For Instance, Those Noble Hills, My Downs In Sussex, When You Are Upon
Them Overlooking The Weald, From Chanctonbury Say, Feel Like This - Or
Even Lower.
Indeed, it is impossible to give them truly, so
insignificant are they; if the stretch of the Weald were made nearly a
yard long, Chanctonbury would not, in proportion, be more than a fifth
of an inch high!
And yet, from the top of Chanctonbury, how one seems
to overlook it and possess it all!
Well, so it was here from the Grimsel when I overlooked the springs of
the Rhone. In true proportion the valley I gazed into and over must
have been somewhat like this -
It felt for all the world as deep and utterly below me as this other -
Moreover, where there was no mist, the air was so surprisingly clear
that I could see everything clean and sharp wherever I turned my eyes.
The mountains forbade any very far horizons to the view, and all that
I could see was as neat and vivid as those coloured photographs they
sell with bright green grass and bright white snow, and blue glaciers
like precious stones.
I scrambled down the mountain, for here, on the south side of the
pass, there was no snow or ice, and it was quite easy to leave the
road and take the old path cutting off the zig-zags. As the air got
heavier, I became hungry, and at the very end of my descent, two
hundred feet or so above the young Rhone, I saw a great hotel. I went
round to their front door and asked them whether I could eat, and at
what price. 'Four francs,' they said.
'What!' said I, 'four francs for a meal! Come, let me eat in the
kitchen, and charge me one.' But they became rude and obstinate, being
used only to deal with rich people, so I cursed them, and went down
the road. But I was very hungry.
The road falls quite steeply, and the Rhone, which it accompanies in
that valley, leaps in little falls. On a bridge I passed a sad
Englishman reading a book, and a little lower down, two American women
in a carriage, and after that a priest (it was lucky I did not see him
first. Anyhow, I touched iron at once, to wit, a key in my pocket),
and after that a child minding a goat. Altogether I felt myself in the
world again, and as I was on a good road, all down hill, I thought
myself capable of pushing on to the next village. But my hunger was
really excessive, my right boot almost gone, and my left boot nothing
to exhibit or boast of, when I came to a point where at last one
looked down the Rhone valley for miles. It is like a straight trench,
and at intervals there are little villages, built of most filthy
chalets, the said chalets raised on great stones. There are pine-trees
up, up on either slope, into the clouds, and beyond the clouds I could
not see. I left on my left a village called 'Between the Waters'. I
passed through another called 'Ehringen', but it has no inn. At last,
two miles farther, faint from lack of food, I got into Ulrichen, a
village a little larger than the rest, and the place where I believed
one should start to go either over the Gries or Nufenen Pass. In
Ulrichen was a warm, wooden, deep-eaved, frousty, comfortable,
ramshackle, dark, anyhow kind of a little inn called 'The Bear'. And
entering, I saw one of the women whom god loves.
She was of middle age, very honest and simple in the face, kindly and
good. She was messing about with cooking and stuff, and she came up
to me stooping a little, her eyes wide and innocent, and a great spoon
in her hand. Her face was extremely broad and flat, and I have never
seen eyes set so far apart. Her whole gait, manner, and accent proved
her to be extremely good, and on the straight road to heaven. I
saluted her in the French tongue. She answered me in the same, but
very broken and rustic, for her natural speech was a kind of mountain
German. She spoke very slowly, and had a nice soft voice, and she did
what only good people do, I mean, looked you in the eyes as she spoke
to you.
Beware of shifty-eyed people. It is not only nervousness, it is also a
kind of wickedness. Such people come to no good. I have three of them
now in my mind as I write. One is a Professor.
And, by the way, would you like to know why universities suffer from
this curse of nervous disease? Why the great personages stammer or
have St Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or
have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go
through life with great goggles like a motor car? Eh? I will tell you.
It is the punishment of their _intellectual pride,_ than which no sin
is more offensive to the angels.
What! here are we with the jolly world of God all round us, able to
sing, to draw, to paint, to hammer and build, to sail, to ride horses,
to run, to leap; having for our splendid inheritance love in youth and
memory in old age, and we are to take one miserable little faculty,
our one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned,
underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy intellect, or
analytical curiosity rather (a diseased appetite), and let it swell
till it eats up every other function? Away with such foolery.
LECTOR. When shall we get on to ...
AUCTOR. Wait a moment. I say, away with such foolery. Note that
pedants lose all proportion. They never can keep sane in a discussion.
They will go wild on matters they are wholly unable to judge, such as
Armenian Religion or the Politics of Paris or what not.
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