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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43209 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+ file which includes the original 92 illustrations.
+ See 43209-h.htm or 43209-h.zip:
+ (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43209/43209-h/43209-h.htm)
+ or
+ (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43209/43209-h.zip)
+
+
+ Images of the original pages are available through
+ Internet Archive. See
+ https://archive.org/details/intrackofrlsteve00hammuoft
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+ Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+
+
+
+
+IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON
+AND ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE
+
+
+ [Illustration: THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP
+
+ "We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. In a stroke or two the canoes
+ were away out in the middle of the Scheldt."--R. L. S.]
+
+
+All rights reserved
+
+IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON AND ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE
+
+by
+
+J. A. HAMMERTON
+
+Author of "Stevensoniana"
+
+With 92 Illustrations
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Bristol
+J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street
+
+London
+Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited
+
+First published in 1907
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ _Page_
+
+ THROUGH THE CEVENNES 1
+
+ ALONG THE ROUTE OF "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 71
+
+ "THE MOST PICTURESQUE TOWN IN EUROPE" 121
+
+ THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 137
+
+ THE WONDERLAND OF FRANCE 155
+
+ THE TOWN OF "TARTARIN" 173
+
+ "LA FÊTE DIEU" 195
+
+ "M'SIEU MEELIN OF DUNDAE" 207
+
+ ROUND ABOUT A FRENCH FAIR 219
+
+ THE PALACE OF THE ANGELS 237
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP _Frontispiece_
+
+ _Face Page_
+
+ LE MONASTIER 1
+
+ LE MONASTIER 4
+
+ CHÂTEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER 8
+
+ GOUDET 8
+
+ CHÂTEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET 13
+
+ SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES 13
+
+ THE INN AT GOUDET 16
+
+ OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE 20
+
+ THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET 20
+
+ VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC 24
+
+ LA BASTIDE 24
+
+ ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 29
+
+ THE MONASTERY 29
+
+ OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 33
+
+ MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD 36
+
+ RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT 36
+
+ ON THE LOZÈRE 40
+
+ ON THE LOZÈRE 45
+
+ VILLAGE OF COCURÈS 48
+
+ BRIDGE OVER THE TARN 48
+
+ WATERFALL ON THE LOZÈRE 53
+
+ IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 53
+
+ "CLARISSE" 56
+
+ THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE 60
+
+ IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 65
+
+ NEAR FLORAC 65
+
+ FLORAC 68
+
+ BOOM ON THE RUPEL 72
+
+ VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 72
+
+ THE ALLÉE VERTE AT LAEKEN 77
+
+ THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE 77
+
+ THE GRAND CERF, MAUBEUGE 80
+
+ THE CHURCH AT QUARTES 84
+
+ THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT 84
+
+ ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES 88
+
+ SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 88
+
+ THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES 93
+
+ THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE 93
+
+ THE INN AT MOY 97
+
+ THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY 97
+
+ VEUVE BAZIN 100
+
+ THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FÈRE 100
+
+ THE TOWN HALL NOYON 104
+
+ HÔTEL DU NORD, NOYON 104
+
+ NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST 109
+
+ NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT 112
+
+ COMPIÈGNE TOWN HALL 116
+
+ THE OISE AT PONTOISE 120
+
+ GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY 121
+
+ LE PUY: CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE
+ FROM PLACE DU BREUIL 125
+
+ LACEMAKERS AT LE PUY 128
+
+ MARKET DAY AT LE PUY, SHOWING TYPES OF
+ THE AUVERNGATS 129
+
+ LE PUY 132
+
+ THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY 136
+
+ HOUSE OF DU CHAYLA, AT PONT DE MONTVERT 137
+
+ TWO VIEWS IN THE VILLAGE OF LA CAVALERIE 141
+
+ LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL 144
+
+ ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE 145
+
+ THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC 148
+
+ MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR 152
+
+ ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC 152
+
+ ON THE TARN 157
+
+ A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN 160
+
+ IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN 161
+
+ THE CHÂTEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN 164
+
+ PEYRELAU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE JONTE 169
+
+ BEAUCAIRE: SHOWING CASTLE AND BRIDGE ACROSS
+ THE RHONE TO TARASCON 173
+
+ TARASCON: THE PUBLIC MARKET 176
+
+ THE TARASQUE 177
+
+ THE CASTLE OF TARASCON 177
+
+ TARASCON: THE MAIRIE 180
+
+ A WOMAN OF TARASCON 184
+
+ TARASCON: "THE BIT OF A SQUARE" 189
+
+ TARASCON: THE PROCESSION OF THE TARASQUE 193
+
+ PROCESSION OF LA FÊTE DIEU 196
+
+ A WOMAN OF SAINTE ENIMIE 205
+
+ THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC 208
+
+ THE MERCHANTS' TABLE 213
+
+ WOMEN OF THE CEVENNES 220
+
+ GENERAL VIEW OF MONT ST. MICHEL 244
+
+ MONT ST. MICHEL 253
+
+
+
+
+Note
+
+
+The travel-sketches that go to the making of this little book have
+appeared, in part only, in certain literary magazines, here and in
+America; but the greater part of the work is now printed for the first
+time.
+
+Perhaps the author should anticipate a criticism that might arise from
+the sequence of the first two papers. Had he gone to work on a set
+plan, he would naturally have undertaken his pilgrimage along the
+route of _An Inland Voyage_ before visiting the scenes of _Travels
+with a Donkey_, as the one book preceded the other in order of
+publication, _An Inland Voyage_, which appeared originally in 1878,
+being properly Stevenson's first book. _Travels with a Donkey_ was
+published in 1879. But he has preferred to give precedence to "Through
+the Cevennes," as it was the first of his Stevenson travel-sketches to
+be written. Moreover, these little journeys were as much, indeed more
+affairs of personal pleasure than of copy-hunting, and when the author
+went forth on them he had no intention of making a book about his
+experiences--at least, not one deriving its chief interest from
+association with the memory of R. L. S. He has been counselled,
+however, to bring together these chapters and their accompanying
+photographs in this form, on the plea that the interest in Stevenson's
+French travels is still so considerable that any straightforward
+account of later journeys over the same ground cannot fail to have
+some attraction for the admirers of that great master of English
+prose.
+
+The book is but a very little sheaf from the occasional writings of
+its author on his wayfarings in old France, where in the last ten
+years he has travelled many thousands of miles by road and rail
+between Maubeuge and Marseilles, from Belfort to Bordeaux, and always
+with undiminished interest among a people who are eminently lovable
+and amid scenes of infinite variety and charm.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: "In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant
+ Highland valley about fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent a month of
+ fine days."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: _The Public Well_
+
+ LE MONASTIER]
+
+
+
+
+Through the Cevennes
+
+
+I.
+
+Someone has accounted for the charm of story-telling by the suggestion
+that the natural man imagines himself the hero of the tale he is
+reading, and squares this action or that with what he would suspect
+himself of doing in similar circumstances. The romancer who can best
+beguile his reader into this conceit of mind is likely to be the most
+popular. It seems to me that with books of travel this mental
+make-believe must also take place if the reader is to derive the full
+measure of entertainment from the narrative. With myself, at all
+events, it is so, and Hazlitt may be authority of sufficient weight to
+justify the thought that my own experience is not likely to be
+singular. To me the chief charm in reading a book of travel is this
+fanciful assumption of the rôle of the traveller; and so far does it
+condition my reading, that my readiest appetite is for a story of
+wayfaring in some quarter of the world where I may hope, not
+unreasonably, to look upon the scenes that have first engaged my
+mind's eye. Thus the adventures of a Mr. Savage Landor in Thibet, or a
+Sir Henry Stanley in innermost Africa, have less attraction for me
+than the narrative of a journey such as Elihu Burritt undertook in his
+famous walk from London to John o' Groats, or R. L. Stevenson's
+_Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_. I will grant you that the
+delicious literary style of Stevenson's book is its potent charm, but
+I am persuaded that others than myself have had their pleasure in the
+reading of it sensibly increased by the thought that some day they
+might witness Nature's originals of the landscapes which the master
+painter has depicted so deftly. It had long been a dream of mine to
+track his path through that romantic region of old France; not in the
+impudently emulative spirit of the throaty tenor who, hearing Mr.
+Edward Lloyd sing a new song, hastens to the music-seller's, resolved
+to practise it for his next "musical evening;" not, forsooth, to do
+again badly what had once been done well; but to travel the ground in
+the true pilgrim spirit of love for him who
+
+ "Here passed one day, nor came again--
+ A prince among the tribes of men."
+
+Well did I know that many of the places with which I was familiar
+romantically through Stevenson's witchery of words were drab and dull
+enough in reality: enough for me that here in his pilgrim way that
+"blithe and rare spirit" had rested for a little while.
+
+
+II.
+
+The mountainous district of France to which, somewhat loosely,
+Stevenson applies the name Cevennes, lies along the western confines
+of Provence, and overlaps on several departments, chief of which are
+Ardèche, Lozère, Gard, and Herault. In many parts the villages and the
+people have far less in common with France and the French than
+Normandy and the Normans have with provincial England. Here in these
+mountain fastnesses and sheltered valleys the course of life has
+flowed along almost changeless for centuries, and here, too, we shall
+find much that is best in the romantic history and natural grandeur of
+France. Remote from Paris, and happily without the area of the "cheap
+trip" organisers, it is likely to remain for ever "off the beaten
+track."
+
+In order to visit the Cevennes proper, the beautiful town of Mende
+would be the best starting-place. But since my purpose was to strike
+the trail of R. L. S., after some wanderings awheel northward of
+Clermont Ferrand, I approached the district from Le Puy, a town which
+so excellent a judge as Mr. Joseph Pennell has voted the most
+picturesque in Europe. Besides, Stevenson himself had often wandered
+through its quaint, unusual streets, while preparing for his memorable
+journey with immortal Modestine. "I decided on a sleeping sack," he
+says; "and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living
+for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed, constructed,
+and triumphantly brought home." At that time the wanderer's "home" was
+in the mountain town of Le Monastier, some fifteen miles south-east of
+Le Puy, and there in the autumn of 1877 he spent "about a month of
+fine days," variously occupied in completing his _New Arabian Nights_
+and _Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh_, and conducting, with no little
+personal and general entertainment, the preliminaries of his projected
+journey through the Cevennes.
+
+ [Illustration: _Where R. L. S. bought Modestine_
+
+ "Our first interview (with Father Adam) was in the Monastier market
+ place."--R. L. S.
+
+ "The bell of Monastier was just striking nine, as I descended the hill
+ through the common."--R. L. S.
+
+ LE MONASTIER]
+
+
+III.
+
+Together with a friend I had spent some rainy but memorable days at Le
+Puy in the summer of 1903, waiting for fair weather to advance on this
+little highland town, which lies secure away from railways and can
+only be reached by road. A bright morning in June saw us gliding on
+our wheels along the excellent _route nationale_ that carries us
+thither on a long, easy gradient. The town seen at a distance is a
+mere huddle of grey houses stuck on the side of a bleak, treeless
+upland, and at close quarters it presents few allurements to the
+traveller. But it is typical of the mountain villages of France, and
+rich in the rugged, unspoilt character of its inhabitants. Stevenson
+tells us that it is "notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness,
+for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension."
+As regards the last of these features, the claim to distinction may
+readily be admitted, but for the rest they apply equally to scores of
+similar villages of the Cevennes. Certainly it is not notable for the
+variety or comfort of its hostelries, but I shall not regret our brief
+sojourn at the Hôtel de Chabrier.
+
+Mine host was a worthy who will always have a corner in my memory.
+Like his establishment, his person was much the worse for wear. Lame
+of a leg, his feet shod with the tattered fragments of slippers such
+as the Scots describe with their untranslatable "bauchle," a pair of
+unclean heels peeping out through his stockings, he was the living
+advertisement of his frowsy inn, the ground floor of which, still
+bearing the legend _Café_, had been turned into a stable for oxen and
+lay open to the highway, a doubtful shelter for our bicycles. But
+withal, turning a shut eye to the kitchen as we passed, the cooking
+was excellent, and M. Chabrier assured us that he was renowned for
+game patties, which he sent to "all parts of Europe." The frank
+satisfaction with himself and his hotel he betrayed at every turn
+would have rejoiced the heart of so shrewd a student of character as
+R. L. S., and the chances are considerable that in that month of fine
+days, six-and-twenty years before, Stevenson may have gossiped with my
+friend of the greasy cap, for M. Chabrier was then, as now, making his
+guests welcome and baking his inimitable patties.
+
+Did he know Stevenson? "_Oui, oui, oui, M'sieu!_" Stevenson was a
+writer of books who had spent some time there years ago. "_Oui, oui,
+parfaitement, M'sieu Stevenzong._" What a memory the man had, and how
+blithely he recalled the distant past!
+
+"Then, of course, you must have known the noted village character
+Father Adam, who sold his donkey to this Scottish traveller?"
+
+"_Père Adam--oui, oui, oui--ah, non, non, je ne le connais pas_," thus
+shuffling when I asked for some further details.
+
+Mine host, who read the duty of an innkeeper to be the humouring of
+his patrons, could clearly supply me with the most surprising details
+of him whose footsteps I was tracing; but wishful not to lead him into
+temptation, I tested his evidence early in our talk by asking how many
+years had passed since he of whom we spoke had rested at Le Monastier,
+and whether he had patronised the Hôtel de Chabrier. He sagely
+scratched his head and racked his memory for a moment, with the result
+that this Scotsman--oh, he was sure he was a Scotsman--had stayed in
+that very hotel, and occupied bedroom number three, just four years
+back!
+
+Obviously he was mistaken--not to put too fine a point upon it--and
+his cheerful avowal, in discussing another subject, that he was "a
+partisan of no religion," did not increase my faith in him. There were
+few Protestants in Le Monastier, he told me; but as I happened to know
+from my good friend the pasteur at Le Puy that the postmaster here, at
+least, stood by the reformed faith, and by that token might be
+supposed a man of some reading, I hoped there to find some knowledge
+of Stevenson, whose works and travels were familiar to the pasteur.
+Alas, "_J' n' sais pas_" was the burden of the postmaster's song.
+
+To wander about the evil-smelling by-ways of Le Monastier, and observe
+the ancient crones busy at almost every door with their lace-making
+pillows, the bent and grizzled wood-choppers at work in open spaces,
+is to understand that, despite the lapse of more than a quarter of a
+century, there must be still alive hundreds of the village folk among
+whom Stevenson moved. But to find any who could recall him were the
+most hopeless of tasks; to identify the _auberge_, in the
+billiard-room of which "at the witching hour of dawn" he concluded the
+purchase of the donkey and administered brandy to its disconsolate
+seller, were equally impossible, and it was only left to the pilgrims
+to visit the market-place where Father Adam and his donkey were first
+encountered. So with the stink of the church, whose interior seemed to
+enclose the common sewer of the town, still lingering in our nostrils,
+we resumed our journey southward across the little river Gazeille, and
+headed uphill in the direction of St. Martin de Frugères, noting as we
+mounted on the other side of the valley the straggling lane down which
+Modestine, loaded with that wonderful sleeping sack and the
+paraphernalia of the most original of travellers, "tripped along upon
+her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait" to the ford
+across the river, giving as yet no hint of the troubles she had in
+store for "the green donkey driver."
+
+ [Illustration: CHÂTEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER
+
+ A drawing of this castle by Stevenson has been published.]
+
+ [Illustration: GOUDET
+
+ "I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a
+ valley."--R. L. S.]
+
+
+IV.
+
+Along our road were several picturesque patches formed of rock and
+pine, and notably the romantic ruins of Château Neuf, with the little
+village clustered at their roots, which furnished subjects for
+Stevenson's block and pencil. Among his efforts as a limner there has
+also been published a sketch of his that gives with striking effect
+the far-reaching panorama of the volcanic mountain masses ranging
+westward from Le Monastier, a scene of wild and austere aspect. A
+little beyond Château Neuf we were wheeling on the same road where he
+urged with sinking heart the unwilling ass, and while still within
+sight of his starting-place, showing now like a scar on the far
+hillside, we passed by the filthy village of St. Victor, the
+neighbourhood where the greenness of the donkey driver was diminished
+by the advice of a peasant, who advocated thrashing and the use of the
+magic word "Proot."
+
+The road grew wilder as we advanced towards St. Martin de Frugères, to
+which village the sentimental traveller came upon a Sabbath, and wrote
+of the "home feeling" the scene at the church brought over him--a
+sentiment difficult to appreciate as we wandered the filth-sodden
+streets and inspected the ugly little church, whitewashed within and
+stuffed with cheap symbols of a religion that is anathema to
+descendants of the Covenanters. The silvery Loire far below in the
+valley to our right, we sat at our ease astride our wiry steeds and
+sped cheerfully down the winding road to Goudet, feeling that if our
+mode of progress was less romantic than Stevenson's, it had
+compensations, for there was nothing that tempted us to tarry on our
+way.
+
+"Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Château Beaufort
+opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal,
+lying in a deep pool between them." The scene was indeed one of
+singular beauty, the fertile fields and shaggy woods being in pleasant
+contrast to the barren country through which we had been moving. While
+still a mile away from the place, we foregathered with two peasants
+trudging uphill to St. Martin. I was glad to talk with them, as I
+desired to know which of the inns was the oldest. There were three, I
+was told, and the Café Rivet boasted the greatest age, the others
+being of recent birth, and none were good, my informant added,
+supposing that we intended to lodge for the night.
+
+To the inn of M. Rivet we repaired, this being the only _auberge_ that
+Goudet possessed at the time of Stevenson's visit. We found it one of
+the usual small plastered buildings, destitute of any quaintness, but
+cleaner than most, and sporting a large wooden tobacco pipe, crudely
+fashioned, by way of a sign. The old people who kept it were good
+Cevennol types, the woman wearing the curious headgear of the peasant
+folk, that resembles the tiny burlesque hats worn by musical clowns,
+and the man in every trait of dress and feature capable of passing for
+a country Scot. The couple were engagingly ignorant, and had never
+heard of Scotland, so it was no surprise to learn that they knew
+nothing of the famous son of that country who had once "hurried over
+his midday meal" in the dining-room where we were endeavouring to
+instruct Madame Rivet in the occult art of brewing tea. The Rivets had
+been four years in possession of the inn at the time of Stevenson's
+visit, and I should judge that the place had changed in no essential
+feature, though I missed the portrait of the host's nephew, Regis
+Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the Two Americas," that
+had entertained R. L. S. In return for our hints on tea-making, Madame
+Rivet charged us somewhat in excess of the usual tariff, and showed
+herself a veritable _grippe-sous_ before giving change, by carefully
+reckoning the pieces of fly-blown sugar we had used, a little
+circumstance the cynic may claim as indicating a knowledge of the
+spirit if not the letter of Scotland.
+
+
+V.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we continued our journey from
+Goudet, intent on reaching that evening the lake of Bouchet, which
+Stevenson had selected as the camping-place for the first night of his
+travels. The highway to Ussel is one of the most beautiful on the
+whole route, lying through a wide and deep glen, similar to many that
+exist in the Scottish Highlands, but again unlike all the latter in
+its numerous terraces, that bear eloquent witness to the industry of
+the country-folk. Every glen in this region of France is remarkable
+for this handiwork of the toilers, and the time was, before the advent
+of the sporting nawbobs, when in some parts of the Scottish Highlands
+similar rude stonework was common in the glens.
+
+ [Illustration: CHÂTEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET]
+
+ [Illustration: SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES]
+
+To those who have not seen this work of the poor hill-folk it is not
+easy to convey a proper idea of its effect on the landscape. In these
+bleak mountain regions the sheltered valleys and ravines are best
+suited for growing the produce of the field, but as the soil is scant
+and the ground too often takes the shape of a very attenuated V, it
+is impossible to cultivate the slopes of the valley in their natural
+condition; so, with infinite labour and the patience of their stolid
+oxen, the Cevennols begin by building near the banks of the stream a
+loose stone wall, and filling in the space between that and the upward
+slope with a level bedding of earth. Thus step by step the hillside is
+brought into cultivation, and the terraces will be found wherever it
+is possible to rear a wall and carry up soil; indeed, they are to be
+seen in many places where it would have been thought impossible to
+prepare them, and out of reason to grow crops upon them. Often they
+are not so large as an ordinary bedroom in area, and such a space one
+may see under wheat. A hillside so terraced looks like a flight of
+giant steps, and it is a unique spectacle to children of the plains to
+descry, perhaps on the twentieth story, so to say, a team of oxen
+ploughing one of these eerie fields.
+
+Along this road, where on our right the terraces climbed upward to the
+naked basalt, and on the other side of the valley, now flooded with a
+pale yellow sunset that picked out vividly children at play tending a
+scanty herd of cattle on the hillside, our donkey driver of old had
+some of his bitterest experiences with that thrawn jade Modestine. We,
+fortunate in our more docile mounts, made excellent progress to
+Ussel, after walking a good two miles on foot. The road beyond that
+town was lively with bullock wagons, heavily freighted with timber,
+and carts, mostly drawn by oxen, filled with women returning from the
+market at Costaros, a little town on the highway between Le Puy and
+Pradelles; bullocks and people--the former to our embarrassment--being
+greatly interested in the wheel-travellers of these seldom cycled
+roads.
+
+When we arrived at Costaros, a town that is drab and dismal beyond
+words, the evening was wearing out under a leaden sky, promising the
+stragglers from the market good use for their bulky umbrellas, and we
+had still eight kilometres of rough country roads between us and the
+lake. Stevenson, in his heart-breaking struggles with the wayward ass,
+must have crossed the highway in the dark some little distance south
+of Costaros to have arrived at the village of Bouchet St. Nicolas, two
+miles beyond the lake; and as we urged forward in the rain, which now
+fell pitilessly and turned the darkling mountains into phantom masses
+smoking with mist, we could appreciate to the full the satisfaction
+with which he abandoned his quest of the lake and spent his first
+night snug at the inn of Bouchet. As we wheeled through the mud into
+the large village of Cayres no straggler appeared in the streets, that
+steamed like the back of a perspiring horse; but a carpenter at work
+in a windy shed assured us that the chalet on the shore of the lake
+had opened for the season, and in our dripping state we pressed
+thither uphill, feeling that two miles more in the rain could not
+worsen our condition. It was a weird and moving experience--the
+ghostly woods on the hillside, the tuneless tinkle of bells on unseen
+sheep, the hissing noise of our wheels on the moist earth--and our
+delight was great when we heard the lapse of water on our left. For
+nearly a mile the latter part of the road lay through a pine forest,
+where the ground had scarcely suffered from the rain, but the way was
+dark as in a tunnel, and glimpses of the lake between the trees showed
+the water almost vivid as steel by contrast.
+
+
+VI.
+
+"I had been told," says R. L. S., "that the neighbourhood of the lake
+was uninhabited except by trout." He travelled in the days before the
+_Syndicat d'Initiative du Velay_, which I shall ever bless for its
+chalet by the Lac du Bouchet, whose lighted windows two weary pilgrims
+descried that night with joy unspeakable. Our arrival was the cause of
+no small commotion to the good folk who kept this two-storied wooden
+hostel. We were their first visitors of the season, and it was clear
+they hailed us with delight, despite the lateness of our arrival.
+Candles were soon alight in the dining-room upstairs, a fire of pine
+logs crackling in the open hearth, the housemaid briskly laying the
+table, the mistress bustling in the kitchen, doors banging cheerily in
+the dark night as the master went and came between outhouses, fetching
+food and firing for which our coming had suddenly raised the need. Our
+bedrooms opened off the dining-room, and were well if plainly
+furnished, the floors being sanded, and we had soon made shift to
+change our sodden garments as well as the limited resources of
+wheelmen's baggage would allow. Above all was the ceaseless noise of
+the lake, that seemed to lend a keener edge to the chilly air.
+
+ [Illustration: THE INN AT GOUDET
+
+ _Where Stevenson was entertained by the old man and woman who still
+ conduct it_]
+
+We could scarcely believe it was the middle of June in the sunny south
+of France as we sat there shivering before the spluttering logs in a
+room "suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise." But a deep sense
+of comfort was supplied by the savoury smells that issued from the
+lower regions of the house. Our blessings on the head of the landlady
+and the whole French nation of cooks were sincere, as we regaled
+ourselves with an excellent meal of perch, omelet, mutton chops,
+raisins, almonds, cheese, lemonade and coffee. Imagine yourself
+arriving after nine o'clock at night at a lonely inn anywhere in
+the British Isles and faring thus! Moreover, the tenants of the
+chalet--the two women especially--were the most welcome of gossips,
+and the elder had a gift of dry humour that must have served her well
+in so wet a season. For three weeks it had rained steadily, she said,
+and she feared it was nothing short of the end of the world. When we
+told her that we had come from Le Monastier by way of St. Martin and
+Goudet, she was highly amused, and the younger, a rosy-faced wench,
+laughed heartily at the thought of anybody visiting such places. The
+lake of Bouchet--ah, that was another matter! Lakes were few in
+France, and this one well worth seeing. There were many lakes in
+Scotland! This was news to them, and they wondered why we had come so
+far to see this of Bouchet,--as we did ourselves when next morning we
+surveyed a tiny sheet of water almost circular, no more than two miles
+in circumference and quite featureless. It is simply the crater of an
+ancient volcano, and receives its water from some underground springs,
+there being no obvious source of supply. The lake, at an altitude of
+4,000 feet, is higher than the surrounding country.
+
+
+VII.
+
+When we awoke in the morning and made ready for our departure the room
+was filled with the smoke of burning faggots, as though a censer had
+been swung in it by some early-rising acolyte; and the fire was again
+a welcome evidence of the landlady's thoughtfulness, for the outlook
+was grey and the early morning air bit shrewdly as the tooth of
+winter. Had the day promised better, we should have struck south from
+the lake to Bouchet St. Nicolas, at whose inn Stevenson uncorked a
+bottle of Beaujolais, inviting his host to join him in drinking it;
+and the innkeeper would take little, saying, "I am an amateur of such
+wine, do you see?--and I am capable of leaving you not enough." But
+the way thither is no better than a bullock-track, and several miles
+of similar road lie between Bouchet and the highway; so with a
+lowering sky ominous of more rain, and the knowledge that for three
+weeks the country had been soaking, we determined not to risk the
+bullock-track, and retraced our path to Costaros, passing on the way
+numerous ox wagons laden with timber.
+
+The whole countryside was sweet with the morning incense of the faggot
+fires burning on many a cottage hearth. We overtook several young
+people driving cattle out to the pasture lands, and noting that
+without exception they carried umbrellas, our hopes of a good day were
+not high. But by the time we had reached the Gendarmerie, that stands
+at the crest of the hill on the high road out of Costaros, and were
+chatting with one of the officers whom we found idling at the door,
+the wind was rising and heaped masses of sombre clouds were being
+driven before it across the sky, though in their passage they
+disclosed no cheering hints of the blue behind. The gendarme admitted
+that the rising wind might be a good sign, but he was not very
+hopeful, and seemed to be more interested in meeting two travellers
+from a country he had never heard of than in discussing the weather.
+There are parts of France, especially Normandy and Brittany, where, to
+confess oneself a Scotsman is to be assured of a heartier welcome than
+would be accorded to one who came from England; but Stevenson's boast
+that "the happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotsman" counts for
+little in these highlands of the south, where few of the village-folk
+have ever heard of Scotland.
+
+The road south of Costaros even on a bright summer day must appear
+bleak and cheerless, and that morning our chief desire was to move
+along it as quickly as we could. Yet, as we advanced, the scene was
+not without elements of beauty, and the mists that veiled the distant
+mountains gradually lifting, produced a transformation entirely
+pleasing, while ere long there were great and welcome rifts in the
+grey above, and patches of blue sky heartened us on our way. By the
+time we had reached the hamlet of La Sauvetat the sun was peeping out
+fitfully, and on our right it suddenly flooded with amber light a
+meadow, yellow with marigolds, where cows were pasturing, attended by
+a small girl who was playing at skipping-rope.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+We had again joined the track of R. L. S., where, now armed with a
+goad, he drove his donkey. "The perverse little devil, since she would
+not be taken with kindness, must even go with pricking." We had but to
+sit in our saddles, and wheel rapidly down the long and exhilarating
+descent to Pradelles, a very tumbledown village with a great shabby
+square lying at an angle of almost forty-five degrees. The town
+occupies a little corrie on the hillside, and the ground slopes
+quickly on the west to the river Allier, beyond which the country
+rises again in mighty undulations as far as the eye can reach. For all
+its slanternness--perhaps, in some degree, because of that--Pradelles
+is a place of interest, perched here at an altitude of 3,800 feet
+above sea-level.
+
+ [Illustration: OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE
+
+ "Just at the bridge at Langogne a lassie of some seven or eight
+ addressed me in the sacramental phrase, '_D'où 'st-ce-que vous
+ venez?_'"--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET
+
+ "An amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the
+ Loire."--R. L. S.]
+
+More than any other place we saw in our journey, this old mountain
+town wears an unmistakable "foreign" appearance, and one walks its
+streets with the feeling that one is moving cautiously along the
+sloping roof of a house. Among its tumbledown buildings it still
+possesses fragments of considerable historic value, such as its
+ancient hospice, and a gateway from the top of which a village heroine
+killed some Huguenot heroes by throwing a stone at them while they
+were leading an assault against its walls. In the church of Nôtre Dame
+this episode in the history of the town is commemorated by a mural
+painting in vivid colours, the stone which the devout Catholic maiden
+is hurling at the devoted heads of the besiegers being large enough to
+warrant the assistance of a steam crane. The interior of the church is
+very quaint and unusual, and I am sorry that Stevenson did not yield
+to the urging of the landlady of the inn to visit Our Lady of
+Pradelles, "who performed many miracles, although she was of wood,"
+for his impressions of the church could not have failed to be
+peculiarly piquant. The miraculous image of the virgin is a wooden
+doll, dressed in lace and set on the high altar. Pilgrims come in
+large numbers to its shrine every fifteenth of August; and one of the
+spirited paintings on the wall depicts the rescue of the idol from a
+burning of the church which, I should guess, took place about the time
+of the Revolution. Evidently the rescuers of Our Lady were not
+prepared to submit her to the crucial test a sister image at Le Puy
+survived--"burning for thirty-six hours without being consumed." Many
+and unfamiliar saints look down at us from the walls, and at the west
+end there is a loft such as might be seen in some of the very old
+Scottish churches, occupied at the time of our visit by a group of
+women, members no doubt of some pious confraternity.
+
+R. L. S. has some picturesque notes on "The Beast of Gévaudan," whose
+trail he first struck at Pradelles; for we were now in the wild and
+uncultivated country of Gévaudan, "but recently disforested from
+terror of the wolves," whose grizzly exploits in the way of eating
+women and children seem to have engaged the imagination of our
+traveller. If the wolves have gone, they have left in their stead a
+flourishing progeny of wolf-like curs, who infest the highways and
+byways in extraordinary numbers, to the embarrassment of the wheelman.
+
+
+IX.
+
+From Pradelles to Langogne is a long and deep descent, and while
+walking our machines down an unrideable path, a young woman on a
+terrace near the road came forward to greet us, tripping unexpectedly
+over the tether of a goat, and landing softly and naturally on the
+ground, where after her moment's surprise she smilingly asked, "_Où
+allez vous promener?_" more usually our bucolic greeting than "_D'où
+'st-ce-que vous venez?_" the latter "sacramental phrase," on which
+Stevenson remarks, being possibly suggested in his case by the odd
+appearance of the traveller and his beast of burden.
+
+The bridge across the Allier at Langogne, where Stevenson met the
+"lassie of some seven or eight" who demanded whence he came, is now a
+crazy ruin, and a serviceable modern structure spans the river some
+little distance to the west of it. Near this place he camped for the
+night. He furnishes no information about his stay at Langogne, where,
+I should judge, he slept at one of the inns. The town must have
+altered greatly since he rested there, as it is now on the railway
+line to Villefort, and a considerable trade in coal seems to be
+carried on. It is also a popular summer resort, though one is at a
+loss to account for its attractions to holiday makers. Its church
+dates from the tenth century, and contains in a little chapel on the
+right, below the level of the nave, the image of Nôtre Dame de
+Tout-Pouvoir, which our landlady at the Cheval Blanc assured us was
+_très vénérée_, and the housemaid who conducted us thither took
+advantage of the occasion to tell her beads before the statue, keeping
+a roving eye on us as we wandered about the church.
+
+
+X.
+
+Stevenson's track now lay somewhat to the west of the course of the
+Allier, as he made for the little village of Cheylard l'Evêque, on the
+borders of the Forest of Mercoire, and in this stage of his journey he
+was more than usually faithful to his ideal of travel: "For my part, I
+travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The
+great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life
+more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and
+find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints."
+There was no need for his quitting the highway, since his further
+objective lay due south through the pleasant valley of the Allier. But
+his diversion among the by-ways was rich in adventure, and
+furnished him with material for perhaps his best chapter, "A Camp in
+the Dark." He had the good fortune to lose his way after nightfall,
+and to be forced to camp in a wood of pines in happy ignorance of his
+whereabouts. When next morning he did reach Cheylard he was fain to
+confess that "it seemed little worthy of all this searching." With a
+less keen appetite for losing ourselves in a maze of muddy
+bullock-tracks, we pressed forward through the fresh green valley to
+Luc, and here rejoined the path of our adventurer once more. We had
+the road almost to ourselves, and among the few wayfarers I recall was
+a travelling knife-grinder, whom we passed near Luc engaged in the
+agreeable task of preparing his dinner, the first course of which,
+_potage au pain_, was simmering in a sooty pot over a fire of twigs. A
+nation of gourmets, verily, when the humblest among them can thus
+maintain the national art in the hedges.
+
+ [Illustration: VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC
+
+ "Why anyone should desire to visit Luc is more than my much-inventing
+ spirit can suppose."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: LA BASTIDE
+
+ "At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river."
+ --R. L. S.]
+
+"Why anyone should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than
+my much inventing spirit can suppose." Thus our vagabond. But
+journeying at a more genial season of the year, we found the
+neighbourhood of Luc not devoid of beauty. The valley of the Allier is
+here broken into wide and picturesque gorges, and in many ways the
+scenery is reminiscent of Glen Coe, where Alan Breck and David Balfour
+dodged the redcoats. But late in September it would bear a very
+different aspect, and Stevenson tells us that "a more unsightly
+prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy.
+Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and
+fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines.
+The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the
+ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my
+feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady." There
+is now a railway station at Luc, the line running near the road all
+the way to La Bastide and as we continued southward that sunny June
+day, it was only the shrill noise of the crickets and the unusual
+quilt work of the diligently husbanded hillsides that told us we were
+not looking on a Perthshire landscape. In a sweet corner of the valley
+lies La Bastide, a drowsy little town despite its long connection with
+the railway, which existed even at the time of Stevenson's visit.
+
+Here, he tells us, "I was directed to leave the river, and follow a
+road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern
+Ardèche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange
+destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows."
+Thither we shall follow his steps, more closely than usual, as the
+road is too steep to admit of our cycling. For some distance the route
+lies through a great forest of pines, but when the crest of the hill
+is gained a far-reaching prospect greets the eye. "The sun came out as
+I left the shelter of a pine wood," writes R. L. S., "and I beheld
+suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue
+as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge,
+heathery, craggy, the sun glittering in veins of rock, the underwood
+clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first.
+There was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and, indeed,
+not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had
+walked in twisted footpaths in and out among the beeches and up and
+down upon the channelled slopes." Only when the snow comes down and
+mantles these abundant hills would this description not apply. It is a
+perfect picture of what we saw. Presently we noted with no small
+satisfaction the white statue of the Virgin, which, standing by the
+highway at a point where a side road strikes northward through the
+pines, "directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows." He describes
+the pine wood as "a young plantation," but in the intervening years
+the trees have grown into a mighty forest, dark and mysterious, and
+the statue of Our Lady was so overshadowed by branches rich with
+cones, that it was impossible to get a satisfactory photograph of it.
+"Here, then," he continues, "I struck leftward, and pursued my way,
+driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots
+and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence." On our equally secular
+cycles we followed the same track, the roadway being dotted on each
+side with bundles of faggots gathered by the silent monks, probably
+for the use of the poor.
+
+
+XI.
+
+"I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than
+the monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a
+Protestant education," says Stevenson, as he recalls the feeling
+produced within him by the clanging of a bell at the monastery while
+he was not yet in sight of it. No bells clanged as we descended the
+road which Father Apollinaris was still in the act of making when
+Stevenson encountered him. We emerged at length from the shelter of
+the trees into a wide hollow of land, from which on every side the
+hills rose up, and where on our right were the outer walls of the
+monastery, plain plastered buildings, with little barred windows on
+the ground floor and a row without bars on the second story. On our
+left was a large saw-mill, where steam saws were giving shrill
+advertisement of their use. Several monks were among the workers at
+the mill, and a brown-coated figure was walking along the road that
+opened on our left beyond the timber sheds to some large white
+buildings which, as we afterwards learned, comprised the farm
+belonging to the monastery. The first impression was not exactly to
+touch one's feeling for romance. Trappists in the timber trade
+suggests a heading for a "snippet" periodical, and if the monks were
+silent, here at least were noises that smote unpleasantly on the ear.
+
+ [Illustration: ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS
+
+ Made by Father Apollinaris "with his own two hands in the space of a
+ year."]
+
+ [Illustration: THE MONASTERY
+
+ "Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and my pack
+ were received into Our Lady of the Snows."--R. L. S.]
+
+The buildings of Our Lady of the Snows are quite devoid of any
+architectural beauty. They are set four-square in the hollow, and the
+hills trend gently upward on every side richly clad with trees, for
+the monks have reforested much of the surrounding land, which is the
+property of the fraternity. The south side is occupied by a long,
+two-storied building, which contains the main entrance--a plain,
+whitewashed, barn-like structure--and buildings of a similar type
+adjoin it east and west, while the north side of the quadrangle is
+filled by the more pretentious masonry of the church, the
+chapter-house, and other religious offices, though even here the
+essential note of the architecture is austerity, the clock-tower being
+devoid of decoration and purely utilitarian.
+
+When endeavouring to photograph the buildings while the sun shone, an
+old man with a very red face, a very white beard and a very dirty
+white blouse came along, leaning feebly on his stick. He was delighted
+on being asked to become part of the picture, and begged me to wait a
+moment while he fixed on his left arm his _plaque_, whereon I read in
+brazen letters, "Gardien de la Propriété." This aged and infirm
+defender of the monastic estates was as proud of his _plaque_ as if it
+had been a medal won in war. There must be few attacks upon the
+property of the monastery, which he informed me extended as far as we
+could see in this windswept hollow of the hills, if our friend of the
+snowy beard and ruddy face stood for its defence! We were cheered to
+learn from him that there would be no difficulty in visiting the
+monastery, and if we wished we might be able to pass the night there.
+This we desired most heartily for various reasons, but chiefly because
+it was now close on six in the evening, and days are short in these
+latitudes.
+
+
+XII.
+
+We were told to go round to the chief gateway, and there to summon the
+Brother Porter by ringing the bell. This we did, with something of
+that "quaking heart" to which Stevenson confesses in the same act, for
+the clamour of a bell that one rings in a great silent building seems
+fraught with news of an offence for which one stands to receive the
+penalty. Nor do your spirits rise when a little shutter in the door is
+opened, and a grizzly-whiskered face in a brown hood peers through
+demanding your business. All was well, however. The Brother Porter
+admitted us to the courtyard, and went to summon one of the novitiates
+who, as Guest Father, would do us the honours of the monastery. He
+was, as I should judge, a young man of five-and-twenty, who came to us
+through a door on the right of the entrance that admitted to the
+hospice. Wearing the white flannel habit of the monks, with a black
+scapular hanging loose and bulky below the neck, he was of medium
+stature, his shaven face pleasant and comely, and his dark eyes of
+that unusual brilliance which Stevenson noted as "the only morbid
+sign" he could detect in the appearance of the monks. Our host bowed
+ceremoniously in shaking hands with us, and immediately escorted us
+across the trim garden to the monastic buildings at the other side of
+the quadrangle.
+
+During their period of novitiate, which lasts for three years, the
+monks have still the liberty to talk with strangers or with the lay
+brethren, but when their final vows are taken they are supposed to be
+inarticulate, except in performing the religious offices of each day.
+The Guest Father would in two years more be qualified for the silent
+life; meanwhile, he exercised his power of speech with so much grace
+that one felt truly sorry so excellent a talker should contemplate
+with cheerfulness the voluntary and useless atrophy of his divine
+gift. Very reverently he led us into the church, which is a plain but
+elegant building with a vaulted roof, the walls being whitewashed, and
+the woodwork, of which there is not too much, chastely carved. A
+number of good pictures are hung on the walls, and there is a series
+of statues of the saints on brackets, executed with some taste, and
+entirely free from the usual tawdry colouring of similar objects in
+French Catholic churches. The altar also is in welcome contrast to the
+common doll-show of the ordinary church, and although the oft-repeated
+references to the simplicity of the whole with which our excellent
+friend pointed out the various features of the place approached almost
+to affectation, one must bear ready witness to the apparent sincerity
+of these poor monks in their efforts towards a simpler circumstance of
+worship than the Roman Catholic Church in general practises.
+
+ [Illustration: _Trappist Monks gathering roots for distilling_]
+
+ [Illustration: _A Peep into the Library_
+
+ OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS]
+
+The chapter-house is in keeping with the church in point of restraint
+in decoration, its beautifully panelled walls giving the apartment a
+genial touch of warmth by contrast with the cold white of its groined
+roof.
+
+The library, which occupies a spacious room on the upper story of the
+north wing, is stocked with some twenty thousand volumes, chiefly in
+Latin and French, but including an excellent collection of works in
+Greek, religion and history being naturally the chief subjects
+represented. When we remember that many of the monks are men of no
+intellectual gifts and of small learning, being drawn largely from the
+peasant class and the military, we may doubt if the treasures of the
+library are in great request. The librarian, at least, must be a man
+of bookish tastes, since the collection is arranged in perfect order.
+Our guide assured us that the monastery possesses a copy of _Travels
+with a Donkey_, but he did not discover it for us.
+
+The refectory is a large and bare chamber occupying the lower story of
+the east wing. Long narrow tables of plain wood stand around the
+room, and on these are laid the simple utensils of the meal. The monks
+sit on a rude bench, and for the greater part of the year they take
+but one meal in twenty-four hours; but during the summer months, when
+one might suppose their needs to be less, they, by special indulgence,
+go so far towards temporising with the flesh as to eat twice in one
+day.
+
+R. L. S. was moved to a little disquisition on the subject of
+over-eating when he contemplated the dietetic restraint of the
+Trappist brethren. "Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat
+sparingly," he writes; "and though each is allowed a small carafe of
+wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of
+mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for
+support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of
+life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this
+Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at
+the freshness of face and the cheerfulness of manner of all whom I
+beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that
+I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with
+the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure,
+and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This, at
+least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live
+healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high
+in colour, and the only morbid sign that I could observe--an unusual
+brilliancy of the eye--was one that rather served to increase the
+general impression of vivacity and strength."
+
+On the topmost floor of the east wing we were shown the dormitory, a
+long and, as I recall it, a somewhat low-roofed room, divided into
+numerous little cubicles, each enclosed on three sides, and screened
+from the passage by a curtain of red cloth. The couch consisted of a
+single mattress laid on boards, with the scantiest supply of
+bedclothes. Each of these little compartments bore in painted letters
+the monastic name of its occupant, and here every night, after the
+toils and vigils of the day, the brethren lay themselves down at eight
+o'clock in their ordinary habit of dress, being in this respect less
+fanatical than other fraternities of the same order, who sleep in
+their coffins, and even in unduly ready graves. "By two in the
+morning," says R. L. S., "the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on,
+hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour
+of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different
+occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his
+hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory all day
+long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from
+two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive
+the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet, and occupied with
+manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth several
+thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of
+their lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery
+bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind
+and healthful activity of body. We speak of hardships, but the true
+hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our
+own dull and foolish manner."
+
+
+XIII.
+
+On our way back to the hospice we learned with regret that Father
+Apollinaris, "so good and so simple," had been dead five years, and
+the right of the monastery to the title of Our Lady of the Snows was
+clearly established by the information that in the winter months it is
+buried for weeks on end, and our young friend of the shiny eyes
+shivered as he spoke of the _neige énorme_, which he is doomed to see
+every winter that he lives.
+
+ [Illustration: MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD
+
+ "From Bleymard I set out to scale a portion of the Lozère."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT
+
+ _On the Villefort-Mende road, at La Remise, near Le Bleymard_]
+
+In the hospice the apartments for the use of visitors and
+_retraitants_ are situated. To the right of the gateway on the
+ground level are the kitchens and storerooms, and a door opening at
+the foot of the stair admits one into a small and barely furnished
+room, where supper had been prepared for us. A small table covered
+with American cloth, with chairs set about it to accommodate perhaps
+eight or ten guests, were the chief items of furniture. There were a
+few prints of a religious character hung upon the walls, and to the
+right of the fireplace stood a little bookcase, containing, however,
+no works of interest. The meal served to us was well cooked and
+savoury, and as an excellent omelet formed its _pièce de résistance_,
+with soup, potato salad, walnuts, figs and cheese included, it needed
+none of the profuse apologies for poverty of fare with which it was
+set before us.
+
+We were afterwards shown our bedroom on the floor above, a fairly
+commodious room containing two iron bedsteads, with a more liberal
+supply of bedclothes than we saw in the dormitory of the monks, a
+small table and two chairs. A crucifix stood on the mantlepiece, and,
+as in some hotels, a printed sheet of regulations was fixed on the
+wall near the door. One may suppose it to have been a copy of that
+which Stevenson noted, for it wound up with an admonition to occupy
+one's spare time by examining one's conscience, confessing one's sins,
+and making good resolutions. "To make good resolutions, indeed!"
+comments R. L. S. "You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair
+grow on your head." So far as we could judge, the south wing at the
+time of our visit sheltered no other strangers than ourselves; nor did
+it appear there were any weary, world-worn laymen living here in
+retreat. At the time of Stevenson's sojourn among the monks there was
+quite a little company in the hospice, an English boarder, a parish
+priest, and an old soldier being some of the acquaintances he made in
+the little room where we had supped. But there is a constant and
+increasing number of visitors to the monastery, and immediately below
+our bedroom there was a large and well-stocked apartment that gave
+evidence of this. Here we found a varied supply of crucifixes and
+rosaries to suit all purses, samples of the different liqueurs
+distilled by the monks, and picture post cards in abundance. The
+Brother Porter, a simple boorish fellow, in vain spread his bottles in
+the sight of two who were not patrons of the stuff; but we reduced his
+stock of post cards and his rosaries. He took the money like a post
+office girl selling stamps.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+When we took our places in the little gallery that extends across the
+west side of the chapel to hear the monks chanting the last service
+of the day, _Compline_ and _Salve Regina_, we found that there was at
+least another visitor, in the person of a stout and blue-chinned
+_curé_. The white-robed monks were seated in their chairs in the
+choir, books upon their knees; while the organist in an elevated
+position on a level with the gallery played, unseen by us, "those
+majestic old Gregorian chants that, wherever you may hear them (in
+Meredith's fine phrase) seem to build up cathedral walls about you."
+Paraffin lamps shed a dim, uncertain light, and the rich full voices
+of the singers resounded weirdly through the white-walled chapel, the
+door opening now and again as some of the lay brothers entered and,
+crossing themselves, bowed wearily towards the altar, moving to their
+places below the gallery. After the elevation of the Host, and when
+the service was almost ended, the organist came down, and we noticed
+that in making his way out of the chapel he hung back a little in
+passing the choir screen, that he might not meet on his way to the
+door any of the brethren who were now slowly leaving.
+
+Of a similar service Stevenson writes: "There were none of those
+circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in
+the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the
+romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall
+the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights
+alternately occluded and revealed the strong manly singing, the
+silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and
+then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that
+the last office was over, and the hour of sleep had come; and when I
+remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with
+somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the
+windy starry night." The effect of it all on the sentimental traveller
+was summed up in these fervent words: "And I blessed God that I was
+free to wander, free to hope, and free to love."
+
+This, indeed, must be the impression all robust and unfettered minds
+will receive from a visit to Our Lady of the Snows. It is true that in
+their busy saw-mill which stands to the west of the monastery, and
+where the timber from the hills is turned to commercial use by the
+monks and their lay assistants, in their well-managed farm some
+distance westward, in the surrounding fields, in their many
+workshops--in these they have varied occupations, and of a manly
+character, but the terrible uselessness of it all is ever present to
+the mind of one coming from the stress and struggle of the zestful
+world. Poor men! in their sullen way they may believe they have
+chosen the better part; but, simple and devout as they may be, they
+are the real cowards of life, the shirkers of the battle we are meant
+to fight.
+
+ [Illustration: _Malavieille, a mountain sheiling_]
+
+ [Illustration: _Scene of "A Night among the Pines"_
+
+ "Buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine woods, between
+ four and five thousand feet towards the stars."--R. L. S.
+
+ ON THE LOZÈRE]
+
+We slept the sleep of tired men in our room upstairs, and heard none
+of those hourly bells Stevenson records. Our young friend, whose
+monastic name I foolishly omitted to ask, called us before eight in
+the morning, and after providing a capital breakfast, bade us a
+ceremonious good-bye, watching us from the door until the pine woods
+enclosed us.
+
+
+XV.
+
+We made a swift descent to La Bastide, and by way of Chasseradès,
+where Stevenson slept in the common bedroom of the inn, reached Le
+Bleymard late in the afternoon, passing through a country of bare
+hills and poor villages clustered in gusty hollows or hanging like
+swallows' nests on craggy slopes. The valley of the Lot, rich and
+beautiful westward to Mende, possesses no elements of charm in the
+neighbourhood of Bleymard, and we found that town so mean and
+featureless, that we had no wish to pass the evening there. The inn we
+wanted was, so a crippled girl told us, at La Remise, on the high
+road, and we must have passed it. We remounted our cycles and
+retraced our path across the river, a distance of perhaps three
+furlongs, and lo! there stood the charred remains of the Hôtel du Lot,
+where we had hoped to rest ourselves. We had passed the place without
+noticing it, and the view of its gaunt and smoky walls, now that they
+had acquired so personal an interest, chilled our hearts, for the need
+to rest and refresh ourselves was pressing. It was after sundown, and
+there lay between us and Pont de Montvert a mountain higher than Ben
+Nevis.
+
+Opposite the unlucky Hôtel du Lot stood a small _auberge_, kept by one
+Teissier. Two men were drinking absinth at a table by the doorway. One
+was a thick-set fellow, wearing eyeglasses, and clothed not unlike a
+foreman mechanic in England. The other was the familiar dark French
+type, thin of features, eyes bright as those of a consumptive, his
+beard ample and of a jet black, against which his ripe red lips showed
+noticeably. He was dressed like a clerk or _commerçant_. They made us
+welcome at their table, and we fell at once to discussing the
+situation, from which it was evident we could not hope to cross the
+Lozère that night. Some tourists had experienced a bad time traversing
+the mountain the previous Sunday, and as we could not hope to do more
+than reach the Baraque de Secours by nightfall, it would be madness to
+attempt the descent into the valley of the Tarn after dark, the road
+lying in many places along the lip of a precipice. Besides, this
+wayside inn was very well managed, said the absinth drinkers; they had
+lived there since being burned out across the way, a statement that
+cheered us not a little, as every other feature of the place was
+extremely uninviting.
+
+The landlady, who had shown no interest in us whatever, I found busy
+at a large cooking-range in a tiny kitchen, which opened off the
+common sitting-room, and served also for the living-room of the
+servants and familiar loungers. She was a woman of austere
+countenance, displaying like so many middle-aged Frenchwomen a
+considerable moustache; but I noticed that her teeth were white. Yes,
+she would be glad to supply dinner if we were to stay overnight. We
+were, I confessed without enthusiasm; whereupon she specified glibly
+the resources of her kitchen. We could have soup, trout, jugged hare,
+chicken, fillet of beef, potatoes, pastries, cheese, and other things,
+and by naming one dish and connecting it to the next with _et puis_,
+an aldermanic banquet seemed about to be conjured up from the dirty
+little room and its greasy stove. The common room of the inn had a
+sanded floor, and was furnished with a plain deal table, round which
+some country bumpkins were sitting on rush-bottomed chairs drinking
+beer and spitting freely in the sand. A few cheap oleographs nailed
+on the dingy walls were the only efforts at decoration. Two drab and
+unattractive girls gossiping with the customers appeared to be the
+staff of the hotel.
+
+I returned to the Frenchmen outside, and found that my companion,
+anxious not to enter the place until the last moment, was playing at a
+game resembling bowls with some village urchins, though understanding
+not one word of their speech. But he came up in a little while to
+learn the results of my inquiries within, and soon we were all engaged
+in a very entertaining discussion. It appeared that the Frenchmen were
+concerned in the zinc mines near Bleymard, him of the oily clothes
+being chief engineer, the other business manager. I suppose they would
+be the two best conditioned residents in the district, and here they
+were lodging at an hotel which, apart from cooking, was below the
+standard of comfort to be found in a crimp's den in the region of
+Ratcliffe Highway. The Frenchman is a wonderfully adaptable creature:
+give him a table to drink at, a chair to sit upon, and a bed anywhere
+under a roof, and he can contrive to be happy.
+
+ [Illustration: _The Baraque de Secours_]
+
+ [Illustration: "The Lozère lies nearly east and west; its highest
+ point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises
+ upwards of 5,600 feet above the sea."--R. L. S.
+
+ ON THE LOZÈRE]
+
+M. l'Ingénieur, although he spoke no English, had seen something of
+the world, and had even been to Klondyke. He could not understand why
+anyone should have wandered to such a hole as this--for pleasure!
+But he expected that next year's guide-books would describe Bleymard
+as notable for the ruins of the Hôtel du Lot. A wag, obviously. If we
+wanted to see places worth looking at, there was Nice and Nîmes, said
+his friend M. Barbenoire. Together they extolled, with a rare gush of
+adjectives, the beauty of these places, and promised to show us
+picture postcards that would lure us into visiting them. Tourists did
+come sometimes to climb the Lozère, from the top of which in clear
+weather one might see the Alps. The engineer laughed merrily at this,
+and said the story was as much legend as the exploits of the beast of
+Gévaudan. He discussed in a very practical mind the question of
+miners' wages, and thought that the Bleymard zinc workers were better
+off with four francs a day than English miners with five or six
+shillings.
+
+Sooner than we had expected dinner was declared ready, and we went
+inside with no great avidity; but to our surprise we found the meal
+laid in a little room at the other end of the drinking den, tolerably
+clean though dingy and tasteless in its appointments. There we were
+joined by the wife of M. Barbenoire and two immense dogs of unfamiliar
+breed. The maid who served us was engagingly free from the usual
+formalities of the table, and between the courses would sit coyly on
+the knee of the engineer, munching a piece of bread; but for the
+rest, ours was no Barmecide feast. The aldermanic banquet appeared in
+all essentials save the serving, and we fared so well that we began to
+hope our bedroom would even be comfortable.
+
+When, later in the evening, we took our courage in both hands and
+penetrated to the upper story by way of a spiral iron staircase
+through the kitchen roof and along a dark lobby of loose boards, we
+were heartened not a little to find in our room two good beds, clean
+and curtained. Sleep was thus assured, though the smell from the
+stable through the wall was redolent of rats. It was "a wonderful
+clear night of stars" when we looked out of our window before
+retiring, and we went to bed determined upon an early start. The
+bellowing of the oxen in the stable and the shouts of the _buveurs_
+below did not come long between us and the drowsy god.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Alas! at dawn next day we looked forth on a blank wall of mist backing
+the ruins across the road. Not a hill was visible. We sought our beds
+again, and by nine o'clock the outlook was only slightly improved, the
+nearest hills, now resonant with sheep-bells, being in sight. The
+engineer comforted us with the assurance that this was the common
+weather in June, the best time of the year being from July to October,
+but he thought the mists might clear before noon. Presently it began
+to rain, and during the whole day there was not half an hour of clear
+weather. At times the atmosphere would thin a little, only to show us
+heavy clouds condensing on the higher hills. Thus prisoned in our
+room, we contrived to be comfortable, and I believe that another day
+would have left us wondering why we had dreaded staying at the inn, so
+soon does the human mind adapt itself to circumstances. The
+rain-sodden streets actually provided entertainment. We watched with
+interest the coming and going of shepherds and their flocks, the
+former armed with commodious umbrellas and their sheep shorn in a way
+that left a lump of wool upon their backs making them comically like
+little camels. Many bullock wagons loaded with shale passed by, and we
+noticed that the slightest touch with the driver's wand served to
+direct the team, whose heads were, to quote our hero, "fixed to the
+yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice." Children
+played out and in the stables and among the ruins, and an old man,
+wearing the usual dress of the peasant, with pink socks showing above
+his sabots, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and a stick under
+his arm, wandered aimlessly to and fro in the rain most of the day.
+The stage-coach from Villefort to Mende rested for a time at the inn,
+causing a flicker of excitement, and in the evening again the mine
+officials were there to bear us company.
+
+The engineer proved himself a thorough-paced sceptic of the modern
+French sort. His opinion of the country-folk was low--hypocrites,
+fools, money-grubbers all! Holding up a five-franc piece, he averred
+that for this they would sell mother, daughter, sister; and then
+similarly elevating a bundle of paper-money, he exclaimed: "_Voilà, le
+Grand Dieu._"
+
+"This is a Catholic countryside?" I said.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "but that makes no difference."
+
+"There is one Protestant in Bleymard," put in Barbenoire,--"myself!"
+
+"And he isn't up to much," added the cynic.
+
+ [Illustration: "A cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocurès
+ sitting among vineyards."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: _Bridge over the Tarn at "Pont de Montvert of bloody
+ memory," and view of the Hôtel des Cevennes where Stevenson stayed._]
+
+
+XVII.
+
+"We shall set out at five in the morning," I said to the landlady
+before going upstairs, and the engineer signalled to us as we left the
+room the outstretched fingers of his right hand twice; wherein he
+proved something of a prophet, for it was nearer ten o'clock than
+five before we determined to risk the mountain journey, the sky
+being clear in parts and the rain clouds scudding before a high wind,
+that promised a comparatively dry day.
+
+On the bridge across the Lot at Bleymard we were hailed by a man in
+labouring clothes, who smiled broadly and said, "Me speak Engleesh."
+As we had not met a single Frenchman between Orleans and this spot who
+pretended to have any knowledge of our native tongue, we tarried to
+have speech with this cheery-faced fellow, whose white teeth shone
+through a reedy black moustache. But his lingual claims did not bear
+inspection. Beyond saying that he had visited London and Liverpool,
+and knew what "shake hands" meant, and that English tobacco was better
+worth smoking than the French trash--a hint which I accepted by
+presenting my pouch--he could not go in our island speech; and so we
+had to continue our chat in French that was bad on both sides, his
+accent resembling a Yorkshireman's English, and mine--let us say an
+Englishman's French. He was certain we should have no more rain, as
+the wind was in the north, and if it kept dry to twelve o'clock we
+could depend on a good day. The weather prophet is the same in all
+lands, and we had not left him half an hour when we were sheltering
+from a sudden downpour.
+
+For some miles we had to plod upward on foot in a wild and rocky
+gorge, with the merest trickle of water below. Yet every corner where
+a few square feet of clover could be coaxed into life had been
+cultivated by the dogged peasants, and patches were growing at heights
+where one would have thought it difficult to climb without the ropes
+of an Alpinist. Many of these mountain plots were miles away from any
+dwelling, a fact that conveys some idea of the barren nature of the
+country.
+
+The tiny hamlet of Malavieille, about half-way up the mountain side,
+is the highest point permanently inhabited. It is a mere handful of
+dark-grey houses, covered on slates and walls with a vivid yellow
+fungus. Here the upland fields were densely spread with violets,
+narcissi and hyacinths, and a few dun cows were browsing contentedly
+on this fragrant fare, while a boy who attended them stood on his head
+kicking his heels merrily in the sunshine. He came up as we passed,
+staring at us stolidly; and when we asked if the snakes, of which we
+had just encountered two about three feet long, were dangerous, he
+answered, "_Pas bien_," and more than that we could not get him to
+say, though he walked beside us for a time eyeing curiously our
+bicycles.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+When we had come within sight of the Baraque de Secours, we had
+reached a sort of table-land reaching east and west for some miles.
+Eastward lay the pine woods where our vagabond spent one of his most
+tranquil nights as described in his chapter, "A Night Among the
+Pines." It was there that, awaking in the morning, he beheld the
+daybreak along the mountain-tops of Vivarais--"a solemn glee possessed
+my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day." And it was
+there, too, that out of thankfulness for his night's rest he laid on
+the turf as he went along pieces of money, "until I had left enough
+for my night's lodging." Some of it may be there to this day, for
+there is small human commerce at this altitude, a shepherd or two
+being the only folk we saw until we arrived at the shelter which we
+had seen for more than half an hour while we cycled arduously toward
+it.
+
+The baraque is a plain two-storied building, with a rough stone wall
+and porch enclosing a muddy yard. It stands at a height of over five
+thousand feet, being thus fully five hundred feet higher than Ben
+Nevis. To the west the Lozère swells upward, a great treeless waste,
+to its highest point, the Pic de Finiels, 5,600 feet above sea-level;
+while a splendid mass of volcanic origin uprears its craggy head some
+little distance to the south-east. "The view, back upon the northern
+Gévaudan," says Stevenson, writing of what he saw as he passed near
+this point, "extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house,
+appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west,
+all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning." And then
+in a little, when he began the descent towards the valley of the Tarn,
+he says: "A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other
+steps that had preceded it--and, 'like stout Cortez when with eagle
+eyes he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of
+a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf
+rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of
+heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet." As he makes
+no mention of the baraque, I venture to suppose that it had not then
+been built, for one so eager of new experience would not have missed
+the opportunity of resting on his way at this high-set hostel. A dead
+sheep--one of several we had seen on the mountain--lay on the road by
+the gate, and propping our bicycles near it, we picked our way through
+the mud and knocked at the door.
+
+ [Illustration: _Waterfall on the Lozère, on Stevenson's route between
+ Finiels and Pont de Montvert_]
+
+ [Illustration: _In the valley of the Tarn: Scene of Stevenson's camp
+ under the chestnuts on the hillside_]
+
+A gruff voice bade us enter. We stepped into a smoky room, with an
+earthern floor, containing a rough wooden table and two rude
+benches, and in a corner a small round table, a few chairs and a plain
+wooden dresser. The mouth that had emitted a very gutteral "_Ongtray_"
+belonged to a man of small stature but brigandish appearance, who was
+seated at the smaller table eating industriously. We asked for
+lemonade and biscuits, but the fellow stared at the words and spoke in
+a patois that was Greek to me. But when I explained more sententiously
+that we desired something to eat and drink, he disappeared up a wooden
+stair, and we knew that a bottle of atrocious red wine, which we would
+welcome as so much vinegar, would be forthcoming. Meanwhile, the man's
+wife--a fair-haired little woman with cheeks like red apples, dressed
+in the universal black of the French country-wife--came in, leading a
+youngster by the hand. I repeated to her our wants, which she
+immediately proceeded to meet by breaking four eggs into a pan, the
+shells being dropped on the floor, and lo! an omelet was well on the
+way by the time her husband in his sabots came clattering down the
+stairs with the undesired wine, a few drops of which we used to colour
+the clear cold water we took in our tumblers from a pipe that ran
+ceaselessly into a basin set in the wall of the room that backed to
+the rising land.
+
+There is one respect in which the Cevennols have progressed since
+Stevenson went among them. He writes: "In these Hedge-inns the
+traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no
+other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron
+fork, the table is completely laid." Not so had we found it in any of
+the inns we visited, all had risen to the dignity of knives and forks;
+but here at this house in the wilds our table was laid precisely as
+Stevenson describes, and the bread being hard, it was a temptation to
+break it across the knee like a piece of wood. We had almost finished
+our meal when, after some whisperings between the man and woman, the
+fellow dived into his pockets and produced a great clasp knife, which
+he opened and handed to us.
+
+While we sat and carried on a somewhat faltering conversation--for
+both man and woman spoke the dialect of Languedoc and were superbly
+ignorant--two men entered of the same brigandish type as the landlord,
+and, speaking better French, proffered their services as guides if we
+desired to scale the Pic de Finiels. This we had no desire to do,
+especially when they were frank enough to state that the view from the
+top was of very little interest. But they urged us to see the
+magnificent view over the entire range of the Cevennes from the more
+westerly peak, the Signal des Laubies. This, however, would have
+taken us some two hours, and we had a long way to travel that day. We
+were curious to know whether the baraque was tenanted in winter, and
+one of the guides told us that during the winter the whole of the
+uplands around us lay deep in snow, the roads being quite impassable.
+This shelter was only open from the beginning of June to the end of
+September, when its keepers retired downhill again to Malavieille. R.
+L. S. crossed the mountain on the second last day in September, so
+that the snows would soon be lying on his track. When we resumed our
+journey again we were once or twice beguiled into thinking that we saw
+some of the snows of yester year lying among the grey and lichened
+rocks, but a nearer approach turned the drifts into flocks of sheep,
+which the sombre background rendered snowy white by contrast.
+
+
+XIX.
+
+We went forward into the country of the Camisards along a well-made
+road which gangs of labourers were leisurely repairing. So good are
+these mountain roads, and so diligently tended, that one is inclined
+to think they are used chiefly for the transit of stones to keep them
+in repair. That on which we travelled has been made since Modestine
+and her driver footed it through this same valley. In less than a
+mile from the baraque it begins to sweep swiftly downward. Stevenson
+thus describes his descent: "A sort of track appeared and began to go
+down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led
+into a valley through falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped
+field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed
+the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the
+continual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old unwearied
+hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend
+me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself
+together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the
+hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with
+a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is
+like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely
+left the summit ere the valley closed round my path, and the sun beat
+upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere."
+
+ [Illustration: "CLARISSE"
+
+ _The Waitress at the Hôtel des Cevennes, from a photograph supplied by
+ the Pasteur at Pont de Montvert_
+
+ "The features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate
+ design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride."
+ --R. L. S.]
+
+If his descent was thus, how much more so ours on our whirling wheels?
+We encountered numerous cattle-drovers, whose herds spread themselves
+across the path and rendered our progress somewhat perilous, as
+neither hedge nor stone stood between us and the abyss. There is
+but little population in the valley, and that centred in two small
+hamlets, though we observed a number of deserted cabins which
+Stevenson also notes. The river, too, as it nears the larger Tarn was
+all his magic pen had pictured; here it "foamed awhile in desperate
+rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot
+with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river
+of so changeful and delicate a hue: crystal was not more clear, the
+meadows were not by half so green."
+
+Our road brought us at length to Pont de Montvert "of bloody memory,"
+which lies in a green and rocky hollow among the hills. To Stevenson
+"the place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an
+indescribable air of the south." Why so, he was unable to say; as he
+justly observes, it would be difficult to tell in what particulars it
+differed from Monastier or Langogne or even Bleymard. One of the first
+buildings that the traveller encounters is the little Protestant
+temple perched on the rocky bank of the river, and perhaps it was
+again the Protestant education of R. L. S. that led him to note a
+higher degree of intelligence among the inhabitants than he had found
+in the purely Catholic villages. For my part, with the best will to
+mark the difference, I found little to choose between the Catholic and
+Camisard townships, unless it were a more obvious effort after
+cleanliness in some of the latter.
+
+
+XX.
+
+Pont de Montvert is memorable as the place where the Covenanters of
+France struck the first blow against their Romish persecutors; here
+they "slew their Archbishop Sharpe." The Protestant pastor, a
+fresh-faced man about sixty, with a short white beard, and wearing no
+outward symbol of office, but dressed in an ordinary jacket suit and
+cloth cap, we found in his home in a building by the river-side near
+the bridge. Directly across the rock-strewn course was the Hôtel des
+Cevennes, where Stevenson sat at the "roaring table d'hôte," and was
+pleased to find three of the women passably good-looking, that being
+more than an average for any town in the Highlands of France. Our
+pastor--his wife and golden-haired daughter also--was more interested
+in discussing Stevenson's travels than the religious condition of his
+district, a subject on which my companion, pastor from "the Celtic
+fringe," was athirst for information.
+
+To my various questions regarding the position of the Reformed Church
+I received the barest answers; there was no glowing enthusiasm _chez
+le pasteur_ for the Camisards who a stone's-throw from where we sat
+stabbed with many superfluous thrusts the Archpriest Du Chayla, their
+most brutal persecutor. But Stevenson and his donkey--ah, that was
+another matter! He knew all about them to the year, the day, the hour
+of their quaint and curious visit; he was himself only two years
+established in his charge at the time. And Clarisse! We knew, of
+course, what Stevenson had said of her? Would we care to see her
+photograph? She was now married, and settled in another town with a
+considerable family growing around her. One felt that after a quarter
+of a century, and with a family thrown in, Stevenson would have
+resolutely refused to look on the counterfeit presentment of Clarisse.
+But, less scrupulous, we chose to see her portrait, and the pastor was
+good enough to present me with a copy, as he possessed several which
+he had procured three years before when ordering one for an Englishman
+who had gone over the trail of R. L. S. The _carte_ shows the
+table-maid of the hotel as still possessing some of the featural
+charms so minutely and faithfully noted by our author.
+
+"What shall I say of Clarisse?" he writes. "She waited the table with
+a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey
+eyes were steeped in amorous langour; her features, although fleshy,
+were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her
+nostrils spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and
+interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and with
+training it offered the promise of delicate sentiment.... Before I
+left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She took it like
+milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily
+with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was some
+confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add
+that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays;
+but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years."
+
+When I look again at the photograph, I fear that even this hope for
+her who was "left to country admirers and a country way of thought,"
+has not been fulfilled.
+
+ [Illustration: THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE
+
+ "It was but a humble place, called La Vernède, with less than a dozen
+ houses and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. There, at the inn, I
+ ordered breakfast."--R. L. S.]
+
+The pastor came with us to point out Du Chayla's house, which stands
+on the river side westward of his own, the spire of the modern
+Catholic church showing above the roof. Perhaps it was only natural
+that he should look upon so familiar an object without any show of
+emotion, though my fellow-traveller set it down to the cold Christless
+teaching of the _Eglise libérale_, to which section of the French
+Reformed Church Pont de Montvert is attached. In that three-storied
+house, with its underground dungeons and stout-walled garden
+trending down to the river, the Archpriest carried on "the Propagation
+of the Faith" by such ungentle methods as plucking out the hairs of
+the beard, enclosing the hands of his Protestant prisoners upon live
+coal, "to convince them," as R. L. S. quaintly observes, "that they
+were deceived in their opinions." On the 24th July, 1702, led by their
+"prophet" Séguier, a band of some fifty Camisards attacked the house
+of the Archpriest, to which they at length set fire, and thus forced
+Du Chayla and his military guard to attempt escape. The Archpriest, in
+lowering himself from an upper window by means of knotted sheets, fell
+and broke his leg, and there in the garden, where a woman was to-day
+hanging out shabby clothes to dry, the Covenanters had their vengeance
+of stabs. "'This,' they said, 'is for my father broken on the wheel.
+This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister
+imprisoned in your cursed convents.' Each gave his blow and his
+reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the
+dawn." Save for a new roof, the building remains much as it was two
+hundred years ago.
+
+
+XXI.
+
+The road, for close on two miles out of Pont de Montvert, goes uphill
+past the Catholic church--the town being now about equally divided in
+the matter of religion--and then it is a long and gentle descent to
+Florac. In no respect has the road changed since Stevenson wrote of
+it, nor is there any likelihood that it will be altered ere the crack
+of doom. "A smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the
+summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I
+went in and out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into
+promontories of afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of
+Killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making
+a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in
+the sunshine far above."
+
+The slopes of the valley have been terraced almost to the sky-line,
+not for baby-fields of wheat, but to furnish ground for chestnut
+trees, that clothe the hills with rich and sombre foliage, and give
+forth "a faint, sweet perfume," which tinctures the air with balsamic
+breath. R. L. S. goes into raptures over these chestnuts;--"I wish I
+could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how they
+strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage
+like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the
+pillars of a church; or, like the olive, from the most shattered bole
+can put out smooth and useful shoots, and begin a new life upon the
+ruins of the old.... And to look down upon a level filled with these
+knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old, unconquerable chestnuts
+clustered 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to
+rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature." It was on a
+terrace and under one of these trees that he camped for the night,
+having to scramble up some sixty feet above the place he had selected
+for himself, which was as high as that from the road, before he could
+find another terrace with space enough for his donkey. He was awakened
+in the morning by peasants coming to prune the trees, and after going
+down to the river for his morning toilet--"To wash in one of God's
+rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or
+semi-pagan act of worship"--he went on his way "with a light and
+peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced."
+
+Some little way from where he had slept he foregathered with an old
+man in a brown nightcap, "clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint,
+excited smile," who said to him after a while, "_Connaissez-vous le
+Seigneur?_" The old fellow was delighted when the donkey-driver
+answered, "Yes, I know Him; He is the best of acquaintances," and
+together they journeyed on, discussing the spiritual condition of the
+country-folk. "Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way,
+he and I came upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place,
+called La Vernède, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant
+chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt, and here at the inn I ordered my
+breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stonebreaker
+on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl."
+
+We found this little hamlet even smaller than we expected, some
+half-dozen houses and a tiny place of worship, the whole lying below
+the level of the main road, so that one could have thrown a stone on
+their roofs, well-tilled fields and meadows stretching down to the
+river. A _cantonnier_ who was busy breaking stones by the roadway
+helped us to identify the place, and was proud to confess himself a
+Protestant, in common with the little handful of his fellow-villagers.
+The country grows richer and more fruitful as we approach Florac,
+passing on our way the old castle of Miral and a picturesque church
+compounded of an ancient battlemented monastery and some modern
+buildings with a tall tower.
+
+ [Illustration: IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN
+
+ "The road led me past the old Castle of Miral on a steep."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: NEAR FLORAC
+
+ "Past a battlemented monastery long since broken up and turned into a
+ church and parsonage."--R. L. S.]
+
+The influence of a country on its people suggested to R. L. S. an
+interesting comparison as he journeyed through "this landscape,
+smiling although wild." "Those who took to the hills for conscience
+sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts," he writes;
+"for once that they received God's comfort, they would be twice
+engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and supporting
+visions.... With a light conscience, they pursued their life in these
+rough times and circumstances. The soul of Séguier, let us not forget,
+was like a garden. They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge
+that has no parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they
+might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the
+person." A singularly inapposite comparison. It was not in pleasant
+valleys such as these, or in cosy little towns like Pont de Montvert,
+that the Camisards fought out their war with "His Most Christian
+Majesty Louis, King of France and Brittany," but on the bare and rocky
+plateaus westward of the Cevennes, and on such mountain-tops as the
+Lozère. Stevenson had never seen the Causse Méjan or the Causse du
+Larzac, to the southward of the region through which he travelled, or
+he would have realised that their conditions were even less likely to
+foster "bright and supporting visions" in the Camisards than those of
+the mountain-hunted Scots, though much better from a strategic point
+of view.
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Florac is a small town of white houses, cuddled between the eastern
+front of the Causse Méjan and the western foothills of the Cevennes,
+with the river Tarnon, joined by the Mimente to the south, running
+northward on its outskirts. There are only two thousand inhabitants,
+but the number and excellence of Florac's hotels are accounted for by
+its being an important centre for tourists visiting the gorges of the
+Tarn, which, totally unknown to the outer world at the time of
+Stevenson's journey, are now admitted to possess the finest scenery in
+Europe. Our French guide-book frankly stated that Florac is a place
+"of few attractions," but R. L. S. makes the most of these in a
+sentence or two, describing the town as possessing "an old castle, an
+alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain
+welling from the hill." The old castle is quite without interest, and
+is indeed the local prison, while the alley of planes, called the
+Esplanade, is a dusty open space, with many cafés lining it, and the
+grey, featureless Protestant Temple at its southern end.
+
+"It is notable, besides," he adds, "for handsome women, and as one of
+two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards."
+I do not recall having noticed an unusual number of handsome women,
+though the wife of the Free Church minister was quite the prettiest
+French woman we saw in the Cevennes, and the Established Church
+pastor's wife perhaps the most cultured. R. L. S. found the townsfolk
+anxious to talk of the part played by Florac in the days of the
+Camisards, and was delighted to see Catholic and Protestant living
+together in peace and amity. But it may be that the conspicuous
+absence of all windows from the lower parts of the Protestant churches
+is a memorial of times when the adherents of the reformed religion
+were subjected to the prying eyes and perchance the more dangerous
+attentions of the Catholics without. Most of the public officials were
+named to us as Protestants, and the religious differences are as
+strongly marked between the two sects of the latter as between them
+and their townsmen of the Roman communion. The larger and
+State-supported church is Rationalistic, corresponding to our
+Unitarian, and the smaller a Free Church, with a symbol of the open
+Bible above its doorway.
+
+In what we might call the Free Manse, really an extension of the
+church for the housing of the minister, a door communicating between
+the place of worship and the domestic apartments, we found M. Illaire
+and his wife at play with their children--homely folk, who gave us a
+cordial welcome, the heartier for the fact that Mme. Illaire had
+stayed for a year in that "quaint, grey-castled city, where the bells
+clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and
+beat"--Stevenson's own romantic birth-town. She could thus speak our
+native tongue, and my companion, for once in a way, needed none of my
+interpreting. M. Illaire, an essential Frenchman, swarthy of features,
+slight of build, voluble and gesticulative, discoursed with shining
+eyes of Protestantism, but was something of a pessimist, and seemed to
+think that at best a cold, bloodless Dieism would rule the
+intellectual France of the future. I gathered that, as in the old days
+of enmity between the Established and Free kirks of Scotland, there
+was no traffic between the two Protestant churches in Florac, for Mme.
+Illaire confessed that she had never seen the inside of the Temple,
+which we had thoroughly inspected earlier in the afternoon, receiving
+the key from the pastor's wife, whose husband unfortunately was absent
+on a visit to Montpellier.
+
+ [Illustration: FLORAC
+
+ "On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac. It is notable as one of the
+ two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the
+ Camisards."--R. L. S.]
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+The route of R. L. S. now lay along the valley of the Mimente, which
+branches eastward a little south of Florac, and penetrates a country
+very similar to that traversed between the Lozère and this point. It
+was only a few miles from Florac that he spent his last night _à la
+belle étoile_ in the valley of this little river, noting in one of his
+finest sentences the coming of night: "A grey pearly evening shadow
+filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and
+melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness was rising
+steadily like an exhalation." At Cassagnas he was in the very heart of
+the Camisard country, where there is little to engage one but the
+historic associations of the district. At St. Germain de Calberte, six
+miles to the south-west, reached by a rough and difficult road more
+suitable for the foot than the wheel, he slept at the inn, and the
+next afternoon (Thursday, 3rd October) he accomplished the eight
+remaining miles through the waterless valley of the Gardon to St. Jean
+du Gard--"fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours."
+
+There came the parting with the companion of his travels, Modestine
+finding a ready purchaser at much below prime cost. "For twelve days
+we had been fast companions," he writes on his last page: "we had
+travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several
+respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky
+and many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I
+was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for
+her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat
+out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an
+ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race
+and sex; her virtues were her own. Farewell! and if for ever----
+Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold her in my
+turn, I was tempted to follow his example; and being alone with the
+stage driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate
+to yield to my emotion."
+
+We are to imagine R. L. S. thus tearfully occupied in the stage-coach
+bearing him east to Alais, an important industrial town on the main
+line northward through Le Puy, whither there is no call to follow him.
+We have the romantic regions of the Causses and the Tarn gorges still
+to explore. Our way, no longer a pilgrim's path, lies westward.
+
+
+
+
+Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"
+
+ "Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone
+ upon alone. If you go in company, or even in pairs, it is
+ no longer a walking tour in anything but name. It is
+ something else, and more in the nature of a picnic. A
+ walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is
+ of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go
+ on, and follow this way or that as the freak takes you, and
+ because you must have your own pace, and neither tramp
+ alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time with a girl.
+ And then you must be open to all impressions, and let
+ yourself take colour from what you see. You should be as a
+ pipe for any wind to play upon."
+
+
+I.
+
+Thus wrote Stevenson in one of his essays, but I doubt if he ever put
+into practice this engaging theory of his. He came nearest to being
+alone when he undertook his famous tour through the Cevennes; yet a
+donkey, and one of so much character as his Modestine, is company of a
+sort. When he made the first of his little journeys with a literary
+end in view, he had a companion after his own heart in the late Sir
+Walter Simpson, to whom the first of his books, _An Inland Voyage_, is
+dedicated. That was, however, an enterprise of some adventure, and it
+was well that the author had a companion, for had he fared forth alone
+in his frail canoe, as did his great exemplar John MacGregor, in the
+_Rob Roy_, it is doubtful if _An Inland Voyage_--not to say all that
+came after it--had ever been written. In a letter sent from Compiègne
+during the voyage, he gives a very cheerless picture of the business:
+"We have had deplorable weather, quite steady ever since the start;
+not one day without heavy showers, and generally much wind and cold
+wind forby.... Indeed, I do not know if I would have stuck to it as I
+have done if it had not been for professional purposes." I suspect
+that no less potent an influence than "professional purposes" in
+raising his courage to the height of the occasion, was the
+companionship of "My dear Cigarette," as he addresses Sir Walter,
+whose canoe had been named _Cigarette_, that of Stevenson sporting the
+classic title _Arethusa_. Fortunately for the reading world, the
+voyage, despite its discomforts, had happy issue in one of the most
+charming books that came from the pen of the essayist, and although
+hints are not lacking of the shadows through which the canoeists
+passed, the sunshine of a gay and bright spirit is radiant on every
+page.
+
+ [Illustration: BOOM ON THE RUPEL
+
+ "Boom is not a nice place."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL
+
+ "The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to
+ the unfavouring air."--R. L. S.]
+
+As it had been my pleasant fortune in the summer of 1903, together
+with a friend, to follow the footsteps of Stevenson in his travels
+among the Cevennes, and the pilgrimage having proved plentiful of
+literary interest, it seemed to me that one might find in a journey by
+road along the route of "An Inland Voyage" as much of interest, and
+certainly some measure of personal pleasure. Moreover, with the
+disciple's daring, often greater than the master's, I desired to test
+the plan of going alone. But it was more by happy chance than any
+planning of mine that I betook myself, with my bicycle, to Antwerp at
+precisely the same season that, eight-and-twenty years before,
+Stevenson and his companion set out upon their canoe voyage by river
+and canal, from that ancient port to the town of Pontoise, near the
+junction of the Seine and Oise, and within hail of Paris.
+
+In the preface to the first edition of _An Inland Voyage_, its author
+expresses the fear that he "might not only be the first to read these
+pages, but the last as well," and that he "might have pioneered this
+very smiling tract of country all in vain, and found not a soul to
+follow in my steps." That others have been before me in my late
+pilgrimage is more than probable, although I have found no trace of
+them; but perhaps I have not searched with care, for I would fain
+flatter myself that here, as in the Cevennes, I found a field of
+interest where there had been no passing of many feet.
+
+
+II.
+
+Antwerp seems a town so antique that no change of modern handiwork can
+alter in any vital way its grey old features. Yet in my own
+acquaintance with it, on its outward quarters at least, it has taken
+on surprisingly the veneer of modern Brussels, though by the
+river-side it remains much as it was when, in the later days of
+August, 1876, the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_, with their
+adventurous occupants, were launched into the Scheldt to the no small
+excitement of the loungers about the docks. There must have been some
+excitement, too, in the breasts of the voyagers, but, like the true
+Scots they were, we can well believe they gave no show of it.
+Stevenson had never been in a canoe under sail before, and to tie his
+sheet in so frail a craft in the middle of a wide and busy river
+called for no contemptible degree of courage. But he tied his sheet.
+
+"I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself," he writes.
+"Of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always
+tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern
+as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to
+find myself follow the same principle, and it inspired me with some
+contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to
+smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a
+comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely
+elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a common-place that we cannot
+answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is not so
+common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we usually find
+ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought."
+
+There is but little of interest up the river, which waters a level,
+unpicturesque country to Rupelmonde, where the canoeists would bid
+good-bye to the Scheldt and steer to the south-east up the Rupel, a
+broad and smooth-flowing stream that joins the greater water at this
+point. Against the current they would urge their tiny prows until they
+arrived after a journey of a few miles at the town of Boom, whence the
+canal extends to Brussels in an almost straight line:
+
+As I made my way that grey autumn morning through the little villages
+and along the tree-lined highway, the brown leaves flickering down in
+the cold wind that stirred among the branches, it pleased me to fancy
+how Stevenson, had his youth fallen in the days of the bicycle, would
+have enjoyed the privilege of riding on the Belgian footpath, which to
+us who live in a land where no cyclist dare mount his machine except
+on the highway affords a delightful sensation of lawlessness. It is
+well to observe, however, that but for this right of the footpath
+there would be no cyclist in all Flanders or Northern France, since
+highways and by-ways there are made of the most indiscriminate
+cobbles, and in the remote country places a cart on the lonely road
+moves with as great a clatter as one on the stony streets of
+Edinburgh.
+
+
+III.
+
+I was no great way from Boom when I saw advancing a high and narrow
+structure, drawn by a horse, that progressed to the weird and
+irregular clangor of a heavy bell, reminding me curiously of
+Stevenson's moving description of the leper bell in _The Black Arrow_.
+When I came up with the horse and its burden, I found the latter to
+consist of a large circular tank, set on four wheels, with a tall box
+in front for the driver, above whose head a large bell was
+suspended. The word "Petrol," painted on the tank, indicated its
+contents. Here, surely, was something that made the days of the canoe
+voyage seem remote indeed; the peddling vendor of petrol belongs
+emphatically to the new century.
+
+ [Illustration: THE ALLEE VERTE AT LAEKEN
+
+ The head-quarters of the "Royal Sport Nautique" is hidden among the
+ trees on the left of the picture.]
+
+ [Illustration: THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE
+
+ It was at this point, "on the Sambre canalised," that the canoe voyage
+ began in earnest.]
+
+"Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that
+the majority of the habitants have a private opinion that they can
+speak English, which is not justified by fact." I can heartily endorse
+our canoeist's opinion of the town, but this linguistic pride of its
+inhabitants is surely a vanity of the past. I found none--and I spoke
+to several--who had any delusions as to their knowledge of English,
+and, indeed, few of them had more than a smattering of French. A
+pleasant fellow on a cycle, who had insisted on riding close to me
+through the outlying districts of the town, which are entirely taken
+up by extensive brickworks, where I noticed the labourers all went
+bare-footed, I found capable of understanding a few words of broad
+Scots, and when I said, "Boom, is't richt on?" or "Watter, richt on?"
+he nodded brightly, and replied in Flemish, which was comically like
+the Scots.
+
+The Hôtel de la Navigation, where the paddlers put up for the night,
+and of which Stevenson gives so bad an account, I found no trace of,
+nor did I tarry any length of time in Boom, since its attractions
+were so meagre. The "great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge
+over the river," remain the outstanding features of the town, and
+viewed from the south side of the river, it makes by no means an
+unpleasing picture.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The canal was simply packed with barges and great ungainly scows in
+the vicinity of the town, awaiting their turn to slip through the
+locks into the freer water of the Rupel, and heigh! for Antwerp, or
+even the coastwise towns of Holland. It was good to feel as one
+proceeded along the tow-path that here, in this world of change, was a
+stream of life flowing onward through the generations serene and
+changeless. "Every now and then we met or overtook a long string of
+boats with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either
+side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or flowerpot in one of the
+windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day's
+dinner, and a handful of children." Every day since R. L. S. paddled
+in this same stretch of water the canal has presented the same picture
+of life, and thirty years hence, it is safe to prophesy, the wayfarer
+will find no change, as these canals remain the great highways of
+Belgium and France for the transport of goods that are in no haste;
+and when we come to think of it, a great proportion of the commodities
+of life may be carried from place to place in no gasping hurry for
+prompt delivery.
+
+Stevenson has many profitable reflections on the life of the
+canal-folk, with which in the course of his journey he was to become
+so familiar. "Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise," he
+writes, "a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It
+may spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the
+tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through
+the green corn-lands, the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or
+the horse plods along at a foot-pace, as if there were no such thing
+as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the
+same spire on the horizon all day long.... There should be many
+contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to
+stay at home.... I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any
+position under heaven that required attendance at an office. There are
+few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty
+in return for regular meals." But our philosopher, when he goes on to
+enhance his comfortable picture of a bargee's life, is scarcely
+correct in saying that "he can never be kept beating off a lee shore
+a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron." For these
+great clumsy craft know well the scent of the brine, and there are
+times when the snug outlook on the towing-path, and the slow business
+of passing through innumerable locks are changed for floundering in
+heavy seas and a straining look-out for a safe harbour. Not all their
+days are smooth and placid, and sometimes, we may imagine, the dainty
+pots of geraniums, that look so gay against the windows as we pass,
+must be removed to safer places, while the family washing, drying on
+deck to-day, has to be stowed elsewhere, and the tow-haired children,
+now playing around the dog-kennel on the top of the hatches, have to
+be sent below when salt waves break over the squat prow of the vessel.
+
+The journey along the canal bank was to me a very pleasant one, and I
+had hopes of being more fortunate than the canoeists in reaching
+Brussels with a dry skin. They had to paddle in an almost continual
+drizzle, and even made shift to lunch in a ditch, with the rain
+pattering on their waterproofs. But when I got as far as Villevorde,
+where gangs of men were labouring on the extensive works in connection
+with the railway and the new water supply, the rain began, and I was
+wet to the skin long before I had reached the royal suburb of
+Laeken, where, for evidence of Belgium's industrial progress, witness
+the splendid improvement on the canal at this point, soon to become a
+system of docks and water-ways resembling in extent a great railway
+junction.
+
+ [Illustration: THE GRAND CERF MAUBEUGE
+
+ Where R. L. S. and his companion stayed for some days awaiting the
+ arrival of the canoes by rail from Brussels.]
+
+
+V.
+
+One of the most amusing episodes in "An Inland Voyage" was the
+encounter of the canoeists with the young boatmen of the "Royal Sport
+Nautique," who in their enthusiasm for rowing gave a warm welcome to
+the strangers, and by assuming the latter to be mighty men of the
+paddle, led them into the most unwarranted boasting about the sport.
+"We are all employed in commerce during the day," said the Belgians,
+"but in the evening, _voyez-vous, nous sommes sérieux_." An admirable
+opening for a characteristic bit of Stevensonian philosophy: "For will
+anyone dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling
+among boats?"
+
+Whether or not the newer generation of Brussels boatmen are as serious
+as the youths of thirty years ago I cannot say. The next afternoon,
+being Sunday, I came out again from Brussels to make enquiries
+concerning the "Royal Sport Nautique," and found a commodious brick
+building occupying the site of the boathouse wherein Stevenson had
+been entertained, but no signs of nautical life about it. There was
+the slip where the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_ were drawn up out of
+the canal, and on the roadway opposite stood this new boathouse and
+clubroom, with the dates 1865--94 indicating, as the only member whom
+I found on the premises explained, that the club had been founded in
+the former year, and the building erected in the latter. But he was a
+churlish fellow, this coxcomb in his Sunday dress, and barely answered
+my questions. If I too, had paddled my own canoe, perhaps it might
+have been otherwise! The day was fine, and the canal was busy with
+little excursion steamers that were well patronised by holiday-makers,
+and were covered almost to the water-line with flaring advertisements
+of Scotch whiskies and English soaps, only one out of a dozen
+advertisements being of local origin: a circumstance that would, we
+may be sure, have drawn from Stevenson some pages of gay philosophy.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Following the example of the original travellers, I took train from
+Brussels to the French frontier town of Maubeuge, where in real
+earnest their canoe voyage began. To the traveller who has wandered
+the highways of France south and west of Paris, such a town as this
+presents some uncommon features, and I cannot but think that R. L. S.
+gives a wrong impression of it. "There was nothing to do, nothing to
+see," he tells us, and his only joy seems to have been that he got
+excellent meals at the "Grand Cerf," where he encountered the
+dissatisfied driver of the hotel omnibus, who said to him: "Here I am.
+I drive to the station. Well! Then I drive back again to the hotel.
+And so on every day and all the week round. My God! is that life?" And
+you remember Stevenson's comment: "Better a thousand times that he
+should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep
+under the trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day above a new
+horizon." Here spoke the lover of romance; but the facts are quite
+otherwise.
+
+Maubeuge I found a bright little town, surrounded by mighty ramparts
+with spacious gates and bridges over the fosse. It is picturesquely
+situated on the river Sambre, on whose banks stand large warehouses
+and manufactories, while the shops bear evidence of prosperity. Even
+_l'art nouveau_ has reached out from Paris and affected the business
+architecture of the town. There is a bustling market-place, a handsome
+little square with a spirited monument to the sons of the
+country-side who have fallen for France, a grey old church, and a
+pleasure-ground with a band-stand and elaborate arrangements for
+illumination on gala nights. Indeed, I can imagine life to be very
+tolerable in Maubeuge, which is really the residential centre of an
+immense industrial district resembling more closely than any other
+part of France our own Black Country.
+
+Stevenson makes no mention of having visited the church, which is
+interesting in one respect at least. Beneath the stucco casts of the
+stations of the cross some _curé_ of an evangelical turn of mind has
+ventured on a series of little homilies unusual in my experience of
+French churches. Thus, under the representation of Christ falling
+while bearing His cross we read: "Who is it that causes Jesus to fall
+a second time? You, unhappy person, who are for ever falling in your
+faults, because you lack resolution. Ask, therefore, of God that you
+may henceforth become more faithful unto Him."
+
+ [Illustration: THE CHURCH AT QUARTES
+
+ "A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering
+ windmill."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT
+
+ Where "the landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had
+ charged so little," when the canoeists arrived back by river from
+ Quartes after having been treated like pedlars at Pont.]
+
+Only in the most insignificant way can Maubeuge have changed since Sir
+Walter Simpson was nearly arrested for drawing the fortifications, "a
+feat of which he was hopelessly incapable," so that I suspect
+something of misplaced sentiment in Stevenson's impressions of the
+place. For my part, I should find it difficult to mention a town of
+the same size in England or Scotland to compare with Maubeuge as a
+place to pass one's days in. That omnibus driver with the soul of a
+Raleigh may have been in some measure a creature of the romancer's
+fancy. At all events, it is likely enough that he has travelled far
+since 1876, as I take him to have been a man of middle age then. The
+hotel omnibus with its two horses still makes its journey to and from
+the station, but the driver is a stout young fellow of florid face,
+who, I am sure, is perfectly contented with his lot, and enjoys his
+meals. "_C'est toujours la même ici_," said Veuve Bonnaire, the
+landlady of the "Grand Cerf," when I chatted with her in the bureau
+after luncheon. Yet not always the same, for where was M. Bonnaire?
+And I fear that our canoeists, if they could visit the hostelry again
+would scarce recognise in this lady of gross body their hostess of
+thirty years ago. The building itself is quite unchanged, I was
+assured, and I ate my food in the same room and in just such company
+as the voyagers dined--military officers all absurdly alike in sharp
+features, small moustache and tuft on chin, and ungallant baldness of
+head; and three or four commercial travellers, each with a tendency to
+"a full habit of body."
+
+
+VII.
+
+The whole establishment of the "Grand Cerf" accompanied the canoeists
+to the water's edge when they were ready to take their leave. Madame
+Bonnaire, however, has quite forgotten that exciting episode of her
+middle life; but there, we have Stevenson's word for it, and the good
+woman must accept the fame. The day was a dismal one, we are
+told--wind and rain, and "a stretch of blighted country" to pass
+through. I heartily wished for a speedy end to that same stretch. For
+six or seven miles the road is lined with factories and dirty
+cottages, while dirty electric cars rattle along, well-laden with
+passengers, for here France is at work and grimy; here is the France
+of which the tourist along the beaten tracks has no notion. A stout
+gentleman with whom I conversed by the wayside was very proud of the
+varied industries of the district. "Look you; we have glass works,
+pottery works, iron foundries, engine works, copper, and many other
+industries in the neighbourhood." Still, I was glad when, a mile or
+two beyond Hautmont, I found myself outside this region of smoke and
+growling factories and advancing into a pleasant pastoral country, the
+river only a little way from the road. Stevenson's word picture of
+the scene is photographic in its accuracy, but his art environs it
+with that ethereal touch the old engravers could give to a landscape,
+an art that has been lost to us by the vogue of cheap modern
+"processes."
+
+"After Hautmont," he writes, "the sun came forth again and the wind
+went down; and a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and
+through a delectable land. The river wound among low hills, so that
+sometimes the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it stood right
+ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On
+either hand, meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and
+water-flowers, upon the river. The hedges were of a great height,
+woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were
+often small, looked like a series of bowers along the stream. There
+was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look
+over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky;
+but that was all. The heaven was bare of clouds.... The river doubled
+among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of
+the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink."
+
+In this land of many waters every male creature seems to be a disciple
+of Sir Isaak Walton. A prodigious number of anglers will be
+encountered; I must have seen hundreds. Every day and all day they are
+dotted along the canals and rivers as patient as posts, and apparently
+as profitably employed. It was a continual wonder to me how they could
+spare the time; and a pleasure also, for it is cheering to know that
+so many fellow-creatures can afford to take life so leisurely, and
+that the factory may whistle and the surburban train shriek laden to
+the town without causing them to turn a hair. "They seem stupefied
+with contentment," says R. L. S. in a fine passage, "and when we
+induced them to exchange a few words with us about the weather, their
+voices sounded quiet and far away."
+
+
+VIII.
+
+At the little hamlet of Quartes, "with its church and bickering
+windmill"--the latter gone these many years--the canoeists went in
+search of a lodging for the night, but had to trudge with their packs
+to the neighbouring village of Pont sur Sambre for accommodation. They
+would have fared better at Quartes to-day, as there is now a clean
+little _auberge_ hard by the bridge, kept by a jovial fellow, who told
+me that his son had taken up photography, with deplorable results. "He
+takes my photograph, I assure you, M'sieu, and makes me look like a
+corpse in the Morgue"--and the landlord would laugh and show two rows
+of dusky teeth beneath his wiry moustache--"and when I say I'm not so
+awful as that, he will say that now I see myself as I really am, for,
+look you, the camera must tell the truth." He laughs again, and
+rising, says: "But come with me here," throwing open the door of a
+private room. "Now there's a portrait I had done in Brussels, and I'm
+really a decent-looking chap in that. So I say to my son, whenever he
+makes a new and worse picture of me: 'There's your papa to the life,
+done by a real photographer.'"
+
+ [Illustration: ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES]
+
+ [Illustration: SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
+
+ "Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the
+ street."--R. L. S.]
+
+I am sure they are a happy family at the inn at Quartes, and they
+enjoy life, the score or two of barges and boats that pass their door
+every day keeping them in touch with the outer world of towns. The
+landlord informed me that he had several times been as far as Paris by
+the rivers and canals, and that there are excursions all that
+distance--nearly 200 miles by water--every summer.
+
+
+IX.
+
+Pont sur Sambre is a long thin village, a mile or so from Quartes, and
+different from other villages only in the possession of a strange lone
+tower that stands in the middle of the wide street. Stevenson makes
+note of it, and says: "What it had been in past ages I know not;
+probably a hold in time of war; but nowadays it bore an illegible
+dial-plate in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron
+letter-box." As I was preparing to take a photograph of this landmark,
+a buxom woman came up and begged that I might photograph her. I
+protested my inability to do so with any satisfaction, having no stand
+for my camera. "But you have a camera; isn't that enough? And I am so
+anxious for a photograph." What would you in such a case? Especially
+as she said she could wait a month or more for me to send a print from
+England. So the widow Cerisier poses in the foreground of my picture
+of the strange tower at Pont--a tower which, she told me, has weird
+underground passages leading away into regions of mystery.
+
+It was at a little ale-house within sight of the tower that Stevenson
+and his friend passed the night, the landlady treating them as
+pedlars, and they enjoying the experience. Here, too, they fell in
+with a real pedlar, Monsieur Hector Gaillard of Maubeuge, who
+travelled in grand style with a tilt-cart drawn by a donkey, and was
+accompanied by his wife and his young son. Pedlars' fortunes seem to
+have improved since those days, as I found a travelling cheap-jack at
+Pont, with a very commodious wagon, which must have required two
+horses to move it about, cunningly contrived to open into a veritable
+bazaar, around which housewives and children clustered like bees.
+Another packman was showing his wares hard by on a lorry equally
+commodious, where he displayed to advantage an immense assortment of
+second-hand clothes and remnants of cloth, while his wife was inducing
+the thrifty women of Pont to buy.
+
+The Sambre at Pont looks very alluring, especially when the sun shines
+and projects the green shadows of the waving willows across its
+sluggish waters. Barges pass under the bridge at a snail's pace, and
+away among the winding avenue of poplars and willows that marks the
+river's zigzag course through the rich and restful meadow-land we see
+the masts of other boats moving with consummate slowness. R. L. S.
+illustrates the erratic course of the river by stating that while they
+could walk from Quartes to Pont in about ten minutes, the distance by
+river was six kilometres, or close on four miles. The folk at the
+ale-house were amazed when their guests, after walking to Quartes next
+morning, arrived by river an hour or so later as the owners of two
+dainty canoes. "They began to perceive that they had entertained
+angels unawares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably
+lamenting she had charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and
+called out the neighbours to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from
+quite a crowd of wrapt observers. These gentlemen pedlars indeed! Now
+you see their quality too late."
+
+
+X.
+
+The country between Pont and Landrecies wears many signs of quiet
+prosperity; houses are numerous, orchards well-stocked, the
+people--and never is the highway utterly deserted--smiling and
+contented, to all appearance. The river at a point about six miles
+from Landrecies skirts a part of the forest of Mormal, and our
+sentimental traveller turns the occasion to profit thus:
+
+ [Illustration: THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES
+
+ As it was at the time of "An Inland Voyage."]
+
+ [Illustration: THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE
+
+ "We were skirting the Forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear,
+ but a place most gratifying to sight and smell."--R. L. S.]
+
+"There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and
+a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and
+bustling by comparison. And surely of all smells in the world, the
+smell of many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a
+rude, pistolling sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like
+snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall
+ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic
+quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness.
+Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a
+forest is infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day,
+not in strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts of
+trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to live
+among different kinds of atmosphere. Usually the resin of the fir
+predominates. But some woods are more coquettish in their habits; and
+the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard upon us that
+showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate than
+sweetbriar."
+
+Further on he says: "Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit
+of a wood, and it was but for a little way that we skirted by its
+boundaries." So it may have seemed to the canoeists, who saw only a
+scrap of the great forest, that thrusts southward to the river at a
+place called Hachette. But it was not without some misgiving that I
+found myself suddenly plunged into the woodland, and discovered that I
+had six miles of it to penetrate and roads to ride which a little boy
+in a cart described eloquently by stretching his arm to its limit and
+then sweeping it down to the cart, and up and down half a dozen times!
+The forest has indeed, as R. L. S. observes, "a sinister name to the
+ear," and I felt--if I must speak the truth--a little quickening of
+the pulse when I had ridden about half an hour through its lonely
+rough roads, with rabbits and other wild creatures of the undergrowth
+making strange rustlings among the leaves by the wayside. The sun had
+been going down as I came into the forest, but the air among the trees
+was chilling and wintry after the warm high-road, not a slanting ray
+of sunshine penetrating the dense growth of trees. The only
+pedestrians whom I met were a party of rough sportsmen, who eyed me as
+a curious bird when, in answer to their questions, I said I had come
+from London. I had wandered from the direct road through the forest,
+it appeared, and one of the men, having a map, was able to work out a
+route for me; but it was another half-hour--which seemed like half a
+day--before I caught a welcome glimpse of the clear evening sky among
+the lower branches, and presently emerged on the main road into
+Landrecies, at a place suggestively named Bout du Monde.
+
+
+XI.
+
+If there is another town so dead as Landrecies in all the department
+of Le Nord, I have a great wish not to pass a night within its walls.
+It is changed times there since the passage of R. L. S., although it
+was _triste_ enough when "Arethusa" and "Cigarette" spent two days at
+the roomy old Hôtel de la Tête d'Or. "Within the ramparts," he says,
+"a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks and a church, figure,
+with what countenance they may, as the town. There seems to be no
+trade; and a shopkeeper, from whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel,
+was so much affected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into
+the bargain. The only public buildings that had any interest for us
+were the hotel and the café. But we visited the church. There lies
+Marshal Clarke; but as neither of us had heard of that military hero,
+we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude."
+
+Marshal Clarke, whose tomb looks as new as though it had been set up
+yesterday, was one of Napoleon's generals, and, as his epitaph reminds
+us, sometime minister of war. Had he hailed from Scotland instead of
+Ireland he might have been more interesting to R. L. S.
+
+If Landrecies was so dull thirty years ago, picture it to-day, with
+its barracks almost empty, its ramparts demolished, and its less than
+4,000 inhabitants in bed by nine o'clock! "It was just the place to
+hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp
+of men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. It
+reminded you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring
+system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with
+cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns."
+Alas! the barking of a melancholy dog and the clock of the Hôtel de
+Ville ringing out the lazy hours were the only sounds I heard that
+night, though just before dusk a wandering camelot selling in the
+street a sheet of "all the latest Paris songs" made a welcome
+diversion. I sampled his stock, and found it to consist of doggerel
+rhymes about the Russo-Japanese War, mingled with some amorous
+ditties, and a piece of a devotional kind! "_C'est une ville morte_,"
+said a dumpy lady with a scorbutic face, who drank her after-dinner
+coffee in the dining-room with me. "Think of Paris, and then--this!"
+she sighed. I wondered what had brought her there, and doubtless she
+thought I was some cycling fellow who had lost his way.
+
+But if the military glory of Landrecies is departed, it makes a brave
+effort to recall the past with an elegant column near the site of the
+north gate, whereon are recorded the sieges which Landrecies
+withstood, the last being in the Franco-German War. Also erected since
+Stevenson's time is a striking monument to the great Joseph François
+Dupleix, whose gallant effort to found an Indian empire for France was
+frustrated by Clive, and who, born in Landrecies, spent his substance
+for his fatherland, only to die in poverty and neglect.
+
+ [Illustration: THE INN AT MOY
+
+ "Sweet was our rest in the 'Golden Sheep' at Moy."--R. L. S.]
+
+ [Illustration: THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY
+
+ "Moy was a pleasant little village."--R. L. S.]
+
+The landlord of the hotel assured me that he remembered the visit of
+my heroes, even mentioning the hour of their arrival and departure.
+He was a young man then; but to-day his hair is streaked with grey.
+The _Juge de Paix_, who entertained the travellers, is still to the
+fore: a bachelor then, he is a widower now.
+
+I noticed an odd feature of the hotel: its meat safe was the roof of
+the passage to the courtyard. Here, hanging from hooks fixed in the
+roof, were joints of beef, legs of mutton, hares, rabbits, and so
+forth--an abundant display; and when the cook was in need of an item,
+she came out with a long pole and reached down the piece she wanted.
+
+
+XII.
+
+The canoeists left Landrecies on a rainy morning, the judge under an
+umbrella seeing them off. My lot was pleasanter, for the morning was
+fine and the landlord's son, a bright lad, with those babyish socks
+which French boys wear, escorted me some way out of the town on his
+bicycle, chatting merrily about the state of the roads, and evincing
+great surprise when he heard that we would be fined for cycling on the
+footpath in England.
+
+My route lay along the highway to Guise for a time and close to the
+canal, passing through a gentle undulating country with far views of
+thickly-wooded fields and little hills. The hamlets by the way were
+surrounded by hop fields, the great poles with their fantastic
+coverings of the vine being the most noticeable feature of the
+wayside, just as R. L. S. had observed them when the hop-growers of
+to-day were _bien jeune_, as the old gentleman at the play in Paris
+described Stevenson himself. Etreux, where the canal journey ended, I
+found a thriving and agreeable little town, the rattle of the loom
+being heard from many an open door, and the thud, thud of flails in
+the farm-steadings on the outskirts. At Etreux the canoes were placed
+on a light country cart one morning, and the travellers walked to
+Vadencourt by way of Tupigny, a village where I was served with a
+make-shift lunch at a little inn, the landlady doing the cooking and
+laying the table with a baby held in her left arm! Vadencourt is full
+of weavers, and here close by the old bridge over the river the
+_Arethusa_ and _Cigarette_ were launched in the fast-flowing water of
+the River Oise.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+The canoeists were now in the full swing of perhaps the most enjoyable
+part of their journey. Let a canal be never so beautiful, it is still
+a canal, and no adventure need be looked for there; but a river that
+runs wild and free is a possible highway to the enchanted kingdom of
+Romance. We have the avowal of R. L. S. that on this sedgy stream,
+wriggling its devious ways by field and woodland, he had some of the
+happiest moments of his life.
+
+"We could have shouted aloud," he says in a glowing passage. "If this
+lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's
+contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with
+us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring points against him
+every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream. I have rarely had
+better profit of my life. For I think we may look upon our little
+private war with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will
+sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the
+best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much
+gained upon the thieves. And above all, where, instead of simply
+spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, when
+it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and
+above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the
+wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the
+more in our stomach, when he cries, 'Stand and deliver.' A swift
+stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a
+comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our
+accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper
+Oise."
+
+Indeed, he came near to settling accounts with old Death more readily
+than he could have cared; for not many miles from Vadencourt, in
+attempting to shoot below the over-hanging trunk of a fallen tree, the
+lively "Arethusa" was caught in its branches, while his canoe went
+spinning down stream relieved of its paddler. He succeeded in
+scrambling on to the tree-trunk, though he "seemed, by the weight, to
+have all the water of the Oise in my trouser-pockets." But through
+all, he still held to his paddle. "On my tomb, if ever I have one, I
+mean to get these words inscribed: 'He clung to his paddle.'" Brave
+heart, this is in truth but a humorous phrasing of the stately requiem
+on the stone upon Vaea Top.
+
+It was a dripping "Arethusa" that got into Origny Sainte-Benoîte that
+night, and but for the ready and resourceful "Cigarette" the adventure
+might have ended less happily. Although Origny is a dusty little
+village, as dull as any in all Picardy, the canoeists rested there a
+day, and had good profit of the people they met at the inn, as
+Stevenson's pages witness. The landlord was a shouting, noisy fellow,
+a red Republican. "'I'm a proletarian, you see.' Indeed, we saw it
+very well. God forbid that I should find him handling a gun in Paris
+streets! That will not be a good moment for the general public."
+
+ [Illustration: VEUVE BAZIN
+
+ Hastily and unnecessarily "tidying herself" while being photographed
+ at her door.]
+
+ [Illustration: THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FÈRE
+
+ "Little did the Bazins know how much they served us."--R. L. S.]
+
+
+XIV.
+
+An accident to my bicycle in the neighbourhood of Origny made it
+necessary for me to go on to Moy by train, on a quaint little railway
+worked chiefly by women, who act as station-mistresses, ticket-clerks,
+restaurant-keepers, and guards of the level crossings. The carriages
+were filled chiefly with anglers, and every little station had a gang
+of them armed with a prodigious number of rods and lines, and each
+carrying a pail with a brass lid. I gathered that the pails were empty
+almost without exception, as sport had been extremely bad, though
+numerous patient creatures with rod and line were still to be seen in
+the drizzling rain along the river, which is here broken into many
+backwaters, lying in flat land among scraggy pine woods and good green
+meadows. One sturdy fellow who, like his companions, bore his
+ill-fortune with a smiling face, averred that though he'd fished all
+day and caught nothing, he had bagged fifteen _broche_ the previous
+day between one o'clock and half-past two, and between three and five
+he had caught an unbelievable number of trout. Anglers are the same in
+all lands, I suspect.
+
+"Moy (pronounced Moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a
+château in a moat," as our author records. "The air was perfumed with
+hemp from neighbouring fields. At the 'Golden Sheep' we found
+excellent entertainment." I asked for the "Golden Sheep," and was
+directed to an establishment that was named the Hôtel de la Poste. I
+passed on and asked another villager, but he sent me back, as I found
+on following his instructions, to the same hotel. The postman put me
+right at length by explaining that the landlord had rechristened his
+house three months before in honour of the new post office across the
+way, a shoddy little building where I bought stamps from a middle-aged
+woman next morning. The landlady of the hotel, who might pass in every
+particular, save the myopia, for the "stout, plain, short-sighted,
+motherly body, with something not far short of a genius for cookery,"
+described by R. L. S., agreed with me that her husband had made a sad
+mistake in dropping the old sign of the "Collier d'Or," "but he would
+have his own way, and there you are!" If I could have got the
+fellow--a fat, jolly mortal--to understand that to have the name of
+his hotel in a book by R. L. S. was an honour worth living up to,
+perhaps the old sign would have been fished out, regilded and placed
+in its old position. But he had not been the _patron_ thirty years
+ago, and he did not care a straw for anything so remote, though his
+wife had a gleam of pleasure when I quoted to her Stevenson's note:
+"Sweet was our rest in the 'Golden Sheep' at Moy."
+
+It is a progressive place, although it seems to go to bed at eight
+o'clock, for there is a good supply of electric light--furnished by
+water power, of course--in the hotel and other establishments; but not
+a solitary street lamp to pierce the blue-black of an autumn night. I
+must tell you that I was the only guest at the inn, yet a splendid
+dinner was prepared for me. Soup, fish with mayonaise, fillet of beef
+with mushrooms, green haricots _au beurre_, cold chicken, and a
+delicious salad of white herbs with a suspicion of garlic, a sweet
+omelet, pears, grapes, cheese, bread and butter, and, if I had cared,
+a whole bottle of red wine. An excellent _café noir_ followed, in the
+_estaminet_, where my hostess apologised for lighting only one
+electric lamp "_pour l'economie, vous savez_." My bedroom was
+commodious and well-appointed, and I had a good French _petit
+dejeuner_ next morning. The bill? Three shillings and ninepence, I
+declare! _Pour l'economie!_ Madame, I sympathise, and some day I must
+return to make a visit more profitable to you.
+
+
+XV.
+
+From Moy to La Fère is a very short journey even by the river, but the
+canoeists had lingered till late afternoon before leaving the former
+place, which "invited to repose," and it was dark when they got to La
+Fère in their chronic state of dampness. "It was a fine night to be
+within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows." They
+had heard that the principal inn at the place was a particularly good
+one, and cheery pictures of their comfortable state there arose in
+their minds as they stowed their canoes and set forth into the town,
+which lies chiefly eastward of the river, and is enclosed by two great
+lines of fortification. But they reckoned without their hostess! The
+lady of the inn mistook them for pedlars, and rushed them back into
+the dismal night. "Out with you--out of the door!" she screeched.
+"_Sortez! Sortez! Sortez par la porte!_" Stevenson's picture of the
+incident is full of sly humour, but the feelings of the travellers
+must indeed have been poignant. "We have been taken for pedlars
+again," said the baronet, "Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in
+reality!" says his companion of the pen. "Timon was a philanthropist
+alongside of him." He prayed that he might never be uncivil to a
+pedlar. But after all, it was for the best. That cosy inn would not
+have afforded the essayist such interesting matter for reflection as
+he found at "la Croix de Malte," a little working-class _auberge_ at
+the other end of the town, where the Porte Notre-Dame gives exit to
+the straggling suburbs.
+
+ [Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, NOYON]
+
+ [Illustration: HÔTEL DU NORD, NOYON
+
+ _Where the travellers stayed_
+
+ "The Hotel du Nord lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast of
+ the church."--R. L. S.]
+
+
+XVI.
+
+There is no passage in the whole of _An Inland Voyage_ so moving, so
+simple in its intense humanity, as that wherein its author sets down
+in his own inimitable way his impressions of the humble folk who kept
+this inn. Scarcely hoping that I might be so fortunate as to find
+either of the Bazins alive, I asked at one of the numerous cafés
+opposite the great barracks, whence crashed forth the indescribable
+noise of a brass band practising for the first time together, if there
+was an inn in the town kept by one Bazin. To my delight I was told
+there was, and you may be sure I made haste to be there. I found the
+place precisely as Stevenson pictures it, noting by the way a tiny new
+Protestant chapel with the legend "Culte Evangélique" over its door, a
+cheering sight to Protestant eyes in so Catholic a country as the
+north of France.
+
+"Bazin, Restaurateur Loge à pied,"--there was the altered sign on the
+cream-coloured walls of the house. In the common room of the little
+inn, which was full of noisy reservists that memorable night when the
+canoeists sought shelter there, I found two or three rough but
+honest-looking fellows drinking, while a grey-haired woman, pleasant
+and homely of appearance, sat at lunch with a young woman and a youth,
+the latter wearing glasses and being in that curious condition of
+downy beard which we never see in England. I stood on the sandy floor
+by the little semi-circular bar, with its shining ranks of glasses,
+waiting the attention of a young woman who was serving the customers
+with something from an inner room, when the old lady, looking up at me
+through her spectacles, asked what I wanted. "To speak with the
+_patron_," I replied. "Well?" she said. "Have I the pleasure of
+addressing Madame Bazin?" I asked, and on her answering with a slight
+show of uneasiness, I proceeded to explain that I had come to see the
+inn out of interest in a celebrated English author, who had once
+stayed there and had written so charmingly about Madame and Monsieur
+Bazin. In an instant the old lady and the younger folk were agitated
+with pleasure, and, to my surprise, they knew all about the long-ago
+visit of R. L. S. and his friend. "Perhaps he was your papa," Madame
+suggested as the likeliest reason for my having come so far on a
+matter so sentimental. And the good soul's eyes brimmed with tears
+when she told me that her husband had been dead these three years.
+Stevenson had sent them a copy of his book, and they had got the
+passage touching the voyagers' stay at the inn translated by a young
+friend at college, so that worthy old Bazin had not been suffered to
+pass away without knowing how he and his good wife had ministered to
+the heart of one of the best beloved writers of his generation. You
+will remember Stevenson's beautiful reference to these worthy people.
+But let me quote it, for it may be read many times with increase of
+profit:
+
+"Bazin was a tall man, running to fat; soft spoken, with a delicate,
+gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself,
+having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type
+of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling, disputatious fellow at
+Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative
+painter in his youth. He had delighted in the museums in his youth,
+'One sees there little miracles of work,' he said; 'that is what makes
+a good workman; it kindles a spark.' We asked him how he managed in La
+Fère. 'I am married,' he said, 'I have my pretty children. But,
+frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night I pledge a pack
+of good enough fellows who know nothing,' ... Madame Bazin came out
+after a while; she was tired with her day's work, I suppose; and she
+nestled up to her husband, and laid her head upon his breast. He had
+his arm about her, and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. I
+think Bazin was right, and he was really married. Of how few people
+can the same be said!
+
+"Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were charged
+for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But
+there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk, nor for
+the pretty spectacle of their married life. And there was yet another
+item uncharged. For these people's politeness really set us up again
+in our own esteem. We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of
+insult was still hot in our spirits, and civil usage seemed to restore
+us to our position in the world.
+
+"How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses
+continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still
+unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good
+as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? Perhaps
+they also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them
+in my manner?"
+
+ [Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST
+
+ "We had the superb east end before our eyes all morning from the
+ window of our bedroom."--R. L. S.]
+
+Is that not a lovely monument to have? Many of us who have made a
+greater clatter in the world than old Bazin will be less fortunate
+than he in this respect. And you see that although he had little
+affection for La Fère, he lived five-and-twenty quiet years there
+after Stevenson came his way. Yet not, in one sense, quiet, as the
+bugles are for ever braying, and even the street boys whistle barrack
+calls instead of music-hall ditties. As Madame told me, the town
+exists solely for the military, and we may be sure that it is none the
+sweeter on that account. But her little inn struck me as a wholesome
+and entirely innocent establishment. Those "pretty children" are men
+and women now, and the young man with the nascent whiskers, whom I
+took to be a clerk in the town, was a grandson of the old folk. Not a
+feature of the _auberge_ has changed, except that the Maltese Cross,
+having served its day, has been taken down. Stevenson--who has lighted
+a little lamp of fame on this humble shrine--and Sir Walter Simpson
+and old Bazin have all passed away, while children's children sit in
+the old seats; truly the meanest works of man's hands are more
+enduring than man himself. Madame Bazin, to my regret, made a quick
+effort to throw aside her apron, and needlessly to tidy her bodice,
+when I asked her to face the camera. She was caught in the act by the
+instantaneous plate. Even here, you see, the apron signifies
+servitude, and must not appear in pictures; yet it and the cap, which
+latter I have seldom seen north of Paris, are the only redeeming
+features of the country Frenchwoman's dress. The women of rural France
+give one the impression of being in permanent mourning, and
+consequently, when they do go into real mourning, they have to
+emphasise the fact with ridiculous yards of flowing crape. Madame
+Bazin had never heard of Stevenson's death, and I felt curiously
+guilty of an ill deed in telling her about that grave in far Samoa.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+The Oise runs through a stretch of pastoral country south of La Fère,
+known as "the Golden Valley," but a strath rather than a valley in
+character. It was a grey day on which I journeyed, and little that was
+golden did I see. But the quaint old town of Noyon, as grey and hoar
+as any in France, is rich in the gold of history; "a haunt of ancient
+peace." It stands on a gentle hill, about a mile away from the river,
+and is one of the cleanest of the old French towns that I have
+visited, reminding me somewhat of Lichfield; in atmosphere, I imagine,
+rather than in any outward resemblance, since I would be at a loss to
+point to the likeness if I were asked. R. L. S. had no more agreeable
+resting-place on all his voyage than at Noyon. The travellers put up
+at a very prosperous-looking hostelry, the Hôtel du Nord, which stands
+withdrawn a little way from the east end of the grand old
+cathedral--the glory of Noyon, and one of the gems of early French
+Gothic, though perhaps the least known to English tourists.
+
+Seldom in France do we find the cathedral so regally free of
+surrounding buildings. No shabby structures lean unworthy heads
+against its old grey walls, and where, on the north side, the canons'
+library, with its crumbling timbers of the fifteenth century, nestles
+under the wing of the church, the effect is entirely pleasing. At the
+west front, too, where there is a spacious close, with well-cared-for
+houses and picturesque gateways, one has a feeling of reverence which
+the surroundings of French cathedrals so often fail to inspire. There
+is a pleasant touch of humour in Stevenson's description of the
+exterior of the beautiful apse:
+
+"I have seldom looked on the east end of a church with more complete
+sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and settles down
+broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some great old
+battleship. Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases which figure for the
+stern lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just
+appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were
+bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a
+hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At any moment a
+window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and
+proceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail the sea no
+longer ... but this, that was a church before ever they were thought
+upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise.
+The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for
+miles around and certainly they have both a grand old age."
+
+Inside the cathedral he found much to engage his mind, and the
+somewhat perfunctory performances of certain priests jarred with the
+noble serenity of the building. "I could never fathom how a man dares
+to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say that
+will not be an anti-climax?" But, on the whole, he "was greatly
+solemnised," and he goes on to say: "In the little pictorial map of
+our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves and sometimes
+unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon Cathedral figures on a
+most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department.
+I can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my
+elbow, and hear '_Ave Maria, ora pro nobis_,' sounding through the
+church. All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior memories,
+and I do not care to say more about the place. It was but a stack of
+brown roofs at the best, where I believe people live very reputably in
+a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun
+is low, and the five bells are heard in all quarters telling that the
+organ has begun. If ever I join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate
+to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise."
+
+ [Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT
+
+ "The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us
+ the five bells hanging in their loft."--R. L. S.]
+
+This pretty fancy of his need lose none of its prettiness when we know
+that Noyon has not had a bishop since the Revolution, when the
+cathedral became a dependency of the Bishop of Beauvais, though it had
+been a bishopric so long ago as the year 531. But I am sorry R. L. S.
+was evidently not aware that when at Noyon he was in the town where
+John Calvin was born in 1709, his father being procurator-fiscal and
+secretary of the diocese; for surely here was an opening for some real
+Stevensonian _obiter scripta_? The beautiful old Town House, of Gothic
+and Renaissance architecture, dates back to the end of the fifteenth
+century, but all the ancient buildings of Noyon fall long centuries
+short of its history in age, as King Pippin was crowned here in 752,
+and his infant son Carloman was at the same time created King of
+Noyon, while in 771 the town saw the coronation of Pippin's eldest
+son, the mighty Charlemagne, no less.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+The last wet day of the voyagers was that on which they set out from
+Noyon. "These gentlemen travel for pleasure?" asked the landlady of
+the little inn at Pimprez. "It was too much. The scales fell from our
+eyes. Another wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into
+the train." Happily, "the weather took the hint," and they paddled and
+sailed the rest of the voyage under clear skies. At Compiègne they
+"put up at a big, bustling hotel, where nobody observed our presence."
+My impression of the famous town scarcely justified this, as in the
+day that I lingered there I seemed to meet everybody a dozen times
+over, and the company at a little café chantant in the evening was
+like a gathering of old friends, so many of the faces were familiar.
+Yet the town is populous, having some 17,000 inhabitants (about 2,000
+of whom are English residents), and I was prepared for busier streets
+than I found.
+
+There can be few towns in France more agreeable to live in. It is
+pleasantly situated on the river Oise, here wide and lively with
+barge-traffic, and spanned by an elegant bridge. The older town lies
+south of the river in a sort of amphitheatre; its streets are narrow
+and tortuous, but with bright shops and cafés in the neighbourhood of
+the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, while the fashionable suburbs extend,
+in splendid quiet avenues, eastward and south from the centre of the
+town, by the historic palace built in Louis XV.'s reign and the Petit
+Parc, which is really very large. While a great many of the English
+residents have chosen the town for the same reason that my hostess at
+Moy put on one electric light--_pour l'economie, vous savez_--together
+with its healthy and beautiful surroundings in the great forest of
+Compiègne, many more are there for the employment afforded by the
+important felt hat factory of Messrs. Moore, Johnson & Co., whose
+commodious works stand near the station on the north of the river.
+Despite its shops, its business prosperity, its red-legged soldiers,
+its visitors, Compiègne is dull enough of an evening, and the brightly
+lighted but almost empty cafés leave one wondering how the business
+pays.
+
+"My great delight in Compiègne," says inland voyager, "was the
+town-hall. I doted upon the town-hall. It is a monument of Gothic
+insecurity, all turreted and gargoyled, and slashed and bedizened with
+half a score of architectural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt
+and painted, and in a great square panel in the centre, in black
+relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with
+hand on hip and head thrown back. There is royal arrogance in every
+line of him; the stirruped foot projects insolently from the frame;
+the eye is hard and proud; the very horse seems to be treading with
+gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have the breath of the
+trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the front of the
+town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his people.
+
+"Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of
+a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each
+one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the
+hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiègne. The
+centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt
+trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like
+cavaliers. As the quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look
+knowingly one to the other; and then, _kling_ go the three hammers on
+the three little bells below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous,
+from the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from
+their labours with contentment.
+
+"I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and
+took care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that
+even the 'Cigarette,' while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was
+more or less a devotee himself. There is something highly absurd in
+the exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop.
+They would be more in keeping in a glass case before a Nürnberg clock.
+Above all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people
+are snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these
+ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling
+moon? The gargoyles may, fitly enough, twist their ape-like heads;
+fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion
+in an old German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be
+put away in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the
+children are abroad again to be amused."
+
+ [Illustration: COMPIÈGNE TOWN HALL
+
+ "My great delight in Compiègne was the Town Hall."--R. L. S.]
+
+
+XIX.
+
+There is but little interest in the remaining stages of Stevenson's
+journey; not because the towns through which the canoeists now passed
+are less worthy of note than any already described, but for the ample
+reason that R. L. S. had, in some measure, lost his earlier delight in
+the voyage. He pretends that on the broading bosom of the Oise the
+canoes were now so far away from the life along the riverside, that
+they had slipped out of touch with rural folk and rural ways. But this
+is not strictly true, when we know that the river, as far as Pontoise,
+is seldom greatly wider than the canals on which the _Arethusa_ and
+the _Cigarette_ had set out with high hopes of adventure a fortnight
+before. The towns are quaint and sleepy. The voyagers were nearing the
+end, the river ran smooth, the sky was bright, and a packet of letters
+at Compiègne had set them dreaming of home. Here was the secret; the
+spell was broken; their appetite for adventure had been slaked; every
+mile of easy-flowing water was taking them not away to unknown things,
+but homeward to familiar ones.
+
+Pont Sainte Maxence, the end of their first stage below Compiègne, is
+a featureless little town, the Oise making a brave show through the
+centre of it, and I do not suspect its church of any stirring history.
+R. L. S. found its interior "positively arctic to the eye." It was
+here he noticed the withered old woman making her orisons before all
+the shrines; "like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view
+of the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in
+a great variety of heavenly securities." I passed through Creil and
+Précy in the afternoon, following close to the river, which now
+skirts a country of gentle hills on the east, but westward fringes a
+vast level plain, with nothing but groves of poplar to break the line
+of the distant horizon.
+
+
+XX.
+
+In the gloaming I arrived at Pontoise, where I was told a fête was in
+progress; but the only signs of hilarity were two booths for the sale
+of pastries and sweet stuffs on the square in front of the station,
+and one small boy investing two sous in a greasy-looking puff. The
+rues of Pontoise have high-sounding names, but they are dull beyond
+words, though only eighteen miles away the "great sinful streets" of
+Paris are gleaming with their myriad lights.
+
+Pontoise in the daylight might have been different; but seen in the
+dusk, I decided upon the eight o'clock train to Paris, and so ended my
+pilgrimage. Nor did I feel any lowering enthusiasm at the end, for
+Stevenson has nothing to tell us of the place beyond saying, "And so a
+letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the last
+time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them,
+through rain and sunshine, for so long." He has not a word for the
+twelfth-century church of St. Maclou, his "brither Scot," or the tomb
+of St. Gautier at Nôtre Dame de Pontoise.
+
+ [Illustration: THE OISE AT PONTOISE
+
+ [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY]
+
+ "At Pontoise we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river
+ of Oise that had faithfully piloted them through rain and sunshine so
+ long."--R. L. S.]
+
+"You may paddle all day long," he concludes; "but it is when you come
+back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that you find
+Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most beautiful
+adventures are not those we go to seek." Yet he was ever an adventurer
+in search of beauty, and who shall say his quest was vain?
+
+
+
+
+"The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"
+
+ "After repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living
+ for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed,
+ constructed, and triumphantly brought home."--R. L.
+ STEVENSON.
+
+
+I.
+
+There will, of course, be differences of opinion as to which is the
+town most worthy of this description; but there is surely no better
+judge than Mr. Joseph Pennell, who has seen every place of any
+historic or natural attraction on the Continent, and whose taste for
+the picturesque none will call in question. He is the author of the
+phrase that heads this chapter, as applied to the little-known town of
+Le Puy, "chief place" of the Department of Haute Loire in the south of
+France. It is one of the few towns that have more than justified the
+mental pictures I had formed of them before seeing the real thing. But
+Le Puy is not only the most conceivably picturesque of towns; it is
+deeply interesting in its character and history, no less than in its
+appearance.
+
+With the exception of Mr. Pennell, and among a circle of people who
+have travelled much in France, I have met none who have ever visited
+Le Puy. A young English governess to whom I spoke at a little
+Protestant temple in the town had been staying there for close upon a
+year, and had not met a single English visitor; so it would appear one
+has an opportunity here to write of a place that is still untrampled
+by the tourist hordes that devastate fair Normandy.
+
+There are many and excellent reasons why few English or American
+tourists make their way to this quaint and beautiful town of the
+French highlands. It lies 352 miles by rail from Paris, and can only
+be reached by a fatiguing journey in trains that seem to be playing at
+railways, and have no serious intention of arriving anywhere. A good
+idea of the roundabout railway service will be gathered from the fact
+that the actual distance of the town from Paris is nearly 100 miles
+less than the length of the railway journey. It can be reached by
+leaving the Mediterranean line at Lyons and continuing for the best
+part of a day on tiresome local trains; or via Orleans and Clermont
+Ferrand, which would surely require the best part of two days. It was
+by the latter route, and in easy stages, that I first arrived there
+in the early evening of a grey June day four years ago.
+
+Between Clermont Ferrand and Le Puy the railway traverses some of the
+most beautiful scenery in Europe, but nothing that one sees on the way
+prepares one for the sensation of the first glimpse of this wonderful
+mountain-town. The train has been steadily puffing its slow way by
+green valleys and pine-clad hills, across gorges as deep as the
+deepest in Switzerland, and past little red-roofed hamlets for hours,
+when suddenly, as it seems, a great peak thrusts itself heavenward,
+carrying on its back a mass of tiny buildings, and on the top of all
+an immense statue of the Virgin. Then another seems to spring up from
+the valley, holding a church upon its head, and the whole country now,
+as far as eye can reach, is studded with great conical hills thrown up
+in some far-off and awful boiling of earth. Curiously, the train seems
+turning tail on this wonderful scene, and one by one the different
+objects that had suddenly attracted our attention are lost to view,
+while we pursue a circuitous route, which in a quarter of an hour
+brings them all into view again, and presently we have arrived at the
+station of Le Puy, by the side of the little river Dolezon, between
+which and the broader Borne extends the hill whereon the town is
+built.
+
+
+II.
+
+The modern part of the town lies close to the railway in the level of
+the valley, and as there is a population of more than 20,000 people,
+the life of the streets is brisk enough to suggest a town of five
+times that size in England. Along the Avenue de la Gare, the Boulevard
+St. Jean, and the Rue St. Haon we go, wary of the electric trams, to
+our hotel opposite the spacious Place du Breuil, where spouts a
+handsome fountain to the memory of a local metal-worker who furnished
+the town with its beautiful Musée Crozatier, and where the elegant
+architecture of the Municipal Theatre, the Palais de Justice and the
+Préfecture supply a touch of modern dignity that contrasts not
+unpleasantly with the ancient and natural grandeur of the town.
+
+ [Illustration: LE PUY: CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE FROM PLACE DU
+ BREUIL]
+
+I have stayed in many a strange hotel, but that of the "Ambassadeurs,"
+whither we repaired, is perhaps the most uncommon in my experience. It
+was reached from the main street through a long, dark tunnel, opening
+at the end into a badly-lighted court, whence a flight of stairs gave
+entrance to the hotel building, which inside was like an old and
+partially-furnished barracks, with wide stone stairs and gloomy
+passages eminently adapted for garrotting. But the bedroom was
+commodious, and its windows gave on another market-place, where had
+been the original frontage of the hotel. For all its cheerless
+appearance, the "Ambassadeurs" was by no means uncomfortable, and,
+needless to say, the cooking was excellent.
+
+There are some towns that ask of you only to wander their streets, and
+others that challenge you to closer acquaintance with their sights.
+Paris or Brussels, for example, pours its bright life through
+boulevard and park, and you are charmed to walk about with no urgent
+call to any place in particular; but who can linger in Princes Street
+of Edinburgh with the grey old castle inviting him to climb up to it,
+or the Calton Hill boldly advertising itself with its mock Roman
+remains? Le Puy has both the charm of the quaintest kinds of street
+life and the challenge of its rare and curious monuments.
+
+One has a restless feeling, a sense of things that "must be done,"
+when one catches a glimpse of the stately old cathedral standing high
+on the hill, and the massive Rock of Corneille with the great figure
+of Notre Dame de France on top, or the church of St. Michel pricking
+up so confidently on its isolated rock. The natural curiosity of man
+is such that he cannot be content until he has clambered to these and
+other high places in and around Le Puy. One makes first for the
+cathedral, and a bewildering labyrinth of ancient and evil-smelling
+lanes has to be wandered through before the building is reached. These
+little streets are all paved with cobbles of black lava, and many of
+the houses are built in part of the same material. Their dirtiness is
+unqualified, and yet the people seem to live long amid their squalor,
+for at every other door we note women of old years busy with their
+needles and pillows making the lace, which is one of the chief
+industries of the town.
+
+
+III.
+
+The nearer we come to the cathedral the more difficult is it to
+observe its general proportions, and, indeed, it can only be seen to
+advantage from one or other of the neighbouring heights. But it is a
+building that, in almost any position, would still be remarkable, as
+it is a striking example of Romanesque architecture. The great porch
+is reached by a splendid flight of steps, sixty in number, where in
+the second week of August each year pilgrims come in their thousands
+to kneel and worship the Black Virgin, the chief glory of the town in
+the eyes of its inhabitants. The builders of the cathedral have
+striven to combine dignity and austerity, and the impression which
+the outside of the building makes upon the visitor is strangely at
+variance with the flummery that surrounds the worship of the Black
+Virgin within. One feels that the men who back in the twelfth century
+reared these massive walls and built this beautiful cloister had not
+their lives dominated by a cheap and ugly wooden doll such as their
+fellows of to-day bow down before. We found the sacristan a young man
+of most amiable disposition; so friendly indeed that on one of our
+subsequent visits, and during the office of High Mass, when he was
+attending upon the celebrant, he nodded familiarly to us on
+recognising us among the congregation. If the truth must be told, we
+were more interested in the contents of the sacristy than in the
+cathedral itself. Here were stored many rare and beautiful examples of
+ancient wood-carving, picture frames, missals, altar vessels, and,
+above all, a manuscript Bible of the ninth century. This
+last-mentioned we were shown only on condition that we would tell no
+one in the town. Then opening a great oaken cupboard, he produced
+first a brass monstrance, similar to the usual receptacle for the
+consecrated wafer of the Eucharist, but containing instead behind the
+little glass disc a tiny morsel of white feather sewn to a bit of
+cloth.
+
+"This," said he, "is a piece of the wing of the angel who visited Joan
+of Arc."
+
+"Indeed," I remarked, with every evidence of surprise, "and who got
+hold of the feather first?"
+
+"The mother of Joan," he replied, as though he were giving the name of
+his tailor; and he proceeded to describe with much circumstance and
+detail the wonderful things that had been done by this bit of feather.
+"It is, M'sieu, an object of the greatest veneration, and has
+attracted pilgrims from far parts of France. It has cured the most
+terrible diseases; it has brought riches to those who were poor; it
+has brought children to barren women,"--and many other wonders I have
+forgotten.
+
+ [Illustration: MARKET DAY AT LE PUY, SHOWING TYPES OF THE AUVERNGATS]
+
+ [Illustration: LACEMAKERS AT LE PUY]
+
+In a very similar setting he showed us a tiny thorn. "This, M'sieu, is
+a thorn from the crown that Jesus wore on the Cross," and while we
+were still gazing upon the sacred relic he produced a small box sealed
+with red wax and having a glass lid, behind which was preserved a good
+six inches of "the true Cross." I thought of a Frenchman whom I had
+met at an hotel recently--an unbelieving fellow--who said that there
+was as much wood of "the true Cross" preserved in the churches of
+France as would make a veritable ladder into heaven. Most wonderful of
+all, the sacristan dived his hand into a sort of cotton bag, and
+produced a Turkish slipper, worn and battered, but probably no more
+than fifty years old. The good man handled the thing as if it had
+been a cheap American shoe he was offering for sale. Then looking us
+boldly in the face, he said, "_Voici, le soulier de la Sainte
+Vierge_." The shoe of the holy Virgin! One did one's best to be
+overcome with emotion, but I claim no success in that effort. The
+ecclesiastical showman drew our attention to the pure Oriental
+character of the workmanship of the sacred slipper, but I declare
+frankly that it was not until the Protestant pastor of the town
+mentioned the fact next day that I realised that the shoe was "a No.
+9!" Among the other contents of the sacristy we noted two maces, one
+of elaborate design richly ornamented in silver, and the other of
+plain wood only slightly carved. We were told they were carried in
+funeral processions, "the ornamental one for people of good family and
+the plain one for common folk." Oh, land of liberty, equality,
+fraternity!
+
+After exhibiting to us the costly vestments of the bishops, canons,
+and other dignitaries of the church, the sacristan came with us to
+point out the far-famed Black Virgin of the cathedral, which a first
+inspection of the interior had failed to reveal to us. We now found it
+to be a small and ugly image fixed above the high altar. It was hardly
+bigger than a child's doll, and was dressed in a little coat of rich
+brocade. From the middle of the idol a smaller head, presumably that
+of the Holy Child, projected through the cloth, and this, like the
+head of the larger figure, wore a heavy crown of bright gilt. I do not
+pretend to remember one tithe of the miracles attributed to this most
+venerated object by our good friend, but I know at least that he
+assured me it had burned for thirty-six hours during the Revolution
+without being consumed, and had thrice been thrown by sacrilegious
+hands into the river Borne, only to reappear mysteriously in its place
+over the altar. This story does not run on all fours with the curt
+description of the image given by M. Paul Joanne in his guide to the
+Cevennes--"an imitation of the old Madonna destroyed in the
+Revolution." It is eminently a case in which "you pays your money and
+you takes your choice." I reckoned the entertainment provided by the
+sacristan cheap at a franc.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Enough, perhaps, has been indicated to give some idea of the
+superstitious character of the people of Le Puy. Nowhere in France
+have I found so many evidences of mediæval superstition; the Black
+Virgin is throned supreme in the minds of the people, and, unlike most
+French communities--if we except the priest-ridden peasantry of
+Brittany--the men-folk of Le Puy seem to be as devoted as their women
+to the church. The black coats of the clergy swarm in street and
+alley. In the town itself there are many institutions packed with
+young priests, and some little way out, on the banks of the Borne,
+there is a training school as large as a military barracks, with the
+pale faces of black-gowned youths peeping from many windows. Almost
+every conceivable type of priest is to be encountered here, from the
+gaunt, ascetic enthusiast to the fat and ruby-nosed Friar Tuck. The
+people of the southern highlands, like the old-fashioned folk of
+Scotland, have had for generations a passion to see at least one of
+their family in the priesthood, apart very often from any
+consideration of fitness, moral or intellectual. Here, as I should
+judge, is the reason for one's seeing so many coarse and ignorant
+faces among the priests of Le Puy.
+
+The gigantic figure of the Virgin crowning the rock of Corneille,
+behind the cathedral, is reached by a long and toilsome pathway, but
+the view from the top--for the statue is hollow, and contains a
+stairway inside with numerous peep-holes--is perhaps unequalled in the
+whole of France. For mile upon mile the country stretches away in
+great billowy masses of dark mountain and green plain, and the little
+white houses with their red roofs are sprinkled everywhere around Le
+Puy, suggesting a sweet and wholesome country life that is hard to
+reconcile with the dark superstition of the town. This monument,
+however, is of little interest--a vulgar modern affair cast from 213
+guns taken at Sebastopol. More to our taste is the quaint little
+building called the Baptistry of St. John, which, standing near the
+cathedral, takes us back to the fourth century, and earlier still, for
+it is built on the foundation of an ancient Roman temple. You see, Le
+Puy was a flourishing Roman town when our forefathers in England were
+living in wattle huts. We have made some progress in England since
+those far-off days, but here, though changes rude and great have taken
+place, one may reasonably doubt whether there is much to choose
+between the present condition of Le Puy and that vanished past.
+
+ [Illustration: _Image of the Black Virgin in the Cathedral_]
+
+ [Illustration: _Remains of Roman Temple, Le Puy, with a fountain to
+ Virgin, a Calvary, and the Mairie_
+
+ LE PUY]
+
+
+V.
+
+Threading our way downhill among the filthy _ruelles_, we pass into
+the wide and modern Boulevard Carnot, where the Sunday market is being
+held and everything may be bought, from a tin-opener to a donkey, from
+a rosary to a cow. A spirited statue of the great La Fayette, who was
+born not far away, at the castle of Chavagnac, stands at the top of
+this street, where the new Boulevard Gambetta strikes westward with
+its clanging electric trams. Down near the river-side, where the
+market comes to an end, we visit the old church of the Dominicans,
+dedicated to St. Laurence, and in a dark and musty corner we are shown
+a tomb with a recumbent figure carved upon it. Here reposes, we are
+told, the dust of the greatest of the heroes of old France--none other
+than that mighty warrior Du Guesclin, memories of whom the wanderer in
+French by-ways meets with as often as the tourist in England comes
+upon a house that sheltered Charles II. after the battle of Worcester.
+There is every reason for believing that the valorous but ugly Du
+Guesclin--he was an "object of aversion" to his own parents--was
+buried at St. Denis, but my excellent M. Joanne assures me that this
+statue is an authentic likeness of the hero; and the _Encyclopædia
+Britannica_ (which in another place mentions St. Denis as the place of
+burial) says that the church of St. Laurence "contains the remains of
+Du Guesclin." What will you?
+
+The electric tram lands us at the suburb of Espaly, and from the high
+road we could almost throw a stone to the massive rock, with its
+castle-like walls enclosing on the top a little garden of trees. But
+it is another matter to pick our way, ankle-deep in mire, to the
+entrance-gate, through the hovels that surround it. Clustering to the
+rock we pass are buildings from which priests and "sisters" come and
+go with a surprising mingling of the sexes, and when we have climbed
+to the top a dark-eyed sister shows us for half a franc a collection
+of the most extraordinary Romish trash we have ever looked upon. The
+chapel is free to us, and within its incense-laden interior we find
+several comfortable priests poring over books or sitting with
+insensate stare at the candles burning on a particularly tawdry altar.
+The place is in a way unique, as the chapel is not a building at all,
+but is hewn out of the volcanic rock, being thus an artificial grotto
+consecrated to worship. Its rough walls are hung with votive tablets
+and studded with crude stuccos of many saints, giving it the
+appearance of a toy bazaar. Only recently the large bronze statue of
+St. Joseph that crowned the rock of Espaly, above the grotto-chapel,
+was blown down, and visitors are invited to contribute towards the
+cost of replacing it.
+
+A little distance away is the higher and more remarkable volcanic mass
+known as the Pic d'Aiguille, with a handsome and well-proportioned
+church upon its summit. One has to climb a long and winding footpath
+and then close on three hundred steps to reach the building, which we
+found quite deserted, some village lads doing the "cake-walk" around
+an angelic form with a box of donations to St. Michael, the patron
+saint of the deserted sanctuary. These _gamins_ also seemed to derive
+much pleasure from ringing the bell still hanging in the ancient
+tower. It was a matter of speculation why the priests should continue
+to use the stuffy and unwholesome grotto of St. Joseph, with this
+airy, noble building lying vacant. We can only suppose that the toil
+of climbing the higher rock is greater than their zeal. Near by the
+base of the Pic d'Aiguille one notices a curious conjunction of old
+paganism and modern mariolatry--an ancient temple of Diana flanked by
+a massive crucifix on the one hand and a modern Gothic fountain and
+shrine to the Virgin on the other.
+
+
+VI.
+
+After all, and somewhat unwillingly, I find that I have written rather
+of the religious side of this interesting town than of its
+picturesqueness. But sensational as the first impression of its unique
+and beautiful outlines undoubtedly is, it is not that, nor yet the
+quaint and entertaining habits of the people, that comes uppermost in
+the mind after some days' acquaintance with the place. One leaves Le
+Puy convinced, almost at a glance, of its claim to be considered the
+most picturesque town in Europe, but depressed with the abounding
+evidence that its people, despite their electric trams and their fine
+modern buildings, are still largely the thralls of darkest
+superstition. For the difference between the religion that here passes
+for Roman Catholicism and that we know by the same name in England is
+greater than the difference between the latter and the most
+Calvanistic Protestantism. To me, at least, Le Puy will be ever the
+city of the Black Virgin.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY]
+
+ [Illustration: HOUSE OF DU CHAYLA, AT PONT DE MONTVERT
+
+ "Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the
+ bridges of the town; and if you are curious you may see the
+ terrace-garden into which he dropped."--R. L. S.]
+
+
+
+
+The Country of the Camisards
+
+ "These are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of
+ the Cevennes."--R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+I.
+
+The word Camisard in the south of France, like Covenanter in Scotland,
+recalls
+
+ "Old, unhappy, far-off things,
+ And battles long ago."
+
+Both describe people who had much in common, for the Camisards were
+the Covenanters of France. The origin of the term need not detain us
+more than a moment. It is variously attributed to the "Children of
+God" having worn a _camise_, or linen shirt, as a sort of uniform; to
+_camisade_, which means a night attack, that having been a feature of
+their warfare; while some historians have derived it from _camis_, a
+road runner. Enough that it stands for a race of people whose
+devotion to the Reformed Faith, whose fearless stand for religious
+liberty, entitles them to rank among the heroes of Protestantism.
+
+As one may suppose that the general reader, however well informed, is
+likely to be somewhat hazy in his knowledge of the Camisards--unless,
+indeed, he has had the good fortune to read one of the later, as it is
+one of the best, of Mr. S. R. Crockett's romances, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_,
+which gives a vivid and moving picture of the Protestant rebellion in
+the Cevennes--it may be well that I set down at once a brief outline
+of the events which, two centuries ago, made these highlands of the
+South one of the historic regions in storied France.
+
+The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, was a transforming
+episode in the history of Europe. It represented the triumphant issue
+of the sinister policy of the Jesuits, who had long been scheming to
+undo the work of the Huguenot wars, whereby the rights of Protestants
+to hold public worship and to take part in the government of the
+country had been recognised as a sort of political compromise.
+
+The atrocities inflicted by the Roman Catholics on their
+fellow-citizens of the Protestant faith during the reign of terror,
+which began in October of 1685, need not be recalled; they are among
+the blackest pages in the annals of Romish tyranny. But we must know
+that in the mountainous regions of the south of France, where the work
+of the Reformation had been fruitful, and blessed in inverse ratio to
+the poverty of the people and the barrenness of their country, these
+hardy hill folk were too poor to quit their villages, and too devoted
+to their religious faith to submit meekly to the new order. Like all
+peoples whose lot it is to scrape a scanty living from a grudging
+soil, the inhabitants of the Cevennes resemble in many ways the
+Highlanders of Scotland and Wales. We find in them the same qualities
+of sturdy independence, patience, endurance; the same strain of
+gravity, associated with a deep fervour for the things that are
+eternal. Thus isolated in their mountain fastnesses, hemmed in by the
+ravening hordes of Catholicism and constituted authority, they
+determined to fight for the faith they valued more than life. In this
+hour of awful trial it was not surprising that, out of the frenzy of
+despair, strange things were born, and an era of religious hysteria
+began, simple women, poor ignorant men, children even, in great
+numbers, being thought to come under the direct inspiration of God,
+arising as "prophets" to urge the rude mountaineers into a holy war
+with "His Most Christian Majesty, Louis, King of France and
+Brittany."
+
+But although there had been many encounters of an irregular kind
+between the Camisards and the leagued officials of Pope and King in
+the closing years of the seventeenth century, it was not until that
+weird figure, Spirit Séguier, who has been called the "Danton of the
+Cevennes," planned the murder of the Archpriest du Chayla at the
+little town of Pont de Montvert, on the 23rd of July, 1702, that the
+first blow in the Protestant rebellion may be said to have been
+struck. Of this tragic event R. L. Stevenson writes:
+
+"A persecution, unsurpassed in violence, had lasted near a score of
+years, and this was the result upon the persecuted: hanging, burning,
+breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left their
+hoof-marks over all the country side; there were men rowing in the
+galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; and not a
+thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant."
+
+On the 12th of August, nineteen days after the murder of the
+Archpriest, the right hand of Séguier was stricken from his body, and
+he was burned alive at the spot where he had driven home the first
+knife into the oppressor of his people.
+
+ [Illustration: TWO VIEWS IN THE VILLAGE OF LA CAVALERIE
+
+ Scene of Mr. Crockett's romance "Flower-o'-the-Corn."]
+
+
+II.
+
+So began the war of the Camisards, for the faggots that burned the
+prophet only added to the fire he lighted when he struck at Du Chayla.
+Presently his place, as leader of the revolt, was taken by an old
+soldier named Laporte, who gave the rising a touch of military
+discipline, and soon the Camisards had many captains, all men who
+believed themselves endowed with the gift of prophecy.
+
+The Protestants of the Cevennes, thorough in every habit of life, took
+up their arms and set about the making of entrenchments and works of
+defence with the determination of men prepared to fight to a finish.
+It is easy for us in these peaceful days to deprecate their vengeful
+deeds, but let us remember, in charity, that if they met
+blood-thirstiness with the same, they were maddened by a system of
+oppression so brutal as to be almost beyond our belief. Their leader,
+Roland, issued a dispatch which for callous suggestion has seldom been
+equalled in the annals of war: "We, Count and Lord Roland,
+Generalissimo of the Protestants of France, we decree that you have to
+make away with, in three days, all the priests and missionaries who
+are among you, under pain of being burned alive, yourselves as well as
+they."
+
+But the most picturesque figure among the Camisards was introduced
+when Jean Cavalier, a baker's apprentice at Geneva, returned to his
+native mountains, and by sheer force of a military genius to which
+history offers few parallels became the chief leader of the Camisards
+while still in his teens. The story of his life is romantic beyond the
+invention of any novelist. Not only did he succeed over a period of
+three years in defending many important parts of the Cevennes from
+organised attacks, but in the course of that time he met and defeated
+successively Count de Broglie and three Marshals of France--Montrevel,
+Berwick, and Villars--although at one time there was a force of 60,000
+soldiers in the field against him. At Nages, a little village in the
+southern Cevennes, he encountered Montrevel, and, outnumbered by five
+to one, he succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in effecting a
+successful retreat with more than two thirds of his thousand men. Not
+even the blessings of the Pope on the royalist troops, and on the
+"holy militia," raised among the Catholic population, brought the
+submission of the Camisards one day nearer. Commander after commander
+retired baffled, and Montrevel's policy of extermination--during which
+four hundred and sixty-six villages in the Upper Cevennes were
+burned, and most of the population put to the sword--left Cavalier,
+still a mere lad, master of the southward mountains, threatening even
+to attack the great city of Nimes.
+
+Marshal Villars, a renowned soldier, recognised the hopelessness of
+continuing the methods of barbarism pursued by his predecessors, and
+succeeded in concluding an honourable peace with Cavalier in the
+summer of 1704, whereby the Camisards were granted certain important
+rights affecting the liberty of conscience and of person. But Roland
+and the more fanatical section of the Protestant army held out until
+January of 1705, their battle-cry being, "No peace until we have our
+churches," Cavalier's treaty having recognised the right to assemble
+outside walled towns, but not in churches.
+
+It is this extraordinary baker's apprentice--who at twenty-four had
+concluded a long and desperate war, in which he played a part entitling
+him to be remembered with national heroes such as William Tell and Sir
+William Wallace--that Mr. S. R. Crockett has made the chief figure in
+his brilliant romance of the Cevennes, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_.
+
+
+III.
+
+The little-known region of the Causses is "the Cevennes of the
+Cevennes," but Stevenson in his travels did not visit the innermost
+Cevennes, and was during most of his journey only on the outskirts of
+the real country of the Camisards. The chief of these great plateaux
+is the Causse de Sauveterre, which extends south-west from the town of
+Mende for upwards of forty miles, and is in parts at least twenty
+miles wide. It is divided from the Causse Méjan on the south by the
+splendid gorges of the river Tarn, and due south of the Méjan, with
+the beautiful valley of the Jonte between, lies the Causse Noir, some
+twenty miles east and west, and ten from the Jonte on its north to the
+no less beautiful glen on its south, where flows the river Dourbie.
+Still southward, and with only this waterway dividing, extends the
+splendid mass of the Causse du Larzac, some thirty miles in length,
+from the neighbourhood of Millau to the ancient Roman town of Lodève,
+which boasted a continuous bishopric from the year 323 to the
+Revolution, and is now a bright and populous industrial centre. These
+are the more notable of the Causses, and all, no doubt, formed one
+mighty plateau in prehistoric times; but numerous swift flowing
+rivers have through the ages worn them asunder, producing a series of
+magnificent ravines that contain some of the finest scenery in France,
+and on whose sides we can trace the slow and steady work of the
+streams wearing down to their present courses through the limestone,
+the local name for which is _cau_, whence _causse_.
+
+ [Illustration: LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL
+
+ (_From a photograph by_ Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)]
+
+ [Illustration: ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE]
+
+To describe the character of the Camisard country, and to convey some
+idea of it to English readers, is no easy matter, since there is
+nothing in the British Islands, and little elsewhere in Europe, to
+which it may be readily compared. Yet the effort must be made, since
+the peculiar nature of the country is of first importance to the
+understanding of its people and their historic resistance of all the
+might of France two centuries ago.
+
+Conceive, then, a vast expanse of rugged and rock-strewn land,
+covering it may be an area of two or three hundred square miles, and
+terminating abruptly on every side in mighty ravines, or ending in
+precipitous cliffs, that look down on wide and fertile valleys, frown
+on smiling plains. This is what the word Causse stands for, and the
+wonder is that folk should be content to live in dreary little
+villages high up on these stony fields, when a thousand feet and more
+in the plains and valleys below rich and fruitful soil invites the
+husbandman. But so it is, and in this region of France we have the
+strange circumstance of two peoples, differing in many essentials of
+character, living within a day's walk of each other, and mingling but
+little in the intercourse of life. As you thread your way through the
+valleys of the Tarn, the Dourbie, or any of the other streams that
+follow the rifts between the Causses, you realise that up there among
+the clouds live people who have small commerce with their fellows in
+the valleys, and in such a town as Millau, whose inhabitants must look
+each day of their lives at the giant walls of the Causse Noir and the
+Larzac, upreared to the immediate east of their own paved streets,
+there are thousands who have never scaled these heights.
+
+Mr. Crockett gives us this graphic word-picture of the Larzac:
+
+"The surface of the Causse--once Yvette had attained to the higher
+levels--spread out before her, plain as the palm of a hand, save for
+those curiously characteristic rocks, which, apparently without
+connection with the underlying limestone, stand out like icebergs out
+of the sea, irregular, pinnacled, the debris of temples destroyed or
+ever foot of man trod there--spires, gargoyles, hideous monsters, all
+dejected in some unutterable catastrophe, and become more horrible in
+the moonlight, or, on the other hand, modified to the divine calm of
+the Bhudda himself, by some effect of illumination or trick of cloud
+umbration....
+
+"A wonderful land, this of the Causses, where the rain never comes to
+stay. Indeed, it might as well rain on a vast dry sponge, thirty miles
+across and four or five thousand feet in height. The sheep up there
+never drink. They only eat the sparse tender grass when the dew is
+upon it. Yet from their milk the curious cheese called Roquefort is
+made, which, being kept long in cool limestone cellars--the cellules
+of the stony sponge--puts on something of the flavour of the rock
+plants--thyme, juniper, dwarf birch, honeysweet heath--from which it
+was distilled."
+
+
+IV.
+
+A country better adapted to the exigencies of defence against an
+attacking army from the plains could not be imagined, for, as the
+novelist says in another passage, "It seemed impossible for any living
+thing to descend those frowning precipices. Even in broad daylight the
+task appeared more suited to goats than to men." The roads which now
+connect these great uplands with the lower country are marvels of
+engineering, and you can count as many as twenty or thirty "elbows"
+in the track, from the point at which it leaves the valley until it
+disappears over the edge of the table-land, the entire length of it
+being in view at one stroke of the eye. The task of ascending is
+laborious in the extreme, and much sitting at cafés, which is the
+habit of the townsfolk, does not equip them for the undertaking. Few
+wayfarers are encountered, and when the summit of the Causse is gained
+the signs of life are still meagre. The roads, now flat and dusty, lie
+like bright ribbons on a dull and melancholy stretch of earth. Here
+and there a lonely shepherd is seen tending a flock of shabby-looking
+sheep, that crop the sparse herbage in fields where stones are more
+plentiful than grass.
+
+Miss M. Betham-Edwards is one of the few writers who have visited this
+little-known corner of France, and in the following passage she refers
+to what is perhaps its most curious feature:
+
+ [Illustration: THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC
+
+ (_From a Photograph by_ Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)]
+
+"Another striking feature of the arid, waterless upper region is the
+_aven_, or yawning chasm, subject of superstitious awe and terror
+among the country people. Wherever you go you find the _aven_; in the
+midst of a field--for parts of this sterile soil have been laid under
+cultivation--on the side of a vertical cliff, of divers shapes and
+sizes: these mysterious openings are locally known as 'Trous
+d'enfer' (mouths of hell). Alike, fact and legend have increased the
+popular dread. It was known that many an unfortunate sheep or goat had
+fallen into some abyss, never, of course, to be heard of after. It was
+said that a jealous seigneur of these regions had been seen thus to
+get rid of his young wife--one tradition out of many. According to the
+country-folk of Padirac, the devil, hurrying away with a captured
+soul, was overtaken by St. Martin on horseback. A struggle, amid
+savage scenery, ensued for possession of the soul. 'Accursed saint,'
+cried Satan, 'thou wilt hardly leap my ditch'--with a tap of his heel
+opening the rock before them, splitting it in two--the enormous chasm,
+as he thought, making pursuit impossible. But St. Martin's steed
+leaped it at a bound, the soul was rescued, and the prince of
+darkness, instead of the saint, sent below."
+
+Many of the _avens_ have been explored by M. E. A. Martel, and his
+adventures in these underground tunnels and caves have rarely been
+equalled in modern exploration.
+
+
+V.
+
+The scene of _Flower-o'-the-Corn_, so far as it is laid in the
+Cevennes, occupies but a small part of that splendid chain of
+mountains, but it is perhaps the most picturesque part. Much of the
+action is centred in the little Camisard town of La Cavalerie, situate
+at an altitude of nearly 2,500 feet on the lonely plateau of the
+Larzac, some ten miles along the main road from Millau, a beautiful
+and important cathedral town in the valley of the Tarn. To-day, as in
+the past, the innkeeper is usually the man of most importance in these
+mountain towns, but I have visited no _auberge_ that would compare, in
+romantic situation, with that so graphically described by Mr. Crockett
+under the style of "le Bon Chrétien" at La Cavalerie:
+
+"To those unacquainted with the plan of such southern houses, it might
+have been remarkable how quickly the remembrance of the strange
+entrance-hall beneath was blotted out. At the first turn of the
+staircase the ammoniacal stable smell was suddenly left behind. At the
+second, there, in front of the ascending guest, was a fringed mat
+lying on the little landing. At the third Maurice found himself in a
+wide hall, lighted from the front, with an outlook upon an inner
+courtyard in which was a Judas-tree in full leaf, with seats of wicker
+and rustic branches set out. Here and there in the shade stood small
+round tables, pleasantly retired, all evidencing a degree of
+refinement to which Maurice had been a stranger ever since he left
+those inns upon the post-roads of England, which were justly held to
+be the wonder of the world."
+
+One fears that the "good old times" have disappeared from the Causses,
+as most of the inns, built, like many of the houses, in sunk positions
+by the roadside, so that one enters on the top flat, sometimes by way
+of a crazy wooden bridge, are sad advertisements of poverty. The
+houses are often like that in which Mr. Crockett's heroine lodged in
+the little Camisard town of St. Vernan, in the valley of the Dourbie,
+"built out like a swallow's nest over the abyss." For it is noteworthy
+that most of these highland villages cluster along the river courses,
+as though the hill-folk were fain to have the sound of the glad waters
+in their ears. In the valley of the Jonte I marvelled often at these
+"swallows' nests." Many of the cottages have a scrap of garden,
+surrounded by a wall not higher than three feet, from the base of
+which the cliff sweeps down at an acute angle to the river bed, six
+hundred feet below. Children play in these tiny eeries with as little
+concern as youngsters in a city court.
+
+Not all the surface of these great table-lands lies flat and
+stone-strewn; one will often come on dark forests of pines, and
+sometimes the woodman has a better return for his labour than the
+shepherd. But on every hand the conditions of life are primitive
+beyond anything in our own land. Here, more frequently than in his
+native Normandy, may we find the sullen clod depicted by Millet in the
+"Man with the Hoe." "Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox," as
+Markham has described him in his powerful poem. It is, indeed,
+difficult to realise that among these crumbling villages and beggarly
+fields we are in the heart of fair France.
+
+
+VI.
+
+There is little to choose between the Catholic and Protestant
+villages; all are more or less in a state of dilapidation, all have
+poverty written on their walls; but to mingle with the people and
+discuss affairs with them, quite apart from all questions of religion,
+is a sure and ready way to discover how great is the difference
+between the two classes. The one is usually a sullen and unintelligent
+mortal, tied neck and crop to the stony soil on which he has been
+born; the other bright, receptive of ideas, quick with life and hope,
+and, if he be old, happy in the knowledge that his sons have gone
+forth from this bare land equipped by the liberal training of the
+Protestant schools to take dignified part in the great life of the
+Republic. For you will find that even in the veritable strongholds
+of a debased and superstitious Catholicism all the important officials
+are Protestants.
+
+ [Illustration: MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR]
+
+ [Illustration: ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC]
+
+The Protestants of to-day are no unworthy descendants of the men whom
+Cavalier led against the forces of civil and religious tyranny, and
+though these lonely mountains shelter also many who are still willing
+slaves of the yoke which the sturdy "Sons of God" endeavoured to shake
+off for ever, the Camisards of two centuries ago did not fight and die
+in vain; their children's children are to-day the little leaven that
+may yet "leaven the whole lump."
+
+
+
+
+The Wonderland of France
+
+
+I.
+
+"Whatever you do, you must not miss the valley of the Tarn--the finest
+scenery in Europe." Thus wrote a celebrated novelist and traveller to
+me when sending some hints on my projected tour in the Cevennes, a
+district which to Mr. S. R. Crockett is almost as familiar as his own
+romantic Galloway. I have good reason to be grateful for his advice,
+as the river Tarn is the waterway through what I shall venture to call
+the Wonderland of France. A clever writer has observed that "there are
+landscapes which are insane," and truly in this little-known corner of
+southern France nature has performed some of her maddest, most
+fantastic freaks. Here she is seen in a mood more sensational than the
+weird imaginings of a Gustave Doré; there is no scenery that I have
+looked upon or read about in any other part of Europe comparable with
+this of the Tarn. In the old world at least it is unique, and we have
+to go for comparison to the renowned cañons of the Colorado.
+
+Not the least curious feature of the story of the Tarn, its awesome
+gorges and wondrous caverns, is the fact that less than thirty years
+ago the region was "discovered" to France by M. E. A. Martel, the
+celebrated grottologist, with as much éclat as it had been an island
+in an unknown sea. Of course, the whole district, like every other
+part of France, had long ago taken its place in history and romance;
+but although many a generation of peasant folk and monkish
+fraternities had lived out their lives in these southern fastnesses,
+the Tarn country-side had not before been explored by one in search of
+the picturesque or the wonders of Nature. Thus, in every sense of the
+word, M. Martel is to be reckoned a discoverer, and the surprise is
+that, despite a somewhat tiresome journey, there are so few English
+tourists who find their way to this enchanted land. The journey is no
+more fatiguing than that to Geneva or Lucerne, which in the summer
+months swarm with English visitors, and, for all their beauties,
+possess nothing to equal the natural glories of the Tarn.
+
+ [Illustration: ON THE TARN
+
+ "One sits as in a cockle shell on the Enchanted Sea, gliding along
+ magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour."]
+
+There are several ways of reaching this little-known corner of France,
+but the best is undoubtedly by way of Mende, a fine town 434 miles
+south of Paris, "chief place" of the Department of the Lozère. Mende,
+although one of the cleanest and brightest of the French towns, with a
+population of less than 10,000, and pleasantly situated in a wide
+green valley, with low and sparsely-timbered hills billowing on every
+side under a sky so blue and in atmosphere so clear that the eye seems
+to acquire an unusual power of vision, would scarcely be worth the
+journey for itself alone. But it is the real starting-place for the
+descent of the Tarn gorges, and it possesses many excellent hotels and
+an ample service of coaches for the journey across the great plateau
+of the Causse de Sauveterre to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about
+eighteen miles. This would be the most convenient route for the
+traveller who depended upon the train and coach for his locomotion,
+but those who, like the writer, make use of the bicycle, would be well
+advised to make Florac their starting-point, as not the least
+beautiful part of the river scenery lies between that pretty little
+town and Ste. Enimie.
+
+
+II.
+
+It fitted well with my plans one summer to explore a much longer reach
+of the Tarn than most visitors are in the habit of following, and I
+should have been sorry indeed to have missed any part of the journey.
+In company with another friend of the wheel, I struck eastward from
+Mende along the lovely valley of the Lot, and crossing the great
+mountain range that gives its name to the Department of the Lozère we
+first came upon the Tarn at Pont de Montvert, some fourteen miles
+north-east of Florac, at which point R. L. Stevenson began his
+acquaintance with the river. From this sleepy old town the river runs
+through a deep and narrow valley, the slopes thick with mighty
+chestnut trees, and the scenery in parts somewhat reminiscent of our
+Scottish Highlands, and totally unlike those reaches which, in its
+south-westerly course, render it unique among the rivers of Europe.
+For a few miles beyond Florac the aspect of the country is somewhat
+similar in kind, but on a more massive scale, the valley wider and
+more pastoral; but when one has reached the little town of Ispagnac,
+which sits snugly amid its fruitful orchards, the real character of
+the Tarn begins to reveal itself.
+
+It was after sunset when we had come thus far on our journey to Ste.
+Enimie, a distance of about seven miles from Florac, and never am I
+likely to forget the weird and thrilling impression of our passage
+from Ispagnac to Ste. Enimie, a matter of fifteen miles. The night
+comes quickly in that latitude, and as we advanced along the
+well-made road that follows the sinuous course of the river, at first
+mounting steadily until the noise of the water is heard but faintly
+far below, and then for mile upon mile gradually tending downward, the
+gloaming deepened into dark, and the gorge of the river, at all times
+awe-inspiring, took on in many a strange and mysterious shadow of the
+night a moving touch of Dantesque grandeur. We had left behind us all
+the tree-bearing slopes, and the river now ran in a great chasm of
+volcanic cliffs, shooting their fantastic pinnacles a thousand feet
+into the darkling sky, and presenting many an outline that might have
+been mistaken for the towers and bastions of some eerie stronghold.
+Not a soul was passed on all the miles of road, no sound was heard but
+the varying noise of the water, nothing moved in our path except an
+occasional bat, that zigzagged its noiseless flight across the road.
+One sat on the saddle with a tight hold on the handle bars, and kept
+as close as possible to the uprising rock, for towards the river was a
+sheer drop of some 500 feet, and only a low coping stood between us
+and disaster. So tortuous was the road, that, being at one time some
+little distance in advance of my companion, I awaited his approach,
+and could see the light of his lamp shoot out like a will-o'-the-wisp
+into the middle of an abyss, and then disappear in a hollow of the
+rocks, only to emerge again and flash upon an uncanny bridge across
+some gaping gully. For a considerable time we gazed enraptured on
+Venus, which is here seen with a radiance seldom witnessed in England,
+and seemed to lie like a glittering gem on the very brow of a mighty
+cliff. Presently summer lightning began to play along the riven lips
+of the valley, and continued at thrilling intervals to add a touch of
+dramatic intensity to a scene already sensational enough.
+
+The only place of habitation through which we passed was the little
+village of Prades, where the lighted window of a café with noise of
+merriment within, and the solemn gruntling of oxen in an open stable,
+gave one a little human encouragement though the street lay void and
+black. As you may suppose, it was with no small satisfaction that we
+at length wheeled into Ste. Enimie at half-past nine o'clock, and
+found mine host of the Hôtel de Paris delighted to welcome two belated
+voyagers.
+
+
+III.
+
+Ste. Enimie, which has a population of 1,000, is the chief town of its
+canton, and is cosily tucked away close by the river side in a great
+amphitheatre of hills and cliffs, the meeting-place of three important
+highways: that by which we had come, and the road across the
+Sauveterre from La Canourgue, and that across the other mighty
+plateau, the Causse Méjan. The town is of great antiquity, and is said
+to owe its origin to a certain princess named Enimie, daughter of
+Clotaire II., who, being tainted with leprosy, was cured by some
+waters at this place, and founded a monastery here at the close of the
+sixth century. This religious house became one of the richest in all
+Gévaudan, but was suppressed, like so many of its kind, at the time of
+the great Revolution. The remains of the building are still an
+interesting feature of the place, and high on the cliff above is the
+hermitage of the saint, a little chapel built about the cave in which
+she is supposed to have slept. The river is here crossed by a splendid
+bridge, which the builders were busy improving at the time of our
+visit.
+
+ [Illustration: A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN
+
+ _Showing the mass of the Causse Méjan rising on the left_]
+
+ [Illustration: IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN
+
+ "The river roars between precipices, that rise sheer and stupendous
+ from its brink."]
+
+While the mistress of the hotel was preparing what we later pronounced
+a most excellent meal, mine host was telling me surprising things in
+the dining-room, to which one gained access through a fine
+old-fashioned kitchen. With one of Taride's large scale maps before
+me, whereon was shown a "national road" right through the gorges of
+the Tarn to Millau, I asked for some particulars of the route, and was
+smilingly informed that it did not yet exist.
+
+"But it is here, shown by a thick red line, on this map."
+
+"Quite so, m'sieu; many cyclists come here with a map like that and
+think they can cycle all the way. But there is no road as yet, though
+in five years or six there will be one. The only way to descend the
+Tarn from here to Le Rozier is in a barque."
+
+Now, experience has made me doubtful of anything a hotel-keeper in a
+tourist resort will tell you about boats and coaches, for you never
+know to what extent he is financially interested in the matter, and he
+of the Hôtel de Paris was avowedly the agent of the company to whom
+belong the boats used for the descent of the river. Although his hotel
+had a modern and well-appointed annexe--token of the growing
+popularity of the place where hotels are rapidly increasing--in person
+he resembled a brigand grown stout with easeful days, and one
+naturally grew more suspicious when he protested that it would not
+make the difference of a sou to him whether we went by boat or toiled
+ourselves to death across the mountains. A good friend at Florac--none
+other than the Free Church minister--had also assured us there was no
+road beyond Ste. Enimie, but that the boat charges were not dear. "Nor
+are they," said the hotel-keeper; "it is only thirty-six francs
+(thirty shillings) all the way, which is very cheap." We were unable
+to see eye to eye with him then, but subsequently came round to his
+opinion when we knew how much labour and skill could be purchased for
+this modest outlay.
+
+
+IV.
+
+You must know that the Tarn and its ways are not to be measured by the
+ordinary experiences of holiday travel. At seven o'clock in the
+morning you wake and breakfast without loss of time, in order to set
+out without delay and reach Le Rozier, thirty miles to the south, in
+time for six o'clock dinner. On the beach, close by the hotel, lie a
+number of flat-bottomed barques, rudely constructed affairs, exactly
+similar to fishing-punts used in shallow English waters. A plank of
+wood with a back to it, and covered with a loose cushion, is laid
+athwart the primitive craft, and here you take your seat. It is
+possible, I believe, for six passengers to be carried, but personally
+I should be loath to trust myself in such a boat with more than four,
+for two boatmen are necessary to each punt. The charge is for the boat
+irrespective of numbers, so that we might have had two more in ours
+without adding to the cost, but our bicycles helped us to square
+matters. Our boatmen were rough, half-shaven fellows, and he who took
+his place at the stern seemed to have been drinking unnecessarily
+early in the morning. But both knew their business thoroughly, and
+were alive to every current and whirlpool in the river.
+
+Their system of navigation is at once simple and effective, the only
+possible method of using the water-way. Armed with a strong pole, they
+stand, the one in front and the other behind, and allow the barque to
+glide down the swift current of the river, which runs, as I should
+judge, at six or eight miles an hour. Its course is broken up by
+innumerable gravel beds and rocky snags, and while we seem to be on
+the very instant of dashing into a seething whirlpool one of the
+boatmen will, with admirable precision, jab his pole into a hidden
+gravel bank and thrust the boat once more into the main current.
+Beautiful was it to watch how skilfully the men made use of this
+current, and that, guiding the frail craft straight into what seemed a
+perilous swirl of breakers, only that they might avail themselves of a
+different current resulting therefrom, and pilot us into a quiet pool
+by the beach on the very lip of a thundering weir.
+
+ [Illustration: THE CHATEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN
+
+ "One of the most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the
+ ancient Castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend
+ of the river."]
+
+It is indeed difficult to convey any adequate idea of the sensation of
+such a journey, where the water itself is at once the element and the
+cause of the progress. One sits as in a cockle shell on the enchanted
+sea, gliding along magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour;
+but, alas! the bronzed youth at the prow and the hairy wine-bibber at
+the stern are no creatures of fairyland, but the very serviceable
+mortals without whose aid the wonders of the Tarn would have remained
+to this day as distant as the realms of faëry.
+
+The panorama, which seems to pass us slowly on both sides of the
+river--for the absence of mechanical propulsion gives one the illusion
+of sitting still while the cliffs on each hand move past the boat--is
+of ceaseless change. For a time the hills reach up, green and
+carefully cultivated, to the higher basaltic cliffs, that rise
+perpendicular to the edge of the plateau, a thousand feet or more
+above our level, and then as they suddenly narrow, with never a
+foothold for the tiniest of creatures, the river roars between
+precipices that soar sheer and stupendous from its water, or in some
+cases lean forward so that at a little distance both sides seem to
+meet and form an arch across the stream. And the whole is rich in
+colour, the prevailing grey of the rocks being varied by great masses
+in which warm reds and browns occur, while every crevice is picked out
+with greenery, and wherever the foot of venturesome man can scramble
+there have been those bold enough to terrace patches of the slopes
+where vines and even tiny crops of wheat contrive to grow. One of the
+most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the ancient
+castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend of the
+river, where above it the cliffs uprear with great hollows and
+rotundities, illustrating how in the unknown ages the water has eaten
+its way down from the upper level to its present bed.
+
+The Château de La Caze is set about by many tall and leafy trees, and
+one could imagine no holiday more enjoyable than a few days passed
+here, for--Oh, ye romantic and practical Frenchmen!--the castle has
+been transformed into an hotel, where all the appointments and even
+the costumes of the servants recall the Middle Ages in which it was
+built. As we approached, one of our boatmen took up a large conch and,
+blowing into it, set the gorge echoing as from a foghorn; but we had
+decided not to visit the château, as it was our purpose to lunch
+farther down at La Malene, and the sounding of the conch was meant
+only to attract the attention of some of the servants, to whom our
+boatmen shouted that we had thrown on the river-bank about a quarter
+of a mile above the castle a sack of loaves for its inmates.
+
+
+V.
+
+Between Ste. Enimie and La Malène there are four or five points at
+which we have to change our barque, where the river leaps over
+dangerous weirs, and several changes are necessary on the lower beach.
+It is due to this manoeuvring and to a wait of nearly two hours at La
+Malène, while the bateliers lunch and gossip boisterously at one of the
+hotels--the voyageurs also being not unmindful of refreshment--that
+Le Rozier is not reached until six o'clock, despite the rapid course
+of the river.
+
+La Malène is one of the three places south of Ste. Enimie, and still
+in the real cañon of the Tarn, where the river is crossed by bridges;
+all splendid structures, designed to withstand the spring floods when
+the current carries with it many a mighty block of ice and all sorts
+of debris from the hills. The first and newest of the bridges is
+passed at St. Chely, a small and dirty, but extremely picturesque,
+hamlet half-way between Ste. Enimie and La Malène, where we explored a
+wonderful series of ancient cave dwellings, and where, by the way, an
+enterprising photographer has joined the modern to the prehistoric by
+painting an advertisement of his wares on the face of the cliff
+overlooking the former haunts of the Troglodites.
+
+La Malène is, to my thinking, one of the most beautiful points on the
+route. The little town sits in the mouth of a great ravine that
+reaches far into the Causse de Sauveterre, and on the opposite side
+the majestic mass of the Causse Méjan climbs to well-nigh 1,800 feet
+above the river, the mountain road wriggling upward from the bridge in
+a series of wonderful twists and turns, "exactly like an apple paring
+thrown over the shoulder of the engineer," as Mr. Crockett has said of
+another highway in the farther south. It takes a man, walking at his
+best, more than an hour to climb that same road, as I can testify, and
+never for a moment during the ascent is the little town at the foot
+out of view. This will convey some idea of the barrenness of the
+mountain-side, where cattle and sheep crop a scanty herbage on fields
+that slope like the roof of a house and are thickly strewn with stones
+and boulders. At La Malène also there is a mediæval castle, which,
+like La Caze, is the property of that great tourist agency, "La France
+Pittoresque," and now serves as a hotel; but we were more interested
+in the old church of Romanesque design, where we saw the common grave
+of the thirty-nine villagers who were slain by the Republican troops
+during the Terror, and are remembered throughout the Cevennes as "the
+Martyrs of La Malène." It is striking proof of the terrible
+thoroughness of that bloody regime that even to this remote and
+sequestered nook the gory hand of the Terror stretched out.
+
+ [Illustration: PEYRELAU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE JONTE]
+
+The French are the best of all road-makers; more than any of the
+Latin peoples they have retained and fostered this gift of their Roman
+forebears. The highway they are now constructing along the Tarn was
+almost completed between St. Enimie and La Malène, at the time of our
+passing, and a splendid road it promised to be, here running like a
+gallery along the face of a cliff and there tunnelling some mighty
+bluff that juts out into the cañon. But the river will always remain
+the real highway, as the scenery can only be viewed to full advantage
+from a seat in a barque, and the bateliers need not fear the
+competition of the road that is in the making.
+
+
+VI.
+
+If one were innocent enough to believe the boatmen who live by the
+tourist traffic, it would be difficult to know which part of the Tarn
+is the most beautiful. At St. Enimie you would be assured, in the
+event of your being undecided as to the whole trip, that the stretch
+between that town and La Malène was by far the best; while at La
+Malène you would find the local boatmen emphatic as to the unrivalled
+beauty of the cañon between that point and Les Vignes, where the third
+bridge stands; and as surely when you arrived there you would be told
+the Tarn was only beginning to be worth seeing from there to Le
+Rozier! Naturally, it is impossible for two boatmen to take you a
+voyage which, occupying twelve hours, requires more than double that
+time and many times more energy, to bring the empty boats back to the
+starting-places. Thus the bateliers are prejudiced in favour of their
+own particular part of the journey, and the only way is to make the
+entire trip; but indeed that is for all who do not cycle imperative,
+as the expense of reaching a railway station from any of the places
+mentioned before Le Rozier would be prohibitive, and one must continue
+the journey from the last-named place to Millau by coach and train,
+for which only a small charge is made.
+
+My own impression, if one can distinguish among scenes so differently
+beautiful, is that the cañon between La Malène and Les Vignes presents
+its most surprising aspect. At Les Detroits the giant walls lean
+forward in a bold and menacing way, and further on, at the Cirque des
+Baumes and Les Baumes Basses, we see some of Nature's most picturesque
+effects, while the Pas de Soucy is a wild and thrilling part of the
+journey, where the great basaltic masses are scattered about as if an
+awful earthquake had but recently shaken them into their fantastic
+positions.
+
+But really there seems to be no end to the beauty of the Tarn, and
+when one has arrived at Le Rozier fresh wonders await the eye, and
+scenes rivalling anything we have witnessed are still to behold, if we
+will make a short detour into the valley of the Jonte, where the
+ancient town of Peyreleau sits like a queen enthroned among enfolding
+hills. If one can go a little farther along this tributary of the Tarn
+and visit the famous grotto of Dargilan, discovered by M. Martel in
+1884, a strange and beautiful underworld, before which the most
+extravagant fantasies of the Arabian Nights pale into insignificance,
+will be revealed. There, by the light of torches, we can wander
+through gigantic caverns of stalactite greater and more awe-inspiring
+than any cathedral, and journey by canoe on underground rivers, in
+what--those practical Frenchmen once again!--is "the property of the
+Society 'La France Pittoresque.'"
+
+Even that part of the Tarn between Le Rozier and Millau, no longer a
+gorge, but broadening into a smiling and fruitful valley, with the
+great impregnable wall of the Causse Noir frowning along its eastern
+length, is full of beautiful vistas; but the wild and rugged grandeur
+of the cañon has given place to scenes of pleasant pastoral life, and
+we cycle along a highway fringed with cherry trees in fruit, passing
+many a populous little town before we enter the leafy boulevards of
+the historic and prosperous city of Millau.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: BEAUCAIRE: SHOWING CASTLE AND BRIDGE ACROSS THE RHONE
+ TO TARASCON]
+
+
+
+
+The Town of "Tartarin"
+
+
+I.
+
+The custom observed by English authors of giving fictitious names to
+places described in works of romance--as for example, Mr. Hardy's
+"Casterbridge" (Dorchester) and Mr. Barrie's "Thrums" (Kirriemuir)--has
+so brought their readers to accept the most faithful realism for
+romance, that when they take up a French novel they are apt to think
+the places mentioned therein are treated in the same way. But those
+who have any acquaintance with French fiction will know that the
+novelists across the Channel follow a method entirely opposed to ours.
+An English reader who may have enjoyed to the full the famous trilogy
+of "Tartarin" books may well be excused if he supposes that the town
+of Tarascon is largely a creation of their author, Alphonse Daudet. It
+is true that if he has ever travelled from Paris to Marseilles by way
+of Lyons and Avignon he will have passed through Tarascon, with its
+wide and open station perched high on a viaduct, and the porter
+bawling in his rich, southern tongue, "Tarascon, stop five minutes.
+Change for Nîmes, Montpellier, Cette." And if he has--as he cannot
+fail to have--delightful memories of the incomparable Tartarin, his
+feet will itch to be out and wander the dusty streets in the hope of
+looking upon the scenes of the hero's happy days; to peep perchance at
+his tiny white-washed villa on the Avignon Road with its green
+Venetian shutters, where the little bootblacks used to play about the
+door and hail the great man as his portly figure stepped forth, bound
+for the Alpine Club "down town." There would certainly be small other
+reasons for tarrying at this ancient town of France; it owes such
+interest as it possesses chiefly to the genius of Daudet, whose
+inimitable humour has vivified and touched it with immortality.
+
+I had been wandering a-wheel over many a league of these fair southern
+roads one summer before I found myself at the ancient Roman city of
+Nîmes, the rarest treasure of France, and it was a visit to Daudet's
+birthplace there that suggested the idea of going on to Tarascon a
+desire intensified by the ardour of a gentleman from that town whom I
+met at a hotel, and who perspired with indignation as he denounced
+"that Daudet" for libelling the good folk of Tarascon. "Tartarin! The
+whole thing's a farce. There never was such a man!" But he asserted
+that the town was well worth seeing, if I could only forget Daudet's
+ribald nonsense.
+
+It went well with my plans for reaching the main route back to Paris
+to make a little journey through the fragrant olive groves along the
+high road to Remoulins in order to visit the world-famous Roman
+aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near to which a gipsy told
+Tartarin he would one day be a king, and thence by the banks of the
+river Gardon to Beaucaire and Tarascon. Not often have I made a
+literary pilgrimage of so pleasant or profitable a nature.
+
+
+II.
+
+You must know, of course, what a rare fellow this Tartarin
+was--_Coquin de bon sort_! I am not sure that I should speak of him in
+the past tense; although his creator eventually gathered him to his
+fathers, Tartarin was built for immortality, and at most his passing
+was a translation; he is for all time the archetype of southern
+character, and Tarascon is alive with him to-day. Of medium height,
+stout of body, scant of hair on his head, but bushy-whiskered and
+jovial-faced, you will see his like sipping absinth at any café on
+the promenade of the sleepy old town, or playing a game of billiards
+with the grand manner of a Napoleon figuring out a campaign.
+
+Tartarin, blessed with all the imagination of the generous south, was
+indeed an ineffectual Bonaparte, in the body of a good-natured
+provincial. "We are both of the south," he observed to his devoted
+admirer Pascalon, when that faithful henchman, at a crisis in
+his hero's career, pointed out the similarity between him of
+Corsica and him of Tarascon. Daudet makes him, in a bright flash of
+self-knowledge, describe himself as "Don Quixote in the skin of Sancho
+Panza," and Mr. Henry James has in this wise elaborated the point with
+his usual deftness:
+
+"There are two men in Tartarin, and there are two men in all of us;
+only, of course, to make a fine case, M. Daudet has zigzagged the line
+of their respective oddities. As he says so amusingly in _Tartarin of
+Tarascon_, in his comparison of the very different promptings of these
+inner voices, when the Don Quixote sounds the appeal, 'Cover yourself
+with glory!' the Sancho Panza murmurs the qualification, 'Cover
+yourself with flannel!' The glory is everything the imagination
+regales itself with as a luxury of reputation--the _regardelle_ so
+prettily described in the last pages of _Port Tarascon_; the flannel
+is everything that life demands as a tribute to reality--a gage
+of self-preservation. The glory reduced to a tangible texture too
+often turns out to be mere prudent underclothing."
+
+ [Illustration: TARASCON: THE PUBLIC MARKET]
+
+ [Illustration: THE TARASQUE]
+
+ [Illustration: THE CASTLE OF TARASCON]
+
+It is true that a good deal of the humour that attaches to Tartarin is
+of the unconscious sort. He and his brethren of Provence stand in
+relation to their fellow-countrymen much as the Irish to the English
+in the matter of humour, but in that only. They are often the butt of
+northern witticisms, and are said to be experts in drawing the long
+bow. Tarascon in this respect no more than many a score of little
+towns in the Midi; but it suited the author's purpose admirably to
+locate the home of his hero there, as the place possesses many quaint
+little peculiarities of its own which fitted in admirably with the
+scheme of Tartarin's remarkable career.
+
+
+III.
+
+Since I visited the town the Tarasconians have proved worthy of their
+reputation, as a picture post card has been put in circulation bearing
+a photograph of "_La Maison de Tartarin_." It shows a square and
+comfortable white house, flat-roofed, with a series of loop-hole
+windows that give it a murderous look. In front is a large garden,
+where an old baobab stretches forth its branches and innumerable
+exotics mingle their strange leaves in the beautiful disorder of the
+primeval forest. So, at least, I gather from a French journal. Yet,
+while pointing out the mendacity of the picture post card, the journal
+in question publishes with every evidence of sincerity an equally
+apocryphal account of the real Tartarin, who we are told, was a person
+named originally Jean Pittalouga, a native of the south of Sardinia,
+not a Frenchman at all. He was bought out of slavery by the
+Brotherhood of the Trinity, and came to Tarascon to manage the
+property of the fraternity in that town. As Sidi-Mouley-Abdallah was
+the superior of Morocco and that country was part of Barbary,
+Pittalouga became known in Tarascon, because of his romantic
+experience among the Moors, first as _Sidi-Barbari_, and then as
+_Barbarin_. The time came when the Trinity fraternity had to clear
+out, and with them Barbarin, who now rented a neighbouring farm on the
+outskirts of the town--the veritable "_Maison de Tartarin_" of the
+post card. But he did not die there. He went away with the Trinity
+fathers into Africa, and is believed to have been devoured entirely by
+some terrible wild beast, with whom he had disputed the sovereignty of
+the desert. To all of which, as Daudet remarks of the member of the
+Jockey Club travelling _avec sa nièce_, "Hum! hum!"
+
+One may note here that the author did first write of his comic hero as
+Barbarin; but as the French law affords the fullest measure of
+protection to living people whose names may be introduced in works of
+fiction, and as there lived in Tarascon a certain M. Barbarin, who
+wrote to Daudet a letter worthy of his hero, wherein he threatened the
+utmost rigour of the law unless the novelist ceased to make sport of
+"what was dearer to him than life itself, the unspotted name of his
+ancestors," Daudet altered the name to Tartarin, and was inclined to
+think in after years, when the fame of his creation had travelled
+around the globe, that his hero would never have been so popular under
+his original name. It may have been a case of "apt alliteration's
+artful aid"; but one may suppose that Tartarin would have been equally
+popular by any other name. He embodies the extravagant, and not the
+least lovable, side of French character, as truly as Uriah Heep and
+Mr. Pecksniff represent English humbug and hypocrisy; he has many
+points of similarity with Mr. Pickwick, but the last-mentioned can
+hardly be compared with him as reality seen through the eye of kindly
+caricature.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Tartarin was, in a word, an epitomy of innocent vanities;
+large-hearted, generous, he had the Cæsarian ambition to be the first
+man in his town; he was imbued with the national hunger for "_la
+Gloire_," and many were the amusing ways in which he sought to
+demonstrate his prowess. To impress his townsmen, the dear old humbug
+surrounded himself with all sorts of foreign curiosities. His garden
+was stuffed with exotics from every clime, most notable of all the
+wonderful baobab, which he grew in a flower-pot, although that is the
+unmatched giant of the tree kingdom! His study was decked with the
+weapons of many strange and savage people, and, like a miniature
+museum, his possessions were ticketed thus: "Poisoned arrows! Do not
+touch!" "Weapons loaded! Have a care!"
+
+His earliest exploits were as chief of the "cap-hunters," for, you
+see, in those days the good folk of Tarascon were great sports, and
+the whole country-side having been denuded of game, they were reduced
+to the device of going forth in hunting-parties, and after a jolly
+picnic they would throw up their caps in the air and shoot at them as
+they fell! "The man whose hat bears the greatest number of shot
+marks is hailed as champion of the chase, and in the evening, with his
+riddled cap stuck on the end of his rifle, he makes a triumphal entry
+into Tarascon, midst the barking of dogs and fanfares of trumpets."
+
+ [Illustration: TARASCON: THE MAIRIE]
+
+Tartarin, however, determined to cover himself with glory--as well as
+flannel--by making an expedition into Algeria and Morocco, there to
+try his prowess on the lions of the Atlas. His ludicrous adventures on
+this great enterprise--how he shot a donkey and a blind lion, and
+returned to Tarascon pursued by his devoted camel--form the theme of
+the first of Daudet's three charming stories. The years pass with
+Tartarin lording it at Baobab House, and at the club every evening
+spinning his untruthful yarns, beginning: "Picture to yourself a
+certain evening in the open Sahara." Then comes the further adventures
+of "Tartarin in the Alps," and I confess that when, a good many years
+ago, I first clambered up a portion of Mont Blanc it was of Tartarin's
+famous ascent I thought rather than of Jacques Balmat's; the fiction
+was more vivid in my mind than the fact; and again at the Castle of
+Chillon--I say it fairly--the comic figure of Tartarin imprisoned
+there was more engaging to the imagination than that of Bonnivard;
+and, by the bye, in the famous dungeon one can see scratched on the
+wall the signatures of both Lord Byron and Alphonse Daudet.
+
+The last, and in some respects the best, of all the Tartarin
+books--like Mulvaney, the mighty Tarasconian has his fame "dishpersed
+most notoriously in sev'ril volumes"--is _Port Tarascon_, wherein are
+detailed the mirthful misadventures of the great man, and many of his
+townsmen who, under his direction, set sail to found a colony in
+Polynesia, an undertaking that proved fatal to his fame, and ended
+eventually in his self-exile across the river to Beaucaire, where he
+died soon after; of sheer melancholy we may suppose.
+
+
+V.
+
+It was into the busy little town of Beaucaire, which lies around its
+ancient castle of Bellicardo, on the west bank of the broad Rhone,
+glaring across at Tarascon, that I wheeled one bright day in June.
+Beaucaire, for all its canal, wharves, and signs of prosperous
+industry, is as tidy a town as I have seen, and the fine old castle,
+ruined by Richelieu, where in the golden age of Languedoc's poesy the
+troubadors sang their ballads at the Court of Love, is beautifully
+situated on a little hill by the river-side, quite near to the
+magnificent suspension bridge which figures so humorously in _Port
+Tarascon_. The rivalry between the two towns, their mutual jealousies,
+furnished Daudet with many an opportunity to poke fun at them.
+"Separated by the whole breadth of the Rhone, the two cities regard
+each other across the river as irreconcilable enemies. The bridge that
+has been thrown between them has not brought them any nearer. This
+bridge is never crossed--in the first place, because it's very
+dangerous. The people of Beaucaire no more go to Tarascon than those
+of Tarascon go to Beaucaire." As the gentleman I met at Nîmes would
+have said, "Zut! It is not true." But that is neither here nor there.
+
+Tartarin, up to his forty-ninth year, had never spent a night away
+from his own home. "The very limit of his travels was Beaucaire, and
+yet Beaucaire is not far from Tarascon, as there is only the bridge to
+cross. Unhappily that beastly bridge had been so often swept away by
+the storms; it is so long, so rickety, and the Rhone so broad there
+that--zounds, you understand!... Tartarin preferred to have a firm
+grip of the ground." But this must have referred to the old bridge
+that made way for the present magnificent structure, which crosses the
+river in four spans and is 1,456 feet in length. However, it was this
+suspension bridge, and no other, across which the hero's cronie
+Bompard came with such bravery to witness for his friend, when
+Tartarin, fallen from his high estate, was on trial at the court of
+Tarascon for having been party to a gigantic swindle in the great
+colonising fraud of Port Tarascon, a charge from which, as we know, he
+was rightly acquitted. Bompard at the time of the trial was in hiding
+at Beaucaire, where he had become conservator of the Castle and warden
+of the Fair Grounds--Beaucaire's annual fair is famed all over
+France--"but when I saw that Tartarin was really dragged into the dock
+between the myrmidons of the law, then I could hold out no longer; I
+let myself go--I crossed the bridge! I crossed it this morning in a
+terrible tempest. I was obliged to go down on all fours the same way
+as when I went up Mont Blanc.... When I tell you that the bridge was
+swinging like a pendulum, you'll believe I had to be brave. I was, in
+fact, heroic."
+
+
+VI.
+
+The view from the bridge as one crosses to Tarascon is as pleasant a
+picture as may be seen in any part of old France. The noble stream,
+broken by sedgy inlands, sweeps on between its low banks, and rising
+sheer from the water's edge on a firm rock-base, almost opposite the
+picturesque mass of Bellicardo, are the massive walls of the
+ancient castle of Tarascon, founded by Count Louis II. in the
+fourteenth century and finished by King Réné of Anjou in the
+fifteenth, and at one time tenanted by Pope Urbain II., but now, like
+many another palace of kings, fallen to the condition of a common
+prison. Within these grim walls Tartarin passed some of his inglorious
+days, but days not lacking romance, for was not Bompard from the
+opposite height signalling o' nights to him by means of mysterious
+lights?
+
+ [Illustration: A WOMAN OF TARASCON
+
+ (_Summer costume_)]
+
+If one has never seen photographs of Tarascon it will be a surprise,
+as it is surely a pleasure, to note how faithfully the artists who
+illustrated Daudet's books have reproduced in their charming little
+vignettes the chief features of the actual town. There to the south of
+the bridge is the tiny quay from which we are to suppose the
+_Tootoopumpum_ sailed away with the flower of Tarascon's aristocracy
+on that ill-starred expedition to the South Seas. Daudet is careful to
+preserve some slight respect for the truth by explaining that the
+vessel was of shallow draft; but, even so, the Rhone is here not
+navigable to ocean-going steamers.
+
+Proceeding straight into the town, we arrive in a minute or so at the
+Promenade, with its long rows of plane trees, as in most French towns,
+only in Tarascon the trees seem to grow higher and leafier than
+anywhere else. It opens out a short distance from the riverside, and
+although it cannot be strictly called the "Walk Round" for the reason
+which the author gives--that it encircles the town--it certainly
+traverses a goodly portion of Tarascon, and takes in _en route_ that
+"bit of a square" to which he makes so many sly allusions.
+
+Almost the first thing one notices after crossing the bridge is the
+"Hotel of the Emperors," close by the Hospice at the opening of the
+Promenade. This title is worthy of Daudet himself! Along the south
+side of the Promenade stand the chief cafés and shops; as one sits by
+a table at a door watching the passers-by, the scene is entirely
+agreeable. Everybody seems to have walked out of Daudet's page. The
+men are of two types chiefly--those of the stout and bearded figure,
+such as Tartarin himself possessed, and the thin and sharp-featured
+fellows of Italian caste, like Bezuquet and Costecalde, with their
+bright, black eyes and fierce moustachios. Most of them, this sunny
+day, are abroad in their shirt sleeves, and almost to a man they wear
+the soft black felt hats such as our English curates affect.
+
+
+VII.
+
+There is a musical jingle of spurs, as some baggy-trousered soldiers
+pass on their way to the fine cavalry barracks which the town
+possesses. There go a pair of comfortable-looking priests in their
+long black gowns, their good fat fingers twined behind them; but
+nowhere do we see the white habit of the friars, whose monastery of
+Pampérigouste the gallant Tartarin and his crusaders defended from the
+Government troops so long ago! The women-folk whom one sees about are
+nearly all hatless, but they wear a dainty substitute in the shape of
+a little cap of white muslin and lace, and a pelerine of the same
+material over their shoulders and breast. Small, plump, swarthy, they
+are true daughters of the south, and by that token better to look upon
+than their sisters of the north. Here and there one may see a woman
+touched with something of the Paris fashion, members of that local
+aristocracy to which belonged the charming Clorinda of Pascalon's
+hopeless passion.
+
+There is a constant toot-toot or tinkle of bells as cyclists go by,
+for the wheel has come into great popularity here as elsewhere since
+Tartarin made his tragic exit across the bridge. Perhaps the most
+unmistakable evidences of provincialism are supplied by the
+antiquated types of vehicles with their fat-faced drivers and their
+unshorn horses, many of the latter being harnessed with the most
+extravagant kinds of collars and saddles that project a couple of feet
+or more above the level of the animals' backs.
+
+The whole scene is one of peaceful and happy life, and it is good to
+look upon people who are in no hurry to do business and seem to take
+things easily. Across the way, there, the chemist is standing at his
+door, with those great glasses of coloured water, that seem to have
+gone out of fashion in England, shining in his window, while he rolls
+a cigarette for the white-legged postman who has stopped to give him a
+letter, and chats with him in the passing. He might be Bezuquet
+himself, did we not know of the misfortune that befell the latter,
+when he was tatooed out of recognition by the South Sea Islanders, and
+had to wear a mask when he came home!
+
+ [Illustration: TARASCON: "THE BIT OF A SQUARE"]
+
+Going down a street that leads northward from the Promenade, we pass
+the Mairie, a quaint old building from whose balcony floats, not the
+Tarasque, but the tricolor, and by whose doorway are posted notices of
+coming bull-fights, for Tarascon is still keen on its ancient sport
+despite the restrictive legislation. Near by is the public market, and
+the whole district swarms with dogs of every breed. We peep into
+the church of St. Martha, which is no bad example of the Pointed
+Gothic and occupies the site of an old Roman Temple. One of the kings
+of Provence is buried here, but more interesting is the tomb of the
+saint to whom the church is dedicated.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+St. Martha and the Tarasque are the peculiar glories of the
+Tarasconians, who, you must know, would almost strike you if you
+breathed the word "Tartarin" to them, and have never forgotten Daudet
+for his satires on the town. We cannot do better than go to Daudet for
+the legend of St. Martha and the beast.
+
+"This Tarasque, in very ancient days, was nothing less than a terrible
+monster, a most alarming dragon, which laid waste the country at the
+mouth of the Rhone. St. Martha, who had come into Provence after the
+death of our Lord, went forth and caught the beast in the deep
+marshes, and binding its neck with a sky-blue ribbon, brought it into
+the city captive, tamed by the innocence and piety of the saint. Ever
+since then, in remembrance of the service rendered by the holy Martha,
+the Tarasconians have kept a holiday, which they celebrate every ten
+years by a procession through the city. This procession forms the
+escort of a sort of ferocious, bloody monster, made of wood and
+painted pasteboard, who is a cross between the serpent and the
+crocodile, and represents, in gross and ridiculous effigy, the dragon
+of ancient days. The thing is not a mere masquerade, for the Tarasque
+is really held in veneration; she is a regular idol, inspiring a sort
+of superstitious, affectionate fear. She is called in the country the
+Old Grannie. The creature has herself stalled in a shed especially
+hired for her by the town council."
+
+Daudet's light sketch of the Tarasque may be supplemented by a more
+circumstantial account of the strange ceremony from a writer on old
+customs (William S. Walsh), who informs us that "the famous Miracle
+Play of 'Sainte Marthe et la Tarasque,' instituted, it was said, by
+King Réné in 1400, was one of the last Provençal _coronlas_ to
+disappear, as in its day it was one of the most popular. Even after
+the Mystery Play was itself abandoned, a remnant of it lingered on
+until the middle of the nineteenth century in the annual procession of
+La Tarasque, celebrated on July 29th, not only at Tarascon, but also
+at Beaucaire. The main feature was the huge figure of a dragon, made
+of wood and canvas, eight feet long, three feet high, and four feet
+broad in the middle. The head was small, there was no neck, the body,
+which was covered with scales, was shaped like an enormous egg, and
+at the nether extremity was a heavy beam of wood for a tail. Sixteen
+mummers, gaily caparisoned and known as the Knights of la Tarasque
+were among its attendants. Eight of the knights concealed themselves
+within the body to represent those who had been devoured, and
+furnished the motive power, besides lashing the tail to right and
+left, at imminent risk to the legs of the spectators. The other eight
+formed the escort, and were followed by drummers and fifers and a long
+procession of clergy and laity. The dragon was conducted by a girl in
+white and blue, the leading string being her girdle of blue silk. When
+the dragon was especially unruly and frolicsome she dashed holy water
+over it. A continuous rattle of torpedoes and musketry was kept up by
+those who followed in the dragon's train."
+
+The celebration of the Tarasque has taken place several times, I
+believe, since the prohibition, while the procession of St. Martha is
+held annually; but as my visit did not synchronise with either, I had
+to be content with securing photographs from a local photographer, who
+was more inclined to discuss the weather and smoke his cigarette than
+sell his wares, and left his wife--at the time of my call, in a state
+of partial undress between changing her visiting costume for an indoor
+dress--to do the business of hunting up prints for me. It will be
+remembered by those who have read _Port Tarascon_ that Tartarin
+foresaw his own downfall from the day on which, under the impression
+that he was shooting at a whale, he planted a bullet in the gross
+carcase of the Tarasque, which had been taken with the emigrants to
+the South Seas and was swept overboard to become a waif of the waves.
+
+
+IX.
+
+One of the peculiarities of Tarascon is its railway station on the
+outskirts of the town. It is situated some thirty feet above the level
+of the street, and you gain the platform by climbing several long
+flights of stairs, up which it is no light task to carry a
+heavily-burdened bicycle. During most of the day there is little
+evidence of life in or around the station, and a clerk will cheerfully
+devote a quarter of an hour to explain to you the absurdities of the
+railway time table; but five or six times a day the place wakes up on
+the arrival of a train from or to the capital, for all the trains in
+France seem to have a connection, however tardy and remote, with the
+octopus of Paris. Then there is much ringing of bells and blowing of
+trumpets, and you almost expect to see the quaint and portly form of
+Tartarin himself returning from his great adventure in the Sahara
+or his ascent of Mont Blanc. But you reflect that these and many other
+of his doings were much too good to be true, and take your place in
+the corner of the carriage, making yourself comfortable for the long
+and dreary journey to Paris.
+
+ [Illustration: TARASCON: THE PROCESSION OF THE TARASQUE
+
+ _The little girl leading the monster represents Saint Martha_]
+
+The last thing you see as the train steams away is the white stretch
+of the Avignon Road lying between the railway and the river, its
+little white houses and modern villas close-shuttered and growing
+indistinct in the soft southern twilight.
+
+
+
+
+"La Fête Dieu"
+
+
+I.
+
+For centuries the 19th of June has been to the people of France a day
+of high festival. No one who has happened to be travelling in Normandy
+or Brittany--or indeed in almost any of the French provinces--about
+this time of the year can have failed to notice the celebration of the
+Fête Dieu, and many may have wondered what it was all about. It has
+existed so long as one of the national customs, varying in its
+observance in different parts of the country, and having passed
+through many periods of change, that a few years ago he would have
+been accounted a rash and uninspired prophet who would have foretold
+that the Republican Government might have the temerity to lay its
+embargo on this sacred institution. But, behold the day when the
+secular hand of M. Combes had stretched out into the remotest parts of
+fair France, and following hard upon the upsetting of monastic peace,
+came the prohibition of religious processions in public. The effect of
+this order was to limit the fête in many places to a mere
+perambulation of the exterior of the church, and in others the
+procession was confined entirely to the interior, though here and
+there, it would seem, the function took place just as it did
+generations before M. Combes and the anti-clericals arose into power.
+
+The festival is clearly of pagan origin, like so many of the
+ceremonies of the Christian church; it corresponds with the Corpus
+Feast in Spain, the exhibition of the holy sacrament having been
+grafted on to the heathenish rights very early in the Christian era.
+There seems to be evidences of the ceremony having been observed in
+some form or other centuries before 673, as in that year an
+ecclesiastical council, held at Braga in Spain, spoke of "the ancient
+and traditional custom of solemnly carrying the Host on the
+shoulders." It was Pope Urbain IV., who vainly endeavoured to stir up
+a new crusade on behalf of his former diocese of Jerusalem, that
+officially recognised and instituted as regular offices of the church
+in 1264 the ceremonies connected with the Fête Dieu. But, despite this
+papal ordinance, the festival did not become one of general observance
+until, some generations later, there had grown around the purely
+religious part of it a mass of painfully secular tomfoolery, which
+turned the fête into a great saturnalia. In the days of that merry
+monarch, King Réné, it had assumed such proportions that an entire
+week was devoted to the celebration, "courts of love," tournaments,
+jousts, mystery plays, and many other amusements being associated with
+the solemn procession of the sacred sacrament. Flourishing more or
+less, the fête continued annually, without interruption until the
+great Revolution, which gave short shrift to the old taste for
+processions; but under Louis XVIII. it was re-established, and the
+State even furnished troops as escorts for those taking part in the
+processions. Times are changed indeed when we find _Le Pèlerin_, an
+illustrated weekly newspaper devoted entirely to the interests of
+pilgrimages, publishing cartoons which show the police dispersing the
+pious participants in the procession of the Fête Dieu, while rowdy
+socialists are permitted to wave their red rags in the highway.
+
+ [Illustration: PROCESSION OF LA FÊTE DIEU
+
+ _Photographed at Morlaix, in Brittany_]
+
+
+II.
+
+The festival, which has thus fallen upon evil times, might possibly
+have gone more steadily downhill to the limbo of old customs if the
+Government had left it alone, as of recent years it has not been
+gaining in popularity, and, practically speaking, only women and
+children have shown active interest in it under the direction of the
+priests and lay officials. Throughout Normandy it was a rare thing to
+see men taking part; but in Brittany, and especially at the quaint old
+town of Morlaix, which is famed for its high railway bridge and its
+Fête Dieu, and holds an extremely jolly kermesse, with dancing and the
+selling of cheap rubbish, immediately after the holy sacrament has
+been carried through the streets, a larger proportion of men were to
+be seen engaging in the ceremony; while in the far south, among the
+peasants of Provence and Aveyron, the men have long been as attached
+to this and similar fêtes of the church as the women, taking part with
+a comic gravity of demeanour absurdly out of keeping with their
+usually gay and careless behaviour. Generally speaking, the Fête Dieu,
+as celebrated during modern years, has been a picturesque, but brief
+and inoffensive ceremonial, that did not greatly disturb anybody, and
+seemed to please the women and children. In the course of time it
+might have died out as a public institution, though it must always
+survive, in some manner, as a religious festival; but the Government,
+in its crusade against the enemies of the Republic--for such
+undoubtedly are the Catholic priests--may find that it has, by its
+very prohibition, reawakened interest in this ancient and decrepid
+institution of the church.
+
+As for the familiar procession of the Fête Dieu, there is not very
+much to describe: a brief notice of one may be taken as typical of
+all. The first indication that the visitor would have of something
+unusual toward was the strewing of the principal streets with rushes.
+Almost every shopkeeper would be seen with an armful of the green
+blades, laying them down to fullest advantage in the middle of the
+road. This done, the next thing was to bring out long sheets of white
+linen, which were tacked a little way below the windows of the first
+story, and hung downward to within a foot or so of the ground, the
+entire route being thus lined with a continuous stretch of white,
+whereon busy hands had pinned roses and other flowers, sometimes
+attempting designs such as a heart or a cross, or the monogram "I H
+S." Each shopkeeper seemed to vie with his or her neighbour to produce
+a more elaborate evidence of pious interest in the coming procession;
+but I have noticed frequently that many performed their part in the
+most perfunctory manner, only rushing up their white linen and
+sticking on a flower or two when the head of the procession was
+actually in sight, and whipping off the sheets as soon as it had
+passed by.
+
+
+III.
+
+In many parts of the town, often in the front garden of a private
+house, in some outside corner of a church or in a market-place,
+elaborate shrines, made of wood, covered with cloth, and decorated
+with rushes and flowers, would be erected. In one small town I have
+counted upwards of a dozen such erections, enclosing gaudy statues of
+the saints, especially well disposed towards those who supplied the
+money for the shrines. But here again I have noticed the proverbial
+economy of the French nation asserting itself, the attendant at such a
+gorgeous shrine lighting the numerous candles only on the approach of
+the procession, and blowing them out the instant it had passed, when
+also the dismantling of the shrine would begin! I recall a
+particularly gorgeous shrine which I saw many years ago in the town of
+Falaise. At a considerable distance the numerous candles seemed to be
+burning so brilliantly, that I was not altogether surprised on going
+up and examining them to find the supposed candles were actually
+incandescent electric lamps. Thus the preliminary arrangements of the
+populace for the coming of the procession.
+
+The route was, as a rule, one that had been followed for years, but
+the erection of a particularly elaborate shrine by some person blessed
+with pelf and piety, in a street not within the usual itinerary, would
+be regarded as sufficient to justify a detour.
+
+I have never witnessed the procession without being refreshed by its
+suggestion of old-world ease. "Build your houses as if you meant them
+to last for ever," was Ruskin's advice. "Proceed as if your procession
+had started at the Flood and was going on till Doomsday," would seem
+to be the motto that inspires the demonstrators in the Fête Dieu.
+
+In the distance the sound of music is heard, and after a time at the
+far end of the road the head of the procession is seen moving towards
+us at a pace as much slower than a funeral as that is slower than a
+horse race. First comes the beadle, or church officer attached to the
+cathedral, whose blue or red uniform, with cocked hat, knee breeches,
+white hose and buckled shoes, remind one of the dress of our soldiers
+in the seventeenth century, a get-up very similar to that of the Swiss
+Guard at the Vatican, these beadles being, indeed, generally known as
+the "Swiss," though they are loutish and ignorant fellows, with as
+much regard for religion as the chucker-out at a roaring London
+tavern. But for all that, the Swiss makes a mighty picturesque figure
+at the head of the procession, his sword hanging at his hip, and a
+long mace carried in his hand as he steps out slowly and endeavours to
+combine dignity with scowls at the children who follow him, the little
+girls in their white muslin dresses, made for their first communion,
+and the little boys in the sort of midshipman's suit universally worn
+by French lads at the time of their confirmation, a white armlet being
+donned on this occasion and a rosary tied around it. Following the
+children, who carry banners with various religious devices, come bands
+of music and different groups of men and women, who also march under
+certain banners that indicate their membership of some brotherhood or
+sisterhood.
+
+
+IV.
+
+There are brotherhoods of the Holy Sacrament in many parts of France
+whose credentials date back to the Middle Ages, and who seem to exist
+solely for the purpose of being privileged to walk in religious
+processions, with a ludicrous gown lavishly trimmed, and having on the
+front, after the manner of a herald's tabard, a picture of Christ. The
+brethren of the various "charities," which in France correspond in
+some degree to our friendly societies, also wear uniforms, and, in
+some parts of the country assist in the procession. In the past many
+unseemly disturbances arose out of the rivalry of these brotherhoods
+as to their respective privileges in the Fête Dieu, and the sacred
+function was often marred by the most disgraceful scenes of rowdyism
+as the rivals fought for precedence, and especially for the right of
+bearing the canopy under which the Holy Sacrament is carried through
+the streets.
+
+The approach of the Host is heralded by the acolytes in their scarlet
+gowns with lace tunicles, who come singing, and precede the
+white-robed members of the choir, lay brethren and priests, who are
+either diligently reading from books, or mumbling unintelligently the
+orisons provided for the occasion. Succeeding these come more
+acolytes, swinging censers, and others who, walking backwards, bear
+large baskets of rose leaves, and scatter their fragrant burdens in
+handfuls on the road in front of the bishop. The latter, arrayed in
+his most gorgeous vestments, advances slowly, holding aloft, with
+well-assumed solemnity, to impress beholders with the awful sacredness
+of his charge, the elaborate brass monstrance or cabinet which
+encloses the consecrated wafer. The bishop, who thus displays before
+the just and the unjust the Holy Sacrament, walks under a canopy of
+richly embroidered cloth, carried on four posts by specially chosen
+members of some of the brotherhoods, or perhaps by some unusually
+devout laymen, whose purses have not been altogether closed when the
+clerical hat has gone round.
+
+Previously to the approach of the dais covering the bishop and his
+holy burden, the spectators in the street have been laughing and
+joking with and about the demonstrators, and some of the children in
+the procession have shown lamentable forgetfulness of the solemn
+nature of the function by putting out their tongues at us, and turning
+back to say derisively, "les Anglais!"--for this was before the days
+of the _Entente_. But the moment the bishop and the Host come up, down
+flop the spectators on their knees, crossing themselves, the men
+removing their hats, though I confess with pleasure that many a time I
+have seen groups of men showing as much reverence to the sacred wafer
+as Cockney crowds do to the Lord Mayor's coachman on show day.
+
+ [Illustration: A WOMAN OF SAINTE ENIMIE]
+
+The procession is now at an end so far as our particular standpoint is
+concerned, and already the white sheets are disappearing all along the
+road, shopkeepers turning their attention to business again. But it is
+winding its way through other streets, pausing to make special
+obeisance before the temporary shrines, and to rehearse prayers
+cunningly adapted to the peculiar requirements of the saints to
+whom the shrines are dedicated. And so after, it may be, two or three
+hours perambulation, the demonstrators return to the cathedral, where
+High Mass is celebrated; this over, they are free to make merry to
+their heart's desire. And they do.
+
+
+
+
+"M'sieu Meelin of Dundae"
+
+
+I.
+
+Please do not consider it an affectation of superior knowledge if I
+begin by saying it is improbable that one out of a hundred of my
+readers has ever heard of Morbihan and the wonderful druidical remains
+in the Commune of Carnac. To be quite frank, I had never heard of them
+myself until one dusty summer day when I cycled into the little
+village of Carnac away on the south coast of Brittany, and within
+sight of the historic bay of Quiberon. The village of Carnac, whose
+population numbers only some six hundred souls, is one of the most
+interesting in Brittany, where almost every hamlet has some historic
+touch to engage the attention of the visitor. It consists practically
+of a little square of houses surrounding the ancient parish church,
+dedicated to Saint Corneille. This saint is the patron of cattle, and
+in September the town is the centre of a series of most picturesque
+celebrations, the peasants journeying hither from all parts of the
+surrounding country, accompanied by their cattle, horses, and even
+their pigs, for the pig is as notable a feature of rural life in
+Brittany as it is in Ireland. Saint Corneille, for a reason which will
+be explained further on, is supposed to take a very personal interest
+in the welfare of the Breton's cattle, and to see the simple peasants
+on their pilgrimage to his shrine, and later in the ceremonies of
+parading their beasts around the church and kneeling before his statue
+on the west front of the tower, kneeling again and sometimes even
+fighting for a dip in the water from his fountain, is to realise how
+sincere is their belief in his powers. But this is only by the way; my
+present intention is not to spend any more time in describing the
+quaint ceremonies that have long made Carnac a centre of pilgrimage,
+and have been the theme of many a story and poem by French writers.
+
+ [Illustration: THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC
+
+ (_The second view is a continuation of the first_)]
+
+Leaving the little square and striking eastward along the main road, I
+noticed a small, plain building, almost the last of the few straggling
+houses in that direction, bearing in bold letters the legend "Musée
+Miln." The name had a pleasant suggestion of my ain countree, and in a
+trice I was knocking at the door, curious to know what lay behind. A
+tall, well-knit, clean-shaven Breton of about forty years of age
+opened and bade me welcome. He was carelessly dressed like any
+village shopkeeper in his shirt sleeves, and wearing a pair of carpet
+slippers; certainly presenting no aspect of the antiquary or the
+scholar, although it was not long before I found that he was a man of
+remarkable attainments in archæology. As far as I remember, the charge
+for admission was one franc, and although at first it seemed a large
+price to pay for looking at a roomful of things in glass cases, I left
+with the conviction that I had made an excellent bargain.
+
+The museum I found to consist of an extremely valuable assortment of
+relics of the Stone and Bronze Ages. Admirably arranged and catalogued
+were hundreds of flint arrowheads and axes, some of the latter being
+of that earliest type before man had the sense to pierce the axe-head
+for the handle, but stuck the wedge-like head of the axe through a
+hole in the shaft. There were also many examples of rude instruments
+belonging to the Bronze Age, some Roman swords and a skeleton in a
+prehistoric stone coffin. The interest of these curiosities lay not
+only in their intrinsic value to the antiquary, but in the fact that
+they had all been dug up from the tumuli in the Commune of Carnac. But
+to me they assumed at once a far more vivid interest, when the
+custodian explained that the antiquary who had discovered most of
+them, and whose money had founded the museum, was "M'sieu Meelin of
+Dundae." When I explained that I was a countryman of this Mr. Miln,
+the curator launched into a warm description of that worthy's
+abounding good qualities, and recalled with the fervour of the French
+his own personal association with Mr. Miln in the work of excavation.
+He pointed with pride to a very ordinary oil painting of his old
+friend and master, which disclosed him as a fresh-complexioned,
+white-haired gentleman of unmistakable Scottish type, and assured me
+that he was "_un homme très interessant et très aimable_." I could
+readily believe the eulogy, as it was a kindly old Scotch face that
+looked out of the canvas at me.
+
+
+II.
+
+I wonder if the memory of Mr. Miln is treasured in Dundee. The chances
+are that what I have to tell of him may be news to his fellow-townsmen
+of to-day. A reference to that excellent work, _Chambers's
+Biographical Dictionary_, discloses the fact that he is remembered
+there to the extent of exactly two lines:
+
+"Miln, James (1819-81), a Scotch antiquary made excavations at Carnac
+in Brittany, 1872-80."
+
+That is all, but behind these two lines lie the long story of a
+romantic life in a foreign land and a little measure of fame among an
+alien people. In this respect the life of James Miln resembles
+curiously the lives of so many of his fellow-countrymen, who have
+wandered to the ends of the earth in the pursuit of their avocations,
+and left traces of their work everywhere except in the place of their
+birth.
+
+My knowledge of the life of this notable Scotsman and his work is
+gleaned from the scholarly little brochure written by M. Zacharie le
+Rouzic, the slippered custodian of the "Musée Miln." It appears that
+James Miln was born at Woodhill in 1819, and while still young
+travelled in India, China, and spent some years in other parts of the
+far east. On his return to Scotland he threw himself with enthusiasm
+into antiquarian research and scientific studies. He succeeded to the
+estate of Murie in Perthshire on the death of his father, James Yeanan
+Miln, of Murie and Woodhill, and later to that of Woodhill in
+Forfarshire at the death of his brother, to whom that property had
+descended. His particular line of study for nearly forty years of his
+life would seem to have been the origin and development of portable
+firearms, and for a man of such peaceful pursuits it is strange to be
+told that he was especially ardent in encouraging every experiment for
+the perfection of rifles. Another of his hobbies was concerned with
+the improvement of the telescope; but all kinds of scientific
+instruments seem to have been objects of his study and inventive
+genius. In the experimental days of photography he speedily achieved
+success with the camera, and made a large collection of photographs of
+ancient sculptures in the east of Scotland. An accomplished linguist
+and something of an artist, he illustrated with his own pencil all his
+works on archæology, which M. Le Rouzic assures us was always his
+favourite study.
+
+It was during the summer of 1873 that Miln first visited Carnac, where
+he encountered his friend, Admiral Tremlett, of Tunbridge Wells, who
+was interested in the wonderful neolithic remains in the
+neighbourhood, and became his guide in a series of explorations.
+Miln's enthusiasm was immediately aflame when he contemplated this
+rich and sparsely-explored field of research awaiting the excavator.
+His first idea was to purchase the ground on which some of the most
+interesting remains were standing, but finding this impossible, he
+approached the farmers on whose land the unbroken mounds, which
+represented burial-places of prehistoric people, were situated, and
+obtained leave from them to commence the work of excavation, to which
+he immediately resolved to devote himself during 1875 and 1876. The
+result was a series of important discoveries. Perhaps the most
+important of the remains unearthed were those of a Roman villa,
+consisting of eleven chambers, and surrounded by several other
+buildings, among which were baths and a small temple, that were
+believed to date back to the first half of the fourth century.
+Numerous examples of Roman pottery, glass, jewellery, money, a bronze
+statue of a bull, and many other curiosities were dug up. Within sight
+of the museum, and only a few minutes' walk away, is a tumulus
+surmounted by a little chapel to Saint Michael, and here in 1876 Miln
+made many notable discoveries, including the remains of an
+eleventh-century monastery.
+
+ [Illustration: THE MERCHANTS' TABLE
+
+ _One of the great dolmens near Carnac_]
+
+
+III.
+
+The results of these excavations were described in a large work
+written and illustrated by himself, and issued in Edinburgh and Paris.
+By January of 1877 he was busily prosecuting his explorations at
+Kermaric, a gunshot distant from Carnac, and the work went steadily on
+with the most fruitful results in many other parts of the district
+until the end of 1880, when Miln returned to Edinburgh in order to
+produce another book describing his researches. Unhappily, in the
+midst of his literary labour, he was seized with a brief illness,
+which at the end of six days resulted in his death on Friday, 28th
+January, 1881, at twelve minutes to eleven, as the faithful M. le
+Rouzic records.
+
+James Miln was a member of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, la
+Société royale des Antiquaries du Nord, the Academy of Copenhagen, and
+several learned societies in England and the Continent. "_C'est avec
+une douloureuse émotion que l'on apprit, à Carnac, la nouvelle de sa
+mort_," to quote again his faithful henchman. The museum with its
+precious contents was secured to Carnac through the efforts of Mr.
+Robert Miln, the son of the antiquary, and his friend Admiral
+Tremlett, and was opened on the 22nd May, 1882, since when it has
+remained a centre of great interest and importance to all antiquarian
+students, and an enduring monument to "M'sieu Meelin of Dondae."
+
+This is a brief outline of the life of a little-known Scotsman, which
+is worth recalling as an example of the quiet, unostentatious way in
+which the Scot will carry on any enterprise that lies near to his
+heart, with no eye to personal advertisement, but out of sheer
+pleasure in the work his hand has found to do. Thus it is that one
+meets with traces of our countrymen in the remote and unfrequented
+corners of earth, and at the ring of an old name the mind of the
+wanderer is carried back across "the waste of seas" to the land whose
+sons, by some strange irony of fate, are prone to find their life-work
+far from home.
+
+
+IV.
+
+But my story must not end here, although we take our leave of James
+Miln and his museum. It is almost impossible to describe in any
+adequate way the historic value of this part of Brittany. Stonehenge,
+in England, is a national monument which we zealously treasure, yet
+its value, compared with the neolithic remains of Morbihan, is as a
+drop in a bucket of water. In the region to the east and north of
+Carnac druidical remains are as plentiful as blackberries in an autumn
+hedge. The sight of what are known as "_les alignements de Carnac_" is
+one never to be forgotten. Standing on the little mound by the chapel
+of Saint Michael already mentioned, and looking northward across the
+plain, we see an enormous range of menhirs or druidical stones
+standing like an army at attention. There are no fewer than 2,813 of
+these massive stones to be seen from this point, and the imagination
+is busy at once striving to picture the strange rites practised here
+by unknown people before the dawn of history. Dotted all over the vast
+plains are dolmens and cromlechs of varying size.
+
+One of the largest dolmens that I visited is known as the Merchants'
+Table. It stands near Locmariaquer, and consists of an enormous stone
+laid flat on the top of a series of smaller stones. Originally the
+supporting stones would be only slightly imbedded in the earth, but in
+the ages that have passed the soil has accumulated until they are now
+sunk six or eight feet deep, but still project above the ground to the
+height of four or five feet. The roof-stone must weigh some hundred
+tons, and one of the mysteries is how a people, whose instruments were
+of the most primitive kind, could place such a mammoth block in so
+elevated a position. The dolmens, of which the Merchants' Table is one
+of the finest examples, were probably places of burial, and are always
+approached by a smaller chamber of the same rude construction. The
+interior of the one in question bears many strange carvings, that
+remain an enigma even to the most erudite.
+
+Some authorities believe these structures may have been used as
+houses; others suppose them to have been altars, so that it will be
+seen their purpose has not yet been decided upon by their most learned
+students. The cromlechs, which are a series of stones standing in a
+circle, were most probably sanctuaries, and there is reason to believe
+that it was here the Druid priests practised their unknown rites.
+They are generally to be found at the end of an "alignment," and are
+oriented, so that the likelihood is the worshippers stood within the
+long rows of stones, which would correspond to the choir of a
+cathedral, and the priests were in the cromlech looking toward the
+rising of the sun.
+
+To return for the last time to the great army of menhirs, or single
+stones, seen from St. Michael's chapel near Carnac, the legend popular
+in the district is that when St. Corneille, a Pope of Rome, was being
+pursued by an army of pagan soldiers, he had with him two oxen, which
+carried his belongings and sometimes himself when he was fatigued. One
+evening, when he had arrived near a village where he would have rested
+the night, he determined to press on beyond it because he had heard a
+young girl insult her mother! He saw soon afterwards that the
+soldiers, who had been following him, were arranged in line of battle,
+and he was between them and the sea. So he stopped, and transformed
+the entire army into stones. This is at least a picturesque way for
+accounting for those marvellous remains that have baffled the minds of
+men to explain.
+
+
+
+
+Round About a French Fair
+
+
+I.
+
+The rambler in old France can seldom undertake a little journey during
+the summer without coming upon some town where a fair is in progress.
+At least, that has been my own experience, and in the course of wide
+wanderings through the highways and by-ways of the most delightful
+land in Europe I have witnessed many fairs in towns so far apart as
+Morlaix and Montluçon, Orleans and Beaucaire, Rennes and Lisieux.
+Nowhere does the distinctive character of a people show itself more
+strongly than in its public fairs and rejoicings. Thus, if one desired
+to get at a glance a glimpse into the different natures of the Briton
+and the Gaul, a visit to Glasgow Fair or Nottingham's famous Goose
+Fair, followed by a look round the great fair of Rennes or Orleans,
+would do more for one's education in this regard than a great deal of
+book learning.
+
+An extensive and peculiar knowledge of Scottish and English
+holiday-making, which the vagrant life of journalism has enabled me to
+acquire, goes far to justify in my mind, when I think of the Frenchman
+and his merry-making, the charge directed against us by our friends
+across the Channel--that we take our pleasures sadly. There is very
+little to choose between an English and Scottish festival of the
+common people, though that little of brightness and genuine high
+spirits is in favour of the former. A more vulgar, tasteless,
+saddening spectacle than a Scottish saturnalia it is difficult to
+conceive. For ill manners, foul speech, stupid and low diversions, I
+have seen nothing so lacking in all the elements of joy as an Ayrshire
+country fair; it has made me blush for my countrymen. But when such a
+melancholy festival has awakened memory's contrasts of sights seen in
+merry France, I have been glad to believe that, speaking generally,
+while a fair in Scotland or in England stirs up the less worthy
+elements in the people's character, such an occasion in France, on the
+contrary, calls forth some of the better traits of the people.
+
+ [Illustration: _Familiar types_
+
+ _A Lacemaker at Le Monastier_
+
+ WOMEN OF THE CEVENNES]
+
+In our own time, and due in some measure to the growth of refinement
+arising out of our improved education, the institution of the public
+fair in this country has been steadily declining in popularity; but in
+France it still flourishes. There are other reasons for this,
+though the chief is--again accepting a French criticism--that we are
+essentially a nation of shopkeepers. The origin of the fair was, of
+course, the bringing together of people with goods to sell or barter,
+and a touch of pleasure was given to the business by the association
+of amusements therewith. Time was when Nottingham Goose Fair was an
+event of the highest importance in the commercial life of the
+district, and continued over a period of a month; but with the rise of
+the shopkeeper, who has ever a jealous eye on the huckster, this, like
+many another of our fairs, has been gradually curtailed, on the plea
+of its interfering with regular business, until it is now limited to a
+week, and is threatened with reduction to three days. In France,
+however, many of the fairs still last for a month, although the most
+celebrated of all, that of Beaucaire, which is almost continental in
+its importance and is less a festival than a commercial institution,
+is held for one week only. At Orleans one of the finest fairs in
+France takes place annually in June, and continues for a whole month.
+It may be taken as typical of these provincial carnivals, and in
+endeavouring to give my readers some idea of its leading features, I
+shall be describing to them the character of French fairs in general.
+
+
+II.
+
+Most of the towns in France are peculiarly adapted for the holding of
+festivals, with their wide main street and "bit of a square"; but
+Orleans is especially fortunate in this respect. Although it is a town
+of not more than seventy thousand inhabitants, it possesses a series of
+spacious boulevards and public squares which would be thought remarkable
+in an English city of three or four times that population. The chief
+part of Orleans lies on the north bank of the wide and swiftly-flowing
+Loire, and the boulevards, following roughly the outline of an arc,
+compass the town with the river for base. The great width of these
+highways--at a moderate estimate six times that of the Strand--makes
+it possible for an immense number of booths and stalls to be ranged
+along them without in any degree obstructing the regular road traffic.
+Thus, if you arrive at the railway station during the fair month, you
+will find the entire stretch of the northern thoroughfares--close on a
+mile and a half as I should estimate--occupied by the show people, who
+have created a boulevard within a boulevard, as the fair-ground is one
+long avenue of booths, with a wide promenade between and roadways as
+roomy as an English turnpike still remaining free to ordinary traffic
+on the outer edges.
+
+If it were the first affair of its kind you had seen in France, you
+would be immediately impressed by the remarkable cleanliness of the
+shows and of the attendants at the numerous stalls, where every
+variety of goods are on sale. What may be described as the business
+part of the fair is distinct from that devoted to amusements, and the
+high-class character of the stalls and their keepers is explained when
+we know that the tradesmen of the town have become hucksters for the
+nonce, most of these temporary structures being fitted up and
+conducted by local shopkeepers. The appointments of some of them are
+elaborate to a surprising degree, but never defaced by such crude and
+tasteless displays as we find at English fairs.
+
+
+III.
+
+To mention the varieties of business represented by these stalls would
+be to enumerate every trade in the town, and a few more. Bakers and
+pastrycooks are there in abundance; the stalls at which a bewildering
+choice of sweetmeats is displayed are marvels of neatness, and their
+name is legion. As many as five or six smartly-dressed young women
+with white oversleeves will be busy at one counter supplying the
+customers, who are endeavouring to increase the purchasing value of
+their coppers by speculating at the roulette table kept by the
+proprietor, for at such time the Frenchman introduces the gambling
+element into every transaction where it can be applied. At the
+miscellaneous stalls, where all sorts of fancy goods are on sale, the
+"wheel of fortune" is practically the only method of exchange. Many of
+the places are run on the principle of "all one price," and thrifty
+housewives may be seen deliberating on the respective merits of knives
+and forks, cruet-stands, butter-dishes, and scores of minor household
+utensils, each to be had at the price of half a franc (fivepence). It
+is clear that the women-folk regard the occasion as an opportunity for
+getting unusual value for their money. Peasants may purchase an entire
+suit of clothes at some of the stalls, and if they are wishful of a
+crucifix or an image of the sacred heart, here they are in abundance,
+with rosaries, bambinoes, and all the brightly-coloured symbols of
+Catholic worship.
+
+But the real interest of the fair, and, of course, its most
+picturesque part, lies in the great Boulevard Alexandré Martin, which
+stretches eastward from the railway station. Here are congregated most
+of the places of entertainment. These, no less than the temporary
+shops of the tradesmen, present a striking contrast to anything one
+may see at an English fair. The Frenchman's instinctive feeling for
+art is everywhere noticeable, and the exterior decoration of the shows
+exhibits a lightness and daintiness of touch quite unknown in the same
+connection in England. The gilded horror of the ghost-show exterior,
+so familiar a feature of our own fairs, has no counterpart in France,
+but the booths wherein are exhibited "freaks of Nature" are curiously
+similar in both countries, the crude pictures on the canvas fronts
+being preposterous exaggerations of the objects to be seen within.
+
+
+IV.
+
+What strikes one particularly in wandering through the fair-ground at
+Orleans is that while all is different from an English festival, the
+difference is one of degree and not of kind. Here, for example, are
+several circuses, where performances very similar to those given by
+any travelling circus in our own land are "about to commence." On the
+outside platform two clowns are shouting to the crowd to walk up; the
+gorgeous ring-master with his whip joins in the general advertisement;
+a girl and a boy are dancing to the music of a small but noisy
+orchestra. There is this difference, however, between a French circus
+and an English one: the whole enterprise wears a more noticeable
+appearance of success, is better housed, the place being brilliantly
+lighted by electricity generated by an excellent portable plant, the
+performers better dressed. But curiously enough, the finest travelling
+circus I have ever seen in any land was Anderson's "Cirque Féerique,"
+which I came upon during a flying visit to the industrial town of
+Vierzon, some hundred and twenty-five miles south of Paris. The
+proprietor was a Scotsman! "Mother Goose" was the chief item of the
+performance, and the coloured posters of the old lady and her goose
+had been printed in England!
+
+Pitched close to such a circus stands a large wooden opera-house,
+capable of holding from six to eight hundred people, the seats being
+arranged on an inclined plane, the higher priced ones as substantial
+and comfortable as the stalls of one of our provincial theatres. The
+stage is commodious, and the performers as accomplished as any touring
+company that visits the second-class English towns. Indeed, their
+performance of "Les Cloches de Corneville" was given with a _verve_
+and a finish not seldom lacking in more ambitious opera companies one
+has seen at home. Instead of an orchestra, a very clever and
+good-looking young lady pianist played the accompaniments throughout
+the entire performance.
+
+The travelling theatres, too, force comparison with the regular
+playhouses in the smaller English towns, rather than with the wretched
+"tuppenny" shows that represent the drama at an English fair. Like the
+opera-house just described, they are fitted up substantially, and in
+good taste, the charges for admission ranging from half a franc to
+three or four francs. Many notable French actors have graduated from
+these portable theatres, and, indeed, those who perform in them are of
+a class considerably above the mummers who exhibit in our "fit-ups";
+they are the best type of "strolling-players."
+
+One of the most detestable features of an English fair is the
+appalling noise created by mechanical organs. This is happily absent
+from the French fête, and of the few contrivances of the kind which I
+remember at Orleans there was only one designed solely for the sake of
+noise. Perhaps the most remarkable of these orchestrions was a real
+triumph of musical machinery, around which, and contained within an
+immense and brilliantly lighted wooden building, whirled an endless
+chain of fairy coaches, hobby horses, swan boats, and other fantastic
+vehicles, eminently contrived for the purpose of producing giddiness.
+This was truly the _pièce de résistance_ of the Orleans Fair, and it
+would be impossible to conceive a more striking contrast than that
+between this really magnificent construction and the familiar English
+merry-go-round. Externally the building would have borne favourable
+comparison with a "Palace of Electricity" at some of our international
+exhibitions. The façade was of Byzantine style, and myriads of
+beautifully-coloured electric lamps picked out the design, two huge
+peacocks with outspread tails, also composed of coloured lights, being
+introduced with most artistic effect on each side of the glittering
+archway. Inside, the decorations were gorgeous "to the _n_th degree,"
+as Mr. W. E. Henley might have said, but the scheme of colours was in
+perfect harmony, the whole making up a veritable feast of light that
+must dazzle and fascinate the simple country-folk wherever this
+wonderful merry-go-round is set up. At a moderate estimate, I should
+name £10,000 as the cost of this single show, and perhaps that will
+indicate the lavish way in which the French are catered for by their
+travelling showmen.
+
+Cinematographs there were in profusion, most of them exhibiting scenes
+of a kind which would speedily be suppressed on this side the Channel;
+shooting galleries galore, exactly like our own; peep-shows,
+marionette theatres, panoramas; a booth with a two-headed bull and
+other monsters, a Breton bagpiper playing his instrument outside being
+worthy of inclusion in the list; but one saw no "fat women"--possibly
+because they are such common objects of French life! A large
+switchback railway seemed to be very popular, and, like all the rival
+attractions, its proprietors claimed for it the distinction of having
+come "direct from the Paris Exhibition," where it had been awarded
+first prize. The smallest side-shows, consisting of perhaps a few
+distorting mirrors, had all been "exhibited at Paris," and the
+two-headed bull was advertised by a huge painting showing all the
+crowned heads of Europe and President Loubet examining the beast,
+which, on inspection, turned out to be only a little removed from the
+normal by having a head slightly broader than usual, with the
+incipient formation of a third eye in its forehead, and a muzzle
+remotely suggestive of two joined together.
+
+
+V.
+
+A performance which I enjoyed not a little was given by a quack
+doctor. An enormous carriage, resembling in outline an old
+stage-coach, but decorated with much carved moulding and thickly
+covered with gilt and crimson, which produced a most bizarre effect,
+stood in an open space. Seated on the roof was a boy, who turned a
+machine which emitted the only hideous noise to be heard at the fair.
+In the open fore-part, richly cushioned, a man stood dressed in a
+dazzling suit of brass armour, his glittering helmet lying in front of
+him, and in his hand a small bottle of clear liquid. He was of the
+southern type, swarthy, wonderfully fluent of speech. He assured a
+gaping crowd that his medicine could cure any disease from toothache
+to tetanus, and he invited any sufferer to step up. Immediately one
+did so, the boy ground out the hideous din above, and the doctor sat
+for a few noisy seconds while his patient told him his trouble! Then
+the racket was stopped with a wave of the quack's hand, and he
+explained for five minutes, in vivid words, the terrible nature of the
+patient's disease, and invited the poor wretch to pick any bottle from
+the stock in front of him. This done, he had to open his waistcoat and
+shirt--for it was a severe pain in the left side from which he
+suffered--and the quack in armour struck the bottom of the bottle on
+his knee, thus causing the cork to pop out. He now shook the bottle
+vigorously with his forefinger on the neck, and the fluid changed into
+green, brown, and finally black, whereat the simpletons around
+marvelled, as they were meant to do. The comic practitioner next
+thrust the bottle into the open shirt-front of his patient, and shook
+the contents of it against the victim's skin, pressing his hand for a
+few moments on the part. Then he asked the fellow to step down as
+cured, and go among the crowd "telling his experience." A dozen cases
+were treated in less than half an hour--people with neuralgia,
+sprained wrists and ankles--and always the same formula as to
+consultation, explanation, application! A handful of liquid applied to
+a man's cheek evaporated mysteriously and worked wonders. Intending
+patients were told that the doctor could be consulted at the hotel
+near by during certain hours each day, and many must have gone to him
+there, for the fluent humbug had every appearance of driving a
+prosperous practice.
+
+
+VI.
+
+But the feature of this fair which, more than any other, distinguished
+it sharply from anything to be seen in our country, was "The Grand
+Theatre of the Walkyries and of the Passion of N. S. J. C." The
+mysterious initials stand for the French of "Our Lord Jesus Christ." A
+gentleman with a shaggy head of hair, dressed in a well-fitting
+frock-coat, and possessed of an excellent voice, stood on the platform
+outside, surrounded by oil paintings of sacred pictures and a dozen
+or more performers in the costumes of Roman soldiers, apostles and
+other Biblical characters. Judas was readily distinguished by his red
+hair, Mary by her nunlike garb. The showman announced that the
+performance was "about to commence," and urged us to walk up and
+witness the most pleasing spectacle of the fair. A hand-bill
+distributed among the crowd described the entertainment as a
+"mimodrame biblique" of the Passion, played, sung, enterpreted and
+mimicked by forty persons! "This spectacle, unique in France, will
+leave in the minds of the inhabitants of this town an unforgettable
+memory. It is not to be confounded with anything else you may have
+seen; it is no mere series of living pictures. At each performance M.
+Chaumont, the originator, will present twenty-one tableaux, three
+hundred costumes will be used, and three apotheoses will be shown. The
+establishment is comfortable, lighted by electricity from a plant of
+thirty-horse power. It is a spectacle of the best taste, pleasing to
+everyone, and families may come here with the fullest confidence.
+Balloons will be distributed to the children every Thursday." So ran
+the circular, which also contained the information (mendacious, I
+doubt not) that the entertainment was the property of a limited
+company with a capital of £20,000.
+
+When the signal to begin was given the place was not more than half
+filled, and the audience seemed in no reverential mood. A pianist
+began to play on a very metallic piano, and outside the voice of the
+manager was still heard urging the crowd to "walk up" and "be in
+time." The drop-curtain was rolled up, and the manager stepped inside
+the building as a number of characters in the sacred drama filed on to
+the stage. He explained, in a rapid torrent of words, what they were
+supposed to be doing, but Judas jingled the filthy lucre so lustfully
+that the pantomime was very obvious in its purport. The curtain fell
+again, and the manager stepped outside to harangue the crowd while the
+second tableau was being prepared; but the ringing of a bell brought
+him in again, and so on through the whole series.
+
+It must be confessed that the performance was carried out with no
+small dramatic ability, and M. Chaumont gave a wonderfully realistic
+interpretation of the rôle of Christ, some of the tableaux being
+strikingly conceived, as, for examples, the kiss of Judas and Christ
+before Pilate, the latter character being admirably represented by a
+performer who looked a veritable Roman proconsul, and washed his hands
+with traditional dignity. The Crucifixion, too, was represented with
+vivid reality; but the audience was disposed to laugh at the writhing
+of the malefactors on their crosses, and did indeed giggle when the
+soldier held up the sponge of vinegar to the dying Saviour. It was
+obvious that the whole performance, although really discharged by the
+actors with remarkable fidelity to tradition, and a commendable
+assumption of reverence, was more amusing than impressive to the
+spectators, who, though moved to laughter when St. Veronica pressed
+her handkerchief to the face of Christ and, turning to the audience,
+displayed the miraculous impression of His features, applauded the
+more dramatic scenes liberally. What interested me personally was M.
+Chaumont's idea of a miracle. Save that of St. Veronica, I have
+forgotten the others enacted; they were quite unfamiliar to me, but in
+the instant of each miracle a limelight was flashed for two or three
+seconds from "the flies," and this was supposed to betoken the
+super-natural character of the affair.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Of course, such a spectacle as I have described would be quite
+impossible in our country to-day, although time was in our history,
+when miracle plays were a recognised feature of the church in England.
+It was in no sense comparable with any of the passion plays still
+performed periodically in some continental towns, and while the
+incongruous surroundings of "The Grand Theatre of the Passion of
+N.S.J.C." were not calculated to induce a spirit of reverence in the
+spectators, it was a saddening spectacle to find an audience of
+Catholic people taking so lightly the representation of scenes which,
+however wrong in the light of history, should have been to them sacred
+subjects of faith.
+
+It was characteristically French that immediately opposite the theatre
+wherein this Biblical pantomime was presented stood a large exhibition
+containing an enormous collection of pathological models and
+curiosities. This was, without doubt, the foulest display of
+unspeakable horrors to be seen in any civilised country in our time,
+for under the hypocritical plea of illustrating, by wax models and
+otherwise, the obstetrics of human life and the diseases of the body,
+its proprietor--a woman, if you will believe me--had gathered together
+a collection of incredible horrors which men and women, and even young
+people, were allowed to inspect on the payment of one franc. The same
+exhibition, which is probably not over-valued at £20,000, was actually
+brought to London some few years ago, but the police speedily cleared
+it out of our country.
+
+These blots, however, are the only blemishes on the Orleans Fair, and
+for brightness, gaiety, and general good taste, I must conclude as I
+began, by saying that a French carnival is in every sense a more
+pleasing spectacle than any of our English or Scottish fairs present.
+
+
+
+
+The Palace of the Angels
+
+
+I.
+
+It was in Evreux, while cycling through Normandy one summer, that my
+wife and I met three "new women," who were also touring the country
+a-wheel. Their route was for the most part the reverse of ours, but
+not so extended, and in discussing the country with them I asked how
+long they had spent at Mont St. Michel. "Oh, we have not gone there,"
+was the reply; "we were told it wasn't interesting, and so we have
+kept away from it." We were saddened to find that three English women,
+especially of the "advanced type," could know so little of the
+monuments of France as to accept the irresponsible opinion of some
+one-eyed tourist, who in his or her idle babble had said Mont St.
+Michel was not worth visiting.
+
+Not interesting, indeed! There is not in the whole of Normandy, in all
+France, in historic England even, an example of so much interest
+concentrated in so small a space. An enthusiastic Frenchman has
+described it as the eighth wonder of the world. Victor Hugo has said
+that Mont St. Michel is to France what the Pyramids are to Egypt.
+Large and deeply interesting volumes have been written about it. It
+will form a theme for writers for generations to come, and artists
+will employ their pencils here so long as a vestige of the wonderful
+buildings remains.
+
+There is a strong temptation in writing of Mont St. Michel to fall
+into the style of the junior reporter, who will blandly tell you that
+a thing is indescribable, and immediately proceed to describe it. One
+is persuaded that this marvellous monument of the Middle Ages cannot
+be adequately described in plain prose, however apt the pen, yet one
+is equally desirous of making the attempt. But I shall promise my
+readers on this occasion to make no effort at an elaborate
+description, which, indeed, the space of a single chapter renders
+impossible, and to attempt no more than a general sketch of the most
+noteworthy features of the Mount.
+
+
+II.
+
+To begin with, I take it for granted that the reader, if he or she has
+not already visited Mont St. Michel, is at least aware that it is
+situated in the bay of the same name, near the point where the coasts
+of Normandy and Brittany merge, and thus some forty-three miles
+south-east of Jersey. The story of Mont St. Michel, even had the hand
+of man never reared upon the rock one of the most remarkable
+structures the human mind has conceived, could scarcely have failed to
+be interesting. During the Roman occupation of France, or Gaul as it
+was then called, the great stretch of sea that lies to-day between the
+Mount and Jersey was then a vast forest, through which some fourteen
+miles of Roman military road were constructed. But in the third
+century the invasion of the sea compelled the Romans to alter the
+course of their road, and in the next century both the Mount and the
+small island of Tombelaine, which lies scarcely two miles away, were
+isolated at high tide. So on from century to century the sea has
+gradually eaten away this part of Normandy, until now some hundred and
+ninety square miles of land are entirely submerged at high tide. This
+alone is sufficient to invest the Mount with a peculiar interest, for
+one can stand upon it to-day and, gazing far away to sea, contemplate
+the absolute mastery of Neptune, whose ravages have left of all the
+great forest of Scissy nothing more than a handful of trees growing
+sturdily among the rocks on the north side of the Mount.
+
+But it is the human interest attaching to Mont St. Michel that
+outweighs everything else. The rock is steeped in religious lore, and
+in the annals of war there is no place in France more historic.
+Originally a monastery, it became in time an impregnable fortress as
+well; the rough warrior lived side by side upon it with the studious
+monk, and there the clash of battle was as regular an occurrence for
+years on end as the mass and vespers. In its old age it became a
+prison, one of the most dreaded in a land of terrible prisons, and
+just as it had been absolutely impregnable to attack (the English
+without success besieging it for eleven years in the fifteenth
+century), so was it an inviolable prison, only one man ever having
+been able to effect his escape, and even in his case escape would have
+been impossible but for the facilities unconsciously placed in his
+hands by his gaolers.
+
+
+III.
+
+The first thought that comes to the visitor as he views the Mount from
+the shore is, What could have induced anyone to choose so difficult a
+site for the foundation of a monastery? But here legend conveniently
+steps in and explains all. In the eighth century Aubert, the Bishop of
+Avranches, one of the most pious in an age of piety, was in the habit
+of retiring to the Mount for rest and meditation, and during one of
+his visits there the Archangel Saint Michael, the Prince of the Armies
+of the Lord, appeared to him and told him to build on the top of the
+Mount a sanctuary in his honour. From which it will be seen that even
+angels in those days were not above self-advertisement. But Aubert,
+though a bishop, was "even as you and I," and when he awoke in the
+morning he had some doubt as to whether he had been dreaming or had
+really entertained the Archangel; so he prolonged his stay in the hope
+of receiving another visit; nor was he disappointed. A few days later
+Saint Michael appeared to him once more, and rather sharply repeated
+his command. But even now Aubert was not convinced, and he determined
+to give Saint Michael a third chance, which the Saint was nothing
+loath to accept, repeating his instructions in a most peremptory
+manner. He also touched the bishop's head, leaving a hole in the skull
+"for a sign." We have heard of a surgical operation to introduce a
+joke, but this is the only case on record where a saint has found it
+necessary to perform a surgical operation for the introduction of a
+command into the head of a bishop, and Aubert, like a sensible man,
+concluding that one hole in his skull was sufficient, immediately set
+about the building of "the Palace of the Angels." Aubert's skull is
+still preserved in the Church of Saint Gervais at Avranches, and the
+startling effect of Saint Michael's touch may be seen to this day!
+
+This is only one of the innumerable legends relating to the origin of
+the Abbey. Another is worthy of mention, illustrating, as it does, the
+advantages of co-operation with an angel when one is performing so
+difficult a task as Aubert took up. On the top of the Mount were two
+large rocks which interfered seriously with building, and could be
+moved by no human efforts. Saint Michael, therefore, appeared to a
+devout peasant who lived on the coast and bore the familiar name of
+Bain, telling him to take his sons to the Mount and move the rocks.
+Despite the Caledonian flavour of his name, Bain did not wait to have
+his skull perforated by the Archangel, but went forthwith together
+with eleven of his children and tried to move the rocks. They could
+not stir them one hair's-breadth, however; whereupon Aubert asked Bain
+if he had brought all his children, and the good man explained that
+they were all there except the baby, which was with its mother. The
+Bishop then instructed him to go at once and fetch the infant, "for
+God often chooses the weak to confound the strong." The child was
+brought, and at a touch of his little foot the rocks went tumbling
+down the Mount, in proof of which one of them may be seen to this day
+with a little chapel to Saint Aubert built on the top of it.
+
+One more of the many miracles associated with the beginning of the
+great work should not be left unmentioned. Saint Aubert was naturally
+much exercised as to where he should rear his sanctuary, the pinnacle
+of a lonely rock being an unusual place to build on even in those
+unusual days, but here again the Archangel, who had manifested so much
+personal interest in the work, came to his rescue, and caused a heavy
+dew to fall on the Mount, leaving a dry space on the top. Upon this
+dry space was the church to be built.
+
+In 709 Saint Aubert had practically completed the structure, and the
+church was dedicated to Saint Michael after two precious relics
+(namely, a piece of a scarlet veil, which the Archangel had left on
+the occasion of his famous appearance at Monte Gargano in Naples,
+together with a piece of the marble on which he had stood) had been
+placed in a casket on the altar. Not a vestige of the oratory built by
+Saint Aubert, nor of the church erected in 963 by Richard, remains.
+The oldest part of the buildings now existing represents a church
+founded in 1020 by Richard, second Duke of Normandy, and constructed
+under the direction of the Abbot Hildebert II. The transepts, the
+greater part of the nave, and the crypts date back to this period.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The whole scheme of the wonderful memorial that fascinates the eye of
+the latter-day tourist owed its conception to this eleventh-century
+abbot, and surely no heaven-born architect ever conceived a more
+audacious plan. His project was not merely to occupy the limited space
+on the summit of the Mount with his religious buildings, but to start
+far down the sides of the rock, and, by utilising the Mount just as
+the sculptor makes use of a skeleton frame whereon to plaster the clay
+in which he models his statue, so to rear upward gigantic walls and
+buttresses which at the top would carry a huge platform to hold the
+superstructures, creating thus a collection of vast buildings with the
+live rock thrust up in the centre for foundation. It is to the glory
+of Saint Michael that for no less than five centuries this colossal
+scheme of Hildebert's was carried out with absolute unity of purpose
+by his successors, an achievement only possible among religious
+workers. The result was that this lonely Mount gradually became
+clothed with a series of most beautiful buildings, which to the eye of
+the beholder seem to have grown by some natural process out of the
+rock itself.
+
+ [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF MONT ST. MICHEL]
+
+To the student of architecture it would be impossible to mention any
+monument more worthy of study than this. Not only do we find within
+its innumerable cloisters, crypts, and halls, specimens of the purest
+Gothic that exists, but at every turn we are presented with structures
+that conform to the very highest ideals of art, in being at once
+useful and beautiful. There is not a single buttress, not a window,
+not an arch, not a pillar, that does not discharge some duty, and the
+removal of which would not weaken in some degree a part of the scheme.
+
+
+V.
+
+The best way to secure an intelligible notion of the work of these
+monkish builders is to walk around the Mount at low tide and study the
+buildings from the outside. The feature that will most impress one in
+following this course is the wonderful north side of the Mount, known
+as the Merveille, which rears its massive walls sheer from the rock
+face, supported along its entire length by enormous buttresses, that
+spring with a fine suggestion of strength and permanency from their
+rocky base. The principal buildings, apart from the church, are
+contained within these massive walls. To the west we have, in three
+stories, the Cellar, the Salle des Chevaliers, and above the latter
+the open Cloister, the most perfect example of its kind in the world.
+The eastern part begins with the Almonry, above which is the Salle des
+Hôtes, and on the top of that the Refectory.
+
+The whole effect of the Merveille is superb, yet what is it more than
+a great wall, held up by mighty buttresses, pierced in different ways
+to light the chambers within and to make each suitable for its
+particular office? The most perfect economy has been observed
+throughout, the buttresses are terminated the moment their services
+are not required, and the Refectory, which carries a light wooden
+roof, is lighted by means of long narrow lancets which give to the
+wall far more strength than would have been possible had it been
+pierced by wide windows; still, the lighting within is perfect. In
+brief, the Merveille, apart from the numerous other buildings that
+went to form the monastic and military establishment, is enough to
+send an architect into raptures, and might, if he knew not the dangers
+of the incoming tide, which has to cover nine miles of land at the
+rate of a race-horse, induce him to tarry over long in feasting his
+eyes on this marvellous achievement. It is beautiful beyond
+description, and yet we may be certain that its builders never
+thought of mere beauty in its construction, but built purely to meet
+the exigencies of the situation, and to provide the best possible
+accommodation for the inhabitants of the monastery and their
+dependants. As one writer has put it, "the beauty just happened." It
+is only when we find builders striving after effect that we are face
+to face with decadent art.
+
+Continuing our walk round the rock on those sands that have been the
+scene of many a bitter battle, we pass under the ramparts, beginning
+with the Tour du Nord at the eastern end of the Merveille. Here,
+again, the beautiful union of art and Nature is observed, this
+magnificent tower seeming to be but the natural growth of the shelving
+rocks at its base. It is no surprise to know that through the ages
+which knew not the Maxim or the 100-ton gun, the splendid
+fortifications successfully resisted every attack of the envious
+English, the Bretons, and the Huguenots. The modern town is huddled
+picturesquely between the ramparts and the Abbey to the east and
+south.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Having completed the tour around the Mount, the visitor should proceed
+along the ramparts, and reach the entrance to the Abbey by the
+staircase known as the Grand Degré, which leads into the Barbican, and
+through the massive and beautiful Châtelet into the more ancient
+entrance of the Abbey, known as Belle-Chaise, where are situated the
+Guard Room and the Government Room. Here the guide will take us in
+hand, and march us from point to point of interest in the interior.
+But it is impossible, in the space of a short chapter, to attempt a
+description of this, that would follow in any detail the stipulated
+round of the apartments at present shown to the public.
+
+Suffice it to say that you will first be taken to the Church, which is
+now, and likely to be for many years, in the hands of the restorers.
+Only four bays of the seven that went to the making of the great
+Norman nave remain, and these have had to be much restored; but here
+it is a pleasure to record that the restoration has been carried out
+with perfect taste, so that the latter-day visitor has an excellent
+idea of the appearance of the Abbey and its dependent buildings as
+these were in the heyday of Mont St. Michel's prosperity.
+
+From the Church we shall enter the Cloister, already mentioned as
+being the topmost of the three western stories of the Merveille. Here
+was the recreation ground of the monks, and nothing could be more
+exquisite than the elegant proportions of the slender pillars that
+support the vaulted roofs of the double arcade. From the Cloister we
+visit the Refectory, where many a strange gathering of monks has taken
+place in days of old, for it is one of the interesting things in the
+history of Mont St. Michel that, while in its earlier ages it was a
+centre of learning and genuine religion, it became corrupt and
+scandalous under the commendatory abbots, who were men neither of
+morals nor religion, and who allowed all sorts of abuses within these
+sacred walls. At one time, indeed, the Abbot of Mont St. Michel was
+the five-year-old son of Louis the Just. In the south-west corner of
+the Refectory is the pit that formerly contained a lift whereby
+provisions could be hauled up from the bottom story, and the leavings
+of the monks sent down to the Almonry for distribution among the poor.
+
+The Salle des Chevaliers, which will next be visited, is described by
+a learned writer as "perhaps the finest Gothic chamber in the world,"
+and is believed to have been built as a great workroom for the monks,
+but received its present name either from the fact that the first
+investitures of the Order of St. Michael were made herein, or that it
+was the lodging of the 190 knights who came to the Mount to defend it
+against the English. In this beautiful apartment, lighted and
+ventilated in a way that is a model to present-day builders, the monks
+wrote and illuminated the manuscripts which earned for the abbey the
+title of "The City of Books." Reached from this room is the Salle des
+Hôtes, wherein the grand visitors were entertained by the abbot in a
+style befitting their rank, as under the rule of St. Benedict it was
+forbidden for laymen to enter the apartments reserved for the monks.
+Like all the other buildings, however, it has served many another
+purpose than that for which it was originally designed, and at one
+time was actually used as a _Plomberie_ where the lead was worked for
+roofing and other purposes connected with the Abbey.
+
+The Cellar is, in its way, as beautiful as any of the other
+apartments, although nothing was attempted by its builders but to
+provide a capacious storeroom for the inhabitants of the Mount, and to
+secure, in its strong pillars, strength to support the buildings
+rising above it. The provisions were hauled up from the sands by means
+of a great wheel and a rope, the latter being carried out on a little
+drawbridge to enable it to drop clear of the rocks. This arrangement,
+by the way, is associated with one of the most audacious attempts to
+secure the Abbey during the wars of the Huguenots. A traitor within
+arranged with two Huguenot leaders that on the day of St. Michael, in
+September, at eight o'clock in the evening, in the year 1591, he would
+haul up their men by means of this rope, and introduce them to the
+Cellar, while the monks were engaged in devotions, so placing the
+Mount at their mercy. But he proved a double traitor, for after
+seventy-eight men had been so hauled up, and, with one exception,
+quietly killed by the soldiers of the garrison as they arrived, the
+leaders below became suspicious of a trap, and asked that a monk
+should be thrown down as evidence that the plot was successful. The
+Governor immediately had one of the murdered Huguenots dressed in the
+gown of a monk and thrown down, but the Sieur Montgomery was not
+satisfied with this, and he called up that one of his men should come
+out on the drawbridge and assure them below that all was well. So the
+Governor sent the one man he had spared and instructed him to answer
+down that the Huguenots were masters of the Abbey. He was faithful to
+death, however, and called down that they were betrayed. Instead of
+being immediately killed, the Governor was so impressed with his
+courage, that he spared him, and the Huguenots hastily rode away.
+
+The Almonry is the last of the great apartments which are contained in
+the Merveille, and it is from this that visitors make their exit into
+the courtyard of the Abbey; but many other interesting chambers are
+shown, such as the Crypte de l'Aquilon, the Charnier, the Promenoir or
+ancient cloister, and the famous Crypte des Gros-Piliers, which is
+also known as l'Eglise Basse, its pillars, of enormous girth, being
+designed to support the heavy masonry of the Abbey above. The Cachots,
+or prisons, are also an important feature of the sights described by
+the guide, and many harrowing tales are told of famous prisoners who
+went mad during their incarceration in these dread dungeons. But it is
+a pity that this part is shown at all, as the recollection of these
+hideous holes is likely to confuse many visitors' impressions of the
+place.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Here, then, is a very brief and a sadly-imperfect sketch of this rare
+legacy which the Middle Ages have left to lucky France. It need only
+be added that not one visit, nor two, is sufficient to an adequate
+appreciation of the beauties of Mont St. Michel; several days,
+instead of several hours, as is too often the custom of the breathless
+tourist, should be spent on the Mount. There is accommodation in
+plenty, for the three hotels, all kept by members of the same family
+(and each at daggers drawn with the others), give splendid
+entertainment at moderate rates; and practically all the houses are
+annexes to one or other of these establishments, so that except during
+August and September accommodation is never difficult to obtain. Nor
+are the buildings of the Abbey and the Merveille the only things of
+interest on the Mount to-day, for though it is a strangely-different
+scene from that in the olden days of pilgrimage, it is, perhaps, as
+interesting if we choose to regard as pilgrims the countless tourists
+who swarm here from all the ends of the earth, and we shall find among
+them even more material for study than was afforded to the monks in
+ages past. Then if rain should keep us prisoner for an hour or two at
+times, we need not weary sitting at our window, watching the carriages
+and bicycles arriving at the entrance to the Cour de l'Avancée, where
+they are immediately besieged by representatives of each of the
+hotels, and probably a simple Briton, innocent of French or the ways
+of this curious community, will find himself divided into three, his
+luggage being captured by the representative of Poulard _aîné_, his
+bicycle being taken by the tout for Poulard _jeune_, and he himself
+led captive by the buxom female who canvasses for _veuve_ Poulard.
+
+ [Illustration: _The Merveille_
+
+ _Interior of the Abbey_
+
+ MONT ST. MICHEL]
+
+We remember one occasion when, at a high tide, which necessitated the
+use of a boat for debarking visitors, a solitary English female, of
+the type so properly satirised by French caricaturists, arrived by the
+diligence, and was rowed in lonely state through the entrance to the
+outer court. As the boat grounded she stood up, an angular vision in
+drab, with dark blue spectacles and a straw hat. In answer to the
+inquiring shouts of the hotel representatives, she innocently replied
+in the one word she knew, "Poulard," and there was a rush for her, in
+which the elder Poulard, thanks to exceptional height and strength,
+was able to dispose of his rivals, and lift this representative of
+British womanhood bodily into the kitchen of his hotel. She would
+probably be as much surprised as most of us are on visiting the place
+for the first time, to discover that after leaving this kitchen and
+ascending two stairs in the hope of arriving immediately at our
+bedroom, the maid calmly opens a door, and we find ourselves in
+another street, that rises step after step for one hundred yards or
+so, and brings us to one of the dependencies of the hotel, where
+probably we may have two or three stories to climb. You have a
+feeling all the time you are on the Mount that, somehow, you are
+living on the top of slates, as the houses look down upon each other,
+and in many cases you can walk from the top flat out on to a street at
+the back.
+
+In a word, Mont St. Michel is unique. A stay here is an experience
+unlike any to be had elsewhere in Europe. "Not worth visiting"
+forsooth!
+
+
+PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER
+
+
+
+
+ * * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43209 ***
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-01-05 03:09:10 +0000