In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley
fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier
is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of
language, and for unparalleled political dissension. There are adherents
of each of the four French parties--Legitimists, Orleanists,
Imperialists, and Republicans--in this little mountain-town; and they all
hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Except for business
purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have laid
aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain Poland. In the
midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-point; every one was
anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from
the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise
with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le
Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this
big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward
through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto
unheard of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man
who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful
interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were ready
to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathisers supported me at the
critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by
glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast.
It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at
the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indian summer to
be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have
the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more
harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk,
and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by
those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is
troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again; and even on the
march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A sleeping-sack,
on the other hand, is always ready--you have only to get into it; it
serves a double purpose--a bed by night, a portmanteau by day; and it
does not advertise your intention of camping out to every curious passer-
by. This is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is but a troubled
resting-place; you become a public character; the convivial rustic visits
your bedside after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open,
and be up before the day. I decided on a sleeping-sack; and after
repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my
advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly
brought home.
This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two
triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom
of the sack by day. I call it 'the sack,' but it was never a sack by
more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof
cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It was commodious as a
valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for
one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury myself
in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur cap, with a hood to
fold down over my ears and a band to pass under my nose like a
respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little
tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, and a bent
branch.
It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on
my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of
burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid,
delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive
to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow
galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's
an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of
the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy,
and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to
a donkey.
There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect
according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as
Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive
she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a kindly
eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred,
a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. Our
first interview was in Monastier market-place. To prove her good temper,
one child after another was set upon her back to ride, and one after
another went head over heels into the air; until a want of confidence
began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was discontinued
from a dearth of subjects. I was already backed by a deputation of my
friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came
round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I and Father Adam
were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At length she passed
into my service for the consideration of sixty-five francs and a glass of
brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer;
so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the
cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only an
appurtenance of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors.
I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the
witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. He professed
himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often
bought white bread for the donkey when he had been content with black
bread for himself; but this, according to the best authorities, must have
been a flight of fancy. He had a name in the village for brutally
misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear
made a clean mark down one cheek.
By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for
me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thoughtfully completed my kit
and arranged my toilette. By way of armoury and utensils, I took a
revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny
candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. The main cargo
consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing--besides my travelling
wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer--some books,
and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a
double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by
cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I
carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by
good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of
carriage than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For
more immediate needs I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of Beaujolais,
an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a considerable quantity
of black bread and white, like Father Adam, for myself and donkey, only
in my scheme of things the destinations were reversed.
Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in
threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death
in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal
practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. Yet
in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left out. Like
Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my
own mishaps, let me in two words relate the lesson of my experience. If
the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length--not
doubled, for your life--across the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe.
The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our
transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there
are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting
any tendency to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone.
On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we began
to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in the dust. The
pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I returned it
to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that the street
outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and
listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be
more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads; and, at
any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a deal of
freedom.
I had a common donkey pack-saddle--a barde, as they call it--fitted upon
Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects. The doubled sack,
my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my waistcoat), a
great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing the white bread,
the mutton, and the bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate
system of knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous content. In
such a monstrous deck-cargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders,
with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not
yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that
might be expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless
traveller should have seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of
knots, again, was the work of too many sympathisers to be very artfully
designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a will; as many as
three at a time would have a foot against Modestine's quarters, and be
hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned afterwards that one thoughtful
person, without any exercise of force, can make a more solid job than
half-a-dozen heated and enthusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice;
even after the misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my security,
and I went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to the slaughter.