“The engineer in charge shall send two hundred bullock trains from Here to There.  He shall then find out along which path the greater number have travelled (i.e. which has the deepest ruts), after which an Austrian surveyor shall map it and mark it, ‘Road to There.’  Should the ruts become so deep that the carts are sliding upon their bottoms rather than travelling upon their wheels, an overseer must be sent to throw stones at it.  He and ten devils worse than himself shall heave rocks till they think they have hurt it enough, when they may return home, leaving the road ten times worse than before, for the boulders by no means are to fill the ruts, but only to render them more exciting.”

Oh, we walked.  Indeed, we walked a good deal more than the driver thought complimentary, we got out at every uphill, and put steam on so that we should not be caught on the downhills.  By supreme efforts we managed to get in four hours’ walking out of the torturous thirteen.  Once—­when we were a long way ahead—­we were stopped by a gendarme.

“Where are your passports?” demanded he.

“In the post-waggon,” replied Jan.

“Why did you leave your passports in the post-waggon?”

“Because they were in the pocket of my great-coat.”

“Why did you leave your great-coat in the post-waggon?”

“Because it is hot.”

“I shall have to arrest you,” quoth the gendarme.

But his officer came from an adjoining building and told him not to make a fool of himself, and on we went, taking short cuts, following the telegraph poles, which staggered across country like a file of drunkards.

Eventually the carriage caught us up and the driver insisted that we should get in.  He added that he could not lose all day while we walked, and that he would never get to Mitrovitza; it seemed superfluous to point out that we had gone quicker than he, but to avoid argument we clambered in.  The driver, in a temper, slashed his horses, and off we went, over ruts and stones full speed ahead.  It was like being in a small boat in a smart cross-choppy sea, with little torpedoes exploding beneath the keel at three minute intervals; and this road was marked on the map as a first-class road; the mind staggers at what the second and third-class must be like.  These countries are still barbarous at heart, but Europe cries out upon open atrocities, and so they have invented the post-waggon.  After all, pain is a thing one can add up, and the sum total of misery produced by the post, travelling daily, must in time exceed that of the Spanish Inquisition.  Thus do they gratify their brutal natures.