You don't say so! and (3) _Credo in Unum Deum Patrem
Omnipotentem, Factorem omnium visibilium atque invisibilium;_ in which
last there is a power of synthesis that can jam all their analytical
dust-heap into such a fine, tight, and compact body as would make them
stare to see. I understand that they need six months' holiday a year.
Had I my way they should take twelve, and an extra day on leap years.
LECTOR. Pray, pray return to the woman at the inn.
AUCTOR. I will, and by this road: to say that on the day of Judgement,
when St Michael weighs souls in his scales, and the wicked are led off
by the Devil with a great rope, as you may see them over the main
porch of Notre Dame (I will heave a stone after them myself I hope),
all the souls of the pedants together will not weigh as heavy and
sound as the one soul of this good woman at the inn.
She put food before me and wine. The wine was good, but in the food
was some fearful herb or other I had never tasted before - a pure spice
or scent, and a nasty one. One could taste nothing else, and it was
revolting; but I ate it for her sake.
Then, very much refreshed, I rose, seized my great staff, shook myself
and said, 'Now it is about noon, and I am off for the frontier.'
At this she made a most fearful clamour, saying that it was madness,
and imploring me not to think of it, and running out fetched from the
stable a tall, sad, pale-eyed man who saluted me profoundly and told
me that he knew more of the mountains than any one for miles. And this
by asking many afterwards I found out to be true. He said that he had
crossed the Nufenen and the Gries whenever they could be crossed since
he was a child, and that if I attempted it that day I should sleep
that night in Paradise. The clouds on the mountain, the soft snow
recently fallen, the rain that now occupied the valleys, the glacier
on the Gries, and the pathless snow in the mist on the Nufenen would
make it sheer suicide for him, an experienced guide, and for me a
worse madness. Also he spoke of my boots and wondered at my poor coat
and trousers, and threatened me with intolerable cold.
It seems that the books I had read at home, when they said that the
Nufenen had no snow on it, spoke of a later season of the year; it was
all snow now, and soft snow, and hidden by a full mist in such a day
from the first third of the ascent. As for the Gries, there was a
glacier on the top which needed some kind of clearness in the weather.
Hearing all this I said I would remain - but it was with a heavy heart.
Already I felt a shadow of defeat over me. The loss of time was a
thorn. I was already short of cash, and my next money was Milan. My
return to England was fixed for a certain date, and stronger than
either of these motives against delay was a burning restlessness that
always takes men when they are on the way to great adventures.
I made him promise to wake me next morning at three o'clock, and,
short of a tempest, to try and get me across the Gries. As for the
Nufenen and Crystalline passes which I had desired to attempt, and
which were (as I have said) the straight line to Rome, he said (and he
was right), that let alone the impassability of the Nufenen just then,
to climb the Crystal Mountain in that season would be as easy as
flying to the moon. Now, to cross the Nufenen alone, would simply land
me in the upper valley of the Ticino, and take me a great bend out of
my way by Bellinzona. Hence my bargain that at least he should show me
over the Gries Pass, and this he said, if man could do it, he would do
the next day; and I, sending my boots to be cobbled (and thereby
breaking another vow), crept up to bed, and all afternoon read the
school-books of the children. They were in French, from lower down the
valley, and very Genevese and heretical for so devout a household. But
the Genevese civilization is the standard for these people, and they
combat the Calvinism of it with missions, and have statues in their
rooms, not to speak of holy water stoups.
The rain beat on my window, the clouds came lower still down the
mountain. Then (as is finely written in the Song of Roland), 'the day
passed and the night came, and I slept.' But with the coming of the
small hours, and with my waking, prepare yourselves for the most
extraordinary and terrible adventure that befell me out of all the
marvels and perils of this pilgrimage, the most momentous and the most
worthy of perpetual record, I think, of all that has ever happened
since the beginning of the world.
At three o'clock the guide knocked at my door, and I rose and came out
to him. We drank coffee and ate bread. We put into our sacks ham and
bread, and he white wine and I brandy. Then we set out. The rain had
dropped to a drizzle, and there was no wind. The sky was obscured for
the most part, but here and there was a star. The hills hung awfully
above us in the night as we crossed the spongy valley. A little wooden
bridge took us over the young Rhone, here only a stream, and we
followed a path up into the tributary ravine which leads to the
Nufenen and the Gries.
