Priests and religious devotees have a tendency in the matter of payments
to keep strictly to the letter of the law. Is this from poverty, or from
the selfishness to which their isolation condemns them, thus encouraging
the natural inclination of all men to avarice; or is it from a
conscientious parsimony which saves all it can for deeds of charity?
Each nature will give a different answer to this question. The
difficulty of putting the hand into the pocket, sometimes concealed by
a gracious kindliness, oftener unreservedly exhibited, is more
particularly noticeable in travelling. Gabriel de Rastignac, the
prettiest youth who had served before the altar for many a long day,
gave only a thirty-sous _pour-boire_ to the postilion. Consequently he
travelled slowly. Postilions drive bishops and other clergy with the
utmost care when they merely double the legal wage, and they run no risk
of damaging the episcopal carriage for any such sum, fearing, they
might say, to get themselves into trouble. The Abbe Gabriel, who was
travelling alone for the first time, said, at each relay, in his dulcet
voice:--
“Pray go faster, postilion.”
“We ply the whip,” replied an old postilion, “according to how the
traveller plies his finger and thumb.”
The young abbe flung himself back into a corner of the carriage unable
to comprehend that answer. To occupy the time he began to study the
country through which he was passing, making several mental excursions
on foot among the hills through which the road winds between Bordeaux
and Lyon.
About fifteen miles from Limoges the landscape, losing the graceful flow
of the Vienne through the undulating meadows of the Limousin, which
in certain places remind one of Switzerland, especially about
Saint-Leonard, takes on a harsh and melancholy aspect. Here we come upon
vast tracts of uncultivated land, sandy plains without herbage, hemmed
in on the horizon by the summits of the Correze. These mountains have
neither the abrupt rise of the Alpine ranges nor their splendid ridges;
neither the warm gorges and desolate peaks of the Appenines, nor the
picturesque grandeur of the Pyrenees. Their undulating slopes, due
to the action of water, prove the subsidence of some great natural
catastrophe in which the floods retired slowly. This characteristic,
common to most of the earth convulsions in France, has perhaps
contributed, together with the climate, to the epitaph of _douce_
bestowed by all Europe on our sunny France.
Though this abrupt transition from the smiling landscapes of the
Limousin to the sterner aspects of La Marche and Auvergne may offer to
the thinker and the poet, as he passes them on his way, an image of the
Infinite, that terror of certain minds; though it incites to revelry
the woman of the world, bored as she travels luxuriously in her
carriage,--to the inhabitants of this region Nature is cruel, savage,
and without resources. The soil of these great gray plains is thankless.
The vicinity of a capital town could alone reproduce the miracle worked
in Brie during the last two centuries. Here, however, not only is a
town lacking, but also the great residences which sometimes give life
to these hopeless deserts, where civilization languishes, where the
agriculturist sees only barrenness, and the traveller finds not a single
inn, nor that which, perchance, he is there to seek,--the picturesque.
Great minds, however, do not dislike these barren wastes, necessary
shadows in Nature’s vast picture. Quite recently Fenimore Cooper has
magnificently developed with his melancholy genius the poesy of such
solitudes, in his “Prairie.” These regions, unknown to botanists,
covered by mineral refuse, round pebbles, and a sterile soil, cast
defiance to civilization. France should adopt the only solution to
these difficulties, as the British have done in Scotland, where patient,
heroic agriculture has changed the arid wastes into fertile farms.
Left in their savage and primitive state these uncultivated social
and natural wastes give birth to discouragement, laziness, weakness
resulting from poor food, and crime when needs become importunate.
These few words present the past history of Montegnac. What could be
done in that great tract of barren land, neglected by the government,
abandoned by the nobility, useless to industry,--what but war against
society which disregarded its duty? Consequently, the inhabitants of
Montegnac lived to a recent period, as the Highlands of Scotland lived
in former times, by murder and rapine. From the mere aspect of this
region a thinking man would understand how, twenty years earlier, the
inhabitants were at war with society. The great upland plain, flanked
on one side by the valley of the Vienne, on the other by the charming
valleys of La Marche, then by Auvergne, and bounded by the mountains of
the Correze, is like (agriculture apart) the plateau of La Beauce, which
separates the basin of the Loire from that of the Seine, also like those
of Touraine and Berry, and many other of the great upland plains which
are cut like facets on the surface of France and are numerous enough
to claim the attention of the wisest administrators. It is amazing
that while complaint is made of the influx of population to the social
centres, the government does not employ the natural remedy of redeeming
a region where, as statistics show, there are many million acres of
waste land, certain parts of which, especially in Berry, have a soil
from seven to eight feet deep.
Many of these plains which might be covered by villages and made
splendidly productive belong to obstinate communes, the authorities of
which refuse to sell to those who would develop them, merely to keep
the right to pasture cows upon them! On all these useless, unproductive
lands is written the word “Incapacity.” All soils have some special
fertility of their own. Arms and wills are ready; the thing lacking is
a sense of duty combined with talent on the part of the government. In
France, up to the present time, these upland plains have been sacrificed
to the valleys; the government has chosen to give all its help to those
regions of country which can take care of themselves.
Most of these luckless uplands are without water, the first essential
for production. The mists which ought to fertilize the gray, dead soil
by discharging oxygen upon it, sweep across it rapidly, driven by the
wind, for want of trees which might arrest them and so obtain their
nourishment. Merely to plant trees in such a region would be carrying a
gospel to it. Separated from the nearest town or city by a distance as
insurmountable to poor folk as though a desert lay between them, with
no means of reaching a market for their products (if they produced
anything), close to an unexplored forest which supplied them with wood
and the uncertain livelihood of poaching, the inhabitants often suffered
from hunger during the winters. The soil not being suitable for wheat,
and the unfortunate peasantry having neither cattle of any kind nor
farming implements, they lived for the most part on chestnuts.
Any one who has studied zoological productions in a museum, or become
personally aware of the indescribable depression caused by the brown
tones of all European products, will understand how the constant sight
of these gray, arid plains must have affected the moral nature of the
inhabitants, through the desolate sense of utter barrenness which they
present to the eye. There, in those dismal regions, is neither coolness
nor brightness, nor shade nor contrast,--none of all those ideas and
spectacles of Nature which awaken and rejoice the heart; even a stunted
apple-tree would be hailed as a friend.
A country road, recently made, runs through the centre of this great
plain, and meets the high-road. Upon it, at a distance of some fifteen
miles from the high-road, stands Montegnac, at the foot of a hill,
as its name designates, the chief town of a canton or district in
the Haute-Vienne. The hill is part of Montegnac, which thus unites
a mountainous scenery with that of the plains. This district is a
miniature Scotland, with its lowlands and highlands. Behind the hill, at
the foot of which lies the village, rises, at a distance of about three
miles, the first peak of the Correze mountains. The space between
is covered by the great forest of Montegnac, which clothes the hill,
extends over the valley, and along the slopes of the mountain (though
these are bare in some places), continuing as far as the highway to
Aubusson, where it diminishes to a point near a steep embankment on
that road. This embankment commands a ravine through which the post-road
between Bordeaux and Lyon passes. Travellers, either afoot or in
carriages, were often stopped in the depths of this dangerous gorge
by highwaymen, whose deeds of violence went unpunished, for the site
favored them; they could instantly disappear, by ways known to them
alone, into the inaccessible parts of the forest.
Such a region was naturally out of reach of law. No one now travelled
through it. Without circulation, neither commerce, industry, exchange of
ideas, nor any of the means to wealth, can exist; the material triumphs
of civilization are always the result of the application of primitive
ideas. Thought is invariably the point of departure and the goal of all
social existence. The history of Montegnac is a proof of that axiom
of social science. When at last the administration was able to concern
itself with the needs and the material prosperity of this region of
country, it cut down this strip of forest, and stationed a detachment of
gendarmerie near the ravine, which escorted the mail-coaches between the
two relays; but, to the shame of the gendarmerie be it said, it was the
gospel, and not the sword, the rector Monsieur Bonnet, and not Corporal
Chervin, who won a civil victory by changing the morals of a population.
This priest, filled with Christian tenderness for the poor, hapless
region, attempted to regenerate it, and succeeded in the attempt.
After travelling for about an hour over these plains, alternately stony
and dusty, where the partridges flocked in tranquil coveys, their wings
whirring with a dull, heavy sound as the carriage came toward them,
the Abbe Gabriel, like all other travellers on the same road, saw with
satisfaction the roofs of Montegnac in the distance. At the entrance of
the village was one of those curious post-relays which are seen only
in the remote parts of France. Its sign was an oak board on which
some pretentious postilion had carved the words, _Pauste o chevos_,
blackening the letters with ink, and then nailing the board by its
four corners above the door of a wretched stable in which there were no
horses. The door, which was nearly always open, had a plank laid on the
soil for its threshold, to protect the stable floor, which was lower
than the road, from inundation when it rained. The discouraged traveller
could see within worn-out, mildewed, and mended harnesses, certain to
break at a plunge of the horses. The horses themselves were hard at
work in the fields, or anywhere but in the stable. If by any chance they
happen to be in their stalls, they are eating; if they have finished
eating, the postilion has gone to see his aunt or his cousin, or is
getting in the hay, or else he is asleep; no one can say where he is;
the traveller has to wait till he is found, and he never comes till he
has finished what he is about. When he does come he loses an immense
amount of time looking for his jacket and his whip, or putting the
collars on his horses. Near by, at the door of the post-house, a worthy
woman is fuming even more than the traveller, in order to prevent the
latter from complaining loudly. This is sure to be the wife of the
post-master, whose husband is away in the fields.
The bishop’s secretary left his carriage before a post-house of this
kind, the walls of which resembled a geographical map, while the
thatched roof, blooming like a flower-garden, seemed to be giving way
beneath the weight of stone-crop. After begging the post-mistress to
have everything in readiness for his departure in an hour’s time, the
abbe asked the way to the parsonage. The good woman showed him a lane
which led to the church, telling him the rectory was close beside it.
While the young abbe followed this lane, which was full of stones
and closed on either side by hedges, the post-mistress questioned the
postilion. Since starting from Limoges each postilion had informed his
successor of the conjectures of the Limoges postilion as to the mission
of the bishop’s messenger. While the inhabitants of the town were
getting out of bed and talking of the coming execution, a rumor spread
among the country people that the bishop had obtained the pardon of
the innocent man; and much was said about the mistakes to which human
justice was liable. If Jean-Francois was executed later, it was certain
that he was regarded in the country regions as a martyr.
After taking a few steps along the lane, reddened by the autumn leaves,
and black with mulberries and damsons, the Abbe Gabriel turned round
with the instinctive impulse which leads us all to make acquaintance
with a region which we see for the first time,--a sort of instinctive
physical curiosity shared by dogs and horses.
The position of Montegnac was explained to him as his eyes rested on
various little streams flowing down the hillsides and on a little river,
along the bank of which runs the country road which connects the chief
town of the arrondissement with the prefecture. Like all the villages
of this upland plain, Montegnac is built of earth baked in the sun and
moulded into square blocks. After a fire a house looks as if it had been
built of brick. The roofs are of thatch. Poverty is everywhere visible.
Before the village lay several fields of potatoes, radishes, and rye,
redeemed from the barren plain. On the slope of the hill were irrigated
meadows where the inhabitants raised horses, the famous Limousin breed,
which is said to be a legacy of the Arabs when they descended by the
Pyrenees into France and were cut to pieces by the battle-axes of the
Franks under Charles Martel. The heights are barren. A hot, baked,
reddish soil shows a region where chestnuts flourish. The springs,
carefully applied to irrigation, water the meadows only, nourishing
the sweet, crisp grass, so fine and choice, which produces this race of
delicate and high-strung horses,--not over-strong to bear fatigue,
but showy, excellent for the country of their birth, though subject to
changes if transplanted. A few mulberry trees lately imported showed an
intention of cultivating silk-worms.
Like most of the villages in this world Montegnac had but one street,
through which the high road passed. Nevertheless there was an upper and
a lower Montegnac, reached by lanes going up or going down from the main
street. A line of houses standing along the brow of the hill presented
the cheerful sight of terraced gardens, which were entered by flights
of steps from the main street. Some had their steps of earth, others
of pebbles; here and there old women were sitting on them, knitting or
watching children, and keeping up a conversation from the upper to the
lower town across the usually peaceful street of the little village;
thus rumors spread easily and rapidly in Montegnac. All the gardens,
which were full of fruit-trees, cabbages, onions, and other vegetables,
had bee-hives along their terraces.
Another line of houses, running down from the main street to the river,
the course of which was outlined by thriving little fields of hemp and
the sorts of fruit trees which like moisture, lay parallel with the
upper town; some of the houses, that of the post-house, for instance,
were in a hollow, and were well-situated for certain kinds of work, such
as weaving. Nearly all of them were shared by walnut-trees, the tree
_par excellence_ of strong soils.
On this side of the main street at the end farthest from the great plain
was a dwelling-house, very much larger and better cared for than those
in other parts of the village; around it were other houses equally well
kept. This little hamlet, separated from the village by its gardens, was
already called Les Tascherons, a name it keeps to the present day.
The village itself mounted to very little, but thirty or more outlying
farms belonged to it. In the valley, leading down to the river,
irrigating channels like those of La Marche and Berry indicated the flow
of water around the village by the green fringe of verdure about them;
Montegnac seemed tossed in their midst like a vessel at sea. When
a house, an estate, a village, a region, passes from the wretched
condition to a prosperous one, without becoming either rich or splendid,
life seems so easy, so natural to living beings, that the spectator may
not at once suspect the enormous labor, infinite in petty detail, grand
in persistency like the toil buried in a foundation wall, in short, the
forgotten labor on which the whole structure rests.
Consequently the scene that lay before him told nothing extraordinary
to the young Abbe Gabriel as his eye took in the charming landscape.
He knew nothing of the state of the region before the arrival of the
rector, Monsieur Bonnet. The young man now went on a few steps and again
saw, several hundred feet above the gardens of the upper village, the
church and the parsonage, which he had already seen from a distance
confusedly mingled with the imposing ruins clothed with creepers of the
old castle of Montegnac, one of the residences of the Navarreins family
in the twelfth century.
The parsonage, a house originally built no doubt for the bailiff or
game-keeper, was noticeable for a long raised terrace planted with
lindens from which a fine view extended over the country. The steps
leading to this terrace and the walls which supported it showed their
great age by the ravages of time. The flat moss which clings to stones
had laid its dragon-green carpet on each surface. The numerous families
of the pellitories, the chamomiles, the mesembryanthemums, pushed their
varied and abundant tufts through the loop-holes in the walls, cracked
and fissured in spite of their thickness. Botany had lavished there
its most elegant drapery of ferns of all kinds, snap-dragons with their
violet mouths and golden pistils, the blue anchusa, the brown lichens,
so that the old worn stones seemed mere accessories peeping out at
intervals from this fresh growth. Along the terrace a box hedge, cut
into geometric figures, enclosed a pleasure garden surrounding the
parsonage, above which the rock rose like a white wall surmounted by
slender trees that drooped and swayed above it like plumes.
The ruins of the castle looked down upon the house and church. The
house, built of pebbles and mortar, had but one story surmounted by an
enormous sloping roof with gable ends, in which were attics, no doubt
empty, considering the dilapidation of their windows. The ground-floor
had two rooms parted by a corridor, at the farther end of which was a
wooden staircase leading to the second floor, which also had two rooms.
A little kitchen was at the back of the building in a yard, where were
the stable and coach-house, both unused, deserted, and worthless. The
kitchen garden lay between the church and the house; a ruined gallery
led from the parsonage to the sacristy.
When the young abbe saw the four windows with their leaded panes, the
brown and mossy walls, the door in common pine slit like a bundle of
matches, far from being attracted by the adorable naivete of these
details, the grace of the vegetations which draped the roof and the
dilapidated wooden frames of the windows, the wealth of the clambering
plants escaping from every cranny, and the clasping tendrils of the
grape-vine which looked into every window as if to bring smiling ideas
to those within, he congratulated himself heartily on being a bishop in
perspective instead of a village rector.
This house, apparently always open, seemed to belong to everybody. The
Abbe Gabriel entered a room communicating with the kitchen, which was
poorly furnished with an oak table on four stout legs, a tapestried
armchair, a number of chairs all of wood, and an old chest by way
of buffet. No one was in the kitchen except a cat which revealed the
presence of a woman about the house. The other room served as a salon.
Casting a glance about it the young priest noticed armchairs in natural
wood covered with tapestry; the woodwork and the rafters of the ceiling
were of chestnut which had turned as black as ebony. A tall clock in
a green case painted with flowers, a table with a faded green cloth,
several chairs, two candlesticks on the chimney-piece, between which was
an Infant Jesus in wax under a glass case, completed the furniture of
the room. The chimney-piece of wood with common mouldings was filled by
a fire-board covered by a painting representing the Good Shepherd with
a lamb over his shoulder, which was probably the gift of some young
girl,--the mayor’s daughter, or the judge’s daughter,--in return for the
pastor’s care of her education.
The forlorn condition of the house was distressing to behold; the walls,
once whitewashed, were now discolored, and stained to a man’s height
by constant friction. The staircase with its heavy baluster and wooden
steps, though very clean, looked as if it might easily give way under
the feet. On the other side of the house, opposite to the entrance
door, another door opening upon the kitchen garden enabled the Abbe de
Rastignac to judge of the narrowness of that garden, which was closed
at the back by a wall cut in the white and friable stone side of
the mountain, against which espaliers were fastened, covered with
grape-vines and fruit-trees so ill taken care of that their leaves were
discolored with blight.
The abbe returned upon his steps and walked along the paths of the first
garden, from which he could see, in the distance beyond the village,
the magnificent stretch of valley, a true oasis at the edge of the vast
plains, which now, veiled by the light mists of morning, lay along the
horizon like a tranquil ocean. Behind him could be seen, on one side,
for a foil, the dark masses of the bronze-green forest; on the other,
the church and the ruins of the castle perched on the rock and vividly
detached upon the blue of the ether. The Abbe Gabriel, his feet creaking
on the gravelly paths cut in stars and rounds and lozenges, looked down
upon the village, where some of the inhabitants were already gazing up
at him, and then at the fresh, cool valley, with its tangled paths, its
river bordered with willows in delightful contrast to the endless plain,
and he was suddenly seized with sensations which changed the nature of
his thoughts; he admired the sweet tranquillity of the place; he felt
the influence of that pure air; he was conscious of the peace inspired
by the revelation of a life brought back to Biblical simplicity; he saw,
confusedly, the beauties of this old parsonage, which he now re-entered
to examine its details with greater interest.
A little girl, employed, no doubt, to watch the house, though she was
picking and eating fruit in the garden, heard the steps of a man with
creaking shoes on the great square flags of the ground-floor rooms. She
ran in to see who it was. Confused at being caught by a priest with a
fruit in one hand and another in her mouth, she made no answer to the
questions of the handsome young abbe. She had never imagined such an
abbe,--dapper and spruce as hands could make him, in dazzling linen and
fine black cloth without spot or wrinkle.
“Monsieur Bonnet?” she said at last. “Monsieur Bonnet is saying mass,
and Mademoiselle Ursule is at church.”
The Abbe Gabriel did not notice a covered way from the house to the
church; he went back to the road which led to the front portal, a
species of porch with a sloping roof that faced the village. It was
reached by a series of disjointed stone steps, at the side of which lay
a ravine washed out by the mountain torrents and covered with noble
elms planted by Sully the Protestant. This church, one of the poorest
in France where there are so many poor churches, was like one of those
enormous barns with projecting doors covered by roofs supported on
brick or wooden pillars. Built, like the parsonage, of cobblestones and
mortar, flanked by a face of solid rock, and roofed by the commonest
round tiles, this church was decorated on the outside with the richest
creations of sculpture, rich in light and shade and lavishly massed
and colored by Nature, who understands such art as well as any Michael
Angelo. Ivy clasped the walls with its nervous tendrils, showing stems
amid its foliage like the veins in a lay figure. This mantle, flung by
Time to cover the wounds he made, was starred by autumn flowers drooping
from the crevices, which also gave shelter to numerous singing birds.
The rose-window above the projecting porch was adorned with blue
campanula, like the first page of an illuminated missal. The side
which communicated with the parsonage, toward the north, was not less
decorated; the wall was gray and red with moss and lichen; but the other
side and the apse, around which lay the cemetery, was covered with a
wealth of varied blooms. A few trees, among others an almond-tree--one
of the emblems of hope--had taken root in the broken wall; two enormous
pines standing close against the apsis served as lightning-rods. The
cemetery, enclosed by a low, half-ruined wall, had for ornament an iron
cross, mounted on a pedestal and hung with box, blessed at Easter,--one
of those affecting Christian thoughts forgotten in cities. The village
rector is the only priest who, in these days, thinks to go among his
dead and say to them each Easter morn, “Thou shalt live again!” Here and
there a few rotten wooden crosses stood up from the grassy mounds.
The interior of the church harmonized perfectly with the poetic tangle
of the humble exterior, the luxury and art of which was bestowed by
Time, for once in a way charitable. Within, the eye first went to the
roof, lined with chestnut, to which age had given the richest tints of
the oldest woods of Europe. This roof was supported at equal distances
by strong shafts resting on transversal beams. The four white-washed
walls had no ornament whatever. Poverty had made the parish
iconoclastic, whether it would or not. The church, paved and furnished
with benches, was lighted by four arched windows with leaded panes. The
altar, shaped like a tomb, was adorned by a large crucifix placed
above a tabernacle in walnut with a few gilt mouldings, kept clean and
shining, eight candlesticks economically made of wood painted white, and
two china vases filled with artificial flowers such as the drudge of a
money-changer would have despised, but with which God was satisfied.
The sanctuary lamp was a night-wick placed in an old holy-water basin
of plated copper hanging by silken cords, the spoil of some demolished
chateau. The baptismal fonts were of wood; so were the pulpit and a sort
of cage provided for the church-wardens, the patricians of the village.
An altar to the Virgin presented to public admiration two colored
lithographs in small gilt frames. The altar was painted white, adorned
with artificial flowers in gilded wooden vases, and covered by a cloth
edged with shabby and discolored lace.
At the farther end of the church a long window entirely covered by a
red calico curtain produced a magical effect. This crimson mantle cast
a rosy tint upon the whitewashed walls; a thought divine seemed to glow
upon the altar and clasp the poor nave as if to warm it. The passage
which led to the sacristy exhibited on one of its walls the patron saint
of the village, a large Saint John the Baptist with his sheep, carved in
wood and horribly painted.
But in spite of all this poverty the church was not without some tender
harmonies delightful to choice souls, and set in charming relief by
their own colors. The rich dark tones of the wood relieved the white of
the walls and blended with the triumphal crimson cast on the chancel.
This trinity of color was a reminder of the grand Catholic doctrine.
If surprise was the first emotion roused by this pitiful house of the
Lord, surprise was followed speedily by admiration mingled with pity.
Did it not truly express the poverty of that poor region? Was it not
in harmony with the naive simplicity of the parsonage? The building was
perfectly clean and well-kept. The fragrance of country virtues exhaled
within it; nothing showed neglect or abandonment. Though rustic and
poor and simple, prayer dwelt there; those precincts had a soul,--a soul
which was felt, though we might not fully explain to our own souls how
we felt it.