ng on to Rome, and I have no time to write a georgic. But,
oh! my little friends of the north; my struggling, strenuous,
introspective, self-analysing, autoscopic, and generally reentrant
friends, who spout the 'Hue! Pater, oh! Lenae!' without a ghost of an
idea what you are talking about, do you know what is meant by the god?
Bacchus is everywhere, but if he has special sites to be ringed in and
kept sacred, I say let these be Brule, and the silent vineyard that
lies under the square wood by Tournus, the hollow underplace of Heltz
le Maurupt, and this town of Porrentruy. In these places if I can get
no living friends to help me, I will strike the foot alone on the
genial ground, and I know of fifty maenads and two hundred little
attendant gods by name that will come to the festival.

What a wine!

I was assured it would not travel. 'Nevertheless,' said I, 'give me a
good quart bottle of it, for I have to go far, and I see there is a
providence for pilgrims.'

So they charged me fourpence, and I took my bottle of this wonderful
stuff, sweet, strong, sufficient, part of the earth, desirable, and
went up on my way to Rome.

Could this book be infinite, as my voyage was infinite, I would tell
you about the shifty priest whom I met on the platform of the church
where a cliff overhangs the valley, and of the anarchist whom I met
when I recovered the highroad--- he was a sad, good man, who had
committed some sudden crime and so had left France, and his hankering
for France all those years had soured his temper, and he said he
wished there were no property, no armies, and no governments.

But I said that we live as parts of a nation, and that there was no
fate so wretched as to be without a country of one's own--what else
was exile which so many noble men have thought worse than death, and
which all have feared? I also told him that armies fighting in a just
cause were the happiest places for living, and that a good battle for
justice was the beginning of all great songs; and that as for
property, a man on his own land was the nearest to God.

He therefore not convinced, and I loving and pitying him, we
separated; I had not time to preach my full doctrine, but gave him
instead a deep and misty glass of cool beer, and pledged him
brotherhood, freedom, and an equal law. Then I went on my way, praying
God that all these rending quarrels might be appeased. For they would
certainly be appeased if we once again had a united