After Dettelbach, two stages to Würzburg, and a female hunchback seated behind my carriage; it was Terence's Andria: _Inopia.... egregia forma.... ætate integra._[19] The postillion wanted to make her get down; I objected, for two reasons: first, because I should have been afraid lest that fairy should have thrown a spell over me; secondly, because, having read in a biography of myself that I am a hunchback, all female hunchbacks are my sisters. Who can satisfy himself that he is not hunchbacked? Who will ever tell you that you are? If you look at yourself in the glass, you cannot say at all; do we ever see ourselves as we are? You will find a turn in your figure that suits you to perfection. All hunchbacks are proud and happy; the advantages of the hump are hallowed in song. At the entrance to a lane, my hunchback, in her ragged finery, stepped majestically to the ground: carrying her burden, like all mortals, Serpentina plunged into a corn-field and disappeared among spikes taller than herself. At mid-day, on the 2nd of June, I had reached the top of a hill from which one descried Würzburg: the citadel on a height, the town below, with its palace, its steeples and its turrets. The palace, although thick-set, would be handsome even in Florence; in case of rain, the Prince could give shelter to all his subjects in his mansion without giving up his own apartments. The Bishop of Würzburg was formerly the Sovereign Bishop: the nomination was in the gift of the canons of the Chapter. After his election, he passed, stripped to the waist, between his colleagues drawn up in two rows, who scourged him. It was hoped that the princes, offended at this manner of consecrating a royal back, would refrain from presenting themselves as candidates. To-day this would be of no avail: there is not a descendant of Charlemagne but would consent to be whipped for three days on end to obtain the crown of Yvetot. I have seen the Emperor of Austria's brother Duke of Würzburg[20]; he used to sing very prettily at Fontainebleau, in the Galerie de François I^er, at the concerts of the Empress Joséphine. They kept Schwartz two hours at the passport-office. Left with my unharnessed carriage in front of a church, I went in: I prayed with the Christian crowd which represents the old society in the midst of the new. A procession went out and marched round the church: why am I not a monk on the walls of Rome? The times to which I belong would be realized in me. When the first seeds of religion budded in my soul, I opened out like a virgin soil which, cleared of its brambles, bears its first harvest. Came a dry and icy wind, and the soil was parched. The sky took pity on it; it gave it its tepid dews; then the wind blew again. This alternation of faith and doubt long made my life a mixture of despair and unspeakable delights. O my good, sainted mother, pray Jesus Christ for me: your son needs redeeming more than other men!