I come from the mountains and the valleys, from down there by the banks of the blue Danube. I have left behind my cottage by the roadside with the as-yet-unharvested grapes, I have left the still-ripening tomatoes and melons, and the roses, which are in bud. For the hundredth time I have strapped on my rucksack and set off to seek work in the great city, the market-place and workshop of embattled minds, Paris!

For all of forty-eight hours I have sat like a prisoner in a railway carriage, forced to breath in the carbon dioxide and nitrogen of people I do not know. To begin with I simply loathed them, for they disturbed me, these creatures who made me learn their features and compelled me, forcibly, to listen to their conversation, which agitated my mind. I slumped back there unable to defend myself against these attacks upon my spiritual self-determination, and it was no help that my soul rebelled, it was carried along such everyday paths all the same by listening to these commonplace exchanges of ideas.

And from the bottom of my heart I cursed my companions, shut up in the same box as I was. But when tiredness got the better of them, and they fell silent, their faces assumed such sorrowful expressions that I ended up feeling sorry for them. Uprooted from their normal sphere, from their loved ones and from their habits, they filled me with compassion.