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 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 unlifting 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 j'ose 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 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-fellowship. 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 Forest, Archettes, the Ballon,
the Mont Terrible, the Watershed, the pass by Moutier, the
Weissenstein. 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
light 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 newspapers 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 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.
