To avoid railways, even
by five miles, and you can get more peace than would fill a nosebag.
All the world is my garden since they built railways, and gave me
leave to keep off them.
Also I vowed a franc to the Black Virgin of La Delivrande (next time I
should be passing there) because I was delivered from being a tourist,
and because all this horrible noise was not being dinned at me (who
was a poor and dirty pilgrim, and no kind of prey for these cabmen,
and busmen, and guides and couriers), but at a crowd of drawn, sad,
jaded tourists that had come in by a train.
Soon I had left them behind. The road climbed the first step upwards
in the valley, going round a rock on the other side of which the Aar
had cut itself a gorge and rushed in a fall and rapids. Then the road
went on and on weary mile after weary mile, and I stuck to it, and it
rose slowly all the time, and all the time the Aar went dashing by,
roaring and filling the higher valley with echoes.
I got beyond the villages. The light shining suffused through the
upper mist began to be the light of evening. Rain, very fine and
slight, began to fall. It was cold. There met and passed me, going
down the road, a carriage with a hood up, driving at full speed.
