Next day before sunrise I went out, and all the valley was adorned and tremulous with the films of morning.
Now all of you who have hitherto followed the story of this great journey, put out of your minds the Alps and the passes and the snows--postpone even
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for a moment thé influence of the happy dawn and of that South into which I had entered, and consider only this truth, that I found myself just out of Faido on this blessed date of God with eight francs and forty centimes for my viaticum and temporal provision wherewith to accomplish the good work of my pilgrimage.
Now when you consider that coffee and bread was twopence and a penny for the maid, you may say without lying that I had left behind me the escarpment of the Alps and stood upon the downward slopes of the first Italian stream and at the summit of the entry road with eight francs ten centimes in my pocket--my body hearty and my spirit light, for the arriving sun shot glory into the sky. The air was keen, and a fresh day came radiant over the high eastern walls of the valley.
And what of that? Why, one might make many things of it. For instance, eight francs and ten centimes is a very good day's wages; it is a lot to spend in cab fares but little for a coupé. It is a heavy price for Burgundy but a song for Tokay. It is eighty miles third-class and more; it is thirty or less first-class; it is a flash in a train de luxe, and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. It would be enormous to give it to an apostle begging at a church door, but nothing to spend on luncheon.
Properly spent I can imagine it saving five or six souls, but I cannot believe that so paltry a sum would damn half an one.
Then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing about. Thus, if one were a modern fool one might write a dirge with 'Huit francs et dix centimes' all chanted on one low sad note, and coming in between brackets for a 'motif, and with a lot about autumn and Death--which last, Death that is, people nowadays seem to regard as something odd, whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world. Or one might make the words the Backbone of a triolet, only one would have to split them up to fit it into the metre; or one might make it the decisive line in a sonnet; or one might make a pretty little lyric of it, to the tune of 'Madame la Marquise' -