I who had cut a path across Europe like a shaft, and seen so
many strange places! - now to have to recite all the litany of the
vulgar; Bellinzona, Lugano, and this and that, which any railway
travelling fellow can tell you. Not till Como should I feel a man
again ...
Indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up one's sword.
I had not the money to wait; my defeat had lowered me in purse as well
as in heart. I started off to enter by the ordinary gates - not Italy
even, but a half-Italy, the canton of the Ticino. It was very hard.
This book is not a tragedy, and I will not write at any length of such
pain. That same day, in the latter half of it, I went sullenly over
the Furka; exactly as easy a thing as going up St James' Street and
down Piccadilly. I found the same storm on its summit, but on a
highroad it was a different affair. I took no short cuts. I drank at
all the inns - at the base, half-way up, near the top, and at the top.
I told them, as the snow beat past, how I had attacked and all but
conquered the Gries that wild morning, and they took me for a liar; so
I became silent even within my own mind.
