On one of the first days of November, I journeyed, in a tremendous
storm, to Lübeck, the characteristic buildings of which (the Church of
Mary, the Exchange, the Town-hall), together with the remains of the
old fortifications, aroused my keen interest. In this Hanse town, with
its strongly individual stamp, I found myself carried back three
hundred years.
I was amazed at the slave-like dress of the workmen, the pointed hats
of the girls, and the wood pavements, which were new to me.
I travelled through Germany with a Portuguese, a little doctor from the
University of Coimbra, in whose queer French fifteen was _kouss_ and
Goethe _Shett_. A practical American, wrapped up in a waterproof, took
up three places to lie down in one evening, pretended to sleep, and
never stirred all night, forcing his inexperienced fellow-travellers to
crowd up into the corners of the carriage, and when the day broke,
chatted with them as pleasantly as if they and he were the best friends
in the world.
At Cologne, where I had stood, reverential, in the noble forest of
pillars in the Cathedral, then afterwards, in my simplicity, allowed
someone to foist a whole case of Eau de Cologne upon me, I shortened my
stay, in my haste to see Paris. But, having by mistake taken a train
which would necessitate my waiting several hours at Liège, I decided
rather to continue my journey to Brussels and see that city too. The
run through Belgium seemed to me heavenly, as for a time I happened to
be quite alone in my compartment and I walked up and down, intoxicated
with the joy of travelling.
Brussels was the first large French town I saw; it was a foretaste of
Paris, and delighted me.
Never having been out in the world on my own account before, I was
still as inexperienced and awkward as a child. It was not enough that I
had got into the wrong train; I discovered, to my shame, that I had
mislaid the key of my box, which made me think anxiously of the customs
officials in Paris, and I was also so stupid as to ask the boots in the
Brussels hotel for "a little room," so that they gave me a miserable
little sleeping-place under the roof.
But at night, after I had rambled about the streets of Brussels, as I
sat on a bench somewhere on a broad boulevard, an overwhelming,
terrifying, transporting sense of my solitariness came over me. It
seemed to me as though now, alone in a foreign land, at night time, in
this human swarm, where no one knew me and I knew no one, where no one
would look for me if anything were to happen to me, I was for the first
time thrown entirely on my own resources, and I recognised in the
heavens, with a feeling of reassurance, old friends among the stars.
With a guide, whom in my ignorance I thought necessary, I saw the
sights of the town, and afterwards, for the first time, saw a French
play. So little experience of the world had I, that, during the
interval, I left my overcoat, which I had not given up to the
attendant, lying on the seat in the pit, and my neighbour had to
explain to me that such great confidence in my fellow-men was out of
place.
Everything was new to me, everything fascinated me. I, who only knew
"indulgence" from my history lessons at school, saw with keen interest
the priest in a Brussels church dispense "_indulgence plénière_," or,
in Flemish, _vollen aflaet_. I was interested in the curious names of
the ecclesiastical orders posted up in the churches, marvelled, for
instance, at a brotherhood that was called "St. Andrew Avellin, patron
saint against apoplexy, epilepsy and sudden death."
In the carriage from Brussels I had for travelling companion a pretty
young Belgian girl named Marie Choteau, who was travelling with her
father, but talked all the time to her foreign fellow-traveller, and in
the course of conversation showed me a Belgian history and a Belgian
geography, from which it appeared that Belgium was the centre of the
globe, the world's most densely built over, most religious, and at the
same time most enlightened country, the one which, in proportion to its
size, had the most and largest industries. I gave her some of my
bountiful supply of Eau de Cologne.