The post-master at Schlau had just invented the accordion[274]: he sold me one; the whole night I played upon its bellows, the sound of which carried away for me the memories of this world. Carlsbad, through which I passed on the 30th of September, was deserted, like an opera-house after the performance. I met at Eger the extortioner who had made me tumble from the moon where I was spending the month of June with a lady from the Roman Campagna[275]. At Hollfeld, no swifts[276], no little girl with her basket[277]; this saddened me. Such is my nature: I idealize real personages and impersonate dreams, making matter and mind change places. A little girl and a bird to-day swell the crowd of the beings of my creation with whom my imagination is peopled, like those day-flies which sport in a ray of the sun. Forgive me, I am speaking of myself: I notice it when it is too late. Here is Bamberg. Padua reminded me of Livy[278]; at Bamberg, Father Horrion recovered the first portion of the third and of the thirtieth books of the Roman historian. While I was supping in the birthplace of Joachim Camerarius[279] and Clavius[280], the librarian of the town came to greet me on account of my fame, the greatest in the world, according to him, which warmed the marrow of my bones. Next, a Bavarian general came running up. At the door of the inn, the crowd surrounded me when I made for my carriage. A young woman had climbed upon a mile-stone, as did the Sainte-Beuve to see the Duc de Guise go by. She laughed: "You are laughing at me?" I asked. "No," she replied, in French, with a German accent, "it is because I am so glad!" [Sidenote: And return to France.] From the 1st to the 4th of October, I saw again the places which I had seen three months before. On the 4th, I reached the French frontier. To me St. Francis' Day is, every year, a day for examining my conscience. I turn my eyes upon the past; I ask myself where I was, what I was doing on each previous anniversary. This year 1833 found me wandering, a slave to my roving destinies. At the end of the road I saw a cross; it stood in a cluster of trees which silently dropped a few dead leaves upon the Man-God crucified. Twenty-seven years before, I spent St. Francis' Day at the foot of the real Golgotha. My Patron Saint also visited the Holy Sepulchre. Francis of Assisi[281], the founder of the Mendicant Orders, by virtue of that institution caused the Gospel to take a great step forward: a fact that has not been sufficiently remarked upon. He achieved the introduction of the people into religion; by clothing the poor in a monk's frock, he forced the world to charity, raised the beggar in the eyes of the rich and, in a Christian proletarian army, established the model of that brotherhood of men which Christ had preached, a brotherhood which will be the fulfilment of that political side of Christianity as yet undeveloped, without which there will never be complete liberty and justice upon earth.