I consoled myself more or less by thinking about torments and evils to
which even such a loss as this was nothing, and then I rose to go on
into the night. As it turned out I was to find beyond the frontier a
wine in whose presence this wasted wine would have seemed a wretched
jest, and whose wonderful taste was to colour all my memories of the
Mount Terrible. It is always thus with sorrows if one will only wait.

So, lighter in the sack but heavier in the heart, I went forward to
cross the frontier in the dark. I did not quite know where the point
came: I only knew that it was about a mile from Delle, the last French
town. I supped there and held on my way. When I guessed that I had
covered this mile I saw a light in the windows on my left, a trellis
and the marble tables of a cafe. I put my head in at the door and
said--

'Am I in Switzerland?'

A German-looking girl, a large heavy man, a Bavarian commercial
traveller, and a colleague of his from Marseilles, all said together
in varying accents: 'Yes.'

'Why then,' I said, 'I will come in and drink.'

This book would never end if I were to attempt to write down so much
as the names of a quarter of the extraordinary things that I saw and
heard on my enchanted pilgrimage, but let me at least mention the
Commercial Traveller from Marseilles.

He talked with extreme rapidity for two hours. He had seen all the