IU 6/ TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1903 \_All rights reserved] it was two o'clock in the afternoon be- fore I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired, for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more ado with baskets ; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard VEv^que, a place on the borders of the for- est of Mercoire. A man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half ; and I thought it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey might cover the same distance in four hours. All the way up the long hill from Lan- 46 Upper Gevaudan gogne it rained and hailed alternately ; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly ; plentiful hurrying clouds — some dragging veils of straight rain-shower, others massed and luminous as though promising snow — careered out of the north and fol- lowed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the A liter ^ and away from the ploughing oxen, and such- like sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields, — these were the characters of the country. Hill and valley followed val- ley and hill ; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporad- ically on hillsides or at the borders of a wood. There was no direct road to Cheylard y and it was no easy affair to make a passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth of tracks. It must A Camp in the Dark 47 have been about four when I struck Sagne- rousse, and went on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours after- wards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir-wood where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead ; and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows and perhaps as many more black figures, which I conjectured to be children, although the mist had almost unrecognisably exaggerated their forms. These were all silently following each other round and round in a circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and reverences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts ; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, I was pricking Mo- 48 Upper Gevaudan destine forward, and guiding her like an un- ruly ship through the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind ; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute became de- mented. The tendency of lost travellers to go round in a circle was developed in her to the degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a single field. While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle began to disperse, until only a pair of girls re- mained behind. From these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were but little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into his house, and barricaded the door on my approach ; and I might beat and shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. An- other, having given me a direction which, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood, complacently watched me going wrong without adding a sign. He did not care A Camp in the Dark 49 a stalk of parsley if I wandered all night upon the hills! As for these two girls, they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief. One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows ; and they both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of Gtvaudan ate about a hun- dred children of this district ; I began to think of him with sympathy. Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into another wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and darker. Modestine, suddenly begin- ning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first sign of intelligence I had occasion to remark in her. At the same time, the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sighted some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of Fouzil- hic ; three houses on a hillside, near a 4 50 Upper Gevaudan wood of birches. Here I found a delight- ful old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on the road for Cheylard. He would hear of no reward ; but shook his hands above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly, in unmitigated patois. All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in my bosom. Alas, and I was on the brink of new and greater miseries ! Suddenly, at a single swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a tree, — this was all that I could dis- criminate. The sky was simply darkness overhead ; even the flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to human eyesight. I could not distinguish my hand at arm's length from the track, nor my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or the sky. A Camp in the Dark 5* Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of the country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. Since Modestine had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this predicament. But the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from the name ; in half a minute she was clambering round and round among some boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have camped long before had I been properly provided ; but as this was to be so short a stage, I had brought no wine, no bread for myself and little over a pound for my lady-friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were both hand- somely wetted by the showers. But now, if I could have found some water, I should have camped at once in spite of all. Water, however, being entirely absent, except in the form of rain, I determined to return to Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little further on my way — ' a little farther lend thy guiding hand.' The thing was easy to decide, hard to 52 Upper Gtvaudan accomplish. In this sensible roaring black, ness I was sure of nothing but the direc- tion of the wind. To this I set my face; the road had disappeared, and I went across country, now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to Modestine, until I came once more in sight of some red windows. This time they were differ- ently disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg in bog, until I gained the entrance of the village. In the first lighted house there was a woman who would not open to me. She could do nothing, she cried to me through the door, being alone and lame ; but if I would apply at the next house, there was a man who could help me if he had a mind. They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. The man was not ill-looking, but had a A Camp in the Dark 53 shifty smile. He leaned against the door- post, and heard me state my case. All I asked was a guide as far as Cheylard. * Cest que, voyez-vous, il fait noir, said he. I told him that was just my reason for requiring help. * I understand that/ said he, looking un- comfortable ; ' mats — cest — de la peine? I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I rose as high as ten francs ; but he continued to shake his head. 1 Name your own price, then,' said I. ' Ce n'est pas ca* he said at length, and with evident difficulty ; * but I am not going to cross the door — maisje ne sortirai pas de la porte* I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that I should do. 1 Where are you going beyond Chey- lard? * he asked by way of answer. * That is no affair of yours,' I returned, for I was not going to indulge his bestial curiosity ; ' it changes nothing in my pres- ent predicament/ 54 Upper Gevaitdan 1 Cest vrai, ca, y he acknowledged, with a laugh ; ' out, cest vrai. Et d'ok venez vous ? * A better man than I might have felt nettled. 1 O,' said I, * I am not going to answer any of your questions, so you may spare yourself the trouble of putting them. I am late enough already ; I want help. If you will not guide me yourself, at least help me to find some one else who will/ * Hold on,' he cried suddenly. ' Was it not you who passed in the meadow while it was still day ? ' 'Yes, yes,' said the girl, whom I had not hitherto recognised ; ' it was monsieur ; I told him to follow the cow/ 'As for you, mademoiselle,' said I, 'you are a farceuse* * And/ added the man, ' what the devil have you done to be still here?' What the devil, indeed ! But there I was. ' The great thing/ said I, ' is to make an end of it ; ' and once more proposed that he should help me to find a guide. A Camp in the Dark 55 ' Cest que,' he said again, ' cest que — it fait noir* * Very well/ said I ; l take one of your lanterns/ ' No,' he cried, drawing a thought back- ward, and again intrenching himself behind one of his former phrases ; * I will not cross the door.' I looked at him. I saw unaffected ter- ror struggling on his face with unaffected shame ; he was smiling pitifully and wet- ting his lip with his tongue, like a de- tected schoolboy. I drew a brief picture of my state, and asked him what I was to do. ' I don't know,' he said ; * I will not cross the door.' Here was the Beast of Gevaudan, and no mistake. ' Sir/ said I, with my most commanding manners, 'you are a coward.' And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who hastened to retire within their fortifications ; and the famous door was closed again, but not till I had $6 Upper Gevaudan overheard the sound of laughter. Filia barbara pater barbarior. Let me say it in the plural : the Beasts of Gdvaudan. The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I ploughed distressfully among stones and rubbish-heaps. All the other houses in the village were both dark and silent; and though I knocked at here and there a door, my knocking was unanswered. It was a bad business ; I gave up Fouzilhac with my curses. The rain had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, began to dry my coat and trousers. * Very well/ thought I, ' water or no water, I must camp.' But the first thing was to return to Modestine. I am pretty sure I was twenty minutes groping for my lady in the dark ; and if it had not been for the un- kindly services of the bog, into which I once more stumbled, I might have still been groping for her at the dawn. My next business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was cold as well as bois- terous. How, in this well-wooded district, I should have been so long in finding one, A Camp in the Dark 57 is another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures ; but I will take my oath that I put near an hour to the discovery. At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, suddenly crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated blackness right in front. I call it a cave without exaggera- tion ; to pass below that arch of leaves was like entering a dungeon. I felt about until my hand encountered a stout branch, and to this I tied Modestine, a haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then I lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the road, and unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where the lantern was ; but where were the candles ? I groped and groped among the tumbled articles, and, while I was thus groping, sud- denly I touched the spirit-lamp. Salvation ! This would serve my turn as well. The wind roared unwearyingly among the trees ; I could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churning through half a mile of for- est ; yet the scene of my encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably 5 8 Upper Gevaudan sheltered. At the second match the wick caught flame. The light was both livid and shifting ; but it cut me off from the universe, and doubled the darkness of the surrounding night. I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up half the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half against the morning. Then I gathered what I should want within reach, took off my wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my sleeping- bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in like a bambino. I opened a tin of Bologna sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all I had to eat. It may sound offensive, but I ate them together, bite by bite, by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat brandy: a re- volting beverage in itself. But I was rare and hungry ; ate well, and smoked one of the best cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the A Camp in the Dark 59 flap of my fur cap over my neck and eyes, put my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down among the sheepskins. I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come separate. The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a steady even rush, not rising nor abating ; and again it would swell and burst like a great crash- ing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert of the wind among the woods ; but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these woods of Gtvaudan. I hearkened and 60 Upper Gevaudan hearkened ; and meanwhile sleep took grad- ual possession of my body and subdued my thoughts and senses ; but still my last wak- ing effort was to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at the foreign clamour in my ears. Twice in the course of the dark hours — once when a stone galled me under- neath the sack, and again when the poor patient Modestine, growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road — I was recalled for a brief while to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace-like edge of the foliage against the sky. When I awoke for the third time {Wednesday, September 2$th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine tied to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over the experi- ence of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been, even in A Camp in the Dark 61 this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me would not have been there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque night ; and I had felt no other incon- venience except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of Peyrafs Pastors of the Desert among the mixed con- tents of my sleeping-bag ; nay more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and clear sensations. With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and break- ing up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to see in what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers ; and thus to be found by morning in a random wood- side nook in Ge'vaudan — not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland castaway — was to find a fraction of my 62 Upper Gevaudan day-dreams realised. I was on the skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few beeches ; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir ; and in front, it broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy dale. All around there were bare hill-tops, some near, some far away, as the perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much higher than the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly. Overhead the sky was full of strings and shreds of vapour, flying, vanish- ing, reappearing, and turning about an axis like tumblers, as the wind hounded them through heaven. It was wild weather and famishing cold. I ate some chocolate, swal- lowed a mouthful of brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the cold should have time to disable my fingers. And by the time I had got all this done, and had made my pack and bound it on the pack-saddle, the day was tiptoe on the threshold of the east. We had not gone many steps along the lane, before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a A Camp in the Dark 63 glow of gold over some cloud mountains that lay ranged along the eastern sky. The wind had us on the stern, and hur- ried us bitingly forward. I buttoned my- self into my coat, and walked on in a pleas- ant frame of mind with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there was Fouzilhic once more in front of me. Nor only that, but there was the old gentleman who had escorted me so far the night before, run- ning out of his house at sight of me, with hands upraised in horror. 1 My poor boy ! ' he cried, * what does this mean ? * I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me go ; but when he heard of the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind. * This time, at least,' said he, ' there shall be no mistake.' And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about half a mile, and until I was almost within sight of Cheylard, the destination I had hunted for so long. CHEYLARD AND LUC /CANDIDLY, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. A few broken ends of village, with no particular street, but a succession of open places heaped with logs and fagots ; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine to our Lady of all Graces on the summit of a little hill ; and all this, upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked valley. What went ye out for to see ? thought I to myself. But the place had a life of its own. I found a board commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants sub- scribed forty-eight francs ten centimes for the * Work of the Propagation of the Faith/ Some of this, I could not help hoping, would be applied to my native land. Chey- Cheylard and Luc 65 lard scrapes together halfpence for the darkened souls in Edinburgh; while Bal- quidder and Dunrossness bemoan the igno- rance of Rome. Thus, to the high enter- tainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with evangelists, like schoolboys bick- ering in the snow. The inn was again singularly unpreten- tious. The whole furniture of a not ill-to- do family was in the kitchen : the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the par- ish priest. There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would erelong be forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. They were much interested in my misad- venture. The wood in which I had slept belonged to them ; the man of Fouzilhac they thought a monster of iniquity, and counselled me warmly to summon him at law — 'because I might have died.' The good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over a pint of uncreamed milk. 5 66 Upper Gevaudan 1 You will do yourself an evil,* she said. * Permit me to boil it for you.' After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she having an infinity of things to arrange, I was permitted, nay requested, to make a bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and gaiters were hung up to dry, and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest daugh- ter let down a hinged table in the chimney- corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, drank my chocolate, and finally ate an ome- lette before I left. The table was thick with dust ; for, as they explained, it was not used except in winter weather. I had a clear look up the vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapour, to the sky ; and whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my legs were scorched by the blaze. The husband had begun life as a mule- teer, and when I came to charge Modestine showed himself full of the prudence of his art. 'You will have to change this pack- age,' said he ; 'it ought to be in two parts, Cheylard and Luc 67 and then you might have double the weight/ I explained that I wanted no more weight ; and for no donkey hitherto created would I cut my sleeping-bag in two. 1 It fatigues her, however,' said the inn- keeper ; ' it fatigues her greatly on the march. Look.' Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on the inside, and blood was running from under her tail. They told me when I left, and I was ready to believe it, that before a few days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. Three days had passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty enough to look at ; but then she had given proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and ill- judged light-heartedness. And I own this new discovery seemed another point against her. What the devil was the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping- 68 Upper Gevaudan bag and a few necessaries ? I saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, when I should have to carry Modestine. JEsop was the man to know the world ! I assure you I set out with heavy thoughts upon my short day's march. It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted me upon the way ; it was a leaden business altogether. For first, the wind blew so rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one hand from Cheylard to Luc ; and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly countries in the world. It was like the worst of the Scotch Highlands, only worse ; cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life. A road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the road was marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow. Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my much- inventing spirit can suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair Cheylard and Luc 69 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. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freez- ing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exact- ing, who can annoy himself about the future ? I came out at length above the A liter. A more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. Shelv- ing 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 impu- dently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady, 70 Upper Gevaudan which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty- quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October. Through this sorry land- scape trickled the A liter and a tributary of nearly equal size, which came down to join it through a broad nude valley in Vivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, and the clouds massed in squadron ; but the fierce wind still hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly splashes of shadow and sunlight over the scene. Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged between hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was there any notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brand-new Madonna. But the inn was clean and large. The kitchen, with its two box-beds hung with clean check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its chimney-shelf four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious statuettes, its array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be ; a melodrama kitch- en, suitable for bandits or noblemen in dis- C hey lard and Luc 71 guise. Nor was the scene disgraced by the landlady, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, clothed and hooded in black like a nun. Even the public bedroom had a character of its own, with the long deal tables and benches, where fifty might have dined, set out as for a harvest-home, and the three box-beds along the wall. In one of these, lying on straw and covered with a pair of table-napkins, did I do penance all night long in goose-flesh and chattering teeth, and sigh from time to time as I awakened for my sheepskin sack and the lee of some great wood. OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS * 1 behold The House, the Brotherhood austere-^ And what am /, that I am here ? ' Matthew Arnold. OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS FATHER APOLLINARIS jVJEXT morning {Thursday, 26th Septem- ber) I took the road in a new order. The sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end. It was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would insure stability, blow high, blow low. But it was not without a pang that I had so decided. For although I had purchased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet jealously uneasy lest the flaps should 76 Out- Lady of the Snows tumble out and scatter my effects along the line of march. My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march of Vivarais and Ge'vaudan. The hills of Ge'vaudan on the right were a little more naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais upon the left, and the former had a monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in solitary burrs upon the shoulders and the summits. Black bricks of fir-wood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and here and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the river ; the only bit of railway in Gevaudan, although there are many proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell me, a station standing ready built in Mende. A year or two hence and this may be another world. The desert is be- leaguered. Now may some Languedocian Wordsworth turn the sonnet into patois : ' Mountains and vales and floods, heard YE that whistle ? ' At a place called La Bastide I was Father Apollinaris 77 directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardeche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery of our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, and I be- held suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sap- phire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the under- wood 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 pros- pect ; 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. The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly in the sun. I drew a long breath. It was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction for the human. 7% Our Lady of the Snows heart. I own I like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon ; and if landscapes were sold, like the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, I should go the length of two- pence every day of my life. But if things had grown better to the south, it was still desolate and inclement near at hand. A spidery cross on every hill-top marked the neighbourhood of a religious house ; and a quarter of a mile beyond, the outlook southward opening out and growing bolder with every step, a white statue of the Virgin at the corner of a young plantation directed the traveller to our Lady of the Snows. Here, then, 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. I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why, my heart sank within me at the sound. I have rarely approached anything with more un- Father Apollinaris 79 affected terror than the monastery of our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant education. And suddenly, on turning a corner, fear took hold on me from head to foot — slavish superstitious fear; and though I did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unno- ticed, and strayed into the country of the dead. For there upon the narrow new- made road, between the stripling pines, was a mediaeval friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs. Every Sunday of my childhood I used to study the Hermits of Marco Sadeler — enchanting prints, full of wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as large as a county, for the imagination to go a travelling in ; and here, sure enough, was one of Marco Sadeler s heroes. He was robed in white like any spectre, and the hood falling back, in the instancy of his contention with the barrow, disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as a skull. He might have been buried any time these thousand years, and all the lively parts of 80 Our Lady of the Snows him resolved into earth and broken up with the farmer's harrow. I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I address a person who was under a vow of silence ? Clearly not. But drawing near, I doffed my cap to him with a far-away superstitious reverence. He nodded back, and cheerfully addressed me. Was I going to the monastery ? Who was I ? An Englishman ? Ah, an Irishman, then ? * No,' I said, 'a Scotsman.' A Scotsman ? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman before. And he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny countenance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I learned with disgust that I could not be received at our Lady of the Snows ; I might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out that I was not a pedlar, but a literary man, who drew landscapes and was going to write a book, he changed his manner of thinking as to my reception (for Father Apollinaris 81 I fear they respect persons even in a Trap- pist monastery), and told me I must be sure to ask for the Father Prior, and state my case to him in full. On second thoughts he determined to go down with me himself; he thought he could manage for me better. Might he say that I was a geographer ? No ; I thought, in the interests of truth, he positively might not. * Very well, then ' (with disappointment), 'an author.' It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young Irishmen, all priests long since, who had received newspapers and kept him informed of the state of ecclesias- tical affairs in England. And he asked me eagerly after Dr. Pusey, for whose conver- sion the good man had continued ever since to pray night and morning. 1 1 thought he was very near the truth,' he said ; ' and he will reach it yet ; there is so much virtue in prayer.' He must be a stiff ungodly Protestant who can take anything but pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. While he was 82 Our Lady of the Snows thus near the subject, the good father asked me if I were a Christian ; and when he found I was not, or not after his way, he glossed it over with great good-will. The road which we were following, and which this stalwart father had made with his own two hands within the space of a year, came to a corner, and showed us some white buildings a little further on beyond the wood. At the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the monastery. Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) stopped me. ' I must not speak to you down there,' he said. ' Ask for the Brother Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as you go out again through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made your acquaintance.' And then suddenly raising his arms, flap- ping his fingers, and crying out twice, ' I must not speak, I must not speak ! ' he ran away in front of me and disappeared into the monastery-door. I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity Father Apollinaris 83 went a good way to revive my terrors. But where one was so good and simple, why should not all be alike ? I took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would permit. It was the first door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had not shown an indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form, though with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaller, and a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me awhile. I think my sack was the great attraction ; it had al- ready beguiled the heart of poor Apolli- naris, who had charged me on my life to show it to the Father Prior. But whether it was my address, or the sack, or the idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on strangers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no difficulty as to my reception. Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and my pack were received into our Lady of the Snows. THE MONKS CATHER MICHAEL, a pleasant, fresh- faced, smiling man, perhaps of thirty five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say he listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly when I remember that I descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken bread, I can well understand that he would find an earthly savour in my conversation. But his manner, though su- perior, was exquisitely gracious ; and I find I have a lurking curiosity as to Father Michaels past. The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery garden. This The Monks 85 is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of particoloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around it four-square, bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and weather, and with no other features than a belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys ; and when I first came out, three hooded monks were kneel- ing on the terrace at their prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind ; the snow falls off and on from October to May, and sometimes lies six weeks on end ; but if they stood in Eden, with a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect ; and for my part, on this wild September day, before I was called to dinner, I felt chilly in and out. When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a hearty conversible 86 Our Lady of the Snows Frenchman (for all those who wait on strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a little room in that part of the building which is set apart for MM. les retraitants. It was clean and whitewashed, and fur- nished with strict necessaries, a crucifix, a bust of the late Pope, the Imitation in French, a book of religious meditations, and the life of Elizabeth Seton, evangelist, it would appear, of North America and of New England in particular. As far as my experience goes, there is a fair field for some more evangelisation in these quar- ters ; but think of Cotton Mather / I should like to give him a reading of this little work in heaven, where I hope he dwells ; but perhaps he knows all that already, and much more ; and perhaps he and Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the table, to conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of regulations for MM. les retraitants : what services they should at- tend, when they were to tell their beads or meditate, and when they were to rise and go The Monks 87 to rest. At the foot was a notable N.B. : 1 Le temps libre est employe' a Vexamen de conscience, a la confession, a faire de bonnes resolutions, &c.' To make good resolutions, indeed! You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head. I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Ambrose returned. An English boarder, it appeared, would like to speak with me. I professed my willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young, little Irishman of fifty, a deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in default of knowledge, I can only call the ecclesiastical shako. He had lived seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in Belgium, and now five at our Lady of the Snows; he never saw an English newspaper ; he spoke French imperfectly, and had he spoken it like a native, there was not much chance of conversation where he dwelt. With this, he was a man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and simple-minded like a child. If I was pleased to have a guide about the monastery, he was no less 88 Our Lady of the Snows delighted to see an English face and hear an English tongue. He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries, Hebrew bibles, and the Waverley novels. Thence he led me to the cloisters, into the chapter- house, through the vestry, where the brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his religious name upon a board, — names full of legendary suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hila- rion, Raphael, or Pacifique ; into the library, where were all the works of Veuillot and Chateaubriand, and the Odes et Ballades, if you please, and even Moliere, to say nothing of innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians. Thence my good Irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, and make cartwheels, and take photo- graphs ; where one superintends a collec- tion of curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits. For in a Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his own choice, apart from his religious duties and The Monks 89 the general labours of the house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir ; but in his private hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on what he likes. Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with literature ; while Father Apollinaris busies himself in making roads, and the Abbot employs himself in binding books. It is not so long since this Abbot was conse- crated, by the way ; and on that occasion, by a special grace, his mother was per- mitted to enter the chapel and witness the ceremony of consecration. A proud day for her to have a son a mitred abbot ; it makes you glad to think they let her in. In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to our passage than if we had been a cloud ; but sometimes the good deacon had a permis- sion to ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in swimming, or 90 Our Lady of the Snows refused by the usual negative signs, and in either case with lowered eyelids and a cer- tain air of contrition, as of a man who was steering very close to evil. The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two meals a day ; but it was already time for their grand fast, which begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and during which they eat but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil and vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly ; 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 diver- sion 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 cheerfulness of man- ner of all whom I beheld. A happier nof The Monks 9 l a healthier company I should scarce sup. pose 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 in- frequent 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 mean time, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour ; and the only morbid sign that I could observe, an un- usual brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather to increase the general impression of vivacity and strength. Those with whom I spoke were singu- larly sweet tempered, with what I can only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conver- sation. There is a note, in the direction to visitors, telling them not to be offended at the curt speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to speak little. The note might have been spared ; to a man the hospitallers were all brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the monastery, it was easier to begin 9 2 Our Lady of the Snows than to break off a conversation. With the exception of Father Michael, who was a man of the world, they showed them- selves full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of subjects — in politics, in voyages, in my sleeping-sack — and not without a certain pleasure in the sound of their own voices. As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder how they bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, apart from any view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, not only in the exclu- sion of women, but in this vow of silence. I have had some experience of lay phalan- steries, of an artistic, not to say a baccha- nalian, character ; and seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. In the neighbourhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association that can be formed among defenceless men ; the stronger elec- tricity is sure to triumph ; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are aban- doned after an interview of ten minutes, The Monks 93 and the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. And next after this, the tongue is the great divider. I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious rule; but there is yet another point in which the Trappist order appeals to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the morning the clap- per goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest ; so infinitesi- mally 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 dis- posal of their lives. Into how many houses 94 Our Lady of the Snows 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 per- mitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner. From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand the monk's existence. A long novitiate and every proof of constancy of mind and strength of body is required before admission to the order ; but I could not find that many were discouraged. In the photographer's studio, which figures so strangely among the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This was one of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the garrison of Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both sides of life before deciding ; yet as soon as he was set free from service he returned to finish his novitiate. The Monks 95 This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit ; he lies in the bed of death as he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent existence ; and when the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has gone to God. At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the gallery to hear compline and Salve Regina, with which the Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. 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 white- washed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and g6 Our Lady of the Snows 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. But I was weary ; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth Setoris memoirs — a dull work — the cold and the raving of the wind among the pines — for my room was on that side of the monas- tery which adjoins the woods — disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel ; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labours of their day. The dead in life — there was a chill reflection. And the words of a The Monks 97 French song came back into my memory, telling of the best of our mixed existence. 'Que t'as de belles filles, Girofle" ! Girofla! . Que t'as de belles filles, L* Amour les compter a ! ' And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love. THE BOARDERS DUT there was another side to my resi- dence at our Lady of the Snows. At this late season there were not many board- ers ; and yet I was not alone in the public part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining-room on the ground-floor, and a whole corridor of cells similar to mine up-stairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for a regular retraitant ; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like myself might give what they chose as a free-will offering, but nothing was de- manded. I may mention that when I was going away, Father Michael refused twenty francs as excessive. I explained the rea- soning which led me to offer him so much ; but even then, from a curious point of hon- our, he would not accept it with his own The Boarders 99 hand. ' I have no right to refuse for the monastery/ he explained, 'but I should prefer if you would give it to one of the brothers.' I had dined alone, because I arrived late ; but at supper I found two other guests. One was a country parish priest, who had walked over that morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy four days of solitude and prayer. He was a grena- dier in person, with the hale colour and circular wrinkles of a peasant ; and as he complained much of how he had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted cas- sock, through the bleak hills of Gdvaudan. The other was a short, grizzling, thick-set man, from forty-five to fifty, dressed in tweed with a knitted spencer, and the red ribbon of a decoration in his buttonhole. This last was a hard person to classify. He was an old soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank of comman- dant ; and he retained some of the brisk 'LcfC. ioo Our Lady of the Snows decisive manners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon as his resignation was accepted, he had come to our Lady of the Snows as a boarder, and, after a brief experi- ence of its ways, had decided to remain as a novice. Already the new life was begin- ning to modify his appearance ; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren ; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trap- pist, but partook of the character of each. And certainly here was a man in an inter- esting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms, communicate by signs. At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in France, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell on the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in England dwell on the example of Carthage. The priest and the Commandant assured me of their The Boarders 101 sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy sighing over the bitterness of con- temporary feeling. 1 Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not absolutely agree/ said I, ' but he flies up at you in a temper.' They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian. While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but a word in praise of Gambetta s moderation. The old soldier's countenance was instantly suffused with blood ; with the palms of his hands he beat the table like a naughty child. * Comment, monsieur? ' he shouted. ' Com- ment ? Gambetta moderate ? Will you dare to justify these words ? ' But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warning look directed on his face ; the absurdity of his behaviour was brought home to him in a flash ; and the storm came to an abrupt end, without another word. 102 Our Lady of the Snows It was only in the morning, over our coffee {Friday, September 27th), that this couple found out I was a heretic. I sup- pose I had misled them by some admiring expressions as to the monastic life around us ; and it was only by a point-blank ques- tion that the truth came out. I had been tolerantly used both by simple Father Apol- linaris and astute Father Michael ; and the good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weakness, had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, ' You must be a Catholic and come to heaven.' But I was now among a different sect of orthodox. These two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the worst of Scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted aloud like a battle-horse. ' Et vons pre'tendez mourir dans cette espece de croyance ? ' he demanded ; and there is no type used by mortal printers large enough to qualify his accent. I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing. The Boarders 103 But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. l No, no,' he cried ; 'you must change. You have come here, God has led you here, and you must em- brace the opportunity/ I made a slip in policy ; I appealed to the family affections, though I was speak- ing to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life. 'Your father and mother?' cried the priest. ' Very well ; you will convert them in their turn when you go home/ I think I see my father's face ! I would rather tackle the Gaetulian lion in his den than embark on such an enterprise against the family theologian. But now the hunt was up ; priest and soldier were in full cry for my conversion ; and the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which the people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during 1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most effective proselytising. They never sought 104 Our Lady of the Snows to convince me in argument, where I might have attempted some defence ; but took it for granted that I was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on the point of time. Now, they said, when God had led me to our Lady of the Snows, now was the appointed hour. 1 Do not be withheld by false shame,' observed the priest, for my encouragement. For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this or that creed on the eter- nal side of things, however much he may see to praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus created was both unfair and painful. I committed my second fault in tact, and tried to plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and we were all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and undiscriminat- ing Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay-spirits, would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men think differently ; and this revolutionary The Boarders 105 aspiration brought down the priest with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of hell. The damned, he said — on the authority of a little book which he had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction, he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket — were to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal tortures. And as he thus expa- tiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with his enthusiasm. As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the Prior, since the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immedi- ately before him. ' Cest mon conseil comme ancien militaire* observed the Commandant ; ' et celui de monsieur comme pretre* ' Out,* added the cure", sententiously nod- ding ; ' comme ancien militaire — et comme pritre* At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in came one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively 106 Our Lady of the Snows as a grig, and with an Italian accent, who threw himself at once into the contention, but in a milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant brethren. Look at hint, he said. The rule was very- hard ; he would have dearly liked to stay in his own country, Italy — it was well known how beautiful it was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no Trappists in Italy; and he had a soul to save ; and here he was. I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has dubbed me, 'a faddling hedonist ; ' for this description of the brother's motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should have preferred to think he had chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes ; and this shows how profoundly I was out of sympa- thy with these good Trappists, even when I was doing my best to sympathise. But to the curi the argument seemed decisive. 'Hear that!' he cried. 'And I have seen a marquis here, a marquis, a marquis ' — he repeated the holy word three times The Boarders 107 over — ' and other persons high in society ; and generals. And here, at your side, is this gentleman, who has been so many years in armies — decorated, an old warrior. And here he is, ready to dedicate himself to God.' I was by this time so thoroughly embar- rassed that I pled cold feet, and made my escape from the apartment. It was a furi- ous windy morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine ; and I wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely staggered and beaten upon by the gale, but rewarded with some striking views. At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was recommenced, and on this occasion still more distastefully to me. The priest asked me many questions as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received my replies with a kind of ecclesias- tical titter. i Your sect/ he said once ; * for I think you will admit it would be doing it too much honour to call it a religion.' 108 Our Lady of the Snows ' As you please, monsieur/ said I. ' La parole est a vous.' At length I grew annoyed beyond endur- ance ; and although he was on his own ground and, what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so holding a claim upon my toleration, I could not avoid a protest against this uncivil usage. He was sadly discountenanced. 1 1 assure you,' he said, ' I have no incli- nation to laugh in my heart. I have no other feeling but interest in your soul.' And there ended my conversion. Hon- est man ! he was no dangerous deceiver ; but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long may he tread Gevaudan with his kilted skirts — a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death ! I daresay he would beat bravely through a snowstorm where his duty called him ; and it is not always the most faith- ful believer who makes the cunningest apostle. UPPER G^VAUDAN {Continued) 1 The bed was made, the room was fit, By punctual eve the stars were lit; The air was still, the water ran ; No need there was for maid or man, When we put up, my ass and I, At God 's green caravanserai* Old Play. UPPER GEVAUDAN (Continued) ACROSS THE GOULET THHE wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear ; so it was under bet- ter auspices that I loaded Modestine before the monastery-gate. My Irish friend ac- companied me so far on the way. As we came through the wood, there was Pere Apollinaire hauling his barrow ; and he too quitted his labours to go with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between both of his in front of him. I parted first from one and then from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the traveller who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth upon another. Then Modestine and I ii2 Upper Gevaudan (continued) mounted the course of the Allier, which here led us back into Gevaudan towards its sources in the forest of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn before we left its guidance. Thence, over a hill, our way lay through a naked plateau, until we reached Chasserades at sundown. The company in the inn-kitchen that night were all men employed in survey for one of the projected railways. They were intelligent and conversible, and we decided the future of France over hot wine, until the state of the clock frightened us to rest. There were four beds in the little up-stairs room ; and we slept six. But I had a bed to myself, and persuaded them to leave the window open. 1 He", bourgeois ; il est cinq heures I * was the cry that wakened me in the morning (Saturday, September 2%th). The room was full of a transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other three beds and the five different nightcaps on the pillows. But out of the window the dawn was grow- ing ruddy in a long belt over the hill-tops, A crass the Goulet 113 and day was about to flood the plateau. The hour was inspiriting ; and there seemed a promise of calm weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. I was soon under way with Modestine. The road lay for awhile over the plateau, and then descended through a precipitous village into the valley of the Chassezac. This stream ran among green meadows, well hidden from the world by its steep banks ; the broom was in flower, and here and there was a hamlet sending up its smoke. At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a bridge, and, forsaking this deep hollow, set itself to cross the mountain of La Goulet. It wound up through Lestampes by upland fields and woods of beech and birch, and with every corner brought me into an acquaintance with some new inter- est. Even in the gully of the Chassezac my ear had been struck by a noise like that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of many miles ; but this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to it, seemed to change in character, and I found at length 8 ii4 Upper Gevaudan {continued) that it came from some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural horn. The narrow street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, from wall to wall — black sheep and white, bleating with one accord like the birds in spring, and each one accompany- ing himself upon the sheep-bell round his neck. It made a pathetic concert, all in treble. A little higher, and I passed a pair of men in a tree with pruning-hooks, and one of them was singing the music of a bourrfe. Still further, and when I was already threading the birches, the crowing of cocks came cheerfully up to my ears, and along with that the voice of a flute dis- coursing a deliberate and plaintive air from one of the upland villages. I pictured to myself some grizzled, apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden in the clear autumn sunshine. All these beautiful and interesting sounds filled my heart with an unwonted expec- tation ; and it appeared to me that, once past this range which I was mounting, I should descend into the garden of the world. Across the Goulet 115 Nor was I deceived, for I was now done with rains and winds and a bleak country. The first part of my journey ended here ; and this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the other and more beautiful. There are other degrees of feyness, as of punishment, besides the capital ; and I was now led by my good spirits into an adven- ture which I relate in the interest of future donkey-drivers. The road zigzagged so widely on the hillside, that I chose a short cut by map and compass, and struck through the dwarf woods to catch the road again upon a higher level. It was my one serious conflict with Modestine. She would none of my short cut ; she turned in my face, she backed, she reared ; she, whom I had hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a loud hoarse flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. I plied the goad with one hand ; with the other, so steep was the ascent, I had to hold on the pack-saddle. Half a dozen times she was nearly over backwards on the top of me ; half a dozen times, from sheer weariness of n6 Upper Gevaudan {continued) spirit, I was nearly giving it up, and leading her down again to follow the road. But I took the thing as a wager, and fought it through. I was surprised, as I went on my way again, by what appeared to be chill rain-drops falling on my hand, and more than once looked up in wonder at the cloud- less sky. But it was only sweat which came dropping from my brow. Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked road — only upright stones posted from space to space to guide the drovers. The turf underfoot was springy and well scented. I had no company but a lark or two, and met but one bullock-cart between Lestampes and Bleymard. In front of me I saw a shallow valley, and beyond that the range of the Lozere, sparsely wooded and well enough modelled in the flanks, but straight and dull in outline. There was scarce a sign of culture ; only about Bley- mard, the white high-road from Villefort to Mende traversed a range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and sounding from side to side with the bells of flocks and herds. A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES CROM Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to scale a portion of the Lozere. An ill-marked stony drove road guided me forward; and I met nearly half a dozen bullock-carts descend- ing from the woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck left- ward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a stream- let made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water-tap. ' In a more sacred or sequestered bower . . . nor nymph, nor faunus, haunted.' The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade : there was no outlook, except north-east- ward upon distant hill-tops, or straight up- ward to the sky ; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the n8 Upper Gevaudan {continued} time I had made my arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal ; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep. Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and per- fumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps a-field. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely ; even as she takes her rest, she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influ- ence goes abroad over the sleeping hemi- sphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the mead- A Night among the Pines 119 ows; sheep break their fast on dewy hill- sides, and change to a new lair among the ferns ; and houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night. At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these sleep- ers thus recalled in the same hour to life ? Do the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother earth below our resting bodies? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrec- tion. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place; and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, like the luxurious Montaigne, i that we may the better and more sensibly relish it.' We have a mo- ment to look upon the stars. And there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neighbourhood, 120 Upper Gevatcdan (continued) that we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilisation, and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock. When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water. I emptied it at a draught ; and feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were clear, coloured, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock- still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether ; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward ; but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and study- ing the colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a red- dish gray behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the A Night among the Pines 121 stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette ; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light in the land- scape. A faint wind, more like a moving cool- ness than a stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time ; so that even in my great chamber the air was being re- newed all night long. I thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congre- gated nightcaps ; with horror of the noc- turnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material % aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place ; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those 122 Upper Gevaudan (continued) truths which are revealed to savages and hid from political economists : at the least, I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet even while I was exulting in my solitude I became aware of a strange lack. I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made per- fect. And to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free. As I thus lay, between content and long- ing, a faint noise stole towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm ; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in my ears, until I became aware that a passen- ger was going by upon the high-road in the valley, and singing loudly as he went. There was more of good-will than grace in his performance ; but he trolled with ample lungs ; and the sound of his voice took hold A Night among the Pines 123 upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens. I have heard people pass- ing by night in sleeping cities; some of them sang ; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after hours of stillness, and pass, for some min- utes, within the range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was double : first, this glad passenger, lit inter- nally with wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night ; and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the stars. When I awoke again {Sunday, 29th Sep- tember), many of the stars had disappeared ; only the stronger companions of the night still burned visibly overhead ; and away towards the east I saw a faint haze of light upon the horizon, such as had been the 124 Upper Gevaudan (continued) Milky Way when I was last awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, and by its glowworm light put on my boots and gait- ers ; then I broke up some bread for Modes- tine, filled my can at the water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil myself some choco- late. The blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had so sweetly slumbered ; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting into gold along the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day. I heard the runnel with delight ; I looked round me for something beautiful and unexpected ; but the still black pine- trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass, remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered but the light, and that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breath- ing peace, and moved me to a strange ex- hilaration. I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. While I was thus delaying, a gush of steady A Night among the Pines 125 wind, as long as a heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It was cold, and set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed their black plumes in its passage ; and I could see the thin distant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to and fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside, scat- tering shadows and sparkles, and the day had come completely. I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent that lay before me ; but I had something on my mind. It was only a fancy ; yet a fancy will sometimes be im- portunate. I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I commanded from the windows ; but I felt I was in some one's debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half-laughing way, to 126 Upper Gevaudan {continued) leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging. I trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover. THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 4 We travelled in the print of olden wars; Yet all the land was green; And love we found, and peace, Where fire and war had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword — No more the sword they wield; And 0, how deep the corn Along the battlefield!' W. P. Bannatyne. THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS ACROSS THE LOZERE HTHE track that I had followed in the evening soon died out, and I con- tinued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was already- warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that set the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gevau- dan, extended with every step ; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and 130 The Country of the Camisards west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path ; they perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and I saw them circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to time, translucent flickering wings between the sun and me. Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like a distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to think it the voice of a neigh- bouring waterfall, and sometimes a subjec- tive result of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I continued to advance, the noise increased and became like the hissing of an enormous tea-urn, and at the same time breaths of cool air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. At length I understood. It was blowing stiffly from the south upon the other slope of the Loztre, and every step that I took I was drawing nearer to the wind. Although it had been long desired, it was Across the Lozere 13 * quite unexpectedly at last that my eyes rose above the summit. 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. The Lozere lies nearly east and west, cut- ting Gdvaudan into two unequal parts ; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises upwards of five thousand six hundred feet above the sea, and in clear weather commands a view over all lower Languedoc to the Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken with people who either pretended or believed that they had seen, from the Pic de Finiels, white ships sailing by Montpellier and Cette. Behind was the upland northern country through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, with- out wood, without much grandeur of hill- 13 2 The Country of the Camisards form, and famous in the past for little beside wolves. But in front of me, half veiled in sunny haze, lay a new Gevaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring events. Speaking largely, I was in the Cevennes at Monastier, and during all my journey ; but there is a strict and local sense in which only this confused and shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this sense the peasantry em- ploy the word. These are the Cevennes with an emphasis : the Cevennes of the Ce- vennes. In that' undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between the Grand Monarch with all his troops and marshals on the one hand, and a few thou- sand Protestant mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and eighty years ago, the Camisards held a station even on the Lozere, where I stood ; they had an organi- sation, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy ; their affairs were * the discourse of every coffee-house' in London ; England sent fleets in their support ; their leaders Across the Lozere 133 prophesied and murdered ; with colours and drums, and the singing of old French psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daylight, marched before walled cities, and dispersed the generals of the king ; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade, pos- sessed themselves of strong castles, and avenged treachery upon their allies and cruelty upon their foes. There, a hundred and eighty years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, ' Count and Lord Roland, general- issimo of the Protestants in France' grave, silent, imperious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed in his wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at fifty-five the English governor of Jersey. There again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a voluminous peruke and with a taste for controversial divinity. Strange gen- erals, who moved apart to take counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an un- guarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to 134 The Country of the Camisards their hearts ! And there, to follow these and other leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and disciples, bold, patient, inde- fatigable, hardy to run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of brainsick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets. I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of nothing more notable than the child-eating Beast of Ge'vaudan, the Napoleon Buonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of a romantic chapter — or, better, a romantic footnote — in the history of the world. What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism ? I was told that Protes- tantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant resistance ; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery parlour. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively and generous tradition. Again, if in the northern Across the Lozere 135 Cevennes the people are narrow in religious judgments, and more filled with zeal than charity, what was I to look for in this land of persecution and reprisal — in a land where the tyranny of the Church produced the Camisard rebellion, and the terror of the Camisards threw the Catholic peasantry into legalised revolt upon the other side, so that Camisard and Florentin skulked for each other's lives among the moun- tains ? Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end ; and only a little below, 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 between falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored further down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation ; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of the descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all con- 136 The Country of the Camisards spired 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 had closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. The track became a road, and went up and down in easy undula- tions. I passed cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted ; and I saw not a human creature, nor heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, however, in a dif- ferent country from the day before. The stony skeleton of the world was here vigor- ously displayed to sun and air. The slopes were steep and changeful. Oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown, wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong and luminous colours. Here and there Across the Lozere 137 another stream would fall in from the right or the left, down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary boulders. The river in the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed awhile in des- perate 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 ; and at every pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body in the mountain air and water. All the time as I went on I never forgot it was the Sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder ; and I heard in spirit the church-bells clamouring all over Europe, and the psalms of a thousand churches. At length a human sound struck upon my ear — a cry strangely modulated be- tween pathos and derision ; and looking i3 8 The Country of the Camisards across the valley, I saw a little urchin sit- ting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the rogue had picked me out as I went down the road, from oak-wood on to oak-wood, driv- ing Modestine ; and he made me the com- pliments of the new country in this trem- ulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises are lovely and natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming through so much clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river. A little after, the stream that I was fol- lowing fell into the Tarn at Pont de Mont- vert of bloody memory. PONT DE MONTVERT /^NE of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I remember rightly, the Protestant temple ; but this was but the type of other novelties. A subtle atmosphere distinguishes a town in England from a town in France, or even in Scotland. At Carlisle you can see you are in one country ; at Dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure that you are in the other. I should find it difficult to tell in what particulars Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or even Bley- mard ; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to the eyes. The place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river- bed, wore an indescribable air of the South. All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public-house, as all had been Sab- bath peace among the mountains. There 14° The Country of the Camzsards must have been near a score of us at din* ner by eleven before noon ; and after I had eaten and drunken, and sat writing up my journal, I suppose as many more came dropping in one after another, or by twos and threes. In crossing the Lozere I had not only come among new natural features, but moved into the territory of a different race. These people, as they hurriedly de- spatched their viands in an intricate sword- play of knives, questioned and answered me with a degree of intelligence which ex- celled all that I had met, except among the railway folk at Chasserades. They had open telling faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. They not only en- tered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there but one. Now of the three who sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly not beautiful — a Pont de Montvert 141 poor timid thing of forty, quite troubled at this roaring table d'hote, whom I squired and helped to wine, and pledged and tried generally to encourage, with quite a con- trary effect ; but the other two, both mar- ried, were both more handsome than the average of women. And Clarisse ? What shall I say of Clarisse? She waited the table with a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow ; her great gray eyes were steeped in amorous languor ; her fea- tures, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design ; her mouth had a curl ; her nostril 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 del- icate sentiment. It seemed pitiful to see so good a model left to country admirers and a country way of thought. Beauty should at least have touched society ; then, in a moment, it throws off a weight that lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an elegance, learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment, i4 2 The Country of the Camisards patet dea. 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 my- self 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. Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might say at home, is a place memora- ble in the story of the Camisards. It was here that the war broke out ; here that those southern Covenanters slew their Archbishop Sharp e. The persecution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the other, are almost equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern days, and with our easy modern beliefs and dis- beliefs. The Protestants were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. They were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the breast would exhort their parents to good works. ' A Pont de Montvert 143 child of fifteen months at Quissac spoke from its mother's arms, agitated and sob- bing, distinctly and with a loud voice.' Marshal Villars has seen a town where all the women ' seemed possessed by the devil,' and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged at Montpellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she declared that she was weeping tears of blood for the misfor- tunes of the Protestants. And it was not only women and children. Stalwart dan- gerous fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield the forest axe, were likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and streaming tears. 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 144 The Country of the Camisards not a thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant. Now the head and forefront of the perse- cution — after Lamoignon de Bdvile — Fran- gois de Langlade du Chayla (pronounce Che'ila), Archpriest of the Cevennes and Inspector of Missions in the same country, had a house in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de Montvert. He was a conscientious person, who seems to have been intended by nature for a pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned all the moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in his youth in China, he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only succoured and brought back to life by the charity of a pariah. We must suppose the pariah devoid of second sight, and not purposely malicious in this act. Such an experience, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the desire to persecute ; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put to- gether ; and, having been a Christian mar- tyr, Du Chayla became a Christian perse- Pont de Montvert 145 cutor. The Work of the Propagation of the Faith went roundly forward in his hands. His house in Pont de Montvert served him as a prison. There he plucked out the hairs of the beard, and closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal, to convince them that they were deceived in their opinions. And yet had not he him- self tried and proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the Boodhists in China ? Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight was rigidly forbid- den. One Massip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the mountain-paths, had already guided several troops of fugitives in safety to Geneva ; and on him, with an- other convoy, consisting mostly of women dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands. The Sunday following, there was a conventicle of Protestants in the woods of Altefage upon Mount Bouges ; where there stood up one Seguier — Spirit Siguier, as his com- panions called him — a woolcarder, tall, 10 X46 The Country of the Camisards black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. He declared, in the name of God, that the time for submission had gone by, and they must betake themselves to arms for the deliverance of their breth- ren and the destruction of the priests. The next night, 24th July 1702, a sound disturbed the Inspector of Missions as he sat in his prison-house at Pont de Montvert ; the voices of many men upraised in psal- mody drew nearer and nearer through the town. It was ten at night ; he had his court about him, priests, soldiers, and ser- vants, to the number of twelve or fifteen ; and now dreading the insolence of a con. venticle below his very windows, he ordered forth his soldiers to report. But the psalm, singers were already at his door, fifty strong, led by the inspired Siguier, and breathing death. To their summons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old persecutor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. One Camisard (for, according to some, it was in this night's work that they came by the name) fell at this discharge ; Pont de Montvert H7 his comrades burst in the door with hatch- ets and a beam of wood, overran the lower storey of the house, set free the prisoners, and finding one of them in the vine, a sort of Scavenger s Daughter of the place and period, redoubled in fury against Du Chayla, and sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors. But he, on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely held the staircase. 1 Children of God/ cried the prophet, 1 hold your hands. Let us burn the house, with the priest and the satellites of Baal* The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du Chayla and his men low- ered themselves into the garden by means of knotted sheets ; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents ; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at 148 The Country of the Camisards least one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and the upburst- ing flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged him to the public place of the town, raging and calling him damned — 'If I be damned/ said he, ' why should you also damn yourselves ? ' Here was a good reason for the last ; but in the course of his inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a contrary direction ; and these he was now to hear. One by one, Seguier first, the Camisards drew near and stabbed him. ' 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. With the dawn, still sing- ing, they defiled away towards Frugeres, further up the Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance, leaving Du Chaylas prison- house in ruins, and his body pierced with two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place. Pont de Montvert 149 Tis a wild night's work, with its accom- paniment of psalms ; and it seems as if a psalm must always have a sound of threat- ening in that town upon the Tarn. But the story does not end, even so far as con- cerns Pont de Montvert, with the departure of the Camisards. The career of Siguier was brief and bloody. Two more priests and a whole family at Ladeveze, from the father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders ; and yet he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all the time by the presence of the soldiery. Taken at length by a famous soldier of fortune, Captain Poul, he appeared unmoved before his judges. ' Your name ? ' they asked. ' Pierre Siguier.' * Why are you called Spirit ? ' ' Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me.' 1 Your domicile ? ' 1 Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven/ 1 Have you no remorse for your crimes?' ISO The Country of the Camzsards 1 1 have committed none. My soul is like a garden full of shelter and of fountains' At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had his right hand stricken from his body, and was burned alive. And his soul was like a garden ? So perhaps was the soul of Du Chayla, the Christian mar- tyr. And perhaps if you could read in my soul, or I could read in yours, our own composure might seem little less surprising. Du Chaylds 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. IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN A NEW road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florae by the valley of the Tarn ; 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 after- noon 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 sum- mits standing in the sunshine high above. A thin fringe of ash-trees ran about the hill- tops, like ivy on a ruin ; but on the lower slopes, and far up every glen, the Span- ish chestnut-trees stood each four-square to heaven under its tented foliage. Some were planted, each on its own terrace no larger than a bed ; some, trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and pros- i5 2 The Country of the Camisards per and be straight and large upon the rapid slopes of the valley ; others, where there was a margin to the river, stood mar- shalled in a line and mighty like cedars of Lebanon. Yet even where they grew most thickly they were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart individ- uals ; and the dome of each tree stood forth separate and large, and as it were a little hill, from among the domes of its compan- ions. They gave forth a faint sweet per- fume which pervaded the air of the after- noon ; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the green ; and the sun so shone through and kindled the broad foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against another, not in shadow, but in light. A humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in de- spair. 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 col- umns like the pillars of a church ; or like In the Valley of the Tarn 153 the olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. Thus they partake of the nature of many different trees ; and even their prickly top- knots, seen near at hand against the sky, have a certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. But their individuality, although compounded of so many ele- ments, is but the richer and the more original. And to look down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts cluster ' like herded elephants ' upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature. Between Modestine s laggard humour and the beauty of the scene, we made little progress all that afternoon ; and at last finding the sun, although still far from setting, was already beginning to desert the narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp in. This was not easy to find ; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was 154 The Country of the Camisards unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I should have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet or my head in the river. After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little] plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble, I goaded and kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there I hastened to unload her. There was only room for myself upon the plateau, and I had to go nearly as high again before I found so much as standing room for the ass. It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut, and having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut-leaves, of which I found her greedy, I descended once more to my own encampment. The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went by upon the road ; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed In the Valley of the Tarn 155 myself, for all the world like a hunted Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut trunk ; for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw that I must be early awake ; for these chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no farther gone than on the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was propped against a trunk ; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. I picked a meal in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide myself from the road ; and I daresay I was as much concerned as if I had been a scout from Joanis band above upon the Lozere, or from Salomons across the Tarn, in the old times of psalm- singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps more ; for the Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God ; and a tale comes back into my memory of how the Count of GV- vaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the 156 The Country of the Camisards oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the stream. Such was a field festival in 1703 ; at that date Antony Watteau would be painting similar subjects. This was a very different camp from that of the night before in the cool and silent pine-woods. It was warm and even stifling in the valley. The shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in it, rang up from the riverside before the sun was down. In the growing dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro among the fallen leaves ; from time to time a faint chirping or cheaping noise would fall upon my ear ; and from time to time I thought I could see the movement of something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of large ants swarmed upon the ground ; bats whisked by, and mosquitoes droned overhead. The In the Valley of the Tarn i$7 long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung against the sky like garlands ; and those immediately above and around me had somewhat the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked and half over- thrown in a gale of wind. Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids ; and just as I was beginning to feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settling densely on my mind, a noise at my head startled me broad awake again, and, I will frankly confess it, brought my heart into my mouth. It was such a noise as a person would make scratching loudly with a finger- nail, it came from under the knapsack which served me for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before I had time to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be seen, nothing more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and the frogs. I learned next day that the chestnut gardens are infested by rats ; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these ; but the puzzle, 158 The Country of the Camisards for the moment, was insoluble, and I had to compose myself for sleep, as best I could, in wondering uncertainty about my neighbours. I was wakened in the gray of the morn- ing {Monday, 30M September) by the sound of footsteps not far off upon the stones, and opening my eyes, I beheld a peasant going by among the chestnuts by a foot- path that I had not hitherto observed. He turned his head neither to the right nor to the left, and disappeared in a few strides among the foliage. Here was an escape ! But it was plainly more than time to be moving. The peasantry were abroad ; scarce less terrible to me in my nondescript position than the soldiers of Captain Poul to an undaunted Camisard. I fed Modes- tine with what haste I could ; but as I was returning to my sack, I saw a man and a boy come down the hillside in a direction crossing mine. They unintelligibly hailed me, and I replied with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, and hurried forward to get into my gaiters. In the Valley of the Tarn 159 The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up to the plateau, and stood close beside me for some time in silence. The bed was open, and I saw with regret my revolver lying patently dis- closed on the blue wool. At last, after they had looked me all over, and the silence had grown laughably embarrassing, the man demanded in what seemed un- friendly tones : * You have slept here ? ' * Yes,' said I. ' As you see.' 1 Why ? ' he asked. 1 My faith,' I answered lightly, ' 1 was tired.' He next inquired where I was going and what I had had for dinner ; and then, with- out the least transition, * Cest bien' he added, ' come along.' And he and his son, without another word, turned off to the next chestnut-tree but one, which they set to pruning. The thing had passed off more simply than I hoped. He was a grave respectable man ; and his unfriendly voice did not imply that he thought he 160 The Country of the Camisards was speaking to a criminal, but merely to an inferior. I was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of chocolate and seriously occupied with a case of conscience. Was I to pay for my night's lodging? I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in the shape of ants, there was no water in the room, the very dawn had neglected to call me in the morning. I might have missed a train, had there been any in the neighbourhood to catch. Clearly, I was dissatisfied with my entertainment ; and I decided I should not pay unless I met a beggar. The valley looked even lovelier by morn- ing ; and soon the road descended to the level of the river. Here, in a place where many straight and prosperous chestnuts stood together, making an aisle upon a swarded terrace, I made my morning toi- lette in the water of the Tarn. It was marvellously clear, thrillingly cool ; the soapsuds disappeared as if by magic in the swift current, and the white boulders gave one a model for cleanliness. To wash In the Valley of the Tarn 161 in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or semi- pagan act of worship. To dabble among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body ; but the imagination takes no share in such a cleansing. I went on with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced. Suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank demanded alms. * Good,' thought I ; ' here comes the waiter with the bill.' And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. Take it how you please, but this was the first and the last beggar that I met with during all my tour. A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a brown nightcap, clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint excited smile. A little girl followed him, driving two sheep and a goat ; but she kept in our wake, while the old man walked beside me and talked about the morning and the valley. It was not much past six; and for healthy people who have slept enough, ii 1 62 The Country of the Camisards that is an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk. ' Connaissez-vous le Seigneur ? ' he said at length. I asked him what Seigneur he meant ; but he only repeated the question with more emphasis and a look in his eyes de- noting hope and interest. 1 Ah/ said I, pointing upwards, ' I under- stand you now. Yes, I know Him ; He is the best of acquaintances.' The old man said he was delighted. ' Hold,' he added, striking his bosom ; ' it makes me happy here.' There were a few who knew the Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me ; not many, but a few. ' Many are called/ he quoted, ' and few chosen/ 1 My father/ said I, ' it is not easy to say who know the Lord ; and it is none of our business. Protestants and Catholics, and even those who worship stones, may know Him and be known by Him ; for He has made all.' I did not know I was so good a preacher. In the Valley of the Tarn 163 The old man assured me he thought as I did, and repeated his expressions of pleas- ure at meeting me. ' We are so few,' he said. ' They call us Moravians here ; but down in the department of Gard, where there are also a good number, they are called Derbists, after an English pastor.' I began to understand that I was figur- ing, in questionable taste, as a member of some sect to me unknown ; but I was more pleased with the pleasure of my companion than embarrassed by my own equivocal position. Indeed I can see no dishonesty in not avowing a difference ; and especially in these high matters, where we have all a sufficient assurance that, whoever may be in the wrong, we ourselves are not com- pletely in the right. The truth is much talked about ; but this old man in a brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet, and friendly that I am not unwilling to profess myself his convert. He was, as a matter of fact, a Plymouth Brother. Of what that involves in the way of doctrine I have no idea nor the time to inform 164 The Country of the Camzsards myself; but I know right well that we are all embarked upon a troublesome world, the children of one Father, striving in many- essential points to do and to become the same. And although it was somewhat in a mistake that he shook hands with me so often and showed himself so ready to receive my words, that was a mistake of the truth-finding sort. For charity begins blindfold ; and only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at length into a settled principle of love and pa- tience, and a firm belief in all our fellow- men. If I deceived this good old man, in the like manner I would willingly go on to deceive others. And if ever at length, out of our separate and sad ways, we should all come together into one common house, I have a hope, to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will hasten to shake hands with me again. Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I came down upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place, called La Vernede, with less than a In the Valley of the Tarn 165 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 stone- breaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl. The village school- master dropped in to speak with the stran- ger. And these were all Protestants — a fact which pleased me more than I should have expected ; and, what pleased me still more, they seemed all upright and simple people. The Plymouth Brother hung round me with a sort of yearning interest, and returned at least thrice to make sure I was enjoying my meal. His behaviour touched me deeply at the time, and even now moves me in recollection. He feared to intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society ; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand. When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, I sat for near half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who talked pleasantly over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the beauties of the Tarn, and 1 66 The Country of the Camisards old family affections, broken up when young folk go from home, yet still subsisting. Hers, I am sure, was a sweet nature, with a country plainness and much delicacy un- derneath ; and he who takes her to his heart will doubtless be a fortunate young man. The valley below La Vernede pleased me more and more as I went forward. Now the hills approached from either hand, naked and crumbling, and walled in the river be- tween cliffs; and now the valley widened and became green. The road led me past the old castle of Miral on a steep ; past a battlemented monastery, long since broken up and turned into a church and parson- age ; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocures, sitting among vineyards and meadows and orchards thick with red apples, and where, along the highway, they were knocking down walnuts from the roadside trees, and gathering them in sacks and baskets. The hills, however much the vale might open, were still tall and bare, with cliffy battlements and here and there a pointed summit ; and the Tarn still rat- In the Valley of the Tarn 167 tied through the stones with a mountain noise. I had been led, by bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a hor- rific country after the heart of Byron ; but to my Scotch eyes it seemed smiling and plentiful, as the weather still gave an impression of high summer to my Scotch body ; although the chestnuts were already picked out by the autumn, and the poplars, that here began to mingle with them, had turned into pale gold against the approach of winter. There was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, that explained to me the spirit of the Southern Covenanters. Those who took to the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedev- illed thoughts ; for once that they received God's comfort they would be twice engaged with Satan ; but the Camisards had only bright and supporting visions. They dealt much more in blood, both given and taken ; yet I find no obsession of the Evil One in their records. With a light conscience, they pursued their life in these rough times 1 68 The Country of the Camisards and circumstances. The soul of Seguier, 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. ' We flew,' says one old Camisard, ' when we heard the sound of psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings. We felt within us an animating ardour, a transporting desire. The feeling cannot be expressed in words. It is a thing that must have been experi- enced to be understood. However weary we might be, we thought no more of our weariness and grew light, so soon as the psalms fell upon our ears.' The valley of the Tarn and the people whom I met at La Vernede not only explain to me this passage, but the twenty years of suffering which those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves to war, endured with the meek- ness of children and the constancy of saints and peasants. FLORAC /^N a branch of the Tarn stands Florae, the seat of a subprefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill. It is notable, besides, for handsome women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the coun- try of the Camisards. The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an adjoining cafe", where I, or rather my journey, became the topic of the afternoon. Every one had some suggest tion for my guidance ; and the subprefec- torial map was fetched from the subpre- fecture itself, and much thumbed among coffee-cups and glasses of liqueur. Most of these kind advisers were Protestant, though I observed that Protestant and Catholic intermingled in a very easy manner ; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory 17° The Country of the Camisards still subsisted of the religious war. Among the hills of the south-west, by Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse, serious Presbyterian people still recall the days of the great persecu- tion, and the graves of local martyrs are still piously regarded. But in towns and among the so-called better classes, I fear that these' old doings have become an idle tale. If you met a mixed company in the King's Arms at Wtgton, it is not likely that the talk would run on Covenanters. Nay, at Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found the bea- dle's wife had not so much as heard of Prophet Peden. But these CeVenols were proud of their ancestors in quite another sense ; the war was their chosen topic ; its exploits were their own patent of nobility ; and where a man or a race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country was still full of legends hitherto uncollected ; I heard from them about Cavalier s descendants — not direct descendants, be it understood, but Florae 171 only cousins or nephews — who were still prosperous people in the scene of the boy- general's exploits ; and one farmer had seen the bones of old combatants dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the great-grandchildren were peaceably ditching. Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so good as to visit me : a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom I passed an hour or two in talk. Florae, he told me, is part Protestant, part Catholic ; and the difference in religion is usually doubled by a difference in politics. You may judge of my surprise, coming as I did from such a babbling purgatorial Poland of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the population lived together on very quiet terms ; and there was even an exchange of hospitalities between households thus doubly separated. Black Camisard and White Camisard, militiaman and Miquelet and dragoon, Protestant prophet and Cath- olic cadet of the White Cross, they had all 17 2 The Country of the Camisards been sabreing and shooting, burning, pil- laging, and murdering, their hearts hot with indignant passion ; and here, after a hun- dred and seventy years, Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in mu- tual toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man, like that indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its own ; the years and seasons bring various harvests ; the sun returns after the rain ; and mankind outlives saccu- lar animosities, as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. We judge our ancestors from a more divine position ; and the dust being a little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides adorned with human virtues and fighting with a show of right. I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even harder than I thought. I own I met these Protestants with delight and a sense of coming home. I was accustomed to speak their language, in another and deeper sense of the word than that which distinguishes between Florae 173 French and English ; for the true babel is a divergence upon morals. And hence I could hold more free communication with the Protestants, and judge them more justly, than the Catholics. Father Apolli- naris may pair off with my mountain Plym- outh Brother as two guileless and devout old men ; yet I ask myself if I had as ready a feeling for the virtues of the Trappist ; or had I been a Catholic, if I should have felt so warmly to the dissenter of La Vernede. With the first I was on terms of mere forbearance ; but with the other, although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on selected points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange some honest thoughts. In this world of imperfection we gladly welcome even partial intimacies. And if we find but one to whom we can speak out of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and simplicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of quarrel with the world or God. IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE /^vN Tuesday, \st October •, we left Florae late in the afternoon, a tired donkey and tired donkey-driver. A little way up the Tarnon, a covered bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the Mi- mente. Steep rocky red mountains over- hung the stream ; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in stony terraces ; here and there was a red field of millet or a few apple-trees studded with red apples ; and the road passed hard by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please the heart of the tourist. It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encampment. Even under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not only a very rapid slope, but was heaped with loose stones ; and where there was no timber the hills descended to the stream in a red precipice tufted with heather. The In the Valley of the Mimente 175 sun had left the highest peak in front of me, and the valley was full of the lowing sound of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river. Thither I descended, and, tying Modestine provision- ally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the neighbourhood. A gray pearly even- ing shadow filled the glen ; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into each other ; and the dark- ness was rising steadily like an exhalation. I approached a great oak which grew in the meadow, hard by the river's brink ; when to my disgust the voices of children fell upon my ear, and I beheld a house round the angle on the other bank. I had half a mind to pack and begone again, but the growing darkness moved me to remain. I had only to make no noise until the night was fairly come, and trust to the dawn to call me early in the morning. But it was hard to be annoyed by neigh- bours in such a great hotel. 176 The Country of the Camisards A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed Modestine and ar- ranged my sack, three stars were already brightly shining, and the others were be- ginning dimly to appear. I slipped down to the river, which looked very black among its rocks, to fill my can ; and dined with a good appetite in the dark, for I scrupled to light a lantern while so near a house. The moon, which I had seen, a pallid crescent, all afternoon, faintly illu- minated the summit of the hills, but not a ray fell into the bottom of the glen where I was lying. The oak rose before me like a pillar of darkness ; and overhead the heartsome stars were set in the face of the night. No one knows the stars who has not slept, as the French happily put it, a la belle e'toile. He may know all their names and distances and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind, their serene and gladsome influ- ence on the mind. The greater part of poetry is about the stars ; and very justly, for they are themselves the most classical In the Valley of the Mimente *77 of poets. These same far-away worlds, sprinkled like tapers or shaken together like a diamond dust upon the sky, had looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in the words of the latter, they had ' no other tent but the sky, and no other bed than my mother earth.' All night a strong wind blew up the val- ley, and the acorns fell pattering over me from the oak. Yet, on this first night of October, the air was as mild as May, and I slept with the fur thrown back. I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver, and is be- sides supported by the sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet with encourage- ment and praise ; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the domestic affections come clamouring round you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. 178 The Country of the Camisards There is something of the clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal ; and if he were not amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. I respect dogs much in the domestic circle ; but on the highway or sleeping a-field, I both detest and fear them. I was wakened next morning ( Wednesday, October 2d) by the same dog — for I knew his bark — making a charge down the bank, and then, seeing me sit up, retreating again with great alacrity. The stars were not yet quite extinguished. The heaven was of that enchanting mild gray-blue of the early morn. A still clear light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were out- lined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more to the north, and no longer reached me in the glen ; but as I was going on with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very swiftly over the hill-top ; and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. In these high regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. If only the clouds travelled high In the Valley of the Mimente *79 enough, we should see the same thing all night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space. As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out of the seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to run overhead in an almost contrary di- rection. A few steps farther, and I saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun ; and still a little beyond, between two peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system. I met but one human being that fore- noon, a dark military-looking wayfarer, who carried a gamebag on a baldric ; but he made a remark that seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or Catholic — * O,' said he, ' I make no shame of my religion. I am a Catholic' He made no shame of it ! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics ; for it is the language of one in a minority. I thought 180 The Country of the Camisards with a smile of Bavile and his dragoon^ and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic ; the Cevennes still Protestant. It is not a basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can change one tittle of a plough- man's thoughts. Outdoor rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants and thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a long while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers of the universe, and amicable relations towards his God. Like my moun- tain Plymouth Brother, he knows the Lord. His religion does not repose upon a choice of logic ; it is the poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his life. God, like a great power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to this simple fellow in the course of years, and In the Valley of the Mimente 181 become the ground and essence of his least reflections ; and you may change creeds and dogmas by authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you will ; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He is a Cath- olic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his faith, un- less he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict and not a conventional meaning, change his mind. THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY T WAS now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road along the Mimente is yet new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first cart arrived at Cassagnas. But although it lay thus apart from the current of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the five arsenals of the Camisards ; where they laid up clothes and corn and arms against necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. To the same caves, amid this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were brought up to heal; and there they were The Heart of the Country 183 visited by the two surgeons, Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women of the neighbourhood. Of the five legions into which the Cami- sards were divided, it was the oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by Cassagnas. This was the band of Spirit Se'guier; men who had joined their voices with his in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the Cevennes. Seguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain- general to the whole army of the Cami- sards. He was a prophet ; a great reader of the heart, who admitted people to the sacrament or refused them by ' intentively viewing every man ' between the eyes ; and had the most of the Scriptures off by rote. And this was surely happy ; since in a surprise in August 1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only strange that they were not surprised more often and more effectually; for this legion of Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its i §4 The Country of the Camisards theory of war, and camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the God for whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but of the trackless country where they harboured. M. de Ca- ladon, taking a stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he might have walked into ' a flock of sheep in a plain,' and found some asleep and some awake and psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no recommendation to insinu- ate himself among their ranks, beyond ' his faculty of singing psalms ; ' and even the prophet Salomon ' took him into a particu- lar friendship.' Thus, among their intri- cate hills, the rustic troop subsisted ; and history can attribute few exploits to them but sacraments and ecstasies. People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been saying, prove variable in religion ; nor will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of Rimrnon. When Louis XVI. , in the words of the edict, ' convinced by the The Heart of the Country 185 uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than sympathy,' granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was still Protestant ; and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed, one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is that of a Cath- olic curi in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a schoolmistress. And his conduct, it's worth noting, is disapproved by the Protestant villagers. * It is a bad idea for a man,' said one, ' to go back from his engagements.' The villagers whom I saw seemed intelli- gent after a countrified fashion, and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a Protestant myself, I was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me farther respect. For we had something not unlike a religious controversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with whom I dined being both strangers to the place and Catholics. The young men of the house stood round and supported me ; and the whole discussion was tolerantly conducted, 1 86 The Country of the Camisards and surprised a man brought up among the infinitesimal and contentious differences of Scotland. The merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and was far less pleased than some others with my historical acquire- ments. But the gendarme was mighty easy over it all. ' It's a bad idea for a man to change/ said he ; and the remark was generally applauded. That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at our Lady of the Snows, But this is a different race ; and perhaps the same great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage ; but where a faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow popula- tion. The true work of Bruce and Wallace was the union of the nations ; not that they should stand apart a while longer, skirmishing upon their borders ; but that, when the time came, they might unite with self-respect. The merchant was much interested in The Heart of the Country 187 my journey, and thought it dangerous to sleep a-field. 'There are the wolves,' said he; 'and then it is known you are an Englishman. The English have always long purses, and it might very well enter into some one's head to deal you an ill blow some night.' I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in the arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a far too risky busi- ness as a whole to make each additional particular of danger worth regard. ' Some- thing,' said I, ' might burst in your inside any day of the week, and there would be an end of you, if you were locked into your room with three turns of the key.' ' Cependant] said he, ' coucher dehors / ' 'God,' said I, 'is everywhere.' ' Cependant, coucher dehors ! ' he repeated, and his voice was eloquent of terror. He was the only person, in all my voy- age, who saw anything hardy in so simple a proceeding ; although many considered 1 88 The Country of the Camisards it superfluous. Only one, on the other hand, professed much delight in the idea ; and that was my Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I told him I sometimes preferred sleeping under the stars to a close and noisy alehouse, ' Now I see that you know the Lord ! ' The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, for he said I should be something to talk of in the future, and desired me to make a note of his request and reason ; a desire with which I have thus complied. A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a rugged path south- ward up a hillside covered with loose stones and tufts of heather. At the top, as is the habit of the country, the path disappeared ; and I left my she-ass munch- ing heather, and went forward alone to seek a road. I was now on the separation of two vast watersheds ; behind me all the streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western Ocean ; before me was the basin The Heart of the Country 189 of the Rhone, Hence, as from the Lozere, you can see in clear weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons ; and perhaps from here the soldiers of Salomon may have watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and the long-promised aid from England. You may take this ridge as lying in the heart of the country of the Camisards ; four of the five legions camped all round it and almost within view — Salomon and Joani to the north, Castanet and Roland to the south ; and when Julien had finished his famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which lasted all through October and November 1703, and during which four hundred and sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly subverted, a man standing on this emi- nence would have looked forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's activity have now repaired these ruins ; Cassagnas is once more roofed and sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, 190 The Country of the Camisards when the day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. And still it was per- haps the wildest view of all my journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging southward, channelled and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out into a coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, sent a drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys were already plunged in a profound and quiet shadow. A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing a black cap of liberty, as if in honour of his nearness to the grave, directed me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was something solemn in the isolation of this infirm and ancient creature. Where he dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or how he proposed to get down again, were more than I could fancy Not far off upon my right was the famous Plan de Font Morte, where Poul with his Armenian sabre slashed down the Camisards of Seguier. This, methought, The Heart of the Country 191 might be some Rip van Winkle of the war, who had lost his comrades, fleeing before Poul y and wandered ever since upon the mountains. It might be news to him that Cavalier had surrendered, or Roland had fallen fighting with his back against an olive. And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him hailing in broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with one of his two sticks. I had already got some way past him ; but, leaving Modestine once more, retraced my steps. Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman had forgot to ask the pedlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this neglect. I told him sternly, 'Nothing.' 'Nothing?' cried he. I repeated ' Nothing,' and made off. It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable to the old man as he had been to me. The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or two below me in the 19 2 The Country of the Camisards vale, and many lone houses of the chest- nut farmers, it was a very solitary march all afternoon ; and the evening began early underneath the trees. But I heard the voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed to be about love and a bel arnoureux, her hand- some sweetheart ; and I wished I could have taken up the strain and answered her, as I went on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem, my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told her ? Little enough ; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives and takes away, and brings sweet- hearts near, only to separate them again into distant and strange lands ; but to love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden ; and ' hope, which comes to all,' outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death. Easy to say : yea, but also, by God's mercy, both easy and grateful to believe ! We struck at last into a wide white high- The Heart of the Country 193 road carpeted with noiseless dust. The night had come ; the moon had been shin- ing for a long while upon the opposite mountain ; when on turning a corner my donkey and I issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out my brandy at Florae, for I could bear the stuff no longer, and replaced it with some generous and scented Volnay ; and now I drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon the road. It was but a couple of mouthfuls ; yet I be- came thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my blood flowed with luxury. Even Modestine was inspired by this purified noc- turnal sunshine, and bestirred her little hoofs as to a livelier measure. The road wound and descended swiftly among masses of chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and flowed away. Our two shadows — mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically bestridden by the pack — now lay before us clearly outlined on the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the ghost- ly distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. From time to time a warm 13 194 The Country of the Camisards wind rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their bunches of foliage and fruit ; the ear was filled with whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next moment the breeze had gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain were faintly de- signed in the moonshine ; and high over- head, in some lone house, there burned one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of sad nocturnal colouring. At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute angles, the moon disap- peared behind the hill ; and I pursued my way in great darkness, until another turn- ing shot me without preparation into St. Germain de Calberte. The place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night. Only from a single open door, some lamp- light escaped upon the road to show me that I was come among men's habitations. The two last gossips of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to The Heart of the Country 195 the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to bed ; the fire was already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be re- kindled ; hait an hour latei v and I must have gone supperless to roost. THE LAST DAY Y\ 7 HEN I awoke (Thursday, 2d October), and, hearing a great flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me to the window of the clean and comfortable room where I had slept the night, I looked forth on a sunshiny morn- ing in a deep vale of chestnut gardens. It was still early, and the cockcrows, and the slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me to be out and look round me. St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about. At the period of the wars, and immediately before the devastation, it was inhabited by two hun- dred and seventy-five families, of which only nine were Catholic ; and it took the cure" seventeen September days to go from house to house on horseback for a census. But the place itself, although capital of a The Last Day 197 canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies terraced across a steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The Protes- tant chapel stands below upon a shoulder ; in the midst of the town is the quaint old Catholic church. It was here that poor Du Ckayla, the Christian martyr, kept his library and held a court of missionaries ; here he had built his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he had redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his death they brought the body, pierced with two-and-fifty wounds, to be interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in the church. The curd, taking his text from Second Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'And Amasa wallowed in his blood in the highway,' preached a rousing sermon, and exhorted his brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and illustrious superior. In the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that Spirit Siguier was near at hand; and behold ! all the assembly took to their 198 The Country of the Camisards horses' heels, some east, some west, and the curd himself as far as Alais. Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. On the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas ; on the other, it was cut off from assistance by the legion of Roland at Mialet. The curt, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic at the archpriest's funeral, and so hurriedly decamped to Alais, stood well by his iso- lated pulpit, and thence uttered fulmina- tions against the crimes of the Protestants. Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but was beat back. The militia- men, on guard before the cure's door, could be heard, in the black hours, singing Protes- tant psalms and holding friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morning, al- though not a shot had been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their flasks. Where was it gone? All handed over to the Camisards for a consideration. Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest ! The Last Day 199 That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de Calberte, the im- agination with difficulty receives ; all is now so quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this hamlet of the mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of lion-hunters ; and people turned round to have a second look, or came out of their houses, as I went by. My passage was the first event, you would have fancied, since the Camisards. There was nothing rude or forward in this obser- vation ; it was but a pleased and wonder- ing scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human infant ; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the street. I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable atti- tudes of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall of great hailstones ; but there f 200 The Country of the Camisards went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already gaping ; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green with leaves. I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and con- tent. But perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was thinking of me in another country ; or perhaps some thought of my own had come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their features ; as though a god, travelling by our green highways, should but ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go again for ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings? Who shall say? But we go the lighter The Last Day 201 about our business, and feel peace and pleasure in our hearts. I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation of a young man, a Catholic, who had married a Protes- tant girl and gone over to the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they could un- derstand and respect ; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman, who told me that same day there was no difference between the two sects, save that ' wrong was more wrong for the Catholic/ who had more light and guid- ance ; but this of a man's desertion filled them with contempt. 1 It is a bad idea for a man to change/ said one. It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued me ; and for myself, I believe it is the current philoso- phy in these parts. I have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's not only a great flight of confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of his family for heaven's sake ; but the odds are — nay, 202 The Country of the Camisards and the hope is — that, with all this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a hairsbreadth to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for the wrench is sore. But it argues some- thing narrow, whether of strength or weak- ness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of the mind. And I think I should not leave my old creed for another, chang- ing only words for other words ; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions. The phylloxera was in the neighbour- hood ; and instead of wine we drank at dinner a more economical juice of the grape — La Parisienne, they call it. It is made by putting the fruit whole into a cask with water ; one by one the berries ferment and burst ; what is drunk during the day is supplied at night in water ; so, with ever another pitcher from the well, and ever The Last Day 203 another grape exploding and giving out its strength, one cask of Parisienne may last a family till spring. It is, as the reader will anticipate, a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste. What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before I left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon of Mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St. Etienne de Valle'e Francaise, or Val Francesque, as they used to call it ; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of St. Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me an empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept hard upon my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. The driver, like the rest of the world, was sure I was a pedlar ; but, unlike others, he was sure of what I had to sell. He had noticed the blue wool which hung out of my pack at either end ; and from this he had decided, beyond my power to alter his decision, that I dealt in blue-wool collars, such as deco- rate the neck of the French draught-horse. 204 The Country of the Camisards I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for I dearly desired to see the view upon the other side before the day had faded. But it was night when I reached the summit ; the moon was riding high and clear ; and only a few gray streaks of twilight lingered in the west. A yawn- ing valley, gulfed in blackness, lay like a hole in created nature at my feet ; but the outline of the hills was sharp against the sky„ There was Mount Aigoal, the strong- hold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as an active undertaking leader, deserves some mention among Camisards ; for there is a spray of rose among his laurel ; and he showed how, even in a public tragedy, love will have its way. In the high tide of war he married, in his mountain citadel, a young and pretty lass called Mariette. There were great rejoicings ; and the bride- groom released five-and-twenty prisoners in honour of the glad event. Seven months afterwards Mariette, the Princess of the Cevennes, as they called her in derision, fell into the hands of the authorities, where it The Last Day 205 was like to have gone hard with her. But Castanet was a man of execution, and loved his wife. He fell on Valleraugue, and got a lady there for a hostage ; and for the first and last time in that war there was an exchange of prisoners. Their daughter, pledge of some starry night upon Mount Aigoal, has left descendants to this day. Modestine and I — it was our last meal together — had a snack upon the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, she standing by me in the moonlight and decorously eating bread out of my hand. The poor brute would eat more heartily in this man- ner ; for she had a sort of affection for me, which I was soon to betray. It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Gard> and we met no one but a carter, visible afar off by the glint of the moon on his extinguished lantern. Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper ; fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours ! FAREWELL, MODESTINE f^N examination, on the morning of October $d, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need at least two days' repose according to the ostler ; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters ; and, being in a civilised country of stage-coaches, I determined to sell my lady- friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill of St. Pierre, spread a favourable notion of my donkey's capabilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an unrivalled opportunity. Be- fore ten I had an offer of twenty-five francs ; and before noon, after a desperate engagement, I sold her, saddle and all, for five-and-thirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but I had bought freedom into the bargain. Farewell, Modestine 207 St. Jean du Gard is a large place and largely Protestant. The maire, a. Protes- tant, asked me to help him in a small matter which is itself characteristic of the country. The young women of the Cevennes profit by the common religion and the dif- ference of the language to go largely as governesses into England ; and here was one, a native of Mialet, struggling with English circulars from two different agencies in London. I gave what help I could ; and volunteered some advice, which struck me as being excellent. One thing more I note. The phylloxera has ravaged the vineyards in this neigh- bourhood ; and in the early morning, under some chestnuts by the river, I found a party of men working with a cider-press. I could not at first make out what they were after, and asked one fellow to ex- plain. 1 Making cider,' he said. ' Out, c'est comme qa. Comme dans le nord ! * There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice : the country was going to the devil. 208 The Country of the Camzsards It was not until I was fairly seated by the driver, and rattling through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I became aware of my bereavement. I had lost Modestine. Up to that moment I had thought I hated her ; but now she was gone, 'And, O, The difference to me ! * For twelve days we had been fast compan- ions ; we had travelled upwards of a hun- dred and twenty miles, crossed several re- spectable 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 man- ner, 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 Farewell, Modestine 209 me ; after I had sold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example ; and being alone with a stage-driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion. 14 THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Edited by Sidney Colvin. With drawings by Peixottc and Guerin. 2 vols., 8vo, $5.00 net. The following volumes, i2mo, red cloth, 25 volumes, in a box, $32.00. St. Ives. The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England. i2mo, $1.50. "St. Ives" is a story of action and adventure in the author's most buoyant and stirring manner. 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Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the year 1751. With 16 full-page illustrations by William Hole. i2mo, $1.50. "Mr. Stevenson has never appeared to greater advantage than in 'Kidnapped.' No better book of its kind has ever been written." — The Nation. David Balfour. Being Memoirs of his Adventures at Home and Abroad. i2mo, $1.50. ' ' Surely the rarest and noblest work of fiction in the English language produced in the year." — New York Times. Treasure Island. A Story or the Spanish Main. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.00. "Primarily it is a book for boys, but it is a book which will be delightful to all grown men who have the sentiment of treasure hunting. . . Like all Mr. Steven- son's good work, it is touched with genius. ... A masterpiece of narrative." — The Saturday Review. THE WORKS OF ROBERT LO UIS STEVENSON The Master of Ballantrae. A Winter's Tale. With 10 full-page illustrations by William Hole. i2mo, $1.50. " We have here a fresh and striking example of Mr. Stevenson's remarkable intellectual versatility and flexibility. It is a fine novel, realistic and romantic by turns, marked by rare skill of draughtmanship and vigor of imagination, an honor to the author and a credit to literature. "—A'ew y'ork Tribune. The Wrecker. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. With 12 full-page illustrations by William Hole and W. L. Metcalf. i2mo, §1.50. M It seems much the most enticing romance at present before the world. " — Andrew Lang. Prince Otto. A Romance. i2mo, $1.00. " A graceful and unusual romance, full of surprises, full of that individuality which is so charming in every page this author has published, and so unhack- neyed that one knows not what to expect from any one paragraph to the next," — Boston Courier. The Merry Men, And Other Tales and Fables, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. l2mo, $1.25. " Everything in the collection is worthv of its remarkable author." — The Independent. The Black Arrow. A Tale of the Two Roses. Illustrated by Will H. Low and Alfred Brennan. i2mo, $1.25. "It has all the good qualities of bis other stories— their invention, their spirit and their charming English. The hand that wrote ' Kidnapped ' is vis- ible in its stirring pages."— R. H. Stoddard. New Arabian Nights. i2mo, $1.25. u There is something In his work which engages and fixes the attention from the first page to the last, which shapes itself before the mind's eye while reading, and which refuses to be forgotten long after the book has been put away." — R. H. Stoddard. The Dynamiter. More New Arabian Nights. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Mrs. Stevenson. i2mo, Si. 25. M There is no writer in the English language to-day who can alternately touch the springs of tears and laughter as does this man, who weaves as delicious fancies as ever passed through the brain." — Philadelphia Times. Island Nights' Entertainments. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.25. 44 The book will be reckoned among the finest of Mr. Stevenson's works. The art of it is so nearly perfect that it seems spontaneous, and the matter is absolutely unique." — Boston Beacon. The Wrong Box. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. i2mo, $1.25. 44 It brings out more strongly than any of Mr. Stevenson's preceding works his facile wit and irresistible humor." — Chicago Tribune. THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN SO ft Virginibus Puerisque. And Other Papers. i2mo, $1.25. " Avowedly the book of a young man taking account of life from the starting point. There is a great deal in it which is individual, suggestive, and direct from life. ' There are sayings about Truth of Intercourse which penetrate a long way. There are passages concerning youth which probe to the quick some of its ailments and errors."— A tlantic Monthly. Memories and Portraits. I2mc, $1.25. " The grace and delicacy, the just artistic instinct, the curious aptness of phrase ■which distinguish these essays, can be fully appreciated only by a reader who loves to go back to them again and again after a first perusal." — LippincoW s Magazine. Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin. i2mo, $1.25. *' The glimpses that we get of Mr. Stevenson himself in this book are charming and add greatly to its edifying and entertaining character. The style of the nar- rative is original, lucid, and spirited." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. Familiar Studies of Men and Books. i2mo, $1.25. Contents : Victor Hugo's Romances, Some Aspects of Robert Burns, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Yoshida Torajiro, Francois Villon, Charles of Orleans, Samuel Pepys, John Knox, and Women. An Inland Voyage. i2mo, $1.00. " Mr. Stevenson does not make canoeing itself his main theme, but delights in charming bits of description that, in their close attention to picturesque detail, Temind one of the work of a skilled ' genre ' painter. Nor does he hesitate .... to indulge in a strain of gently humorous reflection that furnishes some of the pleasantest passages of the book." — Good Literature, Travels with a Donkey In the Cevennes. i2mo, $1.00. " The author sees everything with the eye of a philosopher. He has a steady flow of humor that is as apparently spontaneous as a mountain brook, and he views a landscape or a human figure, not only as a tourist seeking subjects for a book, but as an^artist to whom the slightest line or tint carries a definite impres- sion." — Boston Courier. The Silverado Squatters. With a frontispiece by Walter Crane. i2mo, $1.00. " The interest of the book centres in graphic style and keen observation of the author. He has the power of describing places and characters with such vividness that you seem to have made personal acquaintance with both." — JV. Y. World. Across the Plains. With Other Memories and Essays. i2mo, $1.25. " The book sets us again to wondering at the facility with which Mr. Stevenson makes phrases and builds paragraphs ; moreover, we renew our admiration for a style as subtle as ether and as brilliant as fire opal."— The Independent. A Foot=Note to History. Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. i2mo, $1.50. "A story well worth reading. We have first a description of the curious and complex elements of discord, both native and foreign, in Samoa, and then a mar- velous story of how these discordant elements have been at work during eight rears."— Public Opinion. THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON The following volumes, i6mo, green buckram, 6 volu??ies 1 in a box, $6.50. Fables. i6mo, $1.00. In these delightful fables will be found a new and interesting expression of Mr. Stevenson's genius. They are here collected and issued for the first time in book form, attractively bound, in uniform style with the " Vailima Letters." Vailima Letters. 2 vols., i6mo, $2.25. "The work is full of charm, of brightness, of changeful light and shadow and thick-coming fancies. Again it is readable in a high degree, and will, we make no doubt, delight thousands of readers." — London Spectator. Macaire. A Melodramatic Farce. By R. L. Stevenson and W. E. Henley. i6mo, $1.00. The Ebb Tide. i6mo, $1.25. The Amateur Emigrant. i6mo, $1.25. IN SPECIAL EDITIONS. A Child's Garden of Verses. New Edition. Profusely and beautifully illustrated by Charles Robinson. i2mo, $1.50. "An edition to be recommended in every way. An artist possessing a graceful fancy and a sure decorative sense has supplied a profusion of illustrations. The letter-press is beautiful." — N. Y. Evening Post. A Christmas Sermon. i6mo, net, 50 cents. Ballads. i2mo, $1.00. A Child's Garden of Verses. i2mo, $1.00. Virginibus Puerisque. Cameo Edition. i6mo, $1.25. Underwoods. i2mo, $1.00. Treasure Island. Illustrated, i2mo, $1.25. Three Plays. By R. L. Ste- venson and W. E. Henley. 8vo, $2.00 net. The Suicide Club. {Ivory Series. ~\ i6mo, 75 cents. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. i2mo, $1.00. THE THISTLE EDITION. Sold only by Subscription. Each vol. 8vo. $2.00 net. In this luxurious edition of Mr. Stevenson's works, the Novels and Tales occupy twelve volumes, the Travels and Essays four, the Poems are complete in a single volume, and the Letters and Mis- cellanies seven, or 24 volumes in all. Each volume has a photo- gravure or etched frontispiece. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS «53-«57 Fifth Avenue, - New York DEC B1939 » J Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: May 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 (724)779-2111 i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 546 8528 f