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 people who went to Interlaken instead of driving
right across the great hills to Rome.
After an hour, or so of this melancholy dawdling, I put a map before
me on a little marble table, ordered some more coffee, and blew into
my 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 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.
