THROUGH THE CEVENNES
The drowsy Provence, with its vineyard slopes and poppied fields, warm
lighted and still, is akin to Paradise. But the same Provence, on a
windy day, with the chalk dust of its white roads enveloping one in
opaque blinding clouds, suggests Sherman's definition of war. We got a
taste of this aspect leaving Nimes on our way north. The roads were
about perfect, hard and smooth, but they were white with dust, and the
wind did blow. I have forgotten whether it was the mistral or the
tramontane, and I do not think it matters. It was just wind--such wind
as I used to meet a long time ago in Kansas.
Our first town was Alais, but when we inquired about Alai, according to
the French rule of pronunciation, they corrected us and said
Alais--sounding the s. That is Provencal, I take it, or an exception to
the rule. Alais itself was of no importance, but along the way there
were villages perched on hilltops, with castles crowning the high
central points, all as picturesque and mediaeval as anything well could
be. We were always tempted to go up to them, but the climb was likely to
be steep; then those villages seen from the inside might not be as
poetry-picturelike as when viewed from below, looking up an orchard
slope to their weathered balconies and vine-hung walls.
We were in the Cevennes about as soon as we had passed Alais. The
Cevennes are mountains--not mere hills, but towering heights, with roads
that wind and writhe up them in a multiplicity of convolutions, though
always on perfect grade, always beautiful, bringing to view deep vistas
and wide expanses at every turn.
There was little wind now--the hills took care of that--and we were warm
and comfortable and happy in this fair, lonely land. There were few
habitations of any kind; no automobiles; seldom even a cart. Water was
scarce, too; it was hard to find a place to replenish our bottles. But
we came at last to a cabin in the woods--a sort of wayside cafe it
proved--where a woman sold us half a liter of red wine for about five
cents, and supplied us with spring water free. A little farther along,
where the road widened a bit, we halted for luncheon. On one side a
steep ascent, wooded, on the other a rather abrupt slope, grass-covered
and shady with interspaced trees. By and by we noticed that all the
trees were of one variety--chestnut. It was, in fact, a chestnut
orchard, and proclaimed the industry of this remote land. We saw many
such during the afternoon; probably the district is populous enough
during the chestnut harvest.
Through the long afternoon we went winding upward among those unpeopled
hills, meeting almost nothing in the way of human life, passing through
but one village, Grenolhac, too small even to be set down in the road
book. In fact, the first place mentioned beyond Alais was Villefort,
with a small population and one inn, a hostelry indicated in the book
merely by a little wineglass, and not by one of the tiny houses which,
in their varied sizes, picture the recommended hotels and the relative
importance thereof. There was no mention of rooms in connection with the
Cafe Marius Balme; the outlook for accommodation overnight was not very
cheerful.
It was chilly, too, for evening was closing in and we were well up in
the air. The prospect of camping by the roadside, or even of sitting up
in a cafe until morning, did not attract a person of my years, though
Narcissa and the Joy declared that to build a camp fire and roll up in
the steamer rugs would be "lovely." As there were only three rugs, I
could see that somebody was going to be overlooked in the arrangement;
besides, a night in the mountains in May, let it begin ever so gayly, is
pretty sure to develop doubtful features before morning. I have done
some camping in my time, and I have never been able to get together
enough steamer rugs to produce a really satisfactory warmth at, say,
three or four o'clock in the morning, when the frost is embroidering the
bushes and the stars have a glitter that drills into your very marrow.
Langogne, the first town marked with a hotel, was at least thirty-five
miles farther along, and I could tell by the crinkly look of the road as
it appeared on our map that it was no night excursion. Presently we
descended into a sort of gorge, and there was Villefort, an isolated,
ancient little hamlet forgotten among the Cevennes hilltops. We came to
an open space and there, sure enough, was the Cafe Balme, and by the
side of it, happy vision, another little building with the sign "Hotel
Balme."
It was balm indeed. To my faithful inquiry, "_Vous avez des chambres?_"
Yes, they had chambers--they were across the open square, over the
garage--that is to say, the stable--if the monsieur and his party would
accept them.
"_Oui, certainement!_"
They were not luxurious--they were just bare boxes, but they were clean,
with comfortable beds, and, dear me! how inviting on this particularly
chilly evening, when one has put in most of the day climbing narrow,
circuitous mountain roads--one-sided--that is to say, one side a wall,
the other falling off into unknown space.
They were very quiet rooms, for we had the place to ourselves. The car
would sleep just under us, and we had a feeling of being nomads, the
kind that put up in barns and empty buildings. A better place could
hardly have made us happier, and a better dinner than we had could not
be produced anywhere. There was soup--French soup; hot fried trout,
taken that day from the mountain streams; then there was omelet of the
freshest eggs, served so hot that one must wait for it to cool; also a
dish of veal of the same temperature and of such tenderness that you
could cut it with a fork; and there was steak which we scarcely touched,
and a salad, and fruit and cakes and camembert cheese, with unlimited
wine throughout. How could they give a dinner like that, and a good bed,
and coffee and rolls with jam next morning, all for four francs--that
is, eighty cents, each? I will tell you: they did their own cooking,
and were lost so far in the mountains that they had not yet heard of the
"high cost of living." And if I have not mentioned it before, I wish to
say here that all the red road-book hotels are good, however small or
humble they appear. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that _all French_
hotels are good--at least that they have good food and beds. With the
French, to have good beds and good food is a religion.
You notice I do not mention the coffee. That is because it is not real
coffee. It is-- I don't quite know what it is. In the large hotels it
merely looks like coffee. In these small inns it looks like a dark,
ominous soup and tastes like that as much as anything. Also, it is not
served in cups, but bowls, porridge bowls, with spoons to match, and the
natives break chunks of bread in it and thus entirely carry out the soup
idea. This is the French conception of coffee in the remoter districts,
but the bread and jam or honey that go with it are generally good and
plentiful, and I suppose the fearful drink itself must be wholesome. One
hears a good deal in America of delicious French coffee, but the only
place to get it is in America, in New Orleans, say, or New York. I have
never found any really good coffee even in Paris.
I think not many travelers visit the Cevennes. The road across the
mountains from Nimes toward Paris seemed totally untraversed, at least
so far as tourists are concerned. No English is spoken anywhere--not a
word. This was France--not the France that is Paris, which is not France
at all any more than New York City is America, but the France which is
a blending of race and environment--of soil and sky and human struggle
into a unified whole that is not much concerned with the world at large,
and from generation to generation does not greatly change.
One may suppose, for instance, that the market at Villefort, which we
saw next morning, was very much what it was a hundred years ago--that
the same sturdy women in black dresses and curious hats had carried the
same little bleating kids, one under each arm--that trout and
strawberries and cheese and cherries and all the products of that
mountain district were offered there, around the old stone fountain, in
the same baskets under the shadow of the same walls, with so little
difference in the general aspect that a photograph, if one could have
been taken then, might be placed beside the ones we made and show no
difference in the fashion of things at all.
We bought some of the strawberries, great delicious dewy ones, and
Narcissa and the Joy wanted to buy one or even a dozen of the poor
little kids, offering to hold them in their laps constantly. But I knew
that presently I should be holding one or more of those kids in my own
lap and I was afraid I could not do that and drive with safety. I said
that some day when we had time we would build a wooden cage on wheels to
put behind the car and gradually collect a menagerie, but that I was
afraid we didn't have time just now. We must be getting on.
Our landlady was a good soul. She invited us into the kitchen, neat,
trim, and shining, and showed us some trout caught that morning, and
offered to give us a mess to take along. The entire force of the hotel
assembled to see us go. It consisted of herself and her daughter, our
waitress of the night before. Our bill was sixteen francs. The old
life--the simple life--of France had not yet departed from Villefort.