This was the lowest ebb, and now romance came flooding back. Lausanne at noon was lovely. There was the white house where Cynara used to live; old memories quickened at the sight. Martigny shone like a dream against the Champex mountains. And then, as the train rushed up the Rhone valley, I leant from the window, and the trees and the bushes bending before the wind seemed swaying with my ecstasy.
Late in the afternoon I left Stalden for the last stage of my journey, a fifteen-mile ascent to Saas Fee. Beyond the bridge near the village a young climber overtook me as I stopped to readjust my bag. It appeared that he too had come from Munich, that we had a common friend, and that he wished to make the acquaintance of Cynara and her sister. So we walked on together. Behind us the Bietschorn shone a golden peak in the sunset. On each side of the narrow, high valley fell numberless cascades, pouring into the central torrent. Yes, this was Switzerland at last, far lovelier with its roaring waters and scent of pine-trees than in the dim visions of those stifling Dresden days. I had reached the blue hills of the horizon, and the sinking sun had turned them to gold.
We came to Saas Grund at eve, and the last steep pull to Saas Fee was made in the dark. As we entered the village my companion left me, turning to the left towards his hotel. I stopped a minute to recover my breath. It was the first of August, the day of the national festival. All the hotels were illuminated; men and women crowded the balconies, in fancy dress, and the crowd below ran here and there, laughing and chattering. A fantastic sight; for a moment I was embarrassed by the idea that they were celebrating my arrival. Moving forward diffidently, I entered the Hôtel du Dom by the cellar door, and walked cautiously upstairs. There was no more glory in me, and, except for my anxiety to avoid Cynara, I was not conscious of any particular feeling.
‘The pilgrim,’ says a modern writer, ‘is one who has made an appointment with his higher self, to meet at some distant date and place.’ He sets aside for a season his present interests and the call of work, intent on satisfying that part of his nature which is in danger of suffering from starvation. Therefore, with staff in hand, he turns his back on the familiar, to take, in strange places, something more than a holiday. For the pilgrim is no mere holiday-maker; he is rather the ideal traveller, journeying towards a noble end, and happy in this knowledge; and to attain this end he welcomes the prospect of passing through fire and water.