On the golf links that extend from the extremity of the H?tel Kulm, climbing and descending the whole of the hill of Charnadüras, and which are so green that not even the players' feet have succeeded in making them less green, early in the afternoon the slow, strange parties of golfers kept appearing, to the wonderment of bystanders who did not understand the game, as they leaned over the little hurdles and watched with staring eyes which at last became tired and annoyed at understanding nothing. They kept appearing, to the surprise of wayfarers who stopped a moment to see a man in white shirt-sleeves or in a bright flannel waistcoat with long sleeves, advancing along the course, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, holding his club in his hand, stopping as he brandished it in an aimless blow, and then resuming his way, followed always by a boy who carried, by a shoulder-strap, a leather bag, which seemed like a pagan quiver; a silent, patient boy, who regulated each step to that of the player, who crouched sometimes as he did, and finally vanished in his wake. Continuously from the green beneath the great tent of the Golf Club, where the inexpert remained to take lessons under the direction of two or three professionals, the players started whither the game and their more or less skill led them, and their rough outlines grew less and less in the far distance, till at times the links, or the horizon, became perfectly deserted, as if no players existed, as if they had been dissolved by the air or swallowed by the earth. The spectators who had come, as if on some doubtful invitation, to see a game of golf, saw the man and woman disappear without understanding the reason, and shrugging their shoulders they departed, laughing at and mocking golfers, particularly the Germans, who laughed among themselves and with their wives; more especially because it was an English game the Germans found it idiotic, itiote, as they pronounced it, when they wished to talk French. And the wayfarers, after a minute of contemplation and waiting, went again on their way, especially as they read on certain wooden posts the notice: "Prenez garde aux balles du golf." Balls? Where were the balls? How? The golfers, when they made a stroke, seemed to be assailing the air as if with a sudden movement of madness, and afterwards they looked like solitary vagabonds who were walking without a fixed goal, in spite of the respectful and silent companionship, at ten paces distance, of the urchin laden with the bag of clubs. Those who played in the early afternoon were truly solitary lovers of that curious sport which obliges one to walk much in silence, in a sustained and concentrated attention, in the open country, in a peculiar search for a ball and one's opponent, in a broad horizon, neither feeling heat nor cold, exercising not only the muscles, but even a little—really a little—the intellect. They were great solitaries, who fled from society because they frequented her too much at other times of their day; great solitaries who loved contact with the open air and fields and woods, in contrast with the confined, heavy life they were forced to lead elsewhere; great solitaries who for a secret reason, sad, perhaps, or tragic, but secret and dissembled, now hated man and woman; great solitaries whose age and experience had divorced them from games of love, of vanity, and perhaps of ambition. In fact, the early golfers were the real, keen golfers, and for the most part middle-aged men and women. Among such were the Comte de Buchner, an Austrian diplomat, a pupil of Metternich, who perceived but did not wish to confess the end of the diplomatic legend, the end of a policy made by ambassadors, a septuagenarian who already felt himself dead amongst his ancestors; the Baron de Loewy, from London, of the powerful Loewy bank, who sometimes held in his hand the whole of European finance, a handsome, robust man with white moustaches, full of spirit, who passed hours out of doors at golf, and who came there to find equilibrium for his winter life as a great banker; Madame Lesnoy, a woman of sixty-five, who had made her fortune thirty years ago, and though une grande bourgeoise, had married her sons and daughters to the greatest names in European heraldry, and who now had nothing else to do but play golf by day and bridge by night; the Marquis de Cléan, whose wife had been killed two years ago with her lover in an hotel at Montreux, a story which tortured his life of worldly scepticism and over which he dared not feign cynicism; the Contessa di Anagni, of the best society of Rome, who had been loved by a King and had been unable to fix the heart of the volatile sovereign; Max and Ludwig Freytag, for whom Karl Ehbehard, the great doctor, had ordered this exercise, as being excellent to stimulate their weakened temper; the Comtesse Fulvia Gioia, who thus even better preserved her health and mature beauty, like that of sappy, ripe fruit; and so many others who at two and three o'clock deserted their rooms and hotels and directed themselves to the links and shortly afterwards disappeared in every direction—great solitaries, true golfers.
Towards half-past four, in the meadow which skirts the high road from the Dorf and extends beneath the terrace of the Golf Club House, in that meadow which was almost like a stage, the players increased in number, in couples and groups, not going far-away, alway............