If one of them had buttoned up his coat at the
beginning of the drive, he did not unbutton it on the way, were he never
so warm, and if he had put leather gloves on, for ten hours they would
not be off his hands. The men yawned for the most part; the young ladies
jabbered. The English had made the whole country subservient to them,
and at the hotels one Englishman in this French country was paid more
attention to than a dozen Frenchmen.
Here I understood two widely different poems: Hauch's Swiss Peasant, and
Bjoernson's Over the Hills and Far Away. Hauch had felt this scenery and
the nature of these people, by virtue of his Norwegian birth and his
gift of entering into other people's thought; Bjoernson had given
unforgettable expression to the feeling of imprisoned longing. But for
the man who had been breathing street dust and street sweepings for four
months, it was good to breathe the strong, pure air, and at last see
once more the clouds floating about and beating against the mountain
sides, leaning, exhausted, against a declivity and resting on their
journey. Little children of eight or ten were guarding cattle, children
such as we know so well in the North, when they come with their marmots;
they looked, without exception, like tiny rascals, charming though they
were.
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