I was now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the
hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon in
the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road along the Mimente is yet
new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first
cart arrived at Cassagnas. But although it lay thus apart from the
current of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the
history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the
five arsenals of the Camisards; where they laid up clothes and corn and
arms against necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves
gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. To the
same caves, amid this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were
brought up to heal; and there they were visited by the two surgeons,
Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women of the neighbourhood.
Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it was the
oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by Cassagnas. This
was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who had joined their voices with his
in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the
Cevennes. Seguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc,
whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole army
of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart, who
admitted people to the sacrament or refused them, by 'intensively viewing
every man' between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures off by
rote. And this was surely happy; since in a surprise in August 1703, he
lost his mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only strange that
they were not surprised more often and more effectually; for this legion
of Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war, and camped
without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the God for whom
they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but of the
trackless country where they harboured. M. de Caladon, taking a stroll
one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he might have
walked into 'a flock of sheep in a plain,' and found some asleep and some
awake and psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no recommendation to
insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond 'his faculty of singing
psalms'; and even the prophet Salomon 'took him into a particular
friendship.' Thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic troop
subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but sacraments
and ecstasies.
People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been
saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy
than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of
Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, 'convinced by the
uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than
sympathy,' granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was
still Protestant; and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed,
one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is
that of a Catholic cure in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a
schoolmistress. And his conduct, it is worth noting, is disapproved by
the Protestant villagers.
'It is a bad idea for a man,' said one, 'to go back from his
engagements.'
The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countrified fashion,
and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a Protestant myself, I
was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me further
respect. For we had something not unlike a religious controversy at
table, a gendarme and a merchant with whom I dined being both strangers
to the place, and Catholics. The young men of the house stood round and
supported me; and the whole discussion was tolerantly conducted, and
surprised a man brought up among the infinitesimal and contentious
differences of Scotland. The merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and
was far less pleased than some others with my historical acquirements.
But the gendarme was mighty easy over it all.
'It's a bad idea for a man to change,' said he; and the remark was
generally applauded.
That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at Our Lady of the
Snows. But this is a different race; and perhaps the same
great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ
in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage; but where a faith has
been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow population. The true
work of Bruce and Wallace was the union of the nations; not that they
should stand apart a while longer, skirmishing upon their borders; but
that, when the time came, they might unite with self-respect.
The merchant was much interested in my journey, and thought it dangerous
to sleep afield.
'There are the wolves,' said he; 'and then it is known you are an
Englishman. The English have always long purses, and it might very well
enter into some one's head to deal you an ill blow some night.'
I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate
judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in the
arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a far too risky
business as a whole to make each additional particular of danger worth
regard. 'Something,' said I, 'might burst in your inside any day of the
week, and there would be an end of you, if you were locked into your room
with three turns of the key.'
'Cependant,' said he, 'coucher dehors!'
'God,' said I, 'is everywhere.'
'Cependant, coucher dehors!' he repeated, and his voice was eloquent of
terror.
He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything hardy in so
simple a proceeding; although many considered it superfluous. Only one,
on the other hand, professed much delight in the idea; and that was my
Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I told him I sometimes preferred
sleeping under the stars to a close and noisy ale-house, 'Now I see that
you know the Lord!'
The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, for he said I
should be something to talk of in the future, and desired me to make a
note of his request and reason; a desire with which I have thus complied.
A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a rugged path
southward up a hillside covered with loose stones and tufts of heather.
At the top, as is the habit of the country, the path disappeared; and I
left my she-ass munching heather, and went forward alone to seek a road.
I was now on the separation of two vast water-sheds; behind me all the
streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western Ocean; before me was
the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from the Lozere, you can see in clear
weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and perhaps from here the
soldiers of Salomon may have watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley
Shovel, and the long-promised aid from England. You may take this ridge
as lying in the heart of the country of the Camisards; four of the five
legions camped all round it and almost within view--Salomon and Joani to
the north, Castanet and Roland to the south; and when Julien had finished
his famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which lasted all
through October and November 1703, and during which four hundred and
sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly
subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked forth upon a
silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's activity have now
repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more roofed and sending up
domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and leafy corners,
many a prosperous farmer returns, when the day's work is done, to his
children and bright hearth. And still it was perhaps the wildest view of
all my journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging
southward, channelled and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered
from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out into a
coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, sent a
drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys were already
plunged in a profound and quiet shadow.
A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing a black
cap of liberty, as if in honour of his nearness to the grave, directed me
to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was something solemn in
the isolation of this infirm and ancient creature. Where he dwelt, how
he got upon this high ridge, or how he proposed to get down again, were
more than I could fancy. Not far off upon my right was the famous Plan
de Font Morte, where Poul with his Armenian sabre slashed down the
Camisards of Seguier. This, methought, might be some Rip van Winkle of
the war, who had lost his comrades, fleeing before Poul, and wandered
ever since upon the mountains. It might be news to him that Cavalier had
surrendered, or Roland had fallen fighting with his back against an
olive. And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him hailing in
broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with one of his two
sticks. I had already got some way past him; but, leaving Modestine once
more, retraced my steps.
Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman had forgot to
ask the pedlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this neglect.