第55章 LETTER XXII(1)

I arrived at Corsoer the night after I quitted Copenhagen,purposing to take my passage across the Great Belt the next morning,though the weather was rather boisterous.It is about four-and-twenty miles but as both I and my little girl are never attacked by sea-sickness--though who can avoid ennui?--I enter a boat with the same indifference as I change horses;and as for danger,come when it may,I dread it not sufficiently to have any anticipating fears.

The road from Copenhagen was very good,through an open,flat country that had little to recommend it to notice excepting the cultivation,which gratified my heart more than my eye.

I took a barge with a German baron who was hastening back from a tour into Denmark,alarmed by the intelligence of the French having passed the Rhine.His conversation beguiled the time,and gave a sort of stimulus to my spirits,which had been growing more and more languid ever since my return to Gothenburg;you know why.I had often endeavoured to rouse myself to observation by reflecting that I was passing through scenes which I should probably never see again,and consequently ought not to omit observing.Still I fell into reveries,thinking,by way of excuse,that enlargement of mind and refined feelings are of little use but to barb the arrows of sorrow which waylay us everywhere,eluding the sagacity of wisdom and rendering principles unavailing,if considered as a breastwork to secure our own hearts.

Though we had not a direct wind,we were not detained more than three hours and a half on the water,just long enough to give us an appetite for our dinner.

We travelled the remainder of the day and the following night in company with the same party,the German gentleman whom I have mentioned,his friend,and servant.The meetings at the post-houses were pleasant to me,who usually heard nothing but strange tongues around me.Marguerite and the child often fell asleep,and when they were awake I might still reckon myself alone,as our train of thoughts had nothing in common.Marguerite,it is true,was much amused by the costume of the women,particularly by the pannier which adorned both their heads and tails,and with great glee recounted to me the stories she had treasured up for her family when once more within the barriers of dear Paris,not forgetting,with that arch,agreeable vanity peculiar to the French,which they exhibit whilst half ridiculing it,to remind me of the importance she should assume when she informed her friends of all her journeys by sea and land,showing the pieces of money she had collected,and stammering out a few foreign phrases,which she repeated in a true Parisian accent.Happy thoughtlessness!ay,and enviable harmless vanity,which thus produced a gaite du coeur worth all my philosophy!

The man I had hired at Copenhagen advised me to go round about twenty miles to avoid passing the Little Belt excepting by a ferry,as the wind was contrary.But the gentlemen overruled his arguments,which we were all very sorry for afterwards,when we found ourselves becalmed on the Little Belt ten hours,tacking about without ceasing,to gain the shore.

An oversight likewise made the passage appear much more tedious,nay,almost insupportable.When I went on board at the Great Belt,I had provided refreshments in case of detention,which remaining untouched I thought not then any such precaution necessary for the second passage,misled by the epithet of "little,"though I have since been informed that it is frequently the longest.This mistake occasioned much vexation;for the child,at last,began to cry so bitterly for bread,that fancy conjured up before me the wretched Ugolino,with his famished children;and I,literally speaking,enveloped myself in sympathetic horrors,augmented by every fear my babe shed,from which I could not escape till we landed,and a luncheon of bread and basin of milk routed the spectres of fancy.

I then supped with my companions,with whom I was soon after to part for ever--always a most melancholy death-like idea--a sort of separation of soul;for all the regret which follows those from whom fate separates us seems to be something torn from ourselves.These were strangers I remember;yet when there is any originality in a countenance,it takes its place in our memory,and we are sorry to lose an acquaintance the moment he begins to interest us,through picked up on the highway.There was,in fact,a degree of intelligence,and still more sensibility,in the features and conversation of one of the gentlemen,that made me regret the loss of his society during the rest of the journey;for he was compelled to travel post,by his desire to reach his estate before the arrival of the French.

This was a comfortable inn,as were several others I stopped at;but the heavy sandy roads were very fatiguing,after the fine ones we had lately skimmed over both in Sweden and Denmark.The country resembled the most open part of England--laid out for corn rather than grazing.It was pleasant,yet there was little in the prospects to awaken curiosity,by displaying the peculiar characteristics of a new country,which had so frequently stole me from myself in Norway.We often passed over large unenclosed tracts,not graced with trees,or at least very sparingly enlivened by them,and the half-formed roads seemed to demand the landmarks,set up in the waste,to prevent the traveller from straying far out of his way,and plodding through the wearisome sand.