If I
had my way -
LECTOR. I am sorry to have provoked all this.
AUCTOR. Not at all! Not at all! I trust I have made myself clear.
Well, as I was saying, they cook worse at Undervelier than any place I
was ever in, with the possible exception of Omaha, Neb. However, I
forgave them, because they were such good people, and after a short
and bitter night I went out in the morning before the sun rose and
took the Moutier road.
The valley in which I was now engaged - the phrase seems familiar - was
more or less like an H. That is, there were two high parallel ranges
bounding it, but across the middle a low ridge of perhaps a thousand
feet. The road slowly climbed this ridge through pastures where cows
with deep-toned bells were rising from the dew on the grass, and where
one or two little cottages and a village already sent up smoke. All
the way up I was thinking of the surfeit of religion I had had the
night before, and also of how I had started that morning without bread
or coffee, which was a folly.
When I got to the top of the ridge there was a young man chopping wood
outside a house, and I asked him in French how far it was to Moutier.
He answered in German, and I startled him by a loud cry, such as
sailors give when they see land, for at last I had struck the boundary
of the languages, and was with pure foreigners for the first time in
my life. I also asked him for coffee, and as he refused it I took him
to be a heretic and went down the road making up verses against all
such, and singing them loudly through the forest that now arched over
me and grew deeper as I descended.
And my first verse was -
Heretics all, whoever you be,
In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
_Caritas non conturbat me._
If you ask me why I put a Latin line at the end, it was because I had
to show that it was a song connected with the Universal Fountain and
with European culture, and with all that Heresy combats. I sang it to
a lively hymn-tune that I had invented for the occasion.
I then thought what a fine fellow I was, and how pleasant were my
friends when I agreed with them. I made up this second verse, which I
sang even more loudly than the first; and the forest grew deeper,
sending back echoes -
But Catholic men that live upon wine
Are deep in the water, and frank, and fine;
Wherever I travel I find it so,
_Benedicamus Domino._
There is no doubt, however, that if one is really doing a catholic
work, and expressing one's attitude to the world, charity, pity, and a
great sense of fear should possess one, or, at least, appear.
