all that is left of the Benedictine abbey, excepting some massive
buttresses, ruinous arches, and a round tower grafted upon the
rock--remnants of the ancient monastery which must have been half a
fortress. The burg itself was fortified, and one of the gateways of
the old wall is still standing. The existing church dates from the
eleventh century, but various details point to the conclusion that it
was built on the site of a more ancient structure. For example, in the
entrance is a holy-water stoup, the basin having been scooped out of
the capital of a column which is supposed to have been one of the
supports of a very primitive altar. The figure of an emperor is carved
on one of the faces, and on another that of a pagan divinity. The
architecture of the church is simple and majestic, the only jarring
note being the cupola raised about the time of the Renaissance over
the intersection of the nave and transept. The barrel-vaulted nave,
crossed by plain broad fillets, is in keeping with the early
Romanesque severity of the façade. The ornament is nearly confined to
the tympan over the portal, the capitals of columns, and to the choir
with its seven absidal chapels. The choir itself is cross-vaulted, and
the sanctuary, except at its junction with the nave, is enclosed by an
arcade of narrow stilted arches, the only ornament of the capitals
being acanthus leaves; but those against the wall are elaborately
storied with little figures. A moulding of small billets is carried
round the apse. The great height of the nave vaulting, obtained by a
triforium and clerestory, is very remarkable in a Romanesque church of
such early construction. In accordance with the style of the period,
the capitals of the nave show a complete absence of uniformity, some
being carved with figures, and others with leaves or intricate line
ornament. To obtain an adequate impression of all the fantastic
imagination expressed in these capitals, and the craftsmanship brought
to bear upon the carving, it is necessary to climb to the triforium
galleries. The aisle windows are narrow and placed high in the wall.
The interest of the exterior is centred upon the bas-relief
representing the Last Judgment, which fills the entire tympan of the
arch covering the two main doorways. The composition, which contains
over a hundred figures, is singularly animated, and although the forms
are uncouthly proportioned, and the treatment of the subject in some
of the details touches what to the modern mind seems grotesque, it is
an exceedingly vivid and faithful reflection of the religious ideas of
the age that produced it. What now appears grotesque was then sublime
and awful. We smile at the barbaric imagination that placed here, at
the door of hell, the head of a vast and hideous monster of the
crocodile family, into whose gaping jaws the damned are being thrust
by a pantomime devil; but eight centuries ago Christian people had too
lively a faith in the materialistic horrors of the infernal kingdom to
perceive anything extravagant in this idea of stuffing a scaly monster
with condemned sinners. Eight centuries ago!--the peasant of the
Aveyron and of Finistère still look upon these Dantesque sculptures
with genuine awe. Those who blame the monks for giving the devil a
forked tail and a pair of horns, and otherwise exhausting their
invention in the endeavour to materialize the terrors of hell, are
strangely unphilosophic. The mass of humanity with whom the monks had
to deal had the minds of children in regard to metaphysical ideas;
only by the pictorial method could they be sufficiently impressed with
the joys or horrors of the future life. Bas-reliefs such as this must
have had a great influence on the conduct of many generations; nor has
their influence yet ceased, although, as popular education spreads,
the interest taken in these quaint sculptures by those for whom they
were especially intended, so far from being stimulated, is lessened.
Inasmuch as the mind needs deep ploughing for the new culture, and the
majority can get no more than a superficial raking, the peasant of
to-day is often a poorer man intellectually than his father
was--poorer by the loss of faith and the confusion of ideas.
The sculptor of this Last Judgment--a Benedictine monk, doubtless,
like the architect of the church who has left this personal record,
'Bernardus me fecit,' upon a stone in a dim corner--died centuries
ago, and although his bones or their dust may be near, his name will
never be known. But how his mind lives in the figures that took life
under his hand! With what inspired longing of the soul he must have
conceived and felt the majesty of Christ sitting in judgment at the
end of time to have expressed so much that is sublime in the holy face
and figure with his poor knowledge of art! The right hand is raised to
bless the just, and the left repels the unforgiven. Grouped around the
central figure are saints and angels. Peter, holding his keys, is
followed by a crowd of the elect, headed by an old man on crutches,
and a crowned sovereign--said to be Charlemagne--carries a reliquary.
In the lower half of the tympan Satan is enthroned, his feet resting
upon a writhing and hideously grimacing figure, supposed to be that of
Judas. Immediately above, an angel and a fiend are weighing souls in a
pair of scales, and the demon is trying to cheat. In this lower
division the infernal punishments inflicted upon sinners of different
categories are set forth. The sin of Francesca and Paolo is treated
less poetically than by Dante, for here two guilty lovers are seen
hanging to the same rope. A glutton is being stuffed with flaming
viands, sent up from the devil's kitchen. All manner of torture is
being inflicted by jubilant demons upon the souls that have fallen
into their clutches. One has caught in the net that he has just thrown
a mitred abbot and two other monks. As the dead rise from their tombs
the justiciary angels bar the way of the wicked who strive to approach
the Judge. A seraphim holds the closed book of life, upon which these
words are carved: 'Hic signatur liber vitae.' On various parts of the
portal are numerous inscriptions, some of which, like the following,
are in leonine verses:
'Casti pacifici mites pietatis amici
Sic stant gaudentes securi nil metuentes.'
The archaeological interest of Conques is not confined to its church.
Here, hidden from the world in this obscure little gorge, far from any
railway-station, is one of the most remarkable collections of ancient
reliquaries in France. The chief treasure is the very ancient gold
statue of St. Foy (Sancta Fides) virgin and martyr, the patron saint
of Conques. It is a seated figure nearly three feet in height, and its
appearance is thoroughly Byzantine; indeed, one may go farther, and
say that it looks much more pagan than Christian. There is nothing in
the treatment that indicates a Christian motive; while the antique
engraved gems with which it is studded, illustrating, as some of them
do, workings of the Greek and Roman mind very far removed from the
Christian idea of what is becoming in morals, make this astonishing
statue an archaeological puzzle. The explanation that these gems were
placed upon it to symbolize the victory of Christian purity over the
impurity of the ancient religions of Greece and Rome is more ingenious
than conclusive. This statue of gold (_repoussé_), with regal crown
enriched with precious stones and enamels on which may be
distinguished Jupiter, Mars, Apollo and Diana, among the more
respectable of the divinities; if it was originally intended to
represent the virgin Fides, martyred at Agen, was certainly one of the
most fantastic achievements of ecclesiastical art. But whether this
was its origin or not, the style of its workmanship is considered by
competent judges to be sufficient proof that it is at least nine
hundred years old.
In favour of the opinion that the statue was made at Conques, there is
the fact that the cult of St. Foy at this place dates from the early
Middle Ages. The ancient seal of the abbey bears the motto:
'Duc nos quo resides,
Inclyta Virgo Fides.'
Historians of the abbey state that the relics of the saint were
brought from Agen to Conques about the year 874, and that Etienne,
Bishop of Clermont, caused a basilica to be raised here in her honour
between the years 942 and 984. It was under the direction of Ololric,
Abbot of Conques, that the existing church was built between the years
1030 and 1062. Throughout the Middle Ages the relics drew large
numbers of pilgrims to the spot. In the dialect of the country they
were called _Roumious_, because the pilgrimage to Conques was one of
those which enjoyed the privilege of conferring under certain
conditions the same advantages as were to be gained by the great
pilgrimage to Rome. The pilgrims kept the 'holy vigil'--that is to
say, they passed an entire night in prayer before the relics with a
lighted taper either fixed at their side or carried in the hand. The
pilgrimage and the ancient association of St. Foy were revived in
1874.
The darkness of night drove me to take shelter in an inn which, like
everything else here, is dedicated to St. Foy. The pilgrims' money had
not made it pretentious, nor the people who kept it dishonest
--changes which 'filthy lucre' is very apt to bring about in the
holiest places. But the pilgrims who come to Conques are, for the most
part, peasants who look well before they leap, and who so contrive
matters as never to spend more upon anything than they have set aside
for it.
Having completed the next morning my impressions of Conques, noting
among other things the curious and richly decorated _enfeux_ in the
exterior walls of the church, I returned to the bottom of the ravine,
and having crossed the old Gothic bridge over the Dourdou, began the
ascent of the rocky chestnut forest on the other side of the valley.
Small white crosses planted at intervals amidst the broom and heather
of the open wood marked the way to St. Foy's Chapel for the guidance
of pilgrims. According to the legend, it was near this spot that, the
relics of the saint having been set down by those who had carried them
from Agen, a fountain of the purest water burst forth from the earth,
and has continued to flow ever since. I found the chapel--a modern
Gothic one, with a statue of St. Foy in Roman dress in the niche over
the door--under a high rugged rock of schist. There was no one but
myself to trouble the solitude of this quiet nook on the wild
hillside, all broken up into little gullies and ravines, where the
aged chestnuts sheltered the tender moss and fern from the eager
sunbeam, and kept the dew upon the bracken until the noonday hours. An
exquisitely delicate campanula with minute flowers bloomed with
hemp-agrimony and wood-sage along the sides of the rills that
-scarcely murmured as they slid down the clefts of the impervious
rock.
As I went higher, the chestnuts became more scattered, and at length
the rough land was covered only by the tufted heather and broom. Here,
instead of the light whispering of leaves, was the drowsy song of
multitudinous bees. The breeze blew freshly on the plateau, and grew
stronger as the sun rose. Could it be a cemetery, that grouping of
stones that I saw upon the moorland? No; it was a cottage-garden,
surrounded by disconnected slabs of mica-schist, standing like little
menhirs. peasant family lived in the wretched dwelling, exposed to the
full force of the howling winds, and striving continually with nature
for their black bread and the vegetables that give flavour to the
watery soup.
A young man with a _béret_ on his head overtook me. He was a Béarnais,
who had not been long in the district, and who earned his living by
certain services that he rendered at widely-scattered farms. He had to
walk a great deal in all winds and weathers; therefore he knew the
country well, and could give me useful information. I was crossing the
hills with the intention of meeting the Lot again in the great coal
basin of the Aveyron, and thus cutting off a wide bend of the river.
All went well for some time after the Béarnais left me; but at length
I became fairly bewildered by the woods and ravines, the hills and
valleys that lay before me in seemingly endless succession. Savage
rockiness, sylvan quietude, open solitudes, bare and windblown, gave
me all the sensations of nature which expand the soul; but the body
grumbled for rest and refreshment long before I had crossed this
singularly wild tract of country almost abandoned by man. I had been
wading through bracken up to my neck, or wandering almost at hazard
through chestnut-woods for an hour or two, when hope was revived by my
meeting a peasant, who told me that I was not far from the village of
Firmi. I left the great woods, and reached a district that was new in
every sense. Entering a little gorge, to me it seemed that nature had
been cursed there ages ago, and still carried the sign of the
malediction in the sooty darkness of the rocks--jagged, tormented,
baleful--that rose on either hand. Nothing grew upon them save a low
wretched turf, and this only in patches. Beyond, the metamorphic rock
gave place to red sandstone, and the ground sloped down into the
little coal basin of Firmi. What a change of scene was there! The air
was thick with smoke, the road was black with coal-dust, most of the
houses were new and grimy, nearly all the faces were smutty. There was
a confused noise of wheels going round, of invisible iron monsters
grinding their teeth, of trollies rattling along upon rails, and of
human voices. Nature had no charm; but of beauty combined with fasting
I had had enough for awhile, so my prejudices melted before the genial
ugliness of this sooty paradise, knowing as I did that prosperity goes
with such griminess, and that where there is money there are inns
offering creature comforts both to man and beast.
Either the angel or the goblin who goes a wayfaring with me led me
this time into a heated little auberge infested by myriads of flies,
which, getting into the steam of the _soupe caix choux_ in their
anxiety to be served first, fell upon their backs in the hot mixture,
and made frantic signals to me with their legs to help them out. There
was no temptation to linger at the table when the purpose for which I
was there had been attained; so I was very soon on the tramp again,
making for the valley of the Lot.
Leaving Décazeville a few miles to the west, I took the direction of
Cransac, being curious to see the 'Smoking Mountains' in that
district. Between the little coal basin of Firmi and the large one at
Cransac and Aubin lay a strip of toilsome hill country. I had left the
round tower of the ruined castle of Firmi below, and was following a
winding path up a steep chestnut wood, when two mounted gendarmes
passed me going down. About five minutes later I heard the sound of
horses' hoofs coming near again. 'One of the gendarmes is returning,'
was my reflection, and, looking round, I saw this was really so. The
man was trotting his horse up the wood. Being sure that he was coming
after me, I walked slower, and gave myself the most indifferent and
loitering air that I could put on. In a few minutes he reined up his
horse at my side. He was a young man, and his expression told me that
he did not much like the duty that his chief had put upon him.
Addressing me, he said:
'Pardon, monsieur, you are a stranger in this country?'
'Yes, I am.'
'Will you please tell me your quality?'
In reply I asked him if he wished to see my papers.
'If it will not vex you,' he said. His manners were quite charming. If
he was a native of the Rouergue, the army had polished him up
wonderfully. After looking at the papers and finding them
satisfactory, he said: 'Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, mais vous
comprenez-----'
'Oh yes, I understand perfectly, and I assure you that my feelings are
not at all hurt!'
And so we parted on very good terms. A woman standing at a cottage
door at a little distance watched the scene with a scared and
wondering look in her face. When I was again alone, and she saw me
coming towards her, she disappeared with much agility into her
fortress and shut the door. She must have thought that, although I had
managed to escape arrest that time, I should certainly come to a bad
end.
After reaching the top of the hill, white smoke rising continually
into the blue air led me to the _Montagnes fumantes_. Coming at length
to the spot so named, 'Surely,' I thought, 'my wayfaring has brought
me at last to the Phlegraean Fields.' All about me were rocks that had
been burnt red, black, or yellow, and on their scorched surface not a
shrub, nor a blade of grass, nor even a tuft of spurge, grew. The
subterranean fires which had burnt these upper rocks had long since
gone out; but a hot and sulphurous vapour still passed over them when
the wind blew it in their direction. Continuing down the hillside, I
heard a crackling as of stones being split by heat, and presently saw
little tongues of flame shooting up from the crevices in the soil
almost at my feet, but scarcely perceptible in the brilliant sunshine.
From these and other vents, however, came intermittent puffs, or
continuous fillets of smoke, and the air was almost overpoweringly hot
and sulphurous. To wander by night among these jets of fire must be
very stimulating to the imagination, for then the hill is lit up by
them; but I thought the spot sufficiently infernal by daylight.
Beds of coal lying underneath this rocky hill, perhaps at a great
depth, have been burning for centuries, and the same phenomenon is
repeated elsewhere in the district. The popular legend is that the
English, when they were compelled to abandon Guyenne, set fire to
these coal-measures with the motive of doing all the mischief they
could before leaving. Such fables are handed down from generation to
generation. All the evil that happened to the region in the dim past
is placed to the account of the English. These burning hills in the
Aveyron have been turned to one good purpose. The hot air that escapes
from crevices where there is neither smoke nor fire is used for
heating little cabins which have been constructed for the treatment of
persons suffering from rheumatic disorders. There they can obtain a
natural vapour-bath that is both cheap and effectual.
At the foot of the cliffs lay Cransac, bristling with tall chimneys
and in a cloud of dark coal-smoke that filled the valley. Here,
instead of the solemn calm of the barren uplands, the murmurous
chanting of rills and shallow rivers, and the mystical voices that
speak from the depths of the forest, I heard the fretful buzz of a
human beehive. Here was human life intensified and yet lowered in tone
by aggregation, by the strain of organized effort that suppresses
initiative and makes the value of a man merely a question of dynamics.
The number of shops, especially of drinking-shops--sordid _cafés_ and
flashy _buvettes,_ where the enterprising poisoners of the coal-miner
stood behind their zinc counters pouring out the corrosive absinthe
and the beetroot brandy--told of the prosperity of Cransac. Evidently
it was a place in which money could be earned by those prepared to
accept the conditions. The women wore better clothes than the wives of
the peasants; but low morality, instead of the sad but always
honourable stamp of ravaging toil, was impressed on many a female
face. Even the children looked as degraded by the social atmosphere as
they were blackened by the smoke and ever-falling soot. Hastening
along the road towards Aubin, I soon found that the two places,
separated according to the map by a considerable distance, had grown
together. The long road powdered with coal-dust was now a street lined
on each side with houses and hovels. Wooden shanties with sooty,
bushes of juniper hanging over the door, and the word 'Buvette'
painted beneath, competed for the miner's money at distances of twenty
or fifty yards. One had a notice such as is rarely seen in France, and
which was significant here: 'Ready money for everything sold over the
counter.' Close by was the sign of a _sage-femme_, who, under the
picture of a woman holding aloft in triumph an unreasonably fat baby,
announced that she also bled and vaccinated. Grimy children and grimy
pigs that were intended to be white or pink sprawled upon the
thresholds or wallowed in the hot dust.
Having left the blissful coal basin, I met the Lot again near the
boundary-line of the Aveyron and entered the department named after
the river. Thence to Capdenac the valley was a curving line of
uninterrupted but ever-changing beauty.
The season was farther advanced when I continued the journey from this
point to Cahors.
A person who had contracted the 'morphia habit' would probably find
the most effectual cure for it by forced residence at Capdenac,
because the town does not boast the luxury of a chemist's shop.
Supposing the patient, however, to be a lady of worldly tastes, she
might die of _ennui_ in twenty-four hours. The Capdenac of which I am
speaking is not the utterly unpicturesque collection of houses that
has been formed about the well-known railway junction on the line to
Toulouse, but old romantic Capdenac, whose dilapidated ramparts,
dating from the early Middle Ages, crown the high rocky hill that
rises abruptly from the valley on the other side of the Lot, which
here separates the department named after it from, the Aveyron. The
situation of this town is one of the most remarkable. It is perched
upon a lofty table of reddish rock of the same calcareous composition
as that which prevails throughout the region of the _causses_. Its
walls are so escarped that the topmost crags in places overhang the
path that winds about their base far below. Only strategical
considerations could ever have induced men to build a town on such a
site. The Gauls set the example, and their _oppidum_ was long supposed
to have been Uxellodunum, but the controversy has been settled in
favour of the Puy d'Issolu.
I chose the hour of eight in the morning for climbing the rock of
Capdenac. The broad winding river was brilliantly blue, like the vault
overhead, and although the vine-clad hills, which shut in the valley,
and the bare rocks, whose outlines were sharply drawn against the sky,
were luminous, the light had the pure and clear sparkle of the
morning. Reaching the hill, I took a zigzag stony path that led
through terraced vineyards. The vintage had commenced, and men, women,
and children were busy picking the purple grapes still wet with dew.
The children only, however, showed any joy in the work, for the
bunches hung at such a distance from each other that a vine was very
quickly stripped. The _vigneron_, with his mind dwelling upon the
bygone fruitful years, when these arid steeps poured forth torrents of
wine as surely as October came round, wore an expression on his face
that was not one of thankfulness to Providence. They are a rather
surly people, moreover, the inhabitants of this district, and I do not
think at any time their hearts could have been very expansive. As I
approached a woman who had a great basket of grapes in front of her,
she hastily threw a bundle of leaves over them, casting a keenly
suspicious glance at me the while. If she meant me to understand that
the times were too bad for grapes to be given away, the movement was
unnecessary. Where now are the generous sentiments and the poetry
traditionally associated with the vintage? Not here, certainly. Men go
out into their vineyards by night armed with guns, and the depredators
whom they fear most are not dogs that have acquired a taste for
grapes. The stony path was bordered by brambles, overclimbed by
clematis, whose glistening awns were mingled with blackberries, which
not even a child troubled to pick. There was much fleabane--a plant
that deserves to be cherished in these parts, if it be really what its
name indicates, but it would have to be extensively cultivated to be a
match for the fleas. After the vineyards came the dry rock, that held,
however, sufficient moisture for the wild fig-tree, wherever it could
find a deep, crevice.
Passing underneath the perpendicular wall of rock, and the vine-clad
ramparts above it, built on the very edge of the precipice, the
winding path led me gradually up to the town. A little in front of an
arched gateway was a ruined barbican, the inner surface of the walls
being green with ferns and moss. Four loopholes were still intact. Had
it been night I might have seen ghostly men with crossbows issuing
from the gateway, but it being broad daylight, I was met by a troop of
young pigs followed by a little hump-backed woman who addressed her
youthful swine in the language of the troubadours.