I Said,
'Have You Any Beans?' They Said, 'Yes.' I Suggested They Should Make
Me A Dish Of Beans And Bacon, And Give Me A Bottle Of Wine, While I
Dried Myself At Their Great Stove.
All this they readily did for me,
and I ate heartily and drank heavily, and they begged me afterwards
To
stop the night and pay them for it; but I was so set up by my food and
wine that I excused myself and went out again and took the road. It
was not yet dark.
By some reflection from the fields of snow, which were now quite near
at hand through the mist, the daylight lingered astonishingly late.
The cold grew bitter as I went on through the gloaming. There were no
trees save rare and stunted pines. The Aar was a shallow brawling
torrent, thick with melting ice and snow and mud. Coarse grass grew on
the rocks sparsely; there were no flowers. The mist overhead was now
quite near, and I still went on and steadily up through the
half-light. It was as lonely as a calm at sea, except for the noise of
the river. I had overworn myself, and that sustaining surface which
hides from us in our health the abysses below the mind - I felt it
growing weak and thin. My fatigue bewildered me. The occasional steeps
beside the road, one especially beneath a high bridge where a
tributary falls into the Aar in a cascade, terrified me.
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