Egoists, A Book of Supermen: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
Egoists, A Book of Supermen: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello
Nietzsche · en
Kept by a man from Lyons was a fine inn on the Simplon route in those
days. Stendhal never failed to record where could be found good
wines, cooking, and clean sheets. He usually paid twelve francs for a
carriage to Domo d'Ossola, Lac Majeur (Lago Maggiore) _vis-à-vis_ to
the Borromean Islands. Four hours in a boat to Sesto Calende, and five
hours in a fast coach--behold, Milan! Or you can reach Milan _via_
Varese. Milan to Mantua in the regular diligence. Thence to Bologna by
a carriage, there the mail-coach. You go to Rome by the superb routes
of Ancona and Loreto. You must pay thirty or thirty-five francs on the
coach between Milan and Bologna. Stendhal assures us that he often
found good company in the carriages that traverse the distance from
Bologna to Florence. It took two days to cover twenty leagues and cost
twenty francs. From Florence to Rome he consumed four or five days,
going by Perugia in preference to Siena. Once he travelled in company
with three priests, of whom he was suspicious until the ice was broken;
then with joyous anecdotes they passed the time, and he is surprised to
find these clerical men, who said their prayers openly three times a
day without being embarrassed by the presence of strangers, were very
human, very companionable. With his accustomed naïve expression of
pleasure, he writes that they saved him considerable annoyance at the
custom-house.
And to-day, eighty years later, we take a train _de luxe_ at Paris
and in thirty hours we are in the Eternal City. It is swifter, more
comfortable, and safer, our way of travelling, than Stendhal's, but
that we see as much as he did we greatly doubt. The motor-car is an
improvement on the mail-coach and the express train; you may, if you
will, travel leisurely and privately from Paris to Rome. Or, why not
hire a stout little carriage and go through Tuscany in an old-fashioned
manner as did the Chevalier de Pensieri-Vani! Few may hope to store as
many memories as Stendhal, yet we should see more than the occupants of
railroad drawing-rooms that whiz by us on the road to Rome.
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