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
Lozere, sparsely wooded and well enough modelled 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 Lozere.  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 upon 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 civilisation, 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 Chasserades 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 after, 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 LOZERE


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 set the oats swashing in
the pocket of my coat.  The view, back upon the northern Gevaudan,
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 Lozere, 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 on 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 Lozere lies nearly east and west, cutting Gevaudan 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 beside wolves.
But in front of me, half veiled in sunny haze, lay a new Gevaudan, 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 Lozere, where I stood; they had
an organisation, 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 Gevaudan, the
Napoleon 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 legalised 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 river-bed, wore an
indescribable air of the South.

All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public-house, 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
Lozere 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 Chasserades.  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'hote, 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
Sharp.  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 hoof-marks 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
Bavile--Francois de Langlade du Chayla (pronounce Cheila), 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 Seguier--Spirit
Seguier, 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 Seguier, 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, Seguier 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 Frugeres, 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 Seguier was
brief and bloody.  Two more priests and a whole family at Ladeveze, 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 Seguier.'

'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 marshalled 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 hill, 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 bole 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 Lozere, 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 Gevaudan, 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 river-side 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 foot-steps 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 off to the next chestnut-
tree but one, which they set to pruning.  The thing had passed of 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.

I was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of chocolate and seriously
occupied with a case of conscience.  Was I to pay for my night's lodging?
I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in the shape of ants, there
was no water in the room, the very dawn had neglected to call me in the
morning.  I might have missed a train, had there been any in the
neighbourhood to catch.  Clearly, I was dissatisfied with my
entertainment; and I decided I should not pay unless I met a beggar.

The valley looked even lovelier by morning; and soon the road descended
to the level of the river.  Here, in a place where many straight and
prosperous chestnuts stood together, making an aisle upon a swarded
terrace, I made my morning toilette in the water of the Tarn.  It was
marvellously clear, thrillingly cool; the soap-suds disappeared as if by
magic in the swift current, and the white boulders gave one a model for
cleanliness.  To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me
a sort of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act of worship.  To dabble
among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body; but the
imagination takes no share in such a cleansing.  I went on with a light
and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced.

Suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank demanded alms.

'Good,' thought I; 'here comes the waiter with the bill.'

And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot.  Take it how you please,
but this was the first and the last beggar that I met with during all my
tour.

A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a brown nightcap,
clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint excited smile.  A little girl
followed him, driving two sheep and a goat; but she kept in our wake,
while the old man walked beside me and talked about the morning and the
valley.  It was not much past six; and for healthy people who have slept
enough, that is an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk.

'Connaissez-vous le Seigneur?' he said at length.

I asked him what Seigneur he meant; but he only repeated the question
with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denoting hope and interest.

'Ah,' said I, pointing upwards, 'I understand you now.  Yes, I know Him;
He is the best of acquaintances.'

The old man said he was delighted.  'Hold,' he added, striking his bosom;
'it makes me happy here.'  There were a few who knew the Lord in these
valleys, he went on to tell me; not many, but a few.  'Many are called,'
he quoted, 'and few chosen.'

'My father,' said I, 'it is not easy to say who know the Lord; and it is
none of our business.  Protestants and Catholics, and even those who
worship stones, may know Him and be known by Him; for He has made all.'

I did not know I was so good a preacher.

The old man assured me he thought as I did, and repeated his expressions
of pleasure at meeting me.  'We are so few,' he said.  'They call us
Moravians here; but down in the Department of Gard, where there are also
a good number, they are called Derbists, after an English pastor.'

I began to understand that I was figuring, in questionable taste, as a
member of some sect to me unknown; but I was more pleased with the
pleasure of my companion than embarrassed by my own equivocal position.
Indeed, I can see no dishonesty in not avowing a difference; and
especially in these high matters, where we have all a sufficient
assurance that, whoever may be in the wrong, we ourselves are not
completely in the right.  The truth is much talked about; but this old
man in a brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet, and friendly,
that I am not unwilling to profess myself his convert.  He was, as a
matter of fact, a Plymouth Brother.  Of what that involves in the way of
doctrine I have no idea nor the time to inform myself; but I know right
well that we are all embarked upon a troublesome world, the children of
one Father, striving in many essential points to do and to become the
same.  And although it was somewhat in a mistake that he shook hands with
me so often and showed himself so ready to receive my words, that was a
mistake of the truth-finding sort.  For charity begins blindfold; and
only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at length into a
settled principle of love and patience, and a firm belief in all our
fellow-men.  If I deceived this good old man, in the like manner I would
willingly go on to deceive others.  And if ever at length, out of our
separate and sad ways, we should all come together into one common house,
I have a hope, to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother
will hasten to shake hands with me again.

Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I came down
upon a hamlet by the Tarn.  It was but a humble place, called La Vernede,
with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant chapel on a knoll.  Here
he dwelt; and here, at the inn, I ordered my breakfast.  The inn was kept
by an agreeable young man, a stone-breaker on the road, and his sister, a
pretty and engaging girl.  The village schoolmaster dropped in to speak
with the stranger.  And these were all Protestants--a fact which pleased
me more than I should have expected; and, what pleased me still more,
they seemed all upright and simple people.  The Plymouth Brother hung
round me with a sort of yearning interest, and returned at least thrice
to make sure I was enjoying my meal.  His behaviour touched me deeply at
the time, and even now moves me in recollection.  He feared to intrude,
but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society; and he seemed
never weary of shaking me by the hand.

When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, I sat for near
half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who talked pleasantly
over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the beauties of the Tarn, and
old family affections, broken up when young folk go from home, yet still
subsisting.  Hers, I am sure, was a sweet nature, with a country
plainness and much delicacy underneath; and he who takes her to his heart
will doubtless be a fortunate young man.

The valley below La Vernede pleased me more and more as I went forward.
Now the hills approached from either hand, naked and crumbling, and
walled in the river between cliffs; and now the valley widened and became
green.  The road led me past the old castle of Miral on a steep; past a
battlemented monastery, long since broken up and turned into a church and
parsonage; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocures,
sitting among vineyards, and meadows, and orchards thick with red apples,
and where, along the highway, they were knocking down walnuts from the
roadside trees, and gathering them in sacks and baskets.  The hills,
however much the vale might open, were still tall and bare, with cliffy
battlements and here and there a pointed summit; and the Tarn still
rattled through the stones with a mountain noise.  I had been led, by
bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a horrific country after
the heart of Byron; but to my Scottish eyes it seemed smiling and
plentiful, as the weather still gave an impression of high summer to my
Scottish body; although the chestnuts were already picked out by the
autumn, and the poplars, that here began to mingle with them, had turned
into pale gold against the approach of winter.

There was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, that
explained to me the spirit of the Southern Covenanters.  Those who took
to the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had all gloomy and
bedevilled thoughts; for once that they received God's comfort they would
be twice engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and
supporting visions.  They dealt much more in blood, both given and taken;
yet I find no obsession of the Evil One in their records.  With a light
conscience, they pursued their life in these rough times and
circumstances.  The soul of Seguier, let us not forget, was like a
garden.  They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge that has no
parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they might be certain
of the cause, could never rest confident of the person.

'We flew,' says one old Camisard, 'when we heard the sound of
psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings.  We felt within us an animating
ardour, a transporting desire.  The feeling cannot be expressed in words.
It is a thing that must have been experienced to be understood.  However
weary we might be, we thought no more of our weariness, and grew light so
soon as the psalms fell upon our ears.'

The valley of the Tarn and the people whom I met at La Vernede not only
explain to me this passage, but the twenty years of suffering which
those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves
to war, endured with the meekness of children and the constancy of saints
and peasants.