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, 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. 'Nevertheless,' 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, sufficient, part of the earth, desirable, and
went up on my way to Rome.
Could this book be infinite, as my voyage was infinite, I would tell
you about the shifty priest whom 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.
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