I started on foot, like a sportsman, with leathern gaiters on my feet,
and my gun on my shoulder, and took from the bag only one hundred
francs, which I added to the little I had remaining from the proceeds
of my last sale. I could not bear to spend the price of the trees, and
therefore concealed the remainder of the money at the farm, that on my
return I might restore it to her who had so heroically torn it from her
heart for me. I ate and slept at the humblest inns in the villages
through which I passed, and was taken for a poor Swiss student
returning from the University of Strasbourg. I was never charged but
the strict value of the bread I ate, of the candle I burned, and of the
pallet on which I slept. I had brought but one book with me, which I
read at evening on the bench before the inn door; it was Werther, in
German; and the unknown characters confirmed my hosts in the idea that
I was a foreign traveller.
I thus wandered through the long and picturesque gorges of Bugey, and
crossed the Rhone at the foot of the rock of Pierre-Chatel.
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