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 not 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 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
facilities of distribution' 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 margin 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 backwash of a wave ... Well, then,
I went up the open way, and came in a few miles of that hot afternoon
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, seeking 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 summit 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 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.' Then, having drawn the wonderful outline of what I had seen, I
went up, panting, to the summit, 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 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.
