Meantime (to look at the upper surface where the sun was still shining
and the guns of sportsmen were still noisy through the tufted plain) the
_Cigarette_ was drawing near at his more philosophic pace. In those days
of liberty and health he was the constant partner of the _Arethusa_, and
had ample opportunity to share in that gentleman's disfavour with the
police. Many a bitter bowl had he partaken of with that disastrous
comrade. He was himself a man born to float easily through life, his
face and manner artfully recommending him to all. There was but one
suspicious circumstance he could not carry off, and that was his
companion. He will not readily forget the Commissary in what is
ironically called the free town of Frankfort-on-the-Main; nor the
Franco-Belgian frontier; nor the inn at La Fère; last, but not least, he
is pretty certain to remember Châtillon-sur-Loire.

At the town entry, the gendarme culled him like a wayside flower; and a
moment later two persons in a high state of surprise were confronted in
the Commissary's office. For if the _Cigarette_ was surprised to be
arrested, the Commissary was no less taken aback by the appearance and
appointments of his captive. Here was a man about whom there could be no
mistake: a man of an unquestionable and unassailable manner, in
apple-pie order, dressed not with neatness merely but elegance, ready
with his passport at a word, and well supplied with money: a man the
Commissary would have doffed his hat to on chance upon the highway; and
this _beau cavalier_ unblushingly claimed the _Arethusa_ for his
comrade! The conclusion of the interview was foregone; of its humours I
remember only one. "Baronet?" demanded the magistrate, glancing up from
the passport. "_Alors, monsieur, vous êtes le fils d'un baron?_" And
when the _Cigarette_ (his one mistake throughout the interview) denied
the soft impeachment, "_Alors_," from the Commissary, "_ce n'est pas
voire passeport!_" But these were ineffectual thunders; he never dreamed
of laying hands upon the _Cigarette_; presently he fell into a mood of
unrestrained admiration, gloating over the contents of the knapsack,
commending our friend's tailor. Ah! what an honoured guest was the
Commissary entertaining! What suitable clothes he wore for the warm
weather! What beautiful maps, what an attractive work of history he
carried in his knapsack! You are to understand there was now but one
point of difference between them: what was to be done with the
_Arethusa_? the _Cigarette_ demanding his release, the Commissary still
claiming him as the dungeon's own. Now it chanced that the _Cigarette_
had passed some years of his life in Egypt, where he had made
acquaintance with two very bad things, cholera morbus and pashas; and in
the eye of the Commissary, as he fingered the volume of Michelet, it
seemed to our traveller there was something Turkish. I pass over this
lightly; it is highly possible there was some misunderstanding, highly
possible that the Commissary (charmed with his visitor) supposed the
attraction to be mutual, and took for an act of growing friendship what
the _Cigarette_ himself regarded as a bribe. And at any rate, was there
ever a bribe more singular than an odd volume of Michelet's history! The
work was promised him for the morrow, before our departure; and
presently after, either because he had his price, or to show that he was
not the man to be behind in friendly offices, "_Eh bien_," he said, "_je
suppose qu'il faut lâcher votre camarade_." And he tore up that feast of
humour, the unfinished _procès-verbal_. Ah, if he had only torn up
instead the _Arethusa's_ roundels! There are many works burnt at
Alexandria, there are many treasured in the British Museum, that I could
better spare than the _procès-verbal_ of Châtillon. Poor bubuckled
Commissary! I begin to be sorry that he never had his Michelet:
perceiving in him fine human traits, a broad-based stupidity, a gusto in
his magisterial functions, a taste for letters, a ready admiration for
the admirable. And if he did not admire the _Arethusa_, he was not alone
in that.

To the imprisoned one, shivering under the public covering, there came
suddenly a noise of bolts and chains. He sprang to his feet, ready to
welcome a companion in calamity; and instead of that, the door was flung
wide, the friendly gendarme appeared above in the strong daylight, and
with a magnificent gesture (being probably a student of the
drama)--"_Vous êtes libre_!" he said. None too soon for the _Arethusa_.
I doubt if he had been half an hour imprisoned; but by the watch in a
man's brain (which was the only watch he carried) he should have been
eight times longer; and he passed forth with ecstasy up the cellar
stairs into the healing warmth of the afternoon sun; and the breath of
the earth came as sweet as a cow's into his nostril; and he heard again
(and could have laughed for pleasure) the concord of delicate noises
that we call the hum of life.

And here it might be thought that my history ended; but not so, this was
an act-drop and not the curtain. Upon what followed in front of the
barrack, since there was a lady in the case, I scruple to expatiate. The
wife of the Maréchal-des-logis was a handsome woman, and yet the
_Arethusa_ was not sorry to be gone from her society. Something of her
image, cool as a peach on that hot afternoon, still lingers in his
memory: yet more of her conversation. "You have there a very fine
parlour," said the poor gentleman. "Ah!" said Madame la Maréchale
(des-logis), "you are very well acquainted with such parlours!" And you
should have seen with what a hard and scornful eye she measured the
vagabond before her! I do not think he ever hated the Commissary; but
before that interview was at an end, he hated Madame la Maréchale. His
passion (as I am led to understand by one who was present) stood
confessed in a burning eye, a pale cheek, and a trembling utterance;
Madame, meanwhile tasting the joys of the matador, goading him with
barbed words and staring him coldly down.

It was certainly good to be away from this lady, and better still to sit
down to an excellent dinner in the inn. Here, too, the despised
travellers scraped acquaintance with their next neighbour, a gentleman
of these parts, returned from the day's sport, who had the good taste to
find pleasure in their society. The dinner at an end, the gentleman
proposed the acquaintance should be ripened in the _café_.

The _café_ was crowded with sportsmen conclamantly explaining to each
other and the world the smallness of their bags. About the centre of the
room the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_ sat with their new acquaintance;
a trio very well pleased, for the travellers (after their late
experience) were greedy of consideration, and their sportsman rejoiced
in a pair of patient listeners. Suddenly the glass door flew open with a
crash; the Maréchal-des-logis appeared in the interval, gorgeously
belted and befrogged, entered with salutation, strode up the room with a
clang of spurs and weapons, and disappeared through a door at the far
end. Close at his heels followed the _Arethusa's_ gendarme of the
afternoon, imitating, with a nice shade of difference, the imperial
bearing of his chief; only, as he passed, he struck lightly with his
open hand on the shoulder of his late captive, and with that ringing,
dramatic utterance of which he had the secret--"_Suivez!_" said he.

The arrest of the members, the oath of the Tennis Court, the signing of
the Declaration of Independence, Mark Antony's oration, all the brave
scenes of history, I conceive as having been not unlike that evening in
the _café_ at Châtillon. Terror breathed upon the assembly. A moment
later, when the _Arethusa_ had followed his recaptors into the farther
part of the house, the _Cigarette_ found himself alone with his coffee
in a ring of empty chairs and tables, all the lusty sportsmen huddled
into corners, all their clamorous voices hushed in whispering, all their
eyes shooting at him furtively as at a leper.

And the _Arethusa_? Well, he had a long, sometimes a trying, interview
in the back kitchen. The Maréchal-des-logis, who was a very handsome
man, and I believe both intelligent and honest, had no clear opinion on
the case. He thought the Commissary had done wrong, but he did not wish
to get his subordinates into trouble; and he proposed this, that, and
the other, to all of which the _Arethusa_ (with a growing sense of his
position) demurred.

"In short," suggested the _Arethusa_, "you want to wash your hands of
further responsibility? Well, then, let me go to Paris."

The Maréchal-des-logis looked at his watch.

"You may leave," said he, "by the ten o'clock train for Paris."

And at noon the next day the travellers were telling their misadventure
in the dining-room at Siron's.




TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY

IN THE CEVENNES


_My dear Sidney Colvin,_

_The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and
fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to
the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the
wilderness of this world--all, too, travellers with a donkey; and the
best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate
voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the
end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when
we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of
him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private
messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for
them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays
the postage. Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an old
and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall
a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear
Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself

Affectionately yours,

R. L. S._




VELAY

     _Many are the mighty things, and naught
     is more mighty than man.... He
     masters by his devices the tenant of the
     fields._

            SOPHOCLES.

     _Who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass?_

              JOB.


TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY

THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE


In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley
fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier
is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of
language, and for unparalleled political dissension. There are adherents
of each of the four French parties--Legitimists, Orleanists,
Imperialists, and Republicans--in this little mountain-town; and they
all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Except for business
purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have
laid aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain Poland. In
the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-point; every one was
anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from
the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise
with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le
Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this
big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward
through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto
unheard-of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man
who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful
interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were ready
to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathizers supported me at the
critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by
glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast.

It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at
the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indian summer to
be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have
the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more
harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by
dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned
sure by those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all, for a solitary
traveller, is troublesome to pitch and troublesome to strike again; and
even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A
sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready--you have only to get
into it; it serves a double purpose--a bed by night, a portmanteau by
day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every
curious passer-by. This is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is
but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the
convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must
sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. I decided on a
sleeping-sack; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high
living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed,
constructed, and triumphantly brought home.

This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two
triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom
of the sack by day. I call it "the sack," but it was never a sack by
more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green
waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It was
commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious
turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I
could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur
cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears, and a band to pass under my
nose like a respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make
myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones,
and a bent branch.

It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on
my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of
burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals--flighty, timid,
delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive
to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow
galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's
an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of
the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy,
and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to
a donkey.

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect
according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as
Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive
she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a
kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and
high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on
the spot. Our first interview was in Monastier market-place. To prove
her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to ride,
and one after another went head over heels into the air; until a want of
confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was
discontinued from a dearth of subjects. I was already backed by a
deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers
and sellers came round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I
and Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At
length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty-five
francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs
and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her,
was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it
should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my mattress, or
self-acting bedstead on four castors.

I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the
witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. He professed
himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often
bought white bread for the donkey when he had been content with black
bread for himself; but this, according to the best authorities, must
have been a flight of fancy. He had a name in the village for brutally
misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear
made a clean mark down one cheek.

By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for
me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thoughtfully completed my
kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armoury and utensils, I took a
revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny
candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. The main cargo
consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing--besides my travelling
wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer--some books,
and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a
double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by
cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I
carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and
by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of
carriage than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For
more immediate needs I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of
Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a
considerable quantity of black bread and white, like Father Adam, for
myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the destinations were
reversed.

Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in
threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death
in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the
nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my
attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left
out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before
telling my own mishaps, let me, in two words, relate the lesson of my
experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full
length--not doubled, for your life--across the pack-saddle, the
traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the
imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend
to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon
learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a
well-adjusted stone.

On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we
began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after my hopes were in the
dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I
returned it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that
the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on
and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it
would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads;
and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a
deal of freedom.

I had a common donkey pack-saddle--a _barde_, as they call it--fitted
upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects. The doubled
sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my
waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing
the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all corded together
in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked on the result with
fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck-cargo, all poised above the
donkey's shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new
pack-saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened
with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by
the way, even a very careless traveller should have seen disaster
brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, was the work of too many
sympathizers to be very artfully designed. It is true they tightened the
cords with a will; as many as three at a time would have a foot against
Modestine's quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned
afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise of force,
can make a more solid job than half a dozen heated and enthusiastic
grooms. I was then but a novice; even after the misadventure of the pad
nothing could disturb my security, and I went forth from the stable-door
as an ox goeth to the slaughter.




THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER


The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these
preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. As long
as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of
some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She
tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait;
from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so
small under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford
without difficulty--there was no doubt about the matter, she was
docility itself--and once on the other bank, where the road begins to
mount through pine woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff,
and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up
her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former
minuet. Another application had the same effect, and so with the third.
I am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience
to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over
from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her
breathing was distressed; it was plain that she could go no faster on a
hill. God forbid, thought I, that I should brutalize this innocent
creature; let her go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow.

What that pace was there is no word mean enough to describe; it was
something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run; it
kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five
minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of
the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance
exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went
on a few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to
browse. The thought that this was to last from here to Alais nearly
broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys this promised to be the most
tedious. I tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my
foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision ever present to me of
the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever
infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like
things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the goal.

In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty
years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the
green tail-coat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and
stopped to consider our pitiful advance.

"Your donkey," says he, "is very old?"

I told him, I believed not.

Then, he supposed, we had come far.

I told him, we had but newly left Monastier.

"_Et vous marchez comme ça!_" cried he; and, throwing back his head, he
laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half prepared to feel
offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, "You must have no
pity on these animals," said he; and, plucking a switch out of a
thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the stern-works, uttering a
cry. The rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a good round pace,
which she kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least
symptom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. Her former
panting and shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of comedy.

My _deus ex machinâ_, before he left me, supplied some excellent, if
inhumane, advice; presented me with the switch, which he declared she
would feel more tenderly than my cane; and finally taught me the true
cry or masonic word of donkey-drivers, "Proot!" All the time, he
regarded me with a comical, incredulous air, which was embarrassing to
confront; and smiled over my donkey-driving, as I might have smiled over
his orthography, or his green tail-coat. But it was not my turn for the
moment.

I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned the art to
perfection. And certainly Modestine did wonders for the rest of the
forenoon, and I had a breathing space to look about me. It was Sabbath;
the mountain-fields were all vacant in the sunshine; and as we came down
through St. Martin de Frugères, the church was crowded to the door,
there were people kneeling without upon the steps, and the sound of the
priest's chanting came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a home
feeling on the spot; for I am a countryman of the Sabbath, so to speak,
and all Sabbath observances, like a Scottish accent, strike in me mixed
feelings, grateful and the reverse. It is only a traveller, hurrying by
like a person from another planet, who can rightly enjoy the peace and
beauty of the great ascetic feast. The sight of the resting country does
his spirit good. There is something better than music in the wide,
unusual silence; and it disposes him to amiable thoughts, like the sound
of a little river or the warmth of sunlight.

In this pleasant humour I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a
green end of a valley, with Château Beaufort opposite upon a rocky
steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between
them. Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an
amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire.
On all sides, Goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths,
practicable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of France;
and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up
at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in
an isolation, you would think, like that of Homer's Cyclops. But it is
not so; the postman reaches Goudet with the letter-bag; the aspiring
youth of Goudet are within a day's walk of the railway at Le Puy; and
here in the inn you may find an engraved portrait of the host's nephew,
Régis Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two Americas," a
distinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars,
at Tammany Hall, New York, on the 10th April 1876.

I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as
we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, "Proot!" seemed to
have lost its virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted mellifluously
like a sucking-dove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor
intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace; nothing but a blow would
move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels,
incessantly belabouring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she
relapsed into her own private gait. I think I never heard of any one in
as mean a situation. I must reach the lake of Bouchet, where I meant to
camp, before sundown, and, to have even a hope of this, I must instantly
maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The sound of my own blows sickened
me. Once, when I looked at her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of
my acquaintance who formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased
my horror of my cruelty.

To make matters worse, we encountered another donkey, ranging at will
upon the roadside; and this other donkey chanced to be a gentleman. He
and Modestine met nickering for joy, and I had to separate the pair and
beat down their young romance with a renewed and feverish bastinado. If
the other donkey had had the heart of a male under his hide, he would
have fallen upon me tooth and hoof; and this was a kind of
consolation--he was plainly unworthy of Modestine's affection. But the
incident saddened me, as did everything that spoke of my donkey's sex.

It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun upon my
shoulders; and I had to labour so consistently with my stick that the
sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket,
and the pilot-coat would take an ugly slew to one side or the other; and
I had to stop Modestine, just when I had got her to a tolerable pace of
about two miles an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load.
And at last, in the village of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole
hypothec, turned round and grovelled in the dust below the donkey's
belly. She, none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to
smile, and a party of one man, two women, and two children came up, and,
standing round me in a half circle, encouraged her by their example.

I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted; and the instant
I had done so, without hesitation, it toppled and fell down upon the
other side. Judge if I was hot! And yet not a hand was offered to assist
me. The man, indeed, told me I ought to have a package of a different
shape. I suggested, if he knew nothing better to the point in my
predicament, he might hold his tongue. And the good-natured dog agreed
with me smilingly. It was the most despicable fix. I must plainly
content myself with the pack for Modestine, and take the following items
for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quart flask, a pilot-jacket
heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black bread, and an open
basket full of meats and bottles. I believe I may say I am not devoid of
greatness of soul; for I did not recoil from this infamous burden. I
disposed it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then
proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was
indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in
the whole length; and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help
myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with
six or seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and he
and his acolytes laughed loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered
having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity
in the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with
penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon
me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But
oh, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it!

A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, set her
heart upon a by-road, and positively refused to leave it. I dropped all
my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice
across the face. It was pitiful to see her lift her head with shut eyes,
as if waiting for another blow. I came very near crying, but I did a
wiser thing than that, and sat squarely down by the roadside to consider
my situation under the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of
brandy. Modestine, in the meanwhile, munched some black bread with a
contrite hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice to
the gods of shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottle destined to carry
milk; I threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act by general
average, kept the black bread for Modestine; lastly, I threw away the
cold leg of mutton and the egg-whisk, although this last was dear to my
heart. Thus I found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed
the boating-coat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it under
one arm, and although the cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung
almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that I set
forth again.

I I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cruelly I chastised
her. If I were to reach the lake-side before dark she must bestir her
little shanks to some tune. Already the sun had gone down into a
windy-looking mist; and although there were still a few streaks of gold
far off to the east on the hills and the black fir-woods, all was cold
and grey about our onward path. An infinity of little country by-roads
led hither and thither among the fields. It was the most pointless
labyrinth. I could see my destination overhead, or rather the peak that
dominates it, but choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by turning
away from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or northward along
the margin of the hills. The failing light, the waning colour, the
naked, unhomely, stony country through which I was travelling, threw me
into some despondency. I promise you, the stick was not idle; I think
every decent step that Modestine took must have cost me at least two
emphatic blows. There was not another sound in the neighbourhood but
that of my unwearying bastinado.

Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the dust,
and, as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously loosened, and
the road scattered with my dear possessions. The packing was to begin
again from the beginning; and as I had to invent a new and better
system, I do not doubt but I lost half an hour. It began to be dusk in
earnest as I reached a wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of
being a road which should lead everywhere at the same time; and I was
falling into something not unlike despair when I saw two figures
stalking towards me over the stones. They walked one behind the other
like tramps, but their pace was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall,
ill-made, sombre, Scottish-looking man; the mother followed, all in her
Sunday's best, with an elegantly embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a
new felt hat atop, and proffering, as she strode along with kilted
petticoats, a string of obscene and blasphemous oaths.

I hailed the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west
and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without slackening
his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my
path. The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I shouted
and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and
turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself,
I was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped as
I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she was a
handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son once more
answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But
this time I simply collared the mother, who was nearest me, and,
apologizing for my violence, declared that I could not let them go until
they had put me on my road. They were neither of them offended--rather
mollified than otherwise; told me I had only to follow them; and then
the mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I
replied, in the Scottish manner, by inquiring if she had far to go
herself. She told me, with another oath, that she had an hour and a
half's road before her. And then, without salutation, the pair strode
forward again up the hillside in the gathering dusk.

I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, after a sharp
ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a plateau. The view,
looking back on my day's journey, was both wild and sad. Mount Mézenc
and the peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a
cold glitter in the east; and the intervening field of hills had fallen
together into one broad wash of shadow, except here and there the
outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here and there a white,
irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a
blot where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Laussonne wandered in a
gorge.

Soon we were on a high-road, and surprise seized on my mind as I beheld
a village of some magnitude close at hand; for I had been told that the
neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout. The road
smoked in the twilight with children driving home cattle from the
fields; and a pair of mounted stride-legged women, hat and cap and all,
dashed past me at a hammering trot from the canton where they had been
to church and market. I asked one of the children where I was. At
Bouchet St. Nicholas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south of my
destination, and on the other side of a respectable summit, had these
confused roads and treacherous peasantry conducted me. My shoulder was
cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like tooth-ache from
perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my design to camp, and asked
for the _auberge_.




I HAVE A GOAD


The _auberge_ of Bouchet St. Nicholas was among the least pretentious I
have ever visited; but I saw many more of the like upon my journey.
Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of
two stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a
suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other dining; furniture
of the plainest, earthen floors, a single bed-chamber for travellers,
and that without any convenience but beds. In the kitchen cooking and
eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. Any one
who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table. The
food is sometimes spare; hard fish and omelette have been my portion
more than once; the wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to
man; and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and rubbing
against your legs, is no impossible accompaniment to dinner.

But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves
friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the doors you cease to be
a stranger; and although these peasantry are rude and forbidding on the
highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their
hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais,
and asked the host to join me. He would take but little.

"I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?" he said, "and I am capable
of leaving you not enough."

In these hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife;
unless he ask, no other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of
bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid. My knife was
cordially admired by the landlord of Bouchet, and the spring filled him
with wonder.

"I should never have guessed that," he said. "I would bet," he added,
weighing it in his hand, "that this cost you not less than five francs."

When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped.

He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, astonishingly
ignorant. His wife, who was not so pleasant in her manners, knew how to
read, although I do not suppose she ever did so. She had a share of
brains, and spoke with a cutting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast.

"My man knows nothing," she said, with an angry nod; "he is like the
beasts."

And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. There was no
contempt on her part, and no shame on his; the facts were accepted
loyally, and no more about the matter.

I was tightly cross-examined about my journey; and the lady understood
in a moment, and sketched out what I should put into my book when I got
home. "Whether people harvest or not in such or such a place; if there
were forests; studies of manners; what, for example, I and the master of
the house say to you; the beauties of Nature, and all that." And she
interrogated me with a look.

"It is just that," said I.

"You see," she added to her husband, "I understood that."

They were both much interested by the story of my misadventures.

"In the morning," said the husband, "I will make you something better
than your cane. Such a beast as that feels nothing; it is in the
proverb--_dur comme un âne_; you might beat her insensible with a
cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere."

Something better! I little knew what he was offering.

The sleeping-room was furnished with two beds. I had one; and I will own
I was a little abashed to find a young man and his wife and child in the
act of mounting into the other. This was my first experience of the
sort; and if I am always to feel equally silly and extraneous, I pray
God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of
the woman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit
embarrassed by my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was
more trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in
countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could
not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to
conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. He told me
that he was a cooper of Alais travelling to St. Etienne in search of
work, and that in his spare moments he followed the fatal calling of a
maker of matches. Me he readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant.

I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23rd), and hastened my
toilette guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's
wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood
of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty
clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform; and
the only speck of colour was away behind Mount Mézenc and the eastern
hills, where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn.

It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea; and I
had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People were trooping out to
the labours of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to
stare upon the stranger. I had seen them coming back last night, I saw
them going afield again; and there was the life of Bouchet in a
nutshell.

When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the landlady was in
the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair; and I made her my
compliments upon its beauty.

"Oh, no," said the mother; "it is not so beautiful as it ought to be.
Look, it is too fine."

Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse physical
circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, the defects of
the majority decide the type of beauty.

"And where," said I, "is monsieur?"

"The master of the house is upstairs," she answered, "making you a
goad."

Blessed be the man who invented goads! Blessed the innkeeper of Bouchet
St. Nicholas, who introduced me to their use! This plain wand, with an
eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it in my
hands. Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. A prick, and she passed the
most inviting stable-door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gallant
little trotlet that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable speed,
when all was said; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the best
of it. But what a heavenly change since yesterday! No more wielding of
the ugly cudgel; no more flailing with an aching arm; no more broadsword
exercise, but a discreet and gentlemanly fence. And what although now
and then a drop of blood should appear on Modestine's mouse-coloured
wedge-like rump? I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed; but
yesterday's exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The perverse
little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go
with pricking.

It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride-legged
ladies and a pair of post-runners, the road was dead solitary all the
way to Pradelles. I scarce remember an incident but one. A handsome foal
with a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch of
common, sniffed the air martially as one about to do great deeds, and,
suddenly thinking otherwise in his green young heart, put about and
galloped off as he had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long
while afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the
note of his bell; and when I struck the high-road, the song of the
telegraph-wires seemed to continue the same music.

Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, surrounded by
rich meadows. They were cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave the
neighbourhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay. On
the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the
horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape, with black blots of
fir-wood and white roads wandering through the hills. Over all this the
clouds shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing,
exaggerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief
the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, but one
stimulating to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and
all that I beheld lay in another county--wild Gévaudan, mountainous,
uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves.

Wolves, alas! like bandits, seem to flee the traveler's advance, and
you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe and not meet with an
adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the
frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorable BEAST,
the Napoléon Bonaparte of wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten
months at free quarters in Gévaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and
children and "shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty"; he pursued
armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise
and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing
before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender,
and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And yet, when he was
shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for
that. "Though I could reach from pole to pole," sang Alexander Pope; the
Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf
they would have changed the history of man. M. Élie Berthet has made him
the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do not wish to read again.

I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's desire
that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, "who performed many miracles,
although she was of wood," and before three-quarters of an hour I was
goading Modestine down the deep descent that leads to Langogne on the
Allier. On both sides of the road, in big dusty fields, farmers were
preparing for next spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked
stolid oxen were patiently haling at the plough. I saw one of these mild
formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in
Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying lay at an
angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those
of caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed round his big
honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master
bade him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all
these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer
here and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind
carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy,
breathing, rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, the
highlands of Gévaudan kept mounting in front of me against the sky.

I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the Allier;
so near are these two confluents in their youth. Just at the bridge of
Langogne, as the long-promised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of
some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, "_D'où
'st-ce-que vous venez?_" She did it with so high an air that she set me
laughing, and this cut her to the quick. She was evidently one who
reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I
crossed the bridge and entered the county of Gévaudan.




UPPER GÉVAUDAN

     _The way also here was very wearisome
     through dirt and slabbiness; nor was
     there on all this ground so much as one
     inn or victualling-house wherein to
     refresh the feebler sort._

                      PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.


A CAMP IN THE DARK


The next day (Tuesday, September 24th) it was two o'clock in the
afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired,
for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future, and have no
more ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le
Cheylard l'Évéque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A
man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought
it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey
might cover the same distance in four hours.

All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed
alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly;
plentiful hurrying clouds--some, dragging veils of straight rain-shower,
others massed and luminous as though promising snow--careered out of the
north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated
basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen and such-like
sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines,
woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few
naked cottages and bleak fields,--these were the characters of the
country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and
stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three
or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on
hillsides or at the borders of a wood.

There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make
a passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth
of tracks. It must have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and
went on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours
afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued
from a fir-wood where I had long been wandering, and found, not the
looked-for village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble
hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead;
and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a
dozen cows, and perhaps as many more black figures, which I conjectured
to be children, although the mist had almost unrecognisably exaggerated
their forms. These were all silently following each other round and
round in a circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and
reverences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent and lively
thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and
fantastic to behold. Even I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer,
felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, I was
pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through
the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as
before a fair wind; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute
became demented. The tendency of lost travellers to go round in a circle
was developed in her to the degree of passion, and it took all the
steering I had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a
single field.