Done before me, and not to look
heaven 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 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.
