for relics or for a pilgrimage, it cures no one, and has nothing of a
holy look about it, and all these priests--

LECTOR. Pray dwell less on your religion, and--

AUCTOR. Pray take books as you find them, and treat travel as travel.
For you, when you go to a foreign country, see nothing but what you
expect to see. But I am astonished at a thousand accidents, and always
find things twenty-fold as great as I supposed they would be, and far
more curious; the whole covered by a strange light of adventure. And
that is the peculiar value of this book. Now, if you can explain these
priests---

LECTOR. I can. It was the season of the year, and they were swarming.

AUCTOR. So be it. Then if you will hear nothing of what interests me,
I see no reason for setting down with minute care what interests you,
and I may leave out all mention of the Girl who could only speak
German, of the Arrest of the Criminal, and even of the House of
Marshal Turenne--- this last something quite exceptionally
entertaining. But do not let us continue thus, nor push things to an
open quarrel. You must imagine for yourself about six miles of road,
and then--then in the increasing heat, the dust rising in spite of the
morning rain, and the road most wearisome, I heard again the sound of
bugles and the sombre excitement of the drums.

It is a thought-provoking thing, this passing from one great garrison
to another all the way down the frontier. I had started from the busy
order of Toul; I had passed through the silence and peace of all that
Moselle country, the valley like a long garden, and I had come to the