The next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock in the
afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired,
for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more
ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard
l'Eveque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was
told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce
too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey might cover
the same distance in four hours.
All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed
alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly;
plentiful hurrying clouds--some dragging veils of straight rain-shower,
others massed and luminous as though promising snow--careered out of the
north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated
basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen, and such-like
sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines,
woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few
naked cottages and bleak fields,--these were the characters of the
country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and
stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three
or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on
hillsides or at the borders of a wood.
There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make a
passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth of
tracks. It must have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and went
on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours afterwards,
the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir-wood
where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village,
but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble hills. For some time
past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead; and now, as I came
out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows and perhaps
as many more black figures, which I conjectured to be children, although
the mist had almost unrecognisably exaggerated their forms. These were
all silently following each other round and round in a circle, now taking
hands, now breaking up with chains and reverences. A dance of children
appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the
marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, who am
well enough read in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an
instant on my mind. The next, I was pricking Modestine forward, and
guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she went
doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the
turf or among heather, and the brute became demented. The tendency of
lost travellers to go round in a circle was developed in her to the
degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep even
a decently straight course through a single field.
While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle
began to disperse, until only a pair of girls remained behind. From
these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were but
little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into
his house, and barricaded the door on my approach; and I might beat and
shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me a
direction which, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood, complacently
watched me going wrong without adding a sign. He did not care a stalk of
parsley if I wandered all night upon the hills! As for these two girls,
they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief.
One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows; and they
both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of Gevaudan ate
about a hundred children of this district; I began to think of him with
sympathy.
Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into another wood
and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and darker. Modestine,
suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own
accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first
sign of intelligence I had occasion to remark in her. At the same time,
the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain
came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sighted
some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of Fouzilhic; three
houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. Here I found a delightful
old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on
the road for Cheylard. He would hear of no reward; but shook his hands
above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly,
in unmitigated patois.
All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon dinner and a
fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in my bosom. Alas, and I
was on the brink of new and greater miseries! Suddenly, at a single
swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in many a black night, but
never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it
was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a
tree,--this was all that I could discriminate. The sky was simply
darkness overhead; even the flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to
human eyesight. I could not distinguish my hand at arm's-length from the
track, nor my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or the sky.
Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of the
country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. Since Modestine
had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this
predicament. But the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from
the name; in half a minute she was clambering round and round among some
boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have
camped long before had I been properly provided; but as this was to be so
short a stage, I had brought no wine, no bread for myself, and little
over a pound for my lady friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were
both handsomely wetted by the showers. But now, if I could have found
some water, I should have camped at once in spite of all. Water,
however, being entirely absent, except in the form of rain, I determined
to return to Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little farther on my way--'a
little farther lend thy guiding hand.'
The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this sensible
roaring blackness I was sure of nothing but the direction of the wind. To
this I set my face; the road had disappeared, and I went across country,
now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to Modestine, until
I came once more in sight of some red windows. This time they were
differently disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet
little distant from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of
its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped forward,
stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg in bog, until I gained the
entrance of the village. In the first lighted house there was a woman
who would not open to me. She could do nothing, she cried to me through
the door, being alone and lame; but if I would apply at the next house,
there was a man who could help me if he had a mind.
They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and a girl, and
brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. The man was not ill-
looking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned against the doorpost, and
heard me state my case. All I asked was a guide as far as Cheylard.
'C'est que, voyez-vous, il fait noir,' said he.