Volume 5 — BOOK III[496] (continued 2)

The country is cut and slashed with heights called Bohemian mountains: paps whose tip is marked by pine-trees and whose swelling outlined by the green of the harvests.

And leave Bavaria.

The villages are scarce. A few fortresses, hungering for prisoners, roost on the rocks like old vultures. Between Zditz and Beraun, the mountains on the right become bald. One goes through a village: the roads are spacious, the posts well equipped; all points to a monarchy that imitates Old France.

Johann the Blind[553], under Philip of Valois[554], the ambassadors of George[555], under Louis XI.: by what forest paths did they pass? Of what use are the modern roads of Germany? They will remain deserted, for there is no history, art nor climate to call foreigners to their lonely causeways. For purposes of commerce it is unnecessary that the public thoroughfares should be so wide and so costly to keep in repair: the richest trade in the world, that of India and Persia, is conducted on the backs of mules, asses and horses, by narrow paths, hardly traced over the mountain-chains or sandy zones. The present high-roads, in unfrequented countries, will serve only for war, as vomitories for the use of the new Barbarians who, issuing from the North with the immense bustle of fire-arms, will come to flood regions favoured by intellect and the sun.

At Beraun passes the little river of the same name, rather spiteful, like all curs. In 1748, it rose to the level marked on the walls of the post-house. After Beraun, gorges twist round a few hills and spread out at the entrance to an upland. From this upland the road plunges into a valley with vague lines, the lap of which is occupied by a hamlet. There commences a long ascent which leads to Duschnik, the posting-station and the last stage. Soon, descending towards an opposite eminence, at the top of which stands a cross, one discerns Prague, on both banks of the Moldau. It is in that town that the sons of St. Louis are ending a life of exile, that the heir of their House is beginning a life of proscription, while his mother languishes in a fortress on the soil from which he has been driven. Frenchmen, you have sent the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, her to whom your fathers opened the gates of the Temple, to Prague: you have not cared to keep among you that unique monument of greatness and virtue! O my old King, you whom I love to call my master, because you have fallen! O young lad, whom I was the first to proclaim King, what am I to say to you? How shall I dare to appear in your presence, I who am not banished, I who am free to return to France, free to return my last breath to the air which fired my breast when I breathed for the first time, I whose bones may rest in their native land. Captive of Blaye, I am going to see your son!