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And indeed there was no more question of my mysterious vocation between us. There was to be no more question of it at all, no where or with any one. We began the descent of the Furca Pass conversing merrily. Eleven years later, month for month, I stood on Tower Hill on the steps of the St. Katherine's Dockhouse, a master in the British Merchant Service.
Lydia Languish, though she was constrained by fear of her aunt to hide the book, yet had Peregrine Pickle in her collection. While human nature talks of love so forcibly it can hardly serve our turn to be silent on the subject. "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret."
Some wretched slave-boy, a slight, delicate fellow, had been bound to the bars of a furca, and was being driven by two brutal executioners to the place of doom outside the gates. At the street-crossing he had sunk down, and all the blows of the driver's scourge could not compel him to arise.
Anyway, the deliberate, bald-headed Scot with the coal-black beard appeared to my boyish eyes a very romantic and mysterious person. We slipped out unnoticed. Our mapped-out route led over the Furca Pass toward the Rhone Glacier, with the further intention of following down the trend of the Hasli Valley.
The beautiful weather one had on the Rigi, the execrable weather one had at the Furca, the unsettled weather one had on the Lake of Thun; the endless questions whether you have been here and whether you have been there; the long catechism as to the insect-life and the tariff of the various hotels; the statements as to the route by which they have come, the equally gratuitous information as to the route by which they shall go; the "oh, so beautiful" of the gusher in ringlets, the lawyer's "decidedly sublime," the monotonous "grand, grand" of the man of business; the constant asseveration of all as to every prospect which they have visited that they never have seen such a beautiful view in their life form a cataract of boredom which pours down from morn to dewy eve.
I shall find letters in London and learn all about it. He wrote me not to hurry, that a month or two would make no difference. When I got to Munich I thought I would take a peep at Switzerland while I had the opportunity. I have done a good piece from Lindau to Lucerne, from Lucerne to Martigny by way of the Furca; through the Tete Noire Pass to Chamouni, and from Chamouni, here."
The man of letters is not at once and completely superseded. But as Horace says, Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.
He had proved it already by two years of unremitting and arduous care. I could not hate him. But he had been crushing me slowly, and when he started to argue on the top of the Furca Pass he was perhaps nearer a success than either he or I imagined. I listened to him in despairing silence, feeling that ghostly, unrealised and desired sea of my dreams escape from the unnerved grip of my will.
Long he had not been there ere his unruly nature, not to be long kept under by the curb of a feigned society, broke forth into open profaneness; so true is that of the poet, Naturam expellas furca licet, usque recurret.
Is he to be ever marking passages? if so, he has the real trouble of being editor, not I. Naturam expellas furca, &c. Is the Pope's supremacy the only point on which no opinion is to be expressed? if so, why? It is not more against the Articles to desire it than to desire monachism. Will it offend more than others?
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