After that, when they stopped me, if they could not read, the red seal satisfied them; if they were officers and could read, they cursed me with strange, unclean oaths, and ordered me, in the German equivalent, to beat it.

It was a delightful walk.

I had had no sleep the night before and had eaten nothing, and, though I had cut away most of my shoe, I could hardly touch my foot to the road.

Whenever in the villages I tried to bribe any one to carry my knapsack or to give me food, the peasants ran from me.

They thought I was a German and talked Flemish, not French.