[Illustration: A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC. _Frontispiece_.]
WANDERINGS
BY
SOUTHERN WATERS
_EASTERN AQUITAINE_
BY
EDWARD HARRISON BARKER
AUTHOR OF 'WAYFARING IN FRANCE'
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1893
CONTENTS
THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR
FROM THE ALZOU TO THE DORDOGNE
WAYFARING UNDERGROUND
IN THE VALLEY OF THE CÉLÉ
IN THE ALBIGEOIS
ACROSS THE ROUERGUE
THE BLACK CAUSSE
THE CAÑON OF THE TARN
IN THE VALLEY OF THE LOT
[Illustration:
OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSÉE (NOW HÔTEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC--_Frontispiece_
OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSÉE (NOW HÔTEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL
THE PONT VALENTRÉ AT CAHORS
ROC-AMADOUR
PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ALBI
AMBIALET
CIGALA, THE SHOEBLACK.
[Illustration: THE PONT VALENTRÉ AT CAHORS.]
WANDERINGS BY SOUTHERN WATERS
THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR.
From the Old-English town of Martel, in Guyenne, I turned southward
towards the Dordogne. For a few miles the road lay over a barren
plateau; then it skirted a desolate gorge with barely a trace of
vegetation upon its naked sides, save the desert loving box clinging
to the white stones. A little stream that flowed here led down into
the rich valley of Creysse, blessed with abundance of fruit. Here I
found the nightingales and the spring flowers that avoid the
wind-blown hills. Patches of wayside took a yellow tinge from the
cross-wort galium; others, conquered by ground-ivy or veronica, were
purple or blue. Presently the tiled roofs of the village of Creysse
were seen through the poplars and walnuts. A delightful spot for a
poetical angler is this, for the Dordogne runs close by in the shadow
of prodigious rocks and overhanging trees. What a noble and stately
river I thought it, as the old ferryman, with white cotton nightcap on
his head, punted me across! I took the greater pleasure in its breadth
and grandeur here because I had seen it an infant river in the
Auvergne mountains, and had watched its growth as it rushed between
walls of rock and forest towards the plains.
What witchery of romance and spell-bound fancy is in the song of the
Dordogne as it breaks over its shallows under high rocky cliffs and
ruined castles! Everything that can charm the poet and the artist is
here. The grandeur of rugged nature combines with the most enticing
beauty of water and meadow, and the voices of the past echo with a
sweet sadness from cliff to cliff. It is said that several of these
castles were built to prevent the English from coming up the river,
but this may be treated as one of the many fanciful legends respecting
the British period which are repeated throughout Aquitaine.
By cutting off a curve of the Dordogne I soon came to the river-side
village of Meyronne, and here I stopped for a meal at a very pleasant
little inn, where to my surprise I found that I had been preceded a
few days before by another Englishman, who, accompanied by a
Frenchman, had come up from Bordeaux in a boat. They must have found
it very hard work rowing against the rapids. The hostess here was
evidently a woman who treasured her household gods, but who liked also
to show them. She gave me my coffee in a china cup that looked as if
it had belonged to her great-grandmother; and in the bright little
room where she served my lunch was a large walnut buffet elaborately
and admirably carved, bearing the date 1676.
After Meyronne my road ran for a few miles beside the broad and
curving river. The forms of the great cliffs on each side were ever
changing. Over a sky intensely blue sailed the fleecy April clouds
before the soft west wind, and whenever the sun shone out with
unveiled splendour, the rays fell with summer warmth. While the
tinkling of sheep-bells from the ledges of the rocks came down to me,
the passionate warble of nightingales, that could not wait for the
night, must have risen from the leafy valley to the ears of the
listless shepherd-boy gathering feather-grass where goats would not
dare to venture, or eating his dark bread in the sun on the edge of a
precipice. Time flowed gently like the river, and I was surprised to
find myself at Lacave so soon. This village is near the spot where the
Ouysse falls into the Dordogne. A little beyond the clustering houses,
upon the edge of a high rocky promontory overlooking the Ouysse, is
the castle of Belcastel, still retaining its feudal keep and outer
wall. In this fortress the English are said to have kept many of their
prisoners.
I now left the Dordogne and ascended the valley of the Ouysse. This
stream is one of the most remarkable of the natural phenomena of
France. To judge from its breadth near the mouth, one would suppose
that it had flowed fifty or a hundred miles, but its entire length is
less than ten miles. It is already a river when it rises out of the
depths of the earth. The narrow valley that it waters is a gorge 500
or 600 feet deep through the greater part of its distance. The
traveller at the bottom supposes, or is ready to suppose, that he is
in some ravine of the high mountains; in reality, it is simply a
fissure of the plateau that was once the bed of the sea. There is no
igneous, no metamorphic rock here; nothing but limestone of the
Jurassic formation. The convexities on one side of the fissure
correspond with marked regularity to the concavities on the other.
For awhile I walked on the lush grass by the brimming river, where in
the little creeks and bays the water-ranunculus floated its small
white flowers that were to continue the race. Then I left the water
and the green ribbon that followed its margin, and, taking a
sheep-track, rose upon the arid steeps, where the thinly-scattered
aromatic southern-wood was putting forth its dusty leaves. The bare
rocks, yellow, white, and gray, towered above me; they were beneath
me; they faced me across the valley; wherever I looked they were
shutting me off from the outer world. No nightingales were singing
here, but I heard the melancholy scream of the hawk and the harsh
croak of the raven. And yet, when I looked down into the bottom of
this steep desert of stones, what soft and vernal beauty was there!
Over the grass of living green was spread the gold of cowslips, just
as if that strip of meadow, with its gently-gliding river, had been
lifted out of an English dale and dropped into the midst of the
sternest scenery of Southern France.
As I went on I soon found that the stony wastes had their flowers too.
It would seem as if Nature had wished to console the desert by giving
to it her loveliest and most enticing blossoms. I came upon colonies
of the poet's narcissus, breathing over the rocks so sweet a fragrance
that it was as if a miracle had been wrought to draw it out of the
earth. I walked knee-deep through blooming asphodels, beautiful and
strange, but only noticed here by the wild bee. I gathered sprays of
the graceful alpine-tea, densely crowded with delicate white bloom,
and marvelled at the wanton splendour of the iris colouring the gray
and yellow stones with its gorgeous blue.
Still following the Ouysse, I came to a spot where the valley ended in
an amphitheatre formed by steep hills more than 600 feet high, and
covered for the most part with dwarf oak. In the hollow under the dark
cliffs was a little lake or pool forty or fifty yards from shore to
shore. The water showed no sign of trouble save where it overflowed
its basin on the western side, and formed the river that I had been
keeping in sight for hours. The pool filled the Gouffre de St.
Sauveur. Until the Ouysse finds this opening in the earth it is a
subterranean river, and it must flow at a great depth, probably at the
base of the calcareous formation, inasmuch as it continues to rise
from the gulf the whole year, although from the month of August until
the autumn rains nearly every water-course in the country is marked by
a curving line of dry pebbles. The funnel-shaped hole descends
vertically to the depth of about ninety feet, but there is no means of
knowing how far it descends obliquely. The tourist may occasionally
catch sight of a shepherd boy or girl with goats or sheep upon the
bare or wooded rocks, but his feeling will be one of deep loneliness.
He will see ravens and hawks about the crags, and about the river half
covered in summer with floating pond-weed, watercress, and the broad
leaves of the yellow lily, he will notice many a water-ouzel bobbing
with white breast, water-hens gliding from bank to bank, merry bands
of divers, and the brilliant blue gleam of the passing kingfisher,
which here is allowed to fish in peace, like the otter.
The Gouffre de St. Sauveur has its legend. It is said that when the
church of St. Sauveur, on the neighbouring hill, was in imminent
danger at the time of the Revolution, the bells were thrown into the
pool so that they should not fall into the hands of the enemy.
Imaginative people fancy that they can sometimes hear them ringing at
the bottom of the water.
After leaving the pool--now very sombre in the shadow of the wooded
hill--I crossed a ridge separating me from the Gouffre de Cabouy, out
of which flows a tributary of the Ouysse. Thence I reached the deep
and singularly savage gorge of the Alzou, which brought me to
Roc-Amadour, when the after-light of sunset was lingering rosily upon
the naked crags.
* * * * *
Rocks reach far overhead, dazzlingly white where the sunbeams strike
them, and below is a green line of narrow valley. A tinkling of bells
comes from the stony sides of the gorge, where sheep are browsing the
scant herbage and young shoots of southern-wood; and from the curving
fillet of meadow, where the grass seems to grow while the eye watches
it, rises the shrill little song of the stream hurrying over its
yellow bed, which may be dry again to-morrow. This Alzou is no more to
be depended upon than a coquette. After a period of drought, a storm
that has passed away hours ago will cause it suddenly to come hissing
down over the dry stones; but the next day no trace of the flow may be
found save a few pools. Or it may grow to a torrent, even a river,
that in its wild career scoffs at banks, and spreads devastation
through the valley.
It is April, and the nightingales, the swallows, the flowers, the
bees, and the kids, whose trembling voices are heard all about the
rocks, tell me that the spring has come. I cannot rest in my cottage
on the side of the gorge, not even on the balcony that seems to hang
in the air over the depth; the sounds from the valley, especially
those that the imagination hears, are too enticing.
Upon a high ledge of rock to which I have climbed, not without some
unpleasant qualms, I stretch myself out upon a strip of short turf
sprinkled with the flowers of the white rock-rose and bordered with
candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought
I have at this moment--that of getting down to the path, where I was
safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places is not the going
up, but the coming down. Not a human being or dwelling is in sight, so
that I can contemplate the wildness of the scene to my mind's content.
But a very hoarse voice not far above tells me that I am not alone. A
raven perched upon a jutting piece of rock, that curiously resembles
some monstrous animal, is watching me, and he looks a very crafty old
bird who could speak either French or English if he liked. Presently
he flaps heavily off to the opposite side of the gorge, and fetches
his wife. They fly over me almost within gunshot, going round and
round, expressing an opinion or sentiment with an occasional croak,
but apparently quite willing to make their dinner-hour suit my
convenience. Do they suppose that I have really taken the trouble to
climb up here to die out of the world's way and the sight of my
fellow-creatures, like that very unearthly poet whose story Shelley
has written? Do they think that they are going to make a hearty meal
upon me this evening or to-morrow morning? I remain quite still,
pleased at the thought of cheating the greedy, croaking scavengers of
Nature, and hoping that they will grow bold enough to settle at length
somewhere near me. But they are too suspicious; perhaps with their
superior sight they note the blinking of my eyes as I look upwards at
the dazzling sky, or instinct may tell them that I am not lying down
after the manner of a dying animal. Their patience is more than a
match for mine, and so I come down from my ledge and make my way back
to my cottage before the pink blush of evening has faded from the
rocks.
When the angelus has sounded from the ancient sanctuary, and all the
forms of the valley are dim in the dusk, the silence is broken again
by a very quiet little bell, which might be called the fairies'
angelus if it did not keep ringing all through the spring and summer
nights. It is like a treble note of the piano softly touched. It
steals up from amongst the flags, hyacinths, and box-bushes of the
neglected little garden which I call mine, terraced upon the side of
the gorge just beneath the balcony. Now, from all the terraced gardens
planted with fruit-trees, comes the same sound of low, clear notes,
some a little higher than others, but all in the treble, feebly struck
by unseen musicians. How sweetly this tinkling rises from the earth,
that trembles with the bursting of seeds and the shooting of stems in
the first warm nights of spring! And to think that the musicians
should be toads--yes, toads--the most despised and the most unjustly
treated of creatures!
This cottage is at Roc-Amadour, and before writing about the place I
cannot do better than go down to the level of the stream, and look up
at the amazing cluster of buildings clinging to the rocks on one side
of the gorge, while the old walls are whitened by the pale brilliancy
of the moon. Above the roofs of all the houses is a mass of masonry,
vast and heavy, pierced by narrow Romanesque windows--a building
uncouth and monstrous, like the surrounding crags. It stands upon a
ledge of the cliff, partly in the hollow of the rock, which, indeed,
forms its innermost wall. Higher still a great cross shows against the
sky, and near to it, upon the edge of the precipice, are the ramparts
of a mediaeval fortress, now combined with a modern building, which is
the residence of the clergy attached to the sanctuary of Notre Dame de
Roc-Amadour.
[Illustration: ROC-AMADOUR.]
The sanctuary--it is inside the massive pile under the beetling rock,
and over the roofs of the houses--explains why men in far-distant
times had the strange notion of gathering together and constructing
dwellings upon a spot where Nature must have offered the harshest
opposition to such a project. The chosen site was not only
precipitous, but lay in the midst of a calcareous desert, where no
stream nor spring of water could be relied upon for six months in the
year, and where the only soil that was not absolutely unproductive was
covered with dense forest infested by wolves.[*] And yet, in course of
time, there grew up upon these forbidding rocks, in the midst of this
desert, a little town that obtained a wide celebrity, and was even
fortified, as the five ruinous gateways, with towers along the line of
the single street, prove even now, notwithstanding the deplorable
recklessness with which the structures of the ancient burg have been
degraded or demolished during the last half-century. Nothing is more
certain than that the origin of Roc-Amadour, and the cause of its
development, were religious. It was called into existence by pilgrims;
it grew with the growth of pilgrimages, and if it were not for
pilgrims at the present day half the houses now occupied would be
allowed to fall into ruin. It is impossible to look at it without
wonder, either in the daylight or the moonlight. It appears to have
been wrenched out of the known order of human works--the result of
common motives--and however often Roc-Amadour may suddenly meet the
eye upon turning the gorge, the picture never fails to be surprising.
It has really the air of a holy place, which many others famed for
holiness have not.
[*] Robert du Mont, in his supplement to Sigibert's Chronicles,
wrote, more than five hundred years ago, of Roc-Amadour: 'Est
locus in Cadurcensi pago montaneis et horribile solitudine
circumdatus.'
The founder of the sanctuary was a hermit, whose contemplative spirit
led him to this savage and uninhabited valley, whose name, in the
early Christian ages, was _Vallis tenebrosa_, but in which Nature had
fashioned numerous caverns, more or less tempting to an anchorite. He
is called Amator--_Amator rupis_--by the Latin chroniclers--a name
that, with the spread of the Romance language, would easily have
become corrupted to Amadour by the people. According to the legend,
however, which for an uncertain number of centuries has obtained
general credence in the Quercy and the Bas-Limousin, and which in
these days is much upheld by the clergy, although a learned
Jesuit--the Père Caillau--who sifted all the annals relating to
Roc-Amadour felt compelled to treat it as a pious invention, the
hermit Amator or Amadour was no other than Zaccheus, who climbed into
the sycamore. The legend further says that he was the husband of St.
Veronica, and that, after the crucifixion, they left the Holy Land in
a vessel which eventually landed them on the western coast of Gaul,
not far from the present city of Bordeaux. They became associated with
the mission of St. Martial, the first Bishop of Limoges, and at a
later period Zaccheus, hearing of a rocky solitude in Aquitania, a
little to the south of the Dordogne, abandoned to wild beasts,
proceeded thither, and chose a cavern in the escarped side of a cliff
for his hermitage. Here, meditating upon the merits of the Mother of
Christ, he became one of her most devoted servants in that age, and
during his life he caused a small chapel to be raised to her upon the
rock near his cavern, which was consecrated by St. Martial. All this
is open to controversy, but what is undoubtedly true is that one of
the earliest sanctuaries of Europe associated with the name of Mary
was at Roc-Amadour.
It is recorded that Roland, passing through the Quercy in the year 778
with his uncle, Charlemagne, made a point of stopping at Roc-Amadour
for the purpose of 'offering to the most holy Virgin a gift of silver
of the same weight as his bracmar, or sword.' After his death, if
Duplex and local tradition are to be trusted, this sword was brought
to Roc-Amadour, and the curved rusty blade of crushing weight which is
now to be seen hanging to a wall is said to be a faithful copy of the
famous Durandel, which is supposed to have been stolen by the
Huguenots when they pillaged the church and burnt the remains of St.
Amadour.
That in the twelfth century the fame of Roc-Amadour as a place of
pilgrimage was established we have very good evidence in the fact that
one of the pilgrims to the sanctuary in 1170 was Henry II. of England.
He had fallen seriously ill at Mote-Gercei, and believing that he had
been restored to health through the intercession of the Virgin, he set
out for the 'Dark Valley' in fulfilment of a vow that he had made to
her; but as this journey into the Quercy brought him very near the
territory of his enemies, the annalists tell us that he was
accompanied by a great multitude of infantry and cavalry, as though he
were marching to battle. But he injured no one, and gave abundant alms
to the poor. Thirteen years later, the King's rebellious son, Henry,
Court Mantel, pillaged the sanctuary of its treasure in order to pay
his ruffianly soldiers. This memorable sacrilege had much to do with
the insurmountable antipathy of the Quercynois for the English.
I have before me an old and now exceedingly rare little book on
Roc-Amadour, which was written by the Jesuit Odo de Gissey, and
published at Tulle in 1666. In this, Court Mantel's exploit is spoken
of as follows:
'Les guerres d'entre nos Rois très Chrétiens et les Anglais en ce
Royaume de France guerroyant ruinèrent en quelque façon Roc-Amadour;
mais plus que tous Henri III., Roi d'Angleterre, ingrat des grâces que
son père Henri II. y avait recues, en dépit de son père qui
affectionnait cette Eglise, son avarice le poussant, pilla cet
oratoire et enleva les plaques qui couvraient le corps de S. Amadour
et emporta ce qui était de la Trésorerie; mais Dieu qui ne laisse rien
impuni châtia le sacrilege de cet impie Prince par une mort
malheureuse. De quoi lise qui voudra Roger de Houedan, historien
Anglais en la 2 partie de ses Annales.'
There are early records of miracles wrought at Roc-Amadour. Gauthier
de Coinsy, a monk and poet born at Amiens in 1177, has left a poem
telling how the troubadour, Pierre de Sygelard, singing the praises of
the Virgin in her chapel at Roc-Amadour to the accompaniment of his
_vielle_ (hurdy-gurdy), begged of her as a miraculous sign to let one
of her candles come down from her altar. According to the poem, the
candle came down, and stood upon the musical instrument, to the horror
and disgust of a monk who was looking on, and who saw no miracle in
the matter, but wicked enchantment. He put the candle back
indignantly, but when the minstrel sang and played it came down as
before. The movement was repeated again before the monk would believe
that the miracle was genuine. The poem, which is in the Northern
dialect, and is marked throughout by a charming _naïveté_, commences
with a eulogium of the Virgin:
'La douce mère du Créateur
À l'église à Rochemadour
Fait tants miracles, tants hauts faits,
C'uns moultes biax livres en est faits.'
The huge, inartistic, but imposing block of masonry that appears from
a little distance to be clinging, after the manner of a swallow's
nest, to the precipitous face of the rock, and which is reached from
below by more than 200 steps in venerable dilapidation[*], contains
the church of St. Sauveur, the chapel of the Virgin, called the
Miraculous Chapel, and the chapel of St. Amadour, all distinct. The
last-named is a little crypt, and the Miraculous Chapel conveys the
impression of being likewise one, for it is partly under the
overleaning rock, the rugged surface of which, blackened by the smoke
of the countless tapers which have been burnt there in the course of
ages, is seen without any facing of masonry.
[*] Since the foregoing was written the old slabs have been turned
round, and the steps been made to look quite new.
If by looking at certain details of this composite structure one could
shut off the surroundings from the eye, the mind might feed without
any hindrance upon the ideas of old piety and the fervour of souls
who, when Europe was like a troubled and forlorn sea, sought the
quietude and safety of these rocks, lifted far above the raging surf.
But the hindrance is found on every side. The sense of artistic
fitness is wounded by incongruities of architectural style, of ideas
which meet but do not marry. The brazen altar, in the Miraculous
Chapel was well enough at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where it could
be admired as a piece of elaborate brass work, but at Roc-Amadour it
is a direct challenge to the spirit of the spot. Then again, late
Gothic architecture has been grafted upon the early Romanesque. Those
who restored the building after it had been reduced to a ruin by the
Huguenots in 1562 set the example of bad taste. The revolutionists of
1793 having in their turn wrought their fury upon it, the work of
restoration was again undertaken during the last half-century, but the
opportunity of correcting the mistake of the previous renovators was
lost. The piece of Romanesque architecture whose character has been
best preserved is the detached chapel of St. Michael, raised like a
pigeon-house against the rock; but even this has been carefully
scraped on the outside to make it correspond as nearly as possible to
some adjacent work of recent construction.
The ancient treasure of Roc-Amadour has been scattered or melted down,
but the image of the Virgin and Child, which according to the local
tradition was carved out of the trunk of a tree by St. Amadour
himself, is still to be seen over the altar in the Miraculous Chapel.
It is probably 800 years old, and it may be older. There is no record
to help hypothesis with regard to its antiquity, for since the
pilgrimage originated it appears to have been an object of veneration,
and the commencement of the pilgrimage is lost in the dimness of the
past. Like the statue of the Virgin at Le Puy, it is as black as
ebony, but this is the effect of age, and the smoke of incense and
candles. The antiquity of the image is, moreover, proved by the
artistic treatment. The Child is crowned and rests upon the Virgin's
knee; she does not touch him with her hands. This is in accordance
with the early Christian sentiment, which dwells upon the kingship of
the Child as distinguished from the later mediaeval feeling, which
rests without fear upon the Virgin's maternal love and makes her clasp
the Infant fondly to her breast.
The 'miraculous bell' of Roc-Amadour has not rung since 1551, but it
may do so any day or night, for it is still suspended to the vault of
the Miraculous Chapel. It is of iron, and was beaten into shape with
the hammer--facts which, together with its form, are regarded as
certain evidence of its antiquity. The first time that it is said to
have rung by its own movement was in 1385, and three days afterwards,
according to Odo de Gissey, the phenomenon was repeated during the
celebration of the Mass. All those who were present bore testimony to
the fact upon oath before the apostolic notary.
Very early in the Middle Ages the faith spread among mariners, and
others exposed to the dangers of the sea, that the Lady of Roc-Amadour
had great power to help them when in distress. Hugues Farsit, Canon of
Laon, wrote a treatise in 1140, 'De miraculis Beatae Virginis rupis
Amatoris,' wherein he speaks of her as the 'Star of the Sea,' and the
hymn 'Ave maris stella' is one of those most frequently sung in these
days by the pilgrims at Roc-Amadour. A statement, written and signed
by a Breton pilgrim in 1534, shows how widely this particular devotion
had then spread among those who trusted their lives to the uncertain
sea:
'I, Louis Le Baille, merchant of the town of Pontscorf, on the river
Ellé, in the diocese of Vannes, declare with truth that, returning
from a voyage to Scotland the 13th of the month of February, 1534, at
about ten o'clock at night, we were overtaken by such a violent storm
that the waves covered the vessel, in which were twenty-six persons,
and we went to the bottom. During the voyage somebody said to me: "Let
us recommend ourselves to God and to the Virgin Mary of Roc-Amadour.
Let us put her name upon this spar and trust ourselves to the care of
this good Lady." He who gave me this good counsel and myself fastened
ourselves to the spar with a rope. The tempest carried us away, but in
so fortunate a manner that the next day we found ourselves on the
coast of Bayonne. Half dead, we landed by the grace of God and the aid
of His pitiful mother, Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour. I have come here out
of gratitude for this blessing, and have accomplished the journey in
fulfilment of my vow to her, in proof of which, I have signed here
with my hand.--Louis BAILLE.'
Such streams of pilgrims crossed the country from various directions,
moving towards the sanctuary in the Haut-Quercy, that inns or 'halts'
were called into existence on the principal lines of route, and
lanterns were set up at night for the guidance of the wanderers. The
last halt was close to Roc-Amadour, at a spot still called the
_Hospitalet_. Here were religious, who bound up the pilgrims' bleeding
feet, and provided them with food before they descended to the burg
and completed the last part of their pilgrimage--the ascent of the
steps--upon their knees. The _sportelle_, or badge of Notre Dame de
Roc-Amadour, ensured the wearer against interference or ill-treatment
on his journey. It is acknowledged that the English respected it even
in time of war. At the Great Pardon of Roc-Amadour, in 1546, so great
was the crowd of pilgrims, who had come from all parts, that many
persons were suffocated. The innkeepers' tents gave the surrounding
country the appearance of a vast camp. Sixteen years later, when
Roc-Amadour fell into the hands of the Huguenots, and the religious
buildings were pillaged and partly destroyed, the pilgrimage received
a blow from which it never quite recovered. It ceased completely at
the Revolution, but has since been revived, and some thousand genuine
pilgrims, chiefly of the peasant class, now visit Roc-Amadour every
year.
For nearly 300 years the history of the Quercy and Roc-Amadour was
intimately associated with that of England. Henry II. did not at first
claim the Quercy as a part of Eleanor's actual possessions in
Aquitaine; but he claimed homage from the Count of Toulouse, who was
then suzerain of the Count of Quercy. Homage being refused, Henry
invaded the county, captured Cahors, where he left Becket with a
garrison, and thence proceeded to reduce the other strongholds.
Roc-Amadour appears to have offered little if any resistance. The
Quercy was formally made over to the English in 1191 by the treaty
signed by Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur-de-Lion; but the aged
Raymond V. of Toulouse protested, and the Quercynois still more
loudly. These descendants of the Cadurci found it very difficult to
submit to English rule. Unlike the Gascons, who became thoroughly
English during those three centuries, and were so loath to change
their rulers again that they fought for the King of England to the
last, the Quercynois were never reconciled to the Plantagenets, but
were ever ready to seize an opportunity of rebelling against them. It
is well known that Richard Coeur-de-Lion lost his life at the hand of
a nobleman of the Quercy. While Guyenne was distracted by the family
quarrel of the first Plantagenets, the troubadour Bertrand de Born by
his gift of words so stirred up the patriotic and martial ardour of
the Aquitanians that a league was formed against the English, which
included Talleyrand, Count of Périgord, Guilhem (or Fortanier) de
Gourdon, a powerful lord of the Quercy, De Montfort, the Viscounts of
Turenne and Ventadour. These nobles swore upon the Gospels to remain
united and faithful to the cause of Aquitaine; but Richard, partly by
feats of war and partly by diplomacy, in which it is said the argument
of money had no inconsiderable share, broke up the league, and
Bertrand de Born, being abandoned, fell into the Plantagenet's hands.
But he was pardoned, probably because Richard was a troubadour himself
in his leisure moments, and had a fellow-feeling for all who loved the
'gai sçavoir.' Meanwhile, the Lord of Gourdon was not to be gained
over by fair words or bribes, and Richard besieged his castle, some
ruins of which may still be seen on the rock that overhangs the little
town of Gourdon in the Quercy. The fortress was taken, and Richard in
his fury caused the stern old man who defended it and two of his sons
to be put to death. But there was a third son, Bertrand de Gourdon,
who, seeking an opportunity of avenging his father and brothers,
joined the garrison of the castle of Châlus in the Limousin, which
Richard soon afterwards besieged. He aimed the bolt or the arrow which
brought Richard's stormy life to a close. Although forgiven by the
dying Coeur-de-Lion, Bertrand was flayed alive by the Brabançons who
were in the English army. He left no descendants, but his collaterals
long afterwards bore the name of Richard in memory of Bertrand's
vengeance.
A member of a learned society at Cahors has sought to prove that
Gourdon in the Quercy is the place where the family of General Gordon
of Khartoum fame had its origin. It is true that the name of this town
in all old charts is spelt Gordon; but, inasmuch as it is a compound
of two Celtic words meaning raven's rock, it might as feasibly have
been handed down by the Gaelic Scotch as by the Cadurcians.
The Plantagenets came to be termed 'the devil's race' by the people of
Guyenne. This may have originated in a saying attributed to Richard
himself in Aquitaine: 'It is customary in our family for the sons to
hate their father. We come from the devil, and we shall return to the
devil.'
In 1368 the English, having again to reduce the Quercy, laid siege to
Roc-Amadour. The burghers held out only for a short time, and the
place being surrendered, Perducas d'Albret was left as governor with a
garrison of Gascons. Froissart quaintly describes this brief siege.
Shortly before the army showed itself in the narrow valley of the
Alzou, the towns of Fons and Gavache had capitulated, the inhabitants
having sworn that they would remain English ever afterwards. 'But they
lied,' observes Froissart. Arriving under the walls of Roc-Amadour,
which were raised upon the lower rocks, the English advanced at once
to the assault. 'Là eut je vous dy moult grant assaust et dur.' It
lasted a whole day, with loss on both sides; but when the evening came
the English entrenched themselves in the valley with the intention of
renewing the assault on the morrow. That night, however, the consuls
and burghers of Roc-Amadour took council of one another, and it was
unanimously agreed that the English had shown great 'force and virtue'
during the day. Then the wisest among them urged that the place could
not hold out long against such an enemy, and that if it was taken by
force they, the burghers, would be all hanged, and the town burnt
without mercy. It was, therefore, decided to surrender the town the
next day. This was accordingly done, and the burghers solemnly swore
that they would be 'good English' ever afterwards. For their penance
they undertook to send fifty mules laden with provisions to accompany
the English army on its march for fifteen days. The fact that the
burghers owned fifty mules in the fourteenth century shows how much
richer they were then, for now they can scarcely boast half as many
donkeys, although these beasts do most of the carrying, and even the
ploughing.
It is difficult now to find a trace of the wall which defended the
burg on the side of the valley; but here, not far above the bed of the
Alzou, are some ruins of the castle where Henry II. stayed, and which
the inhabitants still associate with his name. It is improbable that
he built it; it is more reasonable to suppose that it existed before
his marriage with Eleanor in 1152. His son, 'Short Mantle,' also used
it when he came to Roc-Amadour, and behaved, as an old writer
expresses it, 'like a ferocious beast.' Some ruined Gothic archways
may still be seen from the valley, the upper stones yellow with
rampant wallflowers in the early spring. The older inhabitants speak
of the high walls, the finely-sculptured details, etc., which they
remember; and, indeed, it is not very long ago that the ancient castle
was sold for a paltry sum, to be used as building material. The only
part of the interior preserved is what was once the chapel. It is
vaulted and groined, and the old vats and casks heaped up in it show
that it was long used for wine-making, before the phylloxera destroyed
the vineyards that once covered the sides of the stony hills. A little
below this castle is a well, with an extraordinary circumference, said
to have been sunk by the English, and always called by the people 'Le
puit des Anglais.' It is 100 feet deep, and those who made it had to
work thirty feet through solid rock.
* * * * *
After wandering and loitering by rivers too well fed by the mountains
to dry completely up like the perfidious little Alzou, I have returned
to Roc-Amadour, my headquarters, the summer being far advanced. The
wallflowers no longer deck the old towers and gateways with their
yellow bloom, and scent the morning and evening air with their
fragrance; the countless flags upon the rocky shelves no longer flaunt
their splendid blue and purple, tempting the flower-gatherer to risk a
broken neck; the poet's narcissus and the tall asphodel alike are
gone; so are all the flowers of spring. The wild vine that clambers
over the blackthorn, the maple and the hazel, all down the valley
towards the Dordogne, shows here and there a crimson leaf; and the
little path is fringed with high marjoram, whose blossoms revel amidst
the hot stones, and seem to drink the wine of their life from the
fiery sunbeams. Upon the burning banks of broken rock--gray wastes
sprinkled with small spurges and tufts of the fragrant southernwood,
now opening its mean little flowers--multitudes of flying grasshoppers
flutter, most of them with scarlet wings, and one marvels how they can
keep themselves from being baked quite dry where every stone is hot.
The lizards, which spend most of their time in the grasshoppers'
company, appear equally capable of resisting fire. In the bed of the
Alzou a species of brassica has had time since the last flood to grow
up from the seed, and to spread its dark verdure in broad patches over
the dry sand and pebbles. The ravens are gone--to Auvergne, so it is
said, because they do not like hot weather. The hawks are less
difficult to please on the score of climate; they remain here all the
year round, piercing the air with their melancholy cries.
I needed quiet for writing, and could not get it. Of all boons this is
the most difficult to find in France. It can be had in Paris, where it
is easy to live shut off from the world, hearing nothing save the
monotonous rumble of life in the streets; but let no one talk to me
about the blessed quietude of the country in France, unless it be that
of the bare moor or mountain or desolate seashore. In villages there
is no escape from the clatter of tongues until everybody, excepting
yourself, is asleep. The houses are so built that wherever you may
take refuge you are compelled to hear the conversation that is going
on in any part of them. In the South the necessity of listening
becomes really terrible. The men roar, and the women shriek, in their
ordinary talk. A complete stranger to such ways might easily suppose
that they were engaged in a wordy battle of alarming ferocity, when
they are merely discussing the pig's measles, or the case of a cow
that strayed into a field of lucern, and was found the next morning
like a balloon. It is hard for a person who needs to be quiet at times
to live with such people without giving the Recording Angel a great
deal of disagreeable work.
I would not have believed that so small a place as Roc-Amadour, and
such a holy one, could have been so noisy if my own experience had not
informed me on this subject. Every morning at five the tailor who did
duty as policeman and crier came with his drum, and, stationing
himself by the town pump, which was just in front of my cottage, awoke
the echoes of the gorge with a long and furious _tambourinade_. While
the women, in answer to this signal, were coming from all directions,
carrying buckets in their hands, or copper water-pots on their heads,
he unchained the pump-handle. Now for the next two hours the strident
cries of the exasperated pump, and the screaming gabble of many
tongues, all refreshed by slumber and eager for exercise, made such a
diabolic tumult and discord as to throw even the braying of the
donkeys into the minor key. Of course, sleep under such circumstances
would have been miraculous; but, then, no one had any right to sleep
when the rocks were breaking again into flame, and the mists which
filled the gorge by night were folding up their tents. I therefore
accepted this noise as if it had been intended for my good, and the
crowd in front of the pump was always an amusing picture of human
life. It was at its best on Sunday, for then the tailor--who also did
a little shaving between whiles--had put on his fine braided official
coat, as well as his sword and best _képi_. (On very grand days he
wore his cocked hat, and was then quite irresistibly beautiful.) He
had to look after the women as well as the water. The latter was
precious, and it was necessary to protect it in the interest of the
community. Then the pump was parsimonious, and all the women being
impatient to get their allowance and go, it was needful that someone
in authority should stand by to decide questions of disputed priority,
and to nip quarrels in the bud which might otherwise lead to a fight.
Poor man! how those women worried him every morning with their
_badinage_, and how glad he was to chain up the pump-handle and turn
the key!
But this was only the opening act of the day's comedy, or rather the
_lever de rideau_. The little square by the old gateway, whose
immediate neighbourhood lent a mediaeval charm to my cottage, was the
centre of gossip and idling. I did not think of this when I pitched my
tent, so to speak, in the shadow of the old masonry. Knowing full well
that the noise of tongues is one of the chief torments of my life, I
am always leaving it out of my calculations, and paying the same bill
for my folly over and over again. But then I know also that in
provincial France, unless you live in an abandoned ruin upon a rock,
it is well-nigh impossible to obtain the quietude which the literary
man, when he has it not, imagines to be closely allied to the peace
that passeth all understanding. The square served many purposes,
except mine. The women used it as a convenient place for steaming
their linen. This, fashioned into the shape of a huge sugar-loaf, with
a hollow centre, stood in a great open caldron upon a tripod over a
wood-fire. At night the lurid flames and the grouped figures,
illuminated by the glare, were picturesque; but in the daytime the
charm of these gatherings was chiefly conversational. Then the
children made the square their playground, or were driven into it
because it was the safest place for them, and every Sunday afternoon
the young men of Roc-Amadour met there to play at skittles.
In quest of peace, I was driven at first into the loft of the inn, of
which the cottage was a dependency. Here the vocal music of the
inhabitants was somewhat muffled, but the opportunities for studying
natural history were rather excessive. A swarm of bees had established
themselves in a corner where they could not be dislodged, and they had
a way of crawling over the floor that kept my expectations constantly
raised. The maize grown upon the small farm having been stored here
from time immemorial, the rats had learnt from tradition and
experience to consider this loft as their Land of Goshen. When I took
up my quarters among them they were annoyed, and also puzzled. They
could not understand why I remained there so long and so quiet; but at
length they lost patience and gave up the riddle. Then their impudence
became unbounded; they helped themselves to the maize whenever they
felt disposed to do so, and stared at me with the utmost effrontery as
they sat upon their haunches nibbling; they ran races under the tiles
and held pitched battles upon the rafters. Talking one day to the
proprietor of the house about his rats and other live stock, I tried
to excite and distress him by describing the depredation that went on
day and night in the loft. But it was with a calm bordering on
satisfaction that he listened to my story. Then he told me that the
rats ate about two sacks of maize every year.
'And you do not put it elsewhere?' 'Non pas! I leave it here for
them.'
'For the rats?'
'Certainly, for the rats. If I did not give them plenty of maize they
would eat a hundred francs' worth of linen in a single winter. It is
an economy to feed them.'
And there were about a dozen string-tailed cats about the place that
never ventured into the loft. They must have been either afraid or too
lazy to attack the rats in their stronghold. A man who could accept a
plague of rodents in this philosophical spirit could not be otherwise
than mild in his dealings with all animals, including men. My old
friend liked to let every creature live and enjoy existence. He became
so fond of his pigs that it grieved him sorely to have one killed.
Much domestic diplomacy had to be used before the fatal order could be
wrung from him. He would have gone on fattening the beast for ever had
he been allowed, soothing his conscience over the waste with the vague
hope that this pig of exceptional loveliness and vigour would grow to
the size of a donkey if it were permitted to take its time. He never
worried his _métayer_ over money matters, or insisted upon seeing that
everything was equally divided. Notwithstanding, that he had been made
to smart all his life for his trustfulness and indolent good-nature,
experience had taught him nothing of this world's wisdom. No beggar,
although known to be a worthless rascal, ever asked him for a piece of
bread or a night's lodging in his barn without obtaining it. The old
man would lock his ragged guest up for the night, and before letting
him out in the morning would often carry some soup to him--stealthily,
however, so as not to be observed. As he was always ready to give, and
hated every harsh measure, it was to his wood that the unscrupulous
went in winter, when they wanted fuel. Sometimes an informer would say
to him: 'M---- So-and-so is cutting down your wood.' 'Oh, bast! _le
pauvre_. It is cold weather!' was the reply that he would be most
likely to make. His good qualities would have ruined him had not
destiny with great discernment and charity nailed him to his little
patrimony, where he was comparatively safe.
The bees in the loft were instructive and the rats amusing, but the
fleas were neither the one nor the other--they were merely exciting.
And so it came to pass that I forsook the place, and by climbing a
little staircase cut in the rock, against which the house was built,
reached a cavern far above the roof and found at last my ideal
writing-place upon the ledge in front of it, where the mallow and the
crane's-bill crept over a patch of turf. Here the voices of the noisy
little world below were sufficiently toned down by distance. The
noisiest creatures up here were the jackdaws, which were constantly
flying in and out of the holes in the church wall that rose above me
from another and wider ledge of rock. A pair of sooty-looking
rock-swallows that had made their nest in the roof of the cavern were
much irritated by my presence, but, like the rats, they became
reconciled to it. The little martins, always trustful, never hesitated
from the first to fly into the cave and drink from the dripping water.
When the dusk came on, the bats, which had been hanging by their
winged heels all day in dusky holes and corners, fluttered out one
after another, and went zigzagging until they were lost to sight over
the old stone roofs on which the moss had blackened.
A little before the bats came out was the time when to do aught else
but let the sight feast upon the beauty of the rocky little world
bounded by the walls of the narrow gorge would have been literally to
waste the golden moments. Then it was that the naked crags, which
caught the almost level rays of the setting sun, grew brighter and
more brilliantly coruscating, until they seemed ready to melt from the
intensity of their own heat; then this fiery golden colour would
slowly fade and wane into misty purple tones, which lingered long when
there was no more sun. Why did it linger? All the sky that I could see
was blue, and of deepening tone. But the most wonderful sight was yet
to come, when, while the valley was fast darkening, and along the
banks of the Alzou's dry channel the walnut-trees stood like dark
spectres of uncertain form, those rocks began to glow with fire again
as if a wind had risen suddenly and had fanned their dying embers, and
the luminous bloom that spread over them was not that of the earthly
rose, but of the mystical rose of heaven. What I saw was the
reflection of the after-glow, but the glow in the sky was hidden.
Sometimes, as the rocks were fading again and a star was already
glittering like steel against the dark blue, another flush arose in
the dusk, and a faint redness still rested upon the high crags, when
the owl flew forth with a shriek to hunt along the sides of the gorge.