I have been toiling up this long steep road, under that broiling sun,
for more than an hour; my cabriolet is I know not where. The last time I
saw it was at the turn of the road, full half-a-mile behind me, and the
lean postilion trying to put something comfortable into that lanky
carcase of his at the auberge. "Ici on loge a pied et a cheval;" so said
the sign: why did not I, who was literally _a pied_, stop and enjoy
myself a little? whereas I stalked proudly by: and now that rogue of the
big boots and the powdered queue, and the short jacket and the noisy
whip, is getting still more and more slowness out of his sorry horses,
and is the man _a cheval_, treated by the busy little woman of the house
as her worthiest customer. The Marquis will be at least two hours in
advance of me: I shall not see Madame till night: positively I will run
down the hill again and pull that rascal off his horse. Am I not paying
for the accommodation of posting? have I not a right to get on? do I not
fee him like a prince? I'll try a shout at him.
"Hilloa! hilloa! come along there!"--I might as well shout in the middle
of the Atlantic; and as for running back again, why, I shall have to
come over the same ground once more: the tariff shall be his fate: not a
liard more: and I'll write him down in the post-book; I will crush the
reptile: I'll annihilate him!
Here, sit thee down, man: art thou not come hither to enjoy thyself? why
this impatience? why this anxiety to go over ground in a hurry which, a
few hours ago, thou wouldst have given many a crown to visit at thy
leisure? Sit thee down and look around thee: hurry no man's cattle, and
fret not thyself out of thy propriety.
And, truly, 'tis a wondrous spot! what a wide extent of grassy slopes
and barren rocky wastes! how white and hard and rough the road; how
smooth the hill-side; how blue the distant landscape; how more than blue
the cloudless sky! Look onwards towards the distant east; why, you can
see almost across France to the Jura: what endless ridges of mountains,
one above the other, like the billows of the green sea: what boundless
plains between! But turn, for a moment, to the hills on either side of
you; look at those wild copses of fir and stunted oak making good their
'vantage ground wherever the scanty vegetation will allow them; and
above, look at the little round clumps of box-trees, dotting the
mountain-breast with their shadows, and relieving the dull uniformity of
its surface. So dark are they that you might take them for black cattle
at a distance; but that, ever and anon, the sun brings out from them a
bright green tint, and dispels the illusion.
Here, then, on this stone, am I resting, hundreds of miles away from my
dull fatherland; where I have left behind me nought but pride and ennui,
and heart-corroding cares, and soul-harrowing occupations. I have
quitted that dense, black, throng of men, whose minds, pent up in the
narrow circle of their insular limits, are intent on one thing only--and
that thing, money! Thou land of the rich and the poor; of the lord and
the slave; of the noble and the upstart; chosen home of labour and
never-ending care; I have bid thee adieu: my face is to the world; my
lot is on the waters of boundless life; and I am free to choose my
dwelling wherever the clime suits my fancy, and my wishes tally with the
clime. In this dry and barren valley, amidst those lofty hills, where
once fire and sulphur and burning rocks poured forth as the only
elements, and where the melted lava flowed along the face of the earth
like an unloosed torrent; in this lonely spot, where few living beings
are seen, and yet where the vast reproductive energies of the world
have been so widely developed--even here, let me commune a while with
nature and with myself.
Thou mysterious power of expansion, whatever thou art, whether some
igneous form existing within the womb of Earth, and demonstrating
thyself ere our tiny planet revolved in its present orb--or whether some
product of the combination of chemical fluids originating flames, and
melting this prison-house with fervent heat--say when didst thou
convulse this fair land, and raise up from the circumjacent plains these
mountain-masses that now tower over my head? For I see around me the
traces not of one, but of four separate convulsions; and I can pursue in
fancy the long lapse of ages which have served to modify the crude forms
of thy products, and to change the various classes of animated life
which have lived and died at the feet of these vast steeps. First come
thy granitic ebullitions, slow, lumpy, and amorphous--partly
incandescent, yet glowing with heat that cooled not for ages;--and then,
when these rude ribs of the earth had been worn and channeled by
atmospheric action, through time too vast to be reckoned, they split
again with a mighty rending up of their innermost frame, and thy power,
fell spirit of destruction! thrust forth the great chain of the Monts
Dor, and the Cantal. There thou raisedst them stratum above stratum of
volcanic rock; and scoriae and boiling mud, and lava, and porphyry, and
basalt, and light pumice, tier above tier, till the seven-thousandth
foot above Old Ocean's level had been reached; and then thou restedst
from thy labours awhile, rejoicing in thy force, and proud of the chaos
thou hadst occasioned. But not to slumber long; for, glad to have made a
new mineral combination, thou didst thrust forth at the northern point
of thy work the great trachytic mass of the Puy de Dome: there it stands
with its solid hump of felspathic crystals, a vast watch-tower of
creation--white and purple within, glassy-green without. And then burst
out the full hubbub of this mischief--twenty vast craters vomiting forth
molten rocks and cinders and the deep lava-stream, and throwing their
products leagues upon leagues, afar into the fair country:--twenty Etnas
thundering away at the same time, and answered by twenty more in the
Vivaraix, and the infernal chorus kept up by as many in the Cantal:--all
the batteries of the Plutonic artillery launching forth destruction at
once from the summits of their primaeval bastions. Well was it for man
that he existed not when this Titanic warfare was going on, and when
these hills, like those of ancient Thessaly, were heaped, each upon
each, up to heaven's portal! If Europe then existed, it must have been
shaken to its furthest bounds:--Hecla must have answered to the distant
roar; and even the old Ural must have heaved its unwieldy sides.
And now, what see we? A sea of volcanic waves; dark
lava-currents--rough, black, and fresh as though vomited but
yesterday:--vast chasms, red and burnt, and cinders, as though the fire
which raised them were not yet extinguished. Why, from the Puy de Parion
I could swear that smoke must rise at times, and that sulphurous vapours
must still keep it in perpetual desolation. Yes, though winter's rains
and snows visit this volcanic chain full sharply, and though the
gigantic sawing force of frost disintegrates the softer portions of
this, the Fire-king's Home, yet there they stand--and so they shall
stand, till nature be again convulsed, the imperishable monuments, the
stupendous demonstrations, of the Creator's illimitable energy. Yes, let
the Almighty but touch these hills again, and they shall smoke!
Thou dull, senseless stone, with thy numberless crystals variegating and
glittering on the hard resting-place that I have chosen, whence came
those minerals that combined to form thee? Did they exist, pell-mell,
beneath, in the vast Tartaric depths, ready to assimilate themselves on
the first signal of eruption? or did they arise suddenly,
instantaneously, on the first darting of the electric current that
summoned their different atoms into new forms of existence? Whence came
this green olivine?--whence this plate of specular iron?--whence this
quartz and felspar; and all these other minerals I see around me? Thou
rude product of the great infernal Foundery, thy very existence is a
problem--much more the formation of thy component parts.
Stone! thou art not more varied in thy aspect--not less intelligible in
thy constitution--not harder, not more unfeeling, than the heart of man!
I would sooner have thee for my companion and my bosom friend, than any
of that melancholy, solemn-faced crowd of hypocrites I have left behind
me. Refuse me not thy rough welcome: thou art, for the time being, my
couch: thou art even warmed by my contact: hast thou, then, some
sympathy with the wanderer? Thou dull, crystallised block, I will think
of thee, and will remember thy solid virtues, when the uncongenial
offices of man shall plague me no more!