there was nothing nearer than this town of Charmes that was marked on
the milestones, and that was the first place I should come to in the
department of the Vosges.

It would take much too long to describe the dodges that weary men and
stiff have recourse to when they are at the close of a difficult task:
how they divide it up in lengths in their minds, how they count
numbers, how they begin to solve problems in mental arithmetic: I
tried them all. Then I thought of a new one, which is really
excellent, and which I recommend to the whole world. It is to vary the
road, suddenly taking now the fields, now the river, but only
occasionally the turnpike. This last lap was very well suited for such
a method. The valley had become more like a wide and shallow trench
than ever. The hills on either side were low and exactly even. Up the
middle of it went the river, the canal and the road, and these two
last had only a field between them; now broad, now narrow.

First on the tow-path, then on the road, then on the grass, then back
on the tow-path, I pieced out the last baking mile into Charmes, that
lies at the foot of a rather higher hill, and at last was dragging
myself up the street just as the bell was ringing the noon Angelus;
nor, however tedious you may have found it to read this final effort
of mine, can you have found it a quarter as wearisome as I did to walk
it; and surely between writer and reader there should be give and
take, now the one furnishing the entertainment and now the other.

The delightful thing in Charmes is its name. Of this name I had indeed
been thinking as I went along the last miles of that dusty and
deplorable road--that a town should be called 'Charms'.