The Bishop of Würzburg was formerly the Sovereign Bishop: the nomination was in the gift of the canons of the Chapter. After his election, he passed, stripped to the waist, between his colleagues drawn up in two rows, who scourged him. It was hoped that the princes, offended at this manner of consecrating a royal back, would refrain from presenting themselves as candidates. To-day this would be of no avail: there is not a descendant of Charlemagne but would consent to be whipped for three days on end to obtain the crown of Yvetot.
I have seen the Emperor of Austria's brother Duke of Würzburg[20]; he used to sing very prettily at Fontainebleau, in the Galerie de François Ier, at the concerts of the Empress Joséphine.
They kept Schwartz two hours at the passport-office. Left with my unharnessed carriage in front of a church, I went in: I prayed with the Christian crowd which represents the old society in the midst of the new. A procession went out and marched round the church: why am I not a monk on the walls of Rome? The times to which I belong would be realized in me.
When the first seeds of religion budded in my soul, I opened out like a virgin soil which, cleared of its brambles, bears its first harvest. Came a dry and icy wind, and the soil was parched. The sky took pity on it; it gave it its tepid dews; then the wind blew again. This alternation of faith and doubt long made my life a mixture of despair and unspeakable delights. O my good, sainted mother, pray Jesus Christ for me: your son needs redeeming more than other men!
I left Würzburg at four o'clock and took the Mannheim Road. I entered the Grand-duchy of Baden; I found a village in a merry mood; a drunkard gave me his hand, shouting:
"Long live the Emperor!"
Everything that has happened since the fall of Napoleon is null and void in Germany. The men who rose to snatch their national independence from Bonaparte's ambition dream only of him, so greatly did he stir the imagination of the nations, from the Bedouins in their tents to the Teutons in their huts.
As I went towards France, the children became noisier in the hamlets, the postillions drove faster, life sprang up once more.
The Swallow.