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.
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