THE HAUTE-LOIRE
The particular day of which I am now writing was Sunday, and when we
came to Moulin, the ancient capital of the Bourbonnais, there was a
baptismal ceremony going on in the cathedral; the old sexton in the
portico outside was pulling the rope that led up to the great booming
bell. He could pull and talk too, and he told us that the bell was only
rung for baptisms, at least that was what we thought he said as he flung
himself aloft with the upward sweep, and alow with the downward sweep,
until his chin nearly touched the stone floor. I got into the swing of
it directly, and signified that I should like to ring the bell a little
myself. I realize now that it was decidedly brazen to ask to assist at a
sacred function like that, but he let me do it, and I took the rope and
for a minute or two swayed up and down in a pride I can hardly express,
ringing that five-hundred-year-old bell to notify the world of the
latest baptism in France.
We came upon an unexpected treat at Moulin--the Souvigny bible, an
illuminated manuscript of 1115, with one hundred and twenty-two
marvelously executed pictorial designs. The bible was in a museum across
from the cathedral, a splendid museum indeed for little Moulin, being
the reconstructed chateau of the Bourbons, filled with beautiful things
of the Bourbon period. The bible is in a room by itself in a glass case,
but the guardian opened it for us and turned the leaves. This bible,
discovered at the old priory of the little town of Souvigny, is in
perfect condition and presents a gorgeous piece of hand illumination.
The drawing itself is naturally primitive, but the coloring is rich
beyond telling, the lettering marvelously perfect. J. Pierpont Morgan is
said to have offered a million francs for the Souvigny bible, a vast sum
to little Moulin. I am glad they did not sell it. It seems better in the
quiet, choice museum which was once the castle of the Bourbon dukes.
It is curious how conventions establish themselves in the different
districts and how absolutely they prevail in the limits of those
districts. In certain sections, for instance, we found the furnishings
in each hotel exactly alike. The same chairs, the same little table, the
same bedsteads and wardrobes, the same tableware. We could tell by the
change of furnishing when we had reached a new district. A good portion
of the Auvergne remains to us the "Land of Squatty Pitchers," because in
every bedroom the water pitcher was a very short, very corpulent and
saucy-looking affair that amused us each evening with its absurd shape.
Then there were the big coffee bowls and spoons. They got larger and
larger from Nimes northward until we reached Issoire. There the bowls
were really immense and the spoons had grown from dessert spoons to
table spoons, from table spoons to soup spoons until at Issoire they
were like enormous vegetable spoons, such as cooks use to stir the pot
with. From Moulin northward we entered the "Land of Little Ladders." All
the houses outside the larger towns were story-and-a-half affairs, built
facing the road, and the half-story was not reached by an inside
stairway, but by a short outside ladder that led up to a central gable
window, which was really a door. It was curious to see a string of these
houses, all with the little ladders, and all just alike. Our first
thought was that the ladders were used because they were cheaper to
build than a stairway, and saved inside room. But, reflecting later, I
thought it more likely that they originated in the old need of defense.
I think there was a time when the family retired to the loft at night
and drew the ladder up after them, to avoid a surprise.
It had been raining softly when we left Moulin. Somehow we had strayed
from the main road, and through the misty mid-region of the Haute-Loire
followed ways uncharted, but always good--always interesting, and
somewhere in that lost borderland we came to Dornes, and the daintiest
inn, kept by the daintiest gray-haired woman, who showed us her kitchen
and her flower garden and her tame pheasants, and made us love her
dearly. Next day at St. Pierre le Moutier we got back on our route, and
when Narcissa, out of the book she had been reading, reminded us that
Joan of Arc had once fought a battle there the place became glorified.
Joan must have been at Nevers, too, though we found no record of it.
I think we should have stayed longer at Nevers. There was an ancient
look about portions of it that in a brighter day would have invited us.
Crossing the Loire and entering the city, with its ancient bastioned
walls, carried one back a good way into the centuries. But it was still
dull and drizzly, and we had a feeling for the open road and a cozier
lodgment.
The rain ceased, the sun tried to break through the mist. The glistening
world became strangely luminous, a world not of hard realities at all.
The shining river winding away into mystery; far valley reaches fading
into haze; blurred lines of ancient spires and towers--these things
belonged only to a land of romance. Long ago I saw a painting entitled a
dream of Italy. I did not believe then that any real land could be as
beautiful-- I thought it only an artist's vision. I was mistaken. No
painting was ever so beautiful--so full of richness and light and color
as this haze-haunted valley of the Loire.
We rested at Neuvy, at the little red-book inn, Hotel de la Paix, clean
and inviting like the rest. It is the best compliment we can pay these
little hotels that we always want to remain in them longer, and plan
some day to come back to them.