MONTPELLIER-LE-VIEUX (_continued_).
Chatting thus pleasantly, we come nearer and nearer the city, painted
in violet tints against an azure sky, to find it, as we approach, a
splendid phantasmagoria. What we deemed citadels, domes and parapets,
prove to be the silvery dolomite only: limestone rock thrown into every
conceivable form, the imposing masses blocking the horizon; the shadow
of a mighty Babylon darkening the heaven; but a Babylon untenanted from
its earliest beginning--a phantom capital, an eldritch city, whose
streets now for the first time echo with the sound of human voice and
tread.
I can think of but one pen that could aptly describe the scene: the pen
of a Shelley dipped in iridescence and gold; of a poet whose inner eye
could conjure up visions of loveliness and enchantment invisible to the
rest of mortal born. I do not know how Montpellier-le-Vieux would look
on a dull, gray day; doubtless imagination would people it then with
gnomes, horrid afrits, and shapes of fear. To-day, under an exquisite
sky, pearly clouds floating across the blue, a soft southern air
wafting the fragrance of wild pink, thyme and lavender, it was a region
surely peopled by good genii, sportive elves and beneficent fairies
only. We were in a spirit, a phantasmal world; but a world of witchery
and gracious poetic thrall only.
But as yet we are on the threshold, and, like other magic regions, the
Cité du Diable unfolds its marvels all at once, as soon as the novice
has entered within its precincts. Before us rose the colossal citadel
so-called, pyramid upon pyramid of rock, which our guide said we must
positively climb, the grandest panorama being here obtained; a bit of a
scramble, he added, but a mere bagatelle--the affair of a few minutes
only.
I hesitated. We were at the foot of a chaotic wall of enormous blocks,
piled one upon the other, with deep, ugly fissures between--the height,
from base to summit, that of St. Paul's Cathedral. In order to reach
even the lower platform of these superimposed masses it was necessary
to be hoisted up after the manner of travellers ascending the Pyramids,
only with this disadvantage--that holding on to the rocks where any
hold was possible, and planting the feet as firmly as was practicable
on the almost vertical sides, we had here to bestride chasm after chasm.
'Don't be afraid,' cried our guide. 'It is nothing.'
'I would venture if I were you,' urged my friend mildly. So up I went.
The climbing, beyond a somewhat breathless scrambling and painful
straining of the limbs, was nothing to speak of. For a few moments I
could revel in the marvellous spectacle before me.
Lying on a little platform, perhaps two yards square, high above the
bright heavens, I had, far around and beneath, the wide panorama of the
dolomite city, vista upon vista of tower and monolith, avenues, arches,
bridges, arcades, all of cool, tender gray, amid fairy-like verdure and
greenery. Not Lyons itself, seen from the heights of La Fourvière,
shows a more grandiose aspect than this capital of the waste, unpeopled
by either the living or the dead!
Hardly had I realized the magic of the prospect when I became conscious
of frightful giddiness. The flowery shelf of rock on which I lay was
only a foot or two removed from the edge of the piled mass just climbed
so laboriously, and, sloping downwards, seemed to invite a fall. From
this side the incline was almost vertical, and the turf below at a
distance of over a hundred feet. No descent was practicable except by
bestriding the same fissures, two feet wide, and clinging to the sides
of the rocks, as before. I now felt that terrible vertigo which I am
convinced accounts for so many so-called suicides from lofty heights.
To throw myself down seemed the only possible relief from the terrible
nightmare. Had I been longer alone I must, at least, have allowed
myself to slip off my resting-place, with certain risk to life and
limb. As it was, I called to my companion, who had scaled another
story--had, indeed, reached the topmost shelf of the citadel; and she
tripped down looking so airy and alert that I felt ashamed of my own
weakness.
Pale and trembling, I pointed to the horrible staircase by which we had
come.
'Get me down some other way,' I said to the guide, who now followed,
not slightly embarrassed. Had he possessed the physique of our punter
of the rapids, or of our conductor, now attending to his horses at the
farm, he could have shouldered me like a baby. But he was slight of
build and by no means robust. Not a creature was within call, and those
dreaded fissures had to be bestridden. There was no other means of
descent.
'It is of no use to try, I cannot get down,' I repeated, and for a
moment a sombre vision of broken limbs and a long incarceration at the
farm passed before my mind's eye.
Reassuring me as best he could, our poor guide now grasped one of my
hands, with the other got a strong grip of the rock, and the first
dreaded step was achieved. The second presented greater difficulties
still. Once more he tried to carry me, but found the task beyond his
strength. I remembered that he was a bridegroom of a few months only;
what would be the young wife's feelings if he now came by mishap? So I
closed my eyes, shutting out the prospect beneath, and allowed myself
to be dragged down somehow, never more to venture on such giddy
heights. The incomparable view had been too dearly purchased.
The moral of this incident is, let tourists subject to vertigo carry a
smelling-bottle with them, or, better still, stay below.
All had ended well, however, and I could once more enjoy the scene.
When the first bewilderment of wonder and admiration is over; when the
fantastic city no longer appears a vision, but a reality, pile upon
pile of natural rock so magically cast in the form of architecture, we
realize countless beauties unperceived at first. The intense limpidity
and crystalline clearness of the atmosphere, the brilliance of the
limestone, the no less dazzling hue of the foliage everywhere adorning
it, the beautiful lights and shadows of the more distant masses, line
upon line of far off mountain-chain, mere gold and violet clouds rising
above the rugged outline of the Causses, the deep, rich tones of the
nearer--these general effects are not more striking than the details
close under our feet. About every fragment of rock is a wealth of
leaves, flowers and berries, the dogwood and bilberry with their
crimson and purple clusters and tufts, wild lavender and thrift, whilst
the ground is carpeted with the leaf of the hepatica.
We found also the pretty purple and white toad-flax, [Footnote: Linaria
versicolor] the handsome gold-flowered spurges, [Footnote: Euphorbia
sylvatica and E. cyparissea] the elegant orange and crimson-streaked
salvia, [Footnote: Salvia glutinosa] with others more familiar to us.
If the adorer of wild flowers is a happy person here in September, what
enchantment would await him in the spring!
Like the Russian Steppes and the African Metidja, these wastes are a
mosaic of blossoms. The foot-sure, hardy and leisurely traveller must
not content himself with the bird's-eye view of this dolomite city just
described. He should spend hours, nay, days here, if he would
conscientiously explore the stone avenues, worthy to be compared to
Stonehenge or Carnac; the amphitheatre, vast as that of Nîmes or
Orange; the fortifications, with bulwarks, towers, and ramparts; the
necropolis, veritable Cerameicus, or Père-la-Chaise; the citadel, the
forum, the suburbs; for the enthusiastic discoverers of
Montpellier-le-Vieux, or the Cité du Diable, have made out all these.
The most striking rocks have been fancifully named after the celebrated
structures they resemble. We find the Château Gaillard, the Sphinx, the
Gate of Mycenæ, or of the Lions, the Street of Tombs supposed to
resemble Pompeii, some of colossal dimensions. Thus the citadel
measures a hundred and fifty feet from the ground, at this point
Montpellier-le-Vieux attaining an altitude of two thousand five hundred
feet above the sea-level. When I add that the Cité du Diable measures
nearly two miles in length and a mile in breadth, and that its city and
suburbs, so-called, cover a thousand hectares, an area a third less
than that of Windsor Forest, the enterprising tourist will have some
feeble notion of the waste before him. The place is indeed altogether
indescribable--surely one of the most striking testimonies to the force
of erosion existing on the earth's surface. The explanation of the
phenomenon is found here. At a remote period of geological history the
action of mighty torrents let loose sculptured these fantastic and
grandiose monoliths, bored these arcades and galleries, hollowed these
fairy-like caves. Erosion has been the architect of the Cité du Diable,
partly by impetuous floods, partly by slow filtration. Water has
gradually, and in the slow process of ages, built up the whole, then
vanished altogether. Nothing strikes the imagination more than the
absolute aridity of the region now. Not a drop left in the bed of
ancient lake or river, not a crystal thread trickling down the rock
channelled by ancient cascades, and nevertheless abundance of greenery
and luxuriant foliage everywhere! The waterless world of stone is not
only a garden, but a green forest! Immediately around us flowers,
ferns, and shrubs adorn every bit of silvery gray rock, whilst wherever
space admits we see noble trees, pines, oaks, beeches, some of
marvellous growth, yet perched on heights so remote and lofty as to
appear mere tufts of grass.
And then the wonderful deliciousness and invigorating quality of the
air! It is like tasting the waters of the Nile, an experience never to
be forgotten.
Those, indeed, who have once breathed the air of the Lozère will have
only one desire: to breathe it again.
True, Montpellier-le-Vieux, departmentally speaking, is in the Aveyron,
if so phantom-like a city can be said to have a local habitation and a
name. But the Lozère chain is still in sight; its breezes are wafted to
us; we seem still in my favourite department of the eighty-seven, that
now being the proper number, including the newly-created one of the
Territoire de Belfort. I note the fact, as so many errors find their
way into print on the subject of French geography. As we reflect on the
mine of wealth this newly-discovered marvel may, we should say must,
inevitably become to its owners and their near neighbours, a terrible
vision rises before the mind. The gradually-diminishing area of the
picturesque world, in proportion to the enormously-increasing
percentage of tourists, can have but one ultimate result. In process of
time the dolomite city must undergo the fate of other marvels of the
natural world. Waggonettes drawn by four horses will convey the curious
from the Grand Hotel and Hotel Splendide at Le Rozier to the Cité du
Diable. Who can tell? A steam tramway may be placed at the disposal of
globe-trotters sleeping at Maubert, and a patent lift or captive
balloon for the ascension of the citadel. But no! We may at least
console ourselves with the reflexion that such a contingency is far
off. It will take more than a generation or two to vulgarize the Cité
du Diable, which in our days may be considered as remote from London as
Bagdad. The ideas of tourists in general must undergo entire
transformation ere they will cease to endorse Shelley's opinion: 'There
is nothing to see in France.'
Perhaps these pages may tempt a stray sketcher or lover of wild flowers
to follow my route, but the peasant-owner of Montpellier-le-Vieux,
although reaping a fair harvest from his unique possession, will not
certainly become a millionaire through the patronage of Messrs. Cook,
Gaze and Caygill. And, truth to tell, it is not even every ardent lover
of natural beauty who would be held captive here. It requires a
peculiar temperament to appreciate this gray, silent, fantastic world
of stone. When once within its precincts, our mood is not precisely
that of delight or exhilaration; it is more akin to the eerie and the
awesome. We are spellbound, not so much by the sublimity or loveliness
of the place, but by its absolute uniqueness, its total unlikeness to
any other on the face of the globe, its kinship with the few
incomparable marvels Nature has given us; creations of her mysterious,
freakish, dæmonic humour. Strange that a neighbourhood so weird should
have exercised only a wholesome influence on the character of the
people! As far as we can judge, no franker, cheerier, more
straightforward folks are to be found in France, to say nothing of that
little fact of white assizes, so creditable to the department.
Perhaps the fine prospect framing in Montpellier-le-Vieux is best
appreciated as we walk back to the farm, the mind not then being full
of expectancy. What a superb coup d'œil! Distance upon distance, one
mountain range rising above another, almost in endless succession, the
various stages showing infinite gradation of colour--subtle,
distracting, absolutely unpaintable! No wonder the air is unspeakably
fresh and exhilarating, seeing that it blows north, south, east and
west from lofty Alps. We have in view the sombre walls of the three
Causses, the wide outline of the Larzac, in a vast semicircle the
western spurs of the Cévennes, whilst from east to west stretch the
Cantal chain, the Lozère, and the Cévennes des Gardons. [Footnote: So
called from this portion of the Cévennes rising above the valleys of
the streams and rivers Gardon.]
We are on the Roof of France indeed! Having escaped a broken leg or
dislocated shoulder, my only regret was that we could not spend at
least a month within reach of the Cité du Diable. What explorations in
search of rare flowers! what sunset effects! what impressions to be
obtained here! How delightful, too, to make friends with the young
owners of this strange property--the strangest surely out of the
'Arabian Nights,' 'Vathek,' or 'The Epicurean!'--and get the farmhouse
turned into quite an ideal hostelry! I saw in my mind's eye the
dunghill replaced by a pretty flower-garden, a tablecloth spread for
breakfast, the floors swept and scoured, carpets and armchairs in the
best bedrooms, and even--my ambition went so far--trays, bells, and
door-fastenings introduced into these wilds. As the Utopia could not be
realized this year, I chatted with our hosts upon 'le confort,' whilst
they brought out one liqueur after another--rum, quince-water, heaven
knows what!--with which to restore us after our fatigues. Whilst I
conversed on this instructive topic: 'Yes,' said the handsome,
slatternly little mistress of the Cité du Diable, turning to her
husband, 'we must buy some hand-basins, my dear.'
We had not noticed the fact that the six bedchambers at Maubert were
altogether unprovided with these luxuries, for luxuries they must be
called in a region where there is absolutely nothing whatever to render
them necessary. Without smoke, fog, artificial or atmospheric
impurities of any kind, one might surely remain here in a condition of
ideal cleanliness from January to December.
Invigorated by the various petits verres of home-made cordials this
hospitable young couple had pressed upon us, we now set off jauntily
for Le Rozier. My companion, with a courage and endurance I could but
envy, mounted the calèche; I followed close behind on foot with the
little dog.
It was amusing to watch the imperturbability of our conductor as the
somewhat antiquated vehicle swayed this side and that, at every moment,
as it seemed, in jeopardy of overthrow. For a mile and a half from the
farm the road, or, rather, cart-track, may be described as a kind of
steeplechase on wheels, every step of the way showing either a
stone-heap or a ditch, the word 'rut' being quite an inadequate
definition. Now I saw the hood of the carriage nod to the right, now to
the left, as some stone-heap impeded the way; now it curtseyed forward,
almost disappearing altogether as some gully was plunged into, horses,
driver, and vehicle, wonderful to relate, emerging as if nothing
unusual had happened, my companion sitting bolt upright and coolly
enjoying the view.
All this time it was instructive to watch the behaviour of the little
dog. Whenever I lingered behind to gather a flower or gaze around, the
intelligent little creature stopped too and waited for me, with a look
that plainly said, 'You must not be left behind, you know.' Nothing
would induce him to rejoin his master till I had caught him up.
The drive back to Le Rozier is another balloon descent from the clouds.
Like St. Énimie, the little town lies, figuratively speaking, at the
bottom of a well, and as we approach we could almost drop a
plummet-line on to the house-tops. It is a dizzy drive, and many will
shut their eyes as their horses' hoofs turn the sharp curves of the
precipitous mountain-sides, only an inch or two between wheel and
precipice.
And here is a caution to the adventuresome. During our stay a
family-party set off on mule-back from Maubert to Peyreleau somewhat
late in the day. Darkness and rain overtaking them, they were obliged
to take shelter for the night in a peasant's cottage, thankful enough
to obtain even such rough hospitality.
Let no one undertake an expedition in these regions without proper
information and the support of accredited guides--men well known and
well-recommended by residents on the spot.