And, tell
me - what can it profit you to know these geographical details? Believe
me, I write them down for my own gratification, not yours.
I say a day without salt. A trudge. The air was ordinary, the colours
common; men, animals, and trees indifferent. Something had stopped
working.
Our energy also is from God, and we should never be proud of it, even
if we can cover thirty miles day after day (as I can), or bend a peony
in one's hand as could Frocot, the driver in my piece - a man you never
knew - or write bad verse very rapidly as can so many moderns. I say
our energy also is from God, and we should never be proud of it as
though it were from ourselves, but we should accept it as a kind of
present, and we should be thankful for it; just as a man should thank
God for his reason, as did the madman in the Story of the Rose, who
thanked God that he at least was sane though all the rest of the world
had recently lost their reason.
Indeed, this defaillance and breakdown which comes from time to time
over the mind is a very sad thing, but it can be made of great use to
us if we will draw from it the lesson that we ourselves are nothing.
Perhaps it is a grace. Perhaps in these moments our minds repose ...
Anyhow, a day without salt.
You understand that under (or in) these circumstances -
When I was at Oxford there was a great and terrible debate that shook
the Empire, and that intensely exercised the men whom we send out to
govern the Empire, and which, therefore, must have had its effect upon
the Empire, as to whether one should say 'under these circumstances'
or 'in these circumstances'; nor did I settle matters by calling a
conclave and suggesting _Quae quum ita sint_ as a common formula,
because a new debate arose upon when you should say _sint_ and when
you should say _sunt,_ and they all wrangled like kittens in a basket.
Until there rose a deep-voiced man from an outlying college, who said,
'For my part I will say that under these circumstances, or in these
circumstances, or in spite of these circumstances, or hovering
playfully above these circumstances, or -
I take you all for Fools and Pedants, in the Chief, in the Chevron,
and in the quarter Fess. Fools absolute, and Pedants lordless. Free
Fools, unlanded Fools, and Fools incommensurable, and Pedants
displayed and rampant of the Tierce Major. Fools incalculable and
Pedants irreparable; indeed, the arch Fool-pedants in a universe of
pedantic folly and foolish pedantry, O you pedant-fools of the world!'
But by this time he was alone, and thus was this great question never
properly decided.
Under these circumstances, then (or in these circumstances), it would
profit you but little if I were to attempt the description of the
Valley of the Emmen, of the first foot-hills of the Alps, and of the
very uninteresting valley which runs on from Langnau.
I had best employ my time in telling the story of the Hungry Student.
LECTOR. And if you are so worn-out and bereft of all emotions, how can
you tell a story?
AUCTOR. These two conditions permit me. First, that I am writing some
time after, and that I have recovered; secondly, that the story is not
mine, but taken straight out of that nationalist newspaper which had
served me so long to wrap up my bread and bacon in my haversack. This
is the story, and I will tell it you.
Now, I think of it, it would be a great waste of time. Here am I no
farther than perhaps a third of my journey, and I have already
admitted so much digression that my pilgrimage is like the story of a
man asleep and dreaming, instead of the plain, honest, and
straightforward narrative of fact. I will therefore postpone the Story
of the Hungry Student till I get into the plains of Italy, or into the
barren hills of that peninsula, or among the over-well-known towns of
Tuscany, or in some other place where a little padding will do neither
you nor me any great harm.
On the other hand, do not imagine that I am going to give you any kind
of description of this intolerable day's march. If you want some kind
of visual Concept (pretty word), take all these little chalets which
were beginning and make what you can of them.
LECTOR. Where are they?
AUCTOR. They are still in Switzerland; not here. They were
overnumerous as I maundered up from where at last the road leaves the
valley and makes over a little pass for a place called Schangnau. But
though it is not a story, on the contrary, an exact incident and the
truth - a thing that I would swear to in the court of justice, or quite
willingly and cheerfully believe if another man told it to me; or even
take as historical if I found it in a modern English history of the
Anglo-Saxon Church - though, I repeat, it is a thing actually lived,
yet I will tell it you.
It was at the very end of the road, and when an enormous weariness had
begun to add some kind of interest to this stuffless episode of the
dull day, that a peasant with a brutal face, driving a cart very
rapidly, came up with me. I said to him nothing, but he said to me
some words in German which I did not understand. We were at that
moment just opposite a little inn upon the right hand of the road, and
the peasant began making signs to me to hold his horse for him while
he went in and drank.
