and porch enclosing a muddy yard. It stands at a height of over five
thousand feet, being thus fully five hundred feet higher than Ben
Nevis. To the west the Lozère swells upward, a great treeless waste,
to its highest point, the Pic de Finiels, 5,600 feet above sea-level;
while a splendid mass of volcanic origin uprears its craggy head some
little distance to the south-east. "The view, back upon the northern
Gévaudan," says Stevenson, writing of what he saw as he passed near
this point, "extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house,
appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west,
all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning." And then
in a little, when he began the descent towards the valley of the Tarn,
he says: "A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other
steps that had preceded it--and, 'like stout Cortez when with eagle
eyes he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of
a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf
rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of
heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet." As he makes
no mention of the baraque, I venture to suppose that it had not then
been built, for one so eager of new experience would not have missed
the opportunity of resting on his way at this high-set hostel. A dead
sheep--one of several we had seen on the mountain--lay on the road by
the gate, and propping our bicycles near it, we picked our way through
the mud and knocked at the door.
[Illustration: _Waterfall on the Lozère, on Stevenson's route between
Finiels and Pont de Montvert_]
[Illustration: _In the valley of the Tarn: Scene of Stevenson's camp
under the chestnuts on the hillside_]
A gruff voice bade us enter. We stepped into a smoky room, with an
earthern floor, containing a rough wooden table and two rude
benches, and in a corner a small round table, a few chairs and a plain
wooden dresser. The mouth that had emitted a very gutteral "_Ongtray_"
belonged to a man of small stature but brigandish appearance, who was
seated at the smaller table eating industriously. We asked for
lemonade and biscuits, but the fellow stared at the words and spoke in
a patois that was Greek to me. But when I explained more sententiously
that we desired something to eat and drink, he disappeared up a wooden
stair, and we knew that a bottle of atrocious red wine, which we would
welcome as so much vinegar, would be forthcoming. Meanwhile, the man's
wife--a fair-haired little woman with cheeks like red apples, dressed
in the universal black of the French country-wife--came in, leading a
youngster by the hand. I repeated to her our wants, which she
immediately proceeded to meet by breaking four eggs into a pan, the
shells being dropped on the floor, and lo! an omelet was well on the
way by the time her husband in his sabots came clattering down the
stairs with the undesired wine, a few drops of which we used to colour
the clear cold water we took in our tumblers from a pipe that ran
ceaselessly into a basin set in the wall of the room that backed to
the rising land.
There is one respect in which the Cevennols have progressed since
Stevenson went among them. He writes: "In these Hedge-inns the
traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no
other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron
fork, the table is completely laid." Not so had we found it in any of
the inns we visited, all had risen to the dignity of knives and forks;
but here at this house in the wilds our table was laid precisely as
Stevenson describes, and the bread being hard, it was a temptation to
break it across the knee like a piece of wood. We had almost finished
our meal when, after some whisperings between the man and woman, the
fellow dived into his pockets and produced a great clasp knife, which
he opened and handed to us.
While we sat and carried on a somewhat faltering conversation--for
both man and woman spoke the dialect of Languedoc and were superbly
ignorant--two men entered of the same brigandish type as the landlord,
and, speaking better French, proffered their services as guides if we
desired to scale the Pic de Finiels. This we had no desire to do,
especially when they were frank enough to state that the view from the
top was of very little interest. But they urged us to see the
magnificent view over the entire range of the Cevennes from the more
westerly peak, the Signal des Laubies. This, however, would have
taken us some two hours, and we had a long way to travel that day. We
were curious to know whether the baraque was tenanted in winter, and
one of the guides told us that during the winter the whole of the
uplands around us lay deep in snow, the roads being quite impassable.
This shelter was only open from the beginning of June to the end of
September, when its keepers retired downhill again to Malavieille. R.
L. S. crossed the mountain on the second last day in September, so
that the snows would soon be lying on his track. When we resumed our
journey again we were once or twice beguiled into thinking that we saw
some of the snows of yester year lying among the grey and lichened
rocks, but a nearer approach turned the drifts into flocks of sheep,
which the sombre background rendered snowy white by contrast.
XIX.
We went forward into the country of the Camisards along a well-made
road which gangs of labourers were leisurely repairing. So good are
these mountain roads, and so diligently tended, that one is inclined
to think they are used chiefly for the transit of stones to keep them
in repair. That on which we travelled has been made since Modestine
and her driver footed it through this same valley. In less than a
mile from the baraque it begins to sweep swiftly downward. Stevenson
thus describes his descent: "A sort of track appeared and began to go
down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led
into a valley through falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped
field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed
the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the
continual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old unwearied
hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend
me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself
together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the
hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with
a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is
like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely
left the summit ere the valley closed round my path, and the sun beat
upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere."
[Illustration: "CLARISSE"
_The Waitress at the Hôtel des Cevennes, from a photograph supplied by
the Pasteur at Pont de Montvert_
"The features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate
design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride."
--R. L. S.]
If his descent was thus, how much more so ours on our whirling wheels?
We encountered numerous cattle-drovers, whose herds spread themselves
across the path and rendered our progress somewhat perilous, as
neither hedge nor stone stood between us and the abyss. There is
but little population in the valley, and that centred in two small
hamlets, though we observed a number of deserted cabins which
Stevenson also notes. The river, too, as it nears the larger Tarn was
all his magic pen had pictured; here it "foamed awhile in desperate
rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot
with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river
of so changeful and delicate a hue: crystal was not more clear, the
meadows were not by half so green."
Our road brought us at length to Pont de Montvert "of bloody memory,"
which lies in a green and rocky hollow among the hills. To Stevenson
"the place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an
indescribable air of the south." Why so, he was unable to say; as he
justly observes, it would be difficult to tell in what particulars it
differed from Monastier or Langogne or even Bleymard. One of the first
buildings that the traveller encounters is the little Protestant
temple perched on the rocky bank of the river, and perhaps it was
again the Protestant education of R. L. S. that led him to note a
higher degree of intelligence among the inhabitants than he had found
in the purely Catholic villages. For my part, with the best will to
mark the difference, I found little to choose between the Catholic and
Camisard townships, unless it were a more obvious effort after
cleanliness in some of the latter.
XX.
Pont de Montvert is memorable as the place where the Covenanters of
France struck the first blow against their Romish persecutors; here
they "slew their Archbishop Sharpe." The Protestant pastor, a
fresh-faced man about sixty, with a short white beard, and wearing no
outward symbol of office, but dressed in an ordinary jacket suit and
cloth cap, we found in his home in a building by the river-side near
the bridge. Directly across the rock-strewn course was the Hôtel des
Cevennes, where Stevenson sat at the "roaring table d'hôte," and was
pleased to find three of the women passably good-looking, that being
more than an average for any town in the Highlands of France. Our
pastor--his wife and golden-haired daughter also--was more interested
in discussing Stevenson's travels than the religious condition of his
district, a subject on which my companion, pastor from "the Celtic
fringe," was athirst for information.
To my various questions regarding the position of the Reformed Church
I received the barest answers; there was no glowing enthusiasm _chez
le pasteur_ for the Camisards who a stone's-throw from where we sat
stabbed with many superfluous thrusts the Archpriest Du Chayla, their
most brutal persecutor. But Stevenson and his donkey--ah, that was
another matter! He knew all about them to the year, the day, the hour
of their quaint and curious visit; he was himself only two years
established in his charge at the time. And Clarisse! We knew, of
course, what Stevenson had said of her? Would we care to see her
photograph? She was now married, and settled in another town with a
considerable family growing around her. One felt that after a quarter
of a century, and with a family thrown in, Stevenson would have
resolutely refused to look on the counterfeit presentment of Clarisse.
But, less scrupulous, we chose to see her portrait, and the pastor was
good enough to present me with a copy, as he possessed several which
he had procured three years before when ordering one for an Englishman
who had gone over the trail of R. L. S. The _carte_ shows the
table-maid of the hotel as still possessing some of the featural
charms so minutely and faithfully noted by our author.
"What shall I say of Clarisse?" he writes. "She waited the table with
a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey
eyes were steeped in amorous langour; her features, although fleshy,
were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her
nostrils spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and
interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and with
training it offered the promise of delicate sentiment.... Before I
left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She took it like
milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily
with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was some
confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add
that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays;
but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years."
When I look again at the photograph, I fear that even this hope for
her who was "left to country admirers and a country way of thought,"
has not been fulfilled.
[Illustration: THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE
"It was but a humble place, called La Vernède, with less than a dozen
houses and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. There, at the inn, I
ordered breakfast."--R. L. S.]
The pastor came with us to point out Du Chayla's house, which stands
on the river side westward of his own, the spire of the modern
Catholic church showing above the roof. Perhaps it was only natural
that he should look upon so familiar an object without any show of
emotion, though my fellow-traveller set it down to the cold Christless
teaching of the _Eglise libérale_, to which section of the French
Reformed Church Pont de Montvert is attached. In that three-storied
house, with its underground dungeons and stout-walled garden
trending down to the river, the Archpriest carried on "the Propagation
of the Faith" by such ungentle methods as plucking out the hairs of
the beard, enclosing the hands of his Protestant prisoners upon live
coal, "to convince them," as R. L. S. quaintly observes, "that they
were deceived in their opinions." On the 24th July, 1702, led by their
"prophet" Séguier, a band of some fifty Camisards attacked the house
of the Archpriest, to which they at length set fire, and thus forced
Du Chayla and his military guard to attempt escape. The Archpriest, in
lowering himself from an upper window by means of knotted sheets, fell
and broke his leg, and there in the garden, where a woman was to-day
hanging out shabby clothes to dry, the Covenanters had their vengeance
of stabs. "'This,' they said, 'is for my father broken on the wheel.
This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister
imprisoned in your cursed convents.' Each gave his blow and his
reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the
dawn." Save for a new roof, the building remains much as it was two
hundred years ago.
XXI.
The road, for close on two miles out of Pont de Montvert, goes uphill
past the Catholic church--the town being now about equally divided in
the matter of religion--and then it is a long and gentle descent to
Florac. In no respect has the road changed since Stevenson wrote of
it, nor is there any likelihood that it will be altered ere the crack
of doom. "A smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the
summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I
went in and out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into
promontories of afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of
Killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making
a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in
the sunshine far above."
The slopes of the valley have been terraced almost to the sky-line,
not for baby-fields of wheat, but to furnish ground for chestnut
trees, that clothe the hills with rich and sombre foliage, and give
forth "a faint, sweet perfume," which tinctures the air with balsamic
breath. R. L. S. goes into raptures over these chestnuts;--"I wish I
could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how they
strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage
like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the
pillars of a church; or, like the olive, from the most shattered bole
can put out smooth and useful shoots, and begin a new life upon the
ruins of the old.... And to look down upon a level filled with these
knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old, unconquerable chestnuts
clustered 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to
rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature." It was on a
terrace and under one of these trees that he camped for the night,
having to scramble up some sixty feet above the place he had selected
for himself, which was as high as that from the road, before he could
find another terrace with space enough for his donkey. He was awakened
in the morning by peasants coming to prune the trees, and after going
down to the river for his morning toilet--"To wash in one of God's
rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or
semi-pagan act of worship"--he went on his way "with a light and
peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced."
Some little way from where he had slept he foregathered with an old
man in a brown nightcap, "clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint,
excited smile," who said to him after a while, "_Connaissez-vous le
Seigneur?_" The old fellow was delighted when the donkey-driver
answered, "Yes, I know Him; He is the best of acquaintances," and
together they journeyed on, discussing the spiritual condition of the
country-folk. "Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way,
he and I came upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place,
called La Vernède, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant
chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt, and here at the inn I ordered my
breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stonebreaker
on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl."
We found this little hamlet even smaller than we expected, some
half-dozen houses and a tiny place of worship, the whole lying below
the level of the main road, so that one could have thrown a stone on
their roofs, well-tilled fields and meadows stretching down to the
river. A _cantonnier_ who was busy breaking stones by the roadway
helped us to identify the place, and was proud to confess himself a
Protestant, in common with the little handful of his fellow-villagers.
The country grows richer and more fruitful as we approach Florac,
passing on our way the old castle of Miral and a picturesque church
compounded of an ancient battlemented monastery and some modern
buildings with a tall tower.
[Illustration: IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN
"The road led me past the old Castle of Miral on a steep."--R. L. S.]
[Illustration: NEAR FLORAC
"Past a battlemented monastery long since broken up and turned into a
church and parsonage."--R. L. S.]
The influence of a country on its people suggested to R. L. S. an
interesting comparison as he journeyed through "this landscape,
smiling although wild." "Those who took to the hills for conscience
sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts," he writes;
"for once that they received God's comfort, they would be twice
engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and supporting
visions.... With a light conscience, they pursued their life in these
rough times and circumstances. The soul of Séguier, let us not forget,
was like a garden. They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge
that has no parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they
might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the
person." A singularly inapposite comparison. It was not in pleasant
valleys such as these, or in cosy little towns like Pont de Montvert,
that the Camisards fought out their war with "His Most Christian
Majesty Louis, King of France and Brittany," but on the bare and rocky
plateaus westward of the Cevennes, and on such mountain-tops as the
Lozère. Stevenson had never seen the Causse Méjan or the Causse du
Larzac, to the southward of the region through which he travelled, or
he would have realised that their conditions were even less likely to
foster "bright and supporting visions" in the Camisards than those of
the mountain-hunted Scots, though much better from a strategic point
of view.
XXII.
Florac is a small town of white houses, cuddled between the eastern
front of the Causse Méjan and the western foothills of the Cevennes,
with the river Tarnon, joined by the Mimente to the south, running
northward on its outskirts. There are only two thousand inhabitants,
but the number and excellence of Florac's hotels are accounted for by
its being an important centre for tourists visiting the gorges of the
Tarn, which, totally unknown to the outer world at the time of
Stevenson's journey, are now admitted to possess the finest scenery in
Europe. Our French guide-book frankly stated that Florac is a place
"of few attractions," but R. L. S. makes the most of these in a
sentence or two, describing the town as possessing "an old castle, an
alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain
welling from the hill." The old castle is quite without interest, and
is indeed the local prison, while the alley of planes, called the
Esplanade, is a dusty open space, with many cafés lining it, and the
grey, featureless Protestant Temple at its southern end.
"It is notable, besides," he adds, "for handsome women, and as one of
two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards."
I do not recall having noticed an unusual number of handsome women,
though the wife of the Free Church minister was quite the prettiest
French woman we saw in the Cevennes, and the Established Church
pastor's wife perhaps the most cultured. R. L. S. found the townsfolk
anxious to talk of the part played by Florac in the days of the
Camisards, and was delighted to see Catholic and Protestant living
together in peace and amity. But it may be that the conspicuous
absence of all windows from the lower parts of the Protestant churches
is a memorial of times when the adherents of the reformed religion
were subjected to the prying eyes and perchance the more dangerous
attentions of the Catholics without. Most of the public officials were
named to us as Protestants, and the religious differences are as
strongly marked between the two sects of the latter as between them
and their townsmen of the Roman communion. The larger and
State-supported church is Rationalistic, corresponding to our
Unitarian, and the smaller a Free Church, with a symbol of the open
Bible above its doorway.
In what we might call the Free Manse, really an extension of the
church for the housing of the minister, a door communicating between
the place of worship and the domestic apartments, we found M. Illaire
and his wife at play with their children--homely folk, who gave us a
cordial welcome, the heartier for the fact that Mme. Illaire had
stayed for a year in that "quaint, grey-castled city, where the bells
clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and
beat"--Stevenson's own romantic birth-town. She could thus speak our
native tongue, and my companion, for once in a way, needed none of my
interpreting. M. Illaire, an essential Frenchman, swarthy of features,
slight of build, voluble and gesticulative, discoursed with shining
eyes of Protestantism, but was something of a pessimist, and seemed to
think that at best a cold, bloodless Dieism would rule the
intellectual France of the future. I gathered that, as in the old days
of enmity between the Established and Free kirks of Scotland, there
was no traffic between the two Protestant churches in Florac, for Mme.
Illaire confessed that she had never seen the inside of the Temple,
which we had thoroughly inspected earlier in the afternoon, receiving
the key from the pastor's wife, whose husband unfortunately was absent
on a visit to Montpellier.
[Illustration: FLORAC
"On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac. It is notable as one of the
two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the
Camisards."--R. L. S.]
XXIII.
The route of R. L. S. now lay along the valley of the Mimente, which
branches eastward a little south of Florac, and penetrates a country
very similar to that traversed between the Lozère and this point. It
was only a few miles from Florac that he spent his last night _à la
belle étoile_ in the valley of this little river, noting in one of his
finest sentences the coming of night: "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." At Cassagnas he was in the very heart of
the Camisard country, where there is little to engage one but the
historic associations of the district. At St. Germain de Calberte, six
miles to the south-west, reached by a rough and difficult road more
suitable for the foot than the wheel, he slept at the inn, and the
next afternoon (Thursday, 3rd October) he accomplished the eight
remaining miles through the waterless valley of the Gardon to St. Jean
du Gard--"fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours."