The Alps and the passes and the
snows - postpone even for a moment the influence of the happy dawn and
of that South into which I had entered, and consider only this truth,
that I found myself just out of Faido on this blessed date of God with
eight francs and forty centimes for my viaticum and temporal provision
wherewith to accomplish the good work of my pilgrimage.
Now when you consider that coffee and bread was twopence and a penny
for the maid, you may say without lying that I had left behind me the
escarpment of the Alps and stood upon the downward slopes of the first
Italian stream and at the summit of the entry road with _eight francs
ten centimes_ in my pocket - my body hearty and my spirit light, for
the arriving sun shot glory into the sky. The air was keen, and a
fresh day came radiant over the high eastern walls of the valley.
And what of that? Why, one might make many things of it. For instance,
eight francs and ten centimes is a very good day's wages; it is a lot
to spend in cab fares but little for a _coupe._ It is a heavy price
for Burgundy but a song for Tokay. It is eighty miles third-class and
more; it is thirty or less first-class; it is a flash in a train _de
luxe,_ and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. It would be
enormous to give it to an apostle begging at a church door, but
nothing to spend on luncheon.
Properly spent I can imagine it saving five or six souls, but I cannot
believe that so paltry a sum would damn half an one.
Then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing about. Thus, if one were
a modern fool one might write a dirge with 'Huit francs et dix
centimes' all chanted on one low sad note, and coming in between
brackets for a 'motif, and with a lot about autumn and Death - which
last, Death that is, people nowadays seem to regard as something odd,
whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world. Or
one might make the words the Backbone of a triolet, only one would
have to split them up to fit it into the metre; or one might make it
the decisive line in a sonnet; or one might make a pretty little lyric
of it, to the tune of 'Madame la Marquise' -
_'Huit francs et dix centimes, Tra la la, la la la.'_
Or one might put it rhetorically, fiercely, stoically, finely,
republicanly into the Heroics of the Great School. Thus -
HERNANI _(with indignation)... dans ces efforts sublimes_ _'Qu'avez
vous a offrir?'
