the east wing. Long narrow tables of plain wood stand around the
room, and on these are laid the simple utensils of the meal. The monks
sit on a rude bench, and for the greater part of the year they take
but one meal in twenty-four hours; but during the summer months, when
one might suppose their needs to be less, they, by special indulgence,
go so far towards temporising with the flesh as to eat twice in one
day.
R. L. S. was moved to a little disquisition on the subject of
over-eating when he contemplated the dietetic restraint of the
Trappist brethren. "Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat
sparingly," he writes; "and though each is allowed a small carafe of
wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of
mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for
support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of
life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this
Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at
the freshness of face and the cheerfulness of manner of all whom I
beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that
I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with
the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure,
and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This, at
least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live
healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high
in colour, and the only morbid sign that I could observe--an unusual
brilliancy of the eye--was one that rather served to increase the
general impression of vivacity and strength."
On the topmost floor of the east wing we were shown the dormitory, a
long and, as I recall it, a somewhat low-roofed room, divided into
numerous little cubicles, each enclosed on three sides, and screened
from the passage by a curtain of red cloth. The couch consisted of a
single mattress laid on boards, with the scantiest supply of
bedclothes. Each of these little compartments bore in painted letters
the monastic name of its occupant, and here every night, after the
toils and vigils of the day, the brethren lay themselves down at eight
o'clock in their ordinary habit of dress, being in this respect less
fanatical than other fraternities of the same order, who sleep in
their coffins, and even in unduly ready graves. "By two in the
morning," says R. L. S., "the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on,
hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour
of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different
occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his
hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory all day
long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from
two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive
the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet, and occupied with
manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth several
thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of
their lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery
bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind
and healthful activity of body. We speak of hardships, but the true
hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our
own dull and foolish manner."
XIII.
On our way back to the hospice we learned with regret that Father
Apollinaris, "so good and so simple," had been dead five years, and
the right of the monastery to the title of Our Lady of the Snows was
clearly established by the information that in the winter months it is
buried for weeks on end, and our young friend of the shiny eyes
shivered as he spoke of the _neige énorme_, which he is doomed to see
every winter that he lives.
[Illustration: MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD
"From Bleymard I set out to scale a portion of the Lozère."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT
_On the Villefort-Mende road, at La Remise, near Le Bleymard_]
In the hospice the apartments for the use of visitors and
_retraitants_ are situated. To the right of the gateway on the
ground level are the kitchens and storerooms, and a door opening at
the foot of the stair admits one into a small and barely furnished
room, where supper had been prepared for us. A small table covered
with American cloth, with chairs set about it to accommodate perhaps
eight or ten guests, were the chief items of furniture. There were a
few prints of a religious character hung upon the walls, and to the
right of the fireplace stood a little bookcase, containing, however,
no works of interest. The meal served to us was well cooked and
savoury, and as an excellent omelet formed its _pièce de résistance_,
with soup, potato salad, walnuts, figs and cheese included, it needed
none of the profuse apologies for poverty of fare with which it was
set before us.
We were afterwards shown our bedroom on the floor above, a fairly
commodious room containing two iron bedsteads, with a more liberal
supply of bedclothes than we saw in the dormitory of the monks, a
small table and two chairs. A crucifix stood on the mantlepiece, and,
as in some hotels, a printed sheet of regulations was fixed on the
wall near the door. One may suppose it to have been a copy of that
which Stevenson noted, for it wound up with an admonition to occupy
one's spare time by examining one's conscience, confessing one's sins,
and making good resolutions. "To make good resolutions, indeed!"
comments R. L. S. "You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair
grow on your head." So far as we could judge, the south wing at the
time of our visit sheltered no other strangers than ourselves; nor did
it appear there were any weary, world-worn laymen living here in
retreat. At the time of Stevenson's sojourn among the monks there was
quite a little company in the hospice, an English boarder, a parish
priest, and an old soldier being some of the acquaintances he made in
the little room where we had supped. But there is a constant and
increasing number of visitors to the monastery, and immediately below
our bedroom there was a large and well-stocked apartment that gave
evidence of this. Here we found a varied supply of crucifixes and
rosaries to suit all purses, samples of the different liqueurs
distilled by the monks, and picture post cards in abundance. The
Brother Porter, a simple boorish fellow, in vain spread his bottles in
the sight of two who were not patrons of the stuff; but we reduced his
stock of post cards and his rosaries. He took the money like a post
office girl selling stamps.
XIV.
When we took our places in the little gallery that extends across the
west side of the chapel to hear the monks chanting the last service
of the day, _Compline_ and _Salve Regina_, we found that there was at
least another visitor, in the person of a stout and blue-chinned
_curé_. The white-robed monks were seated in their chairs in the
choir, books upon their knees; while the organist in an elevated
position on a level with the gallery played, unseen by us, "those
majestic old Gregorian chants that, wherever you may hear them (in
Meredith's fine phrase) seem to build up cathedral walls about you."
Paraffin lamps shed a dim, uncertain light, and the rich full voices
of the singers resounded weirdly through the white-walled chapel, the
door opening now and again as some of the lay brothers entered and,
crossing themselves, bowed wearily towards the altar, moving to their
places below the gallery. After the elevation of the Host, and when
the service was almost ended, the organist came down, and we noticed
that in making his way out of the chapel he hung back a little in
passing the choir screen, that he might not meet on his way to the
door any of the brethren who were now slowly leaving.
Of a similar service Stevenson writes: "There were none of those
circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in
the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the
romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall
the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights
alternately occluded and revealed the strong manly singing, the
silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and
then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that
the last office was over, and the hour of sleep had come; and when I
remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with
somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the
windy starry night." The effect of it all on the sentimental traveller
was summed up in these fervent words: "And I blessed God that I was
free to wander, free to hope, and free to love."
This, indeed, must be the impression all robust and unfettered minds
will receive from a visit to Our Lady of the Snows. It is true that in
their busy saw-mill which stands to the west of the monastery, and
where the timber from the hills is turned to commercial use by the
monks and their lay assistants, in their well-managed farm some
distance westward, in the surrounding fields, in their many
workshops--in these they have varied occupations, and of a manly
character, but the terrible uselessness of it all is ever present to
the mind of one coming from the stress and struggle of the zestful
world. Poor men! in their sullen way they may believe they have
chosen the better part; but, simple and devout as they may be, they
are the real cowards of life, the shirkers of the battle we are meant
to fight.
[Illustration: _Malavieille, a mountain sheiling_]
[Illustration: _Scene of "A Night among the Pines"_
"Buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine woods, between
four and five thousand feet towards the stars."--R. L. S.
ON THE LOZÈRE]
We slept the sleep of tired men in our room upstairs, and heard none
of those hourly bells Stevenson records. Our young friend, whose
monastic name I foolishly omitted to ask, called us before eight in
the morning, and after providing a capital breakfast, bade us a
ceremonious good-bye, watching us from the door until the pine woods
enclosed us.
XV.
We made a swift descent to La Bastide, and by way of Chasseradès,
where Stevenson slept in the common bedroom of the inn, reached Le
Bleymard late in the afternoon, passing through a country of bare
hills and poor villages clustered in gusty hollows or hanging like
swallows' nests on craggy slopes. The valley of the Lot, rich and
beautiful westward to Mende, possesses no elements of charm in the
neighbourhood of Bleymard, and we found that town so mean and
featureless, that we had no wish to pass the evening there. The inn we
wanted was, so a crippled girl told us, at La Remise, on the high
road, and we must have passed it. We remounted our cycles and
retraced our path across the river, a distance of perhaps three
furlongs, and lo! there stood the charred remains of the Hôtel du Lot,
where we had hoped to rest ourselves. We had passed the place without
noticing it, and the view of its gaunt and smoky walls, now that they
had acquired so personal an interest, chilled our hearts, for the need
to rest and refresh ourselves was pressing. It was after sundown, and
there lay between us and Pont de Montvert a mountain higher than Ben
Nevis.
Opposite the unlucky Hôtel du Lot stood a small _auberge_, kept by one
Teissier. Two men were drinking absinth at a table by the doorway. One
was a thick-set fellow, wearing eyeglasses, and clothed not unlike a
foreman mechanic in England. The other was the familiar dark French
type, thin of features, eyes bright as those of a consumptive, his
beard ample and of a jet black, against which his ripe red lips showed
noticeably. He was dressed like a clerk or _commerçant_. They made us
welcome at their table, and we fell at once to discussing the
situation, from which it was evident we could not hope to cross the
Lozère that night. Some tourists had experienced a bad time traversing
the mountain the previous Sunday, and as we could not hope to do more
than reach the Baraque de Secours by nightfall, it would be madness to
attempt the descent into the valley of the Tarn after dark, the road
lying in many places along the lip of a precipice. Besides, this
wayside inn was very well managed, said the absinth drinkers; they had
lived there since being burned out across the way, a statement that
cheered us not a little, as every other feature of the place was
extremely uninviting.
The landlady, who had shown no interest in us whatever, I found busy
at a large cooking-range in a tiny kitchen, which opened off the
common sitting-room, and served also for the living-room of the
servants and familiar loungers. She was a woman of austere
countenance, displaying like so many middle-aged Frenchwomen a
considerable moustache; but I noticed that her teeth were white. Yes,
she would be glad to supply dinner if we were to stay overnight. We
were, I confessed without enthusiasm; whereupon she specified glibly
the resources of her kitchen. We could have soup, trout, jugged hare,
chicken, fillet of beef, potatoes, pastries, cheese, and other things,
and by naming one dish and connecting it to the next with _et puis_,
an aldermanic banquet seemed about to be conjured up from the dirty
little room and its greasy stove. The common room of the inn had a
sanded floor, and was furnished with a plain deal table, round which
some country bumpkins were sitting on rush-bottomed chairs drinking
beer and spitting freely in the sand. A few cheap oleographs nailed
on the dingy walls were the only efforts at decoration. Two drab and
unattractive girls gossiping with the customers appeared to be the
staff of the hotel.
I returned to the Frenchmen outside, and found that my companion,
anxious not to enter the place until the last moment, was playing at a
game resembling bowls with some village urchins, though understanding
not one word of their speech. But he came up in a little while to
learn the results of my inquiries within, and soon we were all engaged
in a very entertaining discussion. It appeared that the Frenchmen were
concerned in the zinc mines near Bleymard, him of the oily clothes
being chief engineer, the other business manager. I suppose they would
be the two best conditioned residents in the district, and here they
were lodging at an hotel which, apart from cooking, was below the
standard of comfort to be found in a crimp's den in the region of
Ratcliffe Highway. The Frenchman is a wonderfully adaptable creature:
give him a table to drink at, a chair to sit upon, and a bed anywhere
under a roof, and he can contrive to be happy.
[Illustration: _The Baraque de Secours_]
[Illustration: "The Lozère lies nearly east and west; its highest
point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises
upwards of 5,600 feet above the sea."--R. L. S.
ON THE LOZÈRE]
M. l'Ingénieur, although he spoke no English, had seen something of
the world, and had even been to Klondyke. He could not understand why
anyone should have wandered to such a hole as this--for pleasure!
But he expected that next year's guide-books would describe Bleymard
as notable for the ruins of the Hôtel du Lot. A wag, obviously. If we
wanted to see places worth looking at, there was Nice and Nîmes, said
his friend M. Barbenoire. Together they extolled, with a rare gush of
adjectives, the beauty of these places, and promised to show us
picture postcards that would lure us into visiting them. Tourists did
come sometimes to climb the Lozère, from the top of which in clear
weather one might see the Alps. The engineer laughed merrily at this,
and said the story was as much legend as the exploits of the beast of
Gévaudan. He discussed in a very practical mind the question of
miners' wages, and thought that the Bleymard zinc workers were better
off with four francs a day than English miners with five or six
shillings.
Sooner than we had expected dinner was declared ready, and we went
inside with no great avidity; but to our surprise we found the meal
laid in a little room at the other end of the drinking den, tolerably
clean though dingy and tasteless in its appointments. There we were
joined by the wife of M. Barbenoire and two immense dogs of unfamiliar
breed. The maid who served us was engagingly free from the usual
formalities of the table, and between the courses would sit coyly on
the knee of the engineer, munching a piece of bread; but for the
rest, ours was no Barmecide feast. The aldermanic banquet appeared in
all essentials save the serving, and we fared so well that we began to
hope our bedroom would even be comfortable.
When, later in the evening, we took our courage in both hands and
penetrated to the upper story by way of a spiral iron staircase
through the kitchen roof and along a dark lobby of loose boards, we
were heartened not a little to find in our room two good beds, clean
and curtained. Sleep was thus assured, though the smell from the
stable through the wall was redolent of rats. It was "a wonderful
clear night of stars" when we looked out of our window before
retiring, and we went to bed determined upon an early start. The
bellowing of the oxen in the stable and the shouts of the _buveurs_
below did not come long between us and the drowsy god.
XVI.
Alas! at dawn next day we looked forth on a blank wall of mist backing
the ruins across the road. Not a hill was visible. We sought our beds
again, and by nine o'clock the outlook was only slightly improved, the
nearest hills, now resonant with sheep-bells, being in sight. The
engineer comforted us with the assurance that this was the common
weather in June, the best time of the year being from July to October,
but he thought the mists might clear before noon. Presently it began
to rain, and during the whole day there was not half an hour of clear
weather. At times the atmosphere would thin a little, only to show us
heavy clouds condensing on the higher hills. Thus prisoned in our
room, we contrived to be comfortable, and I believe that another day
would have left us wondering why we had dreaded staying at the inn, so
soon does the human mind adapt itself to circumstances. The
rain-sodden streets actually provided entertainment. We watched with
interest the coming and going of shepherds and their flocks, the
former armed with commodious umbrellas and their sheep shorn in a way
that left a lump of wool upon their backs making them comically like
little camels. Many bullock wagons loaded with shale passed by, and we
noticed that the slightest touch with the driver's wand served to
direct the team, whose heads were, to quote our hero, "fixed to the
yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice." Children
played out and in the stables and among the ruins, and an old man,
wearing the usual dress of the peasant, with pink socks showing above
his sabots, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and a stick under
his arm, wandered aimlessly to and fro in the rain most of the day.
The stage-coach from Villefort to Mende rested for a time at the inn,
causing a flicker of excitement, and in the evening again the mine
officials were there to bear us company.
The engineer proved himself a thorough-paced sceptic of the modern
French sort. His opinion of the country-folk was low--hypocrites,
fools, money-grubbers all! Holding up a five-franc piece, he averred
that for this they would sell mother, daughter, sister; and then
similarly elevating a bundle of paper-money, he exclaimed: "_Voilà, le
Grand Dieu._"
"This is a Catholic countryside?" I said.
"Yes," he replied, "but that makes no difference."
"There is one Protestant in Bleymard," put in Barbenoire,--"myself!"
"And he isn't up to much," added the cynic.
[Illustration: "A cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocurès
sitting among vineyards."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: _Bridge over the Tarn at "Pont de Montvert of bloody
memory," and view of the Hôtel des Cevennes where Stevenson stayed._]
XVII.
"We shall set out at five in the morning," I said to the landlady
before going upstairs, and the engineer signalled to us as we left the
room the outstretched fingers of his right hand twice; wherein he
proved something of a prophet, for it was nearer ten o'clock than
five before we determined to risk the mountain journey, the sky
being clear in parts and the rain clouds scudding before a high wind,
that promised a comparatively dry day.
On the bridge across the Lot at Bleymard we were hailed by a man in
labouring clothes, who smiled broadly and said, "Me speak Engleesh."
As we had not met a single Frenchman between Orleans and this spot who
pretended to have any knowledge of our native tongue, we tarried to
have speech with this cheery-faced fellow, whose white teeth shone
through a reedy black moustache. But his lingual claims did not bear
inspection. Beyond saying that he had visited London and Liverpool,
and knew what "shake hands" meant, and that English tobacco was better
worth smoking than the French trash--a hint which I accepted by
presenting my pouch--he could not go in our island speech; and so we
had to continue our chat in French that was bad on both sides, his
accent resembling a Yorkshireman's English, and mine--let us say an
Englishman's French. He was certain we should have no more rain, as
the wind was in the north, and if it kept dry to twelve o'clock we
could depend on a good day. The weather prophet is the same in all
lands, and we had not left him half an hour when we were sheltering
from a sudden downpour.
For some miles we had to plod upward on foot in a wild and rocky
gorge, with the merest trickle of water below. Yet every corner where
a few square feet of clover could be coaxed into life had been
cultivated by the dogged peasants, and patches were growing at heights
where one would have thought it difficult to climb without the ropes
of an Alpinist. Many of these mountain plots were miles away from any
dwelling, a fact that conveys some idea of the barren nature of the
country.
The tiny hamlet of Malavieille, about half-way up the mountain side,
is the highest point permanently inhabited. It is a mere handful of
dark-grey houses, covered on slates and walls with a vivid yellow
fungus. Here the upland fields were densely spread with violets,
narcissi and hyacinths, and a few dun cows were browsing contentedly
on this fragrant fare, while a boy who attended them stood on his head
kicking his heels merrily in the sunshine. He came up as we passed,
staring at us stolidly; and when we asked if the snakes, of which we
had just encountered two about three feet long, were dangerous, he
answered, "_Pas bien_," and more than that we could not get him to
say, though he walked beside us for a time eyeing curiously our
bicycles.
XVIII.
When we had come within sight of the Baraque de Secours, we had
reached a sort of table-land reaching east and west for some miles.
Eastward lay the pine woods where our vagabond spent one of his most
tranquil nights as described in his chapter, "A Night Among the
Pines." It was there that, awaking in the morning, he beheld the
daybreak along the mountain-tops of Vivarais--"a solemn glee possessed
my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day." And it was
there, too, that out of thankfulness for his night's rest he laid on
the turf as he went along pieces of money, "until I had left enough
for my night's lodging." Some of it may be there to this day, for
there is small human commerce at this altitude, a shepherd or two
being the only folk we saw until we arrived at the shelter which we
had seen for more than half an hour while we cycled arduously toward
it.