INTO THE AUVERGNE
We had climbed two thousand feet from Nimes to reach Villefort and
thought we were about on the top of the ridge. But that was a mistake;
we started up again almost as soon as we left, and climbed longer hills,
higher and steeper hills, than ever. Not that they were bad roads, for
the grades were perfect, but they did seem endless and they were still
one-sided roads, with a drop into space just a few feet away, not always
with protecting walls. Still there was little danger, if one did not get
too much interested in the scenery, which was beyond anything for its
limitless distances, its wide spaces and general grandeur.
Whenever we got to a level spot I stopped the car to look at it while
the engine cooled. It is a good plan to stop the car when one wishes
really to admire nature. The middle of the road ahead is thought to be
the best place for the driver to look while skirting a mountainside.
To return to roads just for a moment, there were miles of that winding
lofty way, apparently cut out of the solid face of the mountain, through
a country almost entirely uninhabited--a rocky, barren land that could
never be populous. How can the French afford those roads--how can they
pay for them and keep them in condition? I was always expecting to meet
a car on the short high turns, and kept the horn going, but never a car,
never a carriage--only now and then a cart, usually the stone-cart of
some one mending the roads. The building and engineering of those roads
seems to me even a greater marvel than the architecture of cathedrals
and chateaux. They are as curly and crooked as a vine, but they ascend
and descend with a precision of scale that makes climbing them a real
diversion. We ascended those hills on high speed--all of them.
We were about at the snow line now. We could see it but a little way
higher up, and if the weather had not been so bright and still we should
have been cold. Once we saw what we took to be a snowbank just ahead by
the roadside. But when we came nearer we saw it was narcissus, growing
there wild; later we saw whole fields of it. It flourished up there as
the poppies did lower down.
The country was not all barren. There were stretches of fertile
mountain-top, with pastures and meadows and occasional habitations. Now
and then on some high point we saw a village clustering about an ancient
tower. Once--it was at Prevencheres, a tiny village of the Auvergne--we
stopped and bought eggs and bread. There were also a few picture postals
to be had there, and they showed the Bourree, which is a native dance of
the Auvergne--a rather rough country cafe dance, I gathered, but
picturesque, in the native costume. I wish we might have seen it.
The mountains dwindled to hills, humanity became more plentiful. It was
an open, wind-swept country now--rolling and fruitful enough, but barren
of trees; also, as a rule, barren of houses. The people live in the
villages and their industry would seem to be almost entirely
pasturage--that is, cattle raising. I have never seen finer cattle than
we saw in the Auvergne, and I have never seen more uninviting, dirtier
villages. Barns and houses were one. There were no dooryards, and the
cattle owned the streets. A village, in fact, was a mere cattle yard. I
judge there are few more discouraging-looking communities, more
sordid-looking people, than in just that section. But my guess is that
they are a mighty prosperous lot and have money stuffed in the savings
bank. It is a further guess that they are the people that Zola wrote of
in _La Terre_. Of course there was nothing that looked like a hotel or
an inn in any of those places. One could not imagine a French hotel in
the midst of such a nightmare.