p, we saw the storm above us; but no one could have told it
for what it was. Here, below, was silence, and the terror and raging
above seemed only a great trembling cloud occupying the mountain. Then
we set our faces down the ravine by which we had come up, and so came
down to where the snow changed to rain. When we got right down into
the valley of the Rhone, we found it all roofed with cloud, and the
higher trees were white with snow, making a line like a tide mark on
the slopes of the hills.

I re-entered 'The Bear', silent and angered, and not accepting the
humiliation of that failure. Then, having eaten, I determined in equal
silence to take the road like any other fool; to cross the Furka by a
fine highroad, like any tourist, and to cross the St Gothard by
another fine highroad, as millions had done before me, and not to look
heaven in the face again till I was back after my long detour, on the
straight road again for Rome.

But to think of it! I who had all that planned out, and had so nearly
done it! I who had cut a path across Europe like a shaft, and seen so
many strange places!--now to have to recite all the litany of the
vulgar; Bellinzona, Lugano, and this and that, which any railway
travelling fellow can tell you. Not till Como should I feel a man
again...

Indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up one's sword.

I had not the money to wait; my defeat had lowered me in purse as well
as in heart. I started off to enter by the ordinary gates--not Italy
even, but a half-Italy, the canton of the Ticino. It was very hard.

This book is not a tragedy, and I will not write at any length of such
pain. That same day, in the latter half of it, I went sullenly over
the Furka; exactly as easy a thing as going up St James' Street and
down Piccadilly. I found the same storm on its summit, but on a
highroad it was a different affair. I took no short cuts. I drank at
all the inns--at the base, half-way up, near the top, and at the top.
I told them, as the snow beat past, how I had attacked and all but
conquered the Gries that wild morning, and they took me for a liar; so
I became silent even within my own mind. I looked sullenly at the
white ground all the way. And when on the far side I had got low
enough to be rid of the snow and wind and to be in the dripping rain
again, I welcomed the rain, and let it soothe like a sodden friend my
sodden uncongenial mind.

I will not write of Hospenthal. It has an old towe