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.
