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Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne ..............................................................................................................1

The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth

beginning, I had the best of luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness

of this world all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend.

He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward

of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his

meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for them in

every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet through the letter is directed

to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall a man be proud,

if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself

IN a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a

month of fine days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language,

and for unparalleled political dissension. There are adherents of each of the four French parties Legitimists,

Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans in this little mountaintown; and they all hate, loathe, decry, and

calumniate each other. Except for business purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have

laid aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain Poland. In the midst of this Babylon I found

myself a rallying point; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely

from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a

man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this

big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes. A traveller of

my sort was a thing hitherto unheard of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man who

should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like one setting forth for the inclement

Pole. All were ready to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathisers supported me at the critical moment

of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a

It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road

lay there was no Indian summer to be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have the

means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the

necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by

those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to

strike again; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A sleepingsack, on the

other hand, is always ready you have only to get into it; it serves a double purpose a bed by night, a

portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every curious passerby. This

is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is but a troubled restingplace; you become a public character; the

convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open, and be up

before the day. I decided on a sleepingsack; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for

myself and my advisers, a sleepingsack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home.

This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by

night and as the top and bottom of the sack by day. I call it 'the sack,' but it was never a sack by more than

courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cartcloth without and blue sheep's fur within.

It was commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for one; and at a

pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur

cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears and a band to pass under my nose like a respirator; and in case of

heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, and a bent

It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It

remained to choose a beast of burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid, delicate in

eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your

brute as to a fellow galleyslave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's an uncertain and

exacting ally, and adds thirtyfold to the troubles of the voyager. What I required was something cheap and

small and hardy, and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to a donkey.

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by

streetboys, and known to fame as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive

sheass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined underjaw.

There was something neat and highbred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the

spot. Our first interview was in Monastier marketplace. To prove her good temper, one child after another

was set upon her back to ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air; until a want of

confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was discontinued from a dearth of

subjects. I was already backed by a deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers

and sellers came round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I and Father Adam were the centre of a

hubbub for near half an hour. At length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty five francs

and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I

instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was

I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiardroom at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered

the brandy. He professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often bought white

bread for the donkey when he had been content with black bread for himself; but this, according to the best

authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet it

By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle;

and I thoughtfully completed my kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armoury and utensils, I took a

revolver, a little spiritlamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jackknife and a large leather

flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing besides my travelling wear of

country velveteen, pilotcoat, and knitted spencer some books, and my railwayrug, which, being also in

the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of

chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I carried about my person, was easily stowed

into the sheepskin bag; and by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage

than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For more immediate needs I took a leg of cold

mutton, a bottle of Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an eggbeater, and a considerable quantity of

black bread and white, like Father Adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the

Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous

misadventures, and with sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the

nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the

true, patent danger was left out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my

own mishaps, let me in two words relate the lesson of my experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends,

and hung at full length not doubled, for your life across the packsaddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle

will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to

overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to

On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we began to load the donkey; and ten minutes

after, my hopes were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I returned it

to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from wall to

wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be

more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads; and, at any rate, we were very warm and

I had a common donkey packsaddle a BARDE, as they call it fitted upon Modestine; and once more

loaded her with my effects. The doubled sack, my pilotcoat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my

waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing the white bread, the mutton, and the

bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous

content. In such a monstrous deck cargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing below to

balance, on a brandnew packsaddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with

brandnew girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless traveller

should have seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, was the work of too many

sympathisers to be very artfully designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a will; as many as three at a

time would have a foot against Modestine's quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned

afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise of force, can make a more solid job than

halfadozen heated and enthusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice; even after the misadventure of the pad

nothing could disturb my security, and I went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to the slaughter.

THE bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill

through the common. As long as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some

laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She tripped along upon her four small hoofs

with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small under

the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford without difficulty there was no doubt about

the matter, she was docility itself and once on the other bank, where the road begins to mount through

pinewoods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey.

Modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet. Another

application had the same effect, and so with the third. I am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes

against my conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over from head to

foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her breathing was distressed; it was plain that she could go no

faster on a hill. God forbid, thought I, that I should brutalise this innocent creature; let her go at her own pace,

What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to describe; it was something as much slower than a walk

as a walk is slower than a run; it kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five

minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close at

hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a few

yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse. The thought that this was to last from

here to Alais nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, this promised to be the most tedious. I tried

to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision ever

present to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever infinitesimally moving,

foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the

In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy

countenance, and arrayed in the green tailcoat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped

'ET VOUS MARCHEZ COMME CA!' cried he; and, throwing back his head, he laughed long and heartily. I

watched him, half prepared to feel offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, 'You must have no pity

on these animals,' said he; and, plucking a switch out of a thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the

sternworks, uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a good round pace, which she kept

up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least symptom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside

us. Her former panting and shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of comedy.

My DEUS EX MACHINA, before he left me, supplied some excellent, if inhumane, advice; presented me

with the switch, which he declared she would feel more tenderly than my cane; and finally taught me the true

cry or masonic word of donkeydrivers, 'Proot!' All the time, he regarded me with a comical, incredulous air,

which was embarrassing to confront; and smiled over my donkeydriving, as I might have smiled over his

I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned the art to perfection. And certainly Modestine did

wonders for the rest of the forenoon, and I had a breathing space to look about me. It was Sabbath; the

mountainfields were all vacant in the sunshine; and as we came down through St. Martin de Frugeres, the

church was crowded to the door, there were people kneeling without upon the steps, and the sound of the

priest's chanting came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a home feeling on the spot; for I am a

countryman of the Sabbath, so to speak, and all Sabbath observances, like a Scottish accent, strike in me

mixed feelings, grateful and the reverse. It is only a traveller, hurrying by like a person from another planet,

who can rightly enjoy the peace and beauty of the great ascetic feast. The sight of the resting country does his

spirit good. There is something better than music in the wide unusual silence; and it disposes him to amiable

In this pleasant humour I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Chateau

Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them.

Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems

absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for

donkeys, join it to the outer world of France; and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner,

or look up at the snowclad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in an isolation, you would

think, like that of Homer's Cyclops. But it is not so; the postman reaches Goudet with the letterbag; the

aspiring youth of Goudet are within a day's walk of the railway at Le Puy; and here in the inn you may find

an engraved portrait of the host's nephew, Regis Senac, 'Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two

Americas,' a distinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars, at Tammany Hall, New

I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon

the other side, 'Proot!' seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted mellifluously like a

suckingdove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace;

nothing but a blow would move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly

belabouring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she relapsed into her own private gait. I think I

never heard of any one in as mean a situation. I must reach the lake of Bouchet, where I meant to camp,

before sundown, and, to have even a hope of this, I must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The

sound of my own blows sickened me. Once, when I looked at her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my

acquaintance who formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my cruelty.

To make matters worse, we encountered another donkey, ranging at will upon the roadside; and this other

donkey chanced to be a gentleman. He and Modestine met nickering for joy, and I had to separate the pair

and beat down their young romance with a renewed and feverish bastinado. If the other donkey had had the

heart of a male under his hide, he would have fallen upon me tooth and hoof; and this was a kind of

consolation he was plainly unworthy of Modestine's affection. But the incident saddened me, as did

It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun upon my shoulders; and I had to labour so

consistently with my stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket, and

the pilotcoat would take an ugly slew to one side or the other; and I had to stop Modestine, just when I had

got her to a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. And at

last, in the village of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole hypothec turned round and grovelled in the dust below

the donkey's belly. She, none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to smile; and a party of one

man, two women, and two children came up, and, standing round me in a halfcircle, encouraged her by their

I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted; and the instant I had done so, without hesitation, it

toppled and fell down upon the other side. Judge if I was hot! And yet not a hand was offered to assist me.

The man, indeed, told me I ought to have a package of a different shape. I suggested, if he knew nothing

better to the point in my predicament, he might hold his tongue. And the goodnatured dog agreed with me

smilingly. It was the most despicable fix. I must plainly content myself with the pack for Modestine, and take

the following items for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quartflask, a pilotjacket heavily weighted in

the pockets, two pounds of black bread, and an open basket full of meats and bottles. I believe I may say I am

not devoid of greatness of soul; for I did not recoil from this infamous burden. I disposed it, Heaven knows

how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was

indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length; and, encumbered as

I was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with six or

seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed loudly as they saw

I remembered having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a

jackass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came

upon me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But oh, what a cruel thing is a farce to

A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, set her heart upon a byroad, and positively

refused to leave it. I dropped all my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice across

the face. It was pitiful to see her lift her head with shut eyes, as if waiting for another blow. I came very near

crying; but I did a wiser thing than that, and sat squarely down by the roadside to consider my situation under

the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. Modestine, in the meanwhile, munched some black

bread with a contrite hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice to the gods of shipwreck. I

threw away the empty bottle destined to carry milk; I threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act

by general average, kept the black bread for Modestine; lastly, I threw away the cold leg of mutton and the

eggwhisk, although this last was dear to my heart. Thus I found room for everything in the basket, and even

stowed the boatingcoat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it under one arm; and although the

cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that I set

I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cruelly I chastised her. If I were to reach the lakeside before

dark, she must bestir her little shanks to some tune. Already the sun had gone down into a windylooking

mist; and although there were still a few streaks of gold far off to the east on the hills and the black

firwoods, all was cold and grey about our onward path. An infinity of little country byroads led hither and

thither among the fields. It was the most pointless labyrinth. I could see my destination overhead, or rather

the peak that dominates it; but choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by turning away from it, and

sneaking back towards the valley, or northward along the margin of the hills. The failing light, the waning

colour, the naked, unhomely, stony country through which I was travelling, threw me into some

despondency. I promise you, the stick was not idle; I think every decent step that Modestine took must have

cost me at least two emphatic blows. There was not another sound in the neighbourhood but that of my

Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the dust, and, as by enchantment, all the cords were

simultaneously loosened, and the road scattered with my dear possessions. The packing was to begin again

from the beginning; and as I had to invent a new and better system, I do not doubt but I lost half an hour. It

began to be dusk in earnest as I reached a wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of being a road which

should lead everywhere at the same time; and I was falling into something not unlike despair when I saw two

figures stalking towards me over the stones. They walked one behind the other like tramps, but their pace was

remarkable. The son led the way, a tall, illmade, sombre, Scottishlooking man; the mother followed, all in

her Sunday's best, with an elegantly embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and proffering, as

she strode along with kilted petticoats, a string of obscene and blasphemous oaths.

I hailed the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west and northwest, muttered an inaudible

comment, and, without slackening his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my path.

The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I shouted and shouted after them, but they

continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself, I

was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped as I drew near, the mother still cursing;

and I could see she was a handsome, motherly, respectablelooking woman. The son once more answered me

roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But this time I simply collared the mother, who was

nearest me, and, apologising for my violence, declared that I could not let them go until they had put me on

my road. They were neither of them offended rather mollified than otherwise; told me I had only to follow

them; and then the mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I replied, in the Scottish

manner, by inquiring if she had far to go herself. She told me, with another oath, that she had an hour and a

half's road before her. And then, without salutation, the pair strode forward again up the hillside in the

I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, after a sharp ascent of twenty minutes, reached the

edge of a plateau. The view, looking back on my day's journey, was both wild and sad. Mount Mezenc and

the peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a cold glitter in the east; and the intervening

field of hills had fallen together into one broad wash of shadow, except here and there the outline of a

wooded sugarloaf in black, here and there a white irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here

and there a blot where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Laussonne wandered in a gorge.

Soon we were on a highroad, and surprise seized on my mind as I beheld a village of some magnitude close

at hand; for I had been told that the neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout. The road

smoked in the twilight with children driving home cattle from the fields; and a pair of mounted stridelegged

women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at a hammering trot from the canton where they had been to

church and market. I asked one of the children where I was. At Bouchet St. Nicolas, he told me. Thither,

about a mile south of my destination, and on the other side of a respectable summit, had these confused roads

and treacherous peasantry conducted me. My shoulder was cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like

toothache from perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my design to camp, and asked for the AUBERGE.

THE AUBERGE of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least pretentious I have ever visited; but I saw many

more of the like upon my journey. Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of two

stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine and I could hear

each other dining; furniture of the plainest, earthern floors, a single bedchamber for travellers, and that

without any convenience but beds. In the kitchen cooking and eating go forward side by side, and the family

sleep at night. Any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table. The food is

sometimes spare; hard fish and omelette have been my portion more than once; the wine is of the smallest,

the brandy abominable to man; and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and rubbing against your

But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves friendly and considerate. As soon as you

cross the doors you cease to be a stranger; and although these peasantry are rude and forbidding on the

highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I

uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to join me. He would take but little.

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

In these hedgeinns the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no other will be

supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid. My knife was

cordially admired by the landlord of Bouchet, and the spring filled him with wonder.

'I should never have guessed that,' he said. 'I would bet,' he added, weighing it in his hand, 'that this cost you

He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, astonishingly ignorant. His wife, who was not so

pleasant in her manners, knew how to read, although I do not suppose she ever did so. She had a share of

And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. There was no contempt on her part, and no

I was tightly crossexamined about my journey; and the lady understood in a moment, and sketched out what

I should put into my book when I got home. 'Whether people harvest or not in such or such a place; if there

were forests; studies of manners; what, for example, I and the master of the house say to you; the beauties of

'In the morning,' said the husband, 'I will make you something better than your cane. Such a beast as that feels

nothing; it is in the proverb DUR COMME UN ANE; you might beat her insensible with a cudgel, and yet

The sleepingroom was furnished with two beds. I had one; and I will own I was a little abashed to find a

young man and his wife and child in the act of mounting into the other. This was my first experience of the

sort; and if I am always to feel equally silly and extraneous, I pray God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes

to myself, and know nothing of the woman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit

embarrassed by my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was more trying to me than to the pair. A

pair keep each other in countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could not help

attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my

flask. He told me that he was a cooper of Alais travelling to St. Etienne in search of work, and that in his

spare moments he followed the fatal calling of a maker of matches. Me he readily enough divined to be a

I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23rd), and hastened my toilette guiltily, so as to leave a

clear field for madam, the cooper's wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood of

Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty clouds flew fast and low; the wind

piped over the naked platform; and the only speck of colour was away behind Mount Mezenc and the eastern

It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea; and I had to bury my hands in my pockets

and trot. People were trooping out to the labours of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to stare

upon the stranger. I had seen them coming back last night, I saw them going afield again; and there was the

When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the landlady was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's

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

Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse physical circumstances, and, by a startling

Blessed be the man who invented goads! Blessed the innkeeper of Bouchet St. Nicolas, who introduced me to

their use! This plain wand, with an eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it in my hands.

Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. A prick, and she passed the most inviting stable door. A prick, and

she broke forth into a gallant little trotlet that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable speed, when all was

said; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the best of it. But what a heavenly change since yesterday!

No more wielding of the ugly cudgel; no more flailing with an aching arm; no more broadsword exercise, but

a discreet and gentlemanly fence. And what although now and then a drop of blood should appear on

Modestine's mouse coloured wedgelike rump? I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed; but yesterday's

exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The perverse little devil, since she would not be taken with

It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride legged ladies and a pair of postrunners, the

road was dead solitary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce remember an incident but one. A handsome foal with

a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch of common, sniffed the air martially as one about

to do great deeds, and suddenly thinking otherwise in his green young heart, put about and galloped off as he

had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long while afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up,

and heard the note of his bell; and when I struck the highroad, the song of the telegraphwires seemed to

Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, surrounded by rich meadows. They were cutting

aftermath on all sides, which gave the neighbourhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay.

On the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow

autumn landscape, with black blots of firwood and white roads wandering through the hills. Over all this the

clouds shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing, exaggerating height and distance,

and throwing into still higher relief the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, but one

stimulating to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and all that I beheld lay in another county

wild Gevaudan, mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves.

Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveller's advance; and you may trudge through all our

comfortable Europe, and not meet with an adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on

the frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever memorable BEAST, the Napoleon Bonaparte of

wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women

and children and 'shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty'; he pursued armed horsemen; he has been seen at

broad noonday chasing a postchaise and outrider along the king's highroad, and chaise and outrider fleeing

before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered for

his head. And yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for that.

'Though I could reach from pole to pole,' sang Alexander Pope; the Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all

wolves had been as this wolf, they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie Berthet has made him the

I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's desire that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles,

'who performed many miracles, although she was of wood'; and before threequarters of an hour I was

goading Modestine down the steep descent that leads to Langogne on the Allier. On both sides of the road, in

big dusty fields, farmers were preparing for next spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of greatnecked stolid oxen

were patiently haling at the plough. I saw one of these mild formidable servants of the glebe, who took a

sudden interest in Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying lay at an angle to the road,

and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed

round his big honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the plough

and proceed to reascend the field. From all these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a

labourer here and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind carried away a thin dust like so

much smoke. It was a fine, busy, breathing, rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, the highlands of

I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the Allier; so near are these two confluents in their

youth. Just at the bridge of Langogne, as the longpromised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of some seven

or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 'D'OU'STCEQUE VOUS VENEZ?' She did it with so

high an air that she set me laughing; and this cut her to the quick. She was evidently one who reckoned on

respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I crossed the bridge and entered the county of

The way also here was very wearisome through dirt and slabbiness; nor was there on all this ground so much

THE next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock in the afternoon before I got my journal written

up and my knapsack repaired, for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more ado

with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard l'Eveque, a place on the borders of the

forest of Mercoire. A man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce too

ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey might cover the same distance in four hours.

All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily,

although slowly; plentiful hurrying clouds some dragging veils of straight rain shower, others massed and

luminous as though promising snow careered out of the north and followed me along my way. I was soon

out of the cultivated basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen, and suchlike sights of the

country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow,

here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields, these were the characters of the country. Hill and

valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattletracks wandered in and out of one another,

split into three or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on hillsides or at the

There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make a passage in this uneven country and

through this intermittent labyrinth of tracks. It must have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and

went on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a

lull of the wind, I issued from a firwood where I had long been wandering, and found, not the lookedfor

village, but another marish bottom among roughandtumble hills. For some time past I had heard the

ringing of cattlebells ahead; and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows

and perhaps as many more black figures, which I conjectured to be children, although the mist had almost

unrecognisably exaggerated their forms. These were all silently following each other round and round in a

circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and reverences. A dance of children appeals to very

innocent and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold.

Even I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The

next, I was pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she

went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the turf or among heather, and the

brute became demented. The tendency of lost travellers to go round in a circle was developed in her to the

degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a

While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle began to disperse, until only a pair

of girls remained behind. From these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were but little

disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into his house, and barricaded the door on my

approach; and I might beat and shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me a

direction which, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood, complacently watched me going wrong without

adding a sign. He did not care a stalk of parsley if I wandered all night upon the hills! As for these two girls,

they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief. One put out her tongue at me, the

other bade me follow the cows; and they both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of

Gevaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; I began to think of him with sympathy.

Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into another wood and upon a wellmarked road. It

grew darker and darker. Modestine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own

accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first sign of intelligence I had occasion to

remark in her. At the same time, the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain

came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sighted some red windows in the dusk. This

was the hamlet of Fouzilhic; three houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. Here I found a delightful old

man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on the road for Cheylard. He would hear of

no reward; but shook his hands above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly, in

All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably

softened in my bosom. Alas, and I was on the brink of new and greater miseries! Suddenly, at a single swoop,

the night fell. I have been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a

glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a tree, this

was all that I could discriminate. The sky was simply darkness overhead; even the flying clouds pursued their

way invisibly to human eyesight. I could not distinguish my hand at arm'slength from the track, nor my

Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of the country, into three or four in a piece of rocky

meadow. Since Modestine had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this predicament.

But the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from the name; in half a minute she was clambering

round and round among some boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have camped

long before had I been properly provided; but as this was to be so short a stage, I had brought no wine, no

bread for myself, and little over a pound for my lady friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were both

handsomely wetted by the showers. But now, if I could have found some water, I should have camped at once

in spite of all. Water, however, being entirely absent, except in the form of rain, I determined to return to

Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little farther on my way 'a little farther lend thy guiding hand.'

The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this sensible roaring blackness I was sure of nothing but

the direction of the wind. To this I set my face; the road had disappeared, and I went across country, now in

marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to Modestine, until I came once more in sight of some red

windows. This time they were differently disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant

from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped

forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging midleg in bog, until I gained the entrance of the village. In the

first lighted house there was a woman who would not open to me. She could do nothing, she cried to me

through the door, being alone and lame; but if I would apply at the next house, there was a man who could

They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine

the wayfarer. The man was not illlooking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned against the doorpost, and heard

I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I rose as high as ten francs; but he continued to shake his

'CE N'EST PAS CA,' he said at length, and with evident difficulty; 'but I am not going to cross the door

'That is no affair of yours,' I returned, for I was not going to indulge his bestial curiosity; 'it changes nothing

'C'EST VRAI, CA,' he acknowledged, with a laugh; 'OUI, C'EST VRAI. ET D'OU VENEZVOUS?'

'Oh,' said I, 'I am not going to answer any of your questions, so you may spare yourself the trouble of putting

them. I am late enough already; I want help. If you will not guide me yourself, at least help me to find some

'Hold on,' he cried suddenly. 'Was it not you who passed in the meadow while it was still day?'

'Yes, yes,' said the girl, whom I had not hitherto recognised; 'it was monsieur; I told him to follow the cow.'

'The great thing,' said I, 'is to make an end of it'; and once more proposed that he should help me to find a

'No,' he cried, drawing a thought backward, and again intrenching himself behind one of his former phrases;

I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror struggling on his face with unaffected shame; he was smiling pitifully

and wetting his lip with his tongue, like a detected schoolboy. I drew a brief picture of my state, and asked

And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who hastened to retire within their fortifications; and

the famous door was closed again, but not till I had overheard the sound of laughter. FILIA BARBARA

The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I ploughed distressfully among stones and rubbishheaps. All

the other houses in the village were both dark and silent; and though I knocked at here and there a door, my

knocking was unanswered. It was a bad business; I gave up Fouzilhac with my curses. The rain had stopped,

and the wind, which still kept rising, began to dry my coat and trousers. 'Very well,' thought I, 'water or no

water, I must camp.' But the first thing was to return to Modestine. I am pretty sure I was twenty minutes

groping for my lady in the dark; and if it had not been for the unkindly services of the bog, into which I once

more stumbled, I might have still been groping for her at the dawn. My next business was to gain the shelter

of a wood, for the wind was cold as well as boisterous. How, in this wellwooded district, I should have been

so long in finding one, is another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures; but I will take my oath

At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, suddenly crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated

blackness right in front. I call it a cave without exaggeration; to pass below that arch of leaves was like

entering a dungeon. I felt about until my hand encountered a stout branch, and to this I tied Modestine, a

haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then I lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the

road, and unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where the lantern was; but where were the candles? I

groped and groped among the tumbled articles, and, while I was thus groping, suddenly I touched the

spiritlamp. Salvation! This would serve my turn as well. The wind roared unwearyingly among the trees; I

could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churning through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my

encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. At the second match the wick caught

flame. The light was both livid and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe, and doubled the darkness of

I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up half the black bread for her supper, reserving

the other half against the morning. Then I gathered what I should want within reach, took off my wet boots

and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my

sleeping bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in like a bambino. I opened a tin of

Bologna sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all I had to eat. It may sound offensive, but I ate

them together, bite by bite, by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat

brandy: a revolting beverage in itself. But I was rare and hungry; ate well, and smoked one of the best

cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over my neck

and eyes, put my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down among the sheepskins.

I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable

excitement to which my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped

between them, and they would no more come separate. The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes

it sounded for minutes together with a steady, even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell and

burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the

afternoon. Night after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert of

the wind among the woods; but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I

was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these

woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body

and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to listen and distinguish, and my last

Twice in the course of the dark hours once when a stone galled me underneath the sack, and again when the

poor patient Modestine, growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road I was recalled for a brief while

to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lacelike edge of the foliage against the sky. When

I awoke for the third time (Wednesday, September 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother

of the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there

was Modestine tied to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed

my eyes again, and set to thinking over the experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and

pleasant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me would not have been

there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience,

except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of Peyrat's PASTORS OF THE DESERT

among the mixed contents of my sleepingbag; nay, more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with

With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and, breaking up the rest of the bread for

Modestine, strolled about to see in what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with a

mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have been after an adventure all my life, a

pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a

random woodside nook in Gevaudan not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the

first man upon the earth, an inland castaway was to find a fraction of my daydreams realised. I was on the

skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and in

front, it broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy dale. All around there were bare

hilltops, some near, some far away, as the perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much higher

than the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly.

Overhead the sky was full of strings and shreds of vapour, flying, vanishing, reappearing, and turning about

an axis like tumblers, as the wind hounded them through heaven. It was wild weather and famishing cold. I

ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the cold should have

time to disable my fingers. And by the time I had got all this done, and had made my pack and bound it on

the packsaddle, the day was tiptoe on the threshold of the east. We had not gone many steps along the lane,

before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold over some cloud mountains that lay ranged along the

The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly forward. I buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on

in a pleasant frame of mind with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there was Fouzilhic once more in front

of me. Nor only that, but there was the old gentleman who had escorted me so far the night before, running

I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me

go; but when he heard of the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind.

And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about half a mile, and until I was almost within sight of

CANDIDLY, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. A few broken ends of village, with no particular

street, but a succession of open places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine to Our

Lady of all Graces on the summit of a little hill; and all this, upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a

naked valley. What went ye out for to see? thought I to myself. But the place had a life of its own. I found a

board, commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive

and tottering church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants subscribed fortyeight francs ten centimes for the

'Work of the Propagation of the Faith.' Some of this, I could not help hoping, would be applied to my native

land. Cheylard scrapes together halfpence for the darkened souls in Edinburgh; while Balquhidder and

Dunrossness bemoan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each

The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not illtodo family was in the kitchen:

the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the platerack, the mealchest, and the photograph of the parish priest.

There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stairfoot soon after my arrival,

and a sixth would ere long be forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. They were much

interested in my misadventure. The wood in which I had slept belonged to them; the man of Fouzilhac they

thought a monster of iniquity, and counselled me warmly to summon him at law 'because I might have

died.' The good wife was horrorstricken to see me drink over a pint of uncreamed milk.

After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she having an infinity of things to arrange, I was

permitted, nay requested, to make a bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and gaiters were hung up to dry,

and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest daughter let down a hinged table in the

chimney corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, drank my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before I

left. The table was thick with dust; for, as they explained, it was not used except in winter weather. I had a

clear look up the vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapour, to the sky; and whenever a

The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when I came to charge Modestine showed himself full of the

prudence of his art. 'You will have to change this package,' said he; 'it ought to be in two parts, and then you

I explained that I wanted no more weight; and for no donkey hitherto created would I cut my sleepingbag in

'It fatigues her, however,' said the innkeeper; 'it fatigues her greatly on the march. Look.'

Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on the inside, and blood was running from under her

tail. They told me when I started, and I was ready to believe it, that before a few days I should come to love

Modestine like a dog. Three days had passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as

cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty enough to look at; but then she had given proof

of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and illjudged

lightheartedness. And I own this new discovery seemed another point against her. What the devil was the

good of a she ass if she could not carry a sleepingbag and a few necessaries? I saw the end of the fable

rapidly approaching, when I should have to carry Modestine. AEsop was the man to know the world! I assure

It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted me upon the way; it was a leaden business

altogether. For first, the wind blew so rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one hand from Cheylard to

Luc; and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly countries in the world. It was like the worst

of the Scottish Highlands, only worse; cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life.

A road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the road was marked by upright pillars, to

Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my muchinventing spirit can

suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to

move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this featherbed of civilisation,

and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more

preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a

packsaddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and

compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?

I came out at length above the Allier. A more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to

fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks

alternately naked and hairy with pines. The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the

ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall

white statue of Our Lady, which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the

6th of October. Through this sorry landscape trickled the Allier and a tributary of nearly equal size, which

came down to join it through a broad nude valley in Vivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, and the

clouds massed in squadron; but the fierce wind still hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly

Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged between hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was

there any notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brandnew Madonna. But the

inn was clean and large. The kitchen, with its two boxbeds hung with clean check curtains, with its wide

stone chimney, its chimneyshelf four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious statuettes, its

array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama

kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise. Nor was the scene disgraced by the landlady, a

handsome, silent, dark old woman, clothed and hooded in black like a nun. Even the public bedroom had a

character of its own, with the long deal tables and benches, where fifty might have dined, set out as for a

harvesthome, and the three boxbeds along the wall. In one of these, lying on straw and covered with a pair

of tablenapkins, did I do penance all night long in gooseflesh and chattering teeth, and sigh, from time to

NEXT morning (Thursday, 20th September) I took the road in a new order. The sack was no longer doubled,

but hung at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging out of

either end. It was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would ensure stability,

blow high, blow low. But it was not without a pang that I had so decided. For although I had purchased a new

cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet jealously uneasy lest the flaps should tumble out and scatter

My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march of Vivarais and Gevaudan. The hills of Gevaudan

on the right were a little more naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais upon the left, and the former had a

monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in solitary burrs upon the

shoulders and the summits. Black bricks of firwood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and here

and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the river; the only bit of railway in Gevaudan, although

there are many proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell me, a station standing ready

built in Mende. A year or two hence and this may be another world. The desert is beleaguered. Now may

some Languedocian Wordsworth turn the sonnet into PATOIS: 'Mountains and vales and floods, heard YE

At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left

among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardeche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange

destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter of a

pinewood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire,

closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock,

the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not a sign of

man's hand in all the prospect; and indeed not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation

had walked in twisted footpaths, in and out among the beeches, and up and down upon the channelled slopes.

The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly in

the sun. I drew a long breath. It was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction for the

human heart. I own I like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like the

sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, I should go the length of

But if things had grown better to the south, it was still desolate and inclement near at hand. A spidery cross

on every hilltop marked the neighbourhood of a religious house; and a quarter of a mile beyond, the outlook

southward opening out and growing bolder with every step, a white statue of the Virgin at the corner of a

young plantation directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows. Here, then, I struck leftward, and pursued

my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards the

I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why,

my heart sank within me at the sound. I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the

monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant education. And suddenly, on turning

a corner, fear took hold on me from head to foot slavish, superstitious fear; and though I did not stop in my

advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the

country of the dead. For there, upon the narrow newmade road, between the stripling pines, was a mediaeval

friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs. Every Sunday of my childhood I used to study the Hermits of Marco

Sadeler enchanting prints, full of wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as large as a county, for the

imagination to go atravelling in; and here, sure enough, was one of Marco Sadeler's heroes. He was robed in

white like any spectre, and the hood falling back, in the instancy of his contention with the barrow, disclosed

a pate as bald and yellow as a skull. He might have been buried any time these thousand years, and all the

I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I address a person who was under a vow of silence?

Clearly not. But drawing near, I doffed my cap to him with a faraway superstitious reverence. He nodded

back, and cheerfully addressed me. Was I going to the monastery? Who was I? An Englishman? Ah, an

A Scotsman? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman before. And he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny

countenance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I learned with

disgust that I could not be received at Our Lady of the Snows; I might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all.

And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out that I was not a pedlar, but a literary man, who drew landscapes

and was going to write a book, he changed his manner of thinking as to my reception (for I fear they respect

persons even in a Trappist monastery), and told me I must be sure to ask for the Father Prior, and state my

case to him in full. On second thoughts he determined to go down with me himself; he thought he could

It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young Irishmen, all priests long since, who had received

newspapers and kept him informed of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in England. And he asked me eagerly

after Dr. Pusey, for whose conversion the good man had continued ever since to pray night and morning.

'I thought he was very near the truth,' he said; 'and he will reach it yet; there is so much virtue in prayer.'

He must be a stiff, ungodly Protestant who can take anything but pleasure in this kind and hopeful story.

While he was thus near the subject, the good father asked me if I were a Christian; and when he found I was

The road which we were following, and which this stalwart father had made with his own two hands within

the space of a year, came to a corner, and showed us some white buildings a little farther on beyond the

wood. At the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the monastery. Father

'I must not speak to you down there,' he said. 'Ask for the Brother Porter, and all will be well. But try to see

me as you go out again through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made your

And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and crying out twice, 'I must not speak, I must not

I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to revive my terrors. But where one was so good

and simple, why should not all be alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as

Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would permit. It was the first door, in my

acquaintance of her, which she had not shown an indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form,

though with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaller, and a pair of brownrobed brothers

came to the gate and spoke with me a while. I think my sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled

the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it to the Father Prior, But whether it

was my address, or the sack, or the idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on

strangers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no difficulty as to my reception. Modestine was led away by

a layman to the stables, and I and my pack were received into Our Lady of the Snows.

FATHER MICHAEL, a pleasant, freshfaced, smiling man, perhaps of thirtyfive, took me to the pantry,

and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say he listened to

my prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly, when I

remember that I descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more than

eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken bread, I can well understand that he would find

an earthly savour in my conversation. But his manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious; and I find I

The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery garden. This is no more than the main

court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of particoloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the

Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around it foursquare, bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and

weather, and with no other features than a belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in

brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and when I first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling

on the terrace at their prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood commands

it on the other. It lies exposed to wind; the snow falls off and on from October to May, and sometimes lies six

weeks on end; but if they stood in Eden, with a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would offer

the same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my part, on this wild September day, before I was called to

When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a hearty conversible Frenchman (for all those who

wait on strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a little room in that part of the building which is set

apart for MM. LES RETRAITANTS. It was clean and whitewashed, and furnished with strict necessaries, a

crucifix, a bust of the late Pope, the IMITATION in French, a book of religious meditations, and the LIFE OF

ELIZABETH SETON, evangelist, it would appear, of North America and of New England in particular. As

far as my experience goes, there is a fair field for some more evangelisation in these quarters; but think of

Cotton Mather! I should like to give him a reading of this little work in heaven, where I hope he dwells; but

perhaps he knows all that already, and much more; and perhaps he and Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and

gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the table, to conclude the inventory of the room, hung

a set of regulations for MM. LES RETRAITANTS: what services they should attend, when they were to tell

their beads or meditate, and when they were to rise and go to rest. At the foot was a notable N.B.: 'LE

BONNES RESOLUTIONS, ETC.' To make good resolutions, indeed! You might talk as fruitfully of making

I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Ambrose returned. An English boarder, it appeared, would like

to speak with me. I professed my willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young, little Irishman of fifty, a

deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in default of knowledge, I

can only call the ecclesiastical shako. He had lived seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in Belgium, and

now five at Our Lady of the Snows; he never saw an English newspaper; he spoke French imperfectly, and

had he spoken it like a native, there was not much chance of conversation where he dwelt. With this, he was a

man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and simpleminded like a child. If I was pleased to have a guide

about the monastery, he was no less delighted to see an English face and hear an English tongue.

He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries, Hebrew Bibles, and the Waverley

Novels. Thence he led me to the cloisters, into the chapterhouse, through the vestry, where the brothers'

gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his religious name upon a board names full of

legendary suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, Raphael, or Pacifique; into the library, where were all

the works of Veuillot and Chateaubriand, and the ODES ET BALLADES, if you please, and even Moliere, to

say nothing of innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians. Thence my good

Irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, and make cartwheels, and take

photographs; where one superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits. For in a

Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his own choice, apart from his religious duties and the

general labours of the house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and join in the haymaking

if he has a hand to stir; but in his private hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on what

he likes. Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with literature; while Father Apollinaris busies himself

in making roads, and the Abbot employs himself in binding books. It is not so long since this Abbot was

consecrated, by the way; and on that occasion, by a special grace, his mother was permitted to enter the

chapel and witness the ceremony of consecration. A proud day for her to have a son a mitred abbot; it makes

In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no

more regard to our passage than if we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good deacon had a permission to

ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in

swimming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain air of

The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two meals a day; but it was already time for

their grand fast, which begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and during which they eat but

once in the twentyfour hours, and that at two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil

and vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly; and though each is allowed

a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly

overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the

labour of life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And

I am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A

happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this

bleak upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, and death no

infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they

must live healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour; and the only morbid

sign that I could observe, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather to increase the general

Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweettempered, with what I can only call a holy cheerfulness in

air and conversation. There is a note, in the direction to visitors, telling them not to be offended at the curt

speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to speak little. The note might have been

spared; to a man the hospitallers were all brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the

monastery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conversation. With the exception of Father Michael, who

was a man of the world, they showed themselves full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of subjects in

politics, in voyages, in my sleepingsack and not without a certain pleasure in the sound of their own

As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder how they bear their solemn and cheerless

isolation. And yet, apart from any view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, not only in the exclusion

of women, but in this vow of silence. I have had some experience of lay phalansteries, of an artistic, not to

say a bacchanalian character; and seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily

dispersed. With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. In the neighbourhood of women it is

but a touchandgo association that can be formed among defenceless men; the stronger electricity is sure to

triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and

the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet eyes and a caressing

I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious rule; but there is yet another point in

which the Trappist order appeals to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the morning the clapper goes upon

the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so

infinitesimally is the day divided among different occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example,

hurries from his hutches to the chapel, the chapterroom, or the refectory, all day long: every hour he has an

office to sing, a duty to perform; from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive the

comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and occupied with manifold and changing business. I know

many persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of their lives. Into

how many houses would not the note of the monastery bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring

peace of mind and healthful activity of body! We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool,

From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand the monk's existence. A long novitiate and every

proof of constancy of mind and strength of body is required before admission to the order; but I could not

find that many were discouraged. In the photographer's studio, which figures so strangely among the

outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This

was one of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and drilled and mounted guard for the

proper time among the garrison of Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both sides of life before

deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he returned to finish his novitiate.

This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he

lies in the bed of death as he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent existence; and when the

Liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the

chapel among continual chantings, joybells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and

At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the gallery to hear compline and SALVE

REGINA, with which the Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of those

circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern

simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the

whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, the strong

manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear

trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over and the hour of sleep had come;

and when I remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling

But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth Seton's memoirs a dull work the cold

and the raving of the wind among the pines (for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins the

woods) disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was really

two in the morning, by the first stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel; the

dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labours of their day. The dead in

life there was a chill reflection. And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of the

'Que t'as de belles filles, Girofle! Girofla! Que t'as de belles filles, L'AMOUR LET COMPTERA!'

BUT there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the Snows. At this late season there were not

many boarders; and yet I was not alone in the public part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate,

with a small diningroom on the groundfloor and a whole corridor of cells similar to mine upstairs. I have

stupidly forgotten the board for a regular RETRAITANT; but it was somewhere between three and five

francs a day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like myself might give what they chose as a

freewill offering, but nothing was demanded. I may mention that when I was going away, Father Michael

refused twenty francs as excessive. I explained the reasoning which led me to offer him so much; but even

then, from a curious point of honour, he would not accept it with his own hand. 'I have no right to refuse for

the monastery,' he explained, 'but I should prefer if you would give it to one of the brothers.'

I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at supper I found two other guests. One was a country parish

priest, who had walked over that morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy four days of solitude

and prayer. He was a grenadier in person, with the hale colour and circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he

complained much of how he had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy portrait of

him, striding along, upright, bigboned, with kilted cassock, through the bleak hills of Gevaudan. The other

was a short, grizzling, thickset man, from fortyfive to fifty, dressed in tweed with a knitted spencer, and

the red ribbon of a decoration in his buttonhole. This last was a hard person to classify. He was an old

soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank of commandant; and he retained some of the brisk decisive

manners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon as his resignation was accepted, he had come to Our Lady

of the Snows as a boarder, and, after a brief experience of its ways, had decided to remain as a novice.

Already the new life was beginning to modify his appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet

and smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the

character of each. And certainly here was a man in an interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and

trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly

At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in France, to preach political goodwill and

moderation, and to dwell on the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in England dwell on the example

of Carthage. The priest and the commandant assured me of their sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy

'Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not absolutely agree,' said I, 'but he flies up at

While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but a word in praise of Gambetta's

moderation. The old soldier's countenance was instantly suffused with blood; with the palms of his hands he

'COMMENT, MONSIEUR?' he shouted. 'COMMENT? Gambetta moderate? Will you dare to justify these

But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier

found a warning look directed on his face; the absurdity of his behaviour was brought home to him in a flash;

It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, September 27th), that this couple found out I was a

heretic. I suppose I had misled them by some admiring expressions as to the monastic life around us; and it

was only by a pointblank question that the truth came out. I had been tolerantly used both by simple Father

Apollinaris and astute Father Michael; and the good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weakness,

had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, 'You must be a Catholic and come to heaven.' But I was now

among a different sect of orthodox. These two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the worst of

Scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted aloud like a battlehorse.

'ET VOUS PRETENDEZ MOURIR DANS CETTE ESPECE DE CROYANCE?' he demanded; and there is

But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. 'No, no,' he cried; 'you must change. You have come

I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affections, though I was speaking to a priest and a soldier,

two classes of men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life.

'Your father and mother?' cried the priest. 'Very well; you will convert them in their turn when you go home.'

I think I see my father's face! I would rather tackle the Gaetulian lion in his den than embark on such an

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 fortyeight francs ten centimes during

1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most effective proselytising. 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,

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

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

'C'EST MON CONSEIL COMME ANCIEN MILITAIRE,' observed the commandant; 'ET CELUI DE

'OUI,' added the CURE, sententiously nodding; 'COMME ANCIEN MILITAIRE ET COMME PRETRE.'

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

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 sympathise. But to the CURE the

'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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Gevaudan 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.

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 Pere 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 Gevaudan 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

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

'HE, 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

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 sheepbell 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 pruninghooks, and one of them

was singing the music of a BOURREE. 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,

applecheeked, 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 donkeydrivers. 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 packsaddle. Halfadozen times she was nearly over

backwards on the top of me; halfadozen 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 raindrops 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

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 bullockcart 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

FROM Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to scale a portion of the Lozere. An

illmarked stony droveroad guided me forward; and I met nearly halfadozen bullockcarts descending

from the woods, each laden with a whole pinetree 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 watertap. '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 northeastward upon distant hilltops, 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

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 jewellike, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the

Milky Way. All around me the black firpoints stood upright and stockstill. By the whiteness of the

packsaddle, 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 blueblack 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

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 passkeys 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

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 goodwill 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 pinewoods

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 watertap, 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 mountaintops 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 pinetrees, 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

I drank my waterchocolate, 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

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 halflaughing 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 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,

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 teaurn, 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

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

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 Pie 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 hillform, 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 coffeehouse' 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, pockmarked 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 fiftyfive 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 brainsick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls with which

I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of nothing more notable than the childeating

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

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 breakneck 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. Oaktrees 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 snowwhite 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 seagreen 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

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 highpitched 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

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

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

All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the publichouse, 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

swordplay 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

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

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 Moutpellier 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 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 fiftyfive, 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 secondsight, 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

Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight was rigidly forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer,

and well acquainted with the mountainpaths, 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 woolcarder, tall, blackfaced, 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

The next night, 24th July 1702, a sound disturbed the Inspector of Missions as he sat in his prisonhouse 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 psalmsingers 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

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

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

prisonhouse in ruins, and his body pierced with twoand 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

'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

Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the bridges of the town; and if you are curious

A NEW road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florac by the valley of the Tarn; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs

about halfway 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 ashtrees ran about the hilltops,

like ivy on a ruin; but on the lower slopes, and far up every glen, the Spanish chestnuttrees stood each

foursquare 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

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 topknots, seen near at hand against the sky, have a certain palmlike 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

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

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 standingroom 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 chestnutleaves, of which I found her

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 psalmsinging 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 boxtree 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 pinewoods. 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

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,

It was such a noise as a person would make scratching loudly with a fingernail; 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

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

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

chestnuttree 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

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

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 semipagan 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

And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. Take it how you please, but this was the first and the last

A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a brown nightcap, cleareyed, weatherbeaten, 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.

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

'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.'

'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.'

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

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

truthfinding 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 fellowmen. 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

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

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

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

'We flew,' says one old Camisard, 'when we heard the sound of psalmsinging, 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

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.

ON a branch of the Tarn stands Florac, the seat of a sub prefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes,

many quaint streetcorners, and a live fountain welling from the hill. It is notable, besides, for handsome

women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards.

The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an adjoining cafe, where I, or rather my journey, became

the topic of the afternoon. Every one had some suggestion for my guidance; and the subprefectorial map

was fetched from the subprefecture itself, and much thumbed among coffeecups and glasses of liqueur.

Most of these kind advisers were Protestant, though I observed that Protestant and Catholic intermingled in a

very easy manner; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory still subsisted of the religious war. Among

the hills of the southwest, by Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse, serious

Presbyterian people still recall the days of the great persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are still

piously regarded. But in towns and among the socalled better classes, I fear that these old doings have

become an idle tale. If you met a mixed company in the King's Arms at Wigton, it is not likely that the talk

would run on Covenanters. Nay, at Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had not so much as heard

of Prophet Peden. But these Cevenols were proud of their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their

chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where a man or a race has had but one

adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country

was still full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard from them about Cavalier's descendants not direct

descendants, be it understood, but only cousins or nephews who were still prosperous people in the scene of

the boygeneral's exploits; and one farmer had seen the bones of old combatants dug up into the air of an

afternoon in the nineteenth century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the greatgrandchildren

Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so good as to visit me: a young man, intelligent and polite,

with whom I passed an hour or two in talk. Florac, he told me, is part Protestant, part Catholic; and the

difference in religion is usually doubled by a difference in politics. You may judge of my surprise, coming as

I did from such a babbling purgatorial Poland of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the population

lived together on very quiet terms; and there was even an exchange of hospitalities between households thus

doubly separated. Black Camisard and White Camisard, militiaman and Miquelet and dragoon, Protestant

prophet and Catholic cadet of the White Cross, they had all been sabring and shooting, burning, pillaging,

and murdering, their hearts hot with indignant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy years, Protestant

is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in mutual toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man, like

that indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its own; the years and seasons bring

various harvests; the sun returns after the rain; and mankind outlives secular animosities, as a single man

awakens from the passions of a day. We judge our ancestors from a more divine position; and the dust being

a little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides adorned with human virtues and fighting with a show

I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even harder than I thought. I own I met these

Protestants with a delight and a sense of coming home. I was accustomed to speak their language, in another

and deeper sense of the word than that which distinguishes between French and English; for the true Babel is

a divergence upon morals. And hence I could hold more free communication with the Protestants, and judge

them more justly, than the Catholics. Father Apollinaris may pair off with my mountain Plymouth Brother as

two guileless and devout old men; yet I ask myself if I had as ready a feeling for the virtues of the Trappist;

or, had I been a Catholic, if I should have felt so warmly to the dissenter of La Vernede. With the first I was

on terms of mere forbearance; but with the other, although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on

selected points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange some honest thoughts. In this world of

imperfection we gladly welcome even partial intimacies. And if we find but one to whom we can speak out of

our heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and simplicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of

ON Tuesday, 1st October, we left Florac late in the afternoon, a tired donkey and tired donkeydriver. A little

way up the Tarnon, a covered bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the Mimente. Steep rocky red

mountains overhung the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in stony terraces; here and

there was a red field of millet or a few appletrees studded with red apples; and the road passed hard by two

It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encampment. Even under the oaks and chestnuts the

ground had not only a very rapid slope, but was heaped with loose stones; and where there was no timber the

hills descended to the stream in a red precipice tufted with heather. The sun had left the highest peak in front

of me, and the valley was full of the lowing sound of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the

stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river. Thither I

descended, and, tying Modestine provisionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the neighbourhood. A grey

pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into

each other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an exhalation. I approached a great oak which grew in

the meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to my disgust the voices of children fell upon my ear, and I

beheld a house round the angle on the other bank. I had half a mind to pack and be gone again, but the

growing darkness moved me to remain. I had only to make no noise until the night was fairly come, and trust

to the dawn to call me early in the morning. But it was hard to be annoyed by neighbours in such a great

A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed Modestine and arranged my sack, three stars were

already brightly shining, and the others were beginning dimly to appear. I slipped down to the river, which

looked very black among its rocks, to fill my can; and dined with a good appetite in the dark, for I scrupled to

light a lantern while so near a house. The moon, which I had seen a pallid crescent all afternoon, faintly

illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray fell into the bottom of the glen where I was lying. The oak

rose before me like a pillar of darkness; and overhead the heartsome stars were set in the face of the night. No

one knows the stars who has not slept, as the French happily put it, A LA BELLE ETOILE. He may know all

their names and distances and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind, their

serene and gladsome influence on the mind. The greater part of poetry is about the stars; and very justly, for

they are themselves the most classical of poets. These same faraway worlds, sprinkled like tapers or shaken

together like a diamond dust upon the sky, had looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in the

words of the latter, they had 'no other tent but the sky, and no other bed than my mother earth.'

All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns fell pattering over me from the oak. Yet, on this

first night of October, the air was as mild as May, and I slept with the fur thrown back.

I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear more than any wolf. A dog is vastly

braver, and is besides supported by the sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet with encouragement and

praise; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the domestic affections come clamouring round

you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance;

and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. There

is something of the clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not amenable to

stones, the boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on

I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, October 2nd) by the same dog for I knew his bark making a

charge down the bank, and then, seeing me sit up, retreating again with great alacrity. The stars were not yet

quite extinguished. The heaven was of that enchanting mild greyblue of the early morn. A still clear light

began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were outlined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more to

the north, and no longer reached me in the glen; but as I was going on with my preparations, it drove a white

cloud very swiftly over the hilltop; and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. In these

high regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. If only the clouds travelled high enough, we

should see the same thing all night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space.

As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out of the seat of the sunrise, although the

clouds continued to run overhead in an almost contrary direction. A few steps farther, and I saw a whole

hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, between two peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy

appeared floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of

I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark militarylooking wayfarer, who carried a gamebag on a

baldric; but he made a remark that seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or

He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for it is the language of one in a minority.

I thought with a smile of Bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride roughshod over a religion for a

century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still

Protestant. It is not a basketful of lawpapers, nor the hoofs and pistolbutts of a regiment of horse, that can

change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. Outdoor rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they

have are hardy plants, and thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a long while in the sweat

of laborious noons, and under the stars at night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman,

has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers of the universe, and amicable relations towards his

God. Like my mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows the Lord. His religion does not repose upon a choice of

logic; it is the poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his life. God, like a great

power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to this simple fellow in the course of years, and become the

ground and essence of his least reflections; and you may change creeds and dogmas by authority, or proclaim

a new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will

stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He is a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same

indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his faith,

unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict and not a conventional meaning, change his

I WAS now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among

chestnut gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road along the Mimente is yet

new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first cart arrived at Cassagnas. But

although it lay thus apart from the current of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the

history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the five arsenals of the Camisards; where

they laid up clothes and corn and arms against necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves

gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. To the same caves, amid this multifarious

industry, the sick and wounded were brought up to heal; and there they were visited by the two surgeons,

Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it was the oldest and the most obscure that had its

magazines by Cassagnas. This was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who had joined their voices with his in the

68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the Cevennes. Seguier, promoted to heaven,

was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplaingeneral to the whole

army of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart, who admitted people to the sacrament

or refused them, by 'intensively viewing every man' between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures off

by rote. And this was surely happy; since in a surprise in August 1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and

his Bible. It is only strange that they were not surprised more often and more effectually; for this legion of

Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war, and camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the

angels of the God for whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but of the trackless country

where they harboured. M. de Caladon, taking a stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their midst,

as he might have walked into 'a flock of sheep in a plain,' and found some asleep and some awake and

psalmsinging. A traitor had need of no recommendation to insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond 'his

faculty of singing psalms'; and even the prophet Salomon 'took him into a particular friendship.' Thus, among

their intricate hills, the rustic troop subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but sacraments

People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been saying, prove variable in religion; nor will

they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of Rimmon.

When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, 'convinced by the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and

rather from necessity than sympathy,' granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was still

Protestant; and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed, one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it

Catholic. It is that of a Catholic CURE in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a schoolmistress. And his

The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countrified fashion, and were all plain and dignified in

manner. As a Protestant myself, I was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me further

respect. For we had something not unlike a religious controversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with

whom I dined being both strangers to the place, and Catholics. The young men of the house stood round and

supported me; and the whole discussion was tolerantly conducted, and surprised a man brought up among the

infinitesimal and contentious differences of Scotland. The merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and was far

less pleased than some others with my historical acquirements. But the gendarme was mighty easy over it all.

'It's a bad idea for a man to change,' said he; and the remark was generally applauded.

That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at Our Lady of the Snows. But this is a different race; and

perhaps the same greatheartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ in a kind spirit. For

courage respects courage; but where a faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow

population. The true work of Bruce and Wallace was the union of the nations; not that they should stand apart

a while longer, skirmishing upon their borders; but that, when the time came, they might unite with

The merchant was much interested in my journey, and thought it dangerous to sleep afield.

'There are the wolves,' said he; 'and then it is known you are an Englishman. The English have always long

purses, and it might very well enter into some one's head to deal you an ill blow some night.'

I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or

consider small perils in the arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a far too risky business as a

whole to make each additional particular of danger worth regard. 'Something,' said I, 'might burst in your

inside any day of the week, and there would be an end of you, if you were locked into your room with three

He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything hardy in so simple a proceeding; although many

considered it superfluous. Only one, on the other hand, professed much delight in the idea; and that was my

Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I told him I sometimes preferred sleeping under the stars to a close

The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, for he said I should be something to talk of in

the future, and desired me to make a note of his request and reason; a desire with which I have thus complied.

A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a rugged path southward up a hillside covered with

loose stones and tufts of heather. At the top, as is the habit of the country, the path disappeared; and I left my

I was now on the separation of two vast watersheds; behind me all the streams were bound for the Garonne

and the Western Ocean; before me was the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from the Lozere, you can see in

clear weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and perhaps from here the soldiers of Salomon may have

watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and the longpromised aid from England. You may take

this ridge as lying in the heart of the country of the Camisards; four of the five legions camped all round it

and almost within view Salomon and Joani to the north, Castanet and Roland to the south; and when Julien

had finished his famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which lasted all through October and

November 1703, and during which four hundred and sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe,

utterly subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked forth upon a silent, smokeless, and

dispeopled land. Time and man's activity have now repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more roofed and

sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer

returns, when the day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. And still it was perhaps the wildest

view of all my journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging southward, channelled and

sculptured by the winter streams, feathered from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out

into a coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, sent a drift of misty gold across the

A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing a black cap of liberty, as if in honour of his

nearness to the grave, directed me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was something solemn in

the isolation of this infirm and ancient creature. Where he dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or how he

proposed to get down again, were more than I could fancy. Not far off upon my right was the famous Plan de

Font Morte, where Poul with his Armenian sabre slashed down the Camisards of Seguier. This, methought,

might be some Rip van Winkle of the war, who had lost his comrades, fleeing before Poul, and wandered

ever since upon the mountains. It might be news to him that Cavalier had surrendered, or Roland had fallen

fighting with his back against an olive. And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him hailing in

broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with one of his two sticks. I had already got some way

Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman had forgot to ask the pedlar what he sold, and

It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable to the old man as he had been to me.

The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or two below me in the vale, and many lone houses

of the chestnut farmers, it was a very solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began early underneath the

trees. But I heard the voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed to be

about love and a BEL AMOUREUX, her handsome sweetheart; and I wished I could have taken up the strain

and answered her, as I went on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem, my own

thoughts with hers. What could I have told her? Little enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world

gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again into distant and strange lands;

but to love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden; and 'hope, which comes to all,' outwears the

accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by

We struck at last into a wide white highroad carpeted with noiseless dust. The night had come; the moon

had been shining for a long while upon the opposite mountain; when on turning a corner my donkey and I

issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out my brandy at Florac, for I could bear the stuff no longer,

and replaced it with some generous and scented Volnay; and now I drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon

the road. It was but a couple of mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my blood

flowed with luxury. Even Modestine was inspired by this purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little

hoofs as to a livelier measure. The road wound and descended swiftly among masses of chestnuts. Hot dust

rose from our feet and flowed away. Our two shadows mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically

bestridden by the pack now lay before us clearly outlined on the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went

off into the ghostly distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. From time to time a warm wind

rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled

with whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next moment the breeze had gone by, and in all

the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of

the mountain were faintly designed in the moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned

one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of sad nocturnal colouring.

At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill; and

I pursued my way in great darkness, until another turning shot me without preparation into St. Germain de

Calberte. The place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night. Only from a single open door, some

lamplight escaped upon the road to show me that I was come among men's habitations. The two last gossips

of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to

bed; the fire was already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I must

WHEN I awoke (Thursday, 2nd October), and, hearing a great flourishing of cocks and chuckling of

contented hens, betook me to the window of the clean and comfortable room where I had slept the night, I

looked forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut gardens. It was still early, and the cockcrows,

and the slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me to be out and look round me.

St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about. At the period of the wars, and

immediately before the devastation, it was inhabited by two hundred and seventyfive families, of which

only nine were Catholic; and it took the CURE seventeen September days to go from house to house on

horseback for a census. But the place itself, although capital of a canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies

terraced across a steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The Protestant chapel stands below upon a

It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept his library and held a court of missionaries; here

he had built his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he had redeemed from error; and

hither on the morrow of his death they brought the body, pierced with twoandfifty wounds, to be interred.

Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in the church. The CURE, taking his text from Second

Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'And Amasa wallowed in his blood in the highway,' preached a

rousing sermon, and exhorted his brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and illustrious superior.

In the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that Spirit Seguier was near at hand; and behold! all the

assembly took to their horses' heels, some east, some west, and the CURE himself as far as Alais.

Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary

neighbourhood. On the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas; on the other, it was

cut off from assistance by the legion of Roland at Mialet. The CURE, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic

at the archpriest's funeral, and so hurriedly decamped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence

uttered fulminations against the crimes of the Protestants. Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a

half, but was beaten back. The militiamen, on guard before the CURE'S door, could be heard, in the black

hours, singing Protestant psalms and holding friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morning, although

not a shot had been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their flasks. Where was it gone? All

handed over to the Camisards for a consideration. Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest!

That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de Calberte, the imagination with difficulty receives;

all is now so quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this hamlet of the mountains. Boys

followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of lionhunters; and people turned round to have a second look,

or came out of their houses, as I went by. My passage was the first event, you would have fancied, since the

Camisards. There was nothing rude or forward in this observation; it was but a pleased and wondering

scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the street.

I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil

the inimitable attitudes of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a little wind

went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of

a thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an approaching harvest

and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which

was already gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green with

I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet

and content. But perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was thinking

of me in another country; or perhaps some thought of my own had come and gone unnoticed, and yet done

me good. For some thoughts, which sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their

features; as though a god, travelling by our green highways, should but ope the door, give one smiling look

into the house, and go again for ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings? Who shall say?

But we go the lighter about our business, and feel peace and pleasure in our hearts.

I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation of a young man, a Catholic, who had

married a Protestant girl and gone over to the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they could understand

and respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman, who told me that same day

there was no difference between the two sects, save that 'wrong was more wrong for the Catholic,' who had

more light and guidance; but this of a man's desertion filled them with contempt.

It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued me; and for myself, I believe it is the

current philosophy in these parts. I have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's not only a great flight of

confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of his family for heaven's sake; but the odds are nay,

and the hope is that, with all this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a

hairbreadth to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for the wrench is sore. But it argues something

narrow, whether of strength or weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a

sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who can quit a friendship for a doubtful

process of the mind. And I think I should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for other

words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and find wrong as wrong for me as for the

The phylloxera was in the neighbourhood; and instead of wine we drank at dinner a more economical juice of

the grape La Parisienne, they call it. It is made by putting the fruit whole into a cask with water; one by one

the berries ferment and burst; what is drunk during the day is supplied at night in water: so, with ever another

pitcher from the well, and ever another grape exploding and giving out its strength, one cask of Parisienne

may last a family till spring. It is, as the reader will anticipate, a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the

What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before I left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside

the Gardon of Mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St. Etienne de Vallee

Francaise, or Val Francesque, as they used to call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of St.

Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me an empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept hard

upon my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. The driver, like the rest of the world, was sure I was a

pedlar; but, unlike others, he was sure of what I had to sell. He had noticed the blue wool which hung out of

my pack at either end; and from this he had decided, beyond my power to alter his decision, that I dealt in

I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for I dearly desired to see the view upon the other side

before the day had faded. But it was night when I reached the summit; the moon was riding high and clear;

and only a few grey streaks of twilight lingered in the west. A yawning valley, gulfed in blackness, lay like a

hole in created nature at my feet; but the outline of the hills was sharp against the sky. There was Mount

Aigoal, the stronghold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as an active undertaking leader, deserves some

mention among Camisards; for there is a spray of rose among his laurel; and he showed how, even in a public

tragedy, love will have its way. In the high tide of war he married, in his mountain citadel, a young and pretty

lass called Mariette. There were great rejoicings; and the bridegroom released fiveandtwenty prisoners in

honour of the glad event. Seven months afterwards, Mariette, the Princess of the Cevennes, as they called her

in derision, fell into the hands of the authorities, where it was like to have gone hard with her. But Castanet

was a man of execution, and loved his wife. He fell on Valleraugue, and got a lady there for a hostage; and

for the first and last time in that war there was an exchange of prisoners. Their daughter, pledge of some

Modestine and I it was our last meal together had a snack upon the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones,

she standing by me in the moonlight and decorously eating bread out of my hand. The poor brute would eat

more heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of affection for me, which I was soon to betray.

It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Gard, and we met no one but a carter, visible afar off by the glint of

Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper; fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours!

ON examination, on the morning of October 3rd, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need

at least two days' repose, according to the ostler; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters; and, being

in a civilised country of stagecoaches, I determined to sell my lady friend and be off by the diligence that

afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill of St.

Pierre, spread a favourable notion of my donkey's capabilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an

unrivalled opportunity. Before ten I had an offer of twentyfive francs; and before noon, after a desperate

engagement, I sold her, saddle and all, for fiveand thirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but I had

St Jean du Gard is a large place, and largely Protestant. The maire, a Protestant, asked me to help him in a

small matter which is itself characteristic of the country. The young women of the Cevennes profit by the

common religion and the difference of the language to go largely as governesses into England; and here was

one, a native of Mialet, struggling with English circulars from two different agencies in London. I gave what

One thing more I note. The phylloxera has ravaged the vineyards in this neighbourhood; and in the early

morning, under some chestnuts by the river, I found a party of men working with a ciderpress. I could not at

It was not until I was fairly seated by the driver, and rattling through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I

became aware of my bereavement. I had lost Modestine. Up to that moment I had thought I hated her; but

For twelve days we had been fast companions; we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles,

crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy

byroad. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience;

and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was

patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race

Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his

example; and being alone with a stagedriver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to yield