I had travelled a good part of the day
under a grey and menacing sky, following a narrow band of ochre
coloured ground that an old hermit monk had pointed out to me as being
the road to Moussillon.
"That's where you have to go to cross the river lad, there is no other
way...unless you go back many leagues" he told me, smiling as if the
obligation to pass through the town was something that amused him and
that he enjoyed like a good joke. The man, whose skin was as wrinkled
as that of a dried up apple, left giggling loudly through his toothless
jaw.
Thus I was following the road shown to
me by the hermit. His strange behaviour I attributed to the massive
consumption of self-distilled alcohol, that heavily impregnated his
breath.
After more than four hours travel, the wind had fallen to leave way to
humidity and cold as the road approached a miasma infected swamp; I
tried to catch a glimpse of the town's walls and towers in the
distance, but in vain, the horizon lost itself in a grey and vaporous
haze. The only thing around was a deserted and muddy moor, spattered
only by occasionnal water holes and patches of furze. A bit further
where the land was a bit more settled, I discerned a twisted and
tortured copse of trees.
My cart was now rolling on a much larger earth track, which had been
reinforced using much sand and loose stone. The land at the sides of
the road remained muddy however, and it took much effort to pull my
cart out after the horse had dragged me off-course. The haze had
changed into a thick and acrid smelling smoke which made it impossible
to see more than ten meters away. At the back of the wag, the DAGOLBACH
pots and pans tinkled like many dissonant carillon bells, indifferent
to the snoring of Gautielbe, my road companion. The din was absorbed by
the moor, thereby betraying the lack of any kind of relief in the
region. For the time being, the light of the tempest-lamp hooked at the
front of the carriage was the only thing that helped me avoid going
down in the ditch again. Having to push with all my weight knee deep in
turf to free the cart from the swamps hold, was not a prospect which I
particularly relished. I scrutinized the landscape in search of a
sheltered place. Darkness was starting to fall and I needed to find
somewhere to spend the night, if I didn't want to die frozen in these
putrid swamps.
"Yes, come and see the new marvels from the Empire ! They don't wear !
They don't burn ! They don't even get dirty ! Yes, it's the pots, it's
the pans, it's the cauldrons DA-GOL-BACH. Admire the difference, touch
them, ask for them, buy them..."
I smiled, thinking of the coaxing sales patter I would serve on the
market square to dazed strollers the next morning, and also thinking of
the good bed which I would no doubt find in an inn just behind the city
walls, which had suddenly appeared a few meters in front of my cart.