He was talkative, and ready to help
everyone; he gave us all food and drink from his provisions. Other
travellers told that they had had to stand in queue for fully twelve
hours in front of the ticket office in Paris, to get away from the town.
The train passed the place where Rousseau had lived, at Madame de
Warens'. In an official work on Savoy, written by a priest, I had
recently read a summary dismissal of Rousseau, as a calumniator of his
benefactress. According to this author, it certainly looked as though,
to say the least of it, Rousseau's memory had failed him amazingly
sometimes. The book asserted, for instance, that the Claude of whom he
speaks was no longer alive at the time when he was supposed to be
enjoying Madame de Warens' favours.
We passed French volunteers in blouses bearing a red cross; they shouted
and were in high good humour; passed ten districts, where numbers of
cretins, with their hideous excrescences, sat by the wayside. At last we
arrived,--several hours behind time,--at St. Michel, at the foot of Mont
Cenis; it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and I was beginning to feel
tired, for I had been up since four in the morning. At five o'clock we
commenced the ascent, to the accompaniment of frightful groanings from
the engine; all the travellers were crowded together in three wretched
little carriages, the small engine not being able to pull more.
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