“Where are you going to, Monsieur?” said the valet.

“Au diable!” said I.

“Mais les passeports?” said the man.

I felt that I had sufficient passports for the journey I had proposed; but correcting myself, said, “to Switzerland.”  It was the first name that came into my head; and I had heard that it was the resort of all my countrymen whose heads, hearts, lungs, or finances were disordered.  But, during my journey, I neither saw nor heard any thing, consequently took no notes, which my readers will rejoice at, because they will be spared that inexhaustible supply to the trunk makers, “A Tour through France and Switzerland.”  I travelled night and day; for I could not sleep.  The allegory of Io and the gad-fly, in the heathen mythology, must surely have been intended to represent the being, who, like myself, was tormented by a bad conscience.  Like Io, I flew; and like her, was I pursued by the eternal gad-fly, wherever I went, and in vain did I try to escape it.

I passed the Great St Bernard on foot.  This interested me as I approached it.  The mountains below, and the Alps above, were one mass of snow and ice, and I looked down with contempt on the world below me.  I took up my abode in the convent for some time; my ample contributions to the box in the chapel, made me a welcome sojourner beyond the limited period allowed to travellers, and I felt less and less inclined to quit the scene.  My amusement was climbing the most frightful precipices, followed by the large and faithful dogs, and viewing nature in her wildest and most sublime attire.  At other times, when bodily fatigue required rest, I sat down, with morbid melancholy, in the receptacle for the bodies of those unfortunate persons who had perished in the snow.  There would I remain for hours, musing on their fate:  the purity of the air admitted neither putrefaction, or even decay, for a very considerable time; and they lay, to all appearance, as if the breath had even then only quitted them, although, on touching those who had been there for years, they would often crumble into dust.

Roman Catholics, we know, are ever anxious to make converts.  The prior asked me whether I was not a protestant?  I replied, that I was of no religion; which answer was, I believe, much nearer to the truth than any other I could have given.  The reply was far more favourable to the hopes of the monks, than if I had said I was a heretic or a moslem.  They thought me much more likely to become a convert to their religion, since I had none of my own to oppose to it.  The monks immediately arranged themselves in theological order, with the whole armour of faith, and laid constant siege to me on all sides; but I was not inclined to any religion, much less to the one I despised.  I would sooner have turned Turk.