A Little Rain That
Fell From Time To Time Through The Clear Morning Seemed Like A Sister
To The Spray Of The Waterfalls; And What With All This Moisture And
Greenery, And The Surrounding Silence, All The Valley Was Inspired
With Content.
It was a repose to descend through its leaves and
grasses, and find the lovely pastures at the foot of the descent, a
narrow floor between the hills.
Here there were the first houses of
men; and, from one, smoke was already going up thinly into the
morning. The air was very pure and cold; it was made more nourishing
and human by the presence and noise of the waters, by the shining wet
grasses and the beaded leaves all through that umbrageous valley. The
shreds of clouds which, high above the calm, ran swiftly in the upper
air, fed it also with soft rains from time to time as fine as dew; and
through those clear and momentary showers one could see the sunlight.
When I had enjoyed the descent through this place for but a few miles,
everything changed. The road in front ran straight and bordered - it
led out and onwards over a great flat, set here and there with
hillocks. The Vosges ended abruptly. Houses came more thickly, and by
the ceaseless culture of the fields, by the flat slate roofs, the
white-washed walls, and the voices, and the glare, I knew myself to be
once more in France of the plains; and the first town I came to was
Giromagny.
Here, as I heard a bell, I thought I would go up and hear Mass; and I
did so, but my attention at the holy office was distracted by the
enormous number of priests that I found in the church, and I have
wondered painfully ever since how so many came to be in a little place
like Giromagny. There were three priests at the high altar, and nearly
one for each chapel, and there was such a buzz of Masses going on,
beginning and ending, that I am sure I need not have gone without my
breakfast in my hurry to get one. With all this there were few people
at Mass so early; nothing but these priests going in and out, and
continual little bells. I am still wondering. Giromagny is no place
for relics or for a pilgrimage, it cures no one, and has nothing of a
holy look about it, and all these priests -
LECTOR. Pray dwell less on your religion, and -
AUCTOR. Pray take books as you find them, and treat travel as travel.
For you, when you go to a foreign country, see nothing but what you
expect to see. But I am astonished at a thousand accidents, and always
find things twenty-fold as great as I supposed they would be, and far
more curious; the whole covered by a strange light of adventure. And
that is the peculiar value of this book. Now, if you can explain these
priests - -
LECTOR.
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