The Path to Rome | Page 6

had a style like the London School of Poets: a very
horrible conclusion.
However, I am not concerned here with the ending of a book, but with
its beginning; and I say that the beginning of any literary thing is hard,

and that this hardness is difficult to explain. And I say more than this--I
say that an interminable discussion of the difficulty of beginning a
book is the worst omen for going on with it, and a trashy subterfuge at
the best. In the name of all decent, common, and homely things, why
not begin and have done with it?
It was in the very beginning of June, at evening, but not yet sunset, that
I set out from Toul by the Nancy gate; but instead of going straight on
past the parade-ground, I turned to the right immediately along the
ditch and rampart, and did not leave the fortifications till I came to the
road that goes up alongside the Moselle. For it was by the valley of this
river that I was to begin my pilgrimage, since, by a happy accident, the
valley of the Upper Moselle runs straight towards Rome, though it
takes you but a short part of the way. What a good opening it makes for
a direct pilgrimage can be seen from this little map, where the dotted
line points exactly to Rome. There are two bends which take one a little
out of one's way, and these bends I attempted to avoid, but in general,
the valley, about a hundred miles from Toul to the source, is an evident
gate for any one walking from this part of Lorraine into Italy. And this
map is also useful to show what route I followed for my first three days
past Epinal and Remiremont up to the source of the river, and up over
the great hill, the Ballon d'Alsace. I show the river valley like a trench,
and the hills above it shaded, till the mountainous upper part, the
Vosges, is put in black. I chose the decline of the day for setting out,
because of the great heat a little before noon and four hours after it.
Remembering this, I planned to walk at night and in the mornings and
evenings, but how this design turned out you shall hear in a moment.
I had not gone far, not a quarter of a mile, along my road leaving the
town, when I thought I would stop and rest a little and make sure that I
had started propitiously and that I was really on my way to Rome; so I
halted by a wall and looked back at the city and the forts, and drew
what I saw in my book. It was a sight that had taken a firm hold of my
mind in boyhood, and that will remain in it as long as it can make
pictures for itself out of the past. I think this must be true of all
conscripts with regard to the garrison in which they have served, for the
mind is so fresh at twenty-one and the life so new to every recruit as he
joins it, he is so cut off from books and all the worries of life, that the
surroundings of the place bite into him and take root, as one's school

does or one's first home. And I had been especially fortunate since I
had been with the gunners (notoriously the best kind of men) and not in
a big place but in a little town, very old and silent, with more soldiers
in its surrounding circle than there were men, women, and children
within its useless ramparts. It is known to be very beautiful, and though
I had not heard of this reputation, I saw it to be so at once when I was
first marched in, on a November dawn, up to the height of the artillery
barracks. I remembered seeing then the great hills surrounding it on
every side, hiding their menace and protection of guns, and in the south
and east the silent valley where the high forests dominate the Moselle,
and the town below the road standing in an island or ring of tall trees.
All this, I say, I had permanently remembered, and I had determined,
whenever I could go on pilgrimage to Rome, to make this place my
starting-point, and as I stopped here and looked back, a little way
outside the gates, I took in again the scene that recalled so much
laughter and heavy work and servitude and pride of arms.
I was looking straight at the great fort of St Michel, which is the
strongest thing on the frontier, and which is the key to the circle of forts
that make up this