But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my
conversion; and the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which the
people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during
1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most
effective proselytizing. They never sought to convince me in argument,
where I might have attempted some defence; but took it for granted that
I was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on
the point of time. Now, they said, when God had led me to Our Lady of
the Snows, now was the appointed hour.

"Do not be withheld by false shame," observed the priest, for my
encouragement.

For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has
never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this
or that creed on the eternal side of things, however much he may see to
praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus
created was both unfair and painful. I committed my second fault in
tact, and tried to plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and
we were all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and
undiscriminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits,
would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men think
differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest
with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of
hell. The damned, he said--on the authority of a little book which he
had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction,
he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket--were to
occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal
tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with
his enthusiasm.

As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the Prior, since
the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately before him.

"_C'est mon conseil comme ancien militaire_," observed the commandant;
"_et celui de monsieur comme prêtre_."

"_Oui_," added the _curé_, sententiously nodding; "_comme ancien
militaire_--_et comme prêtre_."

At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in came
one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig, and with
an Italian accent, who threw himself at once into the contention, but in
a milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant
brethren. Look at _him_, he said. The rule was very hard; he would have
dearly liked to stay in his own country, Italy--it was well known how
beautiful it was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no Trappists
in Italy; and he had a soul to save; and here he was.

I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has
dubbed me, "a faddling hedonist," for this description of the brother's
motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should have preferred to think he
had chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes; and
this shows how profoundly I was out of sympathy with these good
Trappists, even when I was doing my best to sympathize. But to the curé
the argument seemed decisive.

"Hear that!" he cried. "And I have seen a marquis here, a marquis, a
marquis"--he repeated the holy word three times over--"and other persons
high in society; and generals. And here, at your side, is this
gentleman, who has been so many years in armies--decorated, an old
warrior. And here he is, ready to dedicate himself to God."

I was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I pled cold feet, and
made my escape from the apartment. It was a furious windy morning, with
a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; and I
wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely
staggered and beaten upon by the gale, but rewarded with some striking
views.

At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was recommenced, and
on this occasion still more distastefully to me. The priest asked me
many questions as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received
my replies with a kind of ecclesiastical titter.

"Your sect," he said once; "for I think you will admit it would be doing
it too much honour to call it a religion."

"As you please, monsieur," said I. "_La parole est à vous."_

At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance; and although he was on his
own ground, and, what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so holding
a claim upon my toleration, I could not avoid a protest against this
uncivil usage. He was sadly discountenanced.

"I assure you," he said, "I have no inclination to laugh in my heart. I
have no other feeling but interest in your soul."

And there ended my conversion. Honest man! he was no dangerous deceiver;
but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long may he tread Gévaudan
with his kilted skirts--a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his
parishioners in death! I daresay he would beat bravely through a
snowstorm where his duty called him; and it is not always the most
faithful believer who makes the cunningest apostle.




UPPER GÉVAUDAN
_(Continued)_

    _The bed was made, the room was fit,
    By punctual eve the stars were lit;
    The air was still, the water ran;
    No need there was for maid or man,
    When we put up, my ass and I,
    At God's green caravanserai._
                               OLD PLAY.


ACROSS THE GOULET


The wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear; so it was under
better auspices that I loaded Modestine before the monastery gate. My
Irish friend accompanied me so far on the way. As we came through the
wood, there was Père Apollinaire hauling his barrow; and he too quitted
his labours to go with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand
between both of his in front of him. I parted first from one and then
from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the
traveller who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth
upon another. Then Modestine and I mounted the course of the Allier,
which here led us back into Gévaudan towards its sources in the forest
of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn before we left its
guidance. Thence, over a hill, our way lay through a naked plateau,
until we reached Chasseradès at sundown.

The company in the inn kitchen that night were all men employed in
survey for one of the projected railways. They were intelligent and
conversible, and we decided the future of France over hot wine, until
the state of the clock frightened us to rest. There were four beds in
the little upstairs room; and we slept six. But I had a bed to myself,
and persuaded them to leave the window open.

"_Hé, bourgeois; il est cinq heures!_" was the cry that wakened me in
the morning (Saturday, September 28th). The room was full of a
transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other three beds and the
five different nightcaps on the pillows. But out of the window the dawn
was growing ruddy in a long belt over the hill-tops, and day was about
to flood the plateau. The hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a
promise of calm weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. I was soon
under way with Modestine. The road lay for a while over the plateau, and
then descended through a precipitous village into the valley of the
Chassezac. This stream ran among green meadows, well hidden from the
world by its steep banks; the broom was in flower, and here and there
was a hamlet sending up its smoke.

At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a bridge, and, forsaking
this deep hollow, set itself to cross the mountain of La Goulet. It
wound up through Lestampes by upland fields and woods of beech and
birch, and with every corner brought me into an acquaintance with some
new interest. Even in the gully of the Chassezac my ear had been struck
by a noise like that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of
many miles; but this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to it,
seemed to change in character, and I found at length that it came from
some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural horn. The narrow
street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, from wall to wall--black sheep
and white, bleating with one accord like the birds in spring, and each
one accompanying himself upon the sheep-bell round his neck. It made a
pathetic concert, all in treble. A little higher, and I passed a pair of
men in a tree with pruning-hooks, and one of them was singing the music
of a _bourrée_. Still further, and when I was already threading the
birches, the crowing of cocks came cheerfully up to my ears, and along
with that the voice of a flute discoursing a deliberate and plaintive
air from one of the upland villages. I pictured to myself some grizzled,
apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden in
the clear autumn sunshine. All these beautiful and interesting sounds
filled my heart with an unwonted expectation; and it appeared to me
that, once past this range which I was mounting, I should descend into
the garden of the world. Nor was I deceived, for I was now done with
rains and winds and a bleak country. The first part of my journey ended
here; and this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the other and
more beautiful.

There are other degrees of _feyness_, as of punishment, besides the
capital; and I was now led by my good spirits into an adventure which I
relate in the interest of future donkey-drivers. The road zigzagged so
widely on the hillside, that I chose a short cut by map and compass, and
struck through the dwarf woods to catch the road again upon a higher
level. It was my one serious conflict with Modestine. She would none of
my short cut; she turned in my face; she backed, she reared; she, whom I
had hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a loud hoarse
flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. I plied the goad with one
hand; with the other, so steep was the ascent, I had to hold on the
pack-saddle. Half a dozen times she was nearly over backwards on the top
of me; half a dozen times, from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly
giving it up, and leading her down again to follow the road. But I took
the thing as a wager, and fought it through. I was surprised, as I went
on my way again, by what appeared to be chill rain-drops falling on my
hand, and more than once looked up in wonder at the cloudless sky. But
it was only sweat which came dropping from my brow.

Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked road--only upright
stones posted from space to space to guide the drovers. The turf
underfoot was springy and well scented. I had no company but a lark or
two, and met but one bullock-cart between Lestampes and Bleymard. In
front of me I saw a shallow valley, and beyond that the range of the
Lozère, sparsely wooded and well enough modeled in the flanks, but
straight and dull in outline. There was scarce a sign of culture; only
about Bleymard, the white high-road from Villefort to Mende traversed a
range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and sounding from side to side
with the bells of flocks and herds.




A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES


From Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to
scale a portion of the Lozère. An ill-marked stony drove-road guided me
forward; and I met nearly half a dozen bullock-carts descending from the
woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the
top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I
struck leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of
green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to
serve me for a water-tap. "In a more sacred or sequestered bower ... nor
nymph nor faunus haunted." The trees were not old, but they grew thickly
round the glade: there was no outlook, except north-eastward upon
distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment
felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my
arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to
decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty
meal; and as soon as the sun went down I pulled my cap over my eyes and
fell asleep.

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof: but in the open world it
passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are
marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal
death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and
living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear
Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest, she
turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who
dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping
hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that
the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a
cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the
meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new
lair among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain down with the
fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night.

At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these
sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? Do the stars rain down
an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother earth below our
resting bodies? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who are the deepest
read in these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of
this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare the
thing takes place, and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it
is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber, only, like the
luxurious Montaigne, "that we may the better and more sensibly relish
it." We have a moment to look up on the stars. And there is a special
pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with
all outdoor creatures in our neighbourhood, that we have escaped out of
the Bastille of civilization, and are become, for the time being, a mere
kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock.

When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was
standing by me half full of water. I emptied it at a draught; and
feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to
make a cigarette. The stars were clear, coloured, and jewel-like, but
not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around
me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness
of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the
length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward;
but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of
the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the colour
of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish
grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the
stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I
could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at
each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a
second the highest light in the landscape.

A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed
down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the
air was being renewed all night long. I thought with horror of the inn
at Chasseradès and the congregated nightcaps; with horror of the
nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and
pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene
possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The
outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a
gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed,
was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open
house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths which are
revealed to savages and hid from political economists; at the least, I
had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet even while I was
exulting in my solitude I became aware of a strange lack. I wished a
companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but
ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than
solitude, and which rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. And to
live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most
complete and free.

As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole towards
me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the crowing of cocks
or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm; but steadily and
gradually it took articulate shape in my ears, until I became aware
that a passenger was going by upon the high-road in the valley, and
singing loudly as he went. There was more of good-will than grace in his
performance; but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice
took hold upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens.
I have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities; some of them
sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard the
rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after hours of
stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the range of my hearing as
I lay abed. There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black
hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business.
But here the romance was double: first, this glad passenger, lit
internally with wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night;
and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone
in the pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the stars.

When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of the stars had
disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night still burned
visibly overhead; and away towards the east I saw a faint haze of light
upon the horizon, such as had been the Milky Way when I was last awake.
Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, and by its glow-worm light put on my
boots and gaiters; then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my
can at the water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil myself some
chocolate. The blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had so
sweetly slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting
into gold along the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee possessed
my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day. I heard the runnel
with delight; I looked round me for something beautiful and unexpected;
but the still black pine-trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass,
remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered but the light, and
that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and
moved me to a strange exhilaration.

I drank my water-chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, and
strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. While I was
thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a heavy sigh, poured
direct out of the quarter of the morning. It was cold, and set me
sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed their black plumes in its
passage; and I could see the thin distant spires of pine along the edge
of the hill rock slightly to and fro against the golden east. Ten
minutes later, the sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside,
scattering shadows and sparkles, and the day had come completely.

I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent that lay
before me; but I had something on my mind. It was only a fancy; yet a
fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been most hospitably received
and punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, the
water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing
of the tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I
commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's debt for all
this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half-laughing
way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had
left enough for my night's lodging. I trust they did not fall to some
rich and churlish drover.




THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS

    _We travelled in the print of olden wars;
              Yet all the land was green;
              And love we found, and peace,
              Where fire and war had been.
    They pass and smile, the children of the sword--
              No more the sword they wield;
              And O, how deep the corn
              Along the battlefield!_
                                  W. P. BANNATYNE.

ACROSS THE LOZÈRE


The track that I had followed in the evening soon died out, and I
continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such
as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was already warm. I tied my
jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine
herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first
time in my experience, into a jolting trot that sent the oats swashing
in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gévaudan,
extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon
the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and
gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. A multitude of little
birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path; they perched on the
stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and I saw them
circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to time,
translucent flickering wings between the sun and me.

Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like a
distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to think it
the voice of a neighbouring waterfall, and sometimes a subjective result
of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I continued to advance, the
noise increased, and became like the hissing of an enormous tea urn, and
at the same time breaths of cool air began to reach me from the
direction of the summit. At length I understood. It was blowing stiffly
from the south upon the other slope of the Lozère, and every step that I
took I was drawing nearer to the wind.

Although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly at last
that my eyes rose above the summit. A step that seemed no way more
decisive than many other steps that had preceded it--and, "like stout
Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared at the Pacific," I took
possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of the world. For behold,
instead of the gross turf rampart I had been mounting for so long, a
view into the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills
below my feet.

The Lozère lies nearly east and west, cutting Gévaudan into two unequal
parts; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then
standing, rises upwards of five thousand six hundred feet above the sea,
and in clear weather commands a view over all lower Languedoc to the
Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken with people who either pretended or
believed that they had seen, from the Pic de Finiels, white ships
sailing by Montpellier and Cette. Behind was the upland northern country
through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, without wood,
without much grandeur of hill-form, and famous in the past for little
besides wolves. But in front of me, half veiled in sunny haze, lay a new
Gévaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring events. Speaking
largely, I was in the Cevennes at Monastier, and during all my journey;
but there is a strict and local sense in which only this confused and
shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this sense
the peasantry employ the word. These are the Cevennes with an emphasis:
the Cevennes of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills,
a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between the
Grand Monarch with all his troops and marshals on the one hand, and a
few thousand Protestant mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and
eighty years ago, the Camisards held a station even on the Lozère, where
I stood; they had an organization, arsenals, a military and religious
hierarchy; their affairs were "the discourse of every coffee-house" in
London; England sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied
and murdered; with colours and drums, and the singing of old French
Psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daylight, marched before walled
cities, and dispersed the generals of the king; and sometimes at night,
or in masquerade, possessed themselves of strong castles, and avenged
treachery upon their allies and cruelty upon their foes. There, a
hundred and eighty years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, "Count and Lord
Roland, generalissimo of the Protestants in France," grave, silent,
imperious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed in his
wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a
genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at
fifty-five the English Governor of Jersey. There again was Castanet, a
partisan leader in a voluminous peruke and with a taste for
controversial divinity. Strange generals, who moved apart to take
counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels
or slept in an unguarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their hearts!
And there, to follow these and other leaders, was the rank and file of
prophets and disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to run upon
the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, eager to fight,
eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of brain-sick children,
and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls with
which they charged their muskets.

I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of
nothing more notable than the child-eating Beast of Gévaudan, the
Napoléon Bonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of
a romantic chapter--or, better, a romantic footnote--in the history of
the world. What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism? I was told
that Protestantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant
resistance; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery
parlour. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively
and generous tradition. Again, if in the northern Cevennes the people
are narrow in religious judgments, and more filled with zeal than
charity, what was I to look for in this land of persecution and
reprisal--in a land where the tyranny of the Church produced the
Camisard rebellion, and the terror of the Camisards threw the Catholic
peasantry into legalized revolt upon the other side, so that Camisard
and Florentin skulked for each other's lives among the mountains?

Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, the
series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end; and only a little
below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a break-neck slope,
turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley between
falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and
floored farther down with green meadows. I followed the track with
precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning
of the line of the descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding
something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a
little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many
fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it
would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which
Modestine refreshed her feet.

The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished.
I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley had closed round my path,
and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. The
track became a road, and went up and down in easy undulations. I passed
cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted; and I saw not a human
creature, nor heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, however,
in a different country from the day before. The stony skeleton of the
world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. The slopes were
steep and changeful. Oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown,
wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong and luminous
colours. Here and there another stream would fall in from the right or
the left, down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary boulders. The river
in the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all
hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed a while in desperate rapids,
and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery
browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so changeful
and delicate a hue; crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by
half so green; and at every pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be
out of these hot, dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body
in the mountain air and water. All the time as I went on I never forgot
it was the Sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder; and I heard
in spirit the church-bells clamouring all over Europe, and the psalms of
a thousand churches.

At length a human sound struck upon my ear--a cry strangely modulated
between pathos and derision; and looking across the valley, I saw a
little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and
dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the rogue had
picked me out as I went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood,
driving Modestine; and he made me the compliments of the new country in
this tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises are lovely and
natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming through so much
clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my
ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river.

A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the Tarn at
Pont de Montvert of bloody memory.




PONT DE MONTVERT


One of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I
remember rightly, the Protestant temple; but this was but the type of
other novelties. A subtle atmosphere distinguishes a town in England
from a town in France, or even in Scotland. At Carlisle you can see you
are in the one country; at Dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure
that you are in the other. I should find it difficult to tell in what
particulars Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or
even Bleymard; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to the
eyes. The place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring riverbed, wore
an indescribable air of the South.

All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public-houses, as all
had been Sabbath peace among the mountains. There must have been near a
score of us at dinner by eleven before noon; and after I had eaten and
drunken, and sat writing up my journal, I suppose as many more came
dropping in one after another, or by twos and threes. In crossing the
Lozère I had not only come among new natural features, but moved into
the territory of a different race. These people, as they hurriedly
despatched their viands in an intricate sword-play of knives, questioned
and answered me with a degree of intelligence which excelled all that I
had met, except among the railway folk at Chasseradès. They had open
telling faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. They not only
entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one
declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such
another.

Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen a pretty
woman since I left Monastier, and there but one. Now of the three who
sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly not beautiful--a poor
timid thing of forty, quite troubled at this roaring _table d'hôte_,
whom I squired and helped to wine, and pledged and tried generally to
encourage, with quite a contrary effect; but the other two, both
married, were both more handsome than the average of women. And
Clarisse? What shall I say of Clarisse? She waited the table with a
heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey eyes
were steeped in amorous languor; her features, although fleshy, were of
an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke
of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and interesting lines. It
was a face capable of strong emotion, and, with training, it offered the
promise of delicate sentiment. It seemed pitiful to see so good a model
left to country admirers and a country way of thought. Beauty should at
least have touched society; then, in a moment, it throws off a weight
that lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an
elegance, learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment,
_patet dea_. Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration.
She took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking
at me steadily with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was
some confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add
that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays; but
that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years.

Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might say at home, is a
place memorable in the story of the Camisards. It was here that the war
broke out; here that those southern Covenanters slew their Archbishop
Sharpe. The persecution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the
other, are almost equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern
days, and with our easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protestants
were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. They
were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the breast would exhort
their parents to good works. "A child of fifteen months at Quissac spoke
from its mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly and with a loud
voice." Marshal Villars has seen a town where all the women "seemed
possessed by the devil," and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies
publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged at
Montpellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she
declared that she was weeping tears of blood for the misfortunes of the
Protestants. And it was not only women and children. Stalwart dangerous
fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield the forest axe, were
likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and
streaming tears. A persecution unsurpassed in violence had lasted near a
score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted; hanging,
burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left
their hoofmarks over all the countryside; there were men rowing in the
galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; and not a
thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant.

Now the head and forefront of the persecution--after Lamoignon de
Bâvile--François de Langlade du Chayla (pronounce Chéïla), Archpriest of
the Cevennes and Inspector of Missions in the same country, had a house
in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de Montvert. He was a
conscientious person, who seems to have been intended by nature for a
pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned all the
moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in his youth in China,
he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only succoured and
brought back to life by the charity of a pariah. We must suppose the
pariah devoid of second-sight, and not purposely malicious in this act.
Such an experience, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the
desire to persecute; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put
together; and, having been a Christian martyr, Du Chayla became a
Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of the Faith went
roundly forward in his hands. His house in Pont de Montvert served him
as a prison. There he closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal,
and plucked out the hairs of their beards, to convince them that they
were deceived in their opinions. And yet had not he himself tried and
proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the Buddhists in
China?

Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight was rigidly
forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the
mountain-paths, had already guided several troops of fugitives in safety
to Geneva; and on him, with another convoy, consisting mostly of women
dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands.
The Sunday following, there was a conventicle of Protestants in the
woods of Altefage upon Mount Bouges; where there stood up one
Séguier--Spirit Séguier, as his companions called him--a wool-carder,
tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. He
declared, in the name of God, that the time for submission had gone by,
and they must betake themselves to arms for the deliverance of their
brethren and the destruction of the priests.

The next night, 24th July 1702, a sound disturbed the Inspector of
Missions as he sat in his prison-house at Pont de Montvert: the voices
of many men upraised in psalmody drew nearer and nearer through the
town. It was ten at night; he had his court about him, priests,
soldiers, and servants, to the number of twelve or fifteen; and now
dreading the insolence of a conventicle below his very windows, he
ordered forth his soldiers to report. But the psalm-singers were already
at his door, fifty strong, led by the inspired Séguier, and breathing
death. To their summons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old
persecutor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. One Camisard (for,
according to some, it was in this night's work that they came by the
name) fell at this discharge: his comrades burst in the door with
hatchets and a beam of wood, overran the lower story of the house, set
free the prisoners, and finding one of them in the _vine_, a sort of
Scavenger's Daughter of the place and period, redoubled in fury against
Du Chayla, and sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors.
But he, on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely
held the staircase.

"Children of God," cried the prophet, "hold your hands. Let us burn the
house, with the priest and the satellites of Baal."

The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du Chayla and his men
lowered themselves into the garden by means of knotted sheets; some
escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the
archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the
hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A
poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely
according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least
one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and
the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged
him to the public place of the town, raging and calling him damned--"If
I be damned," said he, "why should you also damn yourselves?"

Here was a good reason for the last; but in the course of his
inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a contrary
direction; and these he was now to hear. One by one, Séguier first, the
Camisards drew near and stabbed him. "This," they said, "is for my
father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys. That for
my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed convents." Each gave
his blow and his reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the
body till the dawn. With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away
towards Frugères, farther up the Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance,
leaving Du Chayla's prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced with
two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place.

'Tis a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of psalms; and it seems
as if a psalm must always have a sound of threatening in that town upon
the Tarn. But the story does not end, even so far as concerns Pont de
Montvert, with the departure of the Camisards. The career of Séguier was
brief and bloody. Two more priests and a whole family at Ladevèze, from
the father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders; and yet
he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all the time by the
presence of the soldiery. Taken at length by a famous soldier of
fortune, Captain Poul, he appeared unmoved before his judges.

"Your name?" they asked.

"Pierre Séguier."

"Why are you called Spirit?"

"Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me."

"Your domicile?"

"Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven."

"Have you no remorse for your crimes?"

"I have committed none. _My soul is like a garden full of shelter and of
fountains._"

At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had his right hand
stricken from his body, and was burned alive. And his soul was like a
garden? So perhaps was the soul of Du Chayla, the Christian martyr. And
perhaps if you could read in my soul, or I could read in yours, our own
composure might seem little less surprising.

Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the
bridges of the town; and if you are curious you may see the
terrace-garden into which he dropped.




IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN


A new road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florac by the valley of the
Tarn; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit of
the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I went in and
out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into promontories of
afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of Killiecrankie; a deep
turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse
uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine high
above. A thin fringe of ash trees ran about the hill-tops, like ivy on a
ruin; but, on the lower slopes, and far up every glen, the Spanish
chestnut trees stood each four-square to heaven under its tented
foliage. Some were planted, each on its own terrace no larger than a
bed; some, trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and prosper
and be straight and large upon the rapid slopes of the valley; others,
where there was a margin to the river, stood marshaled in a line and
mighty like cedars of Lebanon. Yet even where they grew most thickly
they were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart
individuals; and the dome of each tree stood forth separate and large,
and as it were a little bill, from among the domes of its companions.
They gave forth a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air of the
afternoon; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the green; and
the sun so shone through and kindled the broad foliage, that each
chestnut was relieved against another, not in shadow, but in light. A
humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in despair.

I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of
how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping
foliage like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns
like the pillars of a church; or like the olive, from the most shattered
hole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon
the ruins of the old. Thus they partake of the nature of many different
trees; and even their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the
sky, have a certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. But
their individuality, although compounded of so many elements, is but the
richer and the more original. And to look down upon a level filled with
these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts
cluster "like herded elephants" upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise
to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature.

Between Modestine's laggard humour and the beauty of the scene, we made
little progress all that afternoon; and at last finding the sun,
although still far from setting, was already beginning to desert the
narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp in.
This was not easy to find; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground,
where it was unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I
should have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet
or my head in the river.

After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little
plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the
trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble,
I goaded and kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there I hastened to
unload her. There was only room for myself upon the plateau, and I had
to go nearly as high again before I found so much as standing-room for
the ass. It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace,
certainly not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut,
and having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut-leaves,
of which I found her greedy, I descended once more to my own encampment.

The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went by upon the
road; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed myself, for all the
world like a hunted Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut
trunk; for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of
jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw that I must be early
awake; for these chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no
further gone than on the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped
branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was propped
against a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants
use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. I picked a meal
in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide myself from the road; and
I daresay I was as much concerned as if I had been a scout from Joani's
band above upon the Lozère, or from Salomon's across the Tarn, in the
old times of psalm-singing and blood. Or indeed, perhaps more; for the
Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into
my memory of how the Count of Gévaudan, riding with a party of dragoons
and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the
country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and
his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned
with box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the
stream. Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date Antony Watteau
would be painting similar subjects.

This was a very different camp from that of the night before in the cool
and silent pine-woods. It was warm and even stifling in the valley. The
shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in
it, rang up from the riverside before the sun was down. In the growing
dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro among the fallen leaves;
from time to time a faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my
ear; and from time to time I thought I could see the movement of
something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of
large ants swarmed upon the ground; bats whisked by, and mosquitoes
droned overhead. The long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung
against the sky like garlands; and those immediately above and around me
had somewhat the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked and
half overthrown in a gale of wind.

Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids; and just as I was beginning to
feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settling densely on my mind, a
noise at my head startled me broad awake again, and, I will frankly
confess it, brought my heart into my mouth. It was such a noise as a
person would make scratching loudly with a finger-nail; it came from
under the knapsack which served me for a pillow, and it was thrice
repeated before I had time to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be
seen, nothing more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious
rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and
the frogs. I learned next day that the chestnut gardens are infested by
rats; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these;
but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and I had to compose
myself for sleep as best I could, in wondering uncertainty about my
neighbours.

I was wakened in the grey of the morning (Monday, 30th September) by the
sound of footsteps not far off upon the stones, and, opening my eyes, I
beheld a peasant going by among the chestnuts by a footpath that I had
not hitherto observed. He turned his head neither to the right nor to
the left, and disappeared in a few strides among the foliage. Here was
an escape! But it was plainly more than time to be moving. The peasantry
were abroad; scarce less terrible to me in my nondescript position than
the soldiers of Captain Poul to an undaunted Camisard. I fed Modestine
with what haste I could; but as I was returning to my sack, I saw a man
and a boy come down the hillside in a direction crossing mine. They
unintelligibly hailed me, and I replied with inarticulate but cheerful
sounds, and hurried forward to get into my gaiters.

The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up to the
plateau, and stood close beside me for some time in silence. The bed was
open, and I saw with regret my revolver lying patently disclosed on the
blue wool. At last, after they had looked me all over, and the silence
had grown laughably embarrassing, the man demanded in what seemed
unfriendly tones:--

"You have slept here?"

"Yes," said I. "As you see."

"Why?" he asked.

"My faith," I answered lightly, "I was tired."

He next inquired where I was going, and what I had had for dinner; and
then, without the least transition, "_C'est bien,"_ he added, "come
along." And he and his son, without another word, turned oil to the next
chestnut-tree but one, which they set to pruning. The thing had passed
off more simply than I hoped. He was a grave, respectable man; and his
unfriendly voice did not imply that he thought he was speaking to a
criminal, but merely to an inferior.