On Tuesday, 1st October, we left Florac late in the afternoon, a tired
donkey and tired donkey-driver. A little way up the Tarnon, a covered
bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the Mimente. Steep rocky
red mountains overhung the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the
slopes or in stony terraces; here and there was a red field of millet or
a few apple-trees studded with red apples; and the road passed hard by
two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please the heart of the
tourist.
It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encampment. Even
under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not only a very rapid slope,
but was heaped with loose stones; and where there was no timber the hills
descended to the stream in a red precipice tufted with heather. The sun
had left the highest peak in front of me, and the valley was full of the
lowing sound of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the
stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an
angle of the river. Thither I descended, and, tying Modestine
provisionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the neighbourhood. A
grey pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance
grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness
was rising steadily like an exhalation. I approached a great oak which
grew in the meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to my disgust the
voices of children fell upon my ear, and I beheld a house round the angle
on the other bank. I had half a mind to pack and be gone again, but the
growing darkness moved me to remain. I had only to make no noise until
the night was fairly come, and trust to the dawn to call me early in the
morning. But it was hard to be annoyed by neighbours in such a great
hotel.
A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed Modestine and
arranged my sack, three stars were already brightly shining, and the
others were beginning dimly to appear. I slipped down to the river,
which looked very black among its rocks, to fill my can; and dined with a
good appetite in the dark, for I scrupled to light a lantern while so
near a house. The moon, which I had seen a pallid crescent all
afternoon, faintly illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray
fell into the bottom of the glen where I was lying. The oak rose before
me like a pillar of darkness; and overhead the heartsome stars were set
in the face of the night. No one knows the stars who has not slept, as
the French happily put it, a la belle etoile. He may know all their
names and distances and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone
concerns mankind,--their serene and gladsome influence on the mind. The
greater part of poetry is about the stars; and very justly, for they are
themselves the most classical of poets. These same far-away worlds,
sprinkled like tapers or shaken together like a diamond dust upon the
sky, had looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in the words
of the latter, they had 'no other tent but the sky, and no other bed than
my mother earth.'
All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns fell pattering
over me from the oak. Yet, on this first night of October, the air was
as mild as May, and I slept with the fur thrown back.
I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear more
than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver, and is besides supported by the
sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet with encouragement and
praise; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the
domestic affections come clamouring round you for redress. At the end of
a fagging day, the sharp cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen
annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and
respectable world in its most hostile form. There is something of the
clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not
amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. I
respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway, or sleeping
afield, I both detest and fear them.
I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, October 2nd) by the same dog--for
I knew his bark--making a charge down the bank, and then, seeing me sit
up, retreating again with great alacrity. The stars were not yet quite
extinguished. The heaven was of that enchanting mild grey-blue of the
early morn. A still clear light began to fall, and the trees on the
hillside were outlined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more
to the north, and no longer reached me in the glen; but as I was going on
with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very swiftly over the hill-
top; and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. In
these high regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. If
only the clouds travelled high enough, we should see the same thing all
night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space.
As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out of the
seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to run overhead in an
almost contrary direction. A few steps farther, and I saw a whole
hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, between two
peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared floating in the sky, and
I was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the
kernel of our system.
I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military-looking
wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark that
seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or
Catholic--
'Oh,' said he, 'I make no shame of my religion. I am a Catholic.'
He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for
it is the language of one in a minority. I thought with a smile of
Bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion
for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction.
Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. It is not a
basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of
horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. Outdoor
rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy
plants, and thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a
long while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at night,
a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, has, in the
end, a sense of communion with the powers of the universe, and amicable
relations towards his God. Like my mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows
the Lord. His religion does not repose upon a choice of logic; it is the
poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his
life. God, like a great power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to
this simple fellow in the course of years, and become the ground and
essence of his least reflections; and you may change creeds and dogmas by
authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you
will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will stubbornly
adhere to them in good and evil. He is a Catholic, a Protestant, or a
Plymouth Brother, in the same indefeasible sense that a man is not a
woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his faith,
unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict and
not a conventional meaning, change his mind.