at this last supreme part I vowed one
candle to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour if she would
see that all went well, and this candle I later paid
in Rome ; finding Our Lady of Succour not hung
up in a public place and known to all, as I thought
She would be, but peculiar to a little church belong-
ing to a Scotchman and standing above his high altar.
Yet it is a very famous picture, and extremely old.

Well, then, having made this vow I still went
on, with panic aiding me, till I saw that the bank
beneath had risen to within a few feet of the bridge,
and that dry land was not twenty yards away.
Then my resolution left me and I ran, or rather
stumbled, rapidly from sleeper to sleeper till I could
take a deep breath on the solid earth beyond.

SAFETY BEYOND

I stood and gazed back over the abyss ; I saw
the little horrible strip between heaven and hell —
the perspective of its rails.
I was made ill by the re-
lief from terror. Yet I
suppose railway-men cross
and recross it twenty times
a day. Better for them
than for me !

There is the story of
the awful bridge of the
Mont Terrible, and it lies to a yard upon the
straight line — quid dicam — the segment of the Great
Circle uniting Toul and Rome.

The high bank or hillside before me was that
which ends the gorge of the Doubs and looks down
either limb of the sharp bend. I ,had here not
to climb but to follow at one height round the
curve. My way ran by a rather ill-made lane and
passed a village. Then it was my business to make
straight up the farther wall of the gorge, and as
there was wood upon this, it looked an easy matter.

But when I came to it, it was not easy. The
wood grew in loose rocks and the slope was much
too steep for anything but hands and knees, and far

i44 THE WATERSHED

too soft and broken for true climbing. And no
wonder this ridge seemed a wall for steepness and
difficulty, since it was the watershed between the
Mediterranean and the cold North Sea. But I did
not know this at the time. It must have taken
me close on an hour before I had covered the last
thousand feet or so that brought me to the top
of the ridge, and there, to my great astonishment,
was a road. Where could such a road lead, and
why did it follow right along the highest edge of
the mountains? The Jura with their unique paral-
lels provide twenty such problems.

Wherever it led, however, this road was plainly
perpendicular to my true route and I had but to
press on my straight line. So I crossed it, saw
for a last time through the trees the gorge of the
Doubs, and then got upon a path which led down
through a field more or less in the direction of
my pilgrimage.

Here the country was so broken that one
could make out but little of its general features,
but of course, on the whole, I was following down
yet another southern slope, the southern slope of
the third chain of the Jura, when, after passing
through many glades and along a stony path, I found
a kind of gate between two high rocks and emerged

THE COMMON FIELD

somewhat suddenly upon a wide down studded with
old trees and also many stunted yews, and this
sank down to a noble valley which lay all before
me.

The open down or prairie on which I stood I
afterwards found to be called the " Pasturage of
Common Right," a very fine name ; and, as a

gallery will command a great hall, so this field like
a platform commanded the wide and fading valley
below.

It was a very glad surprise to see this sight sud-
denly unrolled as I stood on the crest of the down.
The Jura had hitherto been either lonely, or some-
what awful, or naked and rocky, but here was a
true vale in which one could imagine a spirit of
its own ; there were corn lands and no rocks.
The mountains on either side did not rise so
high as three thousand feet. Though of lime-

146 THE HUMAN TIDE

stone they were rounded in form, and the slanting
sun of the late afternoon (all the storm had left
the skv) took them full and warm. The valley
remaining wide and fruitful went on out eastward
till the hills became mixed up with brume and
distance. As I did not know its name I called it
after the village immediately below me for which I
was making; and I still remember it as the Valley
of Glovelier, and it lies between the third and fourth
ridges of the Jura.

Before leaving the field I drew what I saw,
but I was much too tired by the double and pro-
digious climb of the past hours to draw definitely
or clearly. Such as it is, there it is. Then 1 went
down over the smooth field.

There is something that distinguishes the rugged
from the gracious in landscape, and in our Europe
this something corresponds to the use and presence
of men, especially in mountainous places. For
men's habits and civilisation fill the valleys and
wash up the base of the hills, making, as it
were, a tide mark. Into this zone I had already
passed. The turf was trodden fine, and was set
firm as it can only become by thousands of years
of pasturing. The moisture that oozed out of
the earth was not the random bog of the high

ON BENEDICTIONS 147

places but a human spring, caught in a stone
trough. Attention had been given to the trees.
Below me stood a wall, which, though rough, was
not the haphazard thing men pile up in the last
recesses of the hills, but formed of chosen stones,
and these bound together with mortar. On my
right was a deep little dale with children playing
in it — and this I afterwards learned was called
a " combe " : delightful memory ! All our deeper
hollows are called the same at home, and even the
Welsh have the word, but they spell it cwm ; it is
their mountain way. Well, as I was saying, every-
thing surrounding me was domestic and grateful,
and I was therefore in a mood for charity and
companionship when I came down the last dip and
entered Glovelier. But Glovelier is a place of no
excellence whatever, and if the thought did not
seem extravagant I should be for putting it to the
sword and burning it all down.

For just as I was going along full of kindly
thoughts, and had turned into the sign of (I think
it was) the " Sun " to drink wine and leave them
my benediction

Lector. Why your benediction ?

Auctor. Who else can give benedictions if people
cannot when they are on pilgrimage ? Learn that

148 THEORY OF BLESSINGS

there are three avenues by which blessing can be be-
stowed, and three kinds of men who can bestow it.

(i) There is the good man, whose goodness
makes him of himself a giver of blessings. His
power is not conferred or of office, but is inhaerens
persona; part of the stuff of his mind. This kind
can confer the solemn benediction, or Benedictio
major, if they choose ; but besides this their every
kind thought, word, or action is a Benedictio genera/is ;
and even their frowns, curses, angry looks and
irritable gestures may be called Benedictiones minores
vel incerti. I believe I am within the definitions.
I avoid heresy. All this is sound theology. I do
not smell of the faggot. And this kind of Bene-
dictory Power is the fount or type or natural origin,
as it were, of all others.

(2) There is the Official of Religion who, in the
exercise of his office

Lector. For Heaven's sake

Auctor. Who began it? You protested my
power to give benediction, and I must now prove it
at length ; otherwise I should fall under the accu-
sation of lesser Simony — that is, the false assump-
tion of particular powers. Well, then, there is
the Official who ex officio, and when he makes it
quite clear that it is qua sponsus and not sicut ut

THEORY OF BLESSINGS 149

ipse, can give formal benediction. This power
belongs certainly to all Bishops, mitred Abbots, and
Archimandrates ; to Patriarchs of course and a for-
tiori to the Pope. In Rome they will have it
that Monsignores also can so bless, and I have
heard it debated whether or no the same were not
true in some rustic way of parish priests. How-
ever this may be, all their power proceeds, not from
themselves, but from the accumulation of goodness
left as a deposit by the multitudes of exceptionally
good men who have lived in times past, and who
have now no use for it.

(3) Thirdly — and this is my point — any one,
good or bad, official or non-official, who is for the
moment engaged in an opus fans turn can act certainly
as a conductor or medium, and the influence of what
he is touching or doing passes to you from him.
This is admitted by every one who worships trees,
wells, and stones ; and indeed it stands to reason, for
it is but a branch of the well-known " Sanctificatio ex
loco, opere, tactu vel conditioned I will admit that this
power is but vague, slight, tenuous, and dissipatory,
still there it is: though of course its poor effect is to
that of the Benedictio major what a cat's-paw in the
Solent is to a north-east snorter on Lindsey Deeps.

I am sorry to have been at such length, but it

150 THE RUDE PEASANTS

is necessary to have these things thrashed out once
for all. So now you see how I, being on pilgrimage,
could give a kind of little creeping blessing to the
people on the way, though, as St. Louis said to the
Hascisch-eaters, " may it be a long time before you can
kiss my bones."

So I entered the " Sun " inn and saw there a
woman sewing, a great dull-faced man like an ox,
and a youth writing down figures in a little book.
I said —

" Good morning, madam, and sirs, and the
company. Could you give me a little red wine ? "

Not a head moved.

True I was very dirty and tired, and they may
have thought me a beggar, to whom, like good
sensible Christians who had no nonsense about them,
they would rather have given a handsome kick than
a cup of cold water. However, I think it was not
only my poverty but a native churlishness which
bound their bovine souls in that valley.

I sat down at a very clean table. I notice that
those whom the devil has made his own are always
spick and span, just as firemen who have to go into
great furnaces have to keep all their gear highly
polished. I sat down at it, and said again, still
gently —

THE OX-MAN 151

" It is, indeed, a fine country this of yours.
Could you give me a little red wine ? "

Then the ox-faced man who had his back turned
to me, and was the worst of the lot, said sulkily, not
to me, but to the woman —

" He wants wine."

The woman as sulkily said to me, not looking
me in the eyes —

" How much will you pay ? "

I said, " Bring the wine. Set it here. See me
drink it. Charge me your due."

I found that this brutal way of speaking was
just what was needed for the kine and cattle of this
pen. She skipped off to a cupboard and set wine
before me, and a glass. I drank quite quietly till I
had had enough, and asked what there was to pay.
She said " threepence," and I said " too much," as I
paid it. At this the ox-faced man grunted and
frowned, and I was afraid; but hiding my fear I
walked out boldly and slowly, and made a noise
with my stick upon the floor of the hall without.
Neither did I bid them farewell. But I made a
sign at the house as I left it. Whether it suffered
from this as did the house at Dorchester which the
man in the boat caused to wither in one night, is
more than I can tell.

152

THE GORGE

The road led straight across the vallev and
approached the further wall of hills. These I saw
were pierced by one of the curious gaps which are
peculiar to limestone ranges. Water cuts them, and
a torrent ran through this one also. The road

through it, gap though
it was, went up steeply,
and the further valley
was evidently higher than
the one I was leaving.
It was already evening
as I entered this nar-
row ravine ; the sun only
caught the tops of the
f', rock-walls. My fatigue

was very great, and my
walking painful to an
extreme" when, having
come to a place where
the gorge was narrowest
and where the two sides
were like the posts of a
giant's stile, where also the fifth ridge of the Jura
stood up beyond me in the further valley, a vast
shadow, I sat down wearily and drew what not even
my exhaustion could render unremarkable.

ON VOWS 153

While I was occupied sketching the slabs of
limestone, I heard wheels coming up behind me,
and a boy in a waggon stopped and hailed me.

What the boy wanted to know was whether I
would take a lift, and this he said in such curious
French that I shuddered to think how far I had
pierced into the heart of the hills, and how soon I
might come to quite strange people. I was greatly
tempted to get into his cart, but though I had
broken so many of my vows one remained yet
whole and sound, which was that I would ride
upon no wheeled thing. Remembering this, there-
fore, and considering that the Faith is rich in
interpretation, I clung on to the waggon in such a
manner that it did all my work for me, and yet
could not be said to be actually carrying me. Dis-
tinguo. The essence of a vow is its literal meaning.
The spirit and intention are for the major morality,
and concern Natural Religion, but when upon a
point of ritual or of dedication or special worship
a man talks to you of the Spirit and Intention,
and complains of the dryness of the Word, look
at him askance. He is not far removed from
Heresy.

I knew a man once that was given to drinking,
and I made up this rule for him to distinguish

154 THE LITERAL VOW

between Bacchus and the Devil. To wit : that he
should never drink what has been made and sold
since the Reformation — I mean especially spirits and
champagne. Let him (said I) drink red wine and
white, good beer and mead — if he could get it —
liqueurs made by monks, and, in a word, all those
feeding, fortifying and confirming beverages that
our fathers drank in old time; but not whisky, nor
brandy, nor sparkling wines, nor absinthe, nor the
kind of drink called gin. This he promised to do,
and all went well. He became a merry companion,
and began to write odes. His prose clarified and
set, that had before been very mixed and cloudy.
He slept well; he comprehended divine things; he
was already half a republican, when one fatal day —
it was the feast of the eleven thousand virgins, and
they were too busy up in heaven to consider the
needs of us poor hobbling, polyktonous and be-
tempted wretches of men — I went with him to the
Society for the Prevention of Annoyances to the
Rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a
paper on the cruelty of Spaniards to their mules.
As we were all seated there round a table with a
staring green cloth on it, and a damnable gas pen-
dant above, the host of that evening offered him
whisky and water, and, my back being turned, he

UNDERVELIER 155

took it. Then when I would have taken it from
him he used these words —

" After all, it is the intention of a pledge that
matters"; and I saw that all was over, for he had
abandoned definition, and was plunged back into
the horrible mazes of Conscience and Natural Re-
ligion.

What do you think, then, was the consequence ?
Why, he had to take some nasty pledge or other to
drink nothing whatever, and became a spectacle and
a judgment, whereas if he had kept his exact word
he might by this time have been a happy man.

Remembering him and pondering upon the ad-
vantage of strict rule, I hung on to my cart, taking
care to let my feet still feel the road, and so passed
through the high limestone gates of the gorge, and
was in the fourth valley of the Jura, with the fifth
ridge standing up black and huge before me against
the last of the daylight. There were as yet no
stars.

There, in this silent place, was the little village
of Undervelier, and I thanked the boy, withdrew
from his cart, and painfully approached the inn,
where I asked the woman if she could give me
something to eat, and she said that she could in
about an hour, using, however, with regard to what

156 THE CIGAR

it was I was to have words which I did not under-
stand. For the French had become quite barbaric,
and I was now indeed lost in one of the inner places
of the world.

A cigar is, however, even in Undervelier, a cigar;
and the best cost a penny. One of these, therefore,
I bought, and then I went out smoking it into the
village square, and, finding a low wall, leaned over
it and contemplated the glorious clear green water
tumbling and roaring along beneath it on the other
side ; for a little river ran through the village.

As I leaned there resting and communing I
noticed how their church, close at hand, was built
along the low banks of the torrent. I admired the
luxuriance of the grass these waters fed, and the
generous arch of the trees beside it. The graves
seemed set in a natural place of rest and home,
and just beyond this churchyard was that marriage
of hewn stone and water which is the source of so
peculiar a satisfaction ; for the church tower was
built boldly right out into the stream and the
current went eddying round it. But why it is that
strong human building when it dips into water
should thus affect the mind I cannot say, only I
know that it is an emotion apart to see our device
and structure where it is most enduring come up

STONES AND WATER 157

against and challenge that element which we cannot
conquer and which has always in it something
of danger for men. It is therefore well to put
strong mouldings on to piers and quays, and to
make an architecture of them, and so it was a
splendid thought of the Romans to build their
villas right out to sea; so they say does Venice en-
thrall one, but where I have most noticed this thing
is at the Mont St. Michel — only one must take care
to shut one's eyes or sleep during all the low tide.

As I was watching that stream against those old
stones, my cigar being now half smoked, a bell
began tolling, and it seemed as if the whole village
were pouring into the church. At this I was very
much surprised, not having been used at any time
of my life to the unanimous devotion of an entire
population, but having always thought of the Faith
as something fighting odds, and having seen una-
nimity only in places where some sham religion or
other glozed over our tragedies and excused our
sins. Certainly to see all the men, women, and
children of a place taking Catholicism for granted
was a new sight, and so I put my cigar carefully
down under a stone on the top of the wall and went
in with them. I then saw that what they were at
was vespers.

158 ON THE FAITH

All the village sang, knowing the psalms very
well, and I noticed that their Latin was nearer
German than French ; but what was most pleasing
of all was to hear from all the men and women
together that very noble good-night and salutation
to God which begins —

"Te, lucis ante terminum."

My whole mind was taken up and transfigured by
this collective act, and I saw for a moment the
Catholic Church quite plain, and I remembered
Europe, and the centuries. Then there left me alto-
gether that attitude of difficulty and combat which,
for us others, is always associated with the Faith.
The cities dwindled in my imagination, and I took
less heed of the modern noise. I went out with them
into the clear evening and the cool. I found my
cigar and lit it again, and musing much more deeply
than before, not without tears, I considered the
nature of Belief.

Of its nature it breeds a reaction and an indiffer-
ence. Those who believe nothing but only think
and judge cannot understand this. Of its nature it
struggles with us. And we, we, when our youth
is full on us invariably reject it and set out in the
sunlight content with natural things. Then for a

ON THE FAITH 159

long time we are like men who follow down the
cleft of a mountain and the peaks are hidden from
us and forgotten. It takes years to reach the dry-
plain, and then we look back and see our home.

What is it, do you think, that causes the return?
I think it is the problem of living ; for every day,
every experience of evil, demands a solution. That
solution is provided by the memory of the great
scheme which at last we remember. Our childhood
pierces through again. . . . But I will not attempt to
explain it, for I have not the power ; only I know
that we who return suffer hard things ; for there
grows a gulf between us and many companions. We
are perpetually thrust into minorities, and the world
almost begins to talk a strange language ; we are
troubled by the human machinery of a perfect
and superhuman revelation ; we are over-anxious
for its safety, alarmed, and in danger of violent
decisions.

And this is hard : that the Faith begins to
make one abandon the old way of judging.
Averages and movements and the rest grow un-
certain. We see things from within and consider
one mind or a little group as a salt or leaven.
The very nature of social force seems changed to
us. And this is hard when a man has loved

160 ON THE FAITH

common views and is happy only with his fel-
lows.

And this again is very hard, that we must once
more take up that awful struggle to reconcile two
truths and to keep civic freedom sacred in spite of
the organisation of religion, and not to deny what is
certainly true. It is hard to accept mysteries, and
to be humble. We are tost as the great schoolmen
were tost, and we dare not neglect the duty of that
wrestling.

But the hardest thing of all is that it leads us
away, as by a command, from all that banquet of
the intellect than which there is no keener joy
known to man.

I went slowly up the village place in the dusk,
thinking of this deplorable weakness in men that
the Faith is too great for them, and accepting it as
an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with
my eyes upon the ground. . . .

There was to be no more of that studious content,
that security in historic analysis, and that constant
satisfaction of an appetite which never cloyed. A
wisdom more imperative and more profound was to
put a term to the comfortable wisdom of learning.
All the balance of judgment, the easy, slow convic-
tions, the broad grasp of things, the vision of their

STILL ON FAITH 161

complexity, the pleasure in their innumerable life —
all that had to be given up. Fanaticisms were no
longer entirely to be despised, just appreciations
and a strong grasp of reality no longer entirely to
be admired.

The Catholic Church will have no philosophies.
She will permit no comforts ; the cry of the martyrs
is in her far voice ; her eyes that see beyond the
world present us heaven and hell to the confusion
of our human reconciliations, our happy blending
of good and evil things.

By the Lord ! I begin to think this intimate
religion as tragic as a great love. There came back
into my mind a relic that I have in my house. It is
a panel of the old door of my college, having carved
on it my college arms. I remembered the Lion and
the Shield, Haec fuit^ Haec almae janua sacra domus.
Yes, certainly religion is as tragic as first love, and
drags us out into the void away from our dear homes.

It is a good thing to have loved one woman from
a child, and it is a good thing not to have to return
to the Faith.

They cook worse in Undervelier than any place I
was ever in, with the possible exception of Omaha,

Neb.

162 ON STYLE

Lector. Why do you use phrases like "possible
exception " ?

Auctor. Why not ? I see that all the reli-
gion I have stuck into the book has no more
effect on you than had Rousseau upon Sir Henry
Maine. You are as full of Pride as a minor
Devil. You would avoid the cliche and the com-
monplace, and the phrase toute faite. Why ? Not
because you naturally write odd prose — contrari-
wise, left to yourself you write pure journalese ; but
simply because you are swelled and puffed up with
a desire to pose. You want what the Martha
Brown school calls " distinction " in prose. My
little friend, I know how it is done, and I find it
contemptible. People write their articles at full
speed, putting down their unstudied and valueless
conclusions in English as pale as a film of dirty
wax — sometimes even they dictate to a typewriter.
Then they sit over it with a blue pencil and care-
fully transpose the split infinitives, and write alter-
native adjectives, and take words away out of their
natural place in the sentence and generally put the
Queen's English — yes, the Queen's English — on
the rack. And who is a penny the better for it ? The
silly authors get no real praise, not even in the
horrible stucco villas where their clique meet on

MORE ON STYLE 163

Sundays. The poor public buys the Marvel and
gasps at the cleverness of the writing and despairs,
and has to read what it can understand, and is
driven back to toshy novels about problems,
written by cooks. " The hungry sheep," as some
one says somewhere, "look up and are not fed";
and the same poet well describes your pipings as
being on wretched straw pipes that are " scrannel "
— a good word.

Oh, for one man who should write healthy,
hearty, straightforward English ! Oh, for Cobbett !
There are indeed some great men who write
twistedly simply because they cannot help it, but
their honesty is proved by the mass they turn out.
What do you turn out, you higglers and sticklers ?
Perhaps a bad triolet every six months and a book
of criticism on something thoroughly threadbare
once in five years. If I had my way

Lector. I am sorry to have provoked all this.

Auctor. Not at all ! Not at all ! I trust I
have made myself clear.

Well, as I was saying, they cook worse at
Undervelier than any place I was ever in, with
the possible exception of Omaha, Neb. However,
I forgave them, because they were such good people,
and after a short and bitter night I went out in

164 THE GERMAN

the morning before the sun rose and took the
Moutier road.

The valley in which I was now engaged — the
phrase seems familiar — was more or less like an |—|.
That is, there were two high parallel ranges bound-
ing it, but across the middle a low ridge of perhaps
a thousand feet. The road slowly climbed this
ridge through pastures where cows with deep-toned
bells were rising from the dew on the grass, and
where one or two little cottages and a village
already sent up smoke. All the way up I was
thinking of the surfeit of religion I had had the
night before, and also of how I had started that
morning without bread or coffee, which was a
folly.

When I got to the top of the ridge there was
a young man chopping wood outside a house, and
I asked him in French how far it was to Moutier.
He answered in German, and I startled him by
a loud cry, such as sailors give when they see land,
for at last I had struck the boundary of the
languages, and was with pure foreigners for the
first time in my life. I also asked him for coffee,
and as he refused it I took him to be a heretic and
went down the road making up verses against
all such, and singing them loudly through the

HERETICS 165

forest that now arched over me and grew deeper as
I descended.

And my first verse was —

" Heretics all, whoever you be,

In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
Caritas non conturbat me."

If you ask me why I put a Latin line at the
end, it was because I had to show that it was a
song connected with the Universal Fountain and
with European culture, and with all that Heresy
combats. I sang it to a lively hymn-tune that I
had invented for the occasion.

I then thought what a fine fellow I was, and
how pleasant were my friends when I agreed with
them. I made up this second verse, which I sang
even more loudly than the first ; and the forest
grew deeper, sending back echoes —

*' But Catholic men that live upon wine

Are deep in the water, and frank, and fine ;
Wherever I travel I find it so,
Benedicamus Domino. ' '

There is no doubt, however, that if one is really
doing a catholic work, and expressing one's attitude
to the world, charity, pity, and a great sense of fear

166 HERETICS

should possess one, or, at least, appear. So I made
up this third verse and sang it to suit —

'« On childing women that are forlorn,
And men that sweat in nothing but scorn :
That is on all that ever were born,
Miserere Do/nine."

Then, as everything ends in death, and as that
is just what Heretics least like to be reminded of,
I ended thus —

" To my poor self on my deathbed,
And all my dear companions dead,
Because of the love that I bore them,
Dona Eis Requiem.''''

I say " I ended." But I did not really end there,
for I also wrote in the spirit of the rest a verse of
Mea Culpa and Confession of Sin, but I shall not
print it here.

So my song over and the woods now left behind,
I passed up a dusty piece of road into Moutier, a
detestable town, all whitewashed and orderly, down
under the hills.

I was tired, for the sun was now long risen and
somewhat warm, and I had walked ten miles, and
that over a high ridge ; and I had written a canticle
and sung it — and all that without a sup or a bite.
I therefore took bread, coffee, and soup in Moutier,

EVERYDAY LIFE 167

and then going a little way out of the town I
crossed a stream off the road, climbed a knoll, and,
lying under a tree, I slept.

I awoke and took the road.

The road after Moutier was not a thing for lyrics ;
it stirred me in no way. It was bare in the sun-
light, had fields on either side ; in the fields stood
houses. In the houses were articulately-speaking
mortal men.

There is a school of Poets (I cannot read them
myself) who treat of common things, and their
admirers tell us that these men raise the things
of everyday life to the plane of the supernatural.
Note that phrase, for it is a shaft of light through
a cloud revealing their disgusting minds.

Everyday life ! As La Croix said in a famous
leading article : " La Presse ? Pooh ! " I know
that everyday life. It goes with sandals and
pictures of lean ugly people all just like one an-
other in browny photographs on the wall, and
these pictures are called, one " The House of
Life," or another, " The Place Beautiful," or yet
again a third, "The Lamp of the Valley," and when
you complain and shift about uneasily before these
pictures, the scrub-minded and dusty-souled owners

168 HORRORS THEREOF

of them tell you that of course in photographs
you lose the marvellous colour of the original.
This everyday life has mantelpieces made of the
same stuff as cafe-tables, so that by instinct I
try to make rings on them with my wine-glass,
and the people who suffer this life get up every
morning at eight, and the poor sad men of the
house slave at wretched articles and come home
to hear more literature and more appreciations,
and the unholy women do nothing and attend
to local government, that is, the oppression of
the poor ; and altogether this accursed everyday
life of theirs is instinct with the four sins crying
to heaven for vengeance, and there is no humanity
in it, and no simplicity, and no recollection. I
know whole quarters of the towns of that life
where they have never heard of Virtus or Vere-
cundia or Pietas.

Lector. Then

Auctor. Alas ! alas ! Dear Lector, in these
houses there is no honest dust. Not a bottle of
good wine or bad ; no prints inherited from one's
uncle, and no children's books by Mrs. Barbauld
or Miss Edgeworth; no human disorder, nothing of
that organic comfort which makes a man's house
like a bear's fur for him. They have no debts,

EXAMPLES 169

they do not read in bed, and they will have diffi-
culty in saving their souls.

Lector. Then tell me, how would you treat
of common things ?

Auctor. Why, I would leave them alone ; but
if I had to treat of them I will show you how
I would do it. Let us have a dialogue about this
road from Moutier.

Lector. By all means.

Auctor. What a terrible thing it is to miss
one's sleep. I can hardly bear the heat of the road,
and my mind is empty !

Lector. Why, you have just slept in a wood !

Auctor. Yes, but that is not enough. One
must sleep at night.

Lector. My brother often complains of in-
somnia. He is a policeman.

Auctor. Indeed? It is a sad affliction.

Lector. Yes, indeed.

Auctor. Indeed, yes.

Lector. I cannot go on like this.

Auctor. There. That is just what I was saying.
One cannot treat of common things : it is not
literature ; and for my part, if I were the editor
even of a magazine, and the author stuck in a
string of dialogue, I would not pay him by the

iyo PLAYS WITHOUT

page but by the word, and I would count off
5 per cent, for epigrams, 10 per cent, for dialect,
and some quarter or so for those stage directions
in italics which they use to pad out their work.

So. I will not repeat this experiment, but next
time I come to a bit of road about which there
is nothing to say, I will tell a story or sing a song,
and to that I pledge myself.

By the way, I am reminded of something. Do
you know those books and stories in which parts of
the dialogues often have no words at all ? Only
dots and dashes and asterisks and interrogations?
I wonder what the people are paid for it? If I
knew I would earn a mint of money, for I believe
I have a talent for it. Look at this —

The Duchess. ? ? ? ? ?

Charles. !

The Duchess. ! ! ! ! !

fc fc fe fc fe

Clara (sobs). £ t j£ Jn £ Jn j£ N £ N

The Duchess (To Major Charles). J$g§~

Charles. ^ ^'vx.'wvN^Nyv-^. (exit).

The Duchess (To Clara, sharply). %%%%%%?

Clara.

WORDS 171

The Duchess {In great anger). ? # * |J § $

TtXi

Clara. ■■ hh M ■■

There. That seems to me worth a good deal
more money than all the modern " delineation of
character," and "folk" nonsense ever written.
What verve ! What terseness ! And yet how
clear !

Lector. Let us be getting on.

Auctor. By all means, and let us consider more
enduring things.

After a few miles, the road going upwards, I
passed through another gap in the hills and

Lector. Pardon me, but I am still ruminating
upon that little tragedy of yours. Why was the
guardian a duchess ?

Auctor. Well, it was a short play and modern,
was it not ?

Lector. Yes. And therefore, of course, you
must have a title in it. I know that. I do not
object to it. What I want to know is, why a
duchess ?

Auctor. On account of the reduction of scale:
the concentration of the thing. You see in the full

172 THE ACOLYTE

play there would have been a lord, two baronets,
and say three ladies, and I could have put suitable
words into their mouths. As it was I had to make
absolutely sure of the element of nobility without
any help, and, as it were, in one startling moment.
Do you follow? Is it not art?

I cannot conceive why a pilgrimage, an adventure
so naturally full of great, wonderful, far-off and
holy things should breed such fantastic nonsense as
all this ; but remember at least the little acolyte of
Rheims, whose father, in 151 2, seeing him apt for
religion, put him into a cassock and designed him
for the Church, whereupon the youngling began to
be as careless and devilish as Mercury, putting
beeswax on the misericords, burning feathers in the
censer, and even going round himself with the plate
without leave and scolding the rich in loud whispers
when they did not put in enough. So one way
with another they sent him home to his father; the
archbishop thrusting him out of the south porch
with his own hands and giving him the Common or
Ferial Malediction, which is much the same as that
used by carters to stray dogs.

When his father saw him he fumed terribly, curs-
ing like a pagan, and asking whether his son were a
roysterer fit for the gallows as well as a fool fit for

OF RHEIMS 173

a cassock. On hearing which complaint the son
very humbly and contritely said —

" It is not my fault but the contact with the things
of the Church that makes me gambol and frisk, just
as the Devil they say is a good enough fellow left to
himself and is only moderately heated, yet when you
put him into holy water all the world is witness how
he hisses and boils."

The boy then taking a little lamb which hap-
pened to be in the drawing-room, said —

"Father, see this little lamb; how demure he
is and how simple and innocent, and how foolish
and how tractable. Yet observe ! " With that he
whipped the cassock from his arm where he was
carrying it and threw it all over the lamb, covering
his head and body ; and the lamb began plunging
and kicking and bucking and rolling and heaving
and sliding and rearing and pawing and most
vigorously wrestling with the clerical and hier-
archically constraining garment of darkness, and
bleating all the while more and more angrily
and loudly, for all the world like the great goat
Baphomet himself when the witches dance about
him on all-hallowe'en. But when the boy suddenly
plucked off the cassock again, the lamb, after
sneezing a little and finding his feet, became quite

174 THE MILLS

gentle once more and looked only a little confused
and dazed.

" There, father," said the boy, " is proof to you
of how the meekest may be driven to desperation
by the shackles I speak of and which I pray you
never lay upon me again."

His father finding him so practical and wise
made over his whole fortune and business to him,
and thus escaped the very heavy Heriot and Death
Dues of those days, for he was a Socage tenant
of St. Remi in Double Burgage. But we stopped
all that here in England by the Statute of Uses,
and I must be getting back to the road before
the dark catches me.

. . . i m

As I was saying, I came to a gap in the hills, and
there was there a house or two called Gansbrunnen,
and one of the houses was an inn. Just by the inn the
road turned away sharply up the valley; the very last
slope of the Jura, the last parallel ridge, lay straight
before me all solemn, dark and wooded, and making
a high feathery line against the noon. To cross
this there was but a vague path rather misleading,
and the name of the mountain was Weissenstein.

So before that last effort which should lead me
over those thousands of feet, and to nourish Instinct

OF GOD 175

(which would be of use to me when I got into that
impenetrable wood), I turned into the inn for wine.

A very old woman having the appearance of a
witch sat at a dark table by the little criss-cross
window of the dark room. She was crooning to
herself, and I made the sign of the evil eye and
asked her in French for wine ; but French she did not
understand. Catching, however, two words which
sounded like the English "White" and "Red,"
I said "Yaw" after the last and nodded, and she
brought up a glass of exceedingly good red wine
which I drank in silence, she watching me uncannily.

Then I paid her with a five-franc piece, and
she gave me a quantity of small change rapidly,
which, as I counted it, I found to contain one
Greek piece of fifty lepta very manifestly of lead.
This I held up angrily before her, and (not without
courage, for it is hard to deal with the darker
powers) I recited to her slowly that familiar verse
which the well-known Satyricus Empiricus was for-
ever using in his now classical attacks on the
grammarians ; and without any Alexandrian twaddle
of accents I intoned to her —

" dtf/e $€(dv aXcovai /jivXoi, aXeovcri 8e Ae7rra,"

and so left her astounded to repentance or to shame.

i76 EDGE OF THE JURA

Then I went out into the sunlight, and crossing
over running water put myself out of her power.

The wood went up darkly and the path branched
here and there so that I was soon uncertain of my
way, but I followed generally what seemed to me
the most southerly course, and so came at last up
steeply through a dip or ravine that ended high on
the crest of the ridge.

Just as I came to the end of the rise, after
perhaps an hour, perhaps two, of that great cur-
tain of forest which had held the mountain side,
the trees fell away to brushwood, there was a gate,
and then the path was lost upon a fine open sward
which was the very top of the Jura and the coping
of that multiple wall which defends the Swiss Plain.
I had crossed it straight from edge to edge, never
turning out of my way.

It was too marshy to lie down on it, so I stood
a moment to breathe and look about me.

It was evident that nothing higher remained, for
though a new line of wood — firs and beeches — stood
before me, yet nothing appeared above them, and
I knew that they must be the fringe of the descent.
I approached this edge of wood, and saw that it
had a rough fence of post and rails bounding it,

BETWEEN THE TREES

177

and as I was looking for the entry of a path (for
my original path was lost, as such tracks are, in
the damp grass of the little down) there came to
me one of those great revelations which betray to
us suddenly the higher things and stand afterwards
firm in our minds.

WML

VlW,

There, on this upper meadow, where so far I
had felt nothing but the ordinary gladness of The
Summit, I had a vision.

What was it I saw? If you think I saw this or
that, and if you think I am inventing the words,
you know nothing of men.

I saw between the branches of the trees in front
of me a sight in the sky that made me stop breath-
ing, just as great danger at sea, or great surprise

i78 THE VISION

in love, or a great deliverance will make a man
stop breathing. I saw something I had known in
the West as a boy, something I had never seen so
grandly discovered as was this. In between the
branches of the trees was a great promise of un-
expected lights beyond.

I pushed left and right along that edge of the
forest and along the fence that bound it, until I
found a place where the pine-trees stopped, leaving
a gap, and where on the right, beyond the gap,
was a tree whose leaves had failed ; there the
ground broke away steeply below me, and the
beeches fell, one below the other, like a vast
cascade, towards the limestone cliffs that dipped
down still further, beyond my sight. I looked
through this framing hollow and praised God.
For there below me, thousands of feet below me,
was what seemed an illimitable plain ; at the end of
that world was an horizon, and the dim bluish sky
that overhangs an horizon.

There was brume in it and thickness. One saw
the sky beyond the edge of the world getting
purer as the vault rose. But right up — a belt in
that empyrean — ran peak and field and needle of
intense ice, remote, remote from the world. Sky
beneath them and sky above them, a steadfast

OF THE ALPS 179

legion, they glittered as though with the armour
of the immovable armies of Heaven. Two days'
march, three days' march away, they stood up like
the walls of Eden. I say it again, they stopped
my breath. I had seen them.

So little are we, we men : so much are we
immersed in our muddy and immediate interests
that we think, by numbers and recitals, to com-
prehend distance or time, or any of our limiting
infinities. Here were these magnificent creatures of
God, I mean the Alps, which now for the first time
I saw from the height of the Jura ; and because
they were fifty or sixty miles away, and because
they were a mile or two high, they were become
something different from us others, and could
strike one motionless with the awe of supernatural
things. Up there in the sky, to which only clouds
belong and birds and the last trembling colours
of pure light, they stood fast and hard ; not moving
as do the things of the sky. They were as distant
as the little upper clouds of summer, as fine and
tenuous; but in their reflection and in their quality
as it were of weapons (like spears and shields of
an unknown array) they occupied the sky with a
sublime invasion : and the things proper to the sky
were forgotten by me in their presence as I gazed.

180 THE ALPS

To what emotion shall I compare this astonish-
ment ? So, in first love one finds that this can
belong to me.

Their sharp steadfastness and their clean uplifted
lines compelled my adoration. Up there, the sky
above and below them, part of the sky, but part
of us, the great peaks made communion between
that homing creeping part of me which loves
vineyards and dances and a slow movement among
pastures, and that other part which is only pro-
perly at home in Heaven. I say that this kind
of description is useless, and that it is better to
address prayers to such things than to attempt to
interpret them for others.

These, the great Alps, seen thus, link one in
some way to one's immortality. Nor is it possible
to convey, or even to suggest, those few fifty miles,
and those few thousand feet ; there is something
more. Let me put it thus : that from the height
of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I
mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of
height and of distance, the glory of God, the
infinite potentiality of reception whence springs
that divine thirst of the soul ; my aspiration also
towards completion, and my confidence in the dual
destiny. For I know that we laughers have a gross

THEIR PICTURE

181

cousinship with the most high, and it is this con-
trast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of
merriment in the soul of a sane man.

Since I could now see such a wonder and it
could work such things in my mind, therefore,

some day I should be part of it. That is what
I felt.

This it is also which leads some men to climb
mountain-tops, but not me, for I am afraid of
slipping down.

Then you will say, if I felt all this, why do I
draw it, and put it in my book, seeing that my
drawings are only for fun ? My jest drags down
such a memory and makes it ludicrous. Well,

82 REMEDY FOR IT

I said in my beginning that I would note down
whatever most impressed me, except figures, which
I cannot draw (I mean figures of human beings,
for mathematical figures I can draw well enough),
and I have never failed in this promise, except
where, as in the case of Porrentruy, my drawing
was blown away by the wind and lost — if anything
ever is lost. So I put down here this extraordi-
nary drawing of what I saw, which is about as much
like it as a printed song full of misprints is to that
same song sung by an army on the march. And
I am consoled by remembering that if I could draw
infinitely well, then it would become sacrilege to
attempt to draw that sight. Moreover, I am not
going to waste any more time discussing why I
put in this little drawing. If it disturbs your
conception of what it was I saw, paste over it a
little bit of paper. I have made it small for the
purpose; but remember that the paper should be
thin and opaque, for thick paper will interfere with
the shape of this book, and transparent paper will
disturb you with a memory of the picture.

It was all full of this, as a man is full of music
just after hearing it, that I plunged down into
the steep forest that led towards the great plain ;

THE CLIFF 183

then, having found a path, I worked zig-zag down
it by a kind of gully that led through to a place
where the limestone cliffs were broken, and (so
my map told me) to the town of Soleure, which
stands at the edge of the plain upon the river
Aar.

I was an hour or more going down the enormous
face of the Jura, which is here an escarpment, a
cliff of great height, and con-
tains but few such breaks by
which men can pick their
way. It was when I was
about half-way down the
mountain side that its vast-
ness most impressed me. And
yet it had been but a plat-
form as it were, from which '--' R^m-7 ^

to view the Alps and their __- T* ~ Mtp'w^

much greater sublimity. 'mjP^~- .&n §K

This vastness, even of these W/fr

limestone mountains, took me W Kjl

especially at a place where
the path bordered a steep, /

or rather precipitous, lift of '

white rock to which only here and there a tree
could cling.

184 THE PLAIN

I was still very high up, but looking somewhat
more eastward than before, and the plain went on
illimitably towards some low vague hills; nor in
that direction could any snow be seen in the sky.
Then at last I came to the slopes which make a
little bank under the mountains, and there, finding
a highroad, and oppressed somewhat suddenly
by the afternoon heat of those low places, I went
on more slowly towards Soleure.

Beside me, on the road, were many houses, shaded
by great trees, built of wood, and standing apart.
To each of them almost was a little water-wheel,
run by the spring which came down out of the
ravine. The water-wheel in most cases worked a
simple little machine for sawing planks, but in other
cases it seemed used for some purpose inside the
house, which I could not divine; perhaps for
spinning.

All this place was full of working, and the men
sang and spoke at their work in German, which I
could not understand. I did indeed find one man,
a young hay-making man carrying a scythe, who
knew a little French and was going my way. I
asked him, therefore, to teach me German, but he
had not taught me much before we were at the
gates of the old town and then I left him. It

SOLEURE

185

is thus, you will see, that for my next four days
or five, which were passed among the German-
speaking Swiss, I was utterly alone.

This book must not go on
for ever ; therefore I cannot
say very much about Soleure,
although there is a great deal
to be said about it. It is dis-
tinguished by an impression
of unity, and of civic life,
which I had already discovered
in all these Swiss towns; for
though men talk of finding
the Middle Ages here or there,
I for my part never find it,
save where there has been de-
mocracy to preserve it. Thus
I have seen the Middle Ages
especially alive in the small
towns of Northern France, and
I have seen the Middle Ages
in the University of Paris.
Here also in Switzerland. As
I had seen it at St. Ursanne,
so I found it now at Soleure.

!a ft*-""

186 THE REMOTE INN

There were huge gates flanking the town, and there
was that evening a continual noise of rifles, at which
the Swiss are for ever practising. Over the church,
however, I saw something terribly seventeenth cen-
tury, namely, Jaweh in great Hebrew letters upon
its front.

Well, dining there of the best they had to give
me (for this was another milestone in my pilgrim-
age), I became foolishly refreshed and valiant, and
instead of sleeping in Soleure, as a wise man would
have done, I determined, though it was now nearly
dark, to push on upon the road to Burgdorf.

I therefore crossed the river Aar, which is here
magnificently broad and strong, and has bastions
jutting out into it in a very bold fashion. I saw
the last colourless light of evening making its waters
seem like dull metal between the gloomy banks ; I
felt the beginnings of fatigue, and half regretted my
determination. But as it is quite certain that one
should never go back, I went on in the darkness, I
do not know how many miles, till I reached some
cross roads and an inn.

This inn was very poor, and the people had never
heard in their lives, apparently, that a poor man
on foot might not be able to talk German, which
seemed to me an astonishing thing ; and as I sat

THE GOOD SAVAGES 187

there ordering beer for myself and for a number
of peasants (who but for this would have me
their butt, and even as it was found something
monstrous in me), I pondered during my continual
attempts to converse with them (for I had picked
up some ten words of their language) upon the folly
of those who imagine the world to be grown smaller
by railways.

I suppose this place was more untouched, as the
phrase goes, that is, more living, more intense,
and more powerful to affect others, whenever it
may be called to do so, than are even the dear
villages of Sussex that lie under my downs. For
those are haunted by a nearly cosmopolitan class
of gentry, who will have actors, financiers, and
what not to come and stay with them, and who
read the paper, and from time to time address
their village folk upon matters of politics. But
here, in this broad plain by the banks of the
Emmen, they knew of nothing but themselves
and the Church which is the common bond of
Europe, and they were in the right way. Hence
it was doubly hard on me that they should think
me such a stranger.

When I had become a little morose at their per-
petual laughter, I asked for a bed, and the landlady,

188 THE GERMAN AIR

a woman of some talent, showed me on her fingers
that the beds were 50c., 75c., and a franc. I deter-
mined upon the best, and was given indeed a very
pleasant room, having in it the statue of a saint, and
full of a country air. But I had done too much in
this night march, as you will presently learn, for my
next day was a day without salt, and in it apprecia-
tion left me. And this breakdown of appreciation
was due to what I did not know at the time to be
fatigue, but to what was undoubtedly a deep inner
exhaustion.

When I awoke next morning it was as it always is :
no one was awake, and I had the field to myself, to
slip out as I chose. I looked out of window into the
dawn. The race had made its own surroundings.

These people who suffocated with laughter at the
idea of one's knowing no German, had produced,
as it were, a German picture by the mere influence
of years and years of similar thoughts.

Out of my window I saw the eaves coming low
down. I saw an apple-tree against the grey light.
The tangled grass in the little garden, the dog-
kennel, and the standing butt were all what I had
seen in those German pictures which they put .into
books for children, and which are drawn in thick

LONELINESS 189

black lines : nor did I see any reason why tame faces
should not appear in that framework. I expected
the light lank hair and the heavy uplifting step of
the people whose only emotions are in music.

But it was too early for any one to be about, and
my German garden, si fose m exprimer ainsi, had
to suffice me for an impression of the Central
Europeans. I gazed at it a little while as it grew
lighter. Then I went downstairs and slipped the
latch (which, being German, was of a quaint design).
I went out into the road and sighed profoundly.

All that day was destined to be covered, so far as
my spirit was concerned, with a motionless lethargy.
Nothing seemed properly to interest or to concern
me, and not till evening was I visited by any muse.
Even my pain (which was now dull and chronic)
was no longer a subject for my entertainment, and
I suffered from an uneasy isolation that had not
the merit of sharpness and was no spur to the
mind. I had the feeling that every one I might see
would be a stranger, and that their language would
be unfamiliar to me, and this, unlike most men who
travel, I had never felt before.

The reason being this : that if a man has English
thoroughly he can wander over a great part of the
world familiarly, and meet men with whom he can

190 ISOLATION

talk. And if he has French thoroughly all Italy,
and I suppose Spain, certainly Belgium, are open to
him. Not perhaps that he will understand what
he hears or will be understood of others, but that
the order and nature of the words and the gestures
accompanying them are his own. Here, however,
I, to whom English and French were the same,
was to spend (it seemed) whole days among a
people who put their verbs at the end, where the
curses or the endearments come in French and
English, and many of whose words stand for ideas
we have not got. I had no room for good-fellow-
ship. I could not sit at tables and expand the air
with terrible stories of adventure, nor ask about
their politics, nor provoke them to laughter or
sadness by my tales. It seemed a poor pilgrimage
taken among dumb men.

Also I have no doubt that I had experienced the
ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing
about us that this bright spirit with which we are
lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness.
Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our
final destiny, and it saps us with numbness, and
we are less than ourselves. Seven nights had I
been on pilgrimage, and two of them had I passed
in the open. Seven great heights had I climbed : the

DESOLATION 191

Forest, Archettes, the Ballon, the Mont Terrible,
the Watershed, the pass by Moutier, the Weissen-
stein. Seven depths had I fallen to : twice . to the
Moselle, the gap of Belfort, the gorge of the
Doubs, Glovelier valley, the hole of Moutier, and
now this plain of the Aar. I had marched 180
miles. It was no wonder that on this eighth day
I was oppressed and that all the night long I drank
no good wine, met no one to remember well, nor
sang any songs. All this part of my way was full
of what they call Duty, and I was sustained only
by my knowledge that the vast mountains (which
had disappeared) would be part of my life very
soon if I still went on steadily towards Rome.

The sun had risen when I reached Burgdorf, and
I there went to a railway station, and outside of it
drank coffee and ate bread. I also bought old news-
papers in French, and looked at everything wearily
and with sad eyes. There was nothing to draw. How
can a man draw pain in the foot and knee? And
that was all there was remarkable at that moment.

I watched a train come in. It was full of
tourists, who (it may have been a subjective
illusion) seemed to me common and worthless
people, and sad into the bargain. It was going
to Interlaken ; and I felt a languid contempt for

192

THE ALTERNATIVE

people who went to Interlaken instead of driving
right across the great hills to Rome.

After an hour or so of this melancholy dawd-
ling, I put a map before me on a little marble
table, ordered some more coffee, and blew into my

^AiD6t CALLEJ)

7 ftAieviEd &fUT.

-- lilric&tti..

tepid life a moment of warmth by the effort of
coming to a necessary decision. I had (for the
first time since I had left Lorraine) the choice of
two roads ; and why this was so the following map
will make clear.

Here you see that there is no possibility of
following the straight way to Rome, but that one

A DAY WITHOUT SALT 193

must go a few miles east or west of it. From
Burgundy one has to strike a point on the sources
of the Emmen, and Burgdorf is on the Emmen.
Therefore one might follow the Emmen all the way
up. But it seemed that the road climbed up above
a gorge that way, whereas by the other (which is
just as straight) the road is good (it seemed) and
fairly level. So I chose this latter Eastern way,
which, at the bifurcation, takes one up a tributary
of the Emmen, then over a rise to the Upper
Emmen again.

Do you want it made plainer than that ? I
should think not. And tell me — what can it profit
you to know these geographical details ? Believe
me, I write them down for my own gratification,
not yours.

I say a day without salt. A trudge. The air was
ordinary, the colours common ; men, animals, and
trees indifferent. Something had stopped working.

Our energy also is from God, and we should
never be proud of it, even it we can cover thirty
miles day after day (as I can), or bend a penny in
one's hand as could Frocot, the driver in my piece
— a man you never knew — or write bad verse very
rapidly as can so many moderns. I say our energy

i94 IN ALL THESE

also is from God, and we should never be proud of
it as though it were from ourselves, but we should
accept it as a kind of present, and we should be
thankful for it ; just as a man should thank God
for his reason, as did the madman in the Story
of the Rose, who thanked God that he at least
was sane though all the rest of the world had
recently lost their reason.

Indeed, this defaillance and breakdown which
comes from time to time over the mind is a very
sad thing, but it can be made of great use to us
if we will draw from it the lesson that we our-
selves are nothing. Perhaps it is a grace. Perhaps
in these moments our minds repose. . . . Any-
how, a day without salt.

You understand that under (or in) these cir-
cumstances

When I was at Oxford there was a great and
terrible debate that shook the Empire, and that
intensely exercised the men whom we send out to
govern the Empire, and which, therefore, must
have had its effect upon the Empire, as to whether
one should say " under these circumstances " or
" in these circumstances " ; nor did I settle matters
by calling a conclave and suggesting Quae quum
it a sint as a common formula, because a new debate

CIRCUMSTANCES

+ 9S

arose upon when you should say sint and when
you should say sunt, and they all wrangled like
kittens in a basket.

Until there rose a deep-voiced man from an
outlying college, who said, " For my part I will
say that under these circumstances, or in these
circumstances, or in spite of these circumstances,
or hovering playfully above these circumstances,
or —

Burrowing under
Plodding up to
Recognising
Refusing
Attacking

Warily approaching
Wholly pooh-poohing
Somewhat confusing
Honestly accepting
Very stoutlv criticising
Humorously bantering
Vigorously regarding
Ironically receiving

Brutally denying
Jovially ragging
Pertinaciously tracking
Loudly deploring
Practically considering
Angrily rejecting
Exactly weighing
Largely comprehending
Narrowlv analysing
Strictly confining
Genially admitting
Ferociously damning
Urbanely neglecting

Gentlv deprecating
Cynically questioning
Hugely denouncing
Pettily belittling
Silently absorbing
Honestly doubting
and,
in the last place,
Occasionally eliminating

196 THE HUNGRY STUDENT

I take you all for Fools and Pedants, in the Chief,
in the Chevron, and in the quarter Fess. Fools
absolute, and Pedants lordless. Free Fools, un-
landed Fools, and Fools incommensurable, and
Pedants displayed and rampant of the Tierce
Major. Fools incalculable and Pedants irreparable ;
indeed, the arch Fool-pedants in a universe of
pedantic folly and foolish pedantry, O you pedant-
fools of the world ! "

But by this time he was alone, and thus was this
great question never properly decided.

Under these circumstances, then (or in these
circumstances), it would profit you but little if I
were to attempt the description of the Valley of
the Emmen, of the first foot-hills of the Alps, and
of the very uninteresting valley which runs on from
Langnau.

I had best employ my time in telling the story of
the Hungry Student.

Lector. And if you are so worn-out and bereft
of all emotions, how can you tell a story?

Auctor. These two conditions permit me.
First, that I am writing some time after, and
that I have recovered ; secondly, that the story is
not mine, but taken straight out of that nationalist
newspaper which had served me so long to wrap up

FAILS TO APPEAR 197

my bread and bacon in my haversack. This is the
story, and I will tell it you.

Now, I think of it, it would be a great waste of
time. Here am I no farther than perhaps a third
of my journey, and I have already admitted so much
digression that my pilgrimage is like the story of
a man asleep and dreaming, instead of the plain,
honest, and straightforward narrative of fact. I
will therefore postpone the Story of the Hungry
Student till I get into the plains of Italy, or into
the barren hills of that peninsula, or among the
over-well-known towns of Tuscany, or in some
other place where a little padding will do neither
you nor me any great harm.

On the other hand, do not imagine that I am
going to give you any kind of description of this
intolerable day's march. If you want some kind
of visual concept (pretty word), take all these little
chalets which were beginning and make wrhat you
can of them.

Lector. Where are they ?

Auctor. They are still in Switzerland ; not
here. They were over-numerous as I maundered
up from where at last the road leaves the valley
and makes over a little pass for a place called

198 STORY OF THE HORSE

Schangnau. But though it is not a story, on the
contrary, an exact incident and the truth — a thing
that I would swear to in the court of justice, or
quite willingly and cheerfully believe if another
man told it to me, or even take as historical
if I found it in a modern English history of the
Anglo-Saxon Church — though, I repeat, it is a
thing actually lived, yet I will tell it you.

It was at the very end of the road, and when
an enormous weariness had begun to add some
kind of interest to this stuffless episode of the
dull day, that a peasant with a brutal face, driving
a cart very rapidly, came up with me. I said to
him nothing, but he said to me some words in
German which I did not understand. We were at
that moment just opposite a little inn upon the
right hand of the road, and the peasant began
making signs to me to hold his horse for him
while he went in and drank.

How willing I was to do this you will not
perhaps understand, unless you have that delicate
and subtle pleasure in the holding of horses' heads,
which is the boast and glory of some rare minds.
And I was the more willing to do it from the fact
that I have the habit of this kind of thing, acquired
in the French manceuvres, and had once held a

STORY OF THE HORSE 199

horse for no less a person than a General of
Division, who gave me a franc for it, and this
franc I spent later with the men of my battery,
purchasing wine. So to make a long story short,
as the publisher said when he published the popular
edition of " Pamela," I held the horse for the
peasant; always, of course, under the implicit
understanding that he should allow me when he
came out to have a drink, which I, of course,
expected him to bring in his own hands.

Far from it. I can understand the anger which
some people feel against the Swiss when they travel
in that country, though I will always hold that it
is monstrous to come into a man's country of your
own accord, and especially into a country so free
and so well governed as is Switzerland, and then
to quarrel with the particular type of citizen that
you find there.

Let us not discuss politics. The point is that
the peasant sat in there drinking with his friends
for a good three-quarters of an hour. Now and
then a man would come out and look at the sky,
and cough and spit and turn round again and say
something to the people within in German, and go
off; but no one paid the least attention to me as I
held this horse.

200 STORY OF THE HORSE

I was already in a very angry and irritable mood,
for the horse was restive and smelt his stable, and
wished to break away from me. And all angry
and irritable as I was, I turned around to see if
this man were coming to relieve me ; but I saw him
laughing and joking with the people inside ; and
they were all looking my way out of their window
as they laughed. I may have been wrong, but I
thought they were laughing at me. A man who
knows the Swiss intimately, and who has written
a book upon " The Drink Traffic : The Example
of Switzerland," tells me they certainly were not
laughing at me; at any rate, I thought they
were, and moved by a sudden anger I let go the
reins, gave the horse a great clout, and set him off
careering and galloping like a whirlwind down the
road from which he had come, with the bit in his
teeth and all the storms of heaven in his four feet.
Instantly, as you may imagine, all the scoffers came
tumbling out of the inn, hullabooling, gesticulating,
and running like madmen after the horse, and one
very old man even turned to protest to me. But
I, setting my teeth, grasping my staff, and re-
membering the purpose of my great journey, set
on up the road again with my face towards Rome.

QUALITY OF BOOKS 201

I sincerely hope, trust, and pray that this part of
my journev will not seem as dull to you as it did
to me at the time, or as it does to me now while
I write of it. But now I come to think of it,
it cannot seem as dull, for I had to walk that
wretched thirty miles or so all the day long,
whereas you have not even to read it ; for I am
not going to say anything more about it, but lead
you straight to the end.

Oh, blessed quality of books, that makes them
a refuge from living ! For in a book everything
can be made to fit in, all tedium can be skipped
over, and the intense moments can be made time-
less and eternal, and as a poet who is too little
known has well said in one of his unpublished
lyrics, we, by the art of writing —

" Can fix the high elusive hour
And stand in things divine.",

And as for high elusive hours, devil a bit of
one was there all the way from Burgdorf to the
Inn of the Bridge, except the ecstatic flash of joy
when I sent that horse careering down the road
with his bad master after him and all his gang
shouting among the hollow hills.

So. It was already evening. I was coming,

202 THE UPPER EMMEN

more tired than ever, to a kind of little pass by
which my road would bring me back again to the
Emmen, now nothing but a torrent. All the slope
down the other side of the little pass (three or four
hundred feet perhaps) was covered by a village,
called, if I remember right, Schangnau, and there was
a large school on my right and a great number of
children there dancing round in a ring and singing
songs. The sight so cheered me that I deter-
mined to press on up the valley, though with no
definite goal for the night. It was a foolish decision,
for I was really in the heart of an unknown coun-
try, at the end of roads, at the sources of rivers,
beyond help. I knew that straight before me, not
five miles away, was the Brienzer Grat, the huge
high wall which it was my duty to cross right over
from side to side. I did not know whether or
not there was an inn between me and that vast
barrier.

The light was failing. I had perhaps some
vaorue idea of sleeping out, but that would have
killed me, for a heavy mist that covered all the tops
of the hills and that made a roof over the valley,
began to drop down a fine rain ; and, as they sing
in church on Christmas Eve, "the heavens sent
down their dews upon a just man." But that was

THE WOODEN TUN 203

written in Palestine, where rain is a rare blessing;
there and then in the cold evening they would
have done better to have warmed the righteous.
There is no controlling them ; they mean well,
but they bungle terribly.

The road stopped being a road, and became like
a Californian trail. I approached enormous gates in
the hills, high, precipitous, and narrow. The mist
rolled over them, hiding their summits and mak-
ing them seem infinitely lifted up and reaching
endlessly into the thick sky ; the straight, tenuous
lines of the rain made them seem narrower still.
Just as I neared them, hobbling, I met a man
driving two cows, and said to him the word,
" Guest-house ? " to which he said " Yaw ! " and
pointed out a clump of trees to me just under the
precipice and right in the gates I speak of. So I
went there over an old bridge, and found a wooden
house and went in.

It was a house which one entered without cere-
mony. The door was open, and one walked straight
into a great room. There sat three men playing at
cards. I saluted them loudly in French, English,
and Latin, but they did not understand me, and
what seemed really remarkable in an hotel (for it
was an hotel rather than an inn), no one in the house

2o4 THE BRIENZER GRAT

understood me — neither the servants nor any one;
but the servants did not laugh at me as had the
poor people near Burgdorf, they only stood round
me looking at me patiently in wonder as cows do at
trains. Then they brought me food, and as I did
not know the names of the different kinds of food,
I had to eat what they chose ; and the angel of that
valley protected me from boiled mutton. I knew,
however, the word Wein, which is the same in all
languages, and so drank a quart of it consciously
and of a set purpose. Then I slept, and next
morning at dawn I rose up, put on my thin, wet
linen clothes, and went downstairs. No one was
about. I looked around for something to fill my
sack. I picked up a great hunk of bread from
the dining-room table, and went out shivering
into the cold drizzle that was still falling from a
shrouded sky. Before me, a great forbidding wall,
growing blacker as it went upwards and ending
in a level line of mist, stood the Brienzer Grat.

To understand what I next had to do it is
necessary to look back at the little map on page 192.

You will observe that the straight way to Rome
cuts the Lake of Brienz rather to the eastward of
the middle, and then goes slap over Wetterhorn
and strikes the Rhone Valley at a place called

HOW IT LIES 205

Ulrichen. That is how a bird would do it, if
some High Pope of Birds lived in Rome and
needed visiting, as, for instance, the Great Auk ;
or if some old primal relic sacred to birds was
connected therewith, as, for instance, the bones of
the Dodo. . . . But I digress. The point is that the
straight line takes one over the Brienzer Grat, over
the lake, and then over the Wetterhorn. That was
manifestly impossible. But whatever of it was
possible had to be done, and among the possible
things was clambering over the high ridge of the
Brienzer Grat instead of going round like a coward
by Interlaken. After I had clambered over it, how-
ever, needs must I should have to take a pass called
the Grimsel Pass and reach the Rhone Valley that
way. It was with such a determination that I had
come here to the upper waters of the Emmen, and
stood now on a moist morning in' the basin where
that stream rises, at the foot of the mountain range
that divided me from the lake.

The Brienzer Grat is an extraordinary thing. It
is quite straight ; its summits are, of course, of
different heights, but from below they seem even,
like a ridge: and, indeed, the whole mountain is
more like a ridge than any other I have seen. At
one end is a peak called the " Red Horn," the

206

THE BRIENZER GRAT

other end falls suddenly above Interlaken, and
wherever you should cut it you would get a section
like this, for it is as steep as anything can be short

of sheer rock. There are no precipices on it,
though there are nasty slabs quite high enough to
kill a man — I saw several of three or four hundred
feet. It is about five or six thousand feet high,
and it stands right up and along the northern shore
of the lake of Brienz. I began the ascent.

Spongy meads, that soughed under the feet and
grew steeper as one rose, took up the first few
hundred feet. Little rivulets of mere dampness
ran in among the under moss, and such very small
hidden flowers as there were drooped with the surfeit
of moisture. The rain was now indistinguishable

THE FOG 207

from a mist, and indeed I had come so near to
the level belt of cloud, that already its gloom was
exchanged for that diffused light which fills vapours
from within and lends them their mystery. A
belt of thick brushwood and low trees lay before
me, clinging to the slope, and as I pushed with
great difficulty and many turns to right and left
through its tangle a wisp of cloud enveloped me,
and from that time on I was now in, now out,
of a deceptive drifting fog, in which it was most
difficult to gauge one's progress.

Now and then a higher mass of rock, a peak on
the ridge, would show clear through a corridor of
cloud and be hidden again ; also at times I would
stand hesitating before a sharp wall or slab, and
wait for a shifting of the fog to make sure of
the best way round. I struck what might have
been a loose path or perhaps only a gully ; lost it
again and found it again. In one place I climbed
up a jagged surface for fifty feet, only to find when
it cleared that it was no part of the general ascent,
but a mere obstacle which might have been out-
flanked. At another time I stopped for a good
quarter of an hour at an edge that might have been
an indefinite fall of smooth rock, but that turned
out to be a short drop, easy for a man, and not

208 THE HALT IN THE FOG

much longer than my body. So I went upwards
always, drenched and doubting, and not sure of the
height I had reached at any time.

At last I came to a place where a smooth stone
lay between two pillared monoliths, as though it
had been put there for a bench. Though all
around me was dense mist, yet I could see above
me the vague shape of a summit looming quite near.
So I said to myself —

" I will sit here and wait till it grows lighter
and clearer, for I must now be within two or three
hundred feet of the top of the ridge, and as any-
thing at all may be on the other side, I had best go
carefully and knowing my way."

So I sat down facing the way I had to go and
looking upwards, till perhaps a movement of the
air might show me against a clear sky the line of
the ridge, and so let me estimate the work that
remained to do. I kept my eyes fixed on the point
where I judged that sky-line to lie, lest I should
miss some sudden gleam revealing it ; and as I sat
there I grew mournful and began to consider the
folly of climbing this great height on an empty
stomach. The soldiers of the Republic fought
their battles often before breakfast, but never, I
think, without having drunk warm coffee, and no

THE SUDDEN GULF 209

one should attempt great efforts without some such
refreshment before starting. Indeed, my fasting,
and the rare thin air of the height, the chill and
the dampness that had soaked my thin clothes
through and through, quite lowered my blood and
left it piano, whimpering and irresolute. I shivered
and demanded the sun.

Then I bethought me of the hunk of bread I had
stolen, and pulling it out of my haversack I began
to munch that ungrateful breakfast. It was hard
and stale, and gave me little sustenance; I still
gazed upwards into the uniform meaningless light
fog, looking for the ridge.

Suddenly, with no warning to prepare the mind,
a faint but distinct wind blew upon me, the mist
rose in a wreath backward and upward, and I was
looking through clear immensity, not at any ridge,
but over an awful gulf at great, white fields of
death. The Alps were right upon me and before
me, overwhelming and commanding empty down-
ward distances of air. Between them and me was
a narrow dreadful space of nothingness and silence,
and a sheer mile below us both, a floor to that
prodigious hollow, lay the little lake.

My stone had not been a halting-place at all, but
was itself the summit of the ridge, and those two

210 THE ALPS CLOSE BY

rocks on either side of it framed a notch upon the
very edge and sky-line of the high hills of Brienz.

Surprise and wonder had not time to form in my
spirit before both were swallowed up by fear.
The proximity of that immense wall of cold, the
Alps, seen thus full from the level of its middle
height and comprehended as it cannot be from
the depths ; its suggestion of something never
changing throughout eternity — yet dead — was a
threat to the eager mind. They, the vast Alps,
all wrapped round in ice, frozen, and their im-
mobility enhanced by the delicate, roaming veils
which (as from an attraction) hovered in their
hollows, seemed to halt the process of living. And
the living soul whom they thus perturbed was sup-
ported by no companionship. There were no trees
or blades of grass around me, only the uneven
and primal stones of that height. There were no
birds in the gulf; there was no sound. And the
whiteness of the glaciers, the blackness of the
snow-streaked rocks beyond, was glistening and
unsoftened. There had come something evil into
their sublimity. I was afraid.

Nor could I bear to look downwards. The slope
was in no way a danger. A man could walk up
it without often using his hands, and a man

THE LIFE-OUALM 211

could go down it slowly without any direct fall,
though here and there he would have to turn
round at each dip or step and hold with his hands
and feel a little for his foothold. I suppose the
general slope, down, down, to where the green
began was not sixtv degrees, but have you ever
tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty
degrees ? It drags the mind after it, and I could
not bear to begin the descent.

However I reasoned with myself. I said to my-
self that a man should only be afraid of real
dangers. That nightmare was not for the daylight.
That there was now no mist but a warm sun. Then
choosing a gully where water sometimes ran, but
now dry, I warily began to descend, using my
staff" and leaning well backwards.

There was this disturbing thing about the gully,
that it went in steps, and before each step one saw
the sky just a yard or two ahead : one lost the com-
forting sight of earth. One knew of course that it
would only be a little drop, and that the slope
would begin again, but it disturbed one. And it is
a trial to drop or clamber down, say fourteen or
fifteen feet, sometimes twentv, and then to find no
flat foothold but that eternal steep beginning again.
And this outline in which I have somewhat, but

212

THE STEEP

not much, exaggerated the slope, will show what I
mean. The dotted line is the line of vision just as
y' ^' one got to a " step."
The little figure is
Auctor. Lector is
up in the air looking
at him. Observe the
perspective ot the lake
below, but make no
comments.

I went very slowly.
When I was about half-
way down and had
come to a place where
a shoulder of heaped
rock stood on my left
and where little parallel
ledges led up to it,
having grown accus-
tomed to the descent
and easier in my mind,
I sat down on a slab
and drew imperfectly
the things I saw : the
lake below me, the first forests clinging to the foot
of the Alps beyond, their higher slopes of snow,

Jfmfff/JM

vkff

THE LAST DESCENT

213

and the clouds that had now
begun to gather round them
and that altogether hid the
last third of their enor-
mous height.

Then I saw a
steamer on the
lake. I felt in
touch with

easier. I
snapped my
fingers at the

great

leviis

M "

that haunt high ]{\q

mountains. I
snirred the gross and
comfortable air of the

lower valleys, I entered
the belt of wood and was
soon going quite a pace
through the trees, for I had
found a path, and was now able to
sing. So I did.

At last I saw through the trunks,

2i4 BRIENZ

but a few hundred feet below me, the highroad that
skirts the lake. I left the path and scrambled
straight down to it. I came to a wall which I
climbed, and found myself in somebody's garden.
Crossing this and admiring its wealth and order (I
was careful not to walk on the lawns), I opened a
little private gate and came on to the road, and
from there to Brienz was but a short way along a
fine hard surface in a hot morning sun, with the
gentle lake on my right hand not five yards away,
and with delightful trees upon my left, caressing
and sometimes even covering me with their shade.
I was therefore dry, ready and contented when
I entered by mid morning the curious town of
Brienz, which is all one long street, and of which
the population is Protestant. I say dry, ready and
contented ; dry in my clothes, ready for food, con-
tented with men and nature. But as I entered I
squinted up that interminable slope, I saw the fog
wreathing again along the ridge so infinitely above
me, and I considered myself a fool to have crossed
the Brienzer Grat without breakfast. But I could
get no one in Brienz to agree with me, because no
one thought I had done it, though several people
there could talk French.

BAD GEOGRAPHY 215

The Grimsel Pass is the valley of the Aar ; it
is also the eastern flank of that great massif*,
or bulk and mass of mountains called the Bernese
Oberland. Western Switzerland, you must know,
is not (as J first thought it was when I gazed
down from the Weissenstein) a plain surrounded
by a ring of mountains, but rather it is a
plain in its northern half (the plain of the lower
Aar), and in its southern half it is two enormous
parallel lumps of mountains. I call them "lumps,"
because they are so very broad and tortuous in
their plan that they are hardly ranges. Now these
two lumps are the Bernese Oberland and the
Pennine Alps, and between them runs a deep trench
called the valley of the Rhone. Take Mont Blanc
in the west and a peak called the Crystal Peak over
the Val Bavona on the east, and they are the
flanking bastions of one great wall, the Pennine
Alps. Take the Diablerets on the west, and the
Wetterhorn on the east, and they are the flanking
bastions of another great wall, the Bernese Ober-
land. And these two walls are parallel, with the
Rhone in between.

Now these two walls converge at a point where
there is a sort of knot of mountain ridges, and
this point may be taken as being on the boundary

2l6

A DOUBTFUL MAP

between Eastern and Western Switzerland. At this
wonderful point the Ticino, the Rhone, the Aar,
and the Reuss all begin, and it is here that the
simple arrangement of the Alps to the west turns
into the confused jumble of the Alps to the east.

When you are high up on either wall you can
catch the plan of all this, but to avoid a con-
fused description and to help you to follow the
marvellous, Hannibalian and never-before-attempted
charge and march which I made, and which, alas !
ended only in a glorious defeat — to help you to
picture faintly to yourselves the mirific and horri-
pilant adventure whereby I nearly achieved super-
human success in spite of all the powers of the
air, I append a little map which is rough but clear

MORE GEOGRAPHY 217

and plain, and which I beg you to study closely,
for it will make it easy for you to understand what
next happened in my pilgrimage.

The dark strips are the deep cloven valleys, the
shaded belt is that higher land which is yet pass-
able by any ordinary man. The part left white
you may take to be the very high fields of ice and
snow with great peaks which an ordinary man must
regard as impassable, unless, indeed, he can wait
for his weather and take guides and go on as a
tourist instead of a pilgrim.

You will observe that I have marked five clefts
or valleys. A is that of the Aar, and the little
white patch at the beginning is the lake of Brienz.
B is that of the Reuss. C is that of the Rhone ;
and all these three are north of the great watershed
or main chain, and all three are full of German-
speaking people.

On the other hand, D is the valley of the Toccia,
E of the Maggia, and F of the Ticino. All these
three are south of the great watershed, and are
inhabited by Italian-speaking people. All these
three lead down at last to Lake Major, and so to
Milan and so to Rome.

The straight line to Rome is marked on my
map by a dotted line ending in an arrow, and you

218 MORE AND MORE

will see that it was just my luck that it should
cross slap over that knot or tangle of ranges where
all the rivers spring. The problem was how to
negotiate a passage from the valley of the Aar to
one of the three Italian valleys, without departing
too far from my straight line. To explain my
track I must give the names of all the high passes
between the valleys. That between A and C is
called the Grimsel ; that between B and C the
Furka. That between D and C is the Gries Pass,
that between F and C the Nufenen, and that between
E and F is not the easy thing it looks on the map;
indeed it is hardly a pass at all but a scramble
over very high peaks, and it is called the Crystalline
Mountain. Finally, on the far right of my map,
you see a high passage between B and F. This
is the famous St. Gothard.

The straight way of all was (i) over the Grimsel,
then, the moment I got into the valley of the
Rhone (2), up out of it again over the Nufenen,
then the moment I was down into the valley of
the Ticino (F), up out of it again (3) over the
Crystalline into the valley of the Maggia (E). Once
in the Maggia valley (the top of it is called the
Val Bavona), it is a straight path for the lakes and
Rome. There were also these advantages : that I

AND MORE STILL

219

should be in a place very rarely visited — all the
guide-books are doubtful on it ; that I should be
going quite straight; that I should be accom-
plishing a feat, viz. the crossing of those high
passes one after the other (and you must remember
that over the Nufenen there is no road at all).

But every one I asked told me that thus early in
the year (it was not the middle of June) I could
not hope to scramble over the Crystalline. No one
(they said) could do it and live. It was all ice and
snow and cold mist and verglas, and the precipices
were smooth — a man would never get across ; so it
was not worth while crossing the Nufenen Pass if
I was to be balked at the Crystal, and I determined
on the Gries Pass. I said to myself: " I will go on
over the Grimsel, and once in the valley of the
Rhone, I will walk a mile or two down to where the
Gries Pass opens, and I will go over it into Italy."
For the Gries Pass, though not quite in the straight
line, had this advantage, that once over it you are
really in Italy. In the Ticino valley or in the
Val Bavona, though the people are as Italian as
Catullus, yet politically they count as part of
Switzerland ; and therefore if you enter Italy
thereby, you are not suddenly introduced to that
country, but, as it were, inoculated, and led on by

22o THE GRIMSEL BEGINS

degrees, which is a pity. For good things should
come suddenly, like the demise of that wicked man,
Mr. (deleted by the censor), who had oppressed the
poor for some forty years, when he was shot dead
from behind a hedge, and died in about the time it
takes to boil an egg, and there was an end of him.

Having made myself quite clear that I had a
formed plan to go over the Grimsel by the new
road, then up over the Gries, where there is no
road at all, and so down into the vale of the
Tosa, and having calculated that on the morrow I
should be in Italy, I started out from Brienz after
eating a great meal, it being then about midday,
and I having already, as you know, crossed the
Brienzer Grat since dawn.

The task of that afternoon was more than I
could properly undertake, nor did I fulfil it. From
Brienz to the top of the Grimsel is, as the crow
flies, quite twenty miles, and by the road a good
twenty-seven. It is true I had only come from
over the high hills; perhaps six miles in a straight
line. But what a six miles ! and all without food.
Not certain, therefore, how much of the pass I
could really do that day, but aiming at crossing it,
like a fool, I went on up the first miles.

For an hour or more after Brienz the road runs

MEIRINGEN 221

round the base of and then away from a fine great
rock. There is here an alluvial plain like a con-
tinuation of the lake, and the Aar runs through it,
canalised and banked and straight, and at last the
road also becomes straight. On either side rise
gigantic cliffs enclosing the valley, and (on the day
I passed there) going up into the clouds, which,
though high, yet made a roof for the valley. From
the great mountains on the left the noble rock
jutted out alone and dominated the little plain ;
on the right the buttresses of the main Alps all
stood in a row, and between them went whorls of
vapour high, high up — just above the places where
snow still clung to the slopes. These whorls made
the utmost steeps more and more misty, till at last
they were lost in a kind of great darkness, in which
the last and highest banks of ice seemed to be
swallowed up. I often stopped to gaze straight
above me, and I marvelled at the silence.

It was the first part of the afternoon when I got
to a place called Meiringen, and I thought that
there I would eat and drink a little more. So I
steered into the main street, but there I found such
a yelling and roaring as I had never heard before,
and very damnable it was ; as though men were
determined to do common evil wherever God

222 THE LOUD NOISE

has given them a chance of living in awe and
worship.

For they were all bawling and howling, with
great placards and tickets, and saying, " This way
to the Extraordinary Waterfall ; that way to the
Strange Cave. Come with me and you shall see
the never-to-be-forgotten Falls of the Aar," and so
forth. So that my illusion of being alone in the
roots of the world dropped off me very quickly,
and I wondered how people could be so helpless
and foolish as to travel about in Switzerland as
tourists and meet with all this vulgarity and
beastliness.

If a man goes to drink good wine he does not
say, " So that the wine be good I do not mind
eating strong pepper and smelling hartshorn as I
drink it," and if a man goes to read good verse,
for instance, Jean Richepin, he does not say, " Go
on playing on the trombone, go on banging the
cymbals ; so long as I am reading good verse 1 am
content." Yet men now go into the vast hills
and sleep and live in their recesses, and pretend
to be indifferent to all the touts and shouters
and hurry and hotels and high prices and abomi-
nations. Thank God, it goes in grooves ! I
say it again, thank God, the railways are trenches

THE AAR 223

that drain our modern marsh, for you have but to
avoid railways, even by five miles, and you can get
more peace than would fill a nosebag. All the
world is my garden since they built railways, and
gave me leave to keep off them.

Also I vowed a franc to the Black Virgin of La
Delivrande (next time I should be passing there)
because I was delivered from being a tourist, and
because all this horrible noise was not being dinned
at me (who was a poor and dirty pilgrim, and no
kind of prey for these cabmen, and busmen, and
guides and couriers), but at a crowd of drawn, sad,
jaded tourists that had come in by a train.

Soon I had left them behind. The road climbed
the first step upwards in the valley, going round a
rock on the other side of which the Aar had cut
itself a gorge and rushed in a fall and rapids.
Then the road went on and on weary mile after
weary mile, and I stuck to it, and it rose slowly all
the time, and all the time the Aar went dashing
by, roaring and filling the higher valley with echoes.

I got beyond the villages. The light shining
suffused through the upper mist began to be the
light of evening. Rain, very fine and slight, began
to fall. It was cold. There met and passed me,
going down the road, a carriage with a hood up,

224 THE INITIAL D

driving at full speed. It could not be from over
the pass, for I knew that it was not yet open for
carriages or carts. It was therefore from a hotel
somewhere, and if there was a hotel I should find
it. I looked back to ask the distance, but they
were beyond earshot, and so I went on.

My boots in which I had sworn to walk to Rome
were ruinous. Already since the Weissenstein they
had gaped, and now the Brienzer Grat had made
the sole of one of them quite free at the toe. It
flapped as I walked. Very soon I should be walking
on my uppers. I limped also, and I hated the wet
cold rain. But I had to go on. Instead of flourish-
ing my staff and singing, I leant on it painfully
and thought of duty, and death, and dereliction,
and every other horrible thing that begins with a D.
I had to go on. If I had gone back there was
nothing for miles.

Before it was dark — indeed one could still read —
I saw a group of houses beyond the Aar, and soon
after I saw that my road would pass them, going
over a bridge. When I reached them I went into
the first, saying to myself, " I will eat, and if I can
go no farther I will sleep here."

There were in the house two women, one old,
the other young; and they were French-speaking,

THE SNOW BLINK 225

from the Vaud country. They had faces like
Scotch people, and were very kindly, but odd,
being Calvinist. I said, " Have you any beans ? "
They said, " Yes." I suggested they should make
me a dish of beans and bacon, and give me a bottle
of wine, while I dried myself at their great stove.
All this they readily did for me, and I eat heartily
and drank heavily, and they begged me afterwards
to stop the night and pay them for it; but I was
so set up by my food and wine that I excused
myself and went out again and took the road. It
was not yet dark.

By some reflection from the fields of snow,
which were now quite near at hand through
the mist, the daylight lingered astonishingly late.
The cold grew bitter as I went on through the
gloaming. There were no trees save rare and stunted
pines. The Aar was a shallow brawling torrent,
thick with melting ice and snow and mud. Coarse
grass grew on the rocks sparsely ; there were no
flowers. The mist overhead was now quite near,
and I still went on and steadily up through the half-
light. It was as lonely as a calm at sea, except for
the noise of the river. I had overworn myself, and
that sustaining surface which hides from us in
our health the abysses below the mind — I felt it

226 THE RICH HOTEL

growing weak and thin. My fatigue bewildered
me. The occasional steeps beside the road, one
especially beneath a high bridge where a tributary
falls into the Aar in a cascade, terrified me. They
were like the emptiness of dreams. At last it being
now dark, and I having long since entered the
upper mist, or rather cloud (for I was now as high
as the clouds), I saw a light gleaming through the
fog, just off the road, through pine-trees. It was
time. I could not have gone much farther.

To this I turned and found there one of those
new hotels, not very large, but very expensive.
They knew me at once for what I was, and welcomed
me with joy. They gave me hot rum and sugar, a
fine warm bed, told me I was the first that had yet
stopped there that year, and left me to sleep very
deep and yet in pain, as men sleep who are stunned.
But twice that night I woke suddenly, staring at
darkness. I had outworn the physical network upon
which the soul depends, and I was full of terrors.

Next morning I had fine coffee and bread and
butter and the rest, like a rich man ; in a gilded
dining-room all set out for the rich, and served by a
fellow that bowed and scraped. Also they made
me pay a great deal, and kept their eyes off my

HEAD OF THE PASS 227

boots, and were still courteous to me, and I to
them. Then I bought wine of them — the first wine
not of the country that I had drunk on this march,
a Burgundy — and putting it in my haversack with
a nice white roll, left them to wait for the next
man whom the hills might send them.

The clouds, the mist, were denser than ever in
that early morning ; one could only see the imme-
diate road. The cold was very great ; my clothes
were not quite dried, but my heart was high, and I
pushed along well enough, though stiffly, till I came
to what they call the Hospice, which was once a
monk-house, I suppose, but is now an inn. I had
brandy there, and on going out I found that it stood
at the foot of a sharp ridge which was the true
Grimsel Pass, the neck which joins the Bernese
Oberland to the eastern group of high mountains.
This ridge or neck was steep like a pitched roof
— very high I found it, and all of black glassy
rock, with here and there snow in sharp, even,
sloping sheets just holding to it. I could see but
little of it at a time on account of the mist.

Hitherto for all these miles the Aar had been
my companion, and the road, though rising always,
had risen evenly and not steeply. Now the Aar
was left behind in the icy glen where it rises, and

228 THE LAKE OF THE DEAD

the road went in an artificial and carefully built set
of zig-zags up the face of the cliff. There is a short
cut, but I could not find it in the mist. It is the
old mule-path. Here and there, however, it was
possible to cut off long corners by scrambling over
the steep black rock and smooth ice, and all the
while the cold, soft mist wisped in and out around
me. After a thousand feet of this I came to the
top of the Grimsel, but not before I had passed
a place where an avalanche had destroyed the
road and where planks were laid. Also before one
got to the very summit, no short cuts or climb-
ing were possible. The road ran deep in a cutting
like a Devonshire lane. Only here the high banks
were solid snow.

Some little way past the summit, on the first
zig-zag down, I passed the Lake of the Dead in
its mournful hollow. The mist still enveloped
all the ridge-side, and moved like a press of
spirits over the frozen water, then — as suddenly
as on the much lower Brienzer Grat, and (as on
the Brienzer Grat) to the southward and the sun,
the clouds lifted and wreathed up backward and
were gone, and where there had just been fulness
was only an immensitv of empty air and a sudden
sight of clear hills beyond and of little strange

COMMENT 229

distant things thousands and thousands of feet
below.

Lector. Pray are we to have any more of that
fine writing ?

Auctor. I saw there as in a cup things that I
had thought (when I first studied the map at home)
far too spacious and spread apart to go into the
view. Yet here they were all quite contained and
close together, on so vast a scale was the whole
place conceived. It was the comb of mountains
of which I have written ; the meeting of all the
valleys.

There, from the height of a steep bank, as it
were (but a bank many thousands of feet high),
one looked down into a whole district or little
world. On the map, I say, it had seemed so great
that I had thought one would command but this
or that portion of it ; as it was, one saw it all.

And this is a peculiar thing I have noticed in all
mountains, and have never been able to understand —
namely, that if you draw a plan or section to scale,
your mountain does not seem a very important
thing. One should not, in theory, be able to
dominate from its height, nor to feel the world
small below one, nor to hold a whole countryside

13°

DIGRESSION

in one's hand — yet one does. The mountains from
their heights reveal to us two truths. They sud-
denly make us feel our insignificance, and at the
same time they free the immortal Mind, and let it
feel its greatness, and they release it from the earth.
But I say again, in theory, when one considers the
exact relation of their height to the distances one
views from them, they ought to claim no such
effect, and that they can produce that effect is
related to another thing — the way in which they
exaggerate their own steepness.

For instance, those noble hills, my downs in
Sussex, when you are upon them overlooking the
weald, from Chanctonbury say, feel like this —

Bo> Mill

but in reality they are like this —

BoxH,^.

"TU Via. let

Cf.A-ncfofttM.nv

Ck'vnctoYilui.y

or even lower. Indeed, it is impossible to give
them truly, so insignificant are they ; if the stretch
of the Weald were made nearly a yard long,
Chanctonbury would not, in proportion, be more

INTERLUDE

231

than a fifth of an inch high ! And yet, from the
top of Chanctonbury, how one seems to overlook
it and possess it all !

Well, so it was here from the Grimsel when I
overlooked the springs of the Rhone. In true pro-
portion the valley I gazed into and over must have
been somewhat like this —

It felt for all the world as deep and utterly below
me as this other —

Moreover, where there was no mist, the air was
so surprisingly clear that I could see everything
clean and sharp wherever I turned my eyes. The
mountains forbade any very far horizons to the
view, and all that I could see was as neat and
vivid as those coloured photographs they sell with

232 A STILL RICHER HOTEL

bright green grass and bright white snow, and blue
glaciers like precious stones.

I scrambled down the mountain, for here, on the
south side of the pass, there was no snow or ice,
and it was quite easy to leave the road and take the
old path cutting off the zig-zags. As the air got
heavier, I became hungry, and at the very end of my
descent, two hundred feet or so above the young
Rhone, I saw a great hotel. I went round to their
front door and asked them whether I could eat,
and at what price. " Four francs," they said.

" What ! " said I, " four francs for a meal ! Come,
let me eat in the kitchen, and charge me one." But
they became rude and obstinate, being used only to
deal with rich people, so I cursed them, and went
down the road. But I was very hungry.

The road falls quite steeply, and the Rhone,
which it accompanies in that valley, leaps in little
falls. On a bridge I passed a sad Englishman
reading a book, and a little lower down, two
American women in a carriage, and after that a
priest (it was lucky I did not see him first. Any-
how, I touched iron at once, to wit, a key in my
pocket), and after that a child minding a goat.
Altogether, I felt myself in the world again, and
as I was on a good road, all down hill, I thought

THE SECOND GOOD WOMAN 233

myself capable of pushing on to the next village.
But my hunger was really excessive, my right boot
almost gone, and my left boot nothing to exhibit
or boast of, when I came to a point where at last
one looked down the Rhone valley for miles. It is
like a straight trench, and at intervals there are
little villages, built of most filthy chalets, the said
chalets raised on great stones. There are pine-trees
up, up on either slope, into the clouds, and beyond
the clouds I could not see. I left on my left a
village called " Between the Waters." I passed
through another called " Ehringen," but it has no
inn. At last, two miles farther, faint from lack
of food, I got into Ulrichen, a village a little
larger than the rest, and the place where I believed
one should start to go either over the Gries or
Nufenen Pass. In Ulrichen was a warm, wooden,
deep-eaved, frousty, comfortable, ramshackle, dark,
anyhow kind of a little inn called " The Bear."
And entering, I saw one of the women whom God
loves.

She was of middle age, very honest and simple
in the face, kindly and good. She was messing
about with cooking and stuff, and she came up to
me stooping a little, her eyes wide and innocent,
and a great spoon in her hand. Her face was

234 ON THE MANIA

extremely broad and flat, and I had never seen eyes
set so far apart. Her whole gait, manner, and
accent proved her to be extremely good, and on
the straight road to heaven. I saluted her in the
French tongue. She answered me in the same, but
very broken and rustic, for her natural speech was a
kind of mountain German. She spoke very slowly,
and had a nice soft voice, and she did what only
good people do, I mean, looked you in the eyes as
she spoke to you.

Beware of shifty-eyed people. It is not only
nervousness, it is also a kind of wickedness. Such
people come to no good. I have three of them
now in my mind as I write. One is a Professor.

And, by the way, would you like to know why
universities surfer from this curse of nervous dis-
ease ? Why the greatest personages stammer or
have St. Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop
in their walk, or have their heads screwed round, or
tremble in the fingers, or go through life with great
goggles like a motor car ? Eh ? I will tell you.
It is the punishment of their intellectual pride, than
which no sin is more offensive to the angels.

What ! here are we with the jolly world of God
all round us, able to sing, to draw, to paint, to

OF UNIVERSITIES 235

hammer and build, to sail, to ride horses, to run,
to leap ; having for our splendid inheritance love
in youth and memory in old age, and we are to
take one miserable little faculty, our one-legged,
knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned,
underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy
intellect, or analytical curiosity rather (a diseased
appetite), and let it swell till it eats up every other
function ? Away with such foolery.

Lector. When shall we get on to . . .

Auctor. Wait a moment. I say, away with
such foolery. Note that pedants lose all propor-
tion. They never can keep sane in a discussion.
They will go wild on matters they are wholly un-
able to judge, such as Armenian Religion or the
Politics of Paris or what not. Never do they use
one of those three phrases which keep a man
steady and balance his mind, I mean the words (1)
After all it is not my business. (2) Tut I tut I Tou
don't say so ! and (3) Credo in Unum Deum Patrem
Omnipotent em^ Factorem omnium visibilium at que in-
visibilium ; in which last there is a power of syn-
thesis that can jam all their analytical dust-heap into
such a fine, tight, and compact body as would make
them stare to see. I understand that they need
six months' holiday a year. Had I my way they

236 THE FRIGHTFUL SPICE

should take twelve, and an extra day on leap
years.

Lector. Pray, pray return to the woman at
the inn.

Auctor. I will, and by this road : to say that
on the day of Judgment, when St. Michael weighs
souls in his scales, and the wicked are led off by
the Devil with a great rope, as you may see them
over the main porch of Notre Dame (I will heave a
stone after them myself I hope), all the souls of the
pedants together will not weigh as heavy and sound
as the one soul of this good woman at the inn.

She put food before me and wine. The wine
was good, but in the food was some fearful herb or
other I had never tasted before — a pure spice or
scent, and a nasty one.- One could taste nothing else,
and it was revolting; but I ate it for her sake.

Then, very much refreshed, I rose, seized my
great staff, shook myself and said, " Now it is
about noon, and I am off for the frontier."

At this she made a most fearful clamour, saying
that it was madness, and imploring me not to think
of it, and running out fetched from the stable a
tall, sad, pale-eyed man who saluted me profoundly
and told me that he knew more of the mountains

THE IMPASSABLE HILLS 237

than any one for miles. And this by asking many
afterwards I found out to be true. He said that
he had crossed the Nufenen and the Gries when-
ever they could be crossed since he was a child,
and that if I attempted it that day I should sleep
that night in Paradise. The clouds on the moun-
tain, the soft snow recently fallen, the rain that
now occupied the valleys, the glacier on the Gries,
and the pathless snow in the mist on the Nufenen
would make it sheer suicide for him, an experienced
guide, and for me a worse madness. Also he spoke
of my boots and wondered at my poor cotton coat
and trousers, and threatened me with intolerable
cold.

It seems that the books I had read at home, when
they said that the Nufenen had no snow on it, spoke
of a later season of the year ; it was all snow now,
and soft snow, and hidden by a full mist in such a day
from the first third of the ascent. As for the Gries,
there was a glacier on the top which needed some
kind of clearness in the weather. Hearing all this
I said I would remain — but it was with a heavy
heart. Already I felt a shadow of defeat over me.
The loss of time was a thorn. I was already short
of cash, and my next money was at Milan. My
return to England was fixed for a certain date, and

238 THE SCHOOL-BOOKS

stronger than either of these motives against delay
was a burning restlessness that always takes men
when they are on the way to great adventures.

I made him promise to wake me. next morning at
three o'clock, and, short of a tempest, to try and
get me across the Gries. As for the Nufenen and
Crystalline passes which I had desired to attempt,
and which were (as I have said) the straight line to
Rome, he said (and he was right), that let alone the
impassability of the Nufenen just then, to climb the
Crystal Mountain in that season would be as easy
as flying to the moon. Now, to cross the Nufenen
alone, would simply land me in the upper valley of
the Ticino, and take me a great bend out of my
way by Bellinzona. Hence my bargain that at least
he should show me over the Gries Pass, and this he
said, if man could do it, he would do the next day ;
and I, sending my boots to be cobbled (and thereby
breaking another vow), crept up to bed, and all
afternoon read the school-books of the children.
They were in French, from lower down the valley,
and very Genevese and heretical for so devout a
household. But the Genevese civilisation is the
standard for these people, and they combat the
Calvinism of it with missions, and have statues in
their rooms, not to speak of holy water stoups.

THE START 239

The rain beat on my window, the clouds came
lower still down the mountain. Then (as is finely
written in the Song of Roland), " the day passed and
the night came, and I slept." But with the coming
of the small hours, and with my waking, prepare
yourselves for the most extraordinary and terrible ad-
venture that befel me out of all the marvels and perils
of this pilgrimage, the most momentous and the
most worthy of perpetual record, I think, of all that
has ever happened since the beginning of the world.

At three o'clock the guide knocked at my door,
and I rose and came out to him. We drank coffee
and ate bread. We put into our sacks ham and
bread, and he white wine and I brandy. Then we
set out. The rain had dropped to a drizzle, and
there was no wind. The sky was obscured for the
most part, but here and there was a star. The hills
hung awfully above us in the night as we crossed
the spongy valley. A little wooden bridge took us
over the young Rhone, here only a stream, and we
followed a path up into the tributary ravine which
leads to the Nufenen and the Gries. In a mile or
two it was a little lighter, and this was as well, for
some weeks before a great avalanche had fallen, and
we had to cross it gingerly. Beneath the wide cap

24o THE FINAL HOLLOW

of frozen snow ran a torrent roaring. I remembered
Colorado, and how I had crossed the Arkansaw
on such a bridge as a boy. We went on in the
uneasy dawn. The woods began to show, and
there was a cross where a man had slipped from
above that very April and been killed. Then,
most ominous and disturbing, the drizzle changed
to a rain, and the guide shook his head and said it
would be snowing higher up. We went on, and
it grew lighter. Before it was really day (or else the
weather confused and darkened the sky), we crossed
a good bridge, built long ago, and we halted at a
shed where the cattle lie in the late summer when
the snow is melted. There we rested a moment.

But on leaving its shelter we noticed many dis-
quieting things. The place was a hollow, the end
of the ravine — a bowl, as it were; one way out of
which is the Nufenen, and the other the Gries.

,£.., Here it is in a sketch

^ map. The heights are

marked lighter and lighter,

0 liiip^^l^ :/*\'' <^^^^»c from black in the valleys

to white in the impassable
mountains. E is where we
stood, in a great cup or basin, having just come up
the ravine B. C is the Italian valley of the Tosa,

DOUBT 241

and the neck between it and E is the Gries. D is
the valley of the Ticino, and the neck between E
and it is the Nufenen. A is the Crystal Mountain.
You may take the necks or passes to be about
8000, and the mountains 10,000 or 11,000 feet
above the sea.

We noticed, I say, many disquieting things.
First, all that bowl or cup below the passes was a
carpet of snow, save where patches of black water
showed, and all the passes and mountains, from
top to bottom, were covered with very thick snow ;
the deep surface of it soft and fresh fallen.
Secondly, the rain had turned into snow. It was
falling thickly all around. Nowhere have I more
perceived the immediate presence of great Death.
Thirdly, it was far colder, and we felt the beginning
of a wind. Fourthly, the clouds had come quite
low down.

The guide said it could not be done, but I said we

must attempt it. I was eager, and had not yet felt

the awful grip of the cold. We left the Nufenen

on our left, a hopeless steep of new snow buried

in fog, and we attacked the Gries. For half-an-

hour we plunged on through snow above our

knees, and my thin cotton clothes were soaked.

So far the guide knew we were more or less

242

ALL SNOW

on the path, and he went on and I panted after
him. Neither of us spoke, but occasionally he

^#-fe^

*—

looked back to make sure I had not dropped

out.

The snow began to fall more thickly, and the
wind had risen somewhat. I was afraid of another
protest from the guide, but he stuck to it well,
and I after him, continually plunging through

THE TOURMENTE 243

soft snow and making yard after yard upwards.
The snow fell more thickly and the wind still rose.
We came to a place which is, in the warm season,
an alp ; that is, a slope of grass, very steep but not
terrifying ; having here and there sharp little pre-
cipices of rock breaking it into steps, but by no
means (in summer) a matter to make one draw back.
Now, however, when everything was still Arctic
it was a very different matter. A sheer steep of
snow whose downward plunge ran into the driving
storm and was lost, whose head was lost in the
same mass of thick cloud above, a slope somewhat
hollowed and bent inwards, had to be crossed
if we were to go any farther ; and I was terrified,
for I knew nothing of climbing. The guide said
there was little danger, only if one slipped one
might slide down to safety, or one might (much
less probably) get over rocks and be killed. I
was chattering a little with cold ; but as he
did not propose a return, I followed him. The
surface was alternately slabs of frozen snow and
patches of soft new snow. In the first he cut
steps, in the second we plunged, and once I went
right in and a mass of snow broke off beneath me
and went careering down the slope. He showed
me how to hold mv staff backwards as he did

244 THE GUIDE DESPAIRS

his alpenstock, and use it as a kind of brake in
case I slipped.

We had been about twenty minutes crawling over
that wall of snow and ice ; and it was more and
more apparent that we were in for danger. Before
we had quite reached the far side, the wind was
blowing a very full gale and roared past our
ears. The surface snow was whirring furiously
like dust before it : past our faces and against
them drove the snow-flakes, cutting the air : not
falling, but making straight darts and streaks.
They seemed like the form of the whistling wind ;
they blinded us. The rocks on the far side of
the slope, rocks which had been our goal when
we set out to cross it, had long ago disap-
peared in the increasing rush of the blizzard. Sud-
denly as we were still painfully moving on, stooping
against the mad wind, these rocks loomed up over
as large as houses, and we saw them through the
swarming snow-flakes as great hulls are seen through
a fog at sea. The guide crouched under the lee of
the nearest ; I came up close to him and he put his
hands to my ear and shouted to me that nothing
further could be done — he had so to shout because
in among the rocks the hurricane made a roaring
sound, swamping the voice.

HIS DILEMMA 245

I asked how far we were from the summit. He
said he did not know where we were exactly, but
that we could not be more than 800 feet from
it. I was but that from Italy and I would not
admit defeat. I offered him all I had in money to
go on, but it was folly in me, because if I had had
enough to tempt him and if he had yielded we should
both have died. Luckily it was but a little sum.
He shook his head. He would not go on, he broke
out, for all the money there was in the world. He
shouted me to eat and drink, and so we both did.

Then I understood his wisdom, for in a little
while the cold began to seize me in my thin clothes.
My hands were numb, my face already gave me in-
tolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy.
I learnt another thing (which had I been used to
mountains I should have known), that it was not
a simple thing to return. The guide was hesi-
tating whether to stay in this rough shelter, or to
face the chances of the descent. This terror had
not crossed my mind, and I thought as little of it
as I could, needing my courage, and being near to
breaking down from the intensity of the cold.

It seems that in a tourmente (for by that excellent
name do the mountain people call such a storm)
it is always a matter of doubt whether to halt or to

246 DEFEAT

go back. If you go back through it and lose your
way, you are done for. If you halt in some shelter,
it may go on for two or three days, and then there
is an end of you.

After a little he decided for a return, but he told
me honestly what the chances were, and my suffering
from cold mercifully mitigated my fear. But even
in that moment, I felt in a confused but very con-
scious way that I was defeated. I had crossed so
many great hills and rivers, and pressed so well on
my undeviating arrow-line to Rome, and I had
charged this one great barrier manfully where the
straight path of my pilgrimage crossed the Alps —
and I had failed ! Even in that fearful cold I
felt it, and it ran through my doubt of return like
another and deeper current of pain. Italy was there,
just above, right to my hand. A lifting of a cloud,
a little respite, and every downward step would have
been towards the sunlight. As it was, I was being
driven back northward, in retreat and ashamed.
The Alps had conquered me.

Let us always after this combat their immensity
and their will, and always hate the inhuman guards
that hold the gates of Italy, and the powers that lie
in wait for men on those high places. But now I
know that Italy will always stand apart. She is cut

THE RETREAT 247

off by no ordinary wall, and Death has all his army
on her frontiers.

Well, we returned. Twice the guide rubbed
my hands with brandy, and once I had to halt
and recover tor a moment, failing and losing
my hold. Believe it or not, the deep footsteps
of our ascent were already quite lost and covered
by the new snow since our halt, and even had
they been visible, the guide would not have re-
traced them. He did what I did not at first
understand, but what I soon saw to be wise. He
took a steep slant downward over the face of the
snow-slope, and though such a pitch of descent
a little unnerved me, it was well in the end. For
when we had gone down perhaps 900 feet, or a
thousand, in perpendicular distance, even I, half
numb and fainting, could feel that the storm was
less violent. Another two hundred, and the flakes
could be seen not driving in flashes past, but sepa-
rately falling. Then in some few minutes we could
see the slope for a verv long way downwards quite
clearly ; then, soon after, we saw far below us the
place where the mountain-side merged easily into
the plain of that cup or basin whence we had
started.

When we saw this, the guide said to me, " Hold

248 WE REACH OUR BASE

your stick thus, if you are strong enough, and let
yourself slide." I could just hold it, in spite of the
cold. Life was returning to me with intolerable
pain. We shot down the slope almost as quickly
as falling, but it was evidently safe to do so, as the
end was clearly visible, and had no break or rock
in it.

So we reached the plain below, and entered the
little shed, and thence looking up, we saw the storm
above us ; but no one could have told it for what it
was. Here, below, was silence, and the terror and
raging above seemed only a great trembling cloud
occupying the mountain. Then we set our faces
down the ravine by which we had come up, and so
came down to where the snow changed to rain.
When we got right down into the valley of the
Rhone, we found it all roofed with cloud, and the
higher trees were white with snow, making a line
like a tide mark on the slopes of the hills.

I re-entered " The Bear," silent and angered,
and not accepting the humiliation of that failure.
Then, having eaten, I determined in equal silence
to take the road like any other fool ; to cross the
Furka by a fine highroad, like any tourist, and to
cross the St. Gothard by another fine highroad, as
millions had done before me, and not to look heaven

THE COMMON ROAD 249

in the face again till I was back after my long
detour, on the straight road again for Rome.

But to think of it ! I who had all that planned
out, and had so nearly done it ! I who had
cut a path across Europe like a shaft, and seen so
many strange places ! — now to have to recite all the
litany of the vulgar; Bellinzona, Lugano, and this
and that, which any railway travelling fellow can
tell you. Not till Como should I feel a man
again. . . .

Indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up
one's sword.

I had not the money to wait ; my defeat had
lowered me in purse as well as in heart. I started
off to enter by the ordinary gates — not Italy even,
but a half-Italy, the canton of the Ticino. It was
very hard.

This book is not a tragedy, and I will not write
at any length of such pain. That same day, in the
latter half of it, I went sullenly over the Furka ;
exactly as easy a thing as going up St. James'
Street and down Piccadilly. I found the same storm
on its summit, but on a highroad it was a different
affair. I took no short cuts. I drank at all the
inns — at the base, half-way up, near the top, and

250 THE SULLEN HOURS

at the top. I told them, as the snow beat past,
how I had attacked and all but conquered the
Gries that wild morning, and they took me for a
liar ; so I became silent even within my own mind.
I looked sullenly at the white ground all the
way. And when on the far side I had got low
enough to be rid of the snow and wind and to
be in the dripping rain again, I welcomed the
rain, and let it soothe like a sodden friend my
sodden uncongenial mind.

I will not write of Hospenthal. It has an old
tower, and the road to it is straight and hideous.
Much I cared for the old tower ! The people of
the inn (which I chose at random) cannot have
loved me much.

I will not write of the St. Gothard. Get it
out of a guide-book. I rose when I felt inclined ;
I was delighted to find it still raining. A dense
mist above the rain gave me still greater pleasure.
I had started quite at my leisure late in the day,
and I did the thing stolidly, and my heart was like
a dully-heated mass of coal or iron because I was
acknowledging defeat. You who have never taken
a straight line and held it, nor seen strange men
and remote places, you do not know what it is
to have to go round by the common way.

ITALY! 251

Only in the afternoon, and on those little
zig-zags which are sharper than any other in the
Alps (perhaps the road is older), something
changed.

A warm air stirred the dense mist which had
mercifully cut me off from anything but the mere
road and from the contemplation of hackneyed
sights.

A hint or memory of gracious things ran in the
slight breeze, the wreaths of fog would lift a little
for a few yards, and in their clearings I thought
to approach a softer and more desirable world. I
was soothed as though with caresses, and when I
began to see somewhat farther and felt a vigour
and fulness in the outline of the Trees, I said to
myself suddenly —

" I know what it is ! It is the South, and a great
part of my blood. They may call it Switzerland
still, but I know now that I am in Italy, and this is
the gate of Italy lying in groves."

Then and on till evening I reconciled myself with
misfortune, and when I heard again at Airolo the
speech of civilised men, and saw the strong Latin
eyes and straight forms of the Race after all those
days of fog and frost and German speech and the
north, my eyes filled with tears and 1 was as

252 THE AIROLANS

glad as a man come home again, and I could have
kissed the ground.

The wine of Airolo and its songs, how greatly
they refreshed me ! To see men with answering
eyes and to find a salute returned ; the noise of
careless mouths talking all together; the group
at cards, and the laughter that is proper to man-
kind ; the straight carriage of the women, and
in all the people something erect and noble as
though indeed they possessed the earth. I made
a meal there, talking to all my companions left
and right in a new speech of my own, which was
made up, as it were, of the essence of all the Latin
tongues, saying —

" Ha I Si jo a traversa li montagna no er at facile !
Nenni ! II san Gottardo ? Nil est ! pooh ! poco !
Ma hest'erna jo ha voulu traversar in Val Bavona, e
credi non ritornar^ nam fredo, fredo erat in alto ! La
tourmente ma prise. ..."

And so forth, explaining all fully with gestures,
exaggerating, emphasising, and acting the whole
matter, so that they understood me without much
error. But I found it more difficult to under-
stand them, because they had a regular formed
language with terminations and special words.

THE RIFT

253

It went to mv heart to offer them no wine, but
a thought was
in me of which
you shall soon
hear more. K%

My m o n e y

low, and the
chief anxiety
of a civilised

man was
spreading over
my mind like
the shadow of
a cloud over a
field of corn
in s u m m e r.
They gave me
a number of
"good-nights,"
and at parting
I could not
forbear from
boasting that I
was a pilgrim
on my way to Rome

■■';

<• -u -<j

This they repeated one to

254 THE NEW WORLD

another, and one man told me that the next good
halting-place was a town called Faido, three hours
down the road. He held up three fingers to explain,
and that was the last intercourse I had with the
Airolans, for at once I took the road.

I glanced up the dark ravine which I should
have descended had I crossed the Nufenen. I
thought of the Val Bavona, only just over the
great wall that held the west; and in one place
where a rift (you have just seen its picture) led
up to the summits of the hills I was half tempted
to go back to Airolo and sleep and next morning
to attempt a crossing. But I had accepted my
fate on the Gries and the falling road also held
me, and so I continued my way.

Everything was pleasing in this new valley under
the sunlight that still came strongly from behind
the enormous mountains; everything also was new,
and I was evidently now in a country of a special
kind. The slopes were populous, I had come to
the great mother of fruits and men, and I was
soon to see her cities and her old walls, and the
rivers that glide by them. Church towers also
repeated the same shapes up and up the wooded
hills until the villages stopped at the line of the
higher slopes and at the patches of snow. The

THE MANY CHURCHES

2S5

houses were square and coloured ; they were graced

with arbours, and there seemed to be all around

nothing but what

was reasonable

and secure, and

especially no rich

or poor.

I noticed all
these things on
the one side and
the other till, not
two hours from
Airolo, I came
to a step in the
valley. For the
valley of the
Ticino is made
up of distinct
levels, each of
which might
have held a lake once for the way it is en-
closed ; and each level ends in high rocks with
a gorge between them. Down this gorge the
river tumbles in falls and rapids and the road
picks its way down steeply, all banked and cut,
and sometimes has to cross from side to side by

2$6

FAIDO

< ^

a bridge, while the railway above one overcomes
the sharp descent by running round into the heart

of the hills through
circular tunnels and
coming out again far
below the cavern
where it plunged in.
Then when all three
— the river, the road,
and the railway —
have got over the
great step, a new
level of the valley
opens. This is the
way the road comes
into the south, and
as I passed down to
the lower valley,
though it was dark-
ening into evening,
something melted
out of the mountain
air, there was content and warmth in the growing
things, and I found it was a place for vineyards.
So, before it was yet dark, I came into Faido,
and there I slept, having at last, after so many

THE FILMS OF MORNING 257

adventures, crossed the threshold and occupied
Italy.

Next day before sunrise I set out, and all the
valley was adorned and tremulous with the films
ot morning.

Now all of you who have hitherto followed the
story of this great journey, put out of your minds
the Alps and the passes and the snows — postpone
even for a moment the influence of the happy
dawn and of that South into which I had entered,
and consider only this truth, that I found myself
just out of Faido on this blessed date of God with
eight francs and fortv centimes for my viaticum
and temporal provision wherewith to accomplish
the good work ot my pilgrimage.

Now when you consider that coffee and bread
was twopence and a penny for the, maid, you may
say without lying that I had left behind me the
escarpment of the Alps and stood upon the down-
ward slopes of the first Italian stream and at the
summit of the entry road with eight francs ten
centimes in my pocket — my body hearty and my
spirit light, for the arriving sun shot glory into
the sky. The air was keen, and a fresh day came
radiant over the high eastern walls of the valley.

258 8 FRANCS 10 CENTIMES

And what of that? Why, one might make
many things of it. For instance, eight francs and
ten centimes is a very good day's wages ; it is a lot
to spend in cab fares but little for a coupe. It is a
heavy price for Burgundy but a song for Tokay.
It is eighty miles third-class and more ; it is thirty
or less first-class ; it is a flash in a train de luxe,
and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. It
would be enormous to give it to an apostle beg-
ging at a church door, but nothing to spend on
luncheon.

Properly spent I can imagine it saving five or
six souls, but I cannot believe that so paltry a sum
would damn half an one.

Then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing
about. Thus, if one were a modern fool one
might write a dirge with " Huit francs et dix
centimes " all chanted on one low sad note, and
coming in between brackets for a " motif," and with
a lot about autumn and Death — which last, Death
that is, people nowadays seem to regard as some-
thing odd, whereas it is well known to be the com-
monest thing in the world. Or one might make
the words the backbone of a triolet, only one would
have to split them up to fit it into the metre ; or
one might make it the decisive line in a sonnet ;

SONGS

259

or one might make a pretty little lyric of it, to the
tune of" Madame la Marquise" —

" Huit francs et dix centimes,
Tra la la, la la la."

Or one might put it rhetorically, fiercely, stoically,
finely, republicanly into the Heroics of the Great
School. Thus —

«' Hernani [with indignation) .... dans ces efforts sublimes

' Qu' avez vous a offrir ? '
Ruy Blas {simply). Huit francs et dix centimes /"

Or finally (for this kind of thing cannot go on
for ever), one might curl one's hair and dye it
black, and cock a dirty slouch hat over one ear
and take a guitar and sit on a flat stone by the
roadside and cross one's legs, and, after a few pings
and pongs on the strings, strike up a Ballad with
the refrain —

h->\ i-uiujfcfe

" Car fai toujours huit francs et dix centimes ! "

a jocular, a sub-sardonic, a triumphant refrain !

260 FORCED MARCHES

But all this is by the way ; the point is, why
was the eight francs and ten centimes of such
importance just there and then ?

For this reason, that I could get no more money
before Milan ; and I think a little reflection will
show you what a meaning lies in that phrase.
Milan was nearer ninety than eighty miles off. By
the strict road it was over ninety. And so I was
forced to consider and to be anxious, for how
would this money hold out?

There was nothing for it but forced marches,
and little prospect of luxuries. But could it be
done ?

I thought it could, and I reasoned this way.

" It is true I need a good deal of food, and
that if a man is to cover great distances he must
keep fit. It is also true that many men have done
more on less. On the other hand, they were men
who were not pressed for time — I am ; and I do
not know the habits of the country. Ninety miles
is three good days; two very heavy days. Indeed,
whether it can be done at all in two is doubtful.
But it can be done in two days, two nights, and
half the third day. So if I plan it thus I shall
achieve it ; namely, to march say forty-five miles

STORY OF THE OLD SAILOR 261

or more to-day, and to sleep rough at the end of
it. My food may cost me altogether three francs.
I march the next day twenty-five to thirty, my
food costing me another three francs. Then with
the remaining two francs and ten centimes I will take
a bed at the end of the day, and coffee and bread
next morning, and will march the remaining twenty
miles or less (as they may be) into Milan with a
copper or two in my pocket. Then in Milan,
having obtained my money, I will eat."

So I planned with very careful and exact
precision, but many accidents and unexpected
things, diverting my plans, lay in wait for me
among the hills.

And to cut a long story short, as the old sailor
said to the young fool

Lector. What did the old sailor say to the
young fool ?

Auctor. Why, the old sailor was teaching the
young fool his compass, and he said —

" Here we go from north, making round by
west, and then by south round by east again to
north. There are thirty-two points of the compass,
namely, first these four, N., W., S., and E., and
these are halved, making four more, viz., NW.,

262 STORY OF THE OLD SAILOR

SW., SE., and NE. I trust I make myself clear,"
said the old sailor.

" That makes eight divisions, as we call them.
So look smart and follow. Each of these eight is
divided into two symbolically and symmetrically
divided parts, as is most evident in the nomenclature
of the same," said the old sailor. " Thus between
N. and NE. is NNE., between NE. and E. is
ENE., between E. and SE. is . . ."

" I see," said the young fool.

The old sailor, frowning at him, continued —

"Smart you there. Heels together, and note you
well. Each of these sixteen divisions is separated
quite reasonably and precisely into two. Thus
between N. and NNE. we get N. by E.," said the
old sailor; "and between NNE. and NE. we get
NE. by E., and between NE. and ENE. we get
NE. by E.," said the old sailor; "and between
ENE. and E. we get E. by N., and then between
E. and ESE. we get . . ."

But here he noticed something dangerous in the
young fool's eves, and having read all his life
Admiral Griles' " Notes on Discipline," and know-
ing that discipline is a subtle bond depending
" not on force but on an attitude of the mind," he
continued —

LONG STORY CUT SHORT 263

" And so to cut a long story short we come
round to the north again." Then he added, " It
is customary also to divide each of these points
into quarters. Thus NNE. f E. signifies . . ."

But at this point the young fool, whose hands
were clasped behind him and concealed a marlin-
spike, up and killed the old sailor, and so rounded
off this fascinating tale.

Well then, to cut a long story short, I had to
make forced marches. With eight francs and ten
centimes, and nearer ninety than eighty-five miles
before the next relief, it was necessary to plan and
then to urge on heroically. Said I to myself, " The
thing can be done quite easily. What is ninety
miles ? Two long days ! Who cannot live on four
francs a day ? Why, lots of men do it on two
francs a day."

But my guardian angel said to me, "You are an
ass ! Ninety miles is a great deal more than twice
forty-five. Besides which " (said he) " a great effort
needs largeness and ease. Men who live on two
francs a day or less are not men who attempt to
march forty-five miles a day. Indeed, my friend,
you are pushing it very close."

" Well," thought I, "at least in such a glorious

264 BODIO

air, with such Hills all about one, and such a race,
one can come to no great harm."

But I knew within me that Latins are hard where
money is concerned, and I feared for my strength.
I was determined to push forward and to live on
little. I filled my lungs and put on the spirit of an
attempt and swung down the valley.

Alas ! I may not linger on that charge, for if I
did I should not give you any measure of its deter-
mination and rapidity. Many little places passed
me off the road on the flanks of that valley, and
mostly to the left. While the morning was yet
young, I came to the packed little town of Bodio,
and passed the eight franc limit by taking coffee,
brandy, and bread. There also were a gentleman
and a lady in a carriage who wondered where I was
going, and I told them (in French) " to Rome."
It was nine in the morning when I came to Biasca.
The sun was glorious, and not yet warm :#it was
too early for a meal. They gave me a little cold
meat and bread and wine, and seven francs stood
out dry above the falling tide of my money.

Here at Biasca the valley took on a different
aspect. It became wider and more of a country-
side ; the vast hills, receding, took on an appearance

THE ENCLOSED VALLEY 265

of less familiar majesty, and because the trend of the
Ticino turned southerly some miles ahead the whole
place seemed enclosed from the world. One would
have said that a high mountain before me closed it
in and rendered it unique and unknown, had not a
wide cleft in the east argued another pass over the
hills, and reminded me that there were various
routes over the crest of the Alps.

Indeed, this hackneyed approach to Italy which
I had dreaded and despised and accepted only after
a defeat was very marvellous, and this valley of the
Ticino ought to stand apart and be a commonwealth
of its own like Andorra or the Gresivaudan : the
noble garden of the Isere within the first gates of
the Dauphine.

I was fatigued, and my senses lost acuteness.
Still I noticed with delight the new character of the
miles I pursued. A low hill just before me, jutting
out apparently from the high western mountains,
forbade me to see beyond it. The plain was allu-
vial, while copses and wood and many cultivated
fields now found room where, higher up, had been
nothing but the bed of a torrent with bare banks
and strips of grass immediately above them ; it was
a place worthy of a special name and of being one
lordship and a countryside. Still 1 went on towards

166 LAKE MAJOR

that near boundary of the mountain spur and
towards the point where the river rounded it, the
great barrier hill before me still seeming to shut in
the valley.

It was noon, or thereabouts, the heat was increas-
ing (I did not feel it greatly, for I had eaten and
drunk next to nothing), when, coming round the
point, there opened out before me the great fan
of the lower valley and the widening and fruitful
plain through which the Ticino rolls in a full river
to reach Lake Major, which is its sea.

Weary as I was, the vision of this sudden expan-
sion roused me and made me forget everything
except the sight before me. The valley turned
well southward as it broadened. The Alps spread
out on either side like great arms welcoming the
southern day ; the wholesome and familiar haze
that should accompany summer dimmed the more
distant mountains of the lakes and turned them
amethystine, and something of repose and of dis-
tance was added to the landscape ; something I had
not seen for many days. There was room in that
air and space for dreams and for many living men,
for towns perhaps on the slopes, for the boats of
happy men upon the waters, and everywhere for
crowded and contented living. History might be

BELLINZONA

267

in all this, and I remembered it was the entry and
introduction of many armies. Singing therefore
a song of Charlemagne, 1 swung on in a good
effort to where, right under the sun, what seemed
a wall and two towers on a
sharp little hillock set in the
bosom of the valley showed
me Bellinzona. Within the
central street of that city,
and on its shaded side, I
sank down upon a bench
before the curtained door
of a drinking booth and
boasted that I had covered
in that morning my twenty-
five miles.

The woman of the place
came out to greet me, and
asked me a question. I did
not catch it (for it was in a
foreign language), but guess-
ing her to mean that I should
take something, I asked for
vermouth, and seeing before me a strange door
built of red stone, I drew it as I sipped my glass

268 4 FRANCS 80 CENTIMES

and the woman talked to me all the while in a
language I could not understand. And as I drew
I became so interested that I forgot my poverty
and offered her husband a glass, and then gave
another to a lounging man that had watched me
at work, and so from less than seven francs my
money fell to six exactly, and my pencil fell from
my hand, and I became afraid.

" I have done a foolish thing," said I to myself,
" and have endangered the success of my endea-
vour. Nevertheless, that cannot now be remedied,
and I must eat ; and as eating is best where one
has friends, I will ask a meal of this woman."

Now had they understood French I could have
bargained and chosen ; as it was I had to take what
they were taking, and so I sat with them as they
all came out and ate together at the little table.
They had soup and flesh, wine and bread, and
as we ate we talked, not understanding each other,
and laughing heartily at our mutual ignorance.
And they charged me a franc, which brought my
six francs down to five. But I, knowing my subtle
duty to the world, put down twopence more, as I
would have done anywhere else, for a pour boire ; and
so with four francs and eighty centimes left, and
with much less than a third of my task accomplished

THE PROUD STATIONER 269

I rose, now drowsy with the food and wine, and
saluting them, took the road once more.

But as I left Bellinzona there was a task before
me which was to bring my poverty to the test ; for
you must know that my map was a bad one, and on
a very small scale, and the road from Bellinzona to
Lugano has a crook in it, and it was essential to find
a short cut. So I thought to myself, " I will try
to see a good map as cheaply as possible," and I
slunk off to the right into a kind of main square,
and there I found a proud stationer's shop, such as
would deal with rich men only, or tourists of the
coarser and less humble kind. I entered with some
assurance, and said in French —

" Sir, I wish to know the hills between here and
Lugano, but I am too poor to buy a map. If you
will let me look at one for a few moments, I will
pay you what you think fit."

The wicked stationer became like a devil for
pride, and glaring at me, said —

" Look ! Look for yourself. I do not take
pence. I sell maps ; I do not hire them ! "

Then I thought, "Shall I take a favour from
such a man ? " But I yielded, and did. I went
up to the wall and studied a large map for some
moments. Then as I left, I said to him —

270 HIS TRANSFORMATION

"Sir, I shall always hold in remembrance the day
on which you did me this signal kindness ; nor shall
I forget your courtesy and goodwill."

And what do you think he did at that ?

Why, he burst into twenty smiles, and bowed,
and seemed beatified, and said : " Whatever I can
do for my customers and for visitors to this town,
I shall always be delighted to do. Pray, sir, will
you not look at other maps for a moment ? "

Now, why did he say this and grin happily like
a gargoyle appeased ? Did something in my accent
suggest wealth? or was he naturally kindly ? I do
not know; but of this I am sure, one should never
hate human beings merely on a first, nor on a tenth,
impression. Who knows? This map-seller of Bel-
linzona may have been a good man ; anyhow, I left
him as rich as I found him, and remembering that
the true key to a forced march is to break the

twenty-four hours into

=S, three pieces, and now

x)-/v-X,*\ \ feeling; the extreme

heat, I went out along

^^mlmffii ff'S:- tne burning straight

Ww//f^ W^' a n t c a

J road until 1 round a

border of grass and a hedge, and there, in spite

of the dust and the continually passing carts, I lay

THE AFTERNOON 271

at full length in the shade and fell into the sleep
of men against whom there is no reckoning. Just;
as I forgot the world I heard a clock strike two.

I slept for two hours beneath that hedge, and
when I awoke the air was no longer a trembling
furnace, but everything about me was wrapped
round as in a cloak of southern afternoon, and was
still. The sun had fallen midway, and shone in
steady glory through a haze that overhung Lake
Major, and the wide luxuriant estuary of the vale.
There lay before me a long straight road for miles
at the base of high hills; then, far off, this road
seemed to end at the foot of a mountain called, I
believe, Ash Mount or Cinder Hill. But my im-
perfect map told me that here it went sharp round
to the left, choosing a pass, and then at an angle
went down its way to Lugano.

Now Lugano was not fifteen miles as the crow
flies from where I stood, and I determined to cut
off that angle by climbing the high hills just above
me. They were wooded only on their slopes; their
crest and much of their sides were a down-land of
parched grass, with rocks appearing here and there.
At the first divergent lane I made off eastward
from the road and began to climb.

272

THE ITALIAN LAKES

In under the chestnut trees the lane became a
number of vague beaten paths ; I followed straight
upwards. Here and there were little houses stand-
ing hidden in leaves,
and soon I crossed the
railway, and at last
above the trees I saw
the sight of all the
Bellinzona vallev to
1 the north ; and turn-
- ing my eyes I saw it
broaden out between
its walls to where the
lake lay very bright,
in spite of the slight mist, and this mist gave the
lake distances, and the mountains round about it
were transfigured and seemed part of the mere
light.

The Italian lakes have that in them and their air
which removes them from common living. Their
beauty is not the beauty which each of us sees for
himself in the world ; it is rather the beauty of
a special creation ; the expression of some mind.
To eyes innocent, and first freshlv noting our great
temporal inheritance — I mean to the eyes of a boy

A SERMON 273

and girl just entered upon the estate of this glorious
earth, and thinking themselves immortal, this shrine

, «t#5 i

of Europe might remain for ever in the memory ; an
enchanted experience, in which the single sense of
sight had almost touched the boundary of music.
They would remember these lakes as the central
emotion of their youth. To mean men also who,
in spite of years and of a full foreknowledge of
death, yet attempt nothing but the satisfaction of
sense, and pride themselves upon the taste and fine-
ness with which they achieve this satisfaction, the
Italian lakes would seem a place for habitation, and

274 END OF THE SERMON

there such a man might build his house contentedly.
But to ordinary Christians I am sure there is some-
thing unnatural in this beauty of theirs, and they
find in it either a paradise only to be won by a much
longer road or a bait and veil of sorcery, behind
which lies great peril. Now, for all we know,
beauty beyond the world may not really bear this
double aspect ; but to us on earth — if we are
ordinary men — beauty of this kind has something
evil. Have you not read in books how men when
they see even divine visions are terrified ? So as
I looked at Lake Major in its halo I also was afraid,
and I was glad to cross the ridge and crest of the
hill and to shut out that picture framed all round
with glory.

But on the other side of the hill I found, to my
great disgust, not, as I had hoped, a fine slope down
leading to Lugano, but a second interior valley and
another range just opposite me. I had not the
patience to climb this, so I followed down the
marshy land at the foot of it, passed round the
end of the hill and came upon the railway, which
had tunnelled under the range I had crossed. I
followed the railway for a little while and at last
crossed it, penetrated through a thick brushwood,

THE HOUSE OF THE GODS 275

forded a nasty little stream, and found myself again
on the main road, wishing heartily I had never
left it.

It was still at least seven miles to Lugano, and
though all the way was downhill, yet fatigue threat-
ened me. These short cuts over marshy land and
through difficult thickets are not short cuts at all,
and I was just wondering whether, although it was
already evening, I dared not rest a while, when there
appeared at a turn in the road a little pink house
with a yard all shaded over by a vast tree; there
was also a trellis making a roof over a plain bench
and table, and on the trellis grew vines.

"Into such houses," I thought, "the gods walk
when they come down and talk with men, and such
houses are the scenes of adventures. I will go in
and rest."

So I walked straight into the courtyard and found
there a shrivelled brown-faced man with kindly eyes,
who was singing a song to himself. He could talk
a little French, a little English, and his own Italian
language. He had been to America and to Paris;
he was full of memories ; and when I had listened
to these and asked for food and drink, and said I
was extremely poor and would have to bargain, he
made a kind of litany of " I will not cheat you ; I

276 THE DISHONEST MAN

am an honest man ; I also am poor," and so forth.
Nevertheless I argued about every item — the bread,
the sausage, and the beer. Seeing that I was in
necessity, he charged me about three times their
value, but I beat him down to double, and lower
than that he would not go. Then we sat down
together at the table and ate and drank and talked
of far countries ; and he would interject remarks
on his honesty compared with the wickedness ot
his neighbours, and I parried with illustrations of
my poverty and need, pulling out the four francs
odd that remained to me, and jingling them sorrow-
fully in my hand. " With these," I said, " I must
reach Milan."

Then I left him, and as I went down the road
a slight breeze came on, and brought with it the
coolness of evening.

At last the falling plateau reached an edge, many
little lights glittered below me, and I sat on a stone
and looked down at the town of Lugano.

It was nearly dark. The mountains all around
had lost their mouldings, and were marked in flat
silhouettes against the sky. The new lake which had
just appeared below me was bright as water is at
dusk, and far away in the north and east the high
Alps still stood up and received the large glow of

THE HONEST MAN 277

evening. Everything else was full of the coming
night, and a few stars shone. Up from the town
came the distant noise of music ; otherwise there
was no sound.

I could have rested there a long time, letting my
tired body lapse into the advancing darkness, and
catching in my spirit the inspiration of the silence —
had it not been for hunger. I knew by experience
that when it is very late one cannot be served in the
eating-houses of poor men, and I had not the money
for any other. So I rose and shambled down the
steep road into the town, and there I found a square
with arcades, and in the south-eastern corner of this
square just such a little tavern as I required. Enter-
ing, therefore, and taking off my hat very low, I
said in French to a man who was sitting there with
friends, and who was the master, " Sir, what is the
least price at which you can give me, a meal ? "

He said, " What do you want?

I answered, " Soup, meat, vegetables, bread, and a
little wine."

He counted on his fingers, while all his friends
stared respectfully at him and me. He then gave
orders, and a very young and beautiful girl set be-
fore me as excellent a meal as I had eaten for days
on days, and he charged me but a franc and a half.

278 I SLEEP

He gave me also coffee and a little cheese, and I, feel-
ing hearty, gave threepence over for the service, and
they all very genially wished me a good-night ; but
their wishes were of no value to me, for the night
was terrible.

I had gone over forty miles ; how much over
I did not know. I should have slept at Lugano,
but my lightening purse forbade me. I thought, " I
will push on and on ; after all, I have already slept,
and so broken the back of the day. I will push on
till I am at the end of my tether, then I will find a
. wood and sleep." Within four miles my strength
abandoned me. I was not even so far down the
lake as to have lost the sound of the band at
Lugano floating up the still water, when I was
under an imperative necessity for repose. It was
perhaps ten o'clock, and the sky was open and
glorious with stars. I climbed up a bank on my
right, and searching for a place to lie found one
under a tree near a great telegraph pole. Here was
a little parched grass, and one could lie there and
see the lake and wait for sleep. It was a bene-
diction to stretch out all supported by the dry
earth, with my little side-bag for pillow, and to look
at the clear night above the hills, and to listen to the
very distant music, and to wonder whether or not, in

THE UNDER-WORLD 279

this strange southern country, there might not be
snakes gliding about in the undergrowth. Caught
in such a skein of influence I was soothed and fell
asleep.

For a little while 1 slept dreamlessly.

Just so much of my living self remained as can
know, without understanding, the air around. It is
the life of trees. That under-part, the barely con-
scious base of nature which trees and sleeping men
are sunk in, is not only dominated by an immeasur-
able calm, but is also beyond all expression contented.
And in its very stuff there is a complete and change-
less jov. This is surelv what the great mind meant
when it said to the Athenian judges that death must
not be dreaded since no experience in life was so
pleasurable as a deep sleep ; for being wise and
seeing the intercommunion of things, he could
not mean extinction, which is nonsense, but a
lapse into that under-part of which I speak. For
there are gods also below the earth.

But a dream came into my sleep and disturbed
me; increasing life, and therefore bringing pain. I
dreamt that I was arguing, at first easily, then
violently, with another man. More and more he
pressed me, and at last in my dream there were

280 THE DREAM

clearly spoken words, and he said to me, "You
must be wrong, because you are so cold ; if you
were right you would not be so cold." And this
argument seemed quite reasonable to me in my
foolish dream, and I muttered to him, " You are
right. I must be in the wrong. It is very cold
. . ." Then I halt opened my eves and saw the
telegraph pole, the trees, and the lake. Far up the
lake, where the Italian Frontier cuts it, the torpedo-
boats, looking tor smugglers, were casting their
search-lights. One of the roving beams fell full on
me and I became broad awake. I stood up. It was
indeed cold, with a kind of clinging and grasping
chill that was not to be expressed in degrees of heat,
but in dampness perhaps, or perhaps in some
subtler influence ot the air.

I sat on the bank and gazed at the lake in
some despair. Certainly I could not sleep again
without a covering cloth, and it was now past mid-
night, nor did I know of any house, whether it I
took the road I should find one in a mile, or in
two, or in five. And, note vou, I was utterly
exhausted. That enormous march rrom Faido,
though it had been wisely broken bv the siesta
at Bellinzona, needed more than a lew cold hours
under trees, and I thought of the three poor francs

THE HOUSE IN THE NIGHT

281

in my pocket, and of the thirty-eight miles remain-
ing to Milan.

The stars were beyond the middle of their slow
turning, and I watched them, splendid and in order,
for sympathy, as I also regularly, but slowly and
painfully, dragged myself along my appointed road.
But in a very short time a great, tall, square, white
house stood right on the roadway, and to my intense
joy I saw a light in one of its higher windows.
Standing therefore beneath, I cried at the top of my
voice, " Hola ! " five or six times. A woman put
her head out of the window into the fresh night,
and said, " You cannot sleep here ; we have no
rooms," then she remained looking out of her
window and ready to analyse the difficulties of the
moment ; a good-natured woman and fat.

In a moment another window at the same level,
but farther from me, opened, and a man leaned out,
just as those alternate figures come in and out of
the toys that tell the weather. " It is impossible,"
said the man ; "we have no rooms."

Then they talked a great deal together, while I
shouted, " Quid vis ? Non e possibile dormire in
la foresta ! e troppo fredo ! Vis ne me assassinare ?
Veni de Lugano — e piu — non e possibile ritornare ! "
and so forth.

282 THE POPE'S PICTURE

They answered in strophe and antistrophe, some-
times together in full chorus, and again in semi-
chorus, and with variations, that it was impossible.
Then a light showed in the chinks of their great
door; the lock grated, and it opened. A third
person, a tall youth, stood in the hall. I went
forward into the breach and occupied the hall.
He blinked at me above a candle, and murmured,
as a man apologising, " It is not possible."

Whatever I have in common with these southern-
ers made me understand that I had won, so I smiled
at him and nodded ; he also smiled, and at once
beckoned to me. He led me upstairs, and showed
me a charming bed in a clean room, where there
was a portrait of the Pope, looking cunning; the
charge for that delightful and human place was
sixpence, and as I said good-night to the youth, the
man and woman from above said good-night also.
And this was my first introduction to the most
permanent feature in the Italian character. The
good people !

When I woke and rose I was the first to be up
and out. It was high morning. The sun was not
yet quite over the eastern mountains, but I had
slept, though so shortly yet at great ease, and the

THE WAGGON-BOATS 283

world seemed new and full of a merry mind. The
sky was coloured like that high metal work which
you may see in the studios of Paris ; there was gold
in it fading into bronze, and above, the bronze
softened to silver. A little morning breeze,
courageous and steady, blew down the lake and
provoked the water to glad ripples, and there was
nothing that did not move and take pleasure in
the day.

The Lake of Lugano is of a complicated shape,
and has many arms. It is at this point very narrow
indeed, and shallow too ; a mole, pierced at either
end with low arches, has here been thrown across it,
and by this mole the railway and the road pass over
to the eastern shore. I turned in this long cause-
way and noticed the northern _j; .<
view. On the farther shore ^W

was an old village and some

. &

pleasure-houses of rich men sy

on the shore; the boats also4pf:-j'<

were beginning to go about

the water. These boats were jlfflgjl \\ ' ■"'

strange, unlike other boats ; ^^^^^^^^j^^f
they were covered with hoods,

and looked like floating waggons. This was to
shield the rowers from the sun. Far off a man

284

THE COURTYARD

was sailing with a little brown sprit-sail. It was
morning, and all the world was alive.

Coffee in the village left me two francs and two
pennies. I still thought the thing could be done, so
invigorating and deceiving are the early hours, and

coming farther
down the road to
an old and beauti-
ful courtyard on
the left, I drew
it, and hearing a
bell at hand I saw
a tumble -down
church with trees
before it, and went
in to Mass ; and
though it was a
little low village
Mass,yetthepriest
had three acolytes
to serve it, and
(true and gracious
mark of a Catholic
country !) these boys were restless and distracted at
their office.

THE ORACLE 285

You may think it trivial, but it was certainly a
portent. One of the acolytes had half his head
clean shaved ! A most extraordinary sight ! I
could not take my eyes from it, and I heartily
wished I had an Omen-book with me to tell me
what it might mean.

When there were oracles on earth, before Pan
died, this sight would have been of the utmost use.
For I should have consulted the oracle woman for
a Lira — at Biasca for instance, or in the lonely
woods of the Cinder Mountain ; and, after a lot of
incense and hesitation, and wrestling with the god,
the oracle would have accepted Apollo and, staring
like one entranced, she would have chanted verses
which, though ambiguous, would at least have been
a guide. Thus : —

Matutinus adest ubi Vesper, et accipiens te
Saepe recusatum voces intelligit bospe\
Rusticus ignotas notas, ac flumina tellus

Occupat /;/ sancto turn, turn, stans Aede cave to

Tonsuram Hirsuti Capitis, via namque pedestrem
Ferrea praeveniens cur sum, peregrine, lab or em
Pro pietate tua tnceptum frustratur, amore
Antiqui Ritus alto sub Num'i/ie Romae.

Lector. What Hoggish great Participles !
Auctor. Well, well, you see it was but a rustic
oracle at ojd. the revelation, and even that is sup-

286 THE ENGLISH OF IT

posing silver at par. Let us translate it for the
vulgar : —

When early morning seems but eve
And they that still refuse receive :
When speech unknown men understand ;
And floods are crossed upon dry land.
Within the Sacred Walls beware
The Shaven Head that boasts of Hair,
For when the road attains the rail
The Pilgrim1 s great attempt shall fail.

Of course such an oracle might very easily have
made me fear too much. The " shaven head " I
should have taken for a priest, especially it it was
to be met with " in a temple " — it might have pre-
vented me entering a church, which would have
been deplorable. Then I might have taken it
to mean that I should never have reached Rome,
which would have been a monstrous weight upon
my mind. Still, as things unfolded themselves,
the oracle would have become plainer and plainer,
and I felt the lack of it greatly. For, I repeat, I
had certainly received an omen.

The road now neared the end of the lake, and
the town called Capo di Lago, or " Lake-head," lay
off to my right. I saw also that in a very little
while I should abruptly find the plains. A low hill

ITALY ! (AGAIN) 287

some five miles ahead of me was the last roll of the
mountains, and just above me stood the last high
crest, a precipitous peak of bare rock, up which
there ran a cog-railway to some hotel or other. I
passed through an old town under the now rising
heat; I passed a cemetery in the Italian manner, with
marble figures like common living men. The road
turned to the left, and I was fairly on the shoulder
of the last glacis. I stood on the Alps at their
last southern bank, and before me was Lombardy.

Also in this ending of the Swiss canton one was
more evidently in Italy than ever. A village
perched upon a rock, deep woods and a ravine
below it, its houses and its church, all betrayed
the full Italian spirit.

The frontier town was Chiasso. I hesitated with
reverence before touching the sacred soil which I
had taken so long to reach, and I longed to be able
to drink its health ; but though I had gone, I sup-
pose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing,
I would not stop ; for I remembered the two
francs, and my former certitude of reaching Milan
was shaking and crumbling. The great heat of
middav would soon be on me, I had yet nearly
thirty miles to go, and my bad night began to
oppress me.

288 COMO

I crossed the frontier, which is here an imaginary
line. Two slovenly customs-house men asked me
if I had anything dutiable on me. I said No, and
it was evident enough, for in my little sack or
pocket was nothing but a piece of bread. If they
had applied the American test, and searched me for
money, then indeed they could have turned me
back, and I should have been forced to go into the
fields a quarter of a mile or so and come into their
country by a path instead of a highroad.

This necessity was spared me. I climbed slowly
up the long slope that hides Como, then I came
down upon that lovely city and saw its frame of
hills and its lake below me.

These things are not like things seen by the
eyes. I say it again, they are like what one feels
when music is played.

I entered Como between ten and eleven faint
for food, and then a new interest came to fill my
mind with memories of this great adventure. The
lake was in flood, and all the town was water.

Como dry must be interesting enough ; Como
flooded is a marvel. What else is Venice? And
here is a Venice at the foot of high mountains, and
all in the water, no streets or squares ; a fine even

THE RICH AND THE POOR 289

depth of three feet and a half or so for navigators,
much what you have in the Spitway in London
River at low spring tides.

There were a few boats about, but the traffic and
pleasure of Como was passing along planks laid on
trestles over the water here and there like bridges ;
and for those who were in haste, and could afford
it (such as take cabs in London), there were wheel-
barrows, coster carts, and what not, pulled about by
men for hire ; and it was a sight to remember all
one's life to see the rich men of Como squatting
on these carts and barrows, and being pulled about
over the water by the poor men of Como, being,
indeed, an epitome of all modern sociology and
economics and religion and organised charity and
strenuousness and liberalism and sophistry generally.

For mv part I was determined to explore this
curious town in the water, and I especially desired
to see it on the lake side, because there one would
get the best impression of its being really an aquatic
town ; so I went northward, as I was directed, and
came quite unexpectedly upon the astonishing
cathedral. It seemed built of polished marble,
and it was in every way so exquisite in propor-
tion, so delicate in sculpture, and so triumphant
in attitude, that I thought to myself —

290 THE LITTLE SEA

" No wonder men praise Italy if this first Italian
town has such a building as this."

But, as you will learn later, many of the things
praised are ugly, and are praised only by certain fol-
lowers of charlatans.

So I went on till I got to the lake, and there I
found a little port about as big as a dining-room
(for the Italian lakes play at being little seas. They
have little ports, little lighthouses, little fleets for war,
and little custom-houses, and little storms and little
lines of steamers. Indeed, if one wanted to give a
rich child a perfect model or toy, one could not give
him anything better than an Italian lake), and when
I had long gazed at the town, standing, as it seemed,
right in the lake, I felt giddy, and said to myself,
" This is the lack of food," for I had eaten nothing
but my coffee and bread eleven miles before, at
dawn.

So I pulled out my two francs, and going into a
little shop, I bought bread, sausage, and a very little
wine for fourpence, and with one franc eighty left I
stood in the street eating and wondering what my
next step should be.

It seemed on the map perhaps twenty-five, per-
haps twenty-six miles to Milan. It was now nearly
noon and as hot as could be. I might, if I held

ESTIMATE OF CONSULS 291

out, cover the distance in eight or nine hours, but I
did not see myself walking in the middle heat on
the plain of Lombardy, and even if I had been able
I should only have got into Milan at dark or later,
when the post office (with my money in it) would
be shut; and where could I sleep, for my one franc
eighty would be gone ? A man covering these dis-
tances must have one good meal a day or he falls
ill. I could beg, but there was the risk of being
arrested, and that means an indefinite waste of time,
perhaps several days ; and time, that had defeated
me at the Gries, threatened me here again. I had
nothing to sell or to pawn, and I had no friends.
The Consul I would not attempt; I knew too
much of such things as Consuls when poor and
dirty men try them. Besides which, there was no
Consul. I pondered.

I went into the cool of the cathedral to sit in its
fine darkness and think better. I sat before a shrine
where candles were burning, put up for their private
intentions by the faithful. Of many, two had nearly
burnt out. I watched them in their slow race for
extinction when a thought took me.

" I will," said I to myself, " use these candles for
an ordeal or heavenly judgment. The left hand one
shall be for attempting the road at the risk of illness

292 ORDEAL OF THE CANDLES

or very dangerous failure ; the right hand one shall
stand for my going by rail till I come to that point
on the railway where one franc eighty will take
me, and thence walking into Milan: — and heaven
defend the right."

They were a long time going out, and they fell
evenly. At last the right hand one shot up the
long flame that precedes the death of candles ; the
contest took on interest, and even excitement when,
just as I thought the left hand certain of winning, it
went out without guess or warning, like a second-
rate person leaving this world for another. The
right hand candle waved its flame still higher, as
though in triumph, outlived its colleague just the
moment to enjoy glory, and then in its turn went
fluttering down the dark way from which they say
there is no return.

None may protest against the voice of the Gods.
I went straight to the nearest railway station (for
there are two), and putting down one franc eighty,
asked in French for a ticket to whatever station
that sum would reach down the line. The ticket
came out marked Milan, and I admitted the
miracle and confessed the finger of Providence.
There was no change, and as I got into the train
I had become that rarest and ultimate kind of

THE MANY SELVES 293

traveller, the man without any money whatsoever
— without passport, without letters, without food or
wine ; it would be interesting to see what would
follow if the train broke down.

I had marched 378 miles and some three fur-
longs, or thereabouts.

Thus did I break — but by a direct command —
the last and dearest of my vows, and as the train
rumbled off, I took luxury in the rolling wheels.

I thought of that other mediaeval and papistical
pilgrim hobbling along rather than " take advantage
of any wheeled thing," and I laughed at him. Now
if Moroso-Malodoroso or any other Non-Aryan,
Antichristian, over-inductive, statistical, brittle-
minded man and scientist, sees anything remarkable
in oneself laughing at another self, let me tell him
and all such for their wide-eyed edification and
astonishment that I knew a man once that had
fifty-six selves (there would have been fifty-seven,
but for the poet in him that died young) — he could
evolve them at will, and they were very useful
to lend to the parish Priest when he wished to make
up a respectable Procession on Holy-days. And I
knew another man that could make himself so tall

294 MILAN

as to look over the heads of the scientists as a
pine-tree looks over grasses, and again so small as
to discern very clearly the thick coating or dust of
wicked pride that covers them up in a fine im-
penetrable coat. So much for the moderns.

The train rolled on. I noticed Lombardy out of
the windows. It is flat. I listened to the talk of
the crowded peasants in the train. I did not under-
stand it. I twice leaned out to see if Milan were
not standing up before me out of the plain, but I
saw nothing. Then I fell asleep, and when I woke
suddenly it was because we were in the terminus of
that noble great town which I then set out to
traverse in search of my necessary money and
sustenance. It was yet but early in the afternoon.

What a magnificent city is Milan! The great
houses are all of stone, and stand regular and
in order, along wide straight streets. There are
swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can
afford them. Men are brisk and alert even in the
summer heats, and there are shops of a very good
kind, though a trifle showy. There are many news-
papers to help the Milanese to be better men and
to cultivate charity and humility ; there are banks

THE CAFE 295

full of paper money ; there are soldiers, good
pavements, and all that man requires to fulfil him,
soul and body ; cafes, arcades, mutoscopes, and
every sign of the perfect state. And the whole
centres in a splendid open square, in the midst of
which is the cathedral, which is justly the most
renowned in the world.

My pilgrimage is to Rome, my business is with
lonely places, hills, and the recollection of the spirit.
It would be waste to describe at length this mighty
capital. The mists and the woods, the snows and
the interminable way had left me ill-suited for the
place, and I was ashamed. I sat outside a cafe,
opposite the cathedral, watching its pinnacles of
light; but I was ashamed. Perhaps I did the mas-
ter a hurt by sitting there in his fine great cafe,
unkempt, in such clothes, like a tramp ; but he was
courteous in spite of his riches, and I ordered a
very expensive drink for him also, in order to
make amends. I showed him my sketches, and
told him of my adventures in French, and he was
kind enough to sit opposite me, and to take that
drink with me. He talked French quite easilv,
as it seems do all such men in the principal towns
of north Italy. Still, the broad day shamed me,
and only when darkness came did I feel at ease.

296 THE AMBROSIAN MASS

I wandered in the streets till I saw a small
eating shop, and there I took a good meal. But
when one is living the life of the poor, one sees how
hard are the great cities. Everything was dearer, and
worse, than in the simple countrysides. The inn-
keeper and his wife were kindly, but their eyes showed
that they had often to suspect men. They gave
me a bed, but it was a franc and more, and I had to
pay before going upstairs to it. The walls were
mildewed, the place ramshackle and evil, the rickety
bed not clean, the door broken and warped, and
that night I was oppressed with the vision of
poverty. Dirt and clamour and inhuman conditions
surrounded me. Yet the people meant well. . . .

With the first light I got up quietly, glad to find
the street again and the air. I stood in the crypt
of the cathedral to hear the Ambrosian Mass, and
it was (as I had expected) like any other, save for a
kind of second lavabo before the Elevation. To read
the distorted stupidity of the north one might have
imagined that in the Ambrosian ritual the priest
put a non before the credo, and nee' s at each clause
of it, and renounced his baptismal vows at the
kyrie ; but the Milanese are Catholics like any others,
and the northern historians are either liars or igno-
rant men. And I know three that are both together.

LOMBARDY 297

Then I set out down the long street that leads
south out of Milan, and was soon in the dull and
sordid suburb of the Piacenzan way. The sky was
grey, the air chilly, and in a little while — alas ! —
it rained.

Lombardy is an alluvial plain.

That is the pretty way of putting it. The truth
is more vivid if you say that Lombardy is as flat as
a marsh, and that it is made up of mud. Of course
this mud dries when the sun shines on it, but mud
it is and mud it will remain ; and that day, as the
rain began falling, mud it rapidly revealed itself to
be ; and the more did it seem to be mud when one
saw how the moistening soil showed cracks from
the last day's heat.

Lombardy has no forests, but any amount of
groups of trees ; moreover (what is very remark-
able), it is all cultivated in fields more or less
square. These fields have ditches round them, full
of mud and water running slowly, and some of
them are themselves under water in order to culti-
vate rice. All these fields have a few trees border-
ing them, apart from the standing clumps ; but
these trees are not very high. There are no open
views in Lombardy, and Lombardy is all the same.
Irregular large farmsteads stand at random all

298 THE LAMBRO

up and down the country ; no square mile of
Lombardy is empty. There are many, many little
villages ; many straggling small towns about seven
to eight miles apart, and a great number of large
towns from thirty to fifty miles apart. Indeed,
this very road to Piacenza, which the rain now
covered with a veil of despair, was among the
longest stretches between any two large towns,
although it was less than fifty miles.

On the map, before coming to this desolate
place, there seemed a straighter and a better way
to Rome than this great road. There is a river
called the Lambro which comes east of Milan and
cuts the Piacenzan road at a place called Melegnano.
It seemed to lead straight down to a point on the
Po, a little above Piacenza. This stream one could
follow (so it seemed), and when it joined the Po
get a boat or ferry, and see on the other side the
famous Trebbia, where Hannibal conquered and
Joubert fell, and so make straight on for the
Apennine.

Since it is always said in books that Lombardy is
a furnace in summer, and that whole great armies
have died of the heat there, this river bank would
make a fine refuge. Clear and delicious water,
more limpid than glass, would reflect and echo the

NAPOLEON'S ROAD 299

restless poplars, and would make tolerable or even
pleasing the excessive summer. Not so. It was a
northern mind judging by northern things that
came to this conclusion. There is not in all Lom-
bardy a clear stream, but every river and brook is
rolling mud. In the rain, not heat, but a damp
and penetrating chill was the danger. There is
no walking on the banks of the rivers ; they are
cliffs of crumbling soil, jumbled anyhow.

Man may, as Pinkerton (Sir Jonas Pinkerton)
writes, be master of his fate, but he has a precious
poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or
a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for
half-an-hour.

Nevertheless, though it was apparent that I should
have to follow the main road for a while, I deter-
mined to make at last to the right of it, and to pass
through a place called " Old Lodi," for I reasoned
thus : " Lodi is the famous town. How much more
interesting must Old Lodi be which is the mother-
town of Lodi ? " Also, Old Lodi brought me back
again on the straight line to Rome, and I foolishly
thought it might be possible to hear there ot some
straight path down the Lambro (for that river still
possessed me somewhat).

Therefore, after hours and hours of trudging

300 OLD LODI

miserably along the wide highway in the wretched
and searching rain, after splashing through tortuous
Melegnano, and not even stopping to wonder if it
was the place of the battle, after noting in despair
the impossible Lambro, I came, caring for nothing,
to the place where a secondary road branches off to
the right over a level crossing and makes for Lodi
Vecchio.

It was not nearly midday, but I had walked
perhaps fifteen miles, and had only rested once in a
miserable Trattoria. In less than three miles I came
to that unkempt and lengthy village, founded upon
dirt and living in misery, and through the quiet,
cold, persistent rain I splash up the main street.
I passed wretched, shivering dogs and mourn-
ful fowls that took a poor refuge against walls ;
passed a sad horse that hung its head in the wet
and stood waiting for a master, till at last I reached
the open square where the church stood, then I
knew that I had seen all Old Lodi had to offer me.
So, going into an eating-house, or inn, opposite the
church, I found a girl and her mother serving, and
I saluted them, but there was no fire, and my heart
sank to the level of that room, which was, I am
sure, no more than fifty-four degrees.

Iffe

ITS UGLY CHURCH 301

Why should the less gracious part of a pilgrim-
age be specially remembered? In life we remember
joy best — that is what makes us sad by contrast ;
pain somewhat, especially if it is acute ; but dulness
never. And a book — which has it in its own power
to choose and to emphasise — has no business to
record dulness. What did I at Lodi Vecchio ? I
ate; I dried my clothes before a tepid stove in a
kitchen. I tried to make myself understood by the
girl and her mother. I sat at y

a window and drew the ugly
church on principle. Oh, the
vile sketch ! Worthy of that
Lombard plain, which they jJ^sCi

had told me was so full of ; 43~rif^^^h^r--: I
wonderful things. I gave up W^^b*^#W

all hope of by-roads, and I iffiiil

r ] ' k ' " (HI f ! %y^

determined to push back ~^#S|s^-.

obliquely to the highway

again — obliquely in order to save time! Nepios !

These " by-roads " of the map turned out in real
life to be all manner of abominable tracks. Some
few were metalled, some were cart-ruts merely,
some were open lanes of rank grass ; and along most
there went a horrible ditch, and in many fields the
standing water proclaimed desolation. In so far as

3o2 THE MIRACLE

I can be said to have had a way at all, I lost it. I
could not ask my way because my only ultimate
goal was Piacenza, and that was far off. I did not
know the name of any place between. Two or
three groups of houses I passed, and sometimes
church towers glimmered through the rain. I
passed a larger and wider road than the rest, but
obviously not my road ; I pressed on and passed
another; and by this time, having ploughed up
Lombardy for some four hours, I was utterly lost.
I no longer felt the north, and, for all I knew,
I might be going backwards. The only certain
thing was that I was somewhere in the belt
between the highroad and the Lambro, and that
was little enough to know at the close of such a
day. Grown desperate, I clamoured within my
mind for a miracle ; and it was not long before
I saw a little bent man sitting on a crazy cart and
going ahead of me at a pace much slower than
a walk — the pace of a horse crawling. I caught
him up, and, doubting much whether he would
understand a word, I said to him repeatedly —
" La granda via ? La via a Piacenza ? '
He shook his head as though to indicate that
this filthy lane was not the road. Just as I had
despaired of learning anything, he pointed with his

NOTHING MUCH 303

arm away to the right, perpendicularly to the road
we were on, and nodded. He moved his hand up
and down. I had been going north !

On getting this sign I did not wait for a cross
road, but jumped the little ditch and pushed
through long grass, across further ditches, along
the side of patches of growing corn, heedless of
the huge weight on my boots and of the oozing
ground, till I saw against the rainy sky a line of
telegraph poles. For the first time since they were
made the sight of them gave a man joy. There
was a long stagnant pond full of reeds between me
and the railroad ; but, as I outflanked it, I came
upon a road that crossed the railway at a level and
led me into the great Piacenzan way. Almost
immediately appeared a village. It was a hole
called Secugnano, and there I entered a house
where a bush hanging above the door promised
entertainment, and an old hobbling woman gave me
food and drink and a bed. The night had fallen, and
upon the roof above me I could hear the steady rain.

The next morning — Heaven preserve the world
from evil ! — it was still raining.

Lector. It does not seem to me that this part of
your book is very entertaining.

3o4 STORY OF CHARLES BLAKE

Auctor. I know that ; but what am I to do ?

Lector. Why, what was the next point in the
pilgrimage that was even tolerably noteworthy ?

Auctor. I suppose the Bridge of Boats.

Lector. And how far on was that?

Auctor. About fourteen miles, more or less.
... I passed through a town with a name as long
as my arm, and I suppose the Bridge of Boats must
have been nine miles on after that.

Lector. And it rained all the time, and there
was mud ?

Auctor. Precisely.

Lector. Well, then, let us skip it and tell
stories.

Auctor. With all my heart. And since you
are such a good judge of literary poignancy, do you
begin.

Lector. I will, and I draw my inspiration from
your style.

Once upon a time there was a man who was
born in Croydon and whose name was Charles
Amieson Blake. He went to Rugby at twelve and
left it at seventeen. He fell in love twice and
then went to Cambridge till he was twenty-three.
Having left Cambridge he fell in love more mildly
and was put by his father into a government

STORY OF MR. BLAKE 305

office, where he began at J~i8o a year. At thirty-
five he was earning ^5°° a year> and perquisites
made j£j$o a year- He met a pleasant lady and
fell in love quite a little compared with the other
times. She had X25° a Year- That made ^"iooo
a year. They married and had three children —
Richard, Amy, and Cornelia. He rose to a high
government position, was knighted, retired at
sixty-three, and died at sixty-seven. He is buried
at Kensal Green. . . .

Auctor. Thank you, Lector, that is a very good
story. It is simple and full of plain human
touches. You know how to deal with the facts of
everyday life. ... It requires a master-hand. Tell
me, Lector, had this man any adventures?

Lector. None that I know of.

Auctor. Had he opinions?

Lector. Yes. I forgot to tell, you he was a
Unionist. He spoke two foreign languages badly.
He often went abroad to Assisi, Florence, and
Boulogne. . . . He left £,7613 6s. ^d., and a
house and garden at Sutton. His wife lives there
still.

Auctor. Oh !

Lector. It is the human story . . . the daily
task !

3o6 STORY OF THE DEVIL

Auctor. Very true, my dear Lector . . . the
common lot . . . now let me tell my story. It is
about the Hole that could not be Filled Up.

Lector. Oh no ! Auctor, no ! That is the
oldest story in the

Auctor. Patience, dear Lector, patience! I
will tell it well. Besides which I promise you it
shall never be told again. 1 will copyright it.

Well, once there was a Learned Man who had
a bargain with the Devil that he should warn the
Devil's emissaries of all the good deeds done around
him so that they could be upset, and he in turn
was to have all those pleasant things of this life
which the Devil's allies usually get, to wit a Com-
fortable Home, Self-Respect, good health, " enough
money for one's rank " and generally what is called
"a happy useful life " — till midnight of All-Hal-
lowe'en in the last year of the nineteenth century.

So this Learned Man did all he was required,
and daily would inform the messenger imps of
the good being done or prepared in the neigh-
bourhood, and they would upset it ; so that the
place he lived in from a nice country town became
a great Centre of Industry, full of wealth and de-
sirable family mansions and street property, and
was called in hell " Depot B " (Depot A you may

AND THE LEARNED MAN 307

guess at). But at last toward the 15th of Octo-
ber 1900, the Learned Man began to shake in his
shoes and to dread the judgment; for, you see,
he had not the comfortable ignorance of his kind,
and was compelled to believe in the Devil willy-
nilly, and, as I say, he shook in his shoes.

So he bethought him of a plan to cheat the
Devil, and the day before All-Hallowe'en he cut a
very small round hole in the floor of his study,
just near the fireplace, right through down to the
cellar. Then he got a number of things that do
great harm (newspapers, legal documents, unpaid
bills, and so forth) and made ready for action.

Next morning when the little imps came for
orders as usual, after pravers, he took them down
into the cellar, and pointing out the hole in the
ceiling, he said to them : —

" My friends, this little hole is a mystery. It
communicates, I believe, with the chapel ; but I
cannot find the exit. All I know is, that some
pious person or angel, or what not, desirous to do
good, slips into it every day whatever he thinks
may be a cause of evil in the neighbourhood,
hoping thus to destroy it" (in proof of which
statement he showed them a scattered heap of
newspapers on the floor of the cellar beneath the

308 STORY OF THE DEVIL

hole). " And the best thing you can do," he
added, " is to stay here and take them away as
fast as they come down and put them back into
circulation again. Tut ! tut ! " he added, picking
up a money-lender's threatening letter to a widow,
" it is astonishing how these people interfere with
the most sacred rights ! Here is a letter actu-
ally stolen from the post ! Pray see that it is
delivered."

So he left the little imps at work, and fed them
from above with all manner of evil-doing things,
which they as promptly drew into the cellar, and at
intervals flew away with, to put them into circula-
tion again.

That evening, at about half-past eleven, the Devil
came to fetch the Learned Man, and found him
seated at his fine great desk, writing. The Learned
Man got up verv affably to receive the Devil, and
offered him a chair by the fire, just near the little
round hole.

" Pray don't move," said the Devil ; " I came
early on purpose not to disturb you."

" You are very good," replied the Learned
Man. "The fact is, I have to finish my report on
Lady Grope's Settlement among our Poor in the
Bull Ring — it is making some progress. But their

AND THE LEARNED MAN 309

condition is heart-breaking, my dear sir ; heart-
breaking ! "

" I can well believe it," said the Devil sadly and
solemnly, leaning back in his chair, and pressing his
hands together like a roof. " The poor in our great
towns, Sir Charles " (for the Learned Man had been
made a Baronet), " the condition, I say, of the —
Don't I feel a draught? " he added abruptly. For
the Devil can't bear draughts.

" Why," said the Learned Man, as though
ashamed, "just near your chair there is a little hole
that I have done my best to fill up, but somehow it
seemed impossible to fill it . . . I don't know . . ."

The Devil hates excuses, and is above all prac-
tical, so he just whipped the soul of a lawyer out of
his side-pocket, tied a knot in it to stiffen it, and
shoved it into the hole.

" There ! " said the Devil contentedly ; " if you
had taken a piece of rag, or what not, you might
yourself . . . Hulloa ! . . ." He looked down
and saw the hole still gaping, and he felt a furious
draught coming up again. He wondered a little,
and then muttered: "It's a pity I have on my
best things. I never dare crease them, and I have
nothing in my pockets to speak of, otherwise I
might have brought something bigger." He felt

310 STORY OF THE DEVIL

in his left-hand trouser pocket, and fished out a
pedant, crumpled him carefully into a ball, and
stuffed him hard into the hole, so that he suffered
agonies. Then the Devil watched carefully. The
soul of the pedant was at first tugged as if from
below, then drawn slowly down, and finally shot off
out of sight.

" This is a most extraordinary thing ! " said the
Devil.

" It is the draught. It is very strong between
the joists," ventured the Learned Man.

" Fiddle-sticks ends ! " shouted the Devil. " It
is a trick ! But I Ve never been caught yet, and I
never will be."

He clapped his hands, and a whole host of his
followers poured in through the windows with
mortgages, Acts of Parliament, legal decisions,
declarations of war, charters to universities, patents
for medicines, naturalisation orders, shares in gold
mines, specifications, prospectuses, water companies'
reports, publishers' agreements, letters patent, free-
doms of cities, and, in a word, all that the Devil con-
trols in the way of hole-stopping rubbish ; and the
Devil, kneeling on the floor, stuffed them into the hole
like a madman. But as fast as he stuffed, the little
imps below (who had summoned a number of their

AND THE LEARNED MAN 311

kind to their aid also) pulled it through and carted
it away. And the Devil, like one possessed, lashed
the floor with his tail, and his eyes glared like coals
of fire, and the sweat ran down his face, and he
breathed hard, and pushed every imaginable thing
he had into the hole so swiftly that at last his
documents and parchments looked like streaks and
flashes. But the loyal little imps, not to be beaten,
drew them through into the cellar as fast as
machinery, and whirled them to their assistants ;
and all the poor lost souls who had been pressed
into the service were groaning that their one holi-
day in the year was being filched from them, when,
just as the process was going on so fast that it
roared like a printing-machine in full blast, the
clock in the hall struck twelve.

The Devil suddenly stopped and stood up.

" Out of my house," said the Learned Man ;
" out of my house ! I 've had enough of you, and
I 've no time for fiddle-faddle ! It 's past twelve,
and I 've won ! "

The Devil, though still panting, smiled a dia-
bolical smile, and pulling out his repeater (which
he had taken as a perquisite from the body of a
member of Parliament), said, " I suppose you keep
Greenwich time ? "

3i2 APPARITION OF

" Certainly ! " said Sir Charles.

" Well," said the Devil, " so much the worse for
you to live in Suffolk. You 're four minutes fast,
so I '11 trouble you to come along with me ; and I
warn you that any words you now say may be used
against . . ."

At this point the Learned Man's patron saint,
who thought things had gone far enough, material-
ised himself and coughed gently. They both
looked round, and there was St. Charles sitting in
the easy chair.

" So far," murmured the Saint to the Devil
suavely, " so far from being four minutes too early,
you are exactly a year too late." On saying this,
the Saint smiled a genial, priestly smile, folded his
hands, twiddled his thumbs slowly round and
round, and gazed in a fatherly way at the Devil.

" What do you mean ? " shouted the Devil.

"What I say," said St. Charles calmly; " 1900
is not the last year of the nineteenth century ; it is
the first year of the twentieth."

" Oh ! " sneered the Devil, " are you an anti-
vaccinationist as well? Now, look here" (and he
began counting on his fingers) ; " supposing, in the
year 1 b.c. . . ."

" I never argue," said St. Charles.

ST. CHARLES BORROMEO 313

"Well, all I know is," answered the Devil with
some heat, " that in this matter as in most others,
thank the Lord, I have on my side all the his-
torians and all the scientists, all the universities,
ail the ..."

"And I," interrupted St. Charles, waving his
hand like a gentleman (he is a Borromeo), " I have
the Pope ! "

At this the Devil gave a great howl, and dis-
appeared in a clap ot thunder, and was never seen
again till his recent appearance at Brighton.

So the Learned Man was saved ; but hardly ; for
he had to spend five hundred years in Purgatory
catechising such heretics and pagans as got there
and instructing them in the true faith. And with
the more muscular he passed a knotty time.

You do not see the river Po till' you are close to
it. Then, a little crook in the road being passed,
you come between high trees, and straight out
before you, level with you, runs the road into and
over a very wide mass of tumbling water. It does
not look like a bridge, it looks like a quay. It
does not rise; it has all the appearance of being a
strip of road shaved off and floated on the water.

All this is because it passes over boats, as do some

3i4 ON THE GERMANS

bridges over the Rhine. (At Cologne, I believe, and
certainly at Kiel — for I once sat at the end of that
and saw a lot of sad German soldiers drilling, a
memory which later made me understand ( I ) why
they can be out-marched by Latins; (2) why they
impress travellers and civilians; (3) why the
governing class in Germany take care to avoid
common service; (4) why there is no promotion
from the ranks; and (5) why their artillery is too
rigid and not quick enough. It also showed me
something intimate and fundamental about the
Germans which Tacitus never understood and which
all our historians miss — they are of necessity his-
trionic. Note I do not say it is a vice of theirs.
It is a necessity of theirs, an appetite. They must
see themselves on a stage. Whether they do things
well or ill, whether it is their excellent army with
its ridiculous parade, or their eighteenth-century
sans-soucis with avenues and surprises, or their
national legends with gods in wigs and strong men
in tights, they must be play-actors to be happy and
therefore to be efficient ; and if I were Lord of
Germany, and desired to lead my nation and to be
loved by them, I should put great golden feathers
on my helmet, I should use rhetorical expressions,
spout monologues in public, organise wide cavalry

THE BRIDGE OF BOATS 315

charges at reviews, and move through life generally
to the crashing of an orchestra. For by doing this
even a vulgar, short, and diseased man, who dabbled
in stocks and shares and was led by financiers, could
become a hero and do his nation good.)

Lector. What is all this ?

Auctor. It is a parenthesis.

Lector. It is good to know the names of the
strange things one meets with on one's travels. _

Auctor. So I return to where I branched off,
and tell you that the river Po is here crossed by
a bridge of boats.

It is a very large stream. Half-wav across, it is
even a trifle uncomfortable to be so near the rush
of the water on the trembling pontoons. And on
that day its speed and turbulence were emphasised
by the falling rain. For the marks of the rain on
the water showed the rapidity of the current, and
the silence of its fall framed and enhanced the swirl
of the great river.

Once across, it is a step up into Piacenza — a
step through mud and rain. On my right was
that plain where Barbarossa received, and was
glorified by, the rising lite of the twelfth century ;
there the renaissance ot our Europe saw the future
glorious for the first time since the twilight of

3 16 THE MOOR'S HEAD

Rome, and being full of morning they imagined
a new earth and gave it a Lord. It was at
Roncaglia, I think in spring, and I wish I had
been there. For in spring even the Lombard plain
thev say is beautiful and generous, but in summer
I know by experience that it is cold, brutish,
and wet.

And so in Piacenza it rained and there was
mud, till I came to a hotel called the Moor's
Head, in a very narrow street, and entering it
I discovered a curious thing : the Italians live in
palaces : I might have known it.

They are the impoverished heirs of a great
time ; its garments cling to them, but their rooms
are too large for the modern penury. I found
these men eating in a great corridor, in a hall,
as they might do in a palace. I found high,
painted ceilings and many things of marble, a vast
kitchen, and all the apparatus of the great houses
— at the service of a handful of contented, un-
known men. So in England, when we have worked
out our full fate, happier but poorer men will sit
in the faded country-houses (a community, or an
inn, or impoverished squires), and rough food will
be eaten under mouldering great pictures, and
there will be offices or granaries in the galleries

THE EMILIAN WAY 317

of our castles ; and where Lord Saxonthorpe (whose
real name is Hauptstein) now plans our policy,
common Englishmen will return to the simpler
lite, and there will be dogs, and beer, and catches
upon winter evenings. For Italy also once gathered
by artifice the wealth that was not of her making.

He was a good man, the innkeeper of this
palace. He warmed me at his fire in his enormous
kitchen, and I drank malaga to the health of the
cooks. I ate of their food, I bought a bottle of
a new kind of sweet wine called " Vino Dolce,"
and — I took the road.

Lector. And did you see nothing of Piacenza ?

Auctor. Nothing;, Lector; it was raining, and
there was mud. I stood in front of the cathedral
on my way out, and watched it rain. It rained
all along the broad and splendid Emilian Way.
I had promised myself great visions of the Roman
soldiery passing up that eternal road; it still was
stamped with the imperial mark, but the rain
washed out its interest, and left me cold. The
Apennines also, rising abruptly from the plain, were
to have given me revelations at sunset ; they gave
me none. Their foothills appeared continually on
my right, they themselves were veiled. And all
these miles of road fade into the confused memory

3*8

THE EMILIAN WAY

of that intolerable plain. The night at Firenzuola,
the morning (the second morning of this visita-

tion) still cold, still heartless, and sodden with the
abominable weather, shall form no part of this
book.

Things grand and simple of their nature are
possessed, as you know, of a very subtle flavour.
The larger music, the more majestic lengths of
verse called epics, the exact in sculpture, the
classic drama, the most absolute kinds of wine,
require a perfect harmony of circumstance for

ON PERFECT THINGS 319

their appreciation. Whatever is strong, poignant,
and immediate in its effect is not so difficult to
suit ; farce, horror, rage, or what not, these a man
can find in the arts, even when his mood may be
heavy or disturbed ; just as (to take their parallel
in wines) strong Beaune will always rouse a man.
But that which is cousin to the immortal spirit
and which has, so to speak, no colour but mere
light, that needs for its recognition so serene an
air of abstraction and of content as makes its
pleasure seem rare in this troubled life, and causes
us to recall it like a descent of the gods.

For who, having noise around him, can strike
the table with pleasure at reading the Misanthrope,
or in mere thirst or in fatigue praise Chinon wine ?
Who does not need for either of these perfect things
Recollection, a variety of according conditions, and
a certain easy Plenitude of the Mind?

So it is with the majesty of Plains, and with the
haunting power of their imperial roads.

All you that have had your souls touched at
the innermost, and have attempted to release your-
selves in verse and have written trash — (and who
know it) — be comforted. You shall have satis-
faction at last, and vou shall attain fame in some

32o FUGUE

other fashion — perhaps in private theatricals or
perhaps in journalism. You will be granted a
prevision of complete success, and your hearts
shall be filled — but you must not expect to find
this mood on the Emilian Way when it is
raining.

All you that feel youth slipping past you and
that are desolate at the approach of age, be merry ;
it is not what it looks like from in front and from
outside. There is a glory in all completion, and
all good endings are but shining transitions.
There will come a sharp moment of revelation
when you shall bless the effect of time. But this
divine moment — it is not on the Emilian Way in
the rain that you should seek it.

All you that have loved passionately and have
torn your hearts asunder in disillusions, do not
imagine that things broken cannot be mended by
the good angels. There is a kind of splice called
"the long splice" which makes a cut rope seem
what it was before ; it is even stronger than before,
and can pass through a block. There will descend
upon you a blessed hour when you will be con-
vinced as by a miracle, and you will suddenly

INTERLUDE 321

understand the redintegratio amoris [amor is redin-
tegralio, a Latin phrase). But this hour you will
not receive in the rain on the Emilian Way.

Here then, next day, just outside a town called
Borgo, past the middle of morning, the rain ceased.

Its effect was still upon the slippery and shining
road, the sky was still fast and leaden, when, in
a distaste for their towns, I skirted the place
by a lane that runs westward of the houses, and
sitting upon a low wall, I looked up at the
Apennines, which were now plain above me, and
thought over my approaching passage through
those hills.

But here I must make clear bv a map the mass
of mountains which I was about to attempt, and
in which I forded so many rivers, met so many
strange men and beasts, saw such' unaccountable
sights, was imprisoned, starved, frozen, haunted,
delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed in
Tuscany — in a word, where I had the most ex-
traordinary and unheard-of adventures that ever
diversified the life of man.

The straight line to Rome runs from Milan not
quite through Piacenza, but within a mile or two
of that city. Then it runs across the first folds

322 UNIMPORTANT

of the Apennines, and gradually diverges from the
Emilian Way. It was not possible to follow this
part of the line exactly, for there was no kind of
track. But by following the Emilian Way for
several miles (as I had done), and by leaving it
at the right moment, it was possible to strike the
straight line again near a village called Medesano.

Now on the far side of the Apennines, beyond
their main crest, there happens, most providentially,
to be a river called the Serchio, whose valley is
fairly straight and points down directly to Rome.
To follow this valley would be practically to fol-
low the line to Rome, and it struck the Tuscan
plain not far from Lucca.

But to get from the Emilian Way over the
eastern slope of the Apennines' main ridge and
crest, to where the Serchio rises on the western
side, is a very difficult matter. The few roads
across the Apennines cut my track at right
angles, and were therefore useless. In order to
strike the watershed at the sources of the Serchio
it was necessary to go obliquely across a torrent
and four rivers (the Taro, the Parma, the Enza,
and the Secchia), and to climb the four spurs
that divided them ; crossing each nearer to the
principal chain as I advanced until, after the

TOPOGRAPHY

323

Secchia, the next climb would be that of the
central crest itself, on the far side of which I
should find the Serchio valley.

Perhaps in places roads might correspond to
this track. Certainly the
bulk of it would be mule
paths or rough gullies —
how much I could not
tell. The only way I
could work it with my
wretched map was to note
the names of towns or
hamlets more or less on
the line, and to pick my
way from one to another.
I wrote them down as
follows : Fornovo, Cales-
tano, Tizzano, Colagna

— the last at the foot of the final pass. The dis-
tance to that pass as the crow flies was only a little
more than thirty miles. So exceedingly difficult
was the task that it took me over two days. Till I
reached Fornovo beyond the Taro, I was not really
in the hills.

By country roads, picking my way, I made that

324 THE RED INN

afternoon for Medesano. The lanes were tortuous;
they crossed continual streams that ran from the
hills above, full and foaming after the rain, and
frothing with the waste of the mountains. I had
not gone two miles when the sky broke ; not four
when a new warmth began to steal over the air
and a sense of summer to appear in the earth
about me. With the greatest rapidity the unusual
weather that had accompanied me from Milan was
changing into the normal brilliancy of the south;
but it was too late for the sun to tell, though he
shone from time to time through clouds that were
now moving eastwards more perceptibly and shred-
ding as they moved.

Quite tired and desiring food, keen also for rest
after those dispiriting days, I stopped, before
reaching Medesano, at an inn where three ways
met; and there I purposed to eat and spend the
night, for the next day, it was easy to see, would
be tropical, and 1 should rise before dawn if I was
to save the heat. I entered.

The room within was of red wood. It had two
tables, a little counter with a vast array of bottles,
a woman behind the counter, and a small, nervous
man in a strange hat serving. And all the little
place was filled and crammed with a crowd of

THE TAVERN BRAWL 325

perhaps twenty men, gesticulating, shouting, laugh-
ing, quarrelling, and one very big man was explain-
ing to another the virtues of his knife ; and all were
already amply satisfied with wine. For in this part
men do not own, but are paid wages, so that they
waste the little they have.

I saluted the company, and walking up to the
counter was about to call for wine. They had all
become silent, when one man asked me a question
in Italian. I did not understand it, and attempted
to say so, when another asked the same question ;
then six or seven — and there was a hubbub. And
out of the hubbub I heard a similar sentence rising
all the time. To this day I do not know what it
meant, but I thought (and think) it meant " he is a
Venetian," or "he is the Venetian." Something in
my broken language had made them think this, and
evidently the Venetians (or a Venetian) were (or
was) gravely unpopular here. Why, I cannot tell.
Perhaps the Venetians were blacklegs. But evi-
dently a Venetian, or the whole Venetian nation,
had recently done them a wrong.

At any rate one very dark-haired man put his
face close up to mine, unlipped his teeth, and began
a great noise of cursing and threatening, and this so
angered me that it overmastered my fear, which

326 THE QUARREL

had till then been considerable. I remembered also
a rule which a wise man once told me for guidance,
and it is this : " God disposes of victory, but, as the
world is made, when men smile, smile ; when men
laugh, laugh ; when men hit, hit ; when men shout,
shout ; and when men curse, curse you also, my son,
and in doubt let them always take the first move."

I say my fear had been considerable, especially
of the man with the knife, but I got too angry to
remember it, and advancing my face also to this
insulter's I shouted, " Dio Ladro ! Dios di mi alma 1
Sanguinamento ! N ombre di Dios ! Che ? Che vole ?
Non sono da Venecia io I Sono de Francia I Je m en
fie he da vestra Venezia ! Non se vede che non parlar
vestra lingua ? Che sono forestiere ? " and so forth.
At this they evidently divided into two parties, and
all began raging amongst themselves, and some at
me, while the others argued louder and louder that
there was an error.

The little innkeeper caught my arm over the
counter, and I turned round sharply, thinking he
was doing me a wrong, but I saw him nodding and
winking at me, and he was on my side. This was
probably because he was responsible if anything hap-
pened, and he alone could not fly from the police.

He made them a speech which, for all I know,

THE ODD KNIFE 327

may have been to the effect that he had known
and loved me from childhood, or may have been
that he knew me for one Jacques of Turin, or may
have been any other lie. Whatever lie it was, it
appeased them. Their anger went down to a mur-
mur, just like soda-water settling down into a glass.

I stood wine ; we drank. I showed them my
book, and as my pencil needed sharpening the large
man lent me his knife for courtesy. When I got it
in my hand I saw plainly that it was

no knife for stabbing ^ ^^^ with > **■

was a pruning-knife, // and would

have bit the hand jSw t'lat cnerished

it (as they say Jp/'-J/¥ °f serpents). On

the other hand, /^'//W it would have been a
good knife for \^jW ripping, and passable at a
slash. You li must not expect too much

of one article.

I took food, but I saw that in this parish it
was safer to sleep out of doors than in ; so in the
falling evening, but not vet sunset, I wandered
on, not at a pace but looking for shelter, and I
found at last just what I wanted : a little shed,
with dried ferns (as it seemed) strewed in a corner,
a few old sacks, and a broken piece of machinery —
though this last was of no use to me.

328 THE CLOUDS

I thought: " It will be safe here, for I shall rise
before day, and the owner, it there is one, will not
disturb me."

The air was fairly warm. The place quite dry.
The open side looked westward and a little south.

The sun had now set behind the Apennines, and
there was a deep effulgence in the sky. I drank
a little wine, lit a pipe, and watched the west in
silence.

Whatever was left of the great pall from which
all that rain had fallen, now was banked up on the
further side of heaven in toppling great clouds that
caught the full glow of evening.

The great clouds stood up in heaven, separate,
like persons; and no wind blew; but everything
was full of evening. I worshipped them so far
as it is permitted to worship inanimate things.

They domed into the pure light of the higher
air, inviolable. They seemed halted in the presence
of a commanding majesty who ranked them all in
order.

This vision filled me with a large calm which a
travelled man may find on coming to his home, or
a learner in the communion of wise men. Repose,
certitude, and as it were, a premonition of glory
occupied my spirit. Before it was yet quite dark

THE IMPASSABLE RIVER 329

I had made a bed out of the dry bracken, covered
myself with the sacks and cloths, and very soon I
fell asleep, still thinking of the shapes of clouds
and of the power of God.

Next morning it was as I had thought. Going
out before it was fully light, a dense mist all around
and a clear sky showed what the day was to be. As
I reached Medesano the sun rose, and in half-an-
hour the air was instinct with heat; within an hour
it was blinding. An early Mass in the church
below the village prepared my day, but as I took
coffee afterwards in a little inn, and asked about
crossing the Taro to Fornovo — my first point — to
mv astonishment they shook their heads. The
Taro was impassable.

Why could it not be crossed ? My very broken
language made it difficult for me' to understand.
They talked of rami, which I thought meant oars;
but rami) had I known it, meant the separate branches
or streams whereby these torrential rivers of Italy
flow through their arid beds.

I drew a boat and asked if one could not cross in
that (for I was a northerner, and my idea of a river
was a river with banks and water in between), but
they laughed and said " No." Then I made the

33o THE CROSSING OF

motion of swimming. They said it was impossible,
and one man hung his head to indicate drowning.
It was serious. They said to-morrow, or rather
next day, one might do it.

Finally, a boy that stood by said he remembered
a man who knew the river better than any one, and
he, if any one could, would get me across. So I
took the boy with me up the road, and as we went
I saw, parallel to the road, a wide plain of dazzling
rocks and sand, and beyond it, shining and silhouetted
like an Arab village, the group of houses that was
Fornovo. This plain was their sort of river in
these hills. The boy said that sometimes it was
full and a mile wide, sometimes it dwindled into
dirty pools. Now, as I looked, a few thin streams
seemed to wind through it, and I could not under-
stand the danger.

After a mile or two we came to a spot in the
road where a patch of brushwood only separated us
from the river-bed. Here the boy bade me wait,

THE TARO 331

and asked a group of peasants whether the guide
was in ; they said they thought so, and some went
up into the hillside with the boy to fetch him,
others remained with me, looking at the river-bed
and at Fornovo beyond, shaking their heads, and
saying it had not been done for days. But I did
not understand whether the rain-freshet had passed
and was draining away, or whether it had not yet
come down from beyond, and I waited for the
guide.

They brought him at last down from his hut
among the hills. He came with great strides,
a kindly-looking man, extremely tall and thin,
and with very pale eyes. He smiled. They
pointed me out to him, and we struck the bar-
gain by holding up three fingers each for three
lira, and nodding. Then he grasped his long
staff and I mine, we bade farewell to the party,
and together we went in silence through thick
brushwood down towards the broad river-bed.
The stones of it glared like the sands of Africa;
Fornovo baked under the sun all white and black ;
between us was this broad plain of parched shingle
and rocks that could, in a night, become one
enormous river, or dwindle to a chain of stag-

332 THE CROSSING OF

nant ponds. To-day some seven narrow streams
wandered in the expanse, and again they seemed
so easy to cross that again I wondered at the
need of a guide.

We came to the edge of the first, and I climbed
on the guide's back. He went bare-legged into
the stream deeper and deeper till my feet, though
held up high, just touched the water; then
laboriously he climbed the further shore, and I
got down upon dry land. It had been but twenty
yards or so, and he knew the place well. I had
seen, as we crossed, what a torrent this first little
stream was, and I now knew the difficulty and
understood the warnings of the inn.

The second branch was impassable. We followed
it up for nearly a mile to where " an island " (that
is, a mass of high land that must have been an
island in flood-time, and that had on it an old
brown village) stood above the white bed of the
river. Just at this "island" my guide found a
ford. And the way he found it is worth telling.
He taught me the trick, and it is most useful to
men who wander alone in mountains.

You take a heavy stone, how heavy you must
learn to judge, for a more rapid current needs
a heavier stone ; but say about ten pounds. This

THE TARO 333

you lob gently into mid-stream. How, it is im-
possible to describe, but when you do it it is quite
easy to see that in about four feet of water, or
less, the stone splashes quite differently from the
way it does in five feet or more. It is a sure
test, and one much easier to acquire by practice
than to write about. To teach myself this trick I
practised it throughout my journey in these wilds.

Having found a ford then, he again took me
on his shoulders, but, in mid-stream, the water
being up to his breast, his foot slipped on a stone
(all the bed beneath was rolling and churning in
the torrent), and in a moment we had both fallen.
He pulled me up straight by his side, and then
indeed, overwhelmed in the rush of water, it was
easy to understand how the Taro could drown men,
and why the peasants dreaded these little ribbons
of water.

The current rushed and foamed past me, coming
nearly to my neck ; and it was icy cold. One had
to lean against it, and the water so took away one's
weight that at any moment one might have slipped
and been carried away. The guide, a much taller
man (indeed he was six foot three or so), sup-
ported me, holding my arm ; and again in a
moment we reached dry land.

334 ST. CHRISTOPHER

After that adventure there was no need for
carrying. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth
branches were easily fordable. The seventh was
broad and deep, and 1 found it a heavy matter;
nor should I have waded it but for my guide,
for the water bore against me like a man wrestling,
and it was as cold as Acheron, the river of the
dead. Then on the further shore, and warning
him (in Lingua Franca) of his peril, I gave him
his wage, and he smiled and thanked me, and
went back, choosing his plans at leisure.

Thus did I cross the river Taro ; a danger for
men.

Where I landed was a poor man sunning himself.
He rose and walked with me to Fornovo. He
knew the guide.

" He is a good man," he said to me of this
friend. " He is as good as a little piece of
bread."

" E vero," I answered ; " e San Cristophero."

This pleased the peasant ; and indeed it was
true. For the guide's business was exactly that
of St. Christopher, except that the Saint took no
money, and lived, I suppose, on air.

And so to Fornovo; and the heat blinded and

FORNOVO CHURCH 335

confused, and the air was alive with flies. But
the sun dried me at once, and I pressed up
the road because I needed food. After I had
eaten in this old town I was preparing to make
for Calestano and to cross the first high spur of
the Apennines that separated me from it, when
I saw, as I left the place, a very old church ; and
I stayed a moment and looked at carvings which
were in no order, but put in pell-mell, evidently
chosen from some older building. They were
barbaric, but one could see that they stood for
the last judgment of man, and there were the good
looking foolish, and there were the wicked being
boiled by devils in a pot, and what was most
pleasing was one devil who with great jov was
carrying off a rich man's gold in a bag. But
now we are too wise to believe in such follies,
and when we die we take our wealth with us ;
in the ninth century they had no way of doing
this, for no system of credit yet obtained.

Then leaving the main road which runs to
Pontremoli and at last to Spezzia, my lane
climbed up into the hills and ceased, little by little,
to be even a lane. It became from time to time
the bed of a stream, then nothing, then a lane
again, and at last, at the head of the glen, I con-

336 THE LOST PATH

fessed to having lost it; but I noted a great rock
or peak above me for a landmark, and I said to
myself —

" No matter. The wall of this glen before me
is obviously the ridge of the spur ; the rock must
be left to the north, and I have but to cross the
ridge by its guidance." By this time, however,
the heat overcame me, and, as it was already after-
noon and as I had used so much of the preceding
night for my journey, I remembered the wise
custom of hot countries and lay down to sleep.

I slept but a little while, yet when I woke the air
was cooler. I climbed the side of the glen at
random, and on the summit I found, to my disgust,
a road. What road could it be ? To this day I
do not know. Perhaps I had missed my way and
struck the main highway again. Perhaps (it is often
so in the Apennines) it was a road leading nowhere.
At any rate I hesitated, and looked back to judge
my direction.

It was a happy accident. I was now some 2000
feet above the Taro. There, before me, stood the
high strange rock that I had watched from below ;
all around it and below me was the glen or cup of
bare hills, slabs, and slopes of sand and stone cal-

THE GREAT VIEW

337

cined in the sun, and, beyond these near things, all
the plain of Lombardy was at my feet.

It was this which made it worth while to have
toiled up that steep wall, and even to have lost

my way — to see a hundred miles of the great flat
stretched out before me : all the kingdoms of the
world.

Nor was this all. There were sharp white clouds
on the tar northern horizon, low down above the
uncertain edge of the world. I looked again and
found they did not move. Then I knew they were
the Alps.

Believe it or not, I was looking back to a place of
days betore : over how many, many miles of road !

338 THE LONELY FORD

The rare, white peaks and edges could not deceive
me ; they still stood to the sunlight, and sent me
from that vast distance the memory of my passage,
when their snows had seemed interminable and their
height so monstrous ; their cold such a cloak of
death. Now they were as far off as childhood, and
I saw them for the last time.

All this I drew. Then finding a post directing
me to a side road for Calestano, I followed it down
and down into the valley beyond; and up the walls
of this second valley as the evening fell I heard
the noise of the water running, as the Taro had
run, a net of torrents from the melting snows far
off. These streams I soon saw below me, winding
(as those of the Taro had wound) through a floor
of dry shingle and rock ; but the high hills enclosed
that trench, and evening had left it in shadow ; and
when my road ceased suddenly some hundreds of feet
above the bed of the river, and when, full of evening,
I had scrambled down through trees to the brink of
the water, I found I should have to repeat what I
had done that morning and to ford these streams.
For there was no track of any kind and no bridge,
and Calestano stood opposite me, a purple cluster of
houses in the dusk against the farther mountain-side.

Very warily, lobbing stones as I had been taught

ON PRISONS 339

and following up and down each branch to find a
place, I forded one by one the six little cold and
violent rivers, and reaching the farther shore, I
reached also, as I thought, supper, companionship,
and a bed.

But it is not in this simple way that human life
is arranged. What awaited me in Calestano was
ill favour, a prison, release, base flattery, and a very
tardy meal.

It is our duty to pity all men. It is our duty to
pity those who are in prison. It is our duty to
pity those who are not in prison. How much
more is it the duty of a Christian man to pity
the rich who cannot ever get into prison ? These
indeed I do now specially pity, and extend to them
my commiseration.

What! Never even to have felt the grip of
the policeman ; to have watched his bold suspicious
eye; to have tried to make a good show under
examination . . . never to have heard the bolt
grinding in the lock, and never to have looked
round at the cleanly simplicity of a cell ? Then
what emotions have you had, unimprisonable rich ;
or what do you know of active living and of
adventure ?

34o THE ARREST

It was after drinking some wine and eating
macaroni and bread at a poor inn, the only one
in the place, and after having to shout at the ill-
natured hostess (and to try twenty guesses before
I made her understand that I wanted cheese), it
was when I had thus eaten and shouted, and had
gone over the way to drink coffee and to smoke
in a little cafe, that my adventure befel me.

In the inn there had been a fat jolly-looking
man and two official-looking people with white
caps dining at another table. I had taken no
notice of them at the time. But as I sat smoking
and thinking in the little cafe, which was bright
and full of people, I noticed a first danger-
signal when I was told sullenly that " they had
no bed ; they thought I could get none in the
town ; " then, suddenly, these two men in white
caps came in, and they arrested me with as much
ease as you or I would hold a horse.

A moment later there came in two magnificent
fellows, gendarmes, with swords and cocked hats,
and moustaches a V Abd el Kader, as we used to say
in the old days ; these four, the two gendarmes and
the two policemen, sat down opposite me on chairs
and began cross-questioning me in Italian, a lan-
guage in which I was not proficient. I so far

THE POLICEMAN'S LIE 341

understood them as to know that they were asking
for my papers.

" Niente ! " said I, and poured out on the table
a card-case, a sketch-book, two pencils, a bottle
of wine, a cup, a piece of bread, a scrap of French
newspaper, an old Secolo, a needle, some thread, and
a flute — but no passport.

They looked in the card-case and found 73 lira ;
that is, not quite three pounds. They examined the
sketch-book critically, as behoved southerners who
are mostly of an artistic bent: but they found no
passport. They questioned me again, and as I
picked about for words to reply, the smaller (the
policeman, a man with a face like a fox) shouted
that he had heard me speaking Italian currently in
the inn, and that my hesitation was a blind.

This lie so annoyed me that I said angrily in
French (which I made as southern as possible to
suit them) : —

" You lie : and you can be punished for such
lies, since you are an official." For though the
police are the same in all countries, and will swear
black is white, and destroy men for a song, yet
where there is a droit administratif — that is, where the
Revolution has made things tolerable — you are
much surer of punishing your policeman, and he is

342 THE CELL

much less able to do you a damage than in England
or America ; for he counts as an official and is
under a more public discipline and responsibility if
he exceeds his powers.

Then I added, speaking distinctly, " I can speak
French and Latin. Have you a priest in Calestano,
and does he know Latin ? "

This was a fine touch. They winced, and par-
ried it by saying that the Sindaco knew French.
Then they led me away to their barracks while
they fetched the Sindaco, and so I was imprisoned.

But not for long. Very soon I was again fol-
lowing up the street, and we came to the house of
the Sindaco or Mayor. There he was, an old man
with white hair, God bless him, playing cards with
his son and daughter. To him therefore, as under-
standing French, I was bidden address myself. I
told him in clear and exact idiom that his police-
men were fools, that his town was a rabbit-warren,
and his prison the only cleanly thing in it; that half-
a-dozen telegrams to places I could indicate would
show where I had passed ; that I was a common
tourist, not even an artist (as my sketch-book
showed), and that my cards gave my exact address
and description.

But the Sindaco, the French-speaking Sindaco,

THE BILINGUAL MAYOR 343

understood me not in the least, and it seemed a
wicked thing in me to expose him in his old age, so
I waited till he spoke. He spoke a word common
to all languages, and one he had just caught
from my lips.

" Tourist-e ? " he said.

I nodded. Then he told them to let me go. It
was as simple as that; and to this day, I suppose,
he passes for a very bilingual Mayor. He did me
a service, and I am willing to believe that in his
youth he smacked his lips over the subtle flavour of
Voltaire, but I fear to-day he would have a poor
time with Anatole France.

What a contrast was there between the hour
when I had gone out of the cafe a prisoner and
that when I returned rejoicing with a crowd about
me, proclaiming my innocence, and shouting one to
another that I was a tourist and had seventy-three
lira on my person ! The landlady smiled and bowed :
she had before refused me a bed ! The men at the
tables made me a god ! Nor did I think them
worse for this. Why should I ? A man unknown,
unkempt, unshaven, in tatters, covered with weeks
of travel and mud, and in a suit that originally
cost not ten shillings ; having slept in leaves and
ferns, and forest places, crosses a river at dusk

344 THE MORNING VALLEY

and enters a town furtively, not by the road. He Is
a foreigner; he carries a great club. Is it not much
wiser to arrest such a man ? Why yes, evidently.
And when you have arrested him, can you do more
than let him go without proof, on his own word ?
Hardly!

Thus I loved the people of Calestano, especially
for this strange adventure they had given me ; and
next day, having slept in a human room, I went at
sunrise up the mountain sides beyond and above
their town, and so climbed by a long cleft the
second spur of the Apennines : the spur that sepa-
rated me from the third river, the Parma. And my
goal above the Parma (when I should have crossed
it) was a place marked in the map " Tizzano."
To climb this second spur, to reach and cross the
Parma in the vale below, to find Tizzano, I left
Calestano on that fragrant morning ; and having
passed and drawn a little hamlet called Frangi,
standing on a crag, I went on up the steep vale and
soon reached the top of the ridge, which here dips
a little and allows a path to cross over to the
southern side.

It is the custom of manv, when they get over a
ridge, to begin singing. Nor did I fail, early as

THE PEASANT

345

was the hour, to sing in passing this the second
of my Apennine summits. I sang easily with an
open throat everything that I could remember in
praise of joy ; and I did not spare the choruses of
my songs, being even at pains to imitate (when they
were double) the various voices of either part.

Now, so much of the Englishman was in me
that, coming round a corner of rock from which
one first sees Beduzzo hanging on its ledge (as you
know), and finding round this corner a peasant
sitting at his ease, I was ashamed. For I did not
like to be overheard singing fantastic songs. But
he, used to singing as a solitary pastime, greeted me,
and we walked along together, pointing out to each
other the glories of the world before us and exult-
ing in the morning. It was his business to show me

things and their names: the great Mountain of the
Pilgrimage to the South, the strange rock of Castel

346 THE MOUNTAIN SPEECH

Nuovo : in the far haze the plain of Parma ; and
Tizzano on its high hill, the ridge straight before
me. He also would tell me the name in Italian
of the things to hand — my boots, my staff, my
hat ; and I told him their names in French, all
of which he was eager to learn.

We talked of the way people here tilled and
owned ground, of the dangers in the hills, and of
the happiness of lonely men. But if you ask how
we understood each other, I will explain the matter
to you.

In Italy, in the Apennines of the north, there
seem to be three strata of language. In the valleys
the Italian was pure, resonant, and foreign to me.
There dwell the townsmen, and they deal down
river with the plains. Half-way up (as at Frangi,
at Beduzzo, at Tizzano) I began to understand
them. They have the nasal " n " ; they clip their
words. On the summits, at last, they speak like
northerners, and I was easily understood, for they
said not " vino,'" but " vin " ; not " duo" but " du"
and so forth. They are the Gauls of the hills. I
told them so, and they were very pleased.

Then I and my peasant parted, but as one should
never leave a man without giving him something to
show by way of token on the Day of Judgment, I

"MOLINAR" 347

gave this man a little picture of Milan, and bade
him keep it for my sake.

So he went his way, and I mine, and the last
thing he said to me was about a " molinar" but I
did not know what that meant.

When I had taken a cut down the mountain, and
discovered a highroad at the bottom, I saw that
the river before me needed fording, like all the
rest; and as my map showed me there was no
bridge for many miles down, I cast about to cross
directly, if possible on some man's shoulders.

I met an old woman with a heap of grass on her
back ; I pointed to the river, and said (in Lingua
Franca) that I wished to cross. She again used that
word " molinar" and I had an inkling that it meant
" miller." I said to myself —

"Where there is a miller there is a mill. For
Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia. Where there is a mill
there is water ; a mill must have motive power :
.\ (a) I must get near the stream ; (b) I must look
out for the noise and aspect of a mill."

I therefore (thanking the grass-bearing woman)
went right over the fields till I saw a great, slow-
mill-wheel against a house, and a sad man standing
looking at it as though it were the Procession of

348 HE IS FOUND

God's Providence. He was thinking of many
things. I tapped him on the shoulder (whereat
he started) and spoke the great word of that valley,
" molinar" It opened all the gates of his soul. He
smiled at me like a man grown young again, and,
beckoning me to follow, led radiantly up the sluice
to where it drew from the river.

Here three men were at work digging a better
entry for the water. One was an old, happy man
in spectacles, the second a young man with stilts
in his hands, the third was very tall and narrow ;
his face was sad, and he was of the kind that endure
all things and conquer. I said " Molinar? " I had
found him.

To the man who had brought me I gave 50 c,
and so innocent and good are these people that he
said " Pourquoi ? " or words like it, and I said it
was necessary. Then I said to the molinar,
"Quanto?" and he, holding up a tall finger, said
" Una Lira." The young man leapt on to his
stilts, the molinar stooped down and I got upon
his shoulders, and we all attempted the many
streams of the river Parma, in which I think I
should by myself have drowned.

I say advisedly — " I should have been drowned."
These upper rivers of the hills run high and low

AND SERVES 349

according to storms and to the melting of the
snows. The river of Parma (for this torrent at
last fed Parma) was higher than the rest.

Even the molinar, the god of that valley, had to
pick his way carefully, and the young man on stilts
had to go before, much higher than mortal men,
and up above the water. I could see him as he
went, and I could see that, to tell the truth, there
was a ford — a rare thing in upper waters, because
in the torrent-sources of rivers either the upper
waters run over changeless rocks or else over
gravel and sand. Now if they run over rocks they
have their isolated shallow places, which any man
may find, and their deep — evident by the still and
mysterious surface, where fish go round and round
in the hollows ; but no true ford continuous from
side to side. So it is in Scotland. And if they
run over gravel and sand, then with every storm or
"spate" they shift and change. But here by some
accident there ran — perhaps a shelf of rock, perhaps
a ruin of a Roman bridge — something at least that
was deep enough and solid enough to be a true ford
— and that we followed.

The molinar — even the molinar — was careful of
his way. Twice he waited, waist high, while the
man on stilts before us suddenly lost ground and

3 so ANDIAMO

plunged to his feet. Once, crossing a small branch
(for the river here, like all these rivers, runs in many
arms over the dry gravel), it seemed there was no
foothold and we had to cast up and down. When-
ever we found dry land, I came off the molinar's
back to rest him, and when he took the water
again I mounted again. So we passed the many
streams, and stood at last on the Tizzanian side.
Then I gave a lira to the molinar, and to his com-
panion on stilts 50 c, who said, " What is this
for? " and I said, "You also helped."

The molinar then, with gesticulations and ex-
pression of the eyes, gave me to understand that
for this 50 c. the stilt-man would take me up to
Tizzano on the high ridge and show me the path
up the ridge ; so the stilt-man turned to me and
said, " Andiamo" which means " A lions." But when
the Italians say " Andiamo " they are less harsh than
the northern French who say " Allons " ; for the
northern French have three troubles in the blood.
They are fighters ; they will for ever be seeking the
perfect state, and they love furiously. Hence they
ferment twice over, like wine subjected to move-
ment and breeding acidity. Therefore is it that
when they say " Allons" it is harsher than " Andiamo."
My Italian said to me genially, "Andiamo."

THEOLOGICAL DIGRESSION 351

The Catholic Church makes men. By which I do
not mean boasters and swaggerers, nor bullies nor
ignorant fools, who, finding themselves comfortable,
think that their comfort will be a boon to others,
and attempt (with singular unsuccess) to force it on
the world ; but men, human beings, different from
the beasts, capable of firmness and discipline and
recognition ; accepting death ; tenacious. Of her
effects the most gracious is the character of the
Irish and of these Italians. Of such also some
day she may make soldiers.

Have you ever noticed that all the Catholic
Church does is thought beautiful and lovable until
she comes out into the open, and then suddenly she
is found by her enemies (which are the seven capital
sins, and the four sins calling to heaven for ven-
geance) to be hateful and grinding? So it is; and
it is the fine irony of her present renovation that
those who were for ever belauding her pictures, and
her saints, and her architecture, as we praise things
dead, they are the most angered by her appearance
on this modern field all armed, just as she was, with
works and art and songs, sometimes superlative,
often vulgar. Note you, she is still careless of art
or songs, as she has always been. She lays her
foundations in something other, which something

352 THE MANY BEASTS

other our moderns hate. Yet out of that some-
thing other came the art and song of the Middle
Ages. And what art or songs have you ? She is
Europe and all our past. She is returning. Andiamo.

Lector. But Mr. [deleted by the Censor) does not
think so ?

Auctor. I last saw him supping at the Savoy.
Andiamo.

We went up the hill together over a burnt land,
but shaded with trees. It was very hot. I could
scarcely continue, so fast did my companion go,
and so much did the heat oppress me.

We passed a fountain at which oxen drank, and
there I supped up cool water from the spout, but he
wagged his finger before his face to tell me that this
was an error under a hot sun.

We went on and met two men driving cattle up
the path between the trees. These I soon found to
be talking of prices and markets with my guide. For
it was market-day. As we came up at last on to the
little town — a little, little town like a nest, and all
surrounded with walls, and a castle in it and a
church — we found a thousand beasts all lowing
and answering each other along the highroad, and
on into the market square through the gate. There

THE BARGAIN 3S3

my guide led me into a large room, where a great
many peasants were eating soup with macaroni in it,
and some few, meat. But I was too exhausted to
eat meat, so I supped up my broth and then began
diapephradizing on my ringers to show the great
innkeeper what I wanted.

I first pulled up the macaroni out of the dish, and
said, Fromagioj Pommodoro, by which I meant cheese
— tomato. He then said he knew what I meant,
and brought me that spaghetti so treated, which
is a dish for a king, a cosmopolitan traitor, an
oppressor of the poor, a usurer, or any other rich
man, but there is no spaghetti in the place to which
such men go, whereas these peasants will continue
to enjoy it in heaven.

I then pulled out my bottle of wine, drank what
was left out of the neck (by way of sign), and
putting it down said, " Tale, tantum, vino rosso.'1
My guide also said many things which probably
meant that I was a rich man, who threw his money
about by the sixpence. So the innkeeper went
through a door and brought back a bottle all
corked and sealed, and said on his fingers, and with
his mouth and eyes, "This kind of wine is some-
thing VERY SPECIAL."

Only in the foolish cities do men think it a fine

354 THE BARGAIN

thing to appear careless of money. So I, very
narrowly watching him out of half-closed eyes,
held up my five fingers interrogatively, and said,
" Cinquante ? ' meaning " Dare you ask five-
pence ? "

At which he and all the peasants around, even
including my guide, laughed aloud as at an excel-
lent joke, and said, " Cinquante, Ho ! ho ! " and dug
each other in the ribs. But the innkeeper of
Tizzano Val Parmense said in Italian a number
of things which meant that I could but be joking,
and added (in passing) that a lira made it a kind of
gift to me. A lira was, as it were, but a token to
prove that it had changed hands : a registration fee :
a matter of record ; at a lira it was pure charity.
Then I said, " Soixante Dix ? " which meant nothing
to him, so I held up seven fingers ; he waved his
hand about genially, and said that as I was evidently
a good fellow, a traveller, and as anyhow he was
practically giving me the wine, he would make it
ninepence ; it was hardly worth his while to stretch
out his hand for so little money. So then I pulled
out 80 c. in coppers, and said, " Tutto" which means
" all." Then he put the bottle before me, took the
money, and an immense clamour rose from all
those who had been watching the scene, and they

THE CORKSCREW 3$$

applauded it as a ratified bargain. And this is the
way in which bargains were struck of old time in
these hills when your fathers and mine lived and
shivered in a cave, hunted wolves, and bargained with
clubs only.

So this being settled, and I eager for the wine,
wished it to be opened, especially to stand drink to
my guide. The innkeeper was in another room.
The guide was too courteous to ask for a corkscrew,
and I did not know the Italian for a corkscrew.

I pointed to the cork, but all I got out of
my guide was a remark that the wine was very
good. Then I made the emblem and sign of a
corkscrew in my sketch-book with a pencil, but he
pretended not to understand — such was his breeding.
Then I imitated the mode, sound, and gesture of
a corkscrew entering a cork, and an old man next
to me said " Tira-buchon" — a common French
word as familiar as the woods of Marly ! It was
brought. The bottle was opened and we all drank
together.

As I rose to go out of Tizzano Val Parmense
my guide said to me, " Se chiama Tira-Buchon
perche E tira il buchon." And I said to him,
" Dominus Vobiscum" and left him to his hills.

I took the road downwards from the ridge into

356

TIZZANO

the next dip and valley, but after a mile or so
in the great heat (it was now one o'clock) I was
exhausted. So I went up into a little wooded

bank, and lay there in the shade sketching Tiz-
zano Val Parmense, where it stood not much above
me, and then I lay down and slept for an hour and
smoked a pipe and thought of many things.

From the ridge on which Tizzano stands, which
is the third of these Apennine spurs, to the next,
the fourth, is but a little way ; one looks across from
one to the other. Nevertheless it is a difficult piece of
walking, because in the middle of the valley another
ridge, almost as high as the principal spurs, runs
down, and this has to be climbed at its lowest part
before one can get down to the torrent of the Enza,
where it runs with a hollow noise in the depths of

THE TOWER OF RUGINO 357

the mountains. So the whole valley looks confused,
and it appears, and is, laborious.

Very high up above in a mass of trees stood the
first of those many ruined towers and

castles in which the Apennines abound, /*■ A*-

and of which Canossa, far off and in- rfyj

distinguishable in the haze, was the chief "■a^/'
example. It was called "The Tower of '^
Rugino." Beyond the deep trench of the Enza,
poised as it seemed on its southern bank (but really
much further off", in the Secchia valley), stood that
strange high rock of Castel-Nuovo, which the
peasant had shown me that morning and which
was the landmark of this attempt. It seemed made
rather by man than by nature, so square and exact
was it and so cut off from the other hills.

It was not till the later afternoon when the air
was already full of the golden dust that comes
before the fall of the evening, that I stood above
the Enza and saw it running thousands of feet
below. Here I halted for a moment irresolute and
looked at the confusion of the hills. It had been
my intention to make a straight line for Collagna,
but I could not tell where Collagna lay save that
it was somewhere behind the high mountain that
was now darkening against the sky. Moreover the

358 THE CROSSING OF

Enza (as I could see down, down from where I stood)
was not fordable. It did not run in streams but in
one full current, and was a true river. All the scene
was wild. I had come close to the central ridge of the
Apennines. It stood above me but five or six clear
miles away, and on its slopes there were patches and
fields of snow which were beginning to glimmer in
the diminishing light.

Four peasants sat on the edge of the road. They
were preparing to go to their quiet homesteads, and
they were gathering their scythes together, for they
had been mowing in a field. Coming up to these, I
asked them how I might reach Collagna. They
told me that I could not go straight, as I had

wished, on account
of the impassable
river, but that if I
went down the steep
directly below me I
should find a bridge;
^/. that thence a path

went up the oppo-
site ridge to where
~"~^~ a hamlet, called Cer-

egio (which they showed me beyond the valley),
stood in trees on the crest, and once there (they

THE ENZA 359

said) I could be further directed. I understood all
their speech except one fatal word. I thought they
told me that Ceregio was half the. way to Collagna ;
and what that error cost me you shall hear.

They drank my wine, I ate their bread, and we
parted : they to go to their accustomed place, and I
to cross this unknown valley. But when I had left
these grave and kindly men, the echo of their
voices remained with me ; the deep valley of the
Enza seemed lonely, and as I went lower and lower
down towards the noise of the river I lost the
sun.

The Enza was flooded. A rough bridge, made
of stout logs resting on trunks of trees that were
lashed together like tri- ^^ ----"'"

pods and supported a „-£"";.; -'-?''; C<> ' $\
long plank, was afforded .--■'',.-, ~~-*- f W%\ \

to cross it. nut in the /• .-/'.•"r^./; H 1

high water it did not quite w^^p"'-'. ' '^ r />'M
reach to the hither bank, ''d'ji'^mf^

I rolled great stones into "^^^?l®^^^^^^/-«
the water and made a short "~=?J3

causeway, and so, some- --^r— T^ts-—

what perilously, I attained " — ~^^fe^

the farther shore, and went up, up by a little pre-
cipitous path till I reached the hamlet of Ceregio

36o CEREGIO

standing on its hill, blessed and secluded ; for no
road leads in or out of it, but only mule paths.

The houses were all grouped together round a
church ; it was dim between them ; but several
men driving oxen took me to a house that was
perhaps the inn, though there was no sign ; and
there in a twilight room we all sat down together like
Christians in perfect harmony, and the woman of
the house served us.

Now when, after this Communion, I asked the
way to Collagna, they must have thought me
foolish, and have wondered why I did not pass
the night with them, for they knew how far off
Collagna was. But I (by the error in language
of which I have told you) believed it to be but a
short way off. It was in reality ten miles. The
oldest of my companions said he would put me
on the way.

We went together in the half light by a lane that
followed the crest of the hill, and we passed a
charming thing, a little white sculpture in relief,
set up for a shrine and representing the Annun-
ciation ; and as we passed it we both smiled. Then
in a few hundred yards we passed another that was
the Visitation, and they were gracious and beautiful
to a degree, and I saw that they stood for the five

THE SHRINES 361

joyful mysteries. Then he had to leave me, and
he said, pointing to the little shrine : —

"When vou come to the fifth of these the path
divides. Take that to the left, and follow it round
the hollow of the mountain : it will become a lane.
This lane crosses a stream and passes near a tower.
When you have reached the tower it joins a great
highroad, and that is the road to Collagna."

And when he indicated the shrines he smiled, as
though in apologv for them, and I saw that we were
of the same religion. Then (since people who will
not meet again should give each other presents
mutually) I gave him the best of my two pipes, a
new pipe with letters carved on it, which he took
to be the initials of my name, and he on his part
gave me a hedge-rose which he had plucked and
had been holding in his fingers. And I continued
the path alone.

Certainly these people have a benediction upon
them, granted them for their simple lives and their
justice. Their eyes are fearless and kindly. They
are courteous, straight, and all have in them laughter
and sadness. They are full of songs, of memories,
ot the stories of their native place ; and their worship
is conformable to the world that God made. May

362 THE NIGHT BEGINS

they possess their own land, and may their influence
come again trom Italy to save from jar, and boast-
ing, and ineptitude the foolish, valourless cities,
and the garish crowds of shouting men. . . . And
let us especially pray that the revival of the faith
may do something tor our poor old universities.

Already, when I had heard all these directions,
they seemed to argue a longer road than I had ex-
pected. It proved interminable.

It was now fully dark ; the night was very cold
trom the height of the hills ; a dense dew began to
tall upon the ground, and the sky was tu 11 of stars.
For hours I went on slowly down the lane that ran
round the hollow of the wooded mountain, won-
dering why I did not reach the stream he spoke of.
It was midnight when I came to the level, and yet
I heard no water, and did not vet see the tower
against the sky. Extreme fatigue made it impos-
sible, as I thoughtj to proceed farther, when I saw
a light in a window, and went to it quickly and
stood beneath it. A woman trom the window called
me Care mio3 which was gracious, but she would
not let me sleep even in the straw ot the barn.

I hobbled on in despair ot the night, for the
necessity ot sleep was weighing me down atter tour

THE DESPAIR OF THE NIGHT 363

high hills climbed that day, and after the rough
ways and the heat and the continual marching.

I found a bridge which crossed the deep ravine
they had told me of. This high bridge was new, and
had been built of fine stone, yet it was broken and
ruined, and a gap suddenly showed in the dark.
I stepped back from it in fear. The clambering
down to the stream and up again through the
briars to regain the road broke me yet more,
and when, on the hill beyond, I saw the tower
faintly darker against the dark sky, I went up
doggedly to it, fearing faintness, and reaching it
where it stood (it was on the highest ground
overlooking the Secchia valley), I sat down on
a stone beside it and waited for the morning.

The long slope of the hills fell away for miles
to where, by daylight, would have lain the misty
plain of Emilia. The darkness confused the land-
scape. The silence of the mountains and the awful
solemnity of the place lent that vast panorama
a sense of the terrible, under the dizzy roof of the
stars. Every now and again some animal of the
night gave a cry in the undergrowth of the valley,
and the great rock of Castel-Nuovo, now close
and enormous — bare, rugged, a desert place —
added something of doom.

364 THE LAST HOURS

The hours were creeping on with the less certain
stars ; a very faint and unliving grey touched the
edges of the clouds. The cold possessed me, and
I rose to walk, if I could walk, a little farther.

What is that in the mind which, after (it
may be) a slight disappointment or a petty ac-
cident, causes it to suffer on the scale of grave
things ?

I have waited for the dawn a hundred times,
attended by that mournful, colourless spirit which
haunts the last hours of darkness ; and influenced
especially by the great timeless apathy that hangs
round the first uncertain promise of increasing light.
For there is an hour before daylight when men die,
and when there is nothing above the soul or around
it, when even the stars fail. And this long and
dreadful expectation I had thought to be worst
when one was alone at sea in a small boat without
wind ; drifting beyond one's harbour in the ebb of
the outer channel tide, and sogging back at the
first flow on the broad, confused movement of a sea
without any waves. In such lonely mornings I have
watched the Owers light turning, and I have counted
up mv gulf of time, and wondered that moments
could be so stretched out in the clueless mind. I
have prayed for the morning or for a little draught

THE END OF DARKNESS 365

of wind, and this I have thought, I say, the extreme
of absorption into emptiness and longing.

But now, on this ridge, dragging myself on to the
main road, I found a deeper abyss of isolation and
despairing fatigue than I had ever known, and I
came near to turning eastward and imploring the
hastening of light, as men pray continually without
reason for things that can but come in a due order.
I still went forward a little, because when I sat
down my loneliness oppressed me like a misfortune ;
and because my feet, going painfully and slowly,
yet gave a little balance and rhythm to the move-
ment of my mind.

I heard no sound of animals or birds. I
passed several fields, deserted in the half-darkness;
and in some I felt the hay, but always found it

366 IT DAWNS

wringing wet with dew, nor could I discover a
good shelter from the wind that blew off the
upper snow of the summits. For a little space of
time there fell upon me, as I crept along the road,
that shadow of sleep which numbs the mind, but it
could not compel me to lie down, and I accepted
it only as a partial and beneficent oblivion which
covered my desolation and suffering as a thin,
transparent cloud may cover an evil moon.

Then suddenly the sky grew lighter upon every
side. That cheating gloom (which I think the
clouds in purgatory must reflect) lifted from the
valley as though to a slow order given by some
calm and good influence that was marshalling in
the day. Their colours came back to things; the
trees recovered their shape, life and trembling ;
here and there, on the face of the mountain oppo-
site, the mists by their movement took part in the
new life, and I thought I heard for the first time
the tumbling water far below me in the ravine.
That subtle barrier was drawn which marks to-day
from yesterday; all the night and its despondency
became the past and entered memory. The road
before me, the pass on my left (my last ridge, and
the entry into Tuscany), the mass of the great
hills, had become mixed into the increasing light,

THE SUN! 367

that is, into the familiar and invigorating Present
which I have always found capable of opening
the doors of the future with a gesture of victory.

My pain either left me, or I ceased to notice
it, and seeing a little way before me a bank above
the road, and a fine grove of sparse and dominant
chestnuts, I climbed up thither and turned, standing
to the east.

There, without any warning of colours, or of the
heraldry that we have in the north, the sky was a
great field of pure light, and without doubt it was
all woven through, as was my mind watching it,
with security and gladness. Into this field, as I
watched it, rose the sun.

The air became warmer almost suddenly. The
splendour and health of the new day left me
all in repose, and persuaded or compelled me to
immediate sleep.

I found therefore in the short grass, and on
the scented earth beneath one of my trees, a
place for lying down ; I stretched myself out
upon it, and lapsed into a profound slumber,
which nothing but a vague and tenuous delight
separated from complete forgetful ness. If the last
confusion of thought, before sleep possessed me, was
a kind of prayer — and certainly I was in the mood

368 THE PASS

of gratitude and of adoration — this prayer was of
course to God, from whom every good proceeds, but
partly (idolatrously) to the Sun, which, of all the
things He has made, seems, of what we at least can
discover, the most complete and glorious.

Therefore the first hours of the sunlight, after
I had wakened, made the place like a new country ;
for my mind which received it was new. I reached
Collagna before the great heat, following the fine
highroad that went dipping and rising again along
the mountain side, and then (leaving the road and
crossing the little Secchia by a bridge), a path, soon
lost in a grassy slope, gave me an indication of my
way. For when I had gone an hour or so upwards
along the shoulder of the hill, there opened gradually
before me a silent and profound vale, hung with
enormous woods, and sloping upwards to where it
was closed by a high bank beneath and between two
peaks. This bank I knew could be nothing else
than the central ridge of the Apennines, the water-
shed, the boundary of Tuscany, and the end of
all the main part of my journey. Beyond, the
valleys would open on to the Tuscan Plain, and
at the southern limit of that, Siena was my mark ;
from Siena to Rome an eager man, if he is sound,
may march in three long days. Nor was that

INTO TUSCANY 369

calculation all. The satisfaction of the last lap, of
the home run, went with the word Tuscany in my
mind ; these cities were the approaches and intro-
duction of the end.

When I had slept out the heat, I followed the
woods upward through the afternoon. They stood
tangled and huge, and the mosses under them were
thick and silent, because in this last belt of the
mountains height and coolness reproduced the
north. A charcoal burner was making his fur-
nace ; after that for the last miles there was no
sound. Even the floor of the vale was a depth
of grass, and no torrent ran in it but only a little
hidden stream, leafy like our streams at home.

At last the steep bank, a wall at the end of the
valley, rose immediately above me. It was very steep
and bare, desolate with the many stumps of trees
that had been cut down ; but all its edge and
fringe against the sky was the line of a deep forest.

After its laborious hundreds of feet, when the forest
that crowned it evenly was reached, the Apennines
were conquered, the last great range was passed,
and there stood no barrier between this high crest
and Rome.

The hither side of that bank, I say, had been
denuded of its trees; the roots of secular chestnuts

37Q THE FURTHER SIDE

stood like graves above the dry steep, and had marked
my last arduous climb. Now, at the summit,
the highest part was a line of cool forest, and
the late afternoon mingled with the sanctity of
trees. A genial dampness pervaded the earth
beneath ; grasses grew, and there were living
creatures in the shade.

Nor was this tenanted wood all the welcome
I received on my entry into Tuscany. Already I
heard the noise of falling waters upon every side,
where the Serchio sprang from twenty sources on
the southern slope, and leapt down between mosses,
and quarrelled, and overcame great smooth dark
rocks in busy falls. Indeed, it was like my own
country in the north, and a man might say to
himself — "After so much journeying, perhaps I
am in the Enchanted Wood, and may find at
last the fairy Melisaunde."

A glade opened and, the trees no longer hiding
it, I looked down the vale, which was the gate of
Tuscany. There — high, jagged, rapt into the
sky — stood such a group of mountains as men
dream of in good dreams, or see in the works of
painters when old age permits them revelations.
Their height was evident from the faint mist and
grey of their hues ; their outline was tumultuous,

THE DESCENT 371

yet balanced : full of accident and poise. It was as
though these high walls of Carrara, the western

■

boundary of the valley, had been shaped expressly
for man, in order to exalt him with unexpected and
fantastic shapes, and to expand his dull life with a
permanent surprise. For a long time I gazed at
these great hills.

Then, more silent in the mind through their
influence, I went down past the speech and com-
panionship of the springs of the Serchio, and the
chestnut trees were redolent of evening all around.
Down the bank to where the streams met in one,
down the river, across its gaping, ruinous bridge
(which some one, generations ago, had built for
the rare travellers — there were then no main roads

372 SILLANO

across the Apennine, and perhaps this rude pass was
in favour); down still more gently through the
narrow upper valley I went between the chestnut
trees, and calm went with me for a companion : and
the love of men and the expectation of good
seemed natural to all that had been made in this
blessed place. Of Borda, where the peasants directed
me, there is no need to speak, till crossing the
Serchio once more, this time on a trestle bridge
of wood, I passed by a wider path through the
groves, and entered the dear village of Sillano, which
looks right into the pure west. And the peaks are
guardians all about it : the elder brothers of this
remote and secluded valley.

An inn received me : a great kitchen full of men
and women talking, a supper preparing, a great fire,
meat smoking and drying in the ingle-nook, a vast
timbered roof going up into darkness: there I was
courteously received, but no one understood my
language. Seeing there a young priest, I said to
him —

" Pater ', habeo Unguam latinam, sed non habeo
linguam Italicam. Visne mi dare traductionem in
is tarn linguam Toscanam non nullorum verborum .?"

To this he replied, " Libenter" and the people
revered us both. Thus he told me the name for a

THE TRANSFIGURED VALLEY 373

knife was cultello ; for a room, camera por dormire ;
for " what is it called ? " " come si chiama ? " ; for
" what is the road to ? " " quella e la via a . . . ? '
and other phrases wherein, no doubt, I am wrong ;
but I only learnt by ear.

Then he said to me something I did not under-
stand, and I answered, " Pol-Hercle ! " at which he
seemed pleased enough.

Then, to make conversation, I said, " Diaconus
es ? "

And he answered me, mildly and gravely, " Pres-
byter sum."

And a little while after he left for his house, but
I went out on to the balcony, where men and women
were talking in subdued tones. There, alone, I sat
and watched the night coming up into these Tuscan
hills. The first moon since that waning in Lorraine —
(how many nights ago, how many m'arches !) — hung
in the sky, a full crescent, growing into bright-
ness and glory as she assumed her reign. The one
star of the west called out his silent companions in
their order; the mountains merged into a fainter
contusion : heaven and the infinite air became the
natural seat of any spirit that watched this spell.
The fire-flies darted in the depths of vineyards and
of trees below ; then the noise of the grasshoppers

374 ON YOUTH

brought back suddenly the gardens of home, and
whatever benediction surrounds our childhood.
Some promise of eternal pleasures and of rest de-
served haunted the village of Sillano.

In very early youth the soul can still remember
its immortal habitation, and clouds and the edges
of hills are of another kind from ours, and every
scent and colour has a savour of Paradise. What
that quality may be no language can tell, nor have
men made any words, no, nor any music, to recall
it — only in a transient way and elusive the recol-
lection of what youth was, and purity, flashes on us
in phrases of the poets, and is gone before we can
fix it in our minds — oh ! my friends, if we could
but recall it ! Whatever those sounds may be that
are beyond our sounds, and whatever are those keen
lives which remain alive there under memory —
whatever is Youth — Youth came up that valley at
evening, borne upon a southern air. If we deserve
or attain beatitude, such things shall at last be our
settled state ; and their now sudden influence upon
the soul in short ecstasies is the proof that they
stand outside time, and are not subject to decay.

This, then, was the blessing of Sillano, and here
was perhaps the highest moment of those seven

SUDDEN EXCURSION 375

hundred miles — or more. Do not therefore be
astonished, reader, if I now press on much more
hurriedly to Rome, for the goal is almost between
my hands, and the chief moment has been enjoyed,
until I shall see the City.

Now I cry out and deplore me that this next
sixty miles of way, but especially the heat of the
days and the dank mists of the night, should have
to be told as of a real journey in this very repe-
titive and sui-similar world. How much rather I
wish that being free from mundane and wide-awake
(that is to say, from perilously dusty) considerations
and droughty boredoms, 1 might wander forth at
leisure through the air and visit the regions where
everything is as the soul chooses : to be dropped at
last in the ancient and famous town of Siena, whence
comes that kind of common brown paint wherewith
men, however wicked, can produce (if they have but
the art) very surprising effects of depth in painting:
for so I read of it in a book by a fool, at six shillings,
and even that was part of a series : but if you wish
to know anything further of the matter, go you and
read it, for I will do nothing of the kind.

Oh to be free for strange voyages even for a
little while ! I am tired of the road ; and so are

376 ON ANYTHING

you, and small blame to you. Your fathers also
tired of the treadmill, and mine of the conquering
marches of the Republic. Heaven bless you all!

But I say that if it were not for the incredulity
and doubt and agnostico-schismatical hesitation, and
very cumbersome air of questioning-and-peering-
about, which is the bane of our moderns, very
certainly I should now go on to tell of giants as big
as cedars, living in mountains of precious stones, and
drawn to battle by dragons in cars of gold ; or of
towns where the customs of men were remote and
unexpected; of countries not yet visited, and of the
gods returning. For though it is permissible, and
a pleasant thing (as Bacon says), to mix a little
falsehood with one's truth (so St. Louis mixed
water with his wine, and so does Sir John Growl
mix vinegar with his, unless I am greatly mistaken,
for if not, how does he give it that taste at his
dinners? eh? There, I think, is a question that
would puzzle him !) yet is it much more delectable,
and far worthier of the immortal spirit of man to
soar into the empyrean of pure lying — that is, to
lay the bridle on the neck of Pegasus and let him
go forward, while in the saddle meanwhile one sits
well back, grips with the knee, takes the race, and
on the energy of that steed visits the wheeling stars.

THE GARFAGNANA 377

This much, then, is worth telling of the valley of
the Serchio, that it is narrow, garrulous with water
brawling, wooded densely, and contained by fan-
tastic mountains. That it has a splendid name,
like the clashing of cymbals — Garfagnana ; that it
leads to the Tuscan plain, and that it is over a day's
march long. Also, it is an oven.

Never since the early liars first cooked eggs in
the sand was there such heat, and it was made hotter
by the consciousness of folly, than which there is no
more heating thing; for I think that not old Cham-
pionnet himself, with his Division of Iron, that
fought one to three and crushed the aged enormities
of the oppressors as we would crush an empty
egg, and that found the summer a good time for
fighting in Naples, I say that he himselt would not
have marched men up the Garfagnana in such a sun.
Folly planned it, Pride held to it,' and the devils
lent their climate. Garfagnana ! Garfagnana ! to
have such a pleasant name, and to be what you are !

Not that there were not old towers on the steep
woods of the Apennine, nor glimpses of the higher
peaks ; towns also : one castle surrounded by a fringe
of humble roofs — there were all these things. But it
was an oven. So imagine me, after having passed
chapels built into rocks, and things most curious,

378

THE BRIDGES

but the whole under the strain of an intolerable sun,
coming, something after midday, to a place called
Castel-Nuovo, the first town, for Campogiamo is
hardly a town.

At Castel-Nuovo I sat upon a bridge and thought,
not what good men think (there came into my
memory no historical stuff; for all I know, Liberty
never went by that valley in arms); no appreciation
of beauty filled me ; I was indifferent to all save the
intolerable heat, when I suddenly recognised the enor-
mous number of bridges that bespattered the town.

OF CASTEL-NUOVO

379

"This is an odd thing," I mused. " Here is a
little worriment of a town up in the hills, and what
a powerful lot of bridges!"

I cared not a fio- for the thousand things I had
been told to expect in Tuscany ; everything is in a
mind, and as they were not in my mind they did

": V)

not exist. But the bridges, they indeed were worthy
of admiration !

Here was a horrible- little place on a torrent bank.

380 THE BRIDGE-GOD

One bridge was reasonable, for by it went the road
leading south to Lucca and to Rome ; it was com-
mon honour to let men escape. But as I sat on
that main bridge I counted seven others ; indeed
there must have been a worship of a bridge-god
some time or other to account for such a necklace
of bridges in such a neglected borough.

You may say (I am off hard on the road to Borgo,
drooping with the heat, but still going strongly), you
may say that is explicable enough. First a thing is
useful, you say, then it has to become routine ; then
the habit, being a habit, gets a sacred idea attached
to it. So with bridges : e. g. Pontifex ; Dervorguilla,
our Balliol saint that built a bridge ; the devil that
will hinder the building of bridges ; cf. the Porphyry
Bridge in the Malay cosmogony ; Amershickel,
Bruckengebildung im kult-Historischer. Passen-
mayer ; Durat, " Le pont antique, etude sur les
origines Toscanes ; " Mr. Dacre's " The Com-
mand of Bridges in Warfare ; " " Bridges and
Empire," by Captain Hole, U.S.A. You may say
all this; I shall not reply. If the heat has hindered
me from saying a word of the fine open valley on
the left, of the little railway and of the last of the
hills, do you suppose it will permit me to discuss
the sanctity of bridges? If it did, I think there is

THE NEW GUIDE-BOOK 381

a little question on " why should habit turn sacred ? "
which would somewhat confound and pose you, and
pose also, for that matter, every pedant that ever
went blind and crook-backed over books, or took
ivory for horn. And there is an end of it. Argue
it with whom you will. It is evening, and I am at
Borgo (for if many towns are called Castel-Nuovo
so are many called Borgo in Italy), and I desire to
be free of interruption while I eat and sleep and
reflect upon the error of that march in that heat,
spoiling nearly thirty miles of road, losing so many
great and pleasurable emotions, all for haste and
from a neglect of the Italian night.

And as I sat, and before I slept, I thought of
that annotated Guide Book which is cried out for by
all Europe, and which shall tell blunt truths. Look
you out " Garfagnana, district of, Valley of Serchio "
in the index. You will be referred to p. 267. Turn
to p. 267. You will find there the phrase —

" One can walk from the pretty little village of Sil-
lano, nestling in its chestnut groves, to the flourishing
town of Borgo on the new Bagni railway in a day."

You will find a mark * after that phrase. It
refers to a footnote. Glance (or look) at the
bottom of the page and you will find : —

1 But if one does one is a fool.

382

DECIMO

So I slept late and uneasily the insufficient sleep
of men who have suffered, and in that uneasy sleep
I discovered this great truth : that if in a southern
summer you do not rest in the day the night will
seem intolerably warm, but that, it you rest in the
day, you will find coolness and energy at evening.

The next morning with daylight I continued
the road to Lucca, and of that also I will say
nothing.

Lector. Why on earth did you write this book ?

Auctor. For my amusement.

Lector. And why do you suppose I got it ?

Auctor. I cannot conceive
. . . however, I will give up
this much, to tell you that at
^Decimo the mystery of cypress
trees first came into my adven-
ture and pilgrimage : of cypress
trees which henceforward were
to mark my Tuscan road.
And I will tell you that there
also I came across a thing
peculiar (I suppose) to the
region of Lucca, for I saw it
there as at Decimo, and also some miles beyond. I
mean fine mournful towers built thus : In the first

WHY "DECIMO"? 383

storey one arch, in the second two, in the third
three, and so on : a very noble way of building.

And I will tell you something more. I will tell
you something no one has vet heard. To wit, why
this place is called Decimo, and why just below
it is another little spot called Sexta.

Lector . . .

Auctor. I know what you are going to say !
Do not say it. You are going to say : " It is
because they were at the sixth and tenth mile-
stones from Lucca on the Roman road." Heaven
help these scientists ! Did you suppose that I
thought it was called Decimo because the people
had ten toes ? Tell me, why is not every place
ten miles out of a Roman town called by such
a name ? Eh ? You are dumb. You cannot
answer. Like most moderns you have entirely
missed the point. We all know that there was
a Roman town at Lucca, because it was called
Luca, .and if there had been no Roman town the
modern town would not be spelt with two c's.
All Roman towns had milestones beyond them.
But why did this tenth milestone from this Roman
town keep its name ?

Lector. I am indifferent.

Auctor. I will tell you. Up in the tangle of

384 BECAUSE OF THIS

the Carrara mountains, overhanging the Garfagnana,
was a wild tribe, whose name I forget (unless it
were the Bruttii), but which troubled the Romans
not a little, defeating them horribly, and keeping
the legionaries in some anxiety for years. So when
the soldiers marched out north from Luca about
six miles, they could halt and smile at each other,
and say "At Sextam . . . that's all right. All safe
so far ! " and therefore only a little village grew up
at this little rest and emotion. But as they got
nearer the gates of the hills they began to be visibly
perturbed, and they would say : " The eighth mile!
cheer up !" Then " The ninth mile ! Sanctissima
Madonna! Have you seen anything moving on
the heights ? " But when they got to the tenth
milestone, which stands before the very jaws of
the defile, then indeed they said with terrible
emphasis, " Ad Decimam I " And there was no
restraining them : they would camp and entrench,
or die in the venture : for they were Romans and
stern fellows, and loved a good square camp and
a ditch, and sentries and a clear moon, and plenty
of sharp stakes, and all the panoply of war. That
is the origin of Decimo.

For all my early start, the intolerable heat had

LUCCA 385

again taken the ascendant before I had fairly
entered the plain. Then, it being yet but morn-
ing, I entered from the north the town of Lucca,
which is the neatest, the regularest, the exactest,
the most fly-in-amber little town in the world,
with its uncrowded streets, its absurd fortifications,
and its contented silent houses — all like a family at
ease and at rest under its high sun. It is as sharp
and trim as its own map, and that map is as clear
as a geometrical problem. Everything in Lucca is
good.

I went with a short shadow, creeping when I
could on the eastern side of the street to save
the sunlight; then I came to the main square, and
immediately on my left was the Albergo di Some-
thing-or-other, a fine great hotel, but most un-
fortunately right facing the blazing sky. I had
to stop outside it to count my money. I counted
it wrong and entered. There I saw the master, who
talked French.

" Can you in an hour," said I, " give me a meal
to my order, then a bed, though it is early day ? "
This absurd question I made less absurd by explain-
ing to him my purpose. How I was walking to
Rome, and how, being northern, I was unaccustomed
to such heat ; how, therefore, I had missed sleep,

386 THE BANQUET

and would find it necessary in future to walk mainly
by night. For I had now determined to fill the last
few marches up in darkness, and to sleep out the
strong hours of the sun.

All this he understood ; I ordered such a meal as
men give to beloved friends returned from wars.
I ordered a wine I had known long ago in the valley
of the Saone in the old time of peace before ever the
Greek came to the land. While they cooked it I went
to their cool and splendid cathedral to follow a late
Mass. Then I came home and ate their admirable
food and drank the wine which the Burgun-
dians had trodden upon the hills of gold so many
years before. They showed me a regal kind of a
room where a bed with great hangings invited
repose.

All my days of marching, the dirty inns, the
forests, the nights abroad, the cold, the mists, the
sleeplessness, the faintness, the dust, the dazzling
sun, the Apennines — all my days came over me, and
there fell on me a peaceful weight, as his two
hundred years fell upon Charlemagne in the tower
of Saragossa when the battle was done, after
he had curbed the valley of Ebro and christened
Bramimonde.

So I slept deeply all day long ; and, outside, the

THE HILL OF LUCCA 387

glare made a silence upon the closed shutters,
save that little insects darted in the outer air.

When I woke it was evening. So well had they
used me that I paid what they asked, and, not know-
ing what money remained over, I left their town by
the southern gate, crossed the railway and took the
road.

My way lay under the flank of that mountain
whereby the Luccans cannot see Pisa, or the Pisans
cannot see Lucca — it is all one to me, I shall not
live in either town, God willing; and if they are so
eager to squint at one another, in Heaven's name,
cannot they be at the pains to walk round the end
of the hill ? It is this laziness which is the ruin of
many ; but not of pilgrims, for here was I off to
cross the plain of Arno in one night, and reach by
morning the mouth and gate of that valley of the
Elsa, which same is a very manifest proof of how
Rome was intended to be the end and centre of all
roads, the chief city of the world, and the Popes'
residence — as, indeed, it plainly is to this day, for
all the world to deny at their peril, spiritual, geo-
graphical, historical, sociological, economic, and
philosophical.

388 NOTHING PARTICULAR

For if some such primeval and predestinarian
quality were not inherent in the City, how, think
you, would the valley of the Serchio — the hot,
droughty, and baking Garfagnana — lead down point-
ing straight to Rome; and how would that same
line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting it
exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa,
itself leading up directly towards Rome? I say,
nowhere in the world is such a coincidence observ-
able, and they that will not take it for a portent
may go back to their rationalism and consort with
microbes and make their meals off logarithms,
washed down with an exact distillation of the root
of minus one ; and the peace of fools, that is the
deepest and most balmy of all, be theirs for ever
and ever.

Here again you fall into errors as you read, ever
expecting something new ; for of that night's march
there is nothing to tell, save that it was cool, full of
mist, and an easy matter after the royal entertain-
ment and sleep of the princely Albergo that dignifies
Lucca. The villages were silent, the moon soon left
the sky, and the stars could not show through the
fog, which deepened in the hours after midnight.

A map I had bought in Lucca made the diffi-
culties of the first part of the road (though there

THE ELSA VALLEY 389

were many cross-ways) easy enough ; and the second
part, in midnight and the early hours, was very plain
sailing, till — having crossed the main line and
having, at last, very weary, come up to the
branch railway at a slant from the west and
north, I crossed that also under the full light — I
stood fairly in the Elsa valley and on the highroad
which follows the railway straight to Siena. That
long march, I say, had been easy enough in the
coolness and in the dark ; but I saw nothing ;
my interior thoughts alone would have afforded
matter for this part ; but of these if you have
not had enough in near six hundred miles of travel,
you are a stouter fellow than I took you for.

Though it was midsummer, the light had come
quickly. Long after sunrise the mist dispersed,
and the nature of the valley appeared.

It was in no wav mountainous, but easy, plea-
sant, and comfortable, bounded by low, rounded
hills, having upon them here and there a row of
cypresses against the sky; and it was populous
with pleasant farms. Though the soil was baked
and dry, as indeed it is everywhere in this south,
yet little regular streams (or canals) irrigated it
and nourished many trees — but the deep grass of
the north was wanting.

390 JAMES BAYLE, POET

For an hour or more after sunrise I continued
my way very briskly ; then what had been the warmth
of the early sun turned into the violent heat of day,
and remembering Merlin where he says that those
who will walk by night must sleep by day, and hav-
ing in my mind the severe verses of James Bayle,
sometime Fellow of St. Anne's, that " in Tuscan
summers as a general rule, the days are sultry but
the nights are cool " (he was no flamboyant poet ;
he loved the quiet diction of the right wing of
English poetry), and imagining an owlish habit
of sleeping by day could be acquired at once, I lay
down under a tree of a kind I had never seen ; and
lulled under the pleasant fancy that this was a pic-
ture-tree drawn before the Renaissance, and that
I was reclining in some background landscape of
the fifteenth century (for the scene was of that
kind), I fell asleep.

When I woke it was as though I had slept long;
but I doubted the feeling. The young sun still
low in the sky, and the shadows not yet shortened,
puzzled me. I looked at my watch, but the dis-
location of habit which night marches produce had
left it unwound. It marked a quarter to three,
which was absurd. I took the road somewhat
stiffly and wondering. I passed several small white

THE TEMPTATION 391

cottages ; there was no clock in them, and their
people were away. At last in a Trattoria, as they
served me with food, a woman told me it was just
after seven ; I had slept but an hour.

Outside, the day was intense ; already flies had
begun to annoy the darkened room within. Through
the half-curtained door the road was white in the
sun, and the railway ran just beyond.

I paid my reckoning, and then, partly for an
amusement, I ranged my remaining pence upon
the table, first in the shape of a Maltese cross, then
in a circle (interesting details !). The road lay
white in the sunlight outside, and the railway ran
just beyond.

I counted the pence and the silver — there was
three francs and a little over ; I remembered the
imperial largesse at Lucca, the lordly spending of
great sums, where, now in the pocket of an obse-
quious man, the pounds were taking care of them-
selves. I remembered how at Como I had been
compelled by poverty to enter the train for Milan.
How little was three francs for the remaining
twenty-five miles to Siena ! The road lay white in
the sunlight, and the railway ran just beyond.

I remembered the pleasing cheque in the post-
office of Siena ; the banks of Siena, and the money-

392 THE FALL

changers at their counters changing money at the
rate of change.

" If one man," thought I, " may take five per
cent, discount on a sum of money in the exchange,
may not another man take discount off a walk of over
seven hundred miles? May he not cut off it, as his
due, twenty-five miserable little miles in the train ? "
Sleep coming over me after my meal increased the
temptation. Alas ! how true is the great phrase of
Averroes (or it may be Boa-ed-din : anyhow, the
Arabic escapes me, but the meaning is plain enough),
that when one has once fallen, it is easy to fall
again (saving always heavy falls from cliffs and high
towers, for after these there is no more falling).
. . . Examine the horse's knees before you buy
him ; take no ticket-of-leave man into your house
for charity ; touch no prospectus that has founders'
shares, and do not play with firearms or knives ;
and never go near the water till you know how to
swim. Oh ! blessed wisdom of the ages ! sole pat-
rimony of the poor ! The road lay white in the
sun, and the railway ran just beyond.

If the people of Milo did well to put up a statue
in gold to the man that invented wheels, so should
we also put one up in Portland stone or plaster to

SIENA 393

the man that invented rails, whose property it is
not only to increase the speed and ease of travel, but
also to bring on slumber as can no drug : not even
poppies gathered under a waning moon. The rails
have a rhythm of slight falls and rises . . . they make
a loud roar like a perpetual torrent ; they cover up
the mind with a veil.

Once only, when a number of men were shouting
" Poggi-bon-si," like a war-cry to the clank of
bronze, did I open my eyes sleepily to see a hill,
a castle wall, many cypresses, and a strange tower
bulging out at the top (such towers I learned were
the feature of Tuscany). Then in a moment, as
it seemed, I awoke in the station of Siena, where
the railway ends and goes no farther.

It was still only morning ; but the glare was beyond
bearing as I passed through the enormous gate of
the town, a gate pierced in high and stupendous
walls that are here guarded by lions. In the narrow
main street there was full shade, and it was made
cooler by the contrast of the blaze on the higher
storeys of the northern side. The wonders of Siena
kept sleep a moment from my mind. I saw their
great square where a tower of vast height marks
the guildhall. I heard Mass in a chapel of their
cathedral : a chapel all frescoed, and built, as it

394 A REFERENCE

were, out of doors, and right below the altar-end or
choir. I noted how the city stood like a queen of
hills dominating all Tuscany : above the Elsa north-
ward, southward above the province round Mount
Amiato. And this great mountain I saw also hazily
far off on the horizon. I suffered the vulgarities of
the main street all in English and American, like a
show. I took my money and changed it ; then,
having so passed not a full hour, and oppressed by
weariness, I said to myself:

" After all, my business is not with cities, and
already I have seen far off the great hill whence
one can see far off the hills that overhang Rome."

With this in my mind I wandered out for a
quiet place, and found it in a desolate green to the
north of the city near a huge, old red-brick church
like a barn. A deep shadow beneath it invited
me in spite of the scant and dusty grass, and in
this country no one disturbs the wanderer. There,
lying down, I slept without dreams till evening.

Auctor. Turn to page 170.

Lector. I have it. It is not easy to watch the
book in two places at once; but pray continue.

Auctor. Note the words from the fifth to the
ninth lines.

ANOTHER STORY 39S

Lector. Why ?

Auctor. They will make what follows seem less
abrupt.

Once there was a man dining by himself at the
Cafe Anglais, in the days when people went there.
It was a full night, and he sat alone at a small
table, when there entered a very big man in a large
fur coat. The big man looked round annoyed,
because there was no room, and the first man very
courteously offered him a seat at his little table.
They sat down and ate and talked of several things ;
among others, of Bureaucracy. The first maintained
that Bureaucracy was the curse of France.

" Men are governed by it like sheep. The ad-
ministrator, however humble, is a despot ; most
people will even run forward to meet him half-
way, like the servile dogs they are," said he.

"No," answered the big man in the fur coat,
" I should say men were governed just by the
ordinary human sense of authority. I have no
theories. I say they recognise authority and obey
it. Whether it is bureaucratic or not is merely
a question of form."

At this moment there came in a tall, rather stiff
Englishman. He also was put out at finding no

396 STORY OF THE

room. The two men saw the manager approach
him ; a tew words passed, and a card ; then the
manager suddenly smiled, bowed, smirked, and
finally went up to the table and begged that the
Duke of Sussex might be allowed to share it. The
Duke hoped he did not incommode these gentle-
men. They assured him that, on the contrary,
they esteemed his presence a favour.

" It is our prerogative," said the big man in the
fur coat, " to be the host Paris entertaining her
Guest."

They would take no denial ; they insisted on the
Duke's dining with them, and they told him what
they had just been discussing. The Duke listened
to their theories with some morgue, much spleen, and
no little phlegm, but with perfect courtesy, and then,
towards the coffee, told them in fluent French
with a strong accent, his own opinion. (He had had
eight excellent courses ; Yquem with his fish, the
best Chambertin during the dinner, and a glass of
wonderful champagne with his dessert.) He spoke
as follows, with a slight and rather hard smile : —

" My opinion may seem to you impertinent, but
I believe nothing more subtly and powerfully
affects men than the aristocratic feeling. Do not
misunderstand me," he added, seeing that they

DUKE OF SUSSEX 397

would protest ; " it is not my own experience alone
that guides me. All history bears witness to the
same truth."

The simple-minded Frenchmen put down this
infatuation to the Duke's early training, little
knowing that our English men of rank are the
simplest fellows in the world, and are quite in-
different to their titles save in business matters.

The Frenchmen paid the bill, and they all three
went out on to the Boulevard.

" Now," said the first man to his two com-
panions, " I will give you a practical example of
what I meant when I said that Bureaucracy governed
mankind."

He went up to the wall of the Credit Lyonnais,
put the forefinger of either hand against it, about
twenty-five centimetres apart, and at a level of
about a foot above his eyes. Holding his fingers
thus he gazed at them, shifting them slightly from
time to time and moving his glance from one to
the other rapidly. A crowd gathered. In a few
moments a pleasant elderly, short, and rather fat
gentleman in the crowd came forward and, taking
off his hat, asked if he could do anything for him.

" Why," said our friend, " the fact is I am an
engineer (section D of the Public Works Depart-

398 STORY OF THE

ment), and I have to make an important measure-
ment in connection with the Apothegm of the
Bilateral which runs to-night precisely through this
spot. My fingers now mark exactly the concentric
of the secondary focus whence the Radius Vector
should be drawn, but I find that (like a fool) I
have left my Double Refractor in the cafe hard
by. I dare not go for fear of losing the place I
have marked ; yet I can get no further without my
Double Refractor."

" Do not let that trouble you," said the short,
stout stranger ; " I will be delighted to keep the
place exactly marked while you run for your in-
strument."

The crowd was now swelled to a considerable
size ; it blocked up the pavement, and was swelled
every moment by the arrival of the curious. The
little fat elderly man put his fingers exactly where
the other's had been, effecting the exchange with a
sharp gesture; and each watched intently to see
that it was right to within a millimetre. The
attitude was constrained. The elderly man smiled,
and begged the engineer not to be alarmed. So
they left him with his two forefingers well above
his head, precisely twenty-five centimetres apart, and
pressing their tips against the wall of the Credit

DUKE OF SUSSEX 399

Lyonnais. Then the three friends slipped out of
the crowd and pursued their way.

" Let us go to the theatre," said the experi-
menter, " and when we come back I warrant you
will agree with my remarks on Bureaucracy."

They went to hear the admirable marble lines of
Corneille. For three hours they were absorbed by
the classics, and, when they returned, a crowd, now
enormous, was surging all over the Boulevard,
stopping the traffic and filled with a noise like the
sea. Policemen were attacking it with the utmost
energy, but still it grew and eddied ; and in the
centre — a little respectful space kept empty around
him — still stretched the poor little fat elderly man,
a pitiable sight. His knees were bent, his head
wagged and drooped with extreme fatigue, he was
the colour of old blotting-paper; but still he kept
the tips of his two forefingers exactly twenty-five
centimetres apart, well above his head, and pressed
against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais.

" You will not match that with your aristocratic
sentiment ! " said the author of the scene in pardon-
able triumph.

" I am not so sure," answered the Duke of Sussex.
He pulled out his watch. " It is midnight," he
said, " and I must be off; but let me tell you

4oo DESIRABLE OMISSIONS

before we part that you have paid for a most
expensive dinner, and have behaved all night with
an extravagant deference under the impression that
I was the Duke of Sussex. As a fact my name is
Jerks, and I am a commercial traveller in the lin-
seed oil line ; and I wish you the best of good
evenings."

" Wait a moment," said the Man in the Big
Fur Coat; " my theory of the Simple Human Sense
of Authority still holds. I am a detective officer,
and you will both be good enough to follow me to
the police station."

And so they did, and the Engineer was fined fifty
francs in correctional, and the Duke of Sussex
was imprisoned for ten days, with interdiction of
domicile for six months ; the first indeed under the
Prefectorial Decree of the 1 8th of November 1843,
but the second under the law of the 12th germinal
of the year VIII.

In this way I have got over between twenty and
thirty miles of road which were tramped in the
dark, and the description of which would have
plagued you worse than a swarm of hornets.

Oh, blessed interlude ! no struggling moon, no
mist, no long-winded passages upon the genial earth,

ST. AUGUSTINE CENSURED 401

no the sense of the night, no marvels of the dawn, no
rhodomontade, no religion, no rhetoric, no sleeping
villages, no silent towns (there was one), no rustle
of trees — just a short story, and there you have a
whole march covered as though a brigade had swung
down it. A new day has come, and the sun has
risen over the detestable parched hillocks of this
downward way.

No, no, Lector ! Do not blame me that Tus-
cany should have passed beneath me unnoticed, as
the monotonous sea passes beneath a boat in full
sail. Blame all those days of marching; hundreds
upon hundreds of miles that exhausted the powers
of the mind. Blame the fiery and angry sky of
Etruria that compelled most of my way to be
taken at night. Blame St. Augustine, who misled
me in his confessions by talking like an African of
"the icy shores of Italy;" or blame Rome, that
now more and more drew me to Herself as She
approached from six to five, from five to four,
from four to three — now She was but three days
ofF. The third sun after that I now saw rising
would shine upon the City.

I did indeed go forward a little in the heat, but
it was useless. After an hour I abandoned it. It
was not so much the sun, though that was intem-

4o2 THE ITALIAN DESERT

perate and deadly ; it was rather the inhuman aspect
of the earth which made me despair. It was as
though the soil had been left imperfect and rough
after some cataclysm ; it reminded me of those bad
lands in the west of America, where the desert has
no form, and where the crumbling and ashy look of
things is more abhorrent than their mere desolation.
As soon march through evil dreams !

The north is the place for men. Eden was there;
and the four rivers of Paradise are the Seine, the
Oise, the Thames, and the Arun; there are grasses
there, and the trees are generous, and the air is an
unnoticed pleasure. The waters brim up to the
edges of the fields. But for this bare Tuscany
I was never made.

How far I had gone I could not tell, nor precisely
how much farther San Quirico, the neighbouring
town, might be. The imperfect map I had bought
at Siena was too minute to give me clear indications.
I was content to wait for evening, and then to go on
till I found it. An hour or so in the shade of a
row of parched and dusty bushes I lay and ate and
drank my wine, and smoked, and then all day I
slept, and woke a while, and slept again more deeply.
But how people sleep and wake, if you do not yet
know it after so much of this book you never will.

SAN QUIRICO 403

It was perhaps five o'clock, or rather more, when
I rose unhappily and took up the ceaseless road.

Even the goodness of the Italian nature seemed
parched up in those dry hollows. At an inn
where I ate they shouted at me, thinking in that
way to make me understand ; and their voices were
as harsh as the grating of metal against stone. A
mile farther I crossed a lonely line of railway ; then
my map told me where I was, and I went wearily
up an indefinite slope under the declining sun, and
thought it outrageous that only when the light had
gone was there any tolerable air in this country.

Soon the walls of San
Ouirico, partly ruinous,
stood above the fields (for ^mL^^T^-^^t\ w^fts.--,
the smallest places here ^^W^^^^£p ":
have walls) ; as I entered
its gate the sun set, and
as though the cool, com-
ing suddenly, had a magic •
in it, everything turned kinder. A church that
could wake interest stood at the entry of the town;
it had stone lions on its steps, and the pillars were
so carved as to resemble knotted ropes. There for
the first time I saw in procession one of those

4o4 THE VALLEY

confraternities which in Italy bury the dead; they
had long and dreadful hoods over their heads,
with slits for the eyes. I spoke to the people of
San Quirico, and they to me. They were up-
standing, and very fine and noble in the lines of
the face. On their walls is set a marble tablet, on
which it is registered that the people of Tuscany,
being asked whether they would have their heredi-
tary Duke or the House of Savoy, voted for the
latter by such and such a great majority ; and this
kind of tablet I afterwards found was common to
all these small towns. Then passing down their
long street I came, at the farther gate, to a great
sight, which the twilight still permitted me to
receive in its entirety.

For San Quirico is built on the edge of a kind
of swell in the land, and here where I stood one
looked over the next great wave ; for the shape
of the view was, on a vast scale, just what one sees
from a lonely boat looking forward over a following
sea.

The trough of the wave was a shallow purple
valley, its arid quality hidden by the kindly glimmer
of evening; few trees stood in it to break its sweep,
and its irregularities and mouldings were just those
of a sweep of water after a gale. The crest of the

LIKE A WAVE

405

wave beyond was seventeen miles away. It had, as
have also such crests at sea, one highest, toppling
peak in its long line, and this, against the clear sky,

one could see to be marked by buildings. These
buildings were the ruined castle and walls of Radi-
cofani, and it lay straight on my way to Rome.

It is a strange thing, arresting northern eyes, to
see towns thus built on summits up into the sky,
and this height seemed the more fantastic because
it was framed. A row of cypress trees stood on
either side of the road where it fell from San

406

THE SILHOUETTE

Quirico, and, exactly between these, this high crest,
a long way off, was set as though by design.

With more heart in me, and tempted by such an
outline as one might be by the prospect of ad-
venture, I set out to cross the great bare run of the
valley. As I went, the mountain of Amiato came
more and more nearly abreast of me in the west; in
its foothills near me were ravines and unexpected

rocks ; upon one
of them hung a
village. I watched
its church and one
tall cypress next
it, as they stood
black against the
last of daylight.
Then for miles I
went on the dusty
way, and crossed
by old bridges
watercourses in
which stood noth-
ing but green pools ; and the night deepened.

It was when I had crossed the greater part of
the obscure plain, at its lowest dip and not far
from the climb up to Radicofani, that I saw lights

THE GOOD FARMER 407

shining in a large farmhouse, and though it was
mv business to walk by night, yet I needed com-
panionship, so I went in.

There in a very large room, floored with brick
and lit by one candle, were two fine old peasants,
with faces like apostles, playing a game of cards.
There also was a woman playing with a strong boy
child, that could not yet talk : and the child ran up
to me. Nothing could persuade the master of the
house but that I was a very poor man who needed
sleep, and so good and generous was this old man
that my protests seemed to him nothing but the
excuses and shame of poverty. He asked me
where I was going. I said, " To Rome." He
came out with a lantern to the stable, and showed
me there a manger full of hay, indicating that I
might sleep in it . . . His candle flashed upon
the great silent oxen standing in rows ; their enor-
mous horns, three times the length of what we know
in England, filled me with wonder . . . Well ! (may
it count to me as gain !), rather than seem to
offend him I lay down in that manger, though I
had no more desire to sleep than has the flitter-
mouse in our Sussex gloamings ; also I was careful
to offer no money, for that is brutality. When he
had left me I took the opportunity for a little rest.

4o8 POEM ON KING ALFRED

and lay on my back in the hay wide-awake and
staring at darkness.

The great oxen champed and champed their
food with a regular sound ; I remembered the
steerage in a liner, the noise of the sea and the
regular screw, for this it exactly resembled. I
considered in the darkness the noble aspect of
these beasts as I had seen them in the lantern
light, and I determined when I got to Rome
to buy two such horns, and to bring them to
England and have them mounted for drinking
horns — great drinking horns, a yard deep — and
to get an engraver to engrave a motto for each.
On the first I would have —

' « King Alfred was in Wantage born ;
He drank out of a ram's horn.
Here is a better man than he,
Who drinks deeper, as you see."

Thus my friends drinking out of it should lift up
their hearts and no longer be oppressed with
humility. But on the second I determined for a
rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round
camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts ;
so, the imagination fairly set going and taking
wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and

THE HORN SONG 409

devil-may-care-for-the-rules, this seemed to suit

" Salve, cornu cornuum !
Cornutorum vis Bourn.
Mutius exce liens Deum !
Gregis o praesidium !
Sitis desiderium !
Dignum cornuum cornu
Romae memor salve tu !
Tibi cornuum cornuto —

Lector. That means nothing.
Auctor. Shut up !

" Tibi cornuum cornuto
Tibi clamo, te saluto
Salve cornu cornuum !
Fortunatam da Dornum /"

And after this cogitation and musing I got up
quietly, so as not to offend the peasant; and I crept
out, and so upwards on to the crest of the hill.

But when, after several miles of climbing, I neared
the summit, it was already beginning to be light.
The bareness and desert grey of the distance I had
crossed stood revealed in a colourless dawn, only
the Mont' Amiata, now somewhat to the north-
ward, was more gentle, and softened the scene with
distant woods. Between it and this height ran a

4io RADICOFANI

vague river-bed as dry as the stones of a salt
beach.

The sun rose as I passed under the ruined walls

,, -0W^l of the castle. In the

^ J&i?f'lT'WT%i -^^ little town itself, early

^^^'I^^CT^^r^^^^l^ as was tne hour, many

*"""• ^ ■ people were stirring.

One gave me good-morning — a man of singular

character, for here, in the very peep of day, he

was sitting on a doorstep, idle, lazy and contented,

as though it was full noon. Another was yoking

oxen ; a third going out singing to work in the

fields.

I did not linger in this crow's nest, but going out
by the low and aged southern gate, another deeper
valley, even drier and more dead than the last,
appeared under the rising sun. It was enough to
make one despair ! And when I thought of the
day's sleep in that wilderness, of the next night's
toil through it

Lector. What about the Brigand of Radicofani
of whom you spoke in Lorraine, and of whom I am
waiting to hear ?

Auctor. What about him ? Why, he was cap-
tured long ago, and has since died of old age. I
am surprised at your interrupting me with such

SECOND FALL 411

questions. Pray ask for no more tales till we get to
the really absorbing story of the Hungry Student.

Well, as I was saying, I was in some despair at
the sight of that valley, which had to be crossed
before I could reach the town of Acquapendente, or
Hanging-water, which I knew to lie somewhere
on the hills beyond. The sun was conquering me,
and I was looking hopelessly for a place to sleep,
when a cart drawn by two oxen at about one mile
an hour came creaking by. The driver was asleep,
his head on the shady side. The devil tempted me,
and without one struggle against temptation, nay
with cynical and congratulatory feelings, I jumped
up behind, and putting my head also on the shady
side (there were soft sacks for a bed) I very soon
was pleasantly asleep.

We lay side by side for hour after hour, and the
day rose on to noon; the sun beat upon our feet,
but our heads were in the shade and we slept
heavily a good and honest sleep : he thinking that
he was alone, but I knowing that I was in company
(a far preferable thing), and I was right and he was
wrong. And the heat grew, and sleep came out
of that hot sun more surely than it does out of
the night air in the north. But no dreams wander
under the noon.

4i2 ACQUAPENDENTE

From time to time one or the other of us would
open our eyes drowsily and wonder, but sleep was
heavy on us both, and our minds were sunk in calm
like old hulls in the dark depths of the sea where
there are no storms.

We neither of us really woke until, at the bottom
of the hill which rises into Acquapendente, the
oxen stopped. This halt woke us up ; first me and
then my companion. He looked at me a moment
and laughed. He seemed to have thought all this
while that I was some country friend of his who
had taken a lift; and I, for my part, had made
more or less certain that he was a good fellow
who would do me no harm. I was right, and he
was wrong. I knew not what offering to make
him to compensate him for this trouble which his
heavy oxen had taken. After some thought I
brought a cigar out of my pocket, which he smoked
with extreme pleasure. The oxen meanwhile had
been urged up the slow hill, and it was in this
way that we reached the famous town of Acqua-
pendente. But why it should be called famous
is more than I can understand. It may be that
in one of those narrow streets there is a picture
or a church, or one of those things which so attract
unbelieving men. To the pilgrim it is simply a

MORE SLEEP 413

group of houses. Into one of these I went, and,
upon my soul, I have nothing to say of it except
that they furnished me with food.

I do not pretend to have counted the flies,
though they were numerous ; and, even had I done
so, what interest would the number have, save to
the statisticians ? Now, as these are patient men
and foolish, I heartily recommend them to go and
count the flies for themselves.

Leaving this meal, then, this town and this
people (which were all of a humdrum sort), and
going out by the gate, the left side of which is made
up of a church, I went a little way on the short
road to San Lorenzo, but I had no intention of
going far, for (as you know by this time) the night
had become my day and the day my night.

I found a stream running very sluggish between
tall trees, and this sight sufficiently reminded me of
my own country to permit repose. Lying down there
I slept till the end of the day, or rather to that same
time of evening which had now become my usual
waking hour. . . . And now tell me, Lector, shall
I leave out altogether, or shall I give you some de-
scription of, the next few miles to San Lorenzo ?

Lector. Why, if I were you I would put the
matter shortly and simply, for it is the business

4i4 HOW TO WRITE

of one describing a pilgrimage or any other matter
not to puff himself up with vain conceit, nor to be
always picking about for picturesque situations, but
to set down plainly and shortly what he has seen
and heard, describing the whole matter.

Auctor. But remember, Lector, that the artist
is known not only by what he puts in but by what
he leaves out.

Lector. That is all very well for the artist, but
you have no business to meddle with such people.

Auctor. How then would you write such a
book if you had the writing of it?

Lector. I would not introduce myself at all ; I
would not tell stories at random, nor go in for long
descriptions of emotions, which I am sure other
men have felt as well as I. I would be careful to
visit those things my readers had already heard of
(Auctor. The pictures ! the remarkable pictures !
All that is meant by culture ! The brown photo-
graphs ! Oh ! Lector, indeed I have done you a
wrong !), and I would certainly not have the bad
taste to say anything upon religion. Above all,
I would be terse.

Auctor. I see. You would not pile words one
on the other, qualifying, exaggerating, conditioning,
superlativing, diminishing, connecting, amplifying,

STORY OF MR. HARD 415

condensing, mouthing, and glorifying the mere
sound : you would be terse. You would be known
for your self-restraint. There should be no ver-
bosity in your style (God forbid!), still less pom-
posity, animosity, curiosity, or ferocity ; you would
have it neat, exact, and scholarly, and, above all,
chiselled to the nail. A fig (say you), the pip
of a fig, for the rambling style. You would be led
into no hilarity, charity, vulgarity, or barbarity.
Eh! my jolly Lector? You would simply say
what you had to say ?

Lector. Precisely ; I would say a plain thing in
a plain way.

Auctor. So you think one can say a plain thing
in a plain way ? You think that words mean
nothing more than themselves, and that you can
talk without ellipsis, and that customary phrases
have not their connotations? You think that,
do you? Listen then to the tale of Mr. Benjamin
Franklin Hard, a kindly merchant of Cincinnati,
O., who had no particular religion, but who had ac-
cumulated a fortune of six hundred thousand dollars,
and who had a horror of breaking the Sabbath. He
was not " a kind husband and a good father," for
he was unmarried ; nor had he any children. But
he was all that those words connote.

4i6 STORY OF MR. HARD

This man Hard at the age of fifty-four retired
from business and determined to treat himself to a
visit to Europe. He had not been in Europe five
weeks before he ran bang up against the Catholic
Church. He was never more surprised in his life.
I do not mean that I have exactly weighed all his
surprises all his life through. I mean that he was
very much surprised indeed — and that is all that
these words connote.

He studied the Catholic Church with extreme
interest. He watched High Mass at several places
(hoping it might be different). He thought it was
what it was not, and then, contrariwise, he thought
it was not what it was. He talked to poor Catholics,
rich Catholics, middle-class Catholics, and elusive,
well-born, penniless, neatly-dressed, successful Catho-
lics ; also to pompous, vain Catholics; humble, un-
certain Catholics ; sneaking, pad-footed Catholics ;
healthy, howling, combative Catholics ; doubtful,
shoulder-shrugging, but devout Catholics ; fixed,
crabbed, and dangerous Catholics ; easy, jovial, and
shone-upon-by-the-heavenly-light Catholics ; subtle
Catholics ; strange Catholics, and (quod tlbi mani-
feste absurdum videtur) intellectual, pince-nez, jejune,
twisted, analytical, yellow, cranky, and introspec-
tive Catholics : in fine, he talked to all Catholics.

STORY OF MR. HARD 417

And when I say "all Catholics" I do not mean
that he talked to every individual Catholic, but
that he got a good, integrative grip of the Church
militant, which is all that the words connote.

Well, this man Hard got to know, among
others, a certain good priest that loved a good
bottle of wine, a fine deep dish of poulet a la
casserole, and a kind of egg done with cream in a
little platter ; and eating such things, this priest said
to him one day : " Mr. Hard, what you want is to
read some books on Catholicism." And Hard, who
was on the point of being received into the Church
as the final solution of human difficulties, thought
it would be a very good thing to instruct his mind
before baptism. So he gave the priest a note to a
bookseller whom an American friend had told him
of; and this American friend had said: —

"You will find Mr. Fingle " (for such was the
bookseller's name) " a hard-headed, honest, business
man. He can say a plain thing in a plain way."

"Here," said Mr. Hard to the priest, "is ten
pounds. Send it to this bookseller Fingle and he shall
choose books on Catholicism to that amount, and
you shall receive them, and I will come and read
them here with you."

So the priest sent the money, and in four days

4i8 STORY OF MR. HARD

the books came, and Mr. Hard and the priest
opened the package, and these were the books
inside : —

Auricular Confession : a History. By a Brand
Saved from the Burning.

Isabella ; or, The Little Female Jesuit. By " Heph-
zibah."

Elisha MacNab : a Tale of the French Huguenots.

England and Rome. By the Rev. Ebenezer Catch-
pole of Emmanuel, Birmingham.

Nuns and Nunneries. By " Ruth," with a Preface
by Miss Carran, lately rescued from a Cana-
dian Convent.

History of the Inquisition. By Llorente.

The Beast with Seven Heads ; or, The Apocalyptical
Warning.

No Truce with the Vatican.

The True Cause of Irish Disaffection.

Decline of the Latin Nations.

Anglo-Saxons the Chosen Race, and their connection
with the Ten Lost Tribes : with a map.

Finally, a very large book at the bottom of the
case called Giant Pope.

And it was no use asking for the money back or
protesting. Mr. Fingle was an honest, straight-

STORY OF MR. HARD 419

forward man who said a plain thing in a plain
way. They had left him to choose a suitable
collection of books on Catholicism, and he had
chosen the best he knew. And thus did Mr.
Hard (who has recently given a hideous font to
the new Catholic church at Bismarckville) learn
the importance of estimating what words connote.

Lector. But all that does not excuse an in-
tolerable prolixity ?

Auctor. Neither did I say it did, dear Lector.
My object was merely to get you to San Lorenzo
where I bought that wine, and where, going out
of the gate on the south, I saw suddenly the wide
lake of Bolsena all below.

It is a great sheet like a sea ; but as one knows
one is on a high plateau, and as there is but a short
dip down to it; as it is round and has all about
it a rim of low even hills, therefore one knows it
for an old and gigantic crater now full of pure
water ; and there are islands in it and palaces on
the islands. Indeed it was an impression of silence
and recollection, for the water lay all upturned to
heaven, and, in the sky above me, the moon at her
quarter hung still pale in the daylight, waiting
for glory.

I sat on the coping of a wall, drank a little

42o THE MIGHTY DRIVE

of my wine, ate a little bread and sausage ; but
still song demanded some outlet in the cool evening,
and companionship was more of an appetite in me
than landscape. Please God, I had become southern
and took beauty for granted.

Anyhow, seeing a little two-wheeled cart come
through the gate, harnessed to a ramshackle little
pony, bony and hard, and driven by a little, brown,
smiling, and contented old fellow with black hair,
I made a sign to him and he stopped.

This time there was no temptation of the
devil; if anything the advance was from my
side. I was determined to ride, and I sprang
up beside the driver. We raced down the hill,
clattering and banging and rattling like a piece
of ordnance, and he, my brother, unasked began
to sing. I sang in turn. He sang of Italy, I of
four countries : America, France, England, and
Ireland. I could not understand his songs nor he
mine, but there was wine in common between us,
and salami and a merry heart, bread which is the
bond of all mankind, and that prime solution of
ill-ease — I mean the forgetfulness of money.

That was a good drive, an honest drive, a human
aspiring drive, a drive of Christians, a glorifying
and uplifted drive, a drive worthy of remembrance

THE MIGHTY DRIVE 421

for ever. The moon has shone on but few like
it though she is old ; the lake of Bolsena has
glittered beneath none like it since the Etruscans
here unbended after the solemnities of a triumph.
It broke my vow to pieces ; there was not a
shadow of excuse for this use of wheels : it was
done openly and wantonly in the face of the
wide sky for pleasure. And what is there else but
pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on ?
Not I hope to contemplation ! A hideous oriental
trick ! No, but to loud notes and comradeship and
the riot of galloping, and laughter ringing through
old trees. Who would change ( says Aristippus of
Pslinthon ) the moon and all the stars for so much
wine as can be held in the cup of a bottle upturned ?
The honest man ! And in his time (note you) they
did not make the devilish deep and fraudulent
bottoms they do now that cheat you of half your
liquor.

Moreover, if I broke my vows (which is a serious
matter), and if I neglected to contemplate the
heavens (for which neglect I will confess to no
one, not even to a postulate sub-deacon ; it is no
sin ; it is a healthy omission), if (I say) I did this, I
did what peasants do. And what is more, by
drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves

422 BOLSENA

no Mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of,
St. Peter looks with a kindly eye.

Now, just at the very entry to Bolsena, when we
had followed the lovely lake some time, my driver
halted and began to turn up a lane to a farm or
villa; so I, bidding him good-night, crossed
a field and stood silent by the lake and watched
for a long time the water breaking on a tiny
shore, and the pretty miniatures of waves. I
stood there till the stars came out and the moon
shone fully; then I went towards Bolsena under its
high gate which showed in the darkness, and under
its castle on the rock. There, in a large room
which was not quite an inn, a woman of great age
and dignity served me with fried fish from the lake,
and the men gathered round me and attempted to
tell me of the road to Rome, while I in exchange
made out to them as much by gestures as by broken
words the crossing of the Alps and the Apennines.

Then, after my meal, one of the men told me I
needed sleep ; that there were no rooms in that
house ( as I said, it was not an inn ), but that across
the way he would show me one he had for hire. I
tried to say that my plan was to walk by night.
They all assured me he would charge me a reason-
able sum. I insisted that the day was too hot for

BOLSENA 423

walking. They told me, did these Etruscans, that
I need fear no extortion from so honest a man.

Certainly it is not easy to make everybody under-
stand everything, and I had had experience already
up in the mountains, days before, of how important
it is not to be misunderstood when one is wander-
ing in a foreign country, poor and ill-clad. I there-
fore accepted the offer, and, what was really very
much to my regret, I paid the money he demanded.
I even, so far fell in with the spirit of the thing as
to sleep a certain number of hours (for, after all, my
sleep that day in the cart had been very broken,
and instead of resting throughout the whole of the
heat I had taken a meal at Acquapendente). But
I woke up not long after midnight — perhaps
between one and two o'clock — and went out along
the borders of the lake.

The moon had set ; I wish I could have seen her
hanging at the quarter in the clear sky of that
high crater, dipping into the rim of its inland sea.
It was perceptibly cold. I went on the road quite
slowly, till it began to climb, and when the day
broke I found myself in a sunken lane leading up
to the town of Montefiascone.

The town lay on its hill in the pale but growing
light. A great dome gave it dignity, and a castle

424 MONTEFIASCONE

overlooked the lake. It was built upon the very
edge and lip of the volcano-cup commanding either
side.

I climbed up this sunken lane towards it, not
knowing what might be beyond, when, at the crest,
there shone before me in the sunrise one of those
unexpected and united landscapes which are among
the glories of Italy. They have changed the very
mind in a hundred northern painters, when men
travelled hither to Rome to learn their art, and
coming in by her mountain roads saw, time and
again, the set views of plains like gardens, sur-
rounded by sharp mountain-land and framed.

The road did not pass through the town ; the
grand though crumbling gate of entry lay up a
short straight way to the right, and below, where
the road continued down the slope, was a level of
some eight miles full of trees diminishing in dis-
tance. At its further side an ample mountain,
wooded, of gentle flattened outline, but high and
majestic, barred the way to Rome. It was yet
another of those volcanoes, fruitful after death,
which are the mark of Latium ; and it held hidden,
as did that larger and more confused one on the rim
of which I stood, a lake in its silent crater. But
that lake, as I was to find, was far smaller than the

VITERBO 425

glittering sea of Bolsena, whose shores now lay-
behind me.

The distance and the hill that bounded it should
in that climate have stood clear in the pure
air, but it was yet so early that a thin haze hung
over the earth, and the sun had not yet controlled
it : it was even chilly. I could not catch the
towers of Viterbo, though I knew them to stand
at the foot of the far mountain. I went down the
road, and in halt-an-hour or so was engaged upon
the straight line crossing the plain.

I wondered a little how the road would lie with
regard to the town, and looked at my map for
guidance, but it told me little. It was too general,
taking in all central Italy, and even large places
were marked only by small circles.

When I approached Viterbo I first saw an
astonishing wall, perpendicular to my road, un-
touched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It stood
up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming
much higher than it should ; its hundred feet or
so were exaggerated by the severity of its stones
and by their sheer fall. For they had no ornament
whatever, and few marks of decay, though many
of age. Tall towers, exactly square and equally
bare of carving or machicolation, stood at intervals

4^6

THE GREAT WALLS

alone this forbidding: defence and flanked its cur-
tain. Then nearer by, one saw that it was not a
huge castle, but the wall of a city, for at a corner
it went sharp round to contain the town, and through
one uneven place I saw houses.
Many men were walking in the
roads alongside these walls,
and there were gates
pierced in them
whereby the citi-

zens went in and out of the city as bees go in and
out of the little opening in a hive.

But my main road to Rome did not go through

I ENTER VITERBO 427

Viterbo, it ran alongside of the eastern wall, and
I debated a little with myself whether I would go
in or no. It was out of my way, and I had not
entered Montefiascone for that reason. On the
other hand, Viterbo was a famous place. It is all
very well to neglect Florence and Pisa because they
are some miles ofF the straight way, but Viterbo
right under one's hand it is a pity to miss. Then
I needed wine and food for the later day in the
mountain. Yet, again, it was getting hot. It was
past eight, the mist had long ago receded, and I
feared delay. So I mused on the white road under
the tall towers and dead walls of Viterbo, and ru-
minated on an unimportant thing. Then curiosity
did what reason could not do, and I entered by a
gate.

The streets were narrow, tortuous, and alive, all
shaded by the great houses, and still full of the cold
of the night. The noise of fountains echoed in
them, and the high voices of women and the cries
of sellers. Every house had in it something fan-
tastic and peculiar; humanity had twined into this
place like a natural growth, and the separate
thoughts of men, both those that were alive there
and those dead before them, had decorated it all.
There were courtyards with blinding whites of

428 OUR FATHERS

sunlit walls above, themselves in shadow ; and
there were many carvings and paintings over doors.
I had come into a great living place after the loneli-
ness of the road.

There, in the first wide street I could find,
I bought sausage and bread and a great bottle of
wine, and then quitting Viterbo, I left it by the
same gate and took the road.

For a long while yet I continued under the walls,
noting in one place a thing peculiar to the Middle
Ages, I mean the apse of a church built right into
the wall as the old Cathedral of St. Stephen's was
in Paris. These, I suppose, enemies respected if
they could ; for I have noticed also that in castles
the chapel is not hidden, but stands out from the
wall. So be it. Your fathers and mine were
there in the fighting, but we do not know their
names, and I trust and hope yours spared the altars
as carefully as mine did.

The road began to climb the hill, and though
the heat increased — for in Italy long before nine
it is glaring noon to us northerners (and that
reminds me : your fathers and mine, to whom
allusion has been made above {as they say in the
dull history books — [Lector. How many more
interior brackets are we to have ? Is this algebra ?

HOW THEY FOUGHT 429

Auctor. You yourself, Lector, are responsible for
the worst]} your fathers and mine coming down
into this country to fight, as was their annual
custom, must have had a plaguy time of it, when
you think that they could not get across the Alps
till summer-time, and then had to hack and hew,
and thrust and dig, and slash and climb, and charge
and puff, and blow and swear, and parry and
receive, and aim and dodge, and butt and run
for their lives at the end, under an unaccustomed
sun. No wonder they saw visions, the dear people !
They are dead now, and we do not even know their
names). — Where was I ?

Lector. You were at the uninteresting remark
that the heat was increasing.

Auctor. Precisely. I remember. Well, the heat
was increasing, but it seemed far more bearable than
it had been in the earlier places ; in the oven of the
Garfagnana or in the deserts of Siena. For with
the first slopes of the mountain a forest of great
chestnut trees appeared, and it was so cool under
these that there was even moss, as though I were
back again in my own country where there are full
rivers in summer-time, deep meadows, and all the
completion of home.

Also the height may have begun to tell on the

430 THE SILENT OLD MAN

air, but not much, for when the forest was behind
me, and when I had come to a bare heath sloping
more gently upwards — a glacis in front of the
topmost bulwark of the round mountain — I was
oppressed with thirst, and though it was not too
hot to sing (for I sang, and two lonely carabinieri
passed me singing, and we recognised as we saluted
each other that the mountain was full of songs),
yet I longed for a bench, a flagon, and shade.

And as I longed, a little house appeared, and a
woman in the shade sewing, and an old man. Also
a bench and a table, and a tree over it. There I
sat down and drank white wine and water many
times. The woman charged me a halfpenny, and
the old man would not talk. He did not take his
old age garrulously. It was his business, not mine ;
but I should dearly have liked to have talked to him
in Lingua Franca, and to have heard him on the
story of his mountain : where it was haunted, by
what, and on which nights it was dangerous to be
abroad. Such as it was, there it was. I left them,
and shall perhaps never see them again.

The road was interminable, and the crest, from
which I promised myself the view of the crater-lake,
was always just before me, and was never reached.
A little spring, caught in a hollow log, refreshed

THE POND OF VENUS 431

a meadow on the right. Drinking there again, I
wondered if I should go on or rest ; but I was full
of antiquity, and a memory in the blood, or what
not, impelled me to see the lake in the crater
before I went to sleep : after a few hundred yards
this obsession was satisfied.

I passed between two banks, where the road had
been worn down at the crest of the volcano's rim ;
then at once, far below, in a circle of silent trees
with here and there a vague shore of marshy land,
I saw the Pond of Venus : some miles of brooding
water, darkened by the dark slopes around it. Its
darkness recalled the dark time before the dawn of
our saved and happy world.

At its hither end a hill, that had once been a
cone in the crater, stood out all covered with a
dense wood. It was the Hill of Venus.

There was no temple, nor no sacrifice, nor no
ritual for the Divinity, save this solemn attitude of
perennial silence; but under the influence which
still remained and gave the place its savour, it
was impossible to believe that the gods were dead.
There were no men in that hollow ; nor was there
any memory of men, save of men dead these
thousands of years. There was no life of visible
things. The mind released itself and was in touch

432 THE FINAL VIEW

with whatever survives of conquered but immortal
Spirits.

Thus ready for worship, and in a mood of
adoration ; filled also with the genius which in-
habits its native place and is too subtle or too
pure to suffer the effect of time, I passed down the
ridge-way of the mountain rim, and came to the
edge overlooking that arena whereon was first fought
out and decided the chief destiny of the world.

For all below was the Campagna. Names that are
at the origin of things attached to every cleft and
distant rock beyond the spreading level, or sanctified
the gleams of rivers. There below me was Veii ;
beyond, in the Wall of the Apennines, only just
escaped from clouds, was Tibur that dignified the
ravine at the edge of their rising ; that crest to
the right was Tusculum, and far to the south,
but clear, on a mountain answering my own, was
the mother of the City, Alba Longa. The Tiber,
a dense, brown fog rolling over and concealing it,
was the god of the wide plain.

There and at that moment I should have seen
the City. I stood up on the bank and shaded my
eyes, straining to catch the dome at least in the
sunlight; but I could not, for Rome was hidden by
the low Sabinian hills.

SORACTE 433

Soracte I saw there — Soracte, of which I had read
as a boy. It stood up like an acropolis, but it
was a citadel for no city. It stood alone, like that

<4 '" "A

.-iasr — — •_•

-~m®332&*

soul which once haunted its recesses and prophesied
the conquering advent of the northern kings. I saw
the fields where the tribes had lived that were the
first enemies of the imperfect state, before it gave
its name to the fortunes of the Latin race.

Dark Etruria lay behind me, forgotten in the
backward of my march : a furnace and a riddle out
of which religion came to the Romans — a place that
has left no language. But below me, sunlit and
easy (as it seemed in the cooler air of that summit),
was the arena upon which were first fought out
the chief destinies of the world.

And I still looked down upon it, wondering.

Was it in so small a space that all the legends
of one's childhood were acted ? Was the defence

of the bridge against so neighbouring and petty an

434 THE ARENA

alliance ? Were they peasants of a group of huts
that handed down the great inheritance of discipline,
and made an iron channel whereby, even to us, the
antique virtues could descend as a living memory ?
It must be so; for the villages and ruins in one
landscape comprised all the first generations of the
history of Rome. The stones we admire, the large
spirit of the last expression came from that rough
village and sprang from the broils of that one
plain ; Rome was most vigorous before it could
speak. So a man's verse, and all he has, are but
the last outward appearance, late and already rigid,
of an earlier, more plastic, and diviner fire.

" Upon this arena," I still said to myself, "were
first fought out the chief destinies of the world";
and so, played upon by an unending theme, I ate
and drank in a reverie, still wondering, and then
lay down beneath the shade of a little tree that
stood alone upon that edge of a new world. And
wondering, I fell asleep under the morning sun.

But this sleep was not like the earlier oblivions
that had refreshed my ceaseless journey, for I still
dreamt as I slept of what I was to see, and visions of
action without thought — pageants and mysteries —
surrounded my spirit; and across the darkness of a
mind remote from the senses there passed whatever
is wrapped up in the great name of Rome.

RONCIGLIONE 435

When I woke the evening had come. A haze
had gathered upon the plain. The road fell into
Ronciglione, and dreams surrounded it upon every
side. For the energy of the body those hours of
rest had made a fresh and enduring vigour; for the
soul no rest was needed. It had attained, at least
for the next hour, a vigour that demanded only the
physical capacity of endurance ; an eagerness worthy
of such great occasions found a marching vigour
for its servant.

In Ronciglione I saw the things that Turner
drew ; I mean the rocks from which a river springs,
and houses all massed together, giving the steep a
kind of crown. This also accompanied that picture,
the soft light which mourns the sun and lends half-
colours to the world. It was cool, and the oppor-
tunity beckoned. I ate and drank, asking every one
questions of Rome, and I passed under their great
gate and pursued the road to the plain. In the mist,
as it rose, there rose also a passion to achieve.

All the night long, mile after mile, I hurried
along the Cassian Way. For five days I had slept
through the heat, and the southern night had
become my daytime; and though the mist was
dense, and though the moon, now past her quarter,
only made a vague place in heaven, yet expecta-

436 THE MANY PEASANTS

tion and fancy took more than the place of sight.
In this fog I felt with every step of the night
march the approach to the goal.

Long past the place I had marked as a halt, long
past Sette Vene, a light blurred upon the white
wreaths of vapour ; distant songs and the noise of
men feasting ended what had been for many, many
hours — for more than twenty miles of pressing for-
ward— an exaltation worthy of the influence that bred
it. Then came on me again, after the full march,
a necessity for food and for repose. But these
things, which have been the matter of so much in
this book, now seemed subservient only to the reach-
ing of an end ; they were left aside in the mind.

It was an inn with trellis outside making an
arbour. In the yard before it many peasants sat
at table ; their beasts and waggons stood in the
roadway, though, at this late hour, men were
feeding some and housing others. Within, fifty
men or more were making a meal or a carousal.

What feast or what necessity of travel made
them keep the night alive I neither knew nor
asked ; but passing almost unobserved amongst
them between the long tables, I took my place at the
end, and the master served me with good food and
wine. As I ate the clamour of the peasants sounded
about me, and I mixed with the energy of numbers.

ROME CALLS ME 437

With a little difficulty I made the master under-
stand that I wished to sleep till the dawn. He led
me out to a small granary (for the house was full),
and showed me where I should sleep in the scented
hay. He would take no money for such a lodging,
and left me after showing me how the door
latched and unfastened ; and out of so many men,
he was the last man whom I thanked for a service
until I passed the gates of Rome.

Above the soft bed which the hay made, a square
window, unglazed, gave upon the southern night ;
the mist hardly drifted in or past it, so still was the
air. I watched it for a while drowsily ; then sleep
again fell upon me.

But as I slept, Rome, Rome still beckoned me,
and I woke in a struggling light as though at
a voice calling, and slipping out I could not but go
on to the end.

The small square paving of the Via Cassia, all
even like a palace floor, rang under my steps. The
parched banks and strips of dry fields showed
through the fog (for its dampness did not cure
the arid soil of the Campagna). The sun rose and
the vapour lifted. Then, indeed, I peered through the
thick air — but still I could see nothing of my goal,
only confused folds of brown earth and burnt-up

438

ROME

grasses, and farther off rare and un- northern
trees.

I passed an old tower of the Middle Ages that
was eaten away at its base by time or the quarrying
of men ; I passed a divergent way on the right
where a wooden sign said " The Triumphal Way,"
and I wondered whether it could be the road where
ritual had once ordained that triumphs should go.
It seemed lonely and lost, and divorced from any
approach to sacred hills.

The road fell into a hollow where soldiers were
manoeuvring. Even these could not arrest an
attention that was fixed upon the approach- j,
ing revelation. The road climbed a little slope f'j
where a branch went off A to the left, and
where there was a house
and an arbour under vines.
It was now warm day ; trees $
of great height stood shad- w
ing the sun; the place had^
taken on an appearance 91
of wealth and care. The
mist had gone before I reached the summit of the
rise.

There, from the summit, between the high villa
walls on either side — at my very feet I saw the City.

FAREWELL TO ALL MEN 439

And now all you people whatsoever that are pre-
sently reading, may have read, or shall in the future
read, this my many-sided but now-ending book ;
all you also that in the mysterious designs of
Providence may not be fated to read it for some
very long time to come ; you then I say, entire,
englobed, and universal race of men both in
gross and regardant, not only living and seeing the
sunlight, but dead also under the earth ; shades,
or to come in procession afterwards out of the dark
places into the day for a little, swarms of you, an
army without end ; all you black and white, red,
yellow and brown, men, women, children and poets
— all of you, wherever you are now, or have been,
or shall be in your myriads and deka myriads and
hendeka myriads, the time has come when I must
bid you farewell —

Ludisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti ;
Tempus abire tibi est. . . .

Only Lector I keep by me for a very little while
longer with a special purpose, but even he must
soon leave me; for all good things come to an end,
and this book is coming to an end — has come to
an end. The leaves fall, and they are renewed ;
the sun sets on the Vexin hills, but he rises again
over the woods of Marly. Human companionship

440

THE SAD SONG

once broken can never be restored, and you and I
shall not meet or understand each other again. It
is so of all the poor links whereby we try to bridge
the impassable gulf between soul and soul. Oh ! we
spin something, I know, but it is very gossamer, thin
and strained, and even if it does not snap time will
at last dissolve it.

Indeed, there is a song on it which you should
know, and which runs

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( This last, one whistles.)

So, my little human race, both you that have read
this book and you that have not, good-bye in

STORY OF MANKIND 441

charity. I loved you all as I wrote. Did you all
love me as much as I have loved you, by the black
stone of Rennes I should be rich by now. Indeed,
indeed, I have loved you all ! You, the workers, all
puffed up and dyspeptic and ready for the asylums;
and you, the good-for-nothing lazy drones ; you, the
strong silent men, who have heads quite empty,
like gourds ; and you also, the frivolous, useless
men that chatter and gabble to no purpose all day
long. Even you, that, having begun to read this
book, could get no further than page 47, and espe-
cially you who have read it manfully in spite of
the flesh, I love you all, and give you here and now
my final, complete, full, absolving, and comfortable
benediction.

To tell the truth, I have noticed one little fault
about you. I will not call it fatuous, inane, and
exasperating vanity or self-absorpti6n ; I will put
it in the form of a parable. Sit you round atten-
tively and listen, dispersing yourselves all in order,
and do not crowd or jostle.

Once, before we humans became the good and
self-respecting people we are, the Padre Eterno was
sitting in heaven with St. Michael beside him, and
He watched the abyss from His great throne, and
saw shining in the void one far point of light amid
some seventeen million others, and He said:

442 OF ST. MICHAEL AND

" What is that ? "

And St. Michael answered :

" That is the Earth," for he felt some pride in it.

"The Earth?" said the Padre Eterno, a little
puzzled ..." The Earth ?...?... I do not
remember very exactly . . ."

" Why," answered St. Michael, with as much
reverence as his annoyance could command, "surely
you must recollect the Earth and all the pother there
was in heaven when it was first suggested to create
it, and all about Lucifer "

" Ah ! " said the Padre Eterno, thinking twice,
" yes. It is attached to Sirius, and "

" No, no," said St. Michael, quite visibly put out.
" It is the Earth. The Earth which has that chang-
ing moon and the thing called the sea."

" Of course, of course," answered the Padre
Eterno quickly, " I said Sirius by a slip of the
tongue. Dear me ! So that is the Earth ! Well,
well ! It is years ago now . . . Michael, what
are those little things swarming up and down all
over it r

"Those," said St. Michael, "are Men."

" Men ? " said the Padre Eterno, " Men ... I
know the word as well as any one, but somehow
the connection escapes me. Men . . ." and He
mused.

OF THE PADRE ETERNO 443

St. Michael, with perfect self-restraint, said a few
things a trifle staccato, defining Man, his dual
destiny, his hope of heaven, and all the great busi-
ness in which he himself had fought hard. But
from a fine military tradition, he said nothing of
his actions, nor even of his shrine in Normandy, of
which he is naturally extremely proud : and well he
may be. What a hill!

" I really beg your pardon," said the Padre
Eterno, when he saw the importance attached to
these little creatures. "I am sure they are worthy
of the very fullest attention, and " (he added, for he
was sorry to have offended) " how sensible they seem,
Michael ! There they go, buying and selling, and
sailing, driving, and wiving, and riding, and dancing
and singing, and the rest of it ; indeed, they are
most practical, business-like, and satisfactory little
beings. But I notice one odd thing. Here and
there are some not doing as the rest, or attending
to their business, but throwing themselves into all
manner of attitudes, making the most extraordinary
sounds, and clothing themselves in the quaintest of
garments. What is the meaning of that ? "

" Sire ! " cried St. Michael, in a voice that shook the
architraves of heaven, " they are worshipping You ! "

" Oh ! they are worshipping me! Well, that is
the most sensible thing I have heard of them yet,

444 CONTINUEZ

and I altogether commend them. Continuez" said
the Padre Eterno, " continues!

And since then all has been well with the world ;
at least where ils continuent.

And so, carissimi, multitudes, all of you, good-
bye ; the day has long dawned on the Via Cassia,
this dense mist has risen, the city is before me, and
I am on the threshold of a great experience ; I would
rather be alone. Good-bye, my readers ; good-bye,
the world.

At the foot of the hill I prepared to enter the
City, and I lifted up my heart.

There was an open space ; a tramway : a tram
upon it about to be drawn by two lean and tired
horses whom in the heat many flies disturbed.
There was dust on everything around.

A bridge was immediately in front. It was
adorned with statues in soft stone, half-eaten away,
but still gesticulating in corruption, after the manner
of the seventeenth century. Beneath the bridge there
tumbled and swelled and ran fast a great confusion
of yellow water : it was the Tiber. Far on the
right were white barracks of huge and of hideous ap-
pearance ; over these the Dome of St. Peter's rose and
looked like something newly built. It was of a deli-
cate blue, but made a metallic contrast against the sky.

THE END 445

Then (along a road perfectly straight and bounded
by factories, mean houses, and distempered walls :
a road littered with many scraps of paper, bones,
dirt, and refuse) I went on for several hundred
yards, having the old wall of Rome before me all
the time, till I came right under it at last; and
with the hesitation that befits all great actions I
entered, putting the right foot first lest I should
bring further misfortune upon that capital of all
our fortunes.

And so the journey ended.

It was the Gate of the Poplar — not of the People.
(Ho, Pedant! Did you think I missed you, hiding
and lurking there?) Many churches were to hand;
I took the most immediate, which stood just within
the wall and was called Our Lady of the People
— (not "of the Poplar." Another fall for the
learned ! Professor, things go ill with you to-day !).
Inside were many fine pictures, not in the niminy-
piminy manner, but strong, full-coloured, and just.

To my chagrin, Mass was ending. I approached
a priest and said to him : —

" Pater, quando vel a quella hora e la prossimma
Mlssa ? "

" Ad nonas," said he.

"Pol! Hercle ! " (thought I), " I have yet twenty

446 LOUD AND

minutes to wait ! Well, as a pilgrimage cannot be
said to be over till the first Mass is heard in
Rome, I have twenty minutes to add to my book."

So, passing an Egyptian obelisk which the great
Augustus had nobly dedicated to the Sun, I en-
tered. . . .

Lector. But do you intend to tell us nothing
of Rome ?

Auctor. Nothing, dear Lector.

Lector. Tell me at least one thing ; did you
see the Coliseum ?

Auctor. ... I entered a cafe at the right hand
of a very long, straight street, called for bread,
coffee, and brandy, and contemplating my boots
and worshipping my staff" that had been friends of
mine so long, and friends like all true friends
inanimate, I spent the few minutes remaining to
my happy, common, unshriven, exterior, and natural
life in writing down this

DITHYRAMBIC
EPITHALAMIUM or THRENODY

In these boots, and with this staff
Two hundred leaguers and a half —

(That means, two and a half hundred leagues. You
follow ? Not two hundred and one half leagues. . . . Well — )

FINAL SONG 447

Two hundred leaguers and a half

Walked I, went 1, paced I, tripped I,

Marched I, held 1, s helped I, slipped I,

Pushed I, panted, swung and dashed I ,•

Picked I, forded, swam and splashed I,

Strolled I, climbed I, crawled and scrambled,

Dropped and dipped I, ranged and rambled ;

Plodded I, hobbled I, trudged and tramped I,

And in lonely spinnies camped I,

And in haunted pinewoods slept I,

Lingered, loitered, limped and crept I,

Clambered, halted, stepped and leapt I;

Slowly sauntered, roundly strode I,

And . . . (Oh ! Patron saints and Angels

That protect the four evangels !
And you Prophets vel majores
Vel incerti, vel minores,
Virgines ac confessores
Chief of whose peculiar glories
Est in Aula Regis stare
Atque orare et exorare
Et clamare et conclamare
Clamantes cum clamoribus
Pro nobis peccatoribus.)

Let me not conceal it . . . Rode I.

(For who but critics could complain
Of" riding" in a railway train ?)
Across the valleys and the high- land
With all the world on either hand

448

THE END AGAIN

Drinking when I had a mind to,
Singing when I felt inclined to ;
Nor ever turned my face to home
Till I had slaked my heart at Rome.

Lector. But this is dogg-
Auctor. Not a word !

FINIS

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