is not the single tinted green ribbon it lately was. The light of its
verdure has been dimmed by the light of flowers. The grass mounts
high, but not higher than the oxeye daisies, the blue racemes of
stachys, the mauve-coloured heads of scabious, the bladder-campions,
the yellow buttercups and goat's-beard. The oxeyes are so numberless
in one long reach of meadow that a white drapery, which every breeze
folds or unfolds, seems to have been cast as light as sea-foam upon
the illimitable forest of stems. The white butterflies that flutter
above are like flecks of foam on the wing. Elsewhere it is the blue of
the stachys and the spiked veronica that rules. Deeper in the herbage
other races of flowers shine in the fair groves of this grassy
paradise, and every blossom, however small, is a mystery, a miracle.
Here is the star of Bethlehem, wide open in the sunshine and showing
so purely white amidst the green, and yonder is the purple fringe-like
tuft of the weird muscari. Along the banks of the stream tall
lilac-purple, stock-like flowers rise proudly above the grasses. They
belong to the hesperis or dame's violet, a common wild-flower in this
valley. Upon my left is the abrupt stony slope of the gorge. Between
it and the meadow are shrubs of yellow jessamine starred with blossom.
But the stony steep that dazzles the eyes with the sun's reflected
glare has its flowers too. Nature, in her great passion for beauty,
even draws it out of the disintegrated fragments of time-worn rock,
whose banks would otherwise be as stark and dry as the desert sand.
Lightly as flakes of snow the frail blossoms of the white rock-rose
lie upon the stones. Then there are patches of candytuft running from
white into pink, crimson flowers of the little crane's-bill, and
spurges whose floral leaves are now losing their golden green and
taking a hue of fiery brown.
An open wood, chiefly of dwarf oak, and shrubs such as the wayfaring
tree, the guelder-rose, and the fly-honeysuckle, now stretches along
the opposite side of the gorge. Here scattered groups of columbine
send forth a glow of dark blue from the shadowy places; the lily of
the valley and its graceful ever-bowing cousin, the Solomon's seal,
show their chaste and wax-like flowers amidst the cool green of their
fresh leaves; and the monkey-orchis stands above the green moss and
the creeping geraniums like a little rocket of pale purple fire just
springing from the earth towards the lingering shreds of storm-cloud
that are melting in the warm sky.
In a few weeks what will have become of all this greenness and
beautiful colour of flowers? The torrid sun and the hot breath of
summer will have burnt up the fair garment of spring, and laid bare
the arid sternness of the South again. The nightingale still warbles
fitfully in the green bushes, but the raven, perched up yonder upon
the stark rock, croaks like a misanthrope at the quick passing away of
youth and loveliness. What sad undertones, mournful murmurs of the
deep that receives the drifted leaves, mingle with the spring's soft
flutings and all the voices that proclaim the season of joy!
While listening and day-dreaming, I was overtaken by a man and his
donkey, both old acquaintances. Every day, except Sundays and the
great Church festivals, when the peasants of the Quercy abstain from
work, like those of Brittany, this pair were in the habit of trudging
together side by side to fetch and bring back wood from the slopes of
the gorge. The ass did all the carrying, and his master the chopping
and sawing. It was a monotonous life, but both seemed to think they
were not worse off than the majority of men and donkeys. The man was
contented with his daily soup of bread-and-water, with an onion or a
leek thrown in, and a suspicion of bacon, and the beast with such
herbage as he could find while his master was getting ready another
load of wood. The man was an old soldier, who had seen some rough
service, for he was at Sedan, and was afterwards engaged in the
ghastly business of shooting down his own countrymen in Paris. But,
with all this, he was as quiet a tempered creature as his donkey,
which he treated as a friend. The army, he told me, was the best
school for learning how to treat a beast with proper consideration.
I asked why.
'Because,' replied he, 'when a soldier is caught beating a horse, he
has eight days of _salle de police_.'
Man and donkey having disappeared into a wood, my next companion was a
small blue butterfly that kept a few yards in front of me, now
stopping to look at a flower, now fluttering on again. Some insects,
as well as certain birds, appear to derive much entertainment from
watching the movements of that fantastic animal--man.
Arcadian leafiness: rocky desolation befitting the mouth of hell.
Grass and flowers on which souls might tread in the paradise of the
Florentine poet. Stony forms, monstrous, enigmatic, reared like
symbolic tokens of defeated gods, or of the worn-out evil passions
that troubled old creation before the coming of man, and the fresh
order of spiritual and carnal bewilderment. Why should I go on and
seek further amazement, while from the lowest to the highest I can
read not one of the mystic figures of the solitude around me? What is
my relation to them, and theirs to me? Why should that beetle in the
grass, upon whose back all the colours of the prism change and glow
like supernatural fire, trouble me with the cause and motive of its
beauty? Why should yonder rock, standing like a spar of some ship
wrecked in a cataclysm of the awful past, draw me to it as though it
were the image of a grand, yet unattainable and blighted, longing of
the human soul?
The gorge became so narrow and the rocks so high that there was a
twilight under the trees, which still dripped with the rain-drops of
last night's storm. Hesperis, columbine, and geranium contrasted their
floral colours with the deep green of the young grass. Some spots of
dark purple were on the ground where the light was most dim. They were
the petals and calyxes of that strange flower, lathraea, of the
broom-rape family. Each bloom seemed to be carried in the cup of
another flower. The plant had no leaves, for it was a thief that drew
its nutriment from the root of an honest little tree that had
struggled upward in the shade of strong and greedy rivals, and had
raised its head at length into the sunshine in spite of them.
After some difficulty in working round and over rocks that barred, the
passage, I came to a spot where it was impossible to follow the gorge
any farther. The walls narrowed to an opening a few yards wide, where
the stream fell in a cascade of some thirty feet. I took my mid-day
meal like a forester in the midst of this beautiful desolation, and
then, having found a spot where I could escape from the gorge of the
Alzou, I climbed the steep towards the north.
Here there was a blinding glare of sunshine reflected by the naked
stones. Goats looked down at me from the upper rocks near the line of
the blue sky. When I reached the boy who tended them, I asked him the
way to the road that I wished to strike upon the plateau. After
staring at me for some time, he screwed up his mouth, and said: '_Je
comprenais pas français, you.' You_ did not apply to me, but to
himself, for it means _I_ in the Southern dialect.
Here was a boy unable to speak French, although all children in France
are now supposed to be educated in the official language of the
republic. Such cases are uncommon. In the Haut-Quercy, where _patois_
is the language of everybody, even in the towns, one soon learns the
advantage of asking the young for the information that one may need.
I found the road I wanted, and also the spot marked on the map as the
Saut de la Pucelle. It is one of those numerous _gouffres_ to be found
in the Quercy, especially in the district of the Dordogne.
Here a stream plunges beneath the surface of the earth to join the
subterranean Ouysse, or the Dordogne. A ravine, sinking rapidly,
becomes a deep, dark, and gloomy gully, at the end of which is a wall
of rock. The stream pours down a tunnel-like passage, at the base of
the rock, with a melancholy wail. Where the sides are not too steep
they are covered with trees and shrubs.
As I stood amidst the poisonous dog-mercury, under the hanging ivy and
the hart's-tongue ferns, watching the stream glitter on the edge of
everlasting darkness, and listening to its death-dirge, I pictured
awful shadows issuing from the infernal passage and seizing the
terror-stricken ghost of the guilty horseman, of whom I had heard from
a local legend.
This legend, as it is commonly told, is briefly as follows: Centuries
ago a virtuous young woman was persecuted by the lord of a
neighbouring castle, who was not at all virtuous. One day, when she
was mounted upon a mule, he gave chase to her on horseback. He was
rapidly gaining upon her, and she, in agony of soul, had given herself
up for lost, when, by one of those miracles which were frequent in
those days, especially in the country of Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour,
the mule, by giving a vigorous stamp with one of his hind-legs, kicked
a yawning gulf in the earth, which he, however, lightly passed over
with his burden, while the wicked pursuer, unable to check his steed
in time, perished in the abyss.
Another legend of the Maiden's Leap is more romantic, but less
supernatural. It is a story of the English occupation of Guyenne, and
the revolt of the Quercynois in 1368. Before the main body of the
British force that subdued Roc-Amadour as related by Froissart arrived
in the Haut-Quercy, the castle of Prangères, near Gramat, was entered
by a troop of armed men in the English service under Jéhan Péhautier,
one of those brigand captains of whom the mediaeval history and
legends of Guyenne speak only too eloquently. An orphan, Bertheline de
Castelnau, _châtelaine_ of Prangères in her own right, was in the
fortress when it was thus taken by surprise. Captivated by her beauty,
Jéhan Péhautier essayed to make Bertheline his prisoner; but she made
her escape from the castle by night, and endeavoured to reach the
sanctuary of Roc-Amadour on foot. Her flight was discovered, and
Péhautier and a party of horsemen started in pursuit. She would have
been quickly captured had she not met a mounted knight, who was no
other than her lover, Bertrand de Terride. She sprang upon his horse,
and away they both went through the oak forest which then covered the
greater part of the _causse_; but the gleam of the knight's armour in
the moonlight kept the pursuers constantly upon his track. Slowly but
surely they gained upon the fugitives. Suddenly Bertheline, who knew
the country, perceived that Bertrand was spurring his horse directly
towards the precipice now called the Saut de la Pucelle. It was too
late, however, to avoid the gulf; she had only time to murmur a brief
prayer before the horse bounded over the edge of the rock. To the
great wonder and joy of the lovers, the animal cleared the ravine, and
alighted safely on the other side. But a very different fate awaited
the pursuers. On they came, crashing through the wood, shouting
exultantly, for they believed that the prey was now almost in their
grasp, when suddenly the air was rent with cries of horror, mingled
with the sound of crashing armour, and bodies falling upon the rocks
and upon the bed of the stream. An awful silence followed. The dead
men and horses were lying in the dark water. As Péhautier felt the
solid earth leave him, he gave out his favourite oath, 'Mort de sang!'
in a frightful shriek, and the words long afterwards rang in the ears
of Bertheline and Bertrand.
As I returned to this spot some months later in order to explore the
cavern, I may as well give an account of the adventure here. I was
accompanied by my neighbour Decros, who gave his donkey on this
occasion a half-holiday. Decros, although a native of the locality,
could not tell me how far the cavern extended, for he had never been
tempted to explore its depths himself, nor had he heard of anybody who
knew more than himself about it. A story, however, was told of a
shepherd-boy who long ago went down the opening, and was never seen
again.
'Perhaps,' said I, 'we shall find his skeleton.' This observation
brought a peculiar expression to my companion's face, which meant that
he had no ambition whatever to share the surprise of such a discovery.
Although he had done his duty bravely in the war of 1870, he was by no
means free from the awe with which these _gouffres_ inspired the
country-people, and his soldiering had still left him a Cadurcian
Celt, with much of the superstition that he had drawn in with his
native air. One morning he found that his donkey had nearly strangled
himself over-night with the halter, and Decros could not shake off the
impression that this accident was an omen intended to convey some
message from the other world. He was ready to go with me into any
cavern; but I am sure he would have much preferred scaling dangerous
rocks in the broad sunlight, for there he would have felt at home.
There was not too much water to offer any danger, so we stooped down
and entered the low vault after lighting candles. The roof soon rose,
and we were in a spacious cavern, the sides of which had evidently
been washed and worn away into hollows by the sea that rolled here
long before the mysterious race raised its dolmens and tumuli upon the
surrounding knolls. The passage was wide enough for us to walk on the
margin of the stream, or where the water was very shallow; but had
much rain fallen, the expedition would have been perilous, for the
descending torrent would then have been strong enough to carry a man
off his legs.
Stalactites hung from the rocks overhead, and as we proceeded they
became more numerous, more fantastic, and more beautiful. They were
just as the dropping water had slowly fashioned them in the darkness
of ages, where day and night were the same, where nothing changed but
themselves, save the voice of the stream, which grew louder or softer
according to the play of winds and sunshine and clouds upon the upper
world. Some tapered to a fine point, others were like pendant bunches
of grapes; all were of the whiteness of loaf-sugar. No tourists
stricken with that deplorable mania for taking home souvenirs of
everything, and ready to spoil any beauty to gratify their vanity or
their acquisitiveness, had cast stones into the midst of the fairy
handicraft of the wizard water for the sake of a fragment; nor had the
village boys amused themselves here at the expense of the stalactites,
for happily they had been well trained in the horror of the
supernatural. The cavern ran for a certain distance south-west; then
the gallery turned at a sharp angle north-north-west, and continued in
this direction. We followed the stream some three or four hundred
yards, and then it entered a deep pool or lake under low rocks. We
tried a side-passage to see if it led round this obstacle, but it soon
came to an end. As I stood on the brink of the deep, black, silent
pool, I had a great longing to know what lay beyond; but I had to
content myself with imagining the unrevealed wonders of the cavern. It
would be just possible, by crouching down in a little boat, to pass
under the rock, which is probably no insuperable obstacle. The roof is
just as likely to form a high vault on one side of it as on the other.
The water is the serious obstacle; but it is safe to say, from the
character of the formation, that the deep pool does not extend very
far. A peculiarity of these underground streams of the _causses_ is
that they generally form a chain of pools.
If a shepherd-boy really lost his life in this cavern, he must have
done so by trying to pass the pool, unless he was washed into it by a
sudden rush of water after a heavy storm. It must be confessed that
the spot is calculated to fill one with superstitious dread. The calm
of the deep water into which the stream glides makes it quite easy to
imagine, with the help of the surroundings, that there is an evil
spirit lurking in it--perhaps that of the wicked Péhautier whom the
demons dragged down here. I had another grim thought: Supposing this
water, in obedience to some pressure elsewhere, should rise suddenly
and flood the lower part of the cavern! There is no knowing what
tricks water may play in this fantastic region, where the tendency of
rivers is to flow underground, and where one gallery may be connected
with a ramification of water-courses extending over many miles of
country, and with reservoirs which empty themselves periodically by
means of natural syphons. There is a world full of marvels under the
_causses_ of the Lot, the Aveyron, and the Lozère; but although much
more will be known about it, a vast deal will remain for ever hidden
from man.
I will now return to my wayfaring across the Causse de Gramat in the
early summer.
I had passed through the village of Alvignac--a little watering-place
that draws all the profit it can from a ferruginous spring which rises
at Miers hard by, but otherwise uninteresting, and had left on my
right the village of Thégra, where the troubadour Hugues de St. Cyr
was born, when suddenly the landscape struck me with the sentiment of
England. For some hours I had been walking chiefly over the stony
_causse_, searching for a so-called castle that was not worth the
trouble of finding. I had seen spurge and juniper, and ribs of rock
rising everywhere above the short turf, until I grew weary of the
sameness. Now, the sun, whose ardour was already melting into the
tenderness of evening, shone upon a broad valley, where the grass
stood high in rich meadows separated from other meadows and green
cornfields by hedges, from the midst of which rose many a tall tree.
The blackbird's low, flute-like note sounded above the shrilling of the
grasshoppers.
The little village of Padirac was entered at sundown. The small inn
where I chose my quarters for the night had a garden at the back,
where vines in new leaf were trained, over a trellis from end to end.
There were also broad beans in flower, peas on sticks, currant-bushes,
and pear-trees. It was a quiet, green spot, and as I strolled about it
in the twilight, vague recollections of other gardens chased one
another, but it would have been hard to say whether they were pleasant
or sad. My dinner or supper was of sorrel soup and part of a goose
that was killed the previous autumn, and, after being slightly salted,
was preserved in grease.
Lean tortoiseshell cats, with staring eyes and tails like strings,
kept near at hand, and seemed ready to commit any crime for the
smallest particle of goose. String-tailed, goggle-eyed, meagre cats
that seize your dinner if you do not keep watch over it, and when
caressed promptly respond by scratching and swearing, appear to be
held in high favour throughout this district. They are expected to
live upon rats, and it is this that makes them so disagreeable, for
although they kill rats for the pleasure of the chase, they do not
like the flavour of them. On this subject there is a standing quarrel
between them and society, which insists upon their eating the animals
that they kill. In order that the cats shall have every facility for
the chase, holes are often cut in the bottom of house-doors, so that
at night they may go in and come out as the quarry moves them. Should
any food have been left about, what with the rats and the cats, not a
trace of it will be seen in the morning. This I know from experience.
Being within a mile or so of the Puit de Padirac--that gloomy hole in
the earth which was supposed to be one of the devil's short-cuts
between this world and his own, until M. Martel proved almost
conclusively that it was not the way to the infernal city, but to a
subterranean river, and a chain of lakes that could be followed for
two miles--I set out the next morning to find it. I might have spent
hours in vain casting about, but for the help of a peasant, who
offered, quite disinterestedly, to be my guide. He was an old man,
with a very Irish face, and eyes that laughed at life. But for his
language he would have seemed a perfectly natural growth of Cork or
Kerry.
Here may be the place to remark that the stock of the ancient Cadurci
appears to have been much less impaired here in an ethnological sense
by the mingling of races than in the country round Cahors. The
peasants, generally, have nothing distinctively Southern in their
appearance, although they speak a dialect which is in the main a Latin
one, the Celtic words that have been retained being in a very small
proportion. Gray or blue eyes are almost as frequent among them as
they are with the English, and many of the village children have hair
the colour of ripening maize.
We left the fertile valley and rose upon the stone-scattered _causse_
where hellebore, spurges, and juniper were the only plants not cropped
close to the earth by the flocks of sheep which thrive upon these
wastes. All the sheep are belled, but the bells they wear are like big
iron pots hanging upon their breasts. Each pot has a bone that swings
inside of it and serves as a hammer. The chief use of these bells is
to prevent the animal from leaving its best wool, that of the breast,
upon the thorns of bushes.
We have now reached the brink of the pit, which is not bottomless, but
looks so until the eye faintly distinguishes something solid at a
depth that has been measured at 175 feet. The opening is almost
circular, with a diameter at the orifice of 116 feet. This prodigious
well, sunk in successive layers of secondary rock, looks as if it had
been regularly quarried; but men could never have had the motive for
giving themselves so much trouble. Did the rock fall in here? No
explanation is satisfactory. How it fills one with awe to look into
the depth while lying upon a slab of stone that stretches some
distance beyond the side of the pit! Bushes with twisted and fantastic
arms, growing, they or their ancestors, from time immemorial in the
clefts of the rock, reach towards the light, and the elfish
hart's-tongue fern, itself half in darkness, points down with frond
that never moves in that eternal stillness which all the winds of
heaven pass over, to a thicker darkness whence comes the everlasting
wail and groan of hidden water.
This horrid gulf being in the open plain, with not even a foot of
rough wall round it as a protection for the unwary, I asked the old
man if people had never fallen into it.
'Yes,' he answered, 'but only those who have been pushed by evil
spirits.'
He meant that only self-murderers had fallen into the Puit de Padirac.
'Pushed by evil spirits.' Perhaps this is the best of all explanations
of the suicidal impulse. Strong thoughts are sometimes hidden under
the simplicity of rustic expression. He told me the story of a man
who, having gone by night to throw himself into the Puit de Padirac,
came in contact with a tough old bush during his descent which held
him up. By this time the would-be suicide disliked the feeling of
falling so much that, so far from trying to free himself from the bush
and begin again, he held on to it with all his might and shrieked for
help. But as people who are not pushed by evil spirits give the Puit
de Padirac a wide berth after sundown, the wretched man's cries were
lost in the darkness. The next morning the shepherd children, as they
led their flocks over the plain, heard a strange noise coming from the
pit, but their horror was stronger than their curiosity, and they
showed their sheep how to run. They went home and told their fathers
what they had heard, and at length some persons were bold enough to
look down the hole, from which the dismal sound the children had
noticed continued to rise. Thus the cause of the mysterious noise was
discovered, and the man was hauled up with a rope. He never allowed
the evil spirits to push him into the Puit de Padirac again.