wanted no more weight; and for no donkey hitherto
created would I cut my sleeping-bag in two.

'It fatigues her, however,' said the innkeeper; 'it fatigues her greatly
on the march. Look.'

Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on the inside,
and blood was running from under her tail. They told me when I started,
and I was ready to believe it, that before a few days I should come to
love Modestine like a dog. Three days had passed, we had shared some
misadventures, and my heart was still as cold as a potato towards my
beast of burden. She was pretty enough to look at; but then she had
given proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but
aggravated by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. And I
own this new discovery seemed another point against her. What the devil
was the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few
necessaries? I saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, when I
should have to carry Modestine. AEsop was the man to know the world! I
assure you I set out with heavy thoughts upon my short day's march.

It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted me upon the
way; it was a leaden business altogether. For first, the wind blew so
rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one hand from Cheylard to Luc;
and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly countries in the
world. It was like the worst of the Scottish Highlands, only worse;
cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life.
A road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the
road was marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow.

Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my
much-inventing spirit can suppose. For my part, I travel not to go
anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to
move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down
off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite
underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life,
and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that
must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out
of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to
occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who
can annoy himself about the future?

I came out at length above