In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere in Old France

I have stayed in many a strange hotel, but that of the "Ambassadeurs," whither we repaired, is perhaps the most uncommon in my experience. It was reached from the main street through a long, dark tunnel, opening at the end into a badly-lighted court, whence a flight of stairs gave entrance to the hotel building, which inside was like an old and partially-furnished barracks, with wide stone stairs and gloomy passages eminently adapted for garrotting. But the bedroom was commodious, and its windows gave on another market-place, where had been the original frontage of the hotel. For all its cheerless appearance, the "Ambassadeurs" was by no means uncomfortable, and, needless to say, the cooking was excellent.

There are some towns that ask of you only to wander their streets, and others that challenge you to closer acquaintance with their sights. Paris or Brussels, for example, pours its bright life through boulevard and park, and you are charmed to walk about with no urgent call to any place in particular; but who can linger in Princes Street of Edinburgh with the grey old castle inviting him to climb up to it, or the Calton Hill boldly advertising itself with its mock Roman remains? Le Puy has both the charm of the quaintest kinds of street life and the challenge of its rare and curious monuments.

One has a restless feeling, a sense of things that "must be done," when one catches a glimpse of the stately old cathedral standing high on the hill, and the massive Rock of Corneille with the great figure of Notre Dame de France on top, or the church of St. Michel pricking up so confidently on its isolated rock. The natural curiosity of man is such that he cannot be content until he has clambered to these and other high places in and around Le Puy. One makes first for the cathedral, and a bewildering labyrinth of ancient and evil-smelling lanes has to be wandered through before the building is reached. These little streets are all paved with cobbles of black lava, and many of the houses are built in part of the same material. Their dirtiness is unqualified, and yet the people seem to live long amid their squalor, for at every other door we note women of old years busy with their needles and pillows making the lace, which is one of the chief industries of the town.

III.

The nearer we come to the cathedral the more difficult is it to observe its general proportions, and, indeed, it can only be seen to advantage from one or other of the neighbouring heights. But it is a building that, in almost any position, would still be remarkable, as it is a striking example of Romanesque architecture. The great porch is reached by a splendid flight of steps, sixty in number, where in the second week of August each year pilgrims come in their thousands to kneel and worship the Black Virgin, the chief glory of the town in the eyes of its inhabitants. The builders of the cathedral have striven to combine dignity and austerity, and the impression which the outside of the building makes upon the visitor is strangely at variance with the flummery that surrounds the worship of the Black Virgin within. One feels that the men who back in the twelfth century reared these massive walls and built this beautiful cloister had not their lives dominated by a cheap and ugly wooden doll such as their fellows of to-day bow down before. We found the sacristan a young man of most amiable disposition; so friendly indeed that on one of our subsequent visits, and during the office of High Mass, when he was attending upon the celebrant, he nodded familiarly to us on recognising us among the congregation. If the truth must be told, we were more interested in the contents of the sacristy than in the cathedral itself. Here were stored many rare and beautiful examples of ancient wood-carving, picture frames, missals, altar vessels, and, above all, a manuscript Bible of the ninth century. This last-mentioned we were shown only on condition that we would tell no one in the town. Then opening a great oaken cupboard, he produced first a brass monstrance, similar to the usual receptacle for the consecrated wafer of the Eucharist, but containing instead behind the little glass disc a tiny morsel of white feather sewn to a bit of cloth.

"This," said he, "is a piece of the wing of the angel who visited Joan of Arc."

"Indeed," I remarked, with every evidence of surprise, "and who got hold of the feather first?"

"The mother of Joan," he replied, as though he were giving the name of his tailor; and he proceeded to describe with much circumstance and detail the wonderful things that had been done by this bit of feather. "It is, M'sieu, an object of the greatest veneration, and has attracted pilgrims from far parts of France. It has cured the most terrible diseases; it has brought riches to those who were poor; it has brought children to barren women,"—and many other wonders I have forgotten.

In a very similar setting he showed us a tiny thorn. "This, M'sieu, is a thorn from the crown that Jesus wore on the Cross," and while we were still gazing upon the sacred relic he produced a small box sealed with red wax and having a glass lid, behind which was preserved a good six inches of "the true Cross." I thought of a Frenchman whom I had met at an hotel recently—an unbelieving fellow—who said that there was as much wood of "the true Cross" preserved in the churches of France as would make a veritable ladder into heaven. Most wonderful of all, the sacristan dived his hand into a sort of cotton bag, and produced a Turkish slipper, worn and battered, but probably no more than fifty years old. The good man handled the thing as if it had been a cheap American shoe he was offering for sale. Then looking us boldly in the face, he said, "Voici, le soulier de la Sainte Vierge." The shoe of the holy Virgin! One did one's best to be overcome with emotion, but I claim no success in that effort. The ecclesiastical showman drew our attention to the pure Oriental character of the workmanship of the sacred slipper, but I declare frankly that it was not until the Protestant pastor of the town mentioned the fact next day that I realised that the shoe was "a No. 9!" Among the other contents of the sacristy we noted two maces, one of elaborate design richly ornamented in silver, and the other of plain wood only slightly carved. We were told they were carried in funeral processions, "the ornamental one for people of good family and the plain one for common folk." Oh, land of liberty, equality, fraternity!

After exhibiting to us the costly vestments of the bishops, canons, and other dignitaries of the church, the sacristan came with us to point out the far-famed Black Virgin of the cathedral, which a first inspection of the interior had failed to reveal to us. We now found it to be a small and ugly image fixed above the high altar. It was hardly bigger than a child's doll, and was dressed in a little coat of rich brocade. From the middle of the idol a smaller head, presumably that of the Holy Child, projected through the cloth, and this, like the head of the larger figure, wore a heavy crown of bright gilt. I do not pretend to remember one tithe of the miracles attributed to this most venerated object by our good friend, but I know at least that he assured me it had burned for thirty-six hours during the Revolution without being consumed, and had thrice been thrown by sacrilegious hands into the river Borne, only to reappear mysteriously in its place over the altar. This story does not run on all fours with the curt description of the image given by M. Paul Joanne in his guide to the Cevennes—"an imitation of the old Madonna destroyed in the Revolution." It is eminently a case in which "you pays your money and you takes your choice." I reckoned the entertainment provided by the sacristan cheap at a franc.

IV.

Enough, perhaps, has been indicated to give some idea of the superstitious character of the people of Le Puy. Nowhere in France have I found so many evidences of mediæval superstition; the Black Virgin is throned supreme in the minds of the people, and, unlike most French communities—if we except the priest-ridden peasantry of Brittany—the men-folk of Le Puy seem to be as devoted as their women to the church. The black coats of the clergy swarm in street and alley. In the town itself there are many institutions packed with young priests, and some little way out, on the banks of the Borne, there is a training school as large as a military barracks, with the pale faces of black-gowned youths peeping from many windows. Almost every conceivable type of priest is to be encountered here, from the gaunt, ascetic enthusiast to the fat and ruby-nosed Friar Tuck. The people of the southern highlands, like the old-fashioned folk of Scotland, have had for generations a passion to see at least one of their family in the priesthood, apart very often from any consideration of fitness, moral or intellectual. Here, as I should judge, is the reason for one's seeing so many coarse and ignorant faces among the priests of Le Puy.

The gigantic figure of the Virgin crowning the rock of Corneille, behind the cathedral, is reached by a long and toilsome pathway, but the view from the top—for the statue is hollow, and contains a stairway inside with numerous peep-holes—is perhaps unequalled in the whole of France. For mile upon mile the country stretches away in great billowy masses of dark mountain and green plain, and the little white houses with their red roofs are sprinkled everywhere around Le Puy, suggesting a sweet and wholesome country life that is hard to reconcile with the dark superstition of the town. This monument, however, is of little interest—a vulgar modern affair cast from 213 guns taken at Sebastopol. More to our taste is the quaint little building called the Baptistry of St. John, which, standing near the cathedral, takes us back to the fourth century, and earlier still, for it is built on the foundation of an ancient Roman temple. You see, Le Puy was a flourishing Roman town when our forefathers in England were living in wattle huts. We have made some progress in England since those far-off days, but here, though changes rude and great have taken place, one may reasonably doubt whether there is much to choose between the present condition of Le Puy and that vanished past.

Threading our way downhill among the filthy ruelles, we pass into the wide and modern Boulevard Carnot, where the Sunday market is being held and everything may be bought, from a tin-opener to a donkey, from a rosary to a cow. A spirited statue of the great La Fayette, who was born not far away, at the castle of Chavagnac, stands at the top of this street, where the new Boulevard Gambetta strikes westward with its clanging electric trams. Down near the river-side, where the market comes to an end, we visit the old church of the Dominicans, dedicated to St. Laurence, and in a dark and musty corner we are shown a tomb with a recumbent figure carved upon it. Here reposes, we are told, the dust of the greatest of the heroes of old France—none other than that mighty warrior Du Guesclin, memories of whom the wanderer in French by-ways meets with as often as the tourist in England comes upon a house that sheltered Charles II. after the battle of Worcester. There is every reason for believing that the valorous but ugly Du Guesclin—he was an "object of aversion" to his own parents—was buried at St. Denis, but my excellent M. Joanne assures me that this statue is an authentic likeness of the hero; and the Encyclopædia Britannica (which in another place mentions St. Denis as the place of burial) says that the church of St. Laurence "contains the remains of Du Guesclin." What will you?

The electric tram lands us at the suburb of Espaly, and from the high road we could almost throw a stone to the massive rock, with its castle-like walls enclosing on the top a little garden of trees. But it is another matter to pick our way, ankle-deep in mire, to the entrance-gate, through the hovels that surround it. Clustering to the rock we pass are buildings from which priests and "sisters" come and go with a surprising mingling of the sexes, and when we have climbed to the top a dark-eyed sister shows us for half a franc a collection of the most extraordinary Romish trash we have ever looked upon. The chapel is free to us, and within its incense-laden interior we find several comfortable priests poring over books or sitting with insensate stare at the candles burning on a particularly tawdry altar. The place is in a way unique, as the chapel is not a building at all, but is hewn out of the volcanic rock, being thus an artificial grotto consecrated to worship. Its rough walls are hung with votive tablets and studded with crude stuccos of many saints, giving it the appearance of a toy bazaar. Only recently the large bronze statue of St. Joseph that crowned the rock of Espaly, above the grotto-chapel, was blown down, and visitors are invited to contribute towards the cost of replacing it.

A little distance away is the higher and more remarkable volcanic mass known as the Pic d'Aiguille, with a handsome and well-proportioned church upon its summit. One has to climb a long and winding footpath and then close on three hundred steps to reach the building, which we found quite deserted, some village lads doing the "cake-walk" around an angelic form with a box of donations to St. Michael, the patron saint of the deserted sanctuary. These gamins also seemed to derive much pleasure from ringing the bell still hanging in the ancient tower. It was a matter of speculation why the priests should continue to use the stuffy and unwholesome grotto of St. Joseph, with this airy, noble building lying vacant. We can only suppose that the toil of climbing the higher rock is greater than their zeal. Near by the base of the Pic d'Aiguille one notices a curious conjunction of old paganism and modern mariolatry—an ancient temple of Diana flanked by a massive crucifix on the one hand and a modern Gothic fountain and shrine to the Virgin on the other.

VI.

After all, and somewhat unwillingly, I find that I have written rather of the religious side of this interesting town than of its picturesqueness. But sensational as the first impression of its unique and beautiful outlines undoubtedly is, it is not that, nor yet the quaint and entertaining habits of the people, that comes uppermost in the mind after some days' acquaintance with the place. One leaves Le Puy convinced, almost at a glance, of its claim to be considered the most picturesque town in Europe, but depressed with the abounding evidence that its people, despite their electric trams and their fine modern buildings, are still largely the thralls of darkest superstition. For the difference between the religion that here passes for Roman Catholicism and that we know by the same name in England is greater than the difference between the latter and the most Calvanistic Protestantism. To me, at least, Le Puy will be ever the city of the Black Virgin.

Both describe people who had much in common, for the Camisards were the Covenanters of France. The origin of the term need not detain us more than a moment. It is variously attributed to the "Children of God" having worn a camise, or linen shirt, as a sort of uniform; to camisade, which means a night attack, that having been a feature of their warfare; while some historians have derived it from camis, a road runner. Enough that it stands for a race of people whose devotion to the Reformed Faith, whose fearless stand for religious liberty, entitles them to rank among the heroes of Protestantism.

As one may suppose that the general reader, however well informed, is likely to be somewhat hazy in his knowledge of the Camisards—unless, indeed, he has had the good fortune to read one of the later, as it is one of the best, of Mr. S. R. Crockett's romances, Flower-o'-the-Corn, which gives a vivid and moving picture of the Protestant rebellion in the Cevennes—it may be well that I set down at once a brief outline of the events which, two centuries ago, made these highlands of the South one of the historic regions in storied France.

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, was a transforming episode in the history of Europe. It represented the triumphant issue of the sinister policy of the Jesuits, who had long been scheming to undo the work of the Huguenot wars, whereby the rights of Protestants to hold public worship and to take part in the government of the country had been recognised as a sort of political compromise.

The atrocities inflicted by the Roman Catholics on their fellow-citizens of the Protestant faith during the reign of terror, which began in October of 1685, need not be recalled; they are among the blackest pages in the annals of Romish tyranny. But we must know that in the mountainous regions of the south of France, where the work of the Reformation had been fruitful, and blessed in inverse ratio to the poverty of the people and the barrenness of their country, these hardy hill folk were too poor to quit their villages, and too devoted to their religious faith to submit meekly to the new order. Like all peoples whose lot it is to scrape a scanty living from a grudging soil, the inhabitants of the Cevennes resemble in many ways the Highlanders of Scotland and Wales. We find in them the same qualities of sturdy independence, patience, endurance; the same strain of gravity, associated with a deep fervour for the things that are eternal. Thus isolated in their mountain fastnesses, hemmed in by the ravening hordes of Catholicism and constituted authority, they determined to fight for the faith they valued more than life. In this hour of awful trial it was not surprising that, out of the frenzy of despair, strange things were born, and an era of religious hysteria began, simple women, poor ignorant men, children even, in great numbers, being thought to come under the direct inspiration of God, arising as "prophets" to urge the rude mountaineers into a holy war with "His Most Christian Majesty, Louis, King of France and Brittany."

But although there had been many encounters of an irregular kind between the Camisards and the leagued officials of Pope and King in the closing years of the seventeenth century, it was not until that weird figure, Spirit Séguier, who has been called the "Danton of the Cevennes," planned the murder of the Archpriest du Chayla at the little town of Pont de Montvert, on the 23rd of July, 1702, that the first blow in the Protestant rebellion may be said to have been struck. Of this tragic event R. L. Stevenson writes:

"A persecution, unsurpassed in violence, had lasted near a score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted: hanging, burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left their hoof-marks over all the country side; 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."

On the 12th of August, nineteen days after the murder of the Archpriest, the right hand of Séguier was stricken from his body, and he was burned alive at the spot where he had driven home the first knife into the oppressor of his people.

The Protestants of the Cevennes, thorough in every habit of life, took up their arms and set about the making of entrenchments and works of defence with the determination of men prepared to fight to a finish. It is easy for us in these peaceful days to deprecate their vengeful deeds, but let us remember, in charity, that if they met blood-thirstiness with the same, they were maddened by a system of oppression so brutal as to be almost beyond our belief. Their leader, Roland, issued a dispatch which for callous suggestion has seldom been equalled in the annals of war: "We, Count and Lord Roland, Generalissimo of the Protestants of France, we decree that you have to make away with, in three days, all the priests and missionaries who are among you, under pain of being burned alive, yourselves as well as they."

But the most picturesque figure among the Camisards was introduced when Jean Cavalier, a baker's apprentice at Geneva, returned to his native mountains, and by sheer force of a military genius to which history offers few parallels became the chief leader of the Camisards while still in his teens. The story of his life is romantic beyond the invention of any novelist. Not only did he succeed over a period of three years in defending many important parts of the Cevennes from organised attacks, but in the course of that time he met and defeated successively Count de Broglie and three Marshals of France—Montrevel, Berwick, and Villars—although at one time there was a force of 60,000 soldiers in the field against him. At Nages, a little village in the southern Cevennes, he encountered Montrevel, and, outnumbered by five to one, he succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in effecting a successful retreat with more than two thirds of his thousand men. Not even the blessings of the Pope on the royalist troops, and on the "holy militia," raised among the Catholic population, brought the submission of the Camisards one day nearer. Commander after commander retired baffled, and Montrevel's policy of extermination—during which four hundred and sixty-six villages in the Upper Cevennes were burned, and most of the population put to the sword—left Cavalier, still a mere lad, master of the southward mountains, threatening even to attack the great city of Nimes.

Marshal Villars, a renowned soldier, recognised the hopelessness of continuing the methods of barbarism pursued by his predecessors, and succeeded in concluding an honourable peace with Cavalier in the summer of 1704, whereby the Camisards were granted certain important rights affecting the liberty of conscience and of person. But Roland and the more fanatical section of the Protestant army held out until January of 1705, their battle-cry being, "No peace until we have our churches," Cavalier's treaty having recognised the right to assemble outside walled towns, but not in churches.

It is this extraordinary baker's apprentice—who at twenty-four had concluded a long and desperate war, in which he played a part entitling him to be remembered with national heroes such as William Tell and Sir William Wallace—that Mr. S. R. Crockett has made the chief figure in his brilliant romance of the Cevennes, Flower-o'-the-Corn.

III.

The little-known region of the Causses is "the Cevennes of the Cevennes," but Stevenson in his travels did not visit the innermost Cevennes, and was during most of his journey only on the outskirts of the real country of the Camisards. The chief of these great plateaux is the Causse de Sauveterre, which extends south-west from the town of Mende for upwards of forty miles, and is in parts at least twenty miles wide. It is divided from the Causse Méjan on the south by the splendid gorges of the river Tarn, and due south of the Méjan, with the beautiful valley of the Jonte between, lies the Causse Noir, some twenty miles east and west, and ten from the Jonte on its north to the no less beautiful glen on its south, where flows the river Dourbie. Still southward, and with only this waterway dividing, extends the splendid mass of the Causse du Larzac, some thirty miles in length, from the neighbourhood of Millau to the ancient Roman town of Lodève, which boasted a continuous bishopric from the year 323 to the Revolution, and is now a bright and populous industrial centre. These are the more notable of the Causses, and all, no doubt, formed one mighty plateau in prehistoric times; but numerous swift flowing rivers have through the ages worn them asunder, producing a series of magnificent ravines that contain some of the finest scenery in France, and on whose sides we can trace the slow and steady work of the streams wearing down to their present courses through the limestone, the local name for which is cau, whence causse.

Conceive, then, a vast expanse of rugged and rock-strewn land, covering it may be an area of two or three hundred square miles, and terminating abruptly on every side in mighty ravines, or ending in precipitous cliffs, that look down on wide and fertile valleys, frown on smiling plains. This is what the word Causse stands for, and the wonder is that folk should be content to live in dreary little villages high up on these stony fields, when a thousand feet and more in the plains and valleys below rich and fruitful soil invites the husbandman. But so it is, and in this region of France we have the strange circumstance of two peoples, differing in many essentials of character, living within a day's walk of each other, and mingling but little in the intercourse of life. As you thread your way through the valleys of the Tarn, the Dourbie, or any of the other streams that follow the rifts between the Causses, you realise that up there among the clouds live people who have small commerce with their fellows in the valleys, and in such a town as Millau, whose inhabitants must look each day of their lives at the giant walls of the Causse Noir and the Larzac, upreared to the immediate east of their own paved streets, there are thousands who have never scaled these heights.

Mr. Crockett gives us this graphic word-picture of the Larzac:

"The surface of the Causse—once Yvette had attained to the higher levels—spread out before her, plain as the palm of a hand, save for those curiously characteristic rocks, which, apparently without connection with the underlying limestone, stand out like icebergs out of the sea, irregular, pinnacled, the debris of temples destroyed or ever foot of man trod there—spires, gargoyles, hideous monsters, all dejected in some unutterable catastrophe, and become more horrible in the moonlight, or, on the other hand, modified to the divine calm of the Bhudda himself, by some effect of illumination or trick of cloud umbration....

"A wonderful land, this of the Causses, where the rain never comes to stay. Indeed, it might as well rain on a vast dry sponge, thirty miles across and four or five thousand feet in height. The sheep up there never drink. They only eat the sparse tender grass when the dew is upon it. Yet from their milk the curious cheese called Roquefort is made, which, being kept long in cool limestone cellars—the cellules of the stony sponge—puts on something of the flavour of the rock plants—thyme, juniper, dwarf birch, honeysweet heath—from which it was distilled."

IV.

A country better adapted to the exigencies of defence against an attacking army from the plains could not be imagined, for, as the novelist says in another passage, "It seemed impossible for any living thing to descend those frowning precipices. Even in broad daylight the task appeared more suited to goats than to men." The roads which now connect these great uplands with the lower country are marvels of engineering, and you can count as many as twenty or thirty "elbows" in the track, from the point at which it leaves the valley until it disappears over the edge of the table-land, the entire length of it being in view at one stroke of the eye. The task of ascending is laborious in the extreme, and much sitting at cafés, which is the habit of the townsfolk, does not equip them for the undertaking. Few wayfarers are encountered, and when the summit of the Causse is gained the signs of life are still meagre. The roads, now flat and dusty, lie like bright ribbons on a dull and melancholy stretch of earth. Here and there a lonely shepherd is seen tending a flock of shabby-looking sheep, that crop the sparse herbage in fields where stones are more plentiful than grass.

Miss M. Betham-Edwards is one of the few writers who have visited this little-known corner of France, and in the following passage she refers to what is perhaps its most curious feature:

"Another striking feature of the arid, waterless upper region is the aven, or yawning chasm, subject of superstitious awe and terror among the country people. Wherever you go you find the aven; in the midst of a field—for parts of this sterile soil have been laid under cultivation—on the side of a vertical cliff, of divers shapes and sizes: these mysterious openings are locally known as 'Trous d'enfer' (mouths of hell). Alike, fact and legend have increased the popular dread. It was known that many an unfortunate sheep or goat had fallen into some abyss, never, of course, to be heard of after. It was said that a jealous seigneur of these regions had been seen thus to get rid of his young wife—one tradition out of many. According to the country-folk of Padirac, the devil, hurrying away with a captured soul, was overtaken by St. Martin on horseback. A struggle, amid savage scenery, ensued for possession of the soul. 'Accursed saint,' cried Satan, 'thou wilt hardly leap my ditch'—with a tap of his heel opening the rock before them, splitting it in two—the enormous chasm, as he thought, making pursuit impossible. But St. Martin's steed leaped it at a bound, the soul was rescued, and the prince of darkness, instead of the saint, sent below."

Many of the avens have been explored by M. E. A. Martel, and his adventures in these underground tunnels and caves have rarely been equalled in modern exploration.

V.

The scene of Flower-o'-the-Corn, so far as it is laid in the Cevennes, occupies but a small part of that splendid chain of mountains, but it is perhaps the most picturesque part. Much of the action is centred in the little Camisard town of La Cavalerie, situate at an altitude of nearly 2,500 feet on the lonely plateau of the Larzac, some ten miles along the main road from Millau, a beautiful and important cathedral town in the valley of the Tarn. To-day, as in the past, the innkeeper is usually the man of most importance in these mountain towns, but I have visited no auberge that would compare, in romantic situation, with that so graphically described by Mr. Crockett under the style of "le Bon Chrétien" at La Cavalerie:

"To those unacquainted with the plan of such southern houses, it might have been remarkable how quickly the remembrance of the strange entrance-hall beneath was blotted out. At the first turn of the staircase the ammoniacal stable smell was suddenly left behind. At the second, there, in front of the ascending guest, was a fringed mat lying on the little landing. At the third Maurice found himself in a wide hall, lighted from the front, with an outlook upon an inner courtyard in which was a Judas-tree in full leaf, with seats of wicker and rustic branches set out. Here and there in the shade stood small round tables, pleasantly retired, all evidencing a degree of refinement to which Maurice had been a stranger ever since he left those inns upon the post-roads of England, which were justly held to be the wonder of the world."

One fears that the "good old times" have disappeared from the Causses, as most of the inns, built, like many of the houses, in sunk positions by the roadside, so that one enters on the top flat, sometimes by way of a crazy wooden bridge, are sad advertisements of poverty. The houses are often like that in which Mr. Crockett's heroine lodged in the little Camisard town of St. Vernan, in the valley of the Dourbie, "built out like a swallow's nest over the abyss." For it is noteworthy that most of these highland villages cluster along the river courses, as though the hill-folk were fain to have the sound of the glad waters in their ears. In the valley of the Jonte I marvelled often at these "swallows' nests." Many of the cottages have a scrap of garden, surrounded by a wall not higher than three feet, from the base of which the cliff sweeps down at an acute angle to the river bed, six hundred feet below. Children play in these tiny eeries with as little concern as youngsters in a city court.

Not all the surface of these great table-lands lies flat and stone-strewn; one will often come on dark forests of pines, and sometimes the woodman has a better return for his labour than the shepherd. But on every hand the conditions of life are primitive beyond anything in our own land. Here, more frequently than in his native Normandy, may we find the sullen clod depicted by Millet in the "Man with the Hoe." "Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox," as Markham has described him in his powerful poem. It is, indeed, difficult to realise that among these crumbling villages and beggarly fields we are in the heart of fair France.

VI.

There is little to choose between the Catholic and Protestant villages; all are more or less in a state of dilapidation, all have poverty written on their walls; but to mingle with the people and discuss affairs with them, quite apart from all questions of religion, is a sure and ready way to discover how great is the difference between the two classes. The one is usually a sullen and unintelligent mortal, tied neck and crop to the stony soil on which he has been born; the other bright, receptive of ideas, quick with life and hope, and, if he be old, happy in the knowledge that his sons have gone forth from this bare land equipped by the liberal training of the Protestant schools to take dignified part in the great life of the Republic. For you will find that even in the veritable strongholds of a debased and superstitious Catholicism all the important officials are Protestants.

The Protestants of to-day are no unworthy descendants of the men whom Cavalier led against the forces of civil and religious tyranny, and though these lonely mountains shelter also many who are still willing slaves of the yoke which the sturdy "Sons of God" endeavoured to shake off for ever, the Camisards of two centuries ago did not fight and die in vain; their children's children are to-day the little leaven that may yet "leaven the whole lump."

The Wonderland of France

I.

"Whatever you do, you must not miss the valley of the Tarn—the finest scenery in Europe." Thus wrote a celebrated novelist and traveller to me when sending some hints on my projected tour in the Cevennes, a district which to Mr. S. R. Crockett is almost as familiar as his own romantic Galloway. I have good reason to be grateful for his advice, as the river Tarn is the waterway through what I shall venture to call the Wonderland of France. A clever writer has observed that "there are landscapes which are insane," and truly in this little-known corner of southern France nature has performed some of her maddest, most fantastic freaks. Here she is seen in a mood more sensational than the weird imaginings of a Gustave Doré; there is no scenery that I have looked upon or read about in any other part of Europe comparable with this of the Tarn. In the old world at least it is unique, and we have to go for comparison to the renowned cañons of the Colorado.

Not the least curious feature of the story of the Tarn, its awesome gorges and wondrous caverns, is the fact that less than thirty years ago the region was "discovered" to France by M. E. A. Martel, the celebrated grottologist, with as much éclat as it had been an island in an unknown sea. Of course, the whole district, like every other part of France, had long ago taken its place in history and romance; but although many a generation of peasant folk and monkish fraternities had lived out their lives in these southern fastnesses, the Tarn country-side had not before been explored by one in search of the picturesque or the wonders of Nature. Thus, in every sense of the word, M. Martel is to be reckoned a discoverer, and the surprise is that, despite a somewhat tiresome journey, there are so few English tourists who find their way to this enchanted land. The journey is no more fatiguing than that to Geneva or Lucerne, which in the summer months swarm with English visitors, and, for all their beauties, possess nothing to equal the natural glories of the Tarn.

There are several ways of reaching this little-known corner of France, but the best is undoubtedly by way of Mende, a fine town 434 miles south of Paris, "chief place" of the Department of the Lozère. Mende, although one of the cleanest and brightest of the French towns, with a population of less than 10,000, and pleasantly situated in a wide green valley, with low and sparsely-timbered hills billowing on every side under a sky so blue and in atmosphere so clear that the eye seems to acquire an unusual power of vision, would scarcely be worth the journey for itself alone. But it is the real starting-place for the descent of the Tarn gorges, and it possesses many excellent hotels and an ample service of coaches for the journey across the great plateau of the Causse de Sauveterre to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about eighteen miles. This would be the most convenient route for the traveller who depended upon the train and coach for his locomotion, but those who, like the writer, make use of the bicycle, would be well advised to make Florac their starting-point, as not the least beautiful part of the river scenery lies between that pretty little town and Ste. Enimie.

II.

It fitted well with my plans one summer to explore a much longer reach of the Tarn than most visitors are in the habit of following, and I should have been sorry indeed to have missed any part of the journey. In company with another friend of the wheel, I struck eastward from Mende along the lovely valley of the Lot, and crossing the great mountain range that gives its name to the Department of the Lozère we first came upon the Tarn at Pont de Montvert, some fourteen miles north-east of Florac, at which point R. L. Stevenson began his acquaintance with the river. From this sleepy old town the river runs through a deep and narrow valley, the slopes thick with mighty chestnut trees, and the scenery in parts somewhat reminiscent of our Scottish Highlands, and totally unlike those reaches which, in its south-westerly course, render it unique among the rivers of Europe. For a few miles beyond Florac the aspect of the country is somewhat similar in kind, but on a more massive scale, the valley wider and more pastoral; but when one has reached the little town of Ispagnac, which sits snugly amid its fruitful orchards, the real character of the Tarn begins to reveal itself.

It was after sunset when we had come thus far on our journey to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about seven miles from Florac, and never am I likely to forget the weird and thrilling impression of our passage from Ispagnac to Ste. Enimie, a matter of fifteen miles. The night comes quickly in that latitude, and as we advanced along the well-made road that follows the sinuous course of the river, at first mounting steadily until the noise of the water is heard but faintly far below, and then for mile upon mile gradually tending downward, the gloaming deepened into dark, and the gorge of the river, at all times awe-inspiring, took on in many a strange and mysterious shadow of the night a moving touch of Dantesque grandeur. We had left behind us all the tree-bearing slopes, and the river now ran in a great chasm of volcanic cliffs, shooting their fantastic pinnacles a thousand feet into the darkling sky, and presenting many an outline that might have been mistaken for the towers and bastions of some eerie stronghold. Not a soul was passed on all the miles of road, no sound was heard but the varying noise of the water, nothing moved in our path except an occasional bat, that zigzagged its noiseless flight across the road. One sat on the saddle with a tight hold on the handle bars, and kept as close as possible to the uprising rock, for towards the river was a sheer drop of some 500 feet, and only a low coping stood between us and disaster. So tortuous was the road, that, being at one time some little distance in advance of my companion, I awaited his approach, and could see the light of his lamp shoot out like a will-o'-the-wisp into the middle of an abyss, and then disappear in a hollow of the rocks, only to emerge again and flash upon an uncanny bridge across some gaping gully. For a considerable time we gazed enraptured on Venus, which is here seen with a radiance seldom witnessed in England, and seemed to lie like a glittering gem on the very brow of a mighty cliff. Presently summer lightning began to play along the riven lips of the valley, and continued at thrilling intervals to add a touch of dramatic intensity to a scene already sensational enough.

The only place of habitation through which we passed was the little village of Prades, where the lighted window of a café with noise of merriment within, and the solemn gruntling of oxen in an open stable, gave one a little human encouragement though the street lay void and black. As you may suppose, it was with no small satisfaction that we at length wheeled into Ste. Enimie at half-past nine o'clock, and found mine host of the Hôtel de Paris delighted to welcome two belated voyagers.

III.

Ste. Enimie, which has a population of 1,000, is the chief town of its canton, and is cosily tucked away close by the river side in a great amphitheatre of hills and cliffs, the meeting-place of three important highways: that by which we had come, and the road across the Sauveterre from La Canourgue, and that across the other mighty plateau, the Causse Méjan. The town is of great antiquity, and is said to owe its origin to a certain princess named Enimie, daughter of Clotaire II., who, being tainted with leprosy, was cured by some waters at this place, and founded a monastery here at the close of the sixth century. This religious house became one of the richest in all Gévaudan, but was suppressed, like so many of its kind, at the time of the great Revolution. The remains of the building are still an interesting feature of the place, and high on the cliff above is the hermitage of the saint, a little chapel built about the cave in which she is supposed to have slept. The river is here crossed by a splendid bridge, which the builders were busy improving at the time of our visit.