In the towns of Germany, the streets are wide, drawn up in line like the tents of a camp or the files of a battalion; the market-places are spacious, the drill-grounds extensive: the people want sun, and everything happens in public.
In the towns of Italy, the streets are narrow and winding, the market-places small, the drill-grounds cramped: the people want shade, and everything happens in secret.
At Linz, my passport was endorsed without difficulty.
24 and 25 September 1833.
I crossed the Danube at three o'clock in the morning: I had said to it in the summer what I could no longer find to say to it in the autumn; its waters were no longer the same and I was there at a different hour. Far on my left, as I passed, lay my good village of Waldmünchen, with its droves of pigs[249], Eumaus the shepherd[250] and the peasant-girl who looked at me over her father's shoulder[251]. The dead man's grave in the cemetery was filled up by now[252]; the deceased had been eaten by some thousands of worms for having had the honour of being a man.
M. and Madame de Bauffremont, who had arrived at Linz, were a few hours ahead of me; they themselves were preceded by some Royalists, bearing a message of peace, who believed Madame to be travelling quietly behind them: and I came after them all, like Discord, with news of war.
The Princesse de Bauffremont, née de Montmorency[253], was going to Butschirad[254] to congratulate the Kings of France, née Bourbons: what could be more natural?
On the 25th, at nightfall, I entered some woods. Carrion-crows flew screaming through the air; their thick flights whirled above the trees whose tops they were making ready to crown. Behold me returning to my early youth: I saw once more the crows in the Mall at Combourg[255]; I imagined myself renewing my family life in the old castle[256]: O memories, you pierce the heart like a sword! O Lucile[257], we are parted by many years: now the crowd of my days has passed and, in dispersing, allows me to see your image more clearly!
I reached Thabor at night: its square, surrounded by arcades, struck me as immense; but the moonlight is deceptive.
On the morning of the 26th, a mist wrapped us in its boundless solitude. At about ten o'clock, it seemed to me that I was passing between two lakes. I was now only a few leagues from Prague.