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IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON

AND

ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE

In the Track of

R. L. STEVENSON

and
Elsewhere in Old France

J. A. HAMMERTON

AUTHOR OF " STEVENSONIANA "
WITH 92 ILLUSTRATIONS

BRISTOL
J. W. ARROWSMITH, n QUAY STREET

LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & COMPANY LIMITED

First published in 1907

1 1 1956

CONTENTS

Page
THROUGH THE CEVENNES ..... I

ALONG THE ROUTE OF "AN INLAND VOYAGE " . 7!

" THE MOST PICTURESQUE TOWN IN EUROPE " . 121

THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS . . . 137
THE WONDERLAND OF FRANCE . . . .155

THE TOWN OF " TARTARIN " . . . . 173

LA FETE DIEU IQ5

" M'SIEU MEELIN OF DUNDAE " . . . . 207

ROUND ABOUT A FRENCH FAIR .... 2IQ

THE PALACE OF THE ANGELS .... 237

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP . . . Frontispiece

Face page

LE MONASTIER I

LE MONASTIER 4

CHATEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER ... 8

GOUDET 8

CHATEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET ... 13

SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES ... 13

THE INN AT GOUDET l6

OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE 2O

THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET 2O

VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC .... 24

LA BASTIDE 24

ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 2Q

THE MONASTERY 2Q

OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 33

MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD .... 36

RUINS OF THE HOTEL DU LOT .... 36

vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Face page

ON THE LOZERE 40

ON THE LOZERE 45

VILLAGE OF COCURES 48

BRIDGE OVER THE TARN . . . .48

WATERFALL ON THE LOZERE • • • • 53

IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 53

"CLARISSE" 56

THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNEDE . . 60

IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN .... 65

NEAR FLORAC 65

FLORAC 68

/BOOM ON THE RUPEL .... -72

V1LLEVORDE ON THE W1LLEBROEK CANAL . . 72

THE ALLEE VERTE AT LAEKEN .... 77

THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE .... 77

THE GRAND CERF, MAUBEUGE 80

THE CHURCH AT QUARTES 84

THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT . . 84

ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES .... 88

SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE .... 88

THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES . . . 93

THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE . 93

Vlll

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Face page

THE INN AT MOY 97

THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY 97

VEUVE BAZIN IOO

THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FERE .... IOO

THE TOWN HALL NO YON 104

HOTEL DU NORD, NOYON 104

NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST . . . 109
NOYON CATHEDRAL : WEST FRONT . . .112

COMPIEGNE TOWN HALL Il6

THE OISE AT PONTOISE I2O

'•

GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY 121

LE PUY ! CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE

FROM PLACE DU BREUIL . . . .125

LACEMAKERS AT LE PUY 128

MARKET DAY AT LE PUY, SHOWING TYPES OF

THE AUVERNGATS 129

LE PUY 132

THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY . . 136

HOUSE OF DU CHAYLA, AT PONT DE MONTVERT . 137

TWO VIEWS IN THE VILLAGE OF LA CAVALERIE . 141

LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL . 144

ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE . 145

THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC .... 148

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Face page
MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR . . 152

ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC .... 152

ON THE TARN .... . . 157

A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN .... l6o

IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN . . . . l6l

THE CHATEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN . .164
PEYRELAU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE JONTE . 169

BEAUCAIRE : SHOWING CASTLE AND BRIDGE ACROSS

THE RHONE TO TARASCOX . . . .173

TARASCON: THE PUBLIC MARKET. . . . 176

THE TARASQUE 177

THE CASTLE OF TARASCON 177

TARASCON: THE MAIRIE 180

A WOMAN OF TARASCON . . . . .184
TARASCON: "THE BIT OF A SQUARE". . .189

TARASCON : THE PROCESSION OF THE TARASQUE . 193

PROCESSION OF LA FETE DIEU .... 196

A WOMAN OF SAINTE ENIMIE .... 2O5

THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC . 208

THE MERCHANTS' TABLE 213

WOMEN OF THE CEVENNES 22O

GENERAL VIEW OF MONT ST. MICHEL . . 244

MONT ST. MICHEL . . 253

Note

THE travel-sketches that go to the making of
this little book have appeared, in part only,
in certain literary magazines, here and in
America ; but the greater part of the work
is now printed for the first time.

Perhaps the author should anticipate a
criticism that might arise from the sequence
of the first two papers. Had he gone to
work on a set plan, he would naturally have
undertaken his pilgrimage along the route of
An Inland Voyage before visiting the scenes
of Travels with a Donkey, as the one book
preceded the other in order of publication,
An Inland Voyage, which appeared originally
in 1878, being properly Stevenson's first book.
Travels with a Donkey was published in 1879.
But he has preferred to give precedence to
"Through the Cevennes," as it was the first
of his Stevenson travel-sketches to be written.
Moreover, these little journeys were as much,
indeed more affairs of personal pleasure than
of copy-hunting, and when the author went
forth on them he had no intention of making
a book about his experiences — at least, not
one deriving its chief interest from association
with the memory of R. L. S. He has been
counselled, however, to bring together these

Note

chapters and their accompanying photographs
in this form, on the plea that the interest in
Stevenson's French travels is still so consider*
able that any straightforward account of later
journeys over the same ground cannot fail
to have some attraction for the admirers of
that great master of English prose.

The book is but a very little sheaf from the
occasional writings of its author on his way-
farings in old France, where in the last ten
years he has travelled many thousands of
miles by road and rail between Maubeuge and
Marseilles, from Belfort to Bordeaux, and
always with undiminished interest among a
people who are eminently lovable and amid
scenes of infinite variety and charm.

Xll

" In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant Highland
valley about fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent a month of fine days."
— R. L. S.

The Public Well
LE MONASTIER

Through the Cevennes

SOMEONE has accounted for the charm of
story-telling by the suggestion that the
natural man imagines himself the hero of the
tale he is reading, and squares this action or
that with what he would suspect himself of
doing in similar circumstances. The romancer
who can best beguile his reader into this
conceit of mind is likely to be the most
popular. It seems to me that with books of
travel this mental make-believe must also
take place if the reader is to derive the full
measure of entertainment from the narrative.
With myself, at all events, it is so, and
Hazlitt may be authority of sufficient weight
to justify the thought that my own experience
is not likely to be singular. To me the chief
charm in reading a book of travel is this
fanciful assumption of the role of the
traveller; and so far does it condition my
reading, that my readiest appetite is for a

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

story of wayfaring in some quarter of the
world where I may hope, not unreasonably,
to look upon the scenes that have first
engaged my mind's eye. Thus the adven-
tures of a Mr. Savage Landor in Thibet, or a
Sir Henry Stanley in innermost Africa, have
less attraction for me than the narrative of a
journey such as Elihu Burritt undertook in
his famous walk from London to John
o' Groats, or R. L. Stevenson's Travels with
a Donkey in the Cevennes. I will grant you
that the delicious literary style of Stevenson's
book is its potent charm, but I am persuaded
that others than myself have had their pleasure
in the reading of it sensibly increased by the
thought that some day they might witness
Nature's originals of the landscapes which
the master painter has depicted so deftly. It
had long been a dream of mine to track his
path through that romantic region of old
France ; not in the impudently emulative
spirit of the throaty tenor who, hearing Mr.
Edward Lloyd sing a new song, hastens to
the music-seller's, resolved to practise it for
his next " musical evening ; " not, forsooth,
to do again badly what had once been done
well ; but to travel the ground in the true
pilgrim spirit of love for him who

" Here passed one day, nor came again —
A prince among the tribes of men."

Through the Cevennes

Well did I know that many of the places with
which I was familiar romantically through
Stevenson's witchery of words were drab and
dull enough in reality : enough for me that
here in his pilgrim way that " blithe and
rare spirit " had rested for a little while.

THE mountainous district of France to
which, somewhat loosely, Stevenson applies
the name Cevennes, lies along the western
confines of Provence, and overlaps on several
departments, chief of which are Ard^che,
Lozere, Gard, and Herault. In many parts
the villages and the people have far less in
common with France and the French than
Normandy and the Normans have with pro-
vincial England. Here in these mountain
fastnesses and sheltered valleys the course
of life has flowed along almost changeless for
centuries, and here, too, we shall find much
that is best in the romantic history and
natural grandeur of France. Remote from
Paris, and happily without the area of the
"cheap trip" organisers, it is likely to remain
for ever " off the beaten track."

In order to visit the Cevennes proper, the
beautiful town of Mende would be the best
starting-place. But since my purpose was to

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

strike the trail of R. L. S., after some wander-
ings awheel northward of Clermont Ferrand,
I approached the district from Le Puy, a
town which so excellent a judge as Mr. Joseph
Pennell has voted the most picturesque in
Europe. Besides, Stevenson himself had
often wandered through its quaint, unusual
streets, while preparing for his memorable
journey with immortal Modestine. " I de-
cided on a sleeping sack," he says ; " and
after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of
high living for myself and my advisers, a
sleeping sack was designed, constructed, and
triumphantly brought home." At that time
the wanderer's " home " was in the mountain
town of Le Monastier, some fifteen miles
south-east of Le Puy, and there in the
autumn of 1877 he spent " about a month of
fine days," variously occupied in completing
his New Arabian Nights and Picturesque
Notes on Edinburgh, and conducting, with no
little personal and general entertainment, the
preliminaries of his projected journey through
the Cevennes.

III.

TOGETHER with a friend I had spent some
rainy but memorable days at Le Puy in the
summer of 1903, waiting for fair weather to
advance on this little highland town, which

Through the Cevennes

lies secure away from railways and can only
be reached by road. A bright morning in
June saw us gliding on our wheels along the
excellent route nationale that carries us
thither on a long, easy gradient. The town
seen at a distance is a mere huddle of grey
houses stuck on the side of a bleak, treeless
upland, and at close quarters it presents few
allurements to the traveller. But it is typical
of the mountain villages of France, and rich
in the rugged, unspoilt character of its in-
habitants. Stevenson tells us that it is
" notable for the making of lace, for drunken-
ness, for freedom of language, and for
unparalleled political dissension/' As re-
gards the last of these features, the claim to
distinction may readily be admitted, but for
the rest they apply equally to scores of
similar villages of the Cevennes. Certainly it
is not notable for the variety or comfort of its
hostelries, but I shall not regret our brief
sojourn at the Hotel de Chabrier.

Mine host was a worthy who will always
have a corner in my memory. Like his
establishment, his person was much the worse
for wear. Lame of a leg, his feet shod with
the tattered fragments of slippers such as
the Scots describe with their untranslatable
" bauchle," a pair of unclean heels peeping out
through his stockings, he was the living
advertisement of his frowsy inn, the ground

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

floor of which, still bearing the legend Cafe,
had been turned into a stable for oxen and
lay open to the highway, a doubtful shelter
for our bicycles. But withal, turning a shut
eye to the kitchen as we passed, the cooking
was excellent, and M. Chabrier assured us
that he was renowned for game patties, which
he sent to " all parts of Europe. " The frank
satisfaction with himself and his hotel
he betrayed at every turn would have re-
joiced the heart of so shrewd a student of
character as R. L. S., and the chances are
considerable that in that month of fine days,
six-and-twenty years before, Stevenson may
have gossiped with my friend of the greasy
cap, for M. Chabrier was then, as now, making
his guests welcome and baking his inimitable
patties.

Did he know Stevenson ? " Oui, oui, oui,
M'sieu ! " Stevenson was a writer of books
who had spent some time there years ago.
"Oui, oui, parfaitement, M'sieu Stevenzong"
What a memory the man had, and how
blithely he recalled the distant past !

" Then, of course, you must have known
the noted village character Father Adam,
who sold his donkey to this Scottish
traveller ? "

" Pi re Adam — oui, oui, oui — ah, non, non,
je ne le connais pas," thus shuffling when I
asked for some further details.

Through the Cevennes

Mine host, who read the duty of an inn-
keeper to be the humouring of his patrons,
could clearly supply me with the most sur-
prising details of him whose footsteps I was
tracing ; but wishful not to lead him into
temptation, I tested his evidence early in our
talk by asking how many years had passed
since he of whom we spoke had rested at
Le Monastier, and whether he had patronised
the Hotel de Chabrier. He sagely scratched
his head and racked his memory for a
moment, with the result that this Scotsman —
oh, he was sure he was a Scotsman — had
stayed in that very hotel, and occupied
bedroom number three, just four years back !

Obviously he was mistaken — not to put too
fine a point upon it — and his cheerful avowal,
in discussing another subject, that he was " a
partisan of no religion," did not increase my
faith in him. There were few Protestants in
Le Monastier, he told me ; but as I happened
to know from my good friend the pasteur at
Le Puy that the postmaster here, at least,
stood by the reformed faith, and by that
token might be supposed a man of some
reading, I hoped there to find some knowledge
of Stevenson, whose works and travels were
familiar to the pasteur. Alas, " /' n' sais pas "
was the burden of the postmaster's song.

To wander about the evil-smelling by-ways
of Le Monastier, and observe the ancient

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

crones busy at almost every door with their
lace-making pillows, the bent and grizzled
wood-choppers at work in open spaces, is to
understand that, despite the lapse of more than
a quarter of a century, there must be still alive
hundreds of the village folk among whom
Stevenson moved. But to find any who could
recall him were the most hopeless of tasks ;
to identify the auberge, in the billiard-room
of which " at the witching hour of dawn "
he concluded the purchase of the donkey
and administered brandy to its disconsolate
seller, were equally impossible, and it
was only left to the pilgrims to visit the
market-place where Father Adam and his
donkey were first encountered. So with the
stink of the church, whose interior seemed
to enclose the common sewer of the town,
still lingering in our nostrils, we resumed our
journey southward across the little river
Gazeille, and headed uphill in the direction
of St. Martin de Frugeres, noting as we
mounted on the other side of the valley the
straggling lane down which Modestine, loaded
with that wonderful sleeping sack and the
paraphernalia of the most original of travel-
lers, " tripped along upon her four small hoofs
with a sober daintiness of gait " to the ford
across the river, giving as yet no hint of the
troubles she had in store for " the green
donkey driver."

CHATEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER
A drawing of this castle by Stevenson has been published.

GOUDET

" I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a
valley."— R. L. S.

IV.

ALONG our road were several picturesque
patches formed of rock and pine, and notably
the romantic ruins of Chateau Neuf, with the
little village clustered at their roots, which
furnished subjects for Stevenson's block and
pencil. Among his efforts as a limner there
has also been published a sketch of his that
gives with striking effect the far-reaching
panorama of the volcanic mountain masses
ranging westward from Le Monastier, a scene
of wild and austere aspect. A little beyond
Chateau Neuf we were wheeling on the same
road where he urged with sinking heart the
unwilling ass, and while still within sight of
his starting-place, showing now like a scar on
the far hillside, we passed by the filthy village
of St. Victor, the neighbourhood where the
greenness of the donkey driver was diminished
by the advice of a peasant, who advocated
thrashing and the use of the magic word
" Proot."

The road grew wilder as we advanced
towards St. Martin de Frugeres, to which
village the sentimental traveller came upon a
Sabbath, and wrote of the " home feeling "
the scene at the church brought over
him — a sentiment difficult to appreciate as

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

we wandered the filth-sodden streets and
inspected the ugly little church, whitewashed
within and stuffed with cheap symbols of a
religion that is anathema to descendants of
the Covenanters. The silvery Loire far below
in the valley to our right, we sat at our ease
astride our wiry steeds and sped cheerfully
down the winding road to Goudet, feeling that
if our mode of progress was less romantic than
Stevenson's, it had compensations, for there
was nothing that tempted us to tarry on our
way.

" 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." The scene was
indeed one of singular beauty, the fertile fields
and shaggy woods being in pleasant contrast
to the barren country through which we had
been moving. While still a mile away from
the place, we foregathered with two peasants
trudging uphill to St. Martin. I was glad to
talk with them, as I desired to know which of
the inns was the oldest. There were three, I
was told, and the Cafe Rivet boasted the
greatest age, the others being of recent birth,
and none were good, my informant added,
supposing that we intended to lodge for the
night.

To the inn of M. Rivet we repaired, this
being the only auberge that Goudet possessed

Through the Cevennes

at the time of Stevenson's visit. We found
it one of the usual small plastered buildings,
destitute of any quaintness, but cleaner than
most, and sporting a large wooden tobacco
pipe, crudely fashioned, by way of a sign.
The old people who kept it were good Cevennol
types, the woman wearing the curious head-
gear of the peasant folk, that resembles the
tiny burlesque hats worn by musical clowns,
and the man in every trait of dress and feature
capable of passing for a country Scot. The
couple were engagingly ignorant, and had
never heard of Scotland, so it was no surprise
to learn that they knew nothing of the famous
son of that country who had once " hurried
over his midday meal " in the dining-room
where we were endeavouring to instruct
Madame Rivet in the occult art of brewing
tea. The Rivets had been four years in
possession of the inn at the time of Stevenson's
visit, and I should judge that the place had
changed in no essential feature, though I
missed the portrait of the host's nephew,
Regis Senac, " Professor of Fencing and
Champion of the Two Americas," that had
entertained R. L. S. In return for our hints
on tea-making, Madame Rivet charged us
somewhat in excess of the usual tariff, and
showed herself a veritable grippe-sous be-
fore giving change, by carefully reckoning
the pieces of fly-blown sugar we had used, a

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

little circumstance the cynic may claim as
indicating a knowledge of the spirit if not
the letter of Scotland.

IT was late in the afternoon when we con-
tinued our journey from Goudet, intent on
reaching that evening the lake of Bouchet,
which Stevenson had selected as the camping-
place for the first night of his travels. The
highway to Ussel is one of the most beautiful
on the whole route, lying through a wide and
deep glen, similar to many that exist in the
Scottish Highlands, but again unlike all the
latter in its numerous terraces, that bear
eloquent witness to the industry of the
country-folk. Every glen in this region of
France is remarkable for this handiwork of
the toilers, and the time was, before the advent
of the sporting nawbobs, when in some parts
of the Scottish Highlands similar rude stone-
work was common in the glens.

To those who have not seen this work of the
poor hill-folk it is not easy to convey a proper
idea of its effect on the landscape. In these
bleak mountain regions the sheltered valleys
and ravines are best suited for growing the
produce of the field, but as the soil is scant
and the ground too often takes the shape of

Through the Cevennes

a very attenuated V, it is impossible to culti-
vate the slopes of the valley in their natural
condition ; so, with infinite labour and the
patience of their stolid oxen, the Cevennols
begin by building near the banks of the
stream a loose stone wall, and filling in the
space between that and the upward slope with
a level bedding of earth. Thus step by step
the hillside is brought into cultivation, and
the terraces will be found wherever it is
possible to rear a wall and carry up soil ;
indeed, they are to be seen in many places
where it would have been thought impossible
to prepare them, and out of reason to grow
crops upon them. Often they are not so large
as an ordinary bedroom in area, and such a
space one may see under wheat. A hillside
so terraced looks like a flight of giant steps,
and it is a unique spectacle to children of the
plains to descry, perhaps on the twentieth
story, so to say, a team of oxen ploughing
one of these eerie fields.

Along this road, where on our right the
terraces climbed upward to the naked basalt,
and on the other side of the valley, now flooded
with a pale yellow sunset that picked out
vividly children at play tending a scanty herd
of cattle on the hillside, our donkey driver of
old had some of his bitterest experiences with
that thrawn jade Modestine. We, fortunate
in our more docile mounts, made excellent

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

progress to Ussel, after walking a good two
miles on foot. The road beyond that town
was lively with bullock wagons, heavily
freighted with timber, and carts, mostly drawn
by oxen, filled with women returning from
the market at Costaros, a little town on the
highway between Le Puy and Pradelles;
bullocks and people — the former to our em-
barrassment— being greatly interested in the
wheel-travellers of these seldom cycled roads.
When we arrived at Costaros, a town that is
drab and dismal beyond words, the evening
was wearing out under a leaden sky, promising
the stragglers from the market good use for
their bulky umbrellas, and we had still eight
kilometres of rough country roads between us
and the lake. Stevenson, in his heart-breaking
struggles with the wayward ass, must have
crossed the highway in the dark some little
distance south of Costaros to have arrived at
the village of Bouchet St. Nicolas, two miles
beyond the lake ; and as we urged forward in
the rain, which now fell pitilessly and turned
the darkling mountains into phantom masses
smoking with mist, we could appreciate to the
full the satisfaction with which he abandoned
his quest of the lake and spent his first night
snug at the inn of Bouchet. As we wheeled
through the mud into the large village of
Cayres no straggler appeared in the streets,
that steamed like the back of a perspiring

Through the Cevennes

horse ; but a carpenter at work in a windy shed
assured us that the chalet on the shore of the
lake had opened for the season, and in our
dripping state we pressed thither uphill,
feeling that two miles more in the rain could
not worsen our condition. It was a weird and
moving experience — the ghostly woods on the
hillside, the tuneless tinkle of bells on unseen
sheep, the hissing noise of our wheels on the
moist earth — and our delight was great when
we heard the lapse of water on our left. For
nearly a mile the latter part of the road lay
through a pine forest, where the ground had
scarcely suffered from the rain, but the way
was dark as in a tunnel, and glimpses of the
lake between the trees showed the water almost
vivid as steel by contrast.

VI.

" I HAD been told," says R. L. S., " that the
neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited
except by trout." He travelled in the days
before the Syndicat d Initiative du Velay,
which I shall ever bless for its chalet by the
Lac du Bouchet, whose lighted windows two
weary pilgrims descried that night with joy
unspeakable. Our arrival was the cause of
no small commotion to the good folk who kept
this two-storied wooden hostel. We were

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

their first visitors of the season, and it was
clear they hailed us with delight, despite the
lateness of our arrival. Candles were soon
alight in the dining-room upstairs, a fire of
pine logs crackling in the open hearth, the
housemaid briskly laying the table, the mis-
tress bustling in the kitchen, doors banging
cheerily in the dark night as the master went
and came between outhouses, fetching food
and firing for which our coming had suddenly
raised the need. Our bedrooms opened off
the dining-room, and were well if plainly
furnished, the floors being sanded, and we had
soon made shift to change our sodden garments
as well as the limited resources of wheelmen's
baggage would allow. Above all was the
ceaseless noise of the lake, that seemed to
lend a keener edge to the chilly air.

We could scarcely believe it was the middle
of June in the sunny south of France as we
sat there shivering before the spluttering logs
in a room " suitable for bandits or noblemen
in disguise/' But a deep sense of comfort was
supplied by the savoury smells that issued
from the lower regions of the house. Our
blessings on the head of the landlady and the
whole French nation of cooks were sincere, as
we regaled ourselves with an excellent meal of
perch, omelet, mutton chops, raisins, almonds,
cheese, lemonade and coffee. Imagine your-
self arriving after nine o'clock at night at a

Through the Cevennes

lonely inn anywhere in the British Isles and
faring thus ! Moreover, the tenants of the
chalet — the two women especially — were the
most welcome of gossips, and the elder had a
gift of dry humour that must have served
her well in so wet a season. For three weeks
it had rained steadily, she said, and she feared
it was nothing short of the end of the world.
When we told her that we had come from Le
Monastier by way of St. Martin and Goudet,
she was highly amused, and the younger, a
rosy-faced wench, laughed heartily at the
thought of anybody visiting such places. The
lake of Bouchet — ah, that was another matter !
Lakes were few in France, and this one well
worth seeing. There were many lakes in
Scotland ! This was news to them, and they
wondered why we had come so far to see this
of Bouchet, — as we did ourselves when next
morning we surveyed a tiny sheet of water
almost circular, no more than two miles in
circumference and quite featureless. It is
simply the crater of an ancient volcano, and
receives its water from some underground
springs, there being no obvious source of
supply. The lake, at an altitude of 4,000 feet,
is higher than the surrounding country.

VII.

WHEN we awoke in the morning and made
ready for our departure the room was filled
with the smoke of burning faggots, as though
a censer had been swung in it by some early-
rising acolyte ; and the fire was again " a
welcome evidence of the landlady's thoughtful-
ness, for the outlook was grey and the early
morning air bit shrewdly as the tooth of winter.
Had the day promised better, we should have
struck south from the lake to Bouchet St.
Nicolas, at whose inn Stevenson uncorked a
bottle of Beaujolais, inviting his host to join
him in drinking it ; and the innkeeper would
take little, saying, " I am an amateur of such
wine, do you see ? — and I am capable of
leaving you not enough." But the way
thither is no better than a bullock-track, and
several miles of similar road lie between
Bouchet and the highway ; so with a lowering
sky ominous of more rain, and the knowledge
that for three weeks the country had been
soaking, we determined not to risk the
bullock-track, and retraced our path to
Costaros, passing on the way numerous ox
wagons laden with timber.

The whole countryside was sweet with the
morning incense of the faggot fires burning on

Through the Cevennes

many a cottage hearth. We overtook several
young people driving cattle out to the pasture
lands, and noting that without exception they
carried umbrellas, our hopes of a good day
were not high. But by the time we had
reached the Gendarmerie, that stands at the
crest of the hill on the high road out of Costaros,
and were chatting with one of the officers
whom we found idling at the door, the wind
was rising and heaped masses of sombre clouds
were being driven before it across the sky,
though in their passage they disclosed no
cheering hints of the blue behind. The
gendarme admitted that the rising wind might
be a good sign, but he was not very hopeful,
and seemed to be more interested in meeting
two travellers from a country he had never
heard of than in discussing the weather.
There are parts of France, especially Normandy
and Brittany, where, to confess oneself a
Scotsman is to be assured of a heartier wel-
come than would be accorded to one who
came from England ; but Stevenson's boast
that " the happiest lot on earth is to be born a
Scotsman " counts for little in these highlands
of the south, where few of the village-folk have
ever heard of Scotland.

The road south of Costaros even on a bright
summer day must appear bleak and cheerless,
and that morning our chief desire was to move
along it as quickly as we could. Yet, as we

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

advanced, the scene was not without elements
of beauty, and the mists that veiled the
distant mountains gradually lifting, produced
a transformation entirely pleasing, while ere
long there were great and welcome rifts in the
grey above, and patches of blue sky heartened
us on our way. By the time we had reached
the hamlet of La Sauvetat the sun was peeping
out fitfully, and on our right it suddenly flooded
with amber light a meadow, yellow with
marigolds, where cows were pasturing, at-
tended by a small girl who was playing at
skipping-rope.

VIII.

WE had again joined the track of R. L. S.,
where, now armed with a goad, he drove his
donkey. " The perverse little devil, since she
would not be taken with kindness, must even
go with pricking. " We had but to sit in our
saddles, and wheel rapidly down the long and
exhilarating descent to Pradelles, a very
tumbledown village with a great shabby
square lying at an angle of almost forty-five
degrees. The town occupies a little corrie on
the hillside, and the ground slopes quickly on
the west to the river Allier, beyond which the
country rises again in mighty undulations as
far as the eye can reach. For all its slan tern-
ness — perhaps, in some degree, because of

OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE

" Just at the bridge at Langogne a lassie of some seven or eight
addressed me in the sacramental phrase, ' D'oh 'est-ce-que vous
venez? '"— R. L. S.

THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET

" An amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call
the Loire."— R. L. S.

Through the Cevennes

that — Pradelles is a place of interest, perched
here at an altitude of 3,800 feet above sea-
level.

More than any other place we saw in our
journey, this old mountain town wears an un-
mistakable " foreign " appearance, and one
walks its stleets with the feeling that one is
moving cautiously along the sloping roof of
a house. Among its tumbledown buildings it
still possesses fragments of considerable his-
toric value, such as its ancient hospice, and a
gateway from the top of which a village
heroine killed some Huguenot heroes by throw-
ing a stone at them while they were leading an
assault against its walls. In the church of
Notre Dame this episode in the history of the
town is commemorated by a mural painting in
vivid colours, the stone which the devout
Catholic maiden is hurling at the devoted
heads of the besiegers being large enough to
warrant the assistance of a steam crane. The
interior of the church is very quaint and un-
usual, and I am sorry that Stevenson did not
yield to the urging of the landlady of the inn to
visit Our Lady of Pradelles, " who performed
many miracles, although she was of wood/'
for his impressions of the church could not
have failed to be peculiarly piquant. The
miraculous image of the virgin is a wooden doll,
dressed in lace and set on the high altar.
Pilgrims come in large numbers to its shrine

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

every fifteenth of August ; and one of the
spirited paintings on the wall depicts the
rescue of the idol from a burning of the church
which, I should guess, took place about the
time of the Revolution. Evidently the res-
cuers of Our Lady were not prepared to submit
her to the crucial test a sister image at
Le Puy survived — " burning for thirty-six
hours without being consumed/' Many and
unfamiliar saints look down at us from the
walls, and at the west end there is a loft such
as might be seen in some of the very old
Scottish churches, occupied at the time of our
visit by a group of women, members no doubt
of some pious confraternity.

R. L. S. has some picturesque notes on " The
Beast of Gevaudan," whose trail he first
struck at Pradelles ; for we were now in the
wild and uncultivated country of Gevaudan,
" but recently disforested from terror of the
wolves," whose grizzly exploits in the way of
eating women and children seem to have en-
gaged the imagination of our traveller. If
the wolves have gone, they have left in their
stead a flourishing progeny of wolf-like curs,
who infest the highways and byways in ex-
traordinary numbers, to the embarrassment of
the wheelman.

IX.

FROM Pradelles to Langogne is a long and
deep descent, and while walking our machines
down an unrideable path, a young woman on
a terrace near the road came forward to greet
us, tripping unexpectedly over the tether of a
goat, and landing softly and naturally on the
ground, where after her moment's surprise
she smilingly asked, " Oil allez vous prome-
ner ? " more usually our bucolic greeting
than " D'ou 'st-ce-que vous venez? " the latter
" sacramental phrase," on which Stevenson
remarks, being possibly suggested in his case
by the odd appearance of the traveller and
his beast of burden.

The bridge across the Allier at Langogne,
where Stevenson met the " lassie of some
seven or eight " who demanded whence he
came, is now a crazy ruin, and a serviceable
modern structure spans the river some little
distance to the west of it. Near this place he
camped for the night. He furnishes no infor-
mation about his stay at Langogne, where,
I should judge, he slept at one of the inns.
The town must have altered greatly since he
rested there, as it is now on the railway line
to Villefort, and a considerable trade in coal
seems to be carried on. It is also a popular

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

summer resort, though one is at a loss to
account for its attractions to holiday makers.
Its church dates from the tenth century, and
contains in a little chapel on the right, below
the level of the nave, the image of Notre
Dame de Tout-Pouvoir, which our landlady
at the Cheval Blanc assured us was tres
veneree, and the housemaid who conducted
us thither took advantage of the occasion to
tell her beads before the statue, keeping a
roving eye on us as we wandered about the
church.

STEVENSON'S track now lay somewhat to
the west of the course of the Allier, as he made
for the little village of Cheylard 1'Eveque, on
the borders of the Forest of Mercoire, and
in this stage of his journey he was more than
usually faithful to his ideal of travel : " 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 feather-bed of civilisation, and find the
globe granite underfoot and strewn with
cutting flints." There was no need for his
quitting the highway, since his further
objective lay due south through the pleasant
valley of the Allier. But his diversion among

VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC

1 ' Why anyone should desire to visit Luc is more than my
much-inventing spirit can suppose." — R. L. S.

LA BAST1DE

"At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the
river."— R. L. S.

Through the Cevennes

the by-ways was rich in adventure, and
furnished him with material for perhaps his
best chapter, " A Camp in the Dark." He
had the good fortune to lose his way after
nightfall, and to be forced to camp in a wood
of pines in happy ignorance of his where-
abouts. When next morning he did reach
Cheylard he was fain to confess that " it
seemed little worthy of all this searching."
With a less keen appetite for losing ourselves
in a maze of muddy bullock-tracks, we pressed
forward through the fresh green valley to
Luc, and here rejoined the path of our adven-
turer once more. We had the road almost
to ourselves, and among the few wayfarers I
recall was a travelling knife-grinder, whom
we passed near Luc engaged in the agreeable
task of preparing his dinner, the first course
of which, potage au pain, was simmering in a
sooty pot over a fire of twigs. A nation of
gourmets, verily, when the humblest among
them can thus maintain the national art in
the hedges.

" Why anyone should desire to visit either
Luc or Cheylard is more than my much
inventing spirit can suppose." Thus our
vagabond. But journeying at a more genial
season of the year, we found the neighbour-
hood of Luc not devoid of beauty. The
valley of the Allier is here broken into wide
and picturesque gorges, and in many ways

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

the scenery is reminiscent of Glen Coe, where
Alan Breck and David Balfour dodged the
redcoats. But late in September it would
bear a very different aspect, and Stevenson
tells us that " 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." There is now a railway station at
Luc, the line running near the road all the
way to La Bastide and as we continued
southward that sunny June day, it was only
the shrill noise of the crickets and the unusual
quilt work of the diligently husbanded hill-
sides that told us we were not looking on a
Perthshire landscape. In a sweet corner of
the valley lies La Bastide, a drowsy little
town despite its long connection with the
railway, which existed even at the time of
Stevenson's visit.

Here, he tells us, " 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

Through the Cevennes

monastery of Our Lady of the Snows/*
Thither we shall follow his steps, more closely
than usual, as the road is too steep to admit
of our cycling. For some distance the route
lies through a great forest of pines, but when
the crest of the hill is gained a far-reaching
prospect greets the eye. " The sun came out
as I left the shelter of a pine wood," writes
R. L. S., " and I beheld suddenly a fine wild
landscape to the south. High rocky hills,
as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and be-
tween these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery,
craggy, the sun glittering in 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." Only when the snow comes down
and mantles these abundant hills would this
description not apply. It is a perfect picture
of what we saw. Presently we noted with no
small satisfaction the white statue of the Virgin,
which, standing by the highway at a point
where a side road strikes northward through
the pines, " directed the traveller to Our Lady
of the Snows." He describes the pine wood
as " a young plantation," but in the inter-
vening years the trees have grown into a

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

mighty forest, dark and mysterious, and the
statue of Our Lady was so overshadowed by
branches rich with cones, that it was impossi-
ble to get a satisfactory photograph of it.
" Here, then/' he continues, " I struck left-
ward, and pursued my way, driving my
secular donkey before me, and creaking in my
secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum
of silence." On our equally secular cycles we
followed the same track, the roadway being
dotted on each side with bundles of faggots
gathered by the silent monks, probably for
the use of the poor.

XI.

" 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," says Stevenson, as
he recalls the feeling produced within him by
the clanging of a bell at the monastery while
he was not yet in sight of it. No bells clanged
as we descended the road which Father
Apollinaris was still in the act of making
when Stevenson encountered him. We
emerged at length from the shelter of the
trees into a wide hollow of land, from which
on every side the hills rose up, and where
on our right were the outer walls of the

Through the Cevennes

monastery, plain plastered buildings, with
little barred windows on the ground floor
and a row without bars on the second story.
On our left was a large saw-mill, where steam
saws were giving shrill advertisement of their
use. Several monks were among the workers
at the mill, and a brown-coated figure was
walking along the road that opened on our
left beyond the timber sheds to some large
white buildings which, as we afterwards
learned, comprised the farm belonging to the
monastery. The first impression was not
exactly to touch one's feeling for romance.
Trappists in the timber trade suggests a head-
ing for a " snippet " periodical, and if the
monks were silent, here at least were noises
that smote unpleasantly on the ear.

The buildings of Our Lady of the Snows
are quite devoid of any architectural beauty.
They are set four-square in the hollow, and
the hills trend gently upward on every side
richly clad with trees, for the monks have re-
forested much of the surrounding land, which
is the property of the fraternity. The south
side is occupied by a long, two - storied
building, which contains the main entrance —
a plain, whitewashed, barn-like structure —
and buildings of a similar type adjoin it east
and west, while the north side of the quad-
rangle is filled by the more pretentious
masonry of the church, the chapter-house,

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

and other religious offices, though even here
the essential note of the architecture is
austerity, the clock-tower being devoid of
decoration and purely utilitarian.

When endeavouring to photograph the
buildings while the sun shone, an old man
with a very red face, a very white beard and
a very dirty white blouse came along, leaning
feebly on his stick. He was delighted on
being asked to become part of the picture,
and begged me to wait a moment while he
fixed on his left arm his plaque, whereon I
read in brazen letters, " Gardien de la
Propriete." This aged and infirm defender
of the monastic estates was as proud of his
plaque as if it had been a medal won in war.
There must be few attacks upon the property
of the monastery, which he informed me
extended as far as we could see in this wind-
swept hollow of the hills, if our friend of the
snowy beard and ruddy face stood for its
defence ! We were cheered to learn from him
that there would be no difficulty in visiting
the monastery, and if we wished we might be
able to pass the night there. This we desired
most heartily for various reasons, but chiefly
because it was now close on six in the evening,
and days are short in these latitudes.

XII.

WE were told to go round to the chief
gateway, and there to summon the Brother
Porter by ringing the bell. This we did, with
something of that " quaking heart " to which
Stevenson confesses in the same act, for the
clamour of a bell that one rings in a great
silent building seems fraught with news of an
offence for which one stands to receive the
penalty. Nor do your spirits rise when a
little shutter in the door is opened, and a
grizzly-whiskered face in a brown hood peers
through demanding your business. All was
well, however. The Brother Porter ad-
mitted us to the courtyard, and went to
summon one of the novitiates who, as Guest
Father, would do us the honours of the
monastery. He was, as I should judge, a
young man of five-and-twenty, who came to
us through a door on the right of the entrance
that admitted to the hospice. Wearing
the white flannel habit of the monks, with a
black scapular hanging loose and bulky below
the neck, he was of medium stature, his
shaven face pleasant and comely, and his
dark eyes of that unusual brilliance which
Stevenson noted as " the only morbid sign "
he could detect in the appearance of the

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

monks. Our host bowed ceremoniously in
shaking hands with us, and immediately
escorted us across the trim garden to the
monastic buildings at the other side of the
quadrangle.

During their period of novitiate, which
lasts for three years, the monks have still the
liberty to talk with strangers or with the lay
brethren, but when their final vows are taken
they are supposed to be inarticulate, except
in performing the religious offices of each day.
The Guest Father would in two years more
be qualified for the silent life ; meanwhile, he
exercised his power of speech with so much
grace that one felt truly sorry so excellent a
talker should contemplate with cheerfulness
the voluntary and useless atrophy of his
divine gift. Very reverently he led us into
the church, which is a plain but elegant
building with a vaulted roof, the walls being
whitewashed, and the woodwork, of which
there is not too much, chastely carved. A
number of good pictures are hung on the walls,
and there is a series of statues of the saints
on brackets, executed with some taste, and
entirely free from the usual tawdry colouring
of similar objects in French Catholic churches.
The altar also is in welcome contrast to the
common doll-show of the ordinary church,
and although the oft-repeated references to
the simplicity of the whole with which our

Trappist Monks gathering roots for distilling

A Peep into the Library
OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

Through the Cevennes

excellent friend pointed out the various
features of the place approached almost to
affectation, one must bear ready witness to
the apparent sincerity of these poor monks
in their efforts towards a simpler circumstance
of worship than the Roman Catholic Church
in general practises.

The chapter-house is in keeping with the
church in point of restraint in decoration, its
beautifully panelled walls giving the apart-
ment a genial touch of warmth by contrast
with the cold white of its groined roof.

The library, which occupies a spacious room
on the upper story of the north wing, is
stocked with some twenty thousand volumes,
chiefly in Latin and French, but including an
excellent collection of works in Greek, religion
and history being naturally the chief subjects
represented. When we remember that many
of the monks are men of no intellectual gifts
and of small learning, being drawn largely
from the peasant class and the military, we may
doubt if the treasures of the library are in
great request. The librarian, at least, must
be a man of bookish tastes, since the collection
is arranged in perfect order. Our guide
assured us that the monastery possesses a
copy of Travels with a Donkey, but he did not
discover it for us.

The refectory is a large and bare chamber
occupying the lower story of the east wing

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

Long narrow tables of plain wood stand around
the room, and on these are laid the simple
utensils of the meal. The monks sit on a
rude bench, and for the greater part of the
year they take but one meal in twenty-four
hours ; but during the summer months, when
one might suppose their needs to be less, they,
by special indulgence, go so far towards
temporising with the flesh as to eat twice in
one day.

R. L. S. was moved to a little disquisition
on the subject of over-eating when he contem-
plated the dietetic restraint of the Trappist
brethren. " Their meals are scanty, but even
of these they eat sparingly," he writes ; " 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 the 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

Through the Cevennes

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 the eye — was one
that rather served to increase the general
impression of vivacity and strength. "

On the topmost floor of the east wing we
were shown the dormitory, a long and, as I
recall it, a somewhat low-roofed room, divided
into numerous little cubicles, each enclosed
on three sides, and screened from the passage
by a curtain of red cloth. The couch consisted
of a single mattress laid on boards, with the
scantiest supply of bedclothes. Each of these
little compartments bore in painted letters
the monastic name of its occupant, and here
every night, after the toils and vigils of the
day, the brethren lay themselves down at
eight o'clock in their ordinary habit of dress,
being in this respect less fanatical than other
fraternities of the same order, who sleep in
their coffins, and even in unduly ready
graves. " By two in the morning," says
R. L. S., " 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

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

to the chapel, the chapter-room, 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, and permitted to mismanage
life in our own dull and foolish manner."

XIII.

ON our way back to the hospice we learned
with regret that Father Apollinaris, " so good
and so simple," had been dead five years, and
the right of the monastery to the title of Our
Lady of the Snows was clearly established
by the information that in the winter months
it is buried for weeks on end, and our young
friend of the shiny eyes shivered as he spoke
of the neige enorme, which he is doomed to see
every winter that he lives.

In the hospice the apartments for the use
of visitors and retraitants are situated. To

2 S

Through the Cevennes

the right of the gateway on the ground level
are the kitchens and storerooms, and a door
opening at the foot of the stair admits one into
a small and barely furnished room, where
supper had been prepared for us. A small
table covered with American cloth, with chairs
set about it to accommodate perhaps eight or
ten guests, were the chief items of furniture.
There were a few prints of a religious character
hung upon the walls, and to the right of the
fireplace stood a little bookcase, containing,
however, no works of interest. The meal
served to us was well cooked and savoury, and
as an excellent omelet formed its piece de
resistance, with soup, potato salad, walnuts,
figs and cheese included, it needed none of the
profuse apologies for poverty of fare with
which it was set before us.

We were afterwards shown our bedroom on
the floor above, a fairly commodious room
containing two iron bedsteads, with a more
liberal supply of bedclothes than we saw in the
dormitory of the monks, a small table and two
chairs. A crucifix stood on the mantlepiece,
and, as in some hotels, a printed sheet of
regulations was fixed on the wall near the door.
One may suppose it to have been a copy of
that which Stevenson noted, for it wound up
with an admonition to occupy one's spare
time by examining one's conscience, confessing
one's sins, and making good resolutions. " To

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

make good resolutions, indeed ! " comments
R. L. S. "You might talk as fruitfully of
making the hair grow on your head." So far
as we could judge, the south wing at the time of
our visit sheltered no other strangers than our-
selves ; nor did it appear there were any weary,
world- worn laymen living here in retreat.
At the time of Stevenson's sojourn among the
monks there was quite a little company in the
hospice, an English boarder, a parish priest,
and an old soldier being some of the acquain-
tances he made in the little room where we had
supped. But there is a constant and increas-
ing number of visitors to the monastery, and
immediately below our bedroom there was a
large and well-stocked apartment that gave
evidence of this. Here we found a varied
supply of crucifixes and rosaries to suit all
purses, samples of the different liqueurs dis-
tilled by the monks, and picture post cards in
abundance. The Brother Porter, a simple
boorish fellow, in vain spread his bottles in the
sight of two wrho were not patrons of the stuff ;
but we reduced his stock of post cards and his
rosaries. He took the money like a post office
girl selling stamps.

XIV.

WHEN we took our places in the little gallery
that extends across the west side of the

Through the Cevennes

chapel to hear the monks chanting the last
service of the day, Compline and Salve Regina,
we found that there was at least another
visitor, in the person of a stout and blue-
chinned cure. The white-robed monks were
seated in their chairs in the choir, books upon
their knees ; while the organist in an elevated
position on a level with the gallery played,
unseen by us, " those majestic old Gregorian
chants that, wherever you may hear them
(in Meredith's fine phrase) seem to build up
cathedral walls about you." Paraffin lamps
shed a dim, uncertain light, and the rich full
voices of the singers resounded weirdly through
the white-walled chapel, the door opening now
and again as some of the lay brothers entered
and, crossing themselves, bowed wearily
towards the altar, moving to their places below
the gallery. After the elevation of the Host,
and when the service was almost ended, the
organist came down, and we noticed that in
making his way out of the chapel he hung back
a little in passing the choir screen, that he might
not meet on his way to the door any of the
brethren who were now slowly leaving.

Of a similar service Stevenson writes :
" 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

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 remem-
ber, I am not surprised that I made my escape
into the court with somewhat whirling fancies,
and stood like a man bewildered in the windy
starry night." The effect of it all on the
sentimental traveller was summed up in these
fervent words : " And I blessed God that I
was free to wander, free to hope, and free to
love."

This, indeed, must be the impression all
robust and unfettered minds will receive
from a visit to Our Lady of the Snows. It is
true that in their busy saw-mill which stands
to the west of the monastery, and where the
timber from the hills is turned to commercial
use by the monks and their lay assistants, in
their well-managed farm some distance west-
ward, in the surrounding fields, in their many
workshops — in these they have varied occupa-
tions, and of a manly character, but the
terrible uselessness of it all is ever present to
the mind of one coming from the stress and
struggle of the zestful world. Poor men ! in
their sullen way they may believe they have

Malavieille, a mountain sheilmg

Scene of "A Night among the Pines"

r sack, and smoking alo
housand feet towards th

ON THE LOZERE

" Buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine woods,
between four and five thousand feet towards the stars."— R. L. S.

Through the Cevennes

chosen the better part ; but, simple and
devout as they may be, they are the real
cowards of life, the shirkers of the battle we
are meant to fight.

We slept the sleep of tired men in our room
upstairs, and heard none of those hourly
bells Stevenson records. Our young friend,
whose monastic name I foolishly omitted to
ask, called us before eight in the morning,
and after providing a capital breakfast, bade
us a ceremonious good-bye, watching us from
the door until the pine woods enclosed us.

XV.

WE made a swift descent to La Bastide, and
by way of Chasserades, where Stevenson
slept in the common bedroom of the inn,
reached Le Bleymard late in the afternoon,
passing through a country of bare hills and
poor villages clustered in gusty hollows or
hanging like swallows* nests on craggy slopes.
The valley of the Lot, rich and beautiful
westward to Mende, possesses no elements
of charm in the neighbourhood of Bleymard,
and we found that town so mean and feature-
less, that we had no wish to pass the evening
there. The inn we wanted was, so a crippled
girl told us, at La Remise, on the high road,
and we must have passed it. We remounted

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

our cycles and retraced our path across the
river, a distance of perhaps three furlongs,
and lo ! there stood the charred remains of the
Hotel du Lot, where we had hoped to rest
ourselves. We had passed the place without
noticing it, and the view of its gaunt and
smoky walls, now that they had acquired so
personal an interest, chilled our hearts, for the
need to rest and refresh ourselves was pressing.
It was after sundown, and there lay between
us and Pont de Montvert a mountain higher
than Ben Nevis.

Opposite the unlucky Hotel du Lot stood a
small auberge, kept by one Teissier. Two men
were drinking absinth at a table by the door-
way. One was a thick-set fellow, wearing
eyeglasses, and clothed not unlike a foreman
mechanic in England. The other was the
familiar dark French type, thin of features,
eyes bright as those of a consumptive, his
beard ample and of a jet black, against which
his ripe red lips showed noticeably. He was
dressed like a clerk or commergant. They
made us welcome at their table, and we fell at
once to discussing the situation, from which
it was evident we could not hope to cross the
Lozere that night. Some tourists had ex-
perienced a bad time traversing the mountain
the previous Sunday, and as we could not hope
to do more than reach the Baraque de Secours
by nightfall, it would be madness to attempt

Through the Cevennes

the descent into the valley of the Tarn after
dark, the road lying in many places along the
lip of a precipice. Besides, this wayside inn
was very well managed, said the absinth
drinkers ; they had lived there since being
burned out across the way, a statement that
cheered us not a little, as every other feature
of the place was extremely uninviting.

The landlady, who had shown no interest
in us whatever, I found busy at a large cooking-
range in a tiny kitchen, which opened off the
common sitting-room, and served also for the
living-room of the servants and familiar
loungers. She was a woman of austere coun-
tenance, displaying like so many middle-aged
Frenchwomen a considerable moustache ; but
I noticed that her teeth were white. Yes, she
would be glad to supply dinner if we were to
stay overnight. We were, I confessed with-
out enthusiasm ; whereupon she specified
glibly the resources of her kitchen. We could
have soup, trout, jugged hare, chicken, fillet
of beef, potatoes, pastries, cheese, and other
things, and by naming one dish and connecting
it to the next with et puis, an aldermanic
banquet seemed about to be conjured up from
the dirty little room and its greasy stove.
The common room of the inn had a sanded
floor, and was furnished with a plain deal table,
round which some country bumpkins were
sitting on rush-bottomed chairs drinking beer

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

and spitting freely in the sand. A few cheap
oleographs nailed on the dingy walls were the
only efforts at decoration. Two drab and
unattractive girls gossiping with the customers
appeared to be the staff of the hotel.

I returned to the Frenchmen outside, and
found that my companion, anxious not to
enter the place until the last moment, was
playing at a game resembling bowls with some
village urchins, though understanding not one
word of their speech. But he came up in a
little while to learn the results of my
inquiries within, and soon we were all engaged
in a very entertaining discussion. It appeared
that the Frenchmen were concerned in the
zinc mines near Bleymard, him of the oily
clothes being chief engineer, the other business
manager. I suppose they would be the two
best conditioned residents in the district, and
here they were lodging at an hotel which, apart
from cooking, was below the standard of com-
fort to be found in a crimp's den in the region
of Ratcliffe Highway. The Frenchman is a
wonderfully adaptable creature : give him a
table to drink at, a chair to sit upon, and a bed
anywhere under a roof, and he can contrive
to be happy.

M. ITngenieur, although he spoke no
English, had seen something of the world, and
had even been to Klondyke. He could not
understand why anyone should have wan-

The Bamque de Secours

"The Lozere lies nearly east and west; its highest point, this Pic
de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises upwards of 5,600 feet
above the sea." — R. L. S.

ON THE LOZERE

Through the Cevennes

dered to such a hole as this — for pleasure !
But he expected that next year's guide-books
would describe Bleymard as notable for the
ruins of the Hotel du Lot. A wag, obviously.
If we wanted to see places worth looking at,
there was Nice and Nimes, said his friend
M. Barbenoire. Together they extolled, with
a rare gush of adjectives, the beauty of these
places, and promised to show us picture post-
cards that would lure us into visiting them.
Tourists did come sometimes to climb the
Lozere, from the top of which in clear weather
one might see the Alps. The engineer laughed
merrily at this, and said the story was as much
legend as the exploits of the beast of Gevau-
dan. He discussed in a very practical mind
the question of miners' wages, and thought
that the Bleymard zinc workers were better
off with four francs a day than English miners
with five or six shillings.

Sooner than we had expected dinner was
declared ready, and we went inside with no
great avidity!; but to our surprise we found
the meal laid in a little room at the other end of
the drinking den, tolerably clean though dingy
and tasteless in its appointments. There we
were joined by the wife of M. Barbenoire and
two immense dogs of unfamiliar breed. The
maid who served us was engagingly free from
the usual formalities of the table, and between
the courses would sit coyly on the knee of the

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

engineer, munching a piece of bread ; but for
the rest, ours was no Barmecide feast. The
aldermanic banquet appeared in all essentials
save the serving, and we fared so well that we
began to hope our bedroom would even be
comfortable.

When, later in the evening, we took our
courage in both hands and penetrated to the
upper story by way of a spiral iron staircase
through the kitchen roof and along a dark
lobby of loose boards, we were heartened not
a little to find in our room two good beds, clean
and curtained. Sleep was thus assured,
though the smell from the stable through the
wall was redolent of rats. It was " a won-
derful clear night of stars " when we looked
out of our window before retiring, and we went
to bed determined upon an early start. The
bellowing of the oxen in the stable and the
shouts of the buveurs below did not come long
between us and the drowsy god.

XVI.

ALAS ! at dawn next day we looked forth on
a blank wall of mist backing the ruins across
the road. Not a hill was visible. We sought
our beds again, and by nine o'clock the out-
look was only slightly improved, the nearest
hills, now resonant with sheep-bells, being in

Through the Cevennes

sight. The engineer comfortad us with the
assurance that this was the common weather
in June, the best time of the year being from
July to October, but he thought the mists
might clear before noon. Presently it began
to rain, and during the whole day there was
not half an hour of clear weather. At times
the atmosphere would thin a little, only to
show us heavy clouds condensing on the higher
hills. Thus prisoned in our room, we con-
trived to be comfortable, and I believe that
another day would have left us wondering why
we had dreaded staying at the inn, so soon
does the human mind adapt itself to circum-
stances. The rain-sodden streets actually
provided entertainment. We watched with
interest the coming and going of shepherds
and their flocks, the former armed with com-
modious umbrellas and their sheep shorn in
a way that left a lump of wool upon their backs
making them comically like little camels.
Many bullock wagons loaded with shale passed
by, and we noticed that the slightest touch
with the driver's wand served to direct the
team, whose heads were, to quote our hero,
" fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides
below a ponderous cornice. " Children played
out and in the stables and among the ruins,
and an old man, wearing the usual dress of the
peasant, with pink socks showing above his
sabots, his hands thrust deep in his pockets,

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

and a stick under his arm, wandered aimlessly
to and fro in the rain most of the day. The
stage-coach from Villefort to Mende rested
for a time at the inn, causing a flicker of
excitement, and in the evening again the mine
officials were there to bear us company.

The engineer proved himself a thorough-
paced sceptic of the modern French sort. His
opinion of the country-folk was low — hypo-
crites, fools, money-grubbers all ! Holding
up a five-franc piece, he averred that for this
they would sell mother, daughter, sister ; and
then similarly elevating a bundle of paper-
money, he exclaimed : " Voila, le Grand
Dieu."

" This is a Catholic countryside ?" I said.

" Yes/' he replied, " but that makes no
difference."

" There is one Protestant in Bleymard,"
put in Barbenoire, — " myself ! ':

" And he isn't up to much," added the cynic.

XVII.

"WE shall set out at five in the morning,"
I said to the landlady before going upstairs,
and the engineer signalled to us as we left the
room the outstretched fingers of his right hand
twice ; wherein he proved something of a
prophet, for it was nearer ten o'clock than five

Through the Cevennes

before we determined to risk the mountain
journey, the sky being clear in parts and the
rain clouds scudding before a high wind, that
promised a comparatively dry day.

On the bridge across the Lot at Bleymard
we were hailed by a man in labouring clothes,
who smiled broadly and said, " Me speak
Engleesh . " As we had not met a single French-
man between Orleans and this spot who pre-
tended to have any knowledge of our native
tongue, we tarried to have speech with this
cheery-faced fellow, whose white teeth shone
through a reedy black moustache. But his
lingual claims did not bear inspection. Beyond
saying that he had visited London and Liver-
pool, and knew what " shake hands " meant,
and that English tobacco was better worth
smoking than the French trash — a hint which
I accepted by presenting my pouch — he could
not go in our island speech ; and so we had
to continue our chat in French that was bad
on both sides, his accent resembling a York-
shireman's English, and mine — let us say an
Englishman's French. He was certain we
should have no more rain, as the wind was in
the north, and if it kept dry to twelve o'clock
we could depend on a good day. The weather
prophet is the same in all lands, and we had
not left him half an hour when we were shelter-
ing from a sudden downpour.

For some miles we h; 1 to plod upward on

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

foot in a wild and rocky gorge, with the merest
trickle of water below. Yet every corner
where a few square feet of clover could be
coaxed into life had been cultivated by the
dogged peasants, and patches were growing
at heights where one would have thought it
difficult to climb without the ropes of an
Alpinist. Many of these mountain plots were
miles away from any dwelling, a fact that
conveys some idea of the barren nature of the
country.

The tiny hamlet of Malavieille, about half-
way up the mountain side, is the highest point
permanently inhabited. It is a mere handful
of dark-grey houses, covered on slates and
walls with a vivid yellow fungus. Here the
upland fields were densely spread with violets,
narcissi and hyacinths, and a few dun cows
were browsing contentedly on this fragrant
fare, while a boy who attended them stood on
his head kicking his heels merrily in the sun-
shine. He came up as we passed, staring at
us stolidly ; and when we asked if the snakes,
of which we had just encountered two about
three feet long, were dangerous, he answered,
" Pas bien," and more than that we could not
get him to say, though he walked beside us for
a time eyeing curiously our bicycles.

XVIII.

WHEN we had come within sight of the
Baraque de Secours, we had reached a sort of
table-land reaching east and west for some
miles. Eastward lay the pine woods where our
vagabond spent one of his most tranquil nights
as described in his chapter, " A Night Among
the Pines." It was there that, awaking in the
morning, he beheld the daybreak along the
mountain-tops of Vivarais — " a solemn glee
possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely
coming in of day." And it was there, too, that
out of thankfulness for his night's rest he laid
on the turf as he went along pieces of money,
" until I had left enough for my night's lodg-
ing." Some of it may be there to this day,
for there is small human commerce at this
altitude, a shepherd or two being the only folk
we saw until we arrived at the shelter
which we had seen for more than half an hour
while we cycled arduously toward it.

The baraque is a plain two-storied building,
with a rough stone wall and porch enclosing a
muddy yard. It stands at a height of over five
thousand feet, being thus fully five hundred feet
higher than Ben Nevis. To the west the Lozere
swells upward, a great treeless waste, to its
highest point, the Pic de Finiels, 5,600 feet

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

above sea-levels while a splendid mass of
volcanic origin uprears its craggy head some
little distance to the south-east. " The view,
back upon the northern Gevaudan," says
Stevenson, writing of what he saw as he passed
near this point, " 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 sun-
light of the morning." And then in a little,
when he began the descent towards the
valley of the Tarn, he says : " A step that
seemed no way more decisive than many other
steps that had preceded it — and, ' like stout
Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared on the
Pacific/ I took possession, in my own name, of a
new quarter of the world. For behold, instead
of the gross turf rampart I had been mounting
for so long, a view into the hazy air of heaven,
and a land of intricate blue hills below my
feet." As he makes no mention of the baraque,
I venture to suppose that it had not then been
built, for one so eager of new experience would
not have missed the opportunity of resting on
his way at this high-set hostel. A dead sheep
— one of several we had seen on the mountain
— lay on the road by the gate, and propping
our bicycles near it, we picked our way through
the mud and knocked at the door.

A gruff voice bade us enter. We stepped
into a smoky room, with an earthern floor,

Through the Cevennte

containing a rough wooden table and two rude
benches, and in a corner a small round table,
a few chairs and a plain wooden dresser. The
mouth that had emitted a very gutteral
" Ongtray " belonged to a man of small stature
but brigandish appearance, who was seated at
the smaller table eating industriously. We
asked for lemonade and biscuits, but the fellow
stared at the words and spoke in a patois
that was Greek to me. But when I ex-
plained more sententiously that we desired
something to eat and drink, he disappeared up
a wooden stair, and we knew that a bottle of
atrocious red wine, which we would welcome
as so much vinegar, would be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the man's wife — a fair-haired
little woman with cheeks like red apples,
dressed in the universal black of the French
country-wife — came in, leading a youngster by
the hand. I repeated to her our wants, which
she immediately proceeded to meet by break-
ing four eggs into a pan, the shells being
dropped on the floor, and lo ! an omelet was
well on the way by the time her husband in
his sabots came clattering down the stairs
with the undesired wine, a few drops of which
we used to colour the clear cold water we took
in our tumblers from a pipe that ran cease-
lessly into a basin set in the wall of the room
that backed to the rising land.
There is one respect in which the Cevennols

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

have progressed since Stevenson went among
them. He writes : ' ' In these Hedge-inns the
traveller is expected to eat with his own knife ;
unless he ask, no other will be supplied : with
a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork,
the table is completely laid." Not so had we
found it in any of the inns we visited, all had
risen to the dignity of knives and forks ; but
here at this house in the wilds our table was
laid precisely as Stevenson describes, and the
bread being hard, it was a temptation to break
it across the knee like a piece of wood. We
had almost finished our meal when, after
some whisperings between the man and woman,
the fellow dived into his pockets and produced
a great clasp knife, which he opened and
handed to us.

While we sat and carried on a somewhat
faltering conversation — for both man and
woman spoke the dialect of Languedoc and
were superbly ignorant — two men entered of
the same brigandish type as the landlord, and,
speaking better French, proffered their ser-
vices as guides if we desired to scale the Pic
de Finiels. This we had no desire to do,
especially when they were frank enough to
state that the view from the top was of very
little interest. But they urged us to see the
magnificent view over the entire range of the
Cevennes from the more westerly peak, the
Signal des Laubies. This, however, would

Through the Cevennes

have taken us some two hours, and we had a
long way to travel that day. We were curious
to know whether the baraque was tenanted in
winter, and one of the guides told us that
during the winter the whole of the uplands
around us lay deep in snow, the roads being
quite impassable. This shelter was only open
from the beginning of June to the end of
September, when its keepers retired downhill
again to Malavieille. R. L. S. crossed the
mountain on the second last day in September,
so that the snows would soon be lying on his
track. When we resumed our journey again
we were once or twice beguiled into thinking
that we saw some of the snows of yester year
lying among the grey and lichened rocks, but
a nearer approach turned the drifts into flocks
of sheep, which the sombre background
rendered snowy white by contrast.

XIX.

WE went forward into the country of the
Camisards along a well-made road which
gangs of labourers were leisurely repairing.
So good are these mountain roads, and so
diligently tended, that one is inclined to think
they are used chiefly for the transit of stones
to keep them in repair. That on which we
travelled has been made since Modestine and

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

her driver footed it through this same valley.
In less than a mile from the baraque it begins
to sweep swiftly downward. Stevenson thus
describes his descent : "A sort of track ap-
peared and began to go down a breakneck
slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It
led into a valley through 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 turn-
ing of the line of 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
closed round my path, and the sun beat
upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland
atmosphere/'

If his descent was thus, how much more so
ours on our whirling wheels ? We encountered
numerous cattle-drovers, whose herds spread
themselves across the path and rendered our
progress somewhat perilous, as neither hedge
nor stone stood between us and the abyss.

CLAR1SSE "

The Waitress at the Hotel des Cevenncs, from a photograph supplied
by the Pasteur at Pont de Montvert

"The features, although fleshy, were of an original and
accurate design ; her mouth had a curl ; her nostril spoke
of dainty pride." — R. L. S.

Through the Cevenntt

There is but little population in the valley, and
that centred in two small hamlets, though we
observed a number of deserted cabins which
Stevenson also notes. The river, too, as it
nears the larger Tarn was all his magic pen
had pictured ; here it " foamed awhile in
desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the
most enchanting sea-green shot with watery
browns. As far as I have gone, I have never
seen a river of so changeful and delicate a
hue : crystal was not more clear, the meadows
were not by half so green."

Our road brought us at length to Pont de
Mont vert " of bloody memory," which lies in
a green and rocky hollow among the hills. To
Stevenson " the place, with its houses, its
lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescrib-
able air of the south." Why so, he was unable
to say ; as he justly observes, it would be
difficult to tell in what particulars it differed
from Monastier or Langogne or even Bley-
mard. One of the first buildings that the
traveller encounters is the little Protestant
temple perched on the rocky bank of the river,
and perhaps it was again the Protestant
education of R. L. S. that led him to note a
higher degree of intelligence among the in-
habitants than he had found in the purely
Catholic villages. For my part, with the best
will to mark the difference, I found little to
choose between the Catholic and Camisard

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

townships, unless it were a more obvious effort
after cleanliness in some of the latter.

XX.

PONT DE MONTVERT is memorable as the place
where the Covenanters of France struck the
first blow against their Romish persecutors ;
here they " slew their Archbishop Sharpe."
The Protestant pastor, a fresh-faced man about
sixty, with a short white beard, and wearing
no outward symbol of office, but dressed in an
ordinary jacket suit and cloth cap, we found
in his home in a building by the river-side near
the bridge. Directly across the rock-strewn
course was the Hotel des Cevennes, where
Stevenson sat at the " roaring table d'hote, J>
and was pleased to find three of the women
passably good-looking, that being more than
an average for any town in the Highlands of
France. Our pastor — his wife and golden-
haired daughter also — was more interested in
discussing Stevenson's travels than the re-
ligious condition of his district, a subject on
which my companion, *ci pastor from :t the
Celtic fringe," was athirst for information.

To my various questions regarding the
position of the Reformed Church I received
the barest answers ; there was no glowing
enthusiasm chez le pasteur for the Camisards

Through the Cevennes

who a stone's - throw from where we sat
stabbed with many superfluous thrusts the
Archpriest Du Chayla, their most brutal
persecutor. But Stevenson and his donkey —
ah, that was another matter ! He knew all
about them to the year, the day, the hour of
their quaint and curious visit ; he was himself
only two years established in his charge at the
time. And Clarisse ! We knew, of course,
what Stevenson had said of her ? Would we
care to see her photograph ? She was now
married, and settled in another town with a
considerable family growing around her. One
felt that after a quarter of a century, and with
a family thrown in, Stevenson would have
resolutely refused to look on the counterfeit
presentment of Clarisse. But, less scrupu-
lous, we chose to see her portrait, and the
pastor was good enough to present me with a
copy, as he possessed several which he had
procured three years before when ordering one
for an Englishman who had gone over the
trail of R. L. S. The carte shows the table-
maid of the hotel as still possessing some of the
featural charms so minutely and faithfully
noted by our author.

" What shall I say of Clarisse ? " he writes.
" She waited the table with a heavy placable
nonchalance, like a performing cow ; her
great grey eyes were steeped in amorous
langour ; her features, although fleshy, were

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

of an original and accurate design ; her mouth
had a curl ; her nostrils 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. . . . Before I left I
assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration.
She took it like milk, without embarrassment
or wonder, merely looking at me steadily with
her great eyes ; and I own the result upon
myself was some confusion. If Clarisse could
read English, I should not dare to add that
her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers
was a case for stays ; but that may perhaps
grow better as she gets up in years."

When I look again at the photograph, I fear
that even this hope for her who was " left
to country admirers and a country way of
thought," has not been fulfilled.

The pastor came with us to point out Du
Chayla's house, which stands on the river side
westward of his own, the spire of the modern
Catholic church showing above the roof. Per-
haps it was only natural that he should look
upon so familiar an object without any show
of emotion, though my fellow-traveller set it
down to the cold Christless teaching of the
Eglise liberate, to which section of the French
Reformed Church Pont de Montvert is at-
tached. In that three-storied house, with
its underground dungeons and stout-walled

Through the Cevennes

garden trending down to the river, the Arch-
priest carried on :< the Propagation of the
Faith " by such ungentle methods as plucking
out the hairs of the beard, enclosing the hands
of his Protestant prisoners upon live coal, " to
convince them," as R. L. S. quaintly observes,
" that they were deceived in their opinions."
On the 24th July, 1702, led by their " prophet"
Seguier, a band of some fifty Camisards
attacked the house of the Archpriest, to which
they at length set fire, and thus forced Du
Chayla and his military guard to attempt
escape. The Archpriest, in lowering himself
from an upper window by means of knotted
sheets, fell and broke his leg, and there in the
garden, where a woman was to-day hanging
out shabby clothes to dry, the Covenanters
had their vengeance of stabs. " ' 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." Save for a new
roof, the building remains much as it was two
hundred years ago.

XXI.

THE road, for close on two miles out of Pont
de Montvert, goes uphill past the Catholic

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

church — the town being now about equally
divided in the matter of religion — and then it
is a long and gentle descent to Florae. In no
respect has the road changed since Stevenson
wrote of it, nor is there any likelihood that it
will be altered ere the crack of doom. " A
smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way
between the summit of the cliffs and the river
in the bottom of the valley ; and I went in
and out, as I followed it, from bays of
shadow into promontories of afternoon sun.
This was a pass like that of Killiecrankie ; a
deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn
making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below,
and craggy summits standing in the sunshine
far above."

The slopes of the valley have been terraced
almost to the sky-line, not for baby-fields of
wheat, but to furnish ground for chestnut trees,
that clothe the hills with rich and sombre
foliage, and give forth "a faint, sweet perfume/'
which tinctures the air with balsamic breath.
R. L. S. goes into raptures over these chestnuts ;
— " 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 useful
shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of

Through the Cevennes

the old. . . . And to look down upon a level
filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a
clan of old, unconquerable chestnuts clustered
' like herded elephants ' upon the spur of a
mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the
powers that are in Nature. " It was on a
terrace and under one of these trees that he
camped for the night, having to scramble up
some sixty feet above the place he had selected
for himself, which was as high as that from the
road, before he could find another terrace with
space enough for his donkey. He was
awakened in the morning by peasants coming
to prune the trees, and after going down to the
river for his morning toilet — " To wash in one
of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a
sort of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act
of worship " — he went on his way " with a
light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to
the spiritual ear as I advanced/'

Some little way from where he had slept he
foregathered with an old man in a brown night-
cap, " clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint,
excited smile," who said to him after a while,
Connaissez-vous le Seigneur P " The old
fellow was delighted when the donkey-driver
answered, " Yes, I know Him ; He is the
best of acquaintances," and together they
journeyed on, discussing the spiritual condi-
tion of the country-folk. " Thus, talking like
Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

came 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 stonebreaker
on the road, and his sister, a pretty and
engaging girl."

We found this little hamlet even smaller
than we expected, some half-dozen houses and
a tiny place of worship, the whole lying below
the level of the main road, so that one could
have thrown a stone on their roofs, well-tilled
fields and meadows stretching down to the river.
A cantonnier who was busy breaking stones by
the roadway helped us to identify the place,
and was proud to confess himself a Protestant,
in common with the little handful of his fellow-
villagers. The country grows richer and more
fruitful as we approach Florae, passing on our
way the old castle of Miral and a picturesque
church compounded of an ancient battle-
mented monastery and some modern buildings
with a tall tower.

The influence of a country on its people
suggested to R. L. S. an interesting comparison
as he journeyed through " this landscape,
smiling although wild." " Those who took to
the hills for conscience sake in Scotland had all
gloomy and bedevilled thoughts," he writes;
" for once that the received God's comfort,

Through the Cevennes

they would be twice engaged with Satan ;
but the Camisards had only bright and sup-
porting visions. . . . 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, al-
though they might be certain of the cause, could
never rest confident of the person. " A singu-
larly inapposite comparison. It was not in
pleasant valleys such as these, or in cosy little
towns like Pont de Montvert, that the Camisards
fought out their war with " His Most Christian
Majesty Louis, King of France and Brittany/'
but on the bare and rocky plateaus westward
of the Cevennes, and on such mountain-tops
as the Lozere. Stevenson had never seen the
Causse Mejan or the Causse du Larzac, to the
southward of the region through which he
travelled, or he would have realised that their
conditions were even less likely to foster
" bright and supporting visions " in the
Camisards than those of the mountain-hunted
Scots, though much better from a strategic
point of view.

XXII.

FLORAC is a small town of white houses,
cuddled between the eastern front of the Causse

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

Mejan and the western foothills of the
Cevennes, with the river Tarnon, joined by
the Mimente to the south, running northward
on its outskirts. There are only two thousand
inhabitants, but the number and excellence of
Florae's hotels are accounted for by its being
an important centre for tourists visiting the
gorges of the Tarn, which, totally unknown to
the outer world at the time of Stevenson's
journey, are now admitted to possess the
finest scenery in Europe. Our French guide-
book frankly stated that Florae is a place " of
few attractions," but R. L. S. makes the most
of these in a sentence or two, describing the
town as possessing " an old castle, an alley of
planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live
fountain welling from the hill." The old
castle is quite without interest, and is indeed
the local prison, while the alley of planes,
called the Esplanade, is a dusty open space,
with many cafes lining it, and the grey, feature-
less Protestant Temple at its southern end.

"It is notable, besides," he adds, " for
handsome women, and as one of two capitals,
Alais being the other, of the country of the
Camisards." I do not recall having noticed
an unusual number of handsome women,
though the wife of the Free Church minister
was quite the prettiest French woman we saw
in the Cevennes, and the Established Church
pastor's wife perhaps the most cultured.

Through the Cevennes

R. L. S. found the townsfolk anxious to talk of
the part played by Florae in the days of the
Camisards, and was delighted to see Catholic
and Protestant living together in peace and
amity. But it may be that the conspicuous
absence of all windows from the lower parts of
the Protestant churches is a memorial of times
when the adherents of the reformed religion
were subjected to the prying eyes and per-
chance the more dangerous attentions of the
Catholics without. Most of the public officials
were named to us as Protestants, and the
religious differences are as strongly marked
between the two sects of the latter as between
them and their townsmen of the Roman
communion. The larger and State-supported
church is Rationalistic, corresponding to our
Unitarian, and the smaller a Free Church, with
a symbol of the open Bible above its doorway.
In what we might call the Free Manse,
really an extension of the church for the
housing of the minister, a door communicating
between the place of worship and the domestic
apartments, we found M. Illaire and his wife
at play with their children — homely folk, who
gave us a cordial welcome, the heartier for the
fact that Mme. Illaire had stayed for a year
in that " quaint, grey-castled city, where the
bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls,
and the salt showers fly and beat " — Steven-
son's own romantic birth- town. She could

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

thus speak our native tongue, and my com-
panion, for once in a way, needed none of my
interpreting. M. Illaire, an essential French-
man, swarthy of features, slight of build,
voluble and gesticulative, discoursed with
shining eyes of Protestantism, but was some-
thing of a pessimist, and seemed to think that
at best a cold, bloodless Dieism would rule the
intellectual France of the future. I gathered
that, as in the old days of enmity between the
Established and Free kirks of Scotland, there
was no traffic between the two Protestant
churches in Florae, for Mme. Illaire confessed
that she had never seen the inside of the
Temple, which we had thoroughly inspected
earlier in the afternoon, receiving the key from
the pastor's wife, whose husband unfortunately
was absent on a visit to Montpellier.

XXIII.

THE route of R. L. S. now lay along the
valley of the Mimente, which branches east-
ward a little south of Florae, and penetrates
a country very similar to that traversed
between the Lozere and this point. It was
only a few miles from Florae that he spent his
last night a la belle ctoile in the valley of this
little river, noting in one of his finest sentences
the coming of night : "A grey pearly evening

FJLORAC

" On a branch of the Tarn stands Florae. It
is notable as one of the two capitals, Alais being
the other, of the country cf the Camisards." —
R. L. S.

Through the Cevennes

shadow filled the glen ; objects at a little
distance grew indistinct and melted baffiingly
into each other ; and the darkness was rising
steadily like an exhalation." At Cassagnas
he was in the very heart of the Camisard
country, where there is little to engage one
but the historic associations of the district.
At St. Germain de Calberte, six miles to the
south-west, reached by a rough and difficult
road more suitable for the foot than the wheel,
he slept at the inn, and the next afternoon
(Thursday, 3rd October) he accomplished the
eight remaining miles through the waterless
valley of the Gar don to St. Jean du Gard —
" fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond
six hours."

There came the parting with the companion
of his travels, Modestine finding a ready pur-
chaser at much below prime cost. " For
twelve days we had been fast companions/'
he writes on his last page : '" 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 by-road. 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

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

faults were those of her race and sex ; her
virtues were her own. Farewell ! and if for

ever 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 the stage driver and four
or five agreeable young men, I did not
hesitate to yield to my emotion. "

We are to imagine R. L. S. thus tearfully
occupied in the stage-coach bearing him east
to Alais, an important industrial town on the
main line northward through Le Puy, whither
there is no call to follow him. We have the
romantic regions of the Gausses and the Tarn
gorges still to explore. Our way, no longer a
pilgrim's path, lies westward.

Along the Route of "An Inland

V» *
oyage

" Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone
upon alone. If you go in company, or even in pairs, it is no
longer a walking tour in anything but name. It is something
else, and more in the nature of a picnic. A walking tour should
be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the essence ; because
you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or
that as the freak takes you, and because you must have your
own pace, and neither tramp alongside a champion walker, nor
mince in time with a girl. And then you must be open to all
impressions, and let yourself take colour from what you see.
You should be as a pipe for any wind to play upon."

THUS wrote Stevenson in one of his essays,
but I doubt if he ever put into practice
this engaging theory of his. He came nearest
to being alone when he undertook his famous
tour through the Cevennes ; yet a donkey, and
one of so much character as his Modestine, is
company of a sort. When he made the first of
his little journeys with a literary end in view,

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

he had a companion after his own heart in the
late Sir Walter Simpson, to whom the first of
his books, An Inland Voyage, is dedicated.
That was, however, an enterprise of some
adventure, and it was well that the author
had a companion, for had he fared forth
alone in his frail canoe, as did his great ex-
emplar John MacGregor, in the Rob Roy, it is
doubtful if An Inland Voyage — not to say
all that came after it — had ever been written.
In a letter sent from Compiegne during the
voyage, he gives a very cheerless picture of
the business : " We have had deplorable
weather, quite steady ever since the start ;
not one day without heavy showers, and
generally much wind and cold wind forby. . .
Indeed, I do not know if I would have stuck
to it as I have done if it had not been for
professional purposes." I suspect that no less
potent an influence than " professional pur-
poses" in raising his courage to the height of
the occasion, was the companionship of " My
dear Cigarette," as he addresses Sir Walter,
whose canoe had been named Cigarette, that
of Stevenson sporting the classic title Are-
thusa. Fortunately for the reading world,
the voyage, despite its discomforts, had
happy issue in one of the most charming
books that came from the pen of the
essayist, and although hints are not lacking
of the shadows through which the canoeists

BOOM ON THE RUPEL
"Boom is not a nice place."— R. L. S.

VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL

"The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our
canvas to the unfavouring air." — R. L. S.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

passed, the sunshine of a gay and bright
spirit is radiant on every page.

As it had been my pleasant fortune in the
summer of 1903, together with a friend, to
follow the footsteps of Stevenson in his travels
among the Cevennes, and the pilgrimage
having proved plentiful of literary interest, it
seemed to me that one might find in a journey
by road along the route of "An Inland
Voyage" as much of interest, and certainly
some measure of personal pleasure. More-
over, with the disciple's daring, often greater
than the master's, I desired to test the plan
of going alone. But it was more by happy
chance than any planning of mine that I
betook myself, with my bicycle, to Antwerp
at precisely the same season that, eight-and-
twenty years before, Stevenson and his com-
panion set out upon their canoe voyage by
river and canal, from that ancient port to the
town of Pontoise, near the junction of the
Seine and Oise, and within hail of Paris.

In the preface to the first edition of An
Inland Voyage, its author expresses the fear
that he " might not only be the first to read
these pages, but the last as well," and that he
" might have pioneered this very smiling
tract of country all in vain, and found not a
soul to follow in my steps." That others have
been before me in my late pilgrimage is more
than probable, although I have found no

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

trace of them ; but perhaps I have not
searched with care, for I would fain flatter
myself that here, as in the Cevennes, I found
a field of interest where there had been no
passing of many feet.

II.

ANTWERP seems a town so antique that no
change of modern handiwork can alter in
any vital way its grey old features. Yet in
my own acquaintance with it, on its outward
quarters at least, it has taken on surprisingly
the veneer of modern Brussels, though by the
river-side it remains much as it was when, in
the later days of August, 1876, the
Cigarette and the Arethusa, with their adven-
turous occupants, were launched into the
Scheldt to the no small excitement of the
loungers about the docks. There must have
been some excitement, too, in the breasts of
the voyagers, but, like the true Scots they
were, we can well believe they gave no show
of it. Stevenson had never been in a canoe
under sail before, and to tie his sheet in so
frail a craft in the middle of a wide and busy
river called for no contemptible degree of
courage. But he tied his sheet.

" I own I was a little struck by this circum-
stance myself," he writes. " Of course, in

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

company with the rest of my fellow-men, I
had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat ;
but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe,
and with these charging squalls, I was not
prepared to find myself follow the same
principle, and it inspired me with some
contemptuous views of our regard for life.
It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet
fastened ; but I had never before weighed a
comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious
risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable
pipe. It is a common-place that we cannot
answer for ourselves before we have been
tried. But it is not so common a reflection,
and surely more consoling, that we usually
find ourselves a great deal braver and better
than we thought."

There is but little of interest up the river,
which waters a level, unpicturesque country
to Rupelmonde, where the canoeists would
bid good-bye to the Scheldt and steer to the
south-east up the Rupel, a broad and smooth-
flowing stream that joins the greater water
at this point. Against the current they
would urge their tiny prows until they arrived
after a journey of a few miles at the town of
Boom, whence the canal extends to Brussels
in an almost straight line:

As I made my way that grey autumn
morning through the little villages and along
the tree-lined highway, the brown leaves

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

flickering down in the cold wind that stirred
among the branches, it pleased me to fancy
how Stevenson, had his youth fallen in the
days of the bicycle, would have enjoyed the
privilege of riding on the Belgian footpath,
which to us who live in a land where no
cyclist dare mount his machine except on the
highway affords a delightful sensation of
lawlessness. It is well to observe, however,
that but for this right of the footpath there
would be no cyclist in all Flanders or Northern
France, since highways and by-ways there are
made of the most indiscriminate cobbles, and
in the remote country places a cart on the
lonely road moves with as great a clatter as
one on the stony streets of Edinburgh.

III.

I WAS no great way from Boom when I saw
advancing a high and narrow structure,
drawn by a horse, that progressed to the
weird and irregular clangor of a heavy bell,
reminding me curiously of Stevenson's
moving description of the leper bell in The
Black Arrow. When I came up with the
horse and its burden, I found the latter to
consist of a large circular tank, set on four
wheels, with a tall box in front for the
driver, above whose head a large bell was

THE ALLEE VERTE AT LAEKEN

The head-quarters of the "Royal Sport N antique " is hidden among
the trees on the left of the picture.

THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE

It was at this point, "on the Sambre canalised," that the canoe
voyage began in earnest.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

suspended. The word " Petrol," painted on
the tank, indicated its contents. Here, surely,
was something that made the days of the canoe
voyage seem remote indeed ; the peddling
vendor of petrol belongs emphatically to the
new century.

" Boom is not a nice place, and is only
remarkable for one thing : that the majority
of the habitants have a private opinion that
they can speak English, which is not justified
by fact." I can heartily endorse our canoe-
ist's opinion of the town, but this linguistic
pride of its inhabitants is surely a vanity of
the past. I found none — and I spoke to
several — who had any delusions as to their
knowledge of English, and, indeed, few of
them had more than a smattering of French.
A pleasant fellow on a cycle, who had
insisted on riding close to me through the
outlying districts of the town, which are en-
tirely taken up by extensive brickworks, where
I noticed the labourers all went bare-footed,
I found capable of understanding a few words
of broad Scots, and when I said, " Boom, is't
richt on ? " or " Watter, richt on ? " he nodded
brightly, and replied in Flemish, which was
comically like the Scots.

The Hotel de la Navigation, where the
paddlers put up for the night, and of which
Stevenson gives so bad an account, I found
no trace of, nor did I tarry any length of time

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

in Boom, since its attractions were so meagre.
The " great church with a clock, and a wooden
bridge over the river/' remain the outstanding
features of the town, and viewed from the
south side of the river, it makes by no means
an unpleasing picture.

IV.

THE canal was simply packed with barges
and great ungainly scows in the vicinity of
the town, awaiting their turn to slip through
the locks into the freer water of the Rupel,
and heigh ! for Antwerp, or even the coast-
wise towns of Holland. It was good to feel
as one proceeded along the tow-path that
here, in this world of change, was a stream of
life flowing onward through the generations
serene and changeless. " Every now and
then we met or overtook a long string of boats
with great green tillers ; high sterns with a
window on either side of the rudder, and
perhaps a jug or flowerpot in one of the
windows ; a dinghy following behind ; a
woman busied about the day's dinner, and a
handful of children." Every day since R. L. S.
paddled in this same stretch of water
the canal has presented the same picture of
life, and thirty years hence, it is safe to
prophesy, the wayfarer will find no change,

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

as these canals remain the great highways of
Belgium and France for the transport of goods
that are in no haste; and when we come to
think of it, a great proportion of the commodi-
ties of life may be carried from place to place
in no gasping hurry for prompt delivery.

Stevenson has many profitable reflections
on the life of the canal-folk, with which in
the course of his journey he was to become so
familiar. " Of all the creatures of commercial
enterprise/' he writes, " a canal barge is by
far the most delightful to consider. It may
spread its sails, and then you see it sailing
high above the tree-tops and the windmill,
sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the
green corn-lands, the most picturesque of
things amphibious. Or the horse plods along
at a foot-pace, as if there were no such thing
as business in the world ; and the man dream-
ing at the tiller sees the same spire on the
horizon all day long. . . There should be
many contented spirits on board, for such a
life is both to travel and to stay at home. . . .
I am sure I would rather be a bargee than
occupy any position under heaven that re-
quired attendance at an office. There are few
callings, I should say, where a man gives up
less of his liberty in return for regular meals."
But our philosopher, when he goes on to
enhance his comfortable picture of a bargee's
life, is scarcely correct in saying that " he can

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

never be kept beating off a lee shore a whole
frosty night when the sheets are as hard as
iron." For these great clumsy craft know
well the scent of the brine, and there are times
wrhen the snug outlook on the towing-path,
and the slow business of passing through
innumerable locks are changed for floundering
in heavy seas and a straining look-out for
a safe harbour. Not all their days are smooth
and placid, and sometimes, we may imagine,
the dainty pots of geraniums, that look so
gay against the windows as we pass, must be
removed to safer places, while the family
washing, drying on deck to-day, has to be
stowed elsewhere, and the tow-haired children,
now playing around the dog-kennel on the top
of the hatches, have to be sent below when
salt waves break over the squat prow of the
vessel.

The journey along the canal bank was to
me a very pleasant one, and I had hopes of
being more fortunate than the canoeists in
reaching Brussels with a dry skin. They had
to paddle in an almost continual drizzle, and
even made shift to lunch in a ditch, with the
rain pattering on their waterproofs. But
when I got as far as Villevorde, where gangs
of men were labouring on the extensive works
in connection with the railway and the new
water supply, the rain began, and I was wet
to the skin long before I had reached the royal

THE GRAND CERF MAUBEUGE

Where R. L. S. and his companion stayed for some days awaiting
the arrival of the canoes by rail from Brussels.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

suburb of Laeken, where, for evidence of
Belgium's industrial progress, witness the
splendid improvement on the canal at this
point, soon to become a system of docks and
water-ways resembling ^in | extent j a great
railway junction.

ONE of the most amusing episodes in "An
Inland Voyage" was the encounter of the
canoeists with the young boatmen of the
" Royal Sport Nautique," who in their enthu-
siasm for rowing gave a warm welcome to
the strangers, and by assuming the latter to
be mighty men of the paddle, led them into
the most unwarranted boasting about the
sport. " We are all employed in commerce
during the day," said the Belgians, " but in
the evening, voyez-vous, nous sommes serieux."
An admirable opening for a characteristic bit
of Stevensonian philosophy : " For will any-
one dare to tell me that business is more
entertaining than fooling among boats ? "

Whether or not the newer generation of
Brussels boatmen are as serious as the youths
of thirty years ago I -cannot say. The <next
afternoon, being Sunday, I came outjagain
from Brussels to make enquiries concerning the
" Royal Sport Nautique," and found a commo-

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

dious brick building occupying the site of the
boathouse wherein Stevenson had been enter-
tained, but no signs of nautical life about it.
There was the slip where the Cigarette and
the Arethusa were drawn up out of the
canal, and on the roadway opposite stood
this new boathouse and clubroom, with
the dates 1865 — 94 indicating, as the only
member whom I found on the premises
explained, that the club had been founded
in the former year, and the building erected
in the latter. But he was a churlish fellow,
this coxcomb in his Sunday dress, and barely
answered my questions. If I too, had paddled
my own canoe, perhaps it might have been
otherwise ! The day was fine, and the canal
was busy with little excursion steamers that
were well patronised by holiday-makers, and
were covered almost to the water-line with
flaring advertisements of Scotch whiskies
and English soaps, only one out of a dozen
advertisements being of local origin : a cir-
cumstance that would, we may be sure, have
drawn from Stevenson some pages of gay
philosophy.

VI.

FOLLOWING the example of the original
travellers, I took train from Brussels to the
French frontier town of Maubeuge, where in

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

real earnest their canoe voyage began. To
the traveller who has wandered the highways
of France south and west of Paris, such a town
as this presents some uncommon features, and
I cannot but think that R. L. S. gives a wrong
impression of it. ' There was nothing to do,
nothing to see/' he tells us, and his only joy
seems to have been that he got excellent meals
at the " Grand Cerf," where he encountered the
dissatisfied driver of the hotel omnibus, who said
to him : " Here I am. I drive to the station.
Well ! Then I drive back again to the hotel.
And so on every day and all the week round.
My God ! is that life ? >! And you remember
Stevenson's comment : " Better a thousand
times that he should be a tramp, and mend
pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under
the trees, and see the dawn and the sunset
every day above a new horizon." Here spoke
the lover of romance ; but the facts are quite
otherwise.

Maubeuge I found a bright little town,
surrounded by mighty ramparts with spacious
gates and bridges over the fosse. It is
picturesquely situated on the river Sambre,
on whose banks stand large warehouses and
manufactories, while the shops bear evidence
of prosperity. Even I' art nouveau has reached
out from Paris and affected the business
architecture of the town. There is a bustling
market-place, a handsome little square with

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

a spirited monument to the sons of the
country-side who have fallen for France, a
grey old church, and a pleasure-ground with
a band-stand and elaborate arrangements for
illumination on gala nights. Indeed, I can
imagine life to be very tolerable in Maubeuge,
which is really the residential centre of an
immense industrial district resembling more
closely than any other part of France our own
Black Country.

Stevenson makes no mention of having
visited the church, which is interesting in one
respect at least. Beneath the stucco casts of.
the stations of the cross some cure of an evan-
gelical turn of mind has ventured on a series
of little homilies unusual in my experience
of French churches. Thus, under the repre-
sentation of Christ falling while bearing His
cross we read : " Who is it that causes Jesus
to fall a second time ? You, unhappy person,
who are for ever falling in your faults, because
you lack resolution. Ask, therefore, of God
that you may henceforth become more faithful
unto Him/'

Only in the most insignificant way can
Maubeuge have changed since Sir Walter
Simpson was nearly arrested for drawing the
fortifications, " a feat of which he was hope-
lessly incapable," so that I suspect something
of misplaced sentiment in Stevenson's im-
pressions of the place. For my part, I should

THE CHURCH AT QUARTES

"A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and
bickering windmill." — R. L. S.

THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT
Where "the landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting
she had charged so little," when the canoeists arrived back by river
from Quartes after having been treated like pedlars at Pont

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

find it difficult to mention a town of the same
size in England or Scotland to compare with
Maubeuge as a place to pass one's days in.
That omnibus driver with the soul of a Raleigh
may have been in some measure a creature of
the romancer's fancy. At all events, it is
likely enough that he has travelled far since
1876, as I take him to have been a man of
middle age then. The hotel omnibus with its
two horses still makes its journey to and from
the station, but- the driver is a stout young
fellow of florid face, who, I am sure, is perfectly
contented with his lot, and enjoys his meals.
" C'est toitjours la meme id" said Veuve
Bonnaire, the landlady of the " Grand Cerf,"
when I chatted with her in the bureau after
luncheon. Yet not always the same, for
where was M. Bonnaire ? And I fear that
our canoeists, if they could visit the hostelry
again would scarce recognise in this lady of
gross body their hostess of thirty years ago.
The building itself is quite unchanged, I was
assured, and I ate my food in the same room
and in just such company as the voyagers
dined — military officers all absurdly alike in
sharp features, small moustache and tuft on
chin, and ungallant baldness of head ; and
three or four commercial travellers, each with
a tendency to " a full habit of body."

VII.

THE whole establishment of the " Grand
Cerf " accompanied the canoeists to the water's
edge when they were ready to take their leave.
Madame Bonnaire, however, has quite forgot-
ten that exciting episode of her middle life ;
but there, we have Stevenson's word for it, and
the good woman must accept the fame. The
day was a dismal one, we are told — wind and
rain, and " a stretch of blighted country " to
pass through. I heartily wished for a speedy
end to that same stretch. For six or seven
miles the road is lined with factories and dirty
cottages, while dirty electric cars rattle along,
well-laden with passengers, for here France is
at work and grimy ; here is the France of
which the tourist along the beaten tracks has
no notion. A stout gentleman with whom I
conversed by the wayside was very proud of
the varied industries of the district. " Look
you ; we have glass works, pottery works,
iron foundries, engine works, copper, and
many other industries in the neighbourhood."
Still, I was glad when, a mile or two beyond
Hautmont, I found myself outside this region
of smoke and growling factories and ad-
vancing into a pleasant pastoral country, the
river only a little way from the road. Steven-

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

son's word picture of the scene is photographic
in its accuracy, but his art environs it with
that ethereal touch the old engravers could
give to a landscape, an art that has been lost
to us by the vogue of cheap modern " pro-

cesses."

" After Hautmont," he writes, :( the sun
came forth again and the wind went down ;
and a little paddling took us beyond the iron-
works and through a delectable land. The
river wound among low hills, so that some-
times the sun was at our backs, and sometimes
it stood right ahead, and the river before us
was one sheet of intolerable glory. On either
hand, meadows and orchards bordered, with a
margin of sedge and water-flowers, upon the
river. The hedges were of a great height,
woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms ;
and the fields, as they were often small, looked
like a series of bowers along the stream.
There was never any prospect ; sometimes a
hill-top with its trees would look over the
nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle
distance for the sky ; but that was all. The
heaven was bare of clouds. . . . The river
doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of
mirror glass ; and the dip of the paddles set the
flowers shaking along the brink.",

In this land of many waters every male
creature seems to be a disciple of Sir Isaak
Walton. A prodigious number of anglers will

IvTihe Track of R. L. Stevenson

be encountered ; I must have seen hundreds.
Every day and all day they are dotted along
the canals and rivers as patient as posts, and
apparently as profitably employed. It was
a continual wonder to me how they could spare
the time ; and a pleasure also, for it is cheering
to know that so many fellow-creatures can
afford to take life so leisurely, and that the
factory may whistle and the surburban train
shriek laden to the town without causing them
to turn a hair. " They seem stupefied with
contentment/' says R. L. S. in a fine passage,
" and when we induced them to exchange a
few words with us about the weather, their
voices sounded quiet and far away."

VIII.

Ax the little hamlet of Quartes, " with its
church and bickering windmill " — the latter
gone these many years — the canoeists went in
search of a lodging for the night, but had to
trudge with their packs to the neighbouring
village of Pont sur Sambre for accommodation.
They would have fared better at Quartes to-
day, as there is now a clean little auberge hard
by the bridge, kept by a jovial fellow,
who told me that his son had taken up photo-
graphy, with deplorable results. " He takes
my photograph, I assure you, M'sieu, and

ON THE SAME RE AT QUARTES

SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE

" Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of
the street."— R L. S.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

makes me look like a corpse in the Morgue " —
and the landlord would laugh and show two
rows of dusky teeth beneath his wiry mous-
tache— " and when I say I 'm not so awful as
that, he will say that now I see myself as I
really am, for, look you, the camera must tell
the truth." He laughs again, and rising,
says : " But come with me here," throwing
open the door of a private room. " Now
there 's a portrait I had done in Brussels, and
I 'm really a decent-looking chap in that.
So I say to my son, whenever he makes a new
and worse picture of me : ' There 's your papa
to the life, done by a real photographer/ '
I am sure they are a happy family at the
inn at Quartes, and they enjoy life, the score
or two of barges and boats that pass their door
every day keeping them in touch with the outer
world of towns. The landlord informed me
that he had several times been as far as Paris
by the rivers and canals, and that there are
excursions all that distance — nearly 200 miles
by water — every summer.

IX.

PONT SUR SAMBRE is a long thin village, a mile
or so from Quartes, and different from ether
villages only in the possession of a strange
lone tower that stands in the middle of the

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

wide street. Stevenson makes note of it, and
says : " What it had been in past ages I know
not ; probably a hold in time of war ; but
nowadays it bore an illegible dial-plate in its
upper parts, and near the bottom an iron
letter-box. " As I was preparing to take a
photograph of this landmark, a buxom woman
came up and begged that I might photograph
her. I protested my inability to do so with
any satisfaction, having no stand for my
camera. " But you have a camera ; isn't that
enough ? And I am so anxious for a photo-
graph. " What would you in such a case ?
Especially as she said she could wait a month
or more for me to send a print from England.
So the widow Cerisier poses in the foreground
of my picture of the strange tower at Pont —
a tower which, she told me, has weird under-
ground passages leading away into regions of
mystery.

It was at a little ale-house within sight of
the tower that Stevenson and his friend passed
the night, the landlady treating them as
pedlars, and they enjoying the experience.
Here, too, they fell in with a real pedlar,
Monsieur Hector Gaillard of Maubeuge, who
travelled in grand style with a tilt-cart drawn
by a donkey, and was accompanied by his
wife and his young son. Pedlars' fortunes
seem to have improved since those days, as I
found a travelling cheap-jack at Pont, with a

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

very commodious wagon, which must have
required two horses to move it about, cun-
ningly contrived to open into a veritable
bazaar, around which housewives and children
clustered like bees. Another packman was
showing his wares hard by on a lorry equally
commodious, where he displayed to advantage
an immense assortment of second-hand clothes
and remnants of cloth, while his wife was in-
ducing the thrifty women of Pont to buy.

The Sambre at Pont looks very alluring,
especially when the sun shines and projects
the green shadows of the waving willows across
its sluggish waters. Barges pass under the
bridge at a snail's pace, and away among the
winding avenue of poplars and willows that
marks the river's zigzag course through the
rich and restful meadow-land we see the masts
of other boats moving with consummate slow-
ness. R. L. S. illustrates the erratic course
of the river by stating that while they could
walk from Quartes to Pont in about ten
minutes, the distance by river was six kilo-
metres, or close on four miles. The folk at
the ale-house were amazed when their guests,
after walking to Quartes next morning, arrived
by river an hour or so later as the owners of
two dainty canoes. " They began to perceive
that they had entertained angels unawares.
The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably
lamenting she had charged so little ; the son

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours
to enjoy the sight ; and we paddled away
from quite a crowd of wrapt observers. These
gentlemen pedlars indeed ! Now you see
their quality too late.'*

THE country between Pont and Landrecies
wears many signs of quiet prosperity ; houses
are numerous, orchards well-stocked, the
people — and never is the highway utterly
deserted — smiling and contented, to all
appearance. The river at a point about six
miles from Landrecies skirts a part of the
forest of Mormal, and our sentimental traveller
turns the occasion to profit thus :

" There is nothing so much alive, and yet
so quiet, as a woodland ; and a pair of people,
swinging past in canoes, feel very small and
bustling by comparison. And surely of all
smells in the world, the smell of many trees is
the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea
has a rude, pistolling sort of odour, that takes
you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with
it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships ;
but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest
to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many
degrees in the quality of softness. Again, the
smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell

THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES
As it was at the time of " An Inland Voyage."

THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE

" We were skirting the Forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a
place most gratifying to sight and smell." — R. L. S.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

of a forest is infinitely changeful ; it varies
with the hour of the day, not in strength
merely, but in character ; and the different
sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the
wood to another, seem to live among different
kinds of atmosphere. Usually the resin of
the fir predominates. But some woods are
more coquettish in their habits ; and the
breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came
aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was
perfumed with nothing less delicate than
sweetbriar."

Further on he says : " Alas ! the forest
of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it
was but for a little way that we skirted by its
boundaries." So it may have seemed to the
canoeists, who saw only a scrap of the great
forest, that thrusts southward to the river
at a place called Hachette. But it was not
without some misgiving that I found myself
suddenly plunged into the woodland, and
discovered that I had six miles of it to pene-
trate and roads to ride which a little boy in a
cart described eloquently by stretching his
arm to its limit and then sweeping it down to
the cart, and up and down half a dozen times !
The forest has indeed, as R. L. S. observes,
" a sinister name to the ear/' and I felt — if I
must speak the truth — a little quickening of
the pulse when I had ridden about half an hour
through its lonely rough roads, with rabbits

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

and other wild creatures of the undergrowth
making strange rustlings among the leaves by
the wayside. The sun had been going down
as I came into the forest, but the air among
the trees was chilling and wintry after the
warm high-road, not a slanting ray of sunshine
penetrating the dense growth of trees. The
only pedestrians whom I met were a party of
rough sportsmen, who eyed me as a curious
bird when, in answer to their questions, I said
I had come from London. I had wandered
from the direct road through the forest, it
appeared, and one of the men, having a map,
was able to work out a route for me ; but it
was another half-hour — which seemed like
half a day — before I caught a welcome glimpse
of the clear evening sky among the lower
branches, and presently emerged on the main
road into Landrecies, at a place suggestively
named Bout du Monde.

IF there is another town so dead as Lan-
drecies in all the department of Le Nord, I
have a great wish not to pass a night within
its walls. It is changed times there since the
passage of R. L. S., although it was triste
enough when " Arethusa " and " Cigarette "
spent two days at the roomy old Hotel de la

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

Tete d'Or. " Within the ramparts/' he says,
" a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks
and a church, figure, with what countenance
they may, as the town. There seems to be
no trade ; and a shopkeeper, from whom I
bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so much
affected that he filled my pockets with spare
flints into the bargain. The only public
buildings that had any interest for us were the
hotel and the cafe. But we visited the church.
There lies Marshal Clarke ; but as neither of
us had heard of that military hero, we bore
the associations of the spot with fortitude.''

Marshal Clarke, whose tomb looks as new
as though it had been set up yesterday, was
one of Napoleon's generals, and, as his epitaph
reminds us, sometime minister of war. Had
he hailed from Scotland instead of Ireland he
might have been more interesting to R. L. S.

If Landrecies was so dull thirty years ago,
picture it to-day, with its barracks almost
empty, its ramparts demolished, and its less
than 4,000 inhabitants in bed by nine o'clock !
" It was just the place to hear the round going
by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp
of men marching, and the startling reverbera-
tions of the drum. It reminded you, that even
this place was a point in the great warfaring
system of Europe, and might on some future
day be ringed about with cannon smoke and
thunder, and make itself a name among strong

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

towns/* Alas ! the barking of a melancholy
dog and the clock of the Hotel de Ville ringing
out the lazy hours were the only sounds I
heard that night, though just before dusk a
wandering camelot selling in the street a sheet
of " all the latest Paris songs " made a welcome
diversion. I sampled his stock, and found it
to consist of doggerel rhymes about the Russo-
Japanese War, mingled with some amorous
ditties, and a piece of a devotional kind !
" C'est line ville morte," said a dumpy ]ady
with a scorbutic face, who drank her after-
dinner coffee in the dining-room with me.
" Think of Paris, and then — this ! " she sighed.
I wondered what had brought her there, and
doubtless she thought I was some cycling
fellow who had lost his way.

But if the military glory of Landrecies is
departed, it makes a brave effort to recall the
past with an elegant column near the site of the
north gate, whereon are recorded the sieges
which Landrecies withstood, the last being in
the Franco-German War. Also erected since
Stevenson's time is a striking monument to
the great Joseph Fra^ois Dupleix, whose
gallant effort to found an Indian empire for
France was frustrated by Clive, and who, born
in Landrecies, spent his substance for his
fatherland, only to die in poverty and neglect.

The landlord of the hotel assured me that he
remembered the visit of my heroes, even

THE INN AT MOY
Sweet was our rest in the ' Golden Sheep" at Moy/' — R. L. S.

THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY 97

"Moy was a pleasant little village." — R. L S.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

mentioning the hour of their arrival and de-
parture. He was a young man then ; but to-day
his hair is streaked with grey. The Jitge de Paix,
who entertained the travellers, is still to the
fore : a bachelor then, he is a widower now.

I noticed an odd feature of the hotel : its
meat safe was the roof of the passage to the
courtyard. Here, hanging from hooks fixed
in the roof, were joints of beef, legs of mutton,
hares, rabbits, and so forth — an abundant
display ; and when the cook was in need of an
item, she came out with a long pole and
reached down the piece she wanted.

XII.

THE canoeists left Landrecies on a rainy
morning, the judge under an umbrella seeing
them off. My lot was pleasanter, for the
morning was fine and the landlord's son, a
bright lad, with those babyish socks which
French boys wear, escorted me some way out
of the town on his bicycle, chatting merrily
about the state of the roads, and evincing
great surprise when he heard that we would
be fined for cycling on the footpath in England.
My route lay along the highway to Guise for
a time and close to the canal, passing through
a gentle undulating country with far views of
thickly-wooded fields and little hills. The

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

hamlets by the way were surrounded by hop
fields, the great poles with their fantastic
coverings of the vine being the most noticeable
feature of the wayside, just as R. L. S. had
observed them when the hop-growers of to-day
were bien jeune, as the old gentleman at the
play in Paris described Stevenson himself.
Etreux, where the canal journey ended, I found
a thriving and agreeable little town, the rattle
of the loom being heard from many an open
door, and the thud, thud of flails in the farm-
steadings on the outskirts. At Etreux the
canoes were placed on a light country cart one
morning, and the travellers walked to Vaden-
court by way of Tupigny, a village where I was
served with a make-shift lunch at a little inn,
the landlady doing the cooking and laying the
table with a baby held in her left arm ! Vaden-
court is full of weavers, and here close by the old
bridge over the river the Arethusa andCigarette
were launched in the fast-flowing water of the
River Oise.

XIII.

THE canoeists were now in the full swing of
perhaps the most enjoyable part of their
journey. Let a canal be never so beautiful, it
is still a canal, and no adventure need be
looked for there ; but a river that runs wild
and free is a possible highway to the enchanted

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

kingdom of Romance. We have the avowal
of R. L. S. that on this sedgy stream, wriggling
its devious ways by field and woodland, he
had some of the happiest moments of his life.
" We could have shouted aloud," he says in
a glowing passage. [( If this lively and beauti-
ful river were, indeed, a thing of death's con-
trivance, the old ashen rogue had famously
outwitted himself with us. I was living three
to the minute. I was scoring points against
him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of
the stream. I have rarely had better profit
of my life. For I think we may look upon our
little private war with death somewhat in this
light. If a man knows he will sooner or later
be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle
of the best in every inn, and look upon all his
extravagances as so much gained upon the
thieves. And above all, where, instead of
simply spending, he makes a profitable invest-
ment for some of his money, when it will be out
of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living,
and above all when it is healthful, is just so
much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death.
We shall have the less in our pockets, the more
in our stomach, when he cries, ' Stand and
deliver.' A swift stream is a favourite artifice
of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable
thing per annum ; but when he and I come to
settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face
for these hours upon the upper Oise."

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

Indeed, he came near to settling accounts
with old Death more readily than he could
have cared ; for not many miles from Vaden-
court, in attempting to shoot below the over-
hanging trunk of a fallen tree, the lively
" Arethusa " was caught in its branches, while
his canoe went spinning down stream relieved
of its paddler. He succeeded in scrambling on
to the tree-trunk, though he " seemed, by the
weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my
trouser-pockets." But through all, he still held
to his paddle. " On my tomb, if ever I have
one, I mean to get these words inscribed : ' He
clung to his paddle/ ' Brave heart, this is
in truth but a humorous phrasing of the
stately requiem on the stone upon Vaea Top.

It was a dripping " Arethusa " that got into
Origny Sainte-Benoite that night, and but
for the ready and resourceful " Cigarette "
the adventure might have ended less happily.
Although Origny is a dusty little village, as
dull as any in all Picardy, the canoeists rested
there a day, and had good profit of the people
they met at the inn, as Stevenson's pages
witness. The landlord was a shouting,
noisy fellow, a red Republican. " ' I 'm a
proletarian, you see/ Indeed, we saw it very
well. God forbid that I should find him
handling a gun in Paris streets ! That will
not be a good moment for the general public."

100

VEUVE BAZIN

Hastily and unnecessarily " tidying herself" while being
photographed at her door.

THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FERE
"Little did the Bazins know how much they served us." — R. L. S.

XIV.

AN accident to my bicycle in the neighbour-
hood of Origny made it necessary for me to
go on to Moy by train, on a quaint little railway
worked chiefly by women, who act as station-
mistresses, ticket-clerks, restaurant-keepers,
and guards of the level crossings. The
carriages were filled chiefly with anglers, and
every little station had a gang of them armed
with a prodigious number of rods and lines,
and each carrying a pail with a brass lid. I
gathered that the pails were empty almost
without exception, as sport had been ex-
tremely bad, though numerous patient
creatures with rod and line were still to be seen
in the drizzling rain along the river, which is
here broken into many backwaters, lying in flat
land among scraggy pine woods and good green
meadows. One sturdy fellow who, like his
companions, bore his ill-fortune with a smiling
face, averred that though he 'd fished all day
and caught nothing, he had bagged fifteen
broche the previous day between one o'clock
and half-past two, and between three and five
he had caught an unbelievable number of trout.
Anglers are the same in all lands, I suspect.

f< Moy (pronounced Moy) was a pleasant
little village, gathered round a chateau in a

101

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

moat/* as our author records. " The air was
perfumed with hemp from neighbouring fields.
At the ' Golden Sheep ' we found excellent
entertainment." I asked for the " Golden
Sheep/' and was directed to an establishment
that was named the Hotel de la Poste. I
passed on and asked another villager, but he
sent me back, as I found on following his
instructions, to the same hotel. The postman
put me right at length by explaining that the
landlord had rechristened his house three
months before in honour of the new post
office across the way, a shoddy little building
where I bought stamps from a middle-aged
woman next morning. The landlady of the
hotel, who might pass in every particular,
save the myopia, for the " stout, plain, short-
sighted, motherly body, with something not
far short of a genius for cookery/' described
by R. L. S., agreed with me that her husband
had made a sad mistake in dropping the old
sign of the " Collier d'Or," " but he would
have his own way, and there you are ! " If I
could have got the fellow — a fat, jolly mortal—
to understand that to have the name of his
hotel in a book by R. L. S. was an honour
worth living up to, perhaps the old sign would
have been fished out, regilded and placed in
its old position. But he had not been the
patron thirty years ago, and he did not care a
straw for anything so remote, though his wife

102

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

had a gleam of pleasure when I quoted to her
Stevenson's note : " Sweet was our rest in the
' Golden Sheep ' at Moy."

It is a progressive place, althougroit seems
to go to bed at eight o'clock, for there is a good
supply of electric light — furnished by water
power, of course — in the hotel and other
establishments ; but not a solitary street
lamp to pierce the blue-black of an autumn
night. I must tell you that I was the only
guest at the inn, yet a splendid dinner was
prepared for me. Soup, fish with mayonaise,
fillet of beef with mushrooms, green haricots
au beurre, cold chicken, and a delicious salad
of white herbs with a suspicion of garlic, a
sweet omelet, pears, grapes, cheese, bread
and butter, and, if I had cared, a whole bottle
of red wine. An excellent cafe noir followed,
in the estaminet, where my hostess apolo-

?ised for lighting only one electric lamp " pour
economic, vous savez." My bedroom was
commodious and well-appointed, and I had a
good French petit dejeuner next morning.
The bill ? Three shillings and ninepence, I
declare ! Pour I' economic / Madame, I sym-
pathise, and some day I must return to make
a visit more profitable to you.

103

XV.

FROM Moy to La Fere is a very short journey
even by the river, but the canoeists had
lingered till late afternoon before leaving
the former place, which " invited to repose/'
and it was dark when they got to La Fere in
their chronic state of dampness. " It was a
fine night to be within doors over dinner, and
hear the rain upon the windows." They had
heard that the principal inn at the place was
a particularly good one, and cheery pictures
of their comfortable state there arose in their
minds as they stowed their canoes and set
forth into the town, which lies chiefly east-
ward of the river, and is enclosed by two great
lines of fortification. But they reckoned
without their hostess ! The lady of the inn
mistook them for pedlars, and rushed them
back into the dismal night. " Out with you —
out of the door ! " she screeched. " Sortez !
Sortez ! Sortez par la porte ! " Stevenson's
picture of the incident is full of sly humour,
but the feelings of the travellers must indeed
have been poignant. " We have been taken
for pedlars again," said the baronet, " Good
God, what it must be to be a pedlar in reality !"
says his companion of the pen. " Timon was
a philanthropist alongside of him. " He

104

THE TOWN HALL, NOYON

HOTEL DU NORD, NOYON
Where the travellers stayed

"The Hotel du Nord lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast
of the church."— R. L. S.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

prayed that he might never be uncivil to a
pedlar. But after all, it was for the best.
That cosy inn would not have afforded the
essayist such interesting matter for reflection
as he found at " la Croix de Malte," a little
working-class auberge at the other end of the
town, where the Porte Notre-Dame gives
exit to the straggling suburbs.

XVI.

THERE is no passage in the whole of An
Inland Voyage so moving, so simple in its
intense humanity, as that wherein its author
sets down in his own inimitable way his im-
pressions of the humble folk who kept this
inn. Scarcely hoping that I might be so
fortunate as to find either of the Bazins alive,
I asked at one of the numerous cafes opposite
the great barracks, whence crashed forth the
indescribable noise of a brass band practising
for the first time together, if there was an inn
in the town kept by one Bazin. To my de-
light I was told there was, and you may be
sure I made haste to be there. I found the
place precisely as Stevenson pictures it, noting
by the way a tiny new Protestant chapel with
the legend " Culte Evangelique " over its door,
a cheering sight to Protestant eyes in so
Catholic a country as the north of France.

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

" Bazin, Restaurateur Loge a pied," — there
was the altered sign on the cream-coloured
walls of the house. In the common room of
the little inn, which was full of noisy re-
servists that memorable night when the
canoeists sought shelter there, I found two or
three rough but honest-looking fellows drink-
ing, while a grey-haired woman, pleasant and
homely of appearance, sat at lunch with a
young woman and a youth, the latter wearing
glasses and being in that curious condition of
downy beard which we never see in England.
I stood on the sandy floor by the little semi-
circular bar, with its shining ranks of glasses,
waiting the attention of a young woman
who was serving the customers with some-
thing from an inner room, when the old lady,
looking up at me through her spectacles,
asked what I wanted. " To speak with the
patron," I replied. " Well ? " she said.
" Have I the pleasure of addressing Madame
Bazin ? " I asked, and on her answering with
a slight show of uneasiness, I proceeded to
explain that I had come to see the inn out of
interest in a celebrated English author, who
had once stayed there and had written so
charmingly about Madame and Monsieur
Bazin. In an instant the old lady and the
younger folk were agitated with pleasure,
and, to my surprise, they knew all about the
long-ago visit of R. L. S. and his friend.

1 06

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage''

s< Perhaps he was your papa," Madame sug-
gested as the likeliest reason for my having
come so far on a matter so sentimental. And
the good soul's eyes brimmed with tears when
she told me that her husband had been dead
these three years. Stevenson had sent them a
copy of his book, and they had got the passage
touching the voyagers' stay at the inn
translated by a young friend at college, so
that worthy old feazin had not been suffered
to pass away without knowing how he and his
good wife had ministered to the heart of one
of the best beloved writers of his generation.
You will remember Stevenson's beautiful
reference to these worthy people. But let me
quote it, for it may be read many times with
increase of profit :

" Bazin was a tall man, running to fat ;
soft spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We
asked him to share our wine ; but he excused
himself, having pledged reservists all day long.
This was a very different type of the workman-
innkeeper from the bawling, disputatious
fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where
he had worked as a decorative painter in his
youth. « . He had delighted in the museums
in his youth, ' One sees there little miracles of
work/ he said ; ' that is what makes a good
workman ; it kindles a spark.' We asked him
how he managed in La Fere. ' I am married,'
he said, ' I have my pretty children. But,

107

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to
night I pledge a pack of good enough fellows
who know nothing.' . . . Madame Bazin
came out after a while ; she was tired with
her day's work, I suppose ; and she nestled up
to her husband, and laid her head upon his
breast. He had his arm about her, and kept
gently patting her on the shoulder. I think
Bazin was right, and he was really married.
Of how few people can the same be said !

" Little did the Bazins know how much
they served us. We were charged for candles,
for food and drink, and for the beds we
slept in. But there was nothing in the bill
for the husband's pleasant talk, nor for the
pretty spectacle of their married life. And there
was yet another item uncharged. For these
people's politeness really set us up again in
our own esteem. We had a thirst for considera-
tion ; the sense of insult was still hot in our
spirits, and civil usage seemed to restore us
to our position in the world.

"How little we pay our way in life ! Although
we have our purses continually in our hand,
the better part of service goes still unrewarded.
But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit
gives as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins
knew how much I liked them ? Perhaps
they also were healed of some slights by the
thanks that I gave them in my manner ? "

Is that not a lovely monument to have ?

1 08

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

Many of us who have made a greater clatter
in the world than old Bazin will be less fortu-
nate than he in this respect. And you see
that although he had little affection for La
Fere, he lived five-and-twenty quiet years
there after Stevenson came his way. Yet not,
in one sense, quiet, as the bugles are for ever
braying, and even the street boys whistle
barrack calls instead of music-hall ditties.
As Madame told me, the town exists solely
for the military, and we may be sure that it
is none the sweeter on that account. But her
little inn struck me as a wholesome and
entirely innocent establishment. Those
" pretty children " are men and women now,
and the young man with the nascent whiskers,
whom I took to be a clerk in the town, was a
grandson of the old folk. Not a feature of
the auberge has changed, except that the
Maltese Cross, having served its day, has been
taken dowrn. Stevenson — who has lighted a
little lamp of fame on this humble shrine —
and Sir Walter Simpson and old Bazin have
all passed away, while children's children sit
in the old seats ; truly the meanest works of
man's hands are more enduring than man
himself. Madame Bazin, to my regret, made
a quick effort to throw aside her apron, and
needlessly to tidy her bodice, when I asked
her to face the camera. She was caught in
the act by the instantaneous plate. Even

109

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

here, you see, the apron signifies servitude,
and must not appear in pictures ; yet it and
the cap, which latter I have seldom seen
north of Paris, are the only redeeming features
of the country Frenchwoman's dress. The
women of rural France give one the impres-
sion of being in permanent mourning, and
consequently, when they do go into real
mourning, they have to emphasise the fact
with ridiculous yards of flowing crape.
Madame Bazin had never heard of Stevenson's
death, and I felt curiously guilty of an ill
deed in telling her about that grave in far
Samoa.

XVII.

THE Oise runs through a stretch of pastoral
country south of La Fere, known as " the
Golden Valley," but a strath rather than a
valley in character. It was a grey day on
which I journeyed, and little that was golden
did I see. But the quaint old town of Noyon,
as grey and hoar as any in France, is rich in
the gold of history ; " a haunt of ancient
peace." It stands on a gentle hill, about a
mile away from the river, and is one of the
cleanest of the old French towns that I ha.ve
visited, reminding me somewhat of Lichfield ;
in atmosphere, I imagine, rather than in any
outward resemblance, since I would be at a

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

loss to point to the likeness if I were asked.
R. L. S. had no more agreeable resting-place
on all his voyage than at Noyon. The travel-
lers put up at a very prosperous-looking
hostelry, the Hotel du Nord, which stands
withdrawn a little way from the east end of
the grand old cathedral — the glory of Noyon,
and one of the gems of early French Gothic,
though perhaps the least known to English
tourists.

Seldom in France do we find the cathedral
so regally free of surrounding buildings. No
shabby structures lean unworthy heads
against its old grey walls, and where, on the
north side, the canons' library, with its
crumbling timbers of the fifteenth century,
nestles under the wing of the church, the
effect is entirely pleasing. At the west front,
too, where there is a spacious close, with
well-cared-for houses and picturesque gate-
ways, one has a feeling of reverence which the
surroundings of French cathedrals so often
fail to inspire. There is a pleasant touch of
humour in Stevenson's description of the
exterior of the beautiful apse :

u I have seldom looked on the east end of
a church with more complete sympathy. As
it flanges out in three wide terraces, and
settles down broadly on the earth, it looks
like the poop of some graat old battleship.
Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases which

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

figure for the stern lanterns. There is a roll
in the ground, and the towers just appear
above the pitch of the roof, as though the
good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic
swell. At any moment it might be a hundred
feet away from you, climbing the next billow.
At any moment a window might open, and
some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat,
and proceed to take an observation. The old
admirals sail the sea no longer . . . but this,
that was a church before ever they were
thought upon, is still a church, and makes as
brave an appearance by the Oise. The
cathedral and the river are probably the two
oldest things for miles around and certainly
they have both a grand old age,"

Inside the cathedral he found much to
engage his mind, and the somewhat perfunc-
tory performances of certain priests jarred
with the noble serenity of the building. " I
could never fathom how a man dares to lift
up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What
is he to say that will not be an anti-climax ? "
But, on the whole, he " was greatly solemn-
ised," and he goes on to say : "In the little
pictorial map of our whole Inland Voyage,
which my fancy still preserves and sometimes
unrolls for the amusement of odd moments,
Noyon Cathedral figures on a most preposter-
ous scale, and must be nearly as large as a
department. I can still see the faces of the

112

NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT

" The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and
showed us the five bells hanging in their loft." — R. L. S.

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

priests as if they were at my elbow, and hear
' Ave Maria, or a pro nobis,' sounding through
the church. All Noyon is blotted out for me
by these superior memories, and I do not care
to say more about the place. It was but a
stack of brown roofs at the best, where I
believe people live very reputably in a quiet
way ; but the shadow of the church falls upon
it when the sun is low, and the five bells are
heard in all quarters telling that the organ has
begun. If ever I join the Church of Rome, I
shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on the
Oise."

This pretty fancy of his need lose none of
its prettiness when we know that Noyon has
not had a bishop since the Revolution, when
the cathedral became a dependency of the
Bishop of Beauvais, though it had been a
bishopric so long ago as the year 531. But I
am sorry R. L. S. was evidently not aware that
when at Noyon he was in the town where
John Calvin was born in 1709, his father being
procurator-fiscal and secretary of the diocese ;
for surely here was an opening for some real
Stevensonian obiter scripta P. The beautiful
old Town House, of Gothic and Renaissance
architecture, dates back to the end of the
fifteenth century, but all the ancient buildings
of Noyon fall long centuries short of its history
in age, as King Pippin was crowned here in
752, and his infant son Carloman was at the

113

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

same time created King of Noyon, while in
771 the town saw the coronation of Pippin's
eldest son, the mighty Charlemagne, no less.

XVIII.

THE last wet day of the voyagers was that
on which they set out from Noyon. " These
gentlemen travel for pleasure ? " asked the
landlady of the little inn at Pimprez. " It
was too much. The scales fell from our eyes.
Another wet day, it was determined, and we
put the boats into the train." Happily,
" the weather took the hint," and they paddled
and sailed the rest of the voyage under clear
skies. At Compiegne they " put up at a big,
bustling hotel, where nobody observed our
presence." My impression of the famous
town scarcely justified this, as in the day
that I lingered there I seemed to meet
everybody a dozen times over, and the
company at a little cafe chantant in the even-
ing was like a gathering of old friends, so
many of the faces were familiar. Yet the
town is populous, having some 17,000 inhabi-
tants (about 2,000 of whom are English
residents), and I was prepared for busier
streets than I found.

There can be few towns in France more
agreeable to live in. It is pleasantly situated

114

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

on the river Oise, here wide and lively with
barge-traffic, and spanned by an elegant
bridge. The older town lies south of the
river in a sort of amphitheatre ; its streets
are narrow and tortuous, but with bright shops
and cafes in the neighbourhood of the Place
de l'H6tel de Ville, while the fashionable
suburbs extend, in splendid quiet avenues,
eastward and south from the centre of the
town, by the historic palace built in Louis
XV.'s reign and the Petit Pare, which is
really very large. While a great many of the
English residents have chosen the town for
the same reason that my hostess at Moy put
on one electric light — pour I' economic, vous
savez — together with its healthy and beautiful
surroundings in the great forest of Compiegne,
many more are there for the employment
afforded by the important felt hat factory of
Messrs. Moore, Johnson & Co., whose commo-
dious works stand near the station on the north
of the river. Despite its shops, its business
prosperity, its red-legged soldiers, its visitors,
Compiegne is dull enough of an evening, and
the brightly lighted but almost empty cafes
leave one wondering how the business pays.

(< My great delight in Compiegne," says
inland voyager, " was the town-hall. I doted
upon the town-hall. It is a monument of
Gothic insecurity, all turreted and gargoyled,
and slashed and bedizened with half a score of

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

architectural fancies. Some of the niches are
gilt and painted, and in a great square panel
in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground,
Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse,
with hand on hip and head tnrown back.
There is royal arrogance in every line of him ;
the stirruped foot projects insolently from the
frame ; the eye is hard and proud ; the very
horse seems to be treading with gratification
over prostrate serfs, and to have the breath
of the trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for
ever, on the front of the town-hall, the good
king Louis XII., the father of his people.

" Over the king's head, in the tall centre
turret, appears the dial of a clock ; and high
above that, three little mechanical figures,
each one with a hammer in his hand, whose
business it is to chime out the hours and
halves and quarters for the burgesses of
Compiegne. The centre figure has a gilt
breast-plate ; the two others wear gilt trunk-
hose ; and they all three have elegant, flapping
hats like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches,
they turn their heads and look knowingly
one to the other ; and then, kling go the three
hammers on the three little bells below. The
hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the
interior of the tower ; and the gilded gentlemen
rest from their labours with contentment.

" I had a great deal of healthy pleasure
from their manoeuvres, and took care to miss

116

COMPIEGNE TOWN HALL
" My great delight in Compiegne was the Town Hall." — R. L. S

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

as few performances as possible ; and I found
that even the ' Cigarette/ while he pretended
to despise my enthusiasm, was more or less
a devotee himself. There is something highly
absurd in the exposition of such toys to the
outrages of winter on a housetop. They
would be more in keeping in a glass case
before a Niirnberg clock. Above all, at night,
when the chlidren are abed, and even grown
people are snoring under quilts, does it not
seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread
figures winking and tinkling to the stars and
the rolling moon ? The gargoyles may, fitly
enough, twist their ape-like heads ; fitly enough
may the potentate bestride his charger, like a
centurion in an old German print of the Via
Dolorosa ; but the toys should be put away
in a box among some cotton, until the sun
rises, and the children are abroad again to
be amused."

XIX.

THERE is but little interest in the remaining
stages of Stevenson's journey ; not because
the towns through which the canoeists now
passed are less worthy of note than any
already described, but for the ample reason
that R. L. S. had, in some measure, lost his
earlier delight in the voyage. He pretends
that on the broading bosom of the Oise the

117

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

canoes were now so far away from the life
along the riverside, that they had slipped out
of touch with rural folk and rural ways. But
this is not strictly true, when we know that the
river, as far as Pontoise, is seldom greatly wider
than the canals on which the Arethusa and
the Cigarette had set out with high hopes of
adventure a fortnight before. The towns are
quaint and sleepy. The voyagers were nearing
the end, the river ran smooth, the sky was
bright, and a packet of letters at Compiegne
had set them dreaming of home. Here was the
secret ; the spell was broken ; their appetite
for adventure had been slaked ; every mile
of easy-flowing water was taking them not
away to unknown things, but homeward to
familiar ones.

Pont Sainte Maxence, the end of their first
stage below Compiegne, is a featureless little
town, the Oise making a brave show through
the centre of it, and I do not suspect its
church of any stirring history. R. L. S. found
its interior " positively arctic to the eye."
It was here he noticed the withered old woman
making her orisons before all the shrines ;
" like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat
cynical view of the commercial prospect, she
desired to place her supplications in a great
variety of heavenly securities." I passed
through Creil and Precy in the afternoon,
following close to the river, which now skirts

118

Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage"

a country of gentle hills on the east, but
westward fringes a vast level plain, with
nothing but groves of poplar to break the line
of the distant horizon.

XX.

IN the gloaming I arrived at Pontoise,
where I was told a fete was in progress ;
but the only signs of hilarity were two booths
for the sale of pastries and sweet stuffs on the
square in front of the station, and one small
boy investing two sous in a greasy-looking
puff. The rues of Pontoise have high-sound-
ing names, but they are dull beyond words,
though only eighteen miles away the " great
sinful streets " of Paris are gleaming with
their myriad lights.

Pontoise in the daylight might have been
different ; but seen in the dusk, I decided
upon the eight o'clock train to Paris, and so
ended my pilgrimage. Nor did I feel any
lowering enthusiasm at the end, for Stevenson
has nothing to tell us of the place beyond
saying, " And so a letter at Pontoise decided
us, and we drew up our keels for the last time
out of that river of Oise that had faithfully
piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for
so long.'* He has not a word for the twelfth-
century church of St. Maclou, his " brither

119

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

Scot," or the tomb of St. Gautier at Notre
Dame de Pontoise.

" You may paddle all day long/' he
concludes ; " but it is when you come back at
nightfall, and look in at the familiar room,
that you find Love or Death awaiting you
beside the stove; and the most beautiful
adventures are not those we go to seek."
Yet he was ever an adventurer in search of
beauty, and who shall say his quest was vain ?

120

O <u co

B 8-S

The Most Picturesque Town
in Europe '

" After repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high
living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was
designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home." —
R. L. STEVENSON.

THERE will, of course, be differences of opinion
as to which is the town most worthy of this
description ; but there is surely no better
judge than Mr. Joseph Pennell, who has seen
every place of any historic or natural attrac-
tion on the Continent, and whose taste for the
picturesque none will call in question. He is
the author of the phrase that heads this
chapter, as applied to the little-known town of
Le Puy, " chief place " of the Department of
Haute Loire in the south of France. It is one
of the few towns that have more than justi-
fied the mental pictures I had formed of them
before seeing the real thing. But Le Puy is

121

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

not only the most conceivably picturesque of
towns ; it is deeply interesting in its character
and history, no less than in its appearance.

With the exception of Mr. Pennell, and
among a circle of people who have travelled
much in France, I have met none who have
ever visited Le Puy. A young English gover-
ness^ to whom I spoke at a little Protestant
temple in the town had been staying there
for close upon a year, and had not met a
single English visitor ; so it would appear one
has an opportunity here to write of a place
that is still untrampled by the tourist hordes
that devastate fair Normandy.

There are many and excellent reasons why
few English or American tourists make their
way to this quaint and beautiful town of the
French highlands. It lies 352 miles by rail from
Paris, and can only be reached by a fatiguing
journey in trains that seem to be playing at
railways, and have no serious intention of
arriving anywhere. A good idea of the round-
about railway service will be gathered from
the fact that the actual distance of the town
from Paris is nearly 100 miles less than the
length of the railway journey. It can be
reached by leaving the Mediterranean line at
Lyons and continuing for the best part of a
day on tiresome local trains ; or via Orleans
and Clermont Ferrand, which would surely
require the best part of two days. It was by

122

" The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"

the latter route, and in easy stages, that I
first arrived there in the early evening of a
grey June day four years ago.

Between Clermont Ferrand and Le Puy the
railway traverses some of the most beautiful
scenery in Europe, but nothing that one sees
on the way prepares one for the sensation of
the first glimpse of this wonderful mountain-
town. The train has been steadily puffing its
slow way by green valleys and pine-clad hills,
across gorges as deep as the deepest in Switzer-
land, and past little red-roofed hamlets for
hours, when suddenly, as i; seems, a great peak
thrusts itself heavenward, carrying on its back
a mass of tiny buildings, and on the top of all
an immense statue of the Virgin. Then another
seems to spring up from the valley, holding a
church upon its head, and the whole country
now, as far as eye can reach, is studded with
great conical hills thrown up in some far-off
and awful boiling of earth. Curiously, the
train seems turning tail on this wonderful
scene, and one by one the different objects
that had suddenly attracted our attention
are lost to view, while we pursue a circuitous
route, which in a quarter of an hour brings
them all into view again, and presently we
have arrived at the station of Le Puy, by the
side of the little river Dolezon, between which
and the broader Borne extends the hill
whereon the town is built.

123

II.

THE modern part of the town lies close to
the railway in the level of the valley, and as
there is a population of more than 20,000
people, the life of the streets is brisk enough
to suggest a town of five times that size in
England. Along the Avenue de la Gare, the
Boulevard St. Jean, and the Rue St. Haon
we go, wary of the electric trams, to our hotel
opposite the spacious Place du Breuil, where
spouts a handsome fountain to the memory
of a local metal-worker who furnished the
town with its beautiful Musee Crozatier, and
where the elegant architecture of the Municipal
Theatre, the Palais de Justice and the Prefect-
ure supply a touch of modern dignity that
that contrasts not unpleasantly with the
ancient and natural grandeur of the town.

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

124

" The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"

for garrotting. But the bedroom was com-
modious, 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

I25

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 pro-
portions, and, indeed, it can only be seen to
advantage from one or other of the neigh-
bouring heights. But it is a building that,
in almost any position, would still be remark-
able, 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 com-
bine dignity and austerity, and the impression

126

" The Most Picturesque Town in Europe ' '

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 con-
tents 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/'

127

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

" 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 sacris-
tan 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.

128

" The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"

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, " Void, le soulier de la
Saint e 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 work-
manship 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

129
10

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 attri-
buted 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 pro-
vided 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 mediaeval super-
stition ; the Black Virgin is throned supreme
in the minds of the people, and, unlike most
French communities — if we except the priest-

130

" The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"

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 priest-
hood, 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

131

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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

132

Image of the Black Virgin in the Cathedral

Remains of Roman Temple, Le Puy, with a fountain to Virgin,
a Calvayy, and the Mairie

LE PUY

" The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"

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 Wor-
cester. 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 Encyclopedia 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,

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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

" The Most Picturesque Town in Europe ' '

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 con-
junction of old paganism and modern mario-
latry — 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 picturesque-
ness. 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

'35

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 Catholi-
cism and that we know by the same name in
England is greater than the difference between
the latter and the most Calvanistic Protestant-
ism. To me, at least, Le Puy will be ever
the city of the Black Virgin.

136

THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY

The Country of the Camisards

" These^are the Cevennes with an emphasis : the
Cevennes of the Cevennes." — R. L. STEVENSON.

THE word Camisard in the south of France,
like Covenanter in Scotland, recalls

"Old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago."

Both describe people who had much in
common, for the Camisards were the Coven-
anters 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 his-
torians have derived it from camis, a road

'37

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 some-
what 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 trium-
phant 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 Protes-
tant faith during the reign of terror, which

138

The Country of the Camisards

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 Refor-
mation 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 independ-
ence, 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 constitu-
ted 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

139

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

Christian Majesty, Louis, King of France and
Brittany."

But although there had been many encoun-
ters 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 Seguier, who has been called the
" Danton of the Cevennes," planned the mur-
der 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 I2th of August, nineteen days after
the murder of the Archpriest, the right hand
of Seguier 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.

140

II.

So began the war of the Camisards, for the
faggots that burned the prophet only added
to the fire he lighted when he struck at Du
Chayla. Presently his place, as leader of the
revolt, was taken by an old soldier named
Laporte, who gave the rising a touch of
military discipline, and soon the Camisards
had many captains, all men who believed
themselves endowed with the gift of
prophecy.

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 sugges-
tion 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

141

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 Cava-
lier, 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 encoun-
tered 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

142

The Country of the Camisards

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, recog-
nised the hopelessness of continuing the
methods of barbarism pursued by his pre-
decessors, 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 Protes-
tant 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 Gausses is
" the Cevennes of the Cevennes," but Steven-
son 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 M6jan on the south by the
splendid gorges of the river Tarn, and due
south of the Mejan, 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
Lodeve, 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

144

LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL
(From a photograph by Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)

ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE

The Country of the Camisards

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
can, whence causse.

To describe the character of the Camisard
country, and to convey some idea of it to
English readers, is no easy matter, since
there is nothing in the British Islands, and
little elsewhere in Europe, to which it may
be readily compared. Yet the effort must be
made, since the peculiar nature of the country
is of first importance to the understanding of
its people and their historic resistance of all
the might of France two centuries ago.

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

u 145

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

the husbandman. But so it is, and in this
region of France we have the strange circum-
stance 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 Gausses, 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 imme-
diate 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

146

The Country of the Camisards

the divine calm of the Bhudda himself, by
some effect of illumination or trick of cloud
umbration. . . .

" A wonderful land, this of the Gausses,
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 lime-
stone 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 dis-
tilled."

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

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

" 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 cafes,
which is the habit of the townsfolk, does not
equip them for the undertaking. Few way-
farers 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 melan-
choly 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

,48

THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC
(From a Photograph by Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)

The Country of the Camisards

as ' Trous d'enfer ' (mouths of hell). Alike,
fact and legend have increased the popular
dread. It was known that many an unfortu-
nate 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.

THE scene of Flower-o '-the-Corn, so far as it
is laid in the Cevennes, occupies but a small

149

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 com-
pare, in romantic situation, with that so
graphically described by Mr. Crockett under
the style of " le Bon Chretien" 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 court-
yard 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

150

The Country of the Camisards

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 Gausses, 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

In the track of JR.. L. Stevenson

than the shepherd. But on every hand the
conditions of life are primitive beyond any-
thing 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.

MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR

152
ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC

The Country of the Camisards

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
tyranm^, and though these lonely mountains
shelter also many who are still willing slaves
of the yoke which the sturdy " Sons of God n
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

' 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 Dore ; 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

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

least it is unique, and we have to go for
comparison to the renowned canons 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 eclat 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 fast-
nesses, the Tarn country-side had not before
been explored by one in search of the pic-
turesque 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

156

"5b.

The Wonderland of France

434 miles south of Paris, " chief place " of the
Department of the Lozere. 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 at-
mosphere 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 Florae 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

'57

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 Lozere
we first came upon the Tarn at Pont de Mont-
vert, some fourteen miles north-east of Florae,
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 sce-
nery 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 Florae 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 Florae, 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

'58

The Wonderland of France

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

'59

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

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 cafe 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 Hotel 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 :

1 60

A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN
Showing the mass of the Cansse Mejan rising on the left

160

IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN

" The river roars between precipices, that rise sheer and stupendous
from its brink."

The Wonderland of France.

that by which we had come, and the road
across the Sauveterre from La Canourgue,
and that across the other mighty plateau, the
Causse Me Jan. The town is of great antiquity,
and is said to owe its origin to a certain prin-
cess 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 Gevaudan, but was sup-
pressed, 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.

While the mistress of the hotel was preparing
what we later pronounced a most excellent
meal, mine host was telling me surprising
things in the dining-room, to which one gained
access through a fine old-fashioned kitchen.
With one of Taride's large scale maps before
me, whereon was shown a " national road "
right through the gorges of the Tarn to Millau,
I asked for some particulars of the route, and
was smilingly informed that it did not yet
exist.

161

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

" But it is here, shown by a thick red line,
on this map/'

" Quite so, m'sieu ; many cyclists come here
with a map like that and think they can cycle
all the way. But there is no road as yet,
though in five years or six there will be one.
The only way to descend the Tarn from here
to Le Rozier is in a barque."

Now, experience has made me doubtful of
anything a hotel-keeper in a tourist resort will
tell you about boats and coaches, for you never
know to what extent he is financially interested
in the matter, and he of the Hotel de Paris was
avowedly the agent of the company to whom
belong the boats used for the descent of the
river. Although his hotel had a modern and
well-appointed annexe — token of the growing
popularity of the place where hotels are
rapidly increasing — in person he resembled a
brigand grown stout with easeful days, and
one naturally grew more suspicious when he
protested that it would not make the difference
of a sou to him whether we went by boat or
toiled ourselves to death across the mountains.
A good friend at Florae — none other than the
Free Church minister — had also assured us
there was no road beyond Ste. Enimie, but
that the boat charges were not dear. " Nor
are they," said the hotel-keeper ; " it is only
thirty-six francs (thirty shillings) all the way,
which is very cheap." We were unable to

162

The Wonderland of France.

see eye to eye with him then, but subsequently
came round to his opinion when we knew how
much labour and skill could be purchased for
this modest outlay.

IV.

You must know that the Tarn and its ways
are not to be measured by the ordinary ex-
periences of holiday travel. At seven o'clock
in the morning you wake and breakfast with-
out loss of time, in order to set out without
delay and reach Le Rozier, thirty miles to the
south, in time for six o'clock dinner. On the
beach, close by the hotel, lie a number of flat-
bottomed barques, rudely constructed affairs,
exactly similar to fishing-punts used in shallow
English waters. A plank of wood with a back
to it, and covered with a loose cushion, is laid
athwart the primitive craft, and here you take
your seat. It is possible, I believe, for six
passengers to be carried, but personally I
should be loath to trust myself in such a boat
with more than four, for two boatmen are
necessary to each punt. The charge is for
the boat irrespective of numbers, so that we
might have had two more in ours without
adding to the cost, but our bicycles helped us
to square matters. Our boatmen were rough,
half -shaven fellows, and he who took his place
at the stern seemed to have been drinking

163

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

unnecessarily early in the morning. But both
knew their business thoroughly, and were
alive to every current and whirlpool in the
river.

Their system of navigation is at once simple
and effective, the only possible method of
using the water-way. Armed with a strong
pole, they stand, the one in front and the other
behind, and allow the barque to glide down
the swift current of the river, which runs, as I
should judge, at six or eight miles an hour.
Its course is broken up by innumerable gravel
beds and rocky snags, and while we seem to be
on the very instant of dashing into a seething
whirlpool one of the boatmen will, with ad-
mirable precision, jab his pole into a hidden
gravel bank and thrust the boat once more
into the main current. Beautiful was it to
watch how skilfully the men made use of this
current, and that, guiding the frail craft
straight into what seemed a perilous swirl of
breakers, only that they might avail them-
selves of a different current resulting there-
from, and pilot us into a quiet pool by the
beach on the very lip of a thundering weir.

It is indeed difficult to convey any adequate
idea of the sensation of such a journey, where
the water itself is at once the element and the
cause of the progress. One sits as in a cockle
shell on the enchanted sea, gliding along
magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour;

164

The Wonderland of France.

but, alas ! the bronzed youth at the prow and
the hairy wine-bibber at the stern are no
creatures of fairyland, but the very serviceable
mortals without whose aid the wonders of the
Tarn would have remained to this day as
distant as the realms of faery.

The panorama, which seems to pass us
slowly on both sides of the river — for the
absence of mechanical propulsion gives one
the illusion of sitting still while the cliffs on
each hand move past the boat — is of ceaseless
change. For a time the hills reach up, green
and carefully cultivated, to the higher basaltic
cliffs, that rise perpendicular to the edge of
the plateau, a thousand feet or more above our
level, and then as they suddenly narrow, with
never a foothold for the tiniest of creatures,
the river roars between precipices that soar
sheer and stupendous from its water, or in
some cases lean forward so that at a little
distance both sides seem to meet and form an
arch across the stream. And the whole is rich
in colour, the prevailing grey of the rocks being
varied by great masses in which warm reds and
browns occur, while every crevice is picked out
with greenery, and wherever the foot of
venturesome man can scramble there have
been those bold enough to terrace patches of
the slopes where vines and even tiny crops of
wheat contrive to grow. One of the most
beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by

165

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

the ancient castle of La Caze, which occupies
a sheltered corner in a bend of the river, where
above it the cliffs uprear with great hollows
and - rotundities, illustrating how in the un-
known ages the water has eaten its way down
from the upper level to its present bed.

The Chateau de La Caze is set about by
many tall and leafy trees, and one could
imagine no holiday more enjoyable than a few
days passed here, for — Oh, ye romantic and
practical Frenchmen ! — the castle has been
transformed into an hotel, where all the
appointments and even the costumes of the
servants recall the Middle Ages in which it was
built. As we approached, one of our boatmen
took up a large conch and, blowing into it, set
the gorge echoing as from a foghorn ; but we
had decided not to visit the chateau, as it was
our purpose to lunch farther down at La
Malene, and the sounding of the conch was
meant only to attract the attention of some
of the servants, to whom our boatmen shouted
that we had thrown on the river-bank about a
quarter of a mile above the castle a sack of
loaves for its inmates.

BETWEEN Ste. Enimie and La Malene there
are four or five points at which we have to

166

The Wonderland of France

change our barque, where the river leaps over
dangerous weirs, and several changes are
necessary on the lower beach. It is due to
this manoeuvring and to a wait of nearly two
hours at La Malene, while the bateliers lunch
and gossip boisterously at one of the hotels—
the voyageurs also being not unmindful of
refreshment — that Le Rozier is not reached
until six o'clock, despite the rapid course of
the river.

La Malene is one of the three places south
of Ste. Enimie, and still in the real canon of
the Tarn, where the river is crossed by bridges ;
all splendid structures, designed to withstand
the spring floods when the current carries with
it many a mighty block of ice and all sorts of
debris from the hills. The first and newest of
the bridges is passed at St. Chely, a small and
dirty, but extremely picturesque, hamlet half-
way between Ste. Enimie and La Malene,
where we explored a wonderful series of
ancient cave dwellings, and where, by the way,
an enterprising photographer has joined the
modern to the prehistoric by painting an
advertisement of his wares on the face of the
cliff overlooking the former haunts of the
Troglodites.

La Malene is, to my thinking, one of the
most beautiful points on the route. The little
town sits in the mouth of a great ravine that
reaches far into the Causse de Sauveterre,

167

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

and on the opposite side the majestic mass of
the Causse Mejan climbs to well-nigh 1,800
feet above the river, the mountain road
wriggling upward from the bridge in a series
of wonderful twists and turns, " exactly like
an apple paring thrown over the shoulder of
the engineer," as Mr. Crockett has said of
another highway in the farther south. It
takes a man, walking at his best, more than an
hour to climb that same road, as I can testify,
and never for a moment during the ascent is
the little town at the foot out of view. This
will convey some idea of the barrenness of the
mountain-side, where cattle and sheep crop
a scanty herbage on fields that slope like the
roof of a house and are thickly strewn with
stones and boulders. At La Malene also
there is a mediaeval castle, which, like La Caze,
is the property of that great tourist agency,
"La France Pittoresque," and now serves as a
hotel ; but we were more interested in the old
church of Romanesque design, where we saw
the common grave of the thirty-nine villagers
who were slain by the Republican troops during
the Terror, and are remembered throughout
the Cevennes as " the Martyrs of La Malene."
It is striking proof of the terrible thoroughness
of that bloody regime that even to this remote
and sequestered nook the gory hand of the
Terror stretched out.

The French are the best of all road-makers ;

1 68

The Wonderland of France.

more than any of the Latin peoples they have
retained and fostered this gift of their Roman
forebears. The highway they are now con-
structing along the Tarn was almost com-
pleted between St. Enimie and La Malene,
at the time of our passing, and a splendid
road it promised to be, here running like
a gallery along the face of a cliff and there
tunnelling some mighty bluff that juts out
into the canon. But the river will always
remain the real highway, as the scenery can
only be viewed to full advantage from a seat
in a barque, and the bateliers need not fear the
competition of the road that is in the making.

VI.

IF one were innocent enough to believe the
boatmen who live by the tourist traffic, it
would be difficult to know which part of the
Tarn is the most beautiful. At St. Enimie
you would be assured, in the event of your
being undecided as to the whole trip, that the
stretch between that town and La Malene was
by far the best ; while at La Malene you would
find the local boatmen emphatic as to the
unrivalled beauty of the canon between that
point and Les Vignes, where the third bridge
stands ; and as surely when you arrived there
you would be told the Tarn was only beginning

169

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

to be worth seeing from there to Le Rozier !
Naturally, it is impossible for two boatmen to
take you a voyage which, occupying twelve
hours, requires more than double that time
and many times more energy, to bring the
empty boats back to the starting-places.
Thus the bateliers are prejudiced in favour of
their own particular part of the journey, and
the only way is to make the entire trip ; but
indeed that is for all who do not cycle impera-
tive, as the expense of reaching a railway
station from any of the places mentioned
before Le Rozier would be prohibitive, and
one must continue the journey from the last-
named place to Millau by coach and train, for
which only a small charge is made.

My own impression, if one can distinguish
among scenes so differently beautiful, is
that the canon between La Malene and Les
Vignes presents its most surprising aspect.
At Les Detroits the giant walls lean forward
in a bold and menacing way, and further on,
at the Cirque des Baumes and Les Baumes
Basses, we see some of Nature's most pic-
turesque effects, while the Pas de Soucy is a
wild and thrilling part of the journey, where
the great basaltic masses are scattered about
as if an awful earthquake had but recently
shaken them into their fantastic positions.

But really there seems to be no end to the
beauty of the Tarn, and when one has arrived

170

The Wonderland of France.

at Le Rozier fresh wonders await the eye, and
scenes rivalling anything we have witnessed
are still to behold, if we will make a short
detour into the valley of the Jonte, where the
ancient town of Peyreleau sits like a queen
enthroned among enfolding hills. If one can
go a little farther along this tributary of the
Tarn and visit the famous grotto of Dargilan,
discovered by M. Martel in 1884, a strange and
beautiful underworld, before which the most
extravagant fantasies of the Arabian Nights
pale into insignificance, will be revealed.
There, by the light of torches, we can wander
through gigantic caverns of stalactite greater
and more awe-inspiring than any cathedral,
and journey by canoe on underground rivers,
in what — those practical Frenchmen once
again ! — is " the property of the Society 'La
France Pittoresque.' '

Even that part of the Tarn between Le
Rozier and Millau, no longer a gorge, but
broadening into a smiling and fruitful valley,
with the great impregnable wall of the Causse
Noir frowning along its eastern length, is full
of beautiful vistas ; but the wild and rugged
grandeur of the canon has given place to scenes
of pleasant pastoral life, and we cycle along
a highway fringed with cherry trees in fruit,
passing many a populous little town before we
enter the leafy boulevards of the historic and
prosperous city of Millau.

171

The Town of Tartarin

THE custom observed by English authors of
giving fictitious names to places described in
works of romance — as for example, Mr. Hardy's
" Casterbridge " (Dorchester) and Mr. Barrie's
" Thrums '' (Kirriemuir) — has so brought
their readers to accept the most faithful
realism for romance, that when they take up
a French novel they are apt to think the places
mentioned therein are treated in the same
way. But those who have any acquaintance
with French fiction will know that the novelists
across the Channel follow a method entirely
opposed to ours. An English reader who
may have enjoyed to the full the famous
trilogy of " Tartarin " books may well be
excused if he supposes that the town of
Tarascon is largely a creation of their author,
Alphonse Daudet. It is true that if he has
ever travelled from Paris to Marseilles by way
of Lyons and Avignon he will have passed

173

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

through Tarascon, with its wide and open
station perched high on a viaduct, and the
porter bawling in his rich, southern tongue,
" Tarascon, stop five minutes. Change for
Nimes, Montpellier, Cette." And if he has —
as he cannot fail to have — delightful memories
of the incomparable Tartarin, his feet will itch
to be out and wander the dusty streets in the
hope of looking upon the scenes of the hero's
happy days ; to peep perchance at his tiny
white- washed villa on the Avignon Road with
its green Venetian shutters, where the little
bootblacks used to play about the door and
hail the great man as his portly figure stepped
forth, bound for the Alpine Club " down
town." There would certainly be small other
reasons for tarrying at this ancient town of
France ; it owes such interest as it possesses
chiefly to the genius of Daudet, whose inimit-
able humour has vivified and touched it with
immortality.

I had been wandering a- wheel over many a
league of these fair southern roads one summer
before I found myself at the ancient Roman
city of Nimes, the rarest treasure of France,
and it was a visit to Daudet' s birthplace there
that suggested the idea of going on to Tarascon
a desire intensified by the ardour of a gentle-
man from that town whom I met at a hotel,
and who perspired with indignation as he
denounced " that Daudet " for libelling the

174

The Town of " Tartarin ' '

good folk of Tarascon. ' Tartarin ! The
whole thing 's a farce. There never was such
a man ! " But he asserted that the town was
well worth seeing, if I could only forget
Daudet's ribald nonsense.

It went well with my plans for reaching the
main route back to Paris to make a little
journey through the fragrant olive groves
along the high road to Remoulins in order to
visit the world-famous Roman aqueduct
known as the Pont du Gard, near to which a
gipsy told Tartarin he would one day be a
Iking, and thence by the banks of the river
Gardon to Beaucaire and Tarascon. Not
often have I made a literary pilgrimage of so
pleasant or profitable a nature.

II.

You must know, of course, what a rare
fellow this Tartarin was — Coquin de bon sort !
I am not sure that I should speak of him in the
past tense ; although his creator eventually
gathered him to his fathers, Tartarin was built
for immortality, and at most his passing was
a translation ; he is for all time the archetype
of southern character, and Tarascon is alive
with him to-day. Of medium height, stout
of body, scant of hair on his head, but bushy-
whiskered and jovial-faced, you will see his

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

like sipping absinth at any cafe on the
promenade of the sleepy old town, or playing
a game of billiards with the grand manner of
a Napoleon figuring out a campaign.

Tartarin, blessed with all the imagination
of the generous south, was indeed an in-
effectual Bonaparte, in the body of a good-
natured provincial. " We are both of the
south," he observed to his devoted admirer
Pascalon, when that faithful henchman, at a
crisis in his hero's career, pointed out the
similarity between him of Corsica and him of
Tarascon. Daudet makes him, in a bright
flash of self-knowledge, describe himself as
" Don Quixote in the skin of Sancho Panza,"
and Mr. Henry James has in this wise elabora-
ted the point with his usual deftness :

" There are two men in Tartarin, and there
are two men in all of us ; only, of course, to
make a fine case, M. Daudet has zigzagged
the line of their respective oddities. As he
says so amusingly in Tartarin of Tarascon, in
his comparison of the very different prompt-
ings of these inner voices, when the Don
Quixote sounds the appeal, ' Cover yourself
with glory ! ' the Sancho Panza murmurs the
qualification, ' Cover yourself with flannel ! '
The glory is everything the imagination
regales itself with as a luxury of reputation
— the regardelle so prettily described in the
last pages of Port Tarascon ; the flannel is

176

TARASCON : THE PUBLIC MARKET

176

THE TARASQUE

THE CASTLE OF TARASCON

The Town of "Tartarin"

everything that life demands as a tribute to
reality — a gage of self-preservation. The
glory reduced to a tangible texture too
often turns out to be mere prudent under-
clothing."

It is true that a good deal of the humour that
attaches to Tartarin is of the unconscious sort.
He and his brethren of Provence stand in
relation to their fellow-countrymen much as
the Irish to the English in the matter fof
humour, but in that only. They are often
the butt of northern witticisms, and are said
to be experts in drawing the long bow. Taras-
con in this respect no more than many a score
of little towns in the Midi ; but it suited the
author's purpose admirably to locate the home
of his hero there, as the place possesses many
quaint little peculiarities of its own which
fitted in admirably with the scheme of
Tartarin' s remarkable career.

III.

SINCE I visited the town the Tarasconians
have proved worthy of their reputation, as a
picture post card has been put in circulation
bearing a photograph of "La Maison de Tar-
tarin." It shows a square and comfortable
white house, flat-roofed, with a series of loop-
hole windows that give it a murderous look.

177

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

In front is a large garden, where an old baobab
stretches forth its branches and innumerable
exotics mingle their strange leaves in the
beautiful disorder of the primeval forest. So,
at least, I gather from a French journal. Yet,
while pointing out the mendacity of the picture
post card, the journal in question publishes
with every evidence of sincerity an equally
apocryphal account of the real Tartarin, who
we are told, was a person named originally
Jean Pittalouga, a native of the south of
Sardinia, not a Frenchman at all. He was
bought out of slavery by the Brotherhood of
the Trinity, and came to Tarascon to manage
the property of the fraternity in that town.
As Sidi-Mouley-Abdallah was the superior of
Morocco and that country was part of Barbary,
Pittalouga became known in Tarascon, because
of his romantic experience among the Moors,
first as Sidi-Barbari, and then as Barbarin.
The time came when the Trinity fraternity
had to clear out, and with them Barbarin,
who now rented a neighbouring farm on the
outskirts of the town — the veritable " Maison
de Tartarin " of the post card. But he did not
die there. He went away with the Trinity
fathers into Africa, and is believed to have
been devoured entirely by some terrible wild
beast, with whom he had disputed the
sovereignty of the desert. To all of which,
as Daudet remarks of the member of the

178

The Town of "Tartarin"

Jockey Club travelling avec sa niece, " Hum !
hum ! "

One may note here that the author did first
write of his comic hero as Barbarin ; but as
the French law affords the fullest measure of
protection to living people whose names may
be introduced in works of fiction, and as there
lived in Tarascon a certain M. Barbarin, who
wrote to Daudet a letter worthy of his hero,
wherein he threatened the utmost rigour of
the law unless the novelist ceased to make
sport of " what was dearer to him than life
itself, the unspotted name of his ancestors,"
Daudet altered the name to Tartarin, and was
inclined to think in after years, when the fame
of his creation had travelled around the globe,
that his hero would never have been so popular
under his original name. It may have been
a case of " apt alliteration's artful aid " ; but
one may suppose that Tartarin would have
been equally popular by any other name.
He embodies the extravagant, and not the
least lovable, side of French character, as
truly as Uriah Keep and Mr. Pecksniff repre-
sent English humbug and hypocrisy ; he has
many points of similarity with Mr. Pickwick,
but the last-mentioned can hardly be com-
pared with him as reality seen through the
eye of kindly caricature.

179

IV.

TARTARIN was, in a word, an epitomy of
innocent vanities ; large-hearted, generous,
he had the Caesarian ambition to be the first
man in his town ; he was imbued with the
national hunger for " la Gloire," and many
were the amusing ways in which he sought to
demonstrate his prowess. To impress his
townsmen, the dear old humbug surrounded
himself with all sorts of foreign curiosities.
His garden was stuffed with exotics from every
clime, most notable of all the wonderful
baobab, which he grew in a flower-pot,
although that is the unmatched giant of
the tree kingdom ! His study was decked
with the weapons of many strange and savage
people, and, like a miniature museum, his
possessions were ticketed thus : " Poisoned
arrows ! Do not touch ! " " Weapons
loaded ! Have a care ! J:

His earliest exploits were as chief of the
" cap-hunters," for, you see, in those days the
good folk of Tarascon were great sports, and
the whole country-side having been denuded
of game, they were reduced to the device of
going forth in hunting-parties, and after a
jolly picnic they would throw up their caps
in the air and shoot at them as they fell !

1 80

i8o

TARA.SCON: THE MAIRIE

The Town of "Tartarin"

" The man whose hat bears the greatest
number of shot marks is hailed as champion
of the chase, and in the evening, with his
riddled cap stuck on the end of his rifle, he
makes a triumphal entry into Tarascon, midst
the barking of dogs and fanfares of trumpets/'
Tartarin, however, determined to cover
himself with glory — as well as flannel — by
making an expedition into Algeria and
Morocco, there to try his prowess on the lions
of the Atlas. His ludicrous adventures on
this great enterprise — how he shot a donkey
and a blind lion, and returned to Tarascon
pursued by his devoted camel — form the theme
of the first of Daudet's three charming stories.
The years pass with Tartarin lording it at
Baobab House, and at the club every evening
spinning his untruthful yarns, beginning :
" Picture to yourself a certain evening in the
open Sahara." Then comes the further
adventures of " Tartarin in the Alps," and I
confess that when, a good many years ago, I
first clambered up a portion of Mont Blanc it
was of Tartarin' s famous ascent I thought
rather than of Jacques Balmat's ; the fiction
was more vivid in my mind than the fact ;
and again at the Castle of Chillon — I say it
fairly — the comic figure of Tartarin imprisoned
there was more engaging to the imagination
than that of Bonnivard ; and, by the bye, in
the famous dungeon one can see scratched on

181

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

the wall the signatures of both Lord Byron
and Alphonse Daudet.

The last, and in some respects the best, of
all the Tartarin books — like Mulvaney, the
mighty Tarasconian has his fame " dishpersed
most notoriously in sev'ril volumes " —is Port
Tarascon, wherein are detailed the mirthful
misadventures of the great man, and many of
his townsmen who, under his direction, set
sail to found a colony in Polynesia, an under-
taking that proved fatal to his fame, and ended
eventually in his self-exile across the river to
Beaucaire, where he died soon after ; of sheer
melancholy we may suppose.

It was into the busy little town of Beau-
caire, which lies around its ancient castle of
Bellicardo, on the west bank of the broad
Rhone, glaring across at Tarascon, that I
wheeled one bright day in June. Beaucaire,
for all its canal, wharves, and signs of pros-
perous industry, is as tidy a town as I have
seen, and the fine old castle, ruined by Riche-
lieu, where in the golden age of Languedoc's
poesy the troubadors sang their ballads at the
Court of Love, is beautifully situated on a
little hill by the river-side, quite near to the
magnificent suspension bridge which figures

182

The Town of "Tartarin"

so humorously in Port Tarascon. The
rivalry between the two towns, their mutual
jealousies, furnished Daudet with many an
opportunity to poke fun at them. " Separa-
ted by the whole breadth of the Rhone, the
two cities regard each other across the river
as irreconcilable enemies. The bridge that
has been thrown between them has not brought
them any nearer. This bridge is never crossed
—in the first place, because it 's very dan-
gerous. The people of Beaucaire no more go
to Tarascon than those of Tarascon go to
Beaucaire/' As the gentleman I met at Nimes
would have said, " Zut ! It is not true."
But that is neither here nor there.

Tartarin, up to his forty-ninth year, had
never spent a night away from his own home.
" The very limit of his travels was Beaucaire,
and yet Beaucaire is not far from Tarascon, as
there is only the bridge to cross. Unhappily
that beastly bridge had been so often swept
away by the storms ; it is so long, so rickety,
and the Rhone so broad there that — zounds,
you understand ! . . . Tartarin preferred to
have a firm grip of the ground." But this
must have referred to the old bridge that made
way for the present magnificent structure,
which crosses the river in four spans and is
1,456 feet in length. However, it was this
suspension bridge, and no other, across which
the hero's cronie Bompard came with such

183

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

bravery to witness for his friend, when Tar-
tarin, fallen from his high estate, was on trial
at the court of Tarascon for having been party
to a gigantic swindle in the great colonising
fraud of Port Tarascon, a charge from which,
as we know, he was rightly acquitted. Bom-
pard at the time of the trial was in hiding at
Beaucaire, where he had become conservator
of the Castle and warden of the Fair Grounds
— Beaucaire' s annual fair is famed all over
France — " but when I saw that Tartarin was
really dragged into the dock between the
myrmidons of the law, then I could hold out
no longer ; I let myself go — I crossed the
bridge ! I crossed it this morning in a terrible
tempest. I was obliged to go down on all
fours the same way as when I went up Mont
Blanc. . . . When I tell you that the bridge
was swinging like a pendulum, you '11 believe
I had to be brave. I was, in fact, heroic/'

VI.

THE view from the bridge as one crosses to
Tarascon is as pleasant a picture as may be
seen in any part of old France. The noble
stream, broken by sedgy inlands, sweeps on
between its low banks, and rising sheer from
the water's edge on a firm rock-base, almost
opposite the picturesque mass of Bellicardo,

184

A WOMAN OF TARASCON
(Summer costi.me)

The Town of " Tartar in ' '

are the massive walls of the ancient castle of
Tarascon, founded by Count Louis II. in the
fourteenth century and finished by King Rene
of Anjou in the fifteenth, and at one time
tenanted by Pope Urbain II., but now, like
many another palace of kings, fallen to the
condition of a common prison. Within these
grim walls Tartarin passed some of his in-
glorious days, but days not lacking romance,
for was not Bompard from the opposite height
signalling o' nights to him by means of
mysterious lights ?

If one has never seen photographs of
Tarascon it will be a surprise, as it is surely a
pleasure, to note how faithfully the artists
who illustrated Daudet's books have repro-
duced in their charming little vignettes the
chief features of the actual town. There to
the south of the bridge is the tiny quay from
which we are to suppose the Tootoopumpum
sailed away with the flower of Tarascon' s
aristocracy on that ill-starred expedition to
the South Seas. Daudet is careful to preserve
some slight respect for the truth by explaining
that the vessel was of shallow draft ; but, even
so, the Rhone is here not navigable to ocean-
going steamers.

Proceeding straight into the town, we arrive
in a minute or so at the Promenade, with its
long rows of plane trees, as in most French
towns, only in Tarascon the trees seem to

185

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

frow higher and leafier than anywhere else.
t opens out a short distance from the riverside,
and although it cannot be strictly called the
" Walk Round " for the reason which the
author gives — that it encircles the town — it
certainly traverses a goodly portion of Taras-
con, and takes in en route that " bit of a square' '
to which he makes so many sly allusions.

Almost the first thing one notices after cross-
ing the bridge is the " Hotel of the Emperors/'
close by the Hospice at the opening of the
Promenade. This title is worthy of Daudet
himself ! Along the south side of the
Promenade stand the chief cafes and shops ;
as one sits by a table at a door watching the
passers-by, the scene is entirely agreeable.
Everybody seems to have walked out of
Daudet 's page. The men are of two types
chiefly — those of the stout and bearded figure,
such as Tartarin himself possessed, and the
thin and sharp-featured fellows of Italian
caste, like Bezuquet and Costecalde, with
their bright, black eyes and fierce moustachios.
Most of them, this sunny day, are abroad in
their shirt sleeves, and almost to a man they
wear the soft black felt hats such as our
English curates affects

186

VII.

THERE is a musical jingle of spurs, as some
baggy-trousered soldiers pass on their way to
the fine cavalry barracks which the town
possesses. There go a pair of comfortable-
looking priests in their long black gowns,
their good fat fingers twined behind them ;
but nowhere do we see the white habit of the
friars, whose monastery of Pamperigouste the
gallant Tartarin and his crusaders defended
from the Government troops so long ago !
The women-folk whom one sees about are nearly
all hatless, but they wear a dainty substitute
in the shape of a little cap of white muslin and
lace, and a pelerine of the same material over
their shoulders and breast. Small, plump,
swarthy, they are true daughters of the south,
and by that token better to look upon than
their sisters of the north. Here and there one
may see a woman touched with something of
the Paris fashion, members of that local
aristocracy to which belonged the charming
Clorinda of Pascalon's hopeless passion.

There is a constant toot-toot or tinkle of
bells as cyclists go by, for the wheel has come
into great popularity here as elsewhere since
Tartarin made his tragic exit across the bridge.
Perhaps the most unmistakable evidences of

187

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

provincialism are supplied by the antiquated
types of vehicles with their fat-faced drivers
and their unshorn horses, many of the latter
being harnessed with the most extravagant
kinds of collars and saddles that project a
couple of feet or more above the level of the
animals' backs.

The whole scene is one of peaceful and happy
life, and it is good to look upon people who are
in no hurry to do business and seem to take
things easily. Across the way, there, the
chemist is standing at his door, with those
great glasses of coloured water, that seem to
have gone out of fashion in England, shining
in his window, while he rolls a cigarette for
the white-legged postman who has stopped to
give him a letter, and chats with him in the
passing. He might be Bezuquet himself, did
we not know of the misfortune that befell
the latter, when he was tatooed out of recog-
nition by the South Sea Islanders, and had to
wear a mask when he came home !

Going down a street that leads northward
from the Promenade, we pass the Mairie, a
quaint old building from whose balcony floats,
not the Tarasque, but the tricolor, and by
whose doorway are posted notices of coming
bull-fights, for Tarascon is still keen on its
ancient sport despite the restrictive legislation.
Near by is the public market, and the whole
district swarms with dogs of every breed. We

1 88

The Town of "Tartarin"

peep into the church of St. Martha, which is
no bad example of the Pointed Gothic and
occupies the site of an old Roman Temple.
One of the kings of Provence is buried here,
but more interesting is the tomb of the saint
to whom the church is dedicated.

VIII.

ST. MARTHA and the Tarasque are the peculiar
glories of the Tarasconians, who, you must
know, would almost strike you if you breathed
the word " Tartarin " to them, and have never
forgotten Daudet for his satires on the town.
We cannot do better than go to Daudet for
the legend of St. Martha and the beast.

' This Tarasque, in very ancient days, was
nothing less than a terrible monster, a most
alarming dragon, which laid waste the country
at the mouth of the Rhone. St. Martha, who
had come into Provence after the death of our
Lord, went forth and caught the beast in the
deep marshes, and binding its neck with a sky-
blue ribbon, brought it into the city captive,
tamed by the innocence and piety of the saint.
Ever since then, in remembrance of the service
rendered by the holy Martha, the Tarasconians
have kept a holiday, which they celebrate
every ten years by a procession through the
city. This procession forms the escort of a

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

sort of ferocious, bloody monster, made of
wood and painted pastboard, who is a cross
between the serpent and the crocodile, and
represents, in gross and ridiculous effigy, the
dragon of ancient days. The thing is not a
mere masquerade, for the Tarasque is really
held in veneration ; she is a regular idol,
inspiring a sort of superstitious, affectionate
fear. She is called in the country the Old
Grannie. The creature has herself stalled in
a shed especially hired for her by the town
council."

Daudet's light sketch of the Tarasque may
be supplemented by a more circumstantial
account of the strange ceremony from a writer
on old customs (William S. Walsh), who in-
forms us that " the famous Miracle Play of
' Sainte Marthe et la Tarasque,' instituted, it
was said, by King Rene in 1400, was one of
the last Proven9al coronlas to disappear, as in
its day it was one of the most popular. Even
after the Mystery Play was itself abandoned,
a remnant of it lingered on until the middle of
the nineteenth century in the annual processon
of La Tarasque, celebrated on July 2gth, not
only at Tarascon, but also at Beaucaire. The
main feature was the huge figure of a dragon,
made of wood and canvas, eight feet long,
three feet high, and four feet broad in the
middle. The head was small, there was no
neck, the body, which was covered with scales,

190

The Town of " Tartarin ' '

was shaped like an enormous egg, and at the
nether extremity was a heavy beam of wood
for a tail. Sixteen mummers, gaily capari-
soned and known as the Knights of la Tarasque
were among its attendants. Eight of the
knights concealed themselves within the body
to represent those who had been devoured, and
furnished the motive power, besides lashing
the tail to right and left, at imminent risk to
the legs of the spectators. The other eight
formed the escort, and were followed by
drummers and fifers and a long procession of
clergy and laity. The dragon was conducted
by a girl in white and blue, the leading string
being her girdle of blue silk. When the dragon
was especially unruly and frolicsome she
dashed holy water over it. A continuous
rattle of torpedoes and musketry was kept up
by those who followed in the dragon's train."
The celebration of the Tarasque has taken
place several times, I believe, since the pro-
hibition, while the procession of St. Martha is
held annually ; but as my visit did not syn-
chronise with either, I had to be content with
securing photographs from a local photo-
grapher, who was more inclined to discuss the
weather and smoke his cigarette than sell his
wares, and left his wife — at the time of my
call, in a state of partial undress between
changing her visiting costume for an indoor
dress — to do the business of hunting up prints

191

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

for me. It will be remembered by those who
have read Port Tarascon that Tartarin foresaw
his own downfall from the day on which, under
the impression that he was shooting at a whale,
he planted a bullet in the gross carcase of the
Tarasque, which had been taken with the
emigrants to the South Seas and was swept
overboard to become a waif of the waves.

IX.

ONE of the peculiarities of Tarascon is its
railway station on the outskirts of the town.
It is situated some thirty feet above the level
of the street, and you gain the platform by
climbing several long flights of stairs, up which
it is no light task to carry a heavily-burdened
bicycle. During most of the day there is little
evidence of life in or around the station, and a
clerk will cheerfully devote a quarter of an
hour to explain to you the absurdities of the
railway time table ; but five or six times a day
the place wakes up on the arrival of a train
from or to the capital, for all the trains in
France seem to have a connection, however
tardy and remote, with the octopus of Paris.
Then there is much ringing of bells and blowing
of trumpets, and you almost expect to see the
quaint and portly form of Tartarin himself
returning from his great adventure in the

192

The Town of " Tartar in ' '

Sahara or his ascent of Mont Blanc. But you
reflect that these and many other of his doings
were much too good to be true, and take your
place in the corner of the carriage, making
yourself comfortable for the long and dreary
journey to Paris.

The last thing you see as the train steams
away is the white stretch of the Avignon Road
lying between the railway and the river, its
little white houses and modern villas close-
shuttered and growing indistinct in the soft
southern twilight.

193

La Fete Dieu

FOR centuries the igth of June has been to
the people of France a day of high festival.
No one who has happened to be travelling in
Normandy or Brittany — or indeed in almost
any of the French provinces — about this time
of the year can have failed to notice the
celebration of the Fete Dieu, and many may
have wondered what it was all about. It
has existed so long as one of the national
customs, varying in its observance in different
parts of the country, and having passed
through many periods of change, that a few
years ago he would have been accounted a
rash and uninspired prophet who would have
foretold that the Republican Government
might have the temerity to lay its embargo
on this sacred institution. But, behold the
day when the secular hand of M. Combes
had stretched out into the remotest parts
of fair France, and following hard upon

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

the upsetting of monastic peace, came the
prohibition of religious processions in public.
The effect of this order was to limit the
fete in many places to a mere perambulation
of the exterior of the church, and in others
the procession was confined entirely to the
interior, though here and there, it would seem,
the function took place just as it did genera-
tions before M. Combes and the anti-clericals
arose into power.

The festival is clearly of pagan origin, like
so many of the ceremonies of the Christian
church ; it corresponds with the Corpus Feast
in Spain, the exhibition of the holy sacrament
having been grafted on to the heathenish
rights very early in the Christian era. There
seems to be evidences of the ceremony having
been observed in some form or other centuries
before 673, as in that year an ecclesiastical
council, held at Braga in Spain, spoke of
" the ancient and traditional custom of
solemnly carrying the Host on the shoulders.''
It was Pope Urbain IV., who vainly en-
deavoured to stir up a new crusade on behalf
of his former diocese of Jerusalem, that
officially recognised and instituted as regular
offices of the church in 1264 the ceremonies
connected with the Fete Dieu. But, despite
this papal ordinance, the festival did not
become one of general observance until, some
generations later, there had grown around the

196

PROCESSION OF LA FETE DIEU

Photographed at Morlaix, in Brittany

La Pete Dieu

purely religious part of it a mass of painfully
secular tomfoolery, which turned the fete into
a great saturnalia. In the days of that merry
monarch, King Rene, it had assumed such
proportions that an entire week was devoted
to the celebration, " courts of love," tourna-
ments, jousts, mystery plays, and many other
amusements being associated with the solemn
procession of the sacred sacrament. Flourish-
ing more or less, the fete continued annually,
without interruption until the great Revolu-
tion, which gave short shrift to the old taste
for processions ; but under Louis XVIII. it
was re-established, and the State even fur-
nished troops as escorts for those taking part
in the processions. Times are changed indeed
when we find Le Pelerin, an illustrated weekly
newspaper devoted entirely to the interests
of pilgrimages, publishing cartoons which
show the police dispersing the pious partici-
pants in the procession of the Fete Dieu,
while rowdy socialists are permitted to wave
their red rags in the highway.

II.

THE festival, which has thus fallen upon
evil times, might possibly have gone more
steadily downhill to the limbo of old customs
if the Government had left it alone, as of

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In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

recent years it has not been gaining in popu-
larity, and, practically speaking, only we men
and children have shown active interest in it
under the direction of the priests and lay
officials. Throughout Normandy it was a
rare thing to see men taking part ; but in
Brittany, and especially at the quaint old
town of Morlaix, which is famed for its high
railway bridge and its Fete Dieu, and holds
an extremely jolly kermesse, with dancing
and the selling of cheap rubbish, immediately
after the holy sacrament has been carried
through the streets, a larger proportion of
men were to be seen engaging in the ceremony ;
while in the far south, among the peasants of
Provence and Aveyron, the men have long
been as attached to this and similar fetes of
the church as the women, taking part with a
comic gravity of demeanour absurdly out of
keeping with their usually gay and careless
behaviour. Generally speaking, the Fete
Dieu, as celebrated during modern years, has
been a picturesque, but brief and inoffensive
ceremonial, that did not greatly disturb
anybody, and seemed to please the women
and children. In the course of time it might
have died out as a public institution, though
it must always survive, in some manner, as a
religious festival ; but the Government, in its
crusade against the enemies of the Republic —
for such undoubtedly are the Catholic priests

198

La Fete Dieu

— may find that it has, by its very prohibi-
tion, reawakened interest in this ancient and
decrepid institution of the church.

As for the familiar procession of the Fete
Dieu, there is not very much to describe : a
brief notice of one may be taken as typical of
all. The first indication that the visitor would
have of something unusual toward was the
strewing of the principal streets with rushes.
Almost every shopkeeper would be seen with
an armful of the green blades, laying them
down to fullest advantage in the middle of
the road. This done, the next thing was to
bring out long sheets of white linen, which were
tacked a little way below the windows of the
first story, and hung downward to within a
foot or so of tthe ground, the entire route
being thus lined with a continuous stretch of
white, whereon busy hands had pinned roses
and other flowers, sometimes attempting
designs such as a heart or a cross, or the
monogram " I H S." Each shopkeeper seemed
to vie with his or her neighbour to produce a
more elaborate evidence of pious interest in
the coming procession ; but I have noticed
frequently that many performed their part in
the most perfunctory manner, only rushing
up their white linen and sticking on a flower
or two when the head of the procession was
actually in sight, and whipping off the sheets
as soon as it had passed by.

199

III.

IN many parts of the town, often in the
front garden of a private house, in some
outside corner of a church or in a market-
place, elaborate shrines, made of wood,
covered with cloth, and decorated with rushes
and flowers, would be erected. In one
small town I have counted upwards of a
dozen such erections, enclosing gaudy statues
of the saints, especially well disposed towards
those who supplied the money for the shrines.
But here again I have noticed the proverbial
economy of the French nation asserting
itself, the attendant at such a gorgeous shrine
lighting the numerous candles only on the
approach of the procession, and blowing them
out the instant it had passed, when also the
dismantling of the shrine would begin ! I
recall a particularly gorgeous shrine which I
saw many years ago in the town of Falaise. At
a considerable distance the numerous candles
seemed to be burning so brilliantly, that I was
not altogether surprised on going up and
examining them to find the supposed
candles were actually incandescent electric
lamps. Thus the preliminary arrangements
of the populace for the coming of the
procession.

200

La Fete Dieu

The route was, as a rule, one that had been
followed for years, but the erection of a
particularly elaborate shrine by some person
blessed with pelf and piety, in a street not
within the usual itinerary, would be regarded
as sufficient to justify a detour.

I have never witnessed the procession with-
out being refreshed by its suggestion of old-
world ease. " Build your houses as if you
meant them to last for ever," was Ruskin's
advice. " Proceed as if your procession had
started at the Flood and was going on till
Doomsday, " would seem to be the motto that
inspires the demonstrators in the Fete Dieu.

In the distance the sound of music is heard,
and after a time at the far end of the road
the head of the procession is seen moving
towards us at a pace as much slower than a
funeral as that is slower than a horse
race. First comes the beadle, or church
officer attached to the cathedral, whose blue
or red uniform, with cocked hat, knee breeches,
white hose and buckled shoes, remind one of
the dress of our soldiers in the seventeenth
century, a get-up very similar to that of the
Swiss Guard at the Vatican, these beadles
being, indeed, generally known as the
" Swiss," though they are loutish and ignorant
fellows, with as much regard for religion as the
chucker-out at a roaring London tavern.
But for all that, the Swiss makes a mighty

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In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

picturesque figure at the head of the proces-
sion, his sword hanging at his hip, and a long
mace carried in his hand as he steps out
slowly and endeavours to combine dignity
with scowls at the children who follow him,
the little girls in their white muslin dresses,
made for their first communion, and the
little boys in the sort of midshipman's suit
universally worn by French lads at the time
of their confirmation, a white armlet being
donned on this occasion and a rosary tied
around it. Following the children, who carry
banners with various religious devices, come
bands of music and different groups of men
and women, who also march under certain
banners that indicate their membership of
some brotherhood or sisterhood.

IV.

THERE are brotherhoods of the Holy Sacra-
ment in many parts of France whose creden-
tials date back to the Middle Ages, and who
seem to exist solely for the purpose of being
privileged to walk in religious processions,
with a ludicrous gown lavishly trimmed, and
having on the front, after the manner of a
herald's tabard, a picture of Christ. The
brethren of the various " charities," which
in France correspond in some degree to our

202

La Fete Dieu

friendly societies, also wear uniforms, and,
in some parts of the country assist in the
procession. In the past many unseemly dis-
turbances arose out of the rivalry of these
brotherhoods as to their respective privileges
in the Fete Dieu, and the sacred function was
often marred by the most disgraceful scenes of
rowdyism as the rivals fought for precedence,
and especially for the right of bearing the
canopy under which the Holy Sacrament is
carried through the streets.

The approach of the Host is heralded by
the acolytes in their scarlet gowns with lace
tunicles, who come singing, and precede the
white-robed members of the choir, lay breth-
ren and priests, who are either diligently
reading from books, or mumbling unintelli-
gently the orisons provided for the occasion.
Succeeding these come more acolytes, swinging
censers, and others who, walking backwards,
bear large baskets of rose leaves, and scatter
their fragrant burdens in handfuls on the road
in front of the bishop. The latter, arrayed in
his most gorgeous vestments, advances slowly,
holding aloft, with well-assumed solemnity,
to impress beholders with the awful sacredness
of his charge, the elaborate brass monstrance
or cabinet which encloses the consecrated
wafer. The bishop, who thus displays before
the just and the unjust the Holy Sacrament,
walks under a canopy of richly embroidered

203

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

cloth, carried on four posts by specially
chosen members of some of the brotherhoods,
or perhaps by some unusually devout laymen,
whose purses have not been altogether closed
when the clerical hat has gone round.

Previously to the approach of the dais
covering the bishop and his holy burden, the
spectators in the street have been laughing
and joking with and about the demonstrators,
and some of the children in the procession
have shown lamentable forgetfulness of the
solemn nature of the function by putting out
their tongues at us, and turning back to say
derisively, " les Anglais ! " — for this was before
the days of the Entente. But the moment
the bishop and the Host come up, down flop
the spectators on their knees, crossing them-
selves, the men removing their hats, though
I confess with pleasure that many a time I
have seen groups of men showing as much
reverence to the sacred wafer as Cockney
crowds do to the Lord Mayor's coachman on
show day.

The procession is now at an end so far as
our particular standpoint is concerned, and
already the white sheets are disappearing all
along the road, shopkeepers turning their
attention to business again. But it is winding
its way through other streets, pausing to
make special obeisance before the temporary
shrines, and to rehearse prayers cunningly

204

A WOMAN OF SA1NTE ENIMIE

La Fete Dieu

adapted to the peculiar requirements of the
saints to whom the shrines are dedicated.
And so after, it may be, two or three hours
perambulation, the demonstrators return to
the cathedral, where High Mass is celebrated ;
this over, they are free to make merry to
their heart's desire. And they do.

205

M'sieu Meelin of Dundae

PLEASE do not consider it an affectation of
superior knowledge if I begin by saying it is
improbable that one out of a hundred of my
readers has ever heard of Morbihan and the
wonderful druidical remains in the Commune
of Carnac. To be quite frank, I had never
heard of them myself until one dusty summer
day when I cycled into the little village of
Carnac away on the south coast of Brittany,
and within sight of the historic bay of Ouiberon.
The village of Carnac, whose population
numbers only some six hundred souls, is one
of the most interesting in Brittany, where
almost every hamlet has some historic touch
to engage the attention of the visitor. It
consists practically of a little square of houses
surrounding the ancient parish church, dedi-
cated to Saint Corneille. This saint is the
patron of cattle, and in September the town
is the centre of a series of most picturesque

207

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

celebrations, the peasants journeying hither
from all parts of the surrounding country,
accompanied by their cattle, horses, and even
their pigs, for the pig is as notable a feature of
rural life in Brittany as it is in Ireland. Saint
Corneille, for a reason which will be explained
further on, is supposed to take a very personal
interest in the welfare of the Breton's cattle,
and to see the simple peasants on their pil-
grimage to his shrine, and later in the cere-
monies of parading their beasts around the
church and kneeling before his statue on the
west front of the tower, kneeling again and
sometimes even fighting for a dip in the water
from his fountain, is to realise how sincere is
their belief in his powers. But this is only by
the way ; my present intention is not to spend
any more time in describing the quaint
ceremonies that have long made Carnac a
centre of pilgrimage, and have been the theme
of many a story and poem by French writers.
Leaving the little square and striking east-
ward along the main road, I noticed a small,
plain building, almost the last of the few
straggling houses in that direction, bearing in
bold letters the legend " Musee Miln." The
name had a pleasant suggestion of my ain
countree, and in a trice I was knocking at
the door, curious to know what lay behind. A
tall, well-knit, clean-shaven Breton of about
forty years of age opened and bade me welcome.

208

THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC
(The second view is a continuation of the first)

" M 'sieu Meelin of Dundae "

He was carelessly dressed like any village shop-
keeper in his shirt sleeves, and wearing a pair
of carpet slippers ; certainly presenting no
aspect of the antiquary or the scholar, although
it was not long before I found that he was a
man of remarkable attainments in archaeology.
As far as I remember, the charge for admission
was one franc, and although at first it seemed
a large price to pay for looking at a roomful
of things in glass cases, I left with the con-
viction that I had made an excellent bargain.
The museum I found to consist of an ex-
tremely valuable assortment of relics of the
Stone and Bronze Ages. Admirably arranged
and catalogued were hundreds of flint arrow-
heads and axes, some of the latter being of
that earliest type before man had the sense to
pierce the axe-head for the handle, but stuck
the wedge-like head of the axe through a hole
in the shaft. There were also many examples
of rude instruments belonging to the Bronze
Age, some Roman swords and a skeleton in a
prehistoric stone coffin. The interest of these
curiosities lay not only in their intrinsic value
to the antiquary, but in the fact that they had
all been dug up from the tumuli in the Com-
mune of Carnac. But to me they assumed at
once a far more vivid interest, when the custo-
dian explained that the antiquary who had
discovered most of them, and whose money
had founded the museum, was " M'sieu Meelin

209

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

of Dundae." When I explained that I was a
countryman of this Mr. Miln, the curator
launched into a warm description of that
worthy's abounding good qualities, and re-
called with the fervour of the French his own
personal association with Mr. Miln in the work
of excavation. He pointed with pride to a
very ordinary oil painting of his old friend and
master, which disclosed him as a fresh-com-
plexioned, white-haired gentleman of unmis-
takable Scottish type, and assured me that he
was " un hoMme tres inter ess ant et tres aimable."
I could readily believe the eulogy, as it was a
kindly old Scotch face that looked out of the
canvas at me.

II.

I WONDER if the memory of Mr. Miln is
treasured in Dundee. The chances are that
what I have to tell of him may be news to his
fellow-townsmen of to-day. A reference to
that excellent work, Chambers' s Biographical
Dictionary, discloses the fact that he is
remembered there to the extent of exactly
two lines :

" Miln, James (1819-81), a Scotch antiquary
made excavations at Carnac in Brittany, 1872-
80."

That is all, but behind these two lines lie
the long story of a romantic life in a foreign

2JO

" M 'sieu Meelin of Dundae "

land and a little measure of fame among an
alien people. In this respect the life of James
Miln resembles curiously the lives of so many
of his fellow-countrymen, who have wandered
to the ends of the earth in the pursuit of their
avocations, and left traces of their work every-
where except in the place of their birth.

My knowledge of the life of this notable
Scotsman and his work is gleaned from the
scholarly little brochure written by M. Zacharie
le Rouzic, the slippered custodian of the
" Musee Miln." It appears that James Miln
was born at Woodhill in 1819, and while still
young travelled in India, China, and spent
some years in other parts of the far east. On
his return to Scotland he threw himself with
enthusiasm into antiquarian research and
scientific studies. He succeeded to the estate
of Murie in Perthshire on the death of his
father, James Yeanan Miln, of Murie and
Woodhill, and later to that of Woodhill in
Forfarshire at the death of his brother, to
whom that property had descended. His
particular line of study for nearly forty years
of his life would seem to have been the origin
and development of portable firearms, and for
a man of such peaceful pursuits it is strange
to be told that he was especially ardent in
encouraging every experiment for the per-
fection of rifles. Another of his hobbies was
concerned with the improvement of the

211

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

telescope ; but all kinds of scientific instru-
ments seem to have been objects of his study
and inventive genius. In the experimental
days of photography he speedily achieved
success with the camera, and made a large
collection of photographs of ancient sculptures
in the east of Scotland. An accomplished
linguist and something of an artist, he illus-
trated with his own pencil all his works on
archaeology, which M. Le Rouzic assures us
was always his favourite study.

It was during the summer of 1873 that Miln
first visited Carnac, where he encountered his
friend, Admiral Tremlett, of Tunbridge Wells,
who was interested in the wonderful neolithic
remains in the neighbourhood, and became his
guide in a series of explorations. Miln's
enthusiasm was immediately aflame when he
contemplated this rich and sparsely-explored
field of research awaiting the excavator. His
first idea was to purchase the ground on which
some of the most interesting remains were
standing, but finding this impossible, he
approached the farmers on whose land the
unbroken mounds, which represented burial-
places of prehistoric people, were situated, and
obtained leave from them to commence the
work of excavation, to which he immediately
resolved to devote himself during 1875 and
1876. The result was a series of important
discoveries. Perhaps the most important of

212

" M 'sieu Meelin of Dundae "

the remains unearthed were those of a Roman
villa, consisting of eleven chambers, and sur-
rounded by several other buildings, among
which were baths and a small temple, that
were believed to date back to the first half of
the fourth century. Numerous examples of
Roman pottery, glass, jewellery, money, a
bronze statue of a bull, and many other
curiosities were dug up. Within sight of the
museum, and only a few minutes' walk away,
is a tumulus surmounted by a little chapel to
Saint Michael, and here in 1876 Miln made
many notable discoveries, including the re-
mains of an eleventh-century monastery.

III.

THE results of these excavations were des-
cribed in a large work written and illustrated
by himself, and issued in Edinburgh and Paris.
By January of 1877 he was busily prosecuting
his explorations at Kermaric, a gunshot
distant from Carnac, and the work went
steadily on with the most fruitful results in
many other parts of the district until the end
of 1880, when Miln returned to Edinburgh in
order to produce another book describing his
researches. Unhappily, in the midst of his
literary labour, he was seized with a brief
illness, which at the end of six days resulted

213

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

in his death on Friday, 28th January, 1881,
at twelve minutes to eleven, as the faithful
M. le Rouzic records.

James Miln was a member of the Scottish
Society of Antiquaries, la Societe royale des
Antiquaries du Nord, the Academy of Copen-
hagen, and several learned societies in England
and the Continent. " Cest avec une doulou-
reuse emotion que I' on apprit, a Carnac, la
nouvelle de sa mort," to quote again his faithful
henchman. The museum with its precious
contents was secured to Carnac through the
efforts of Mr. Robert Miln, the son of the
antiquary, and his friend Admiral Tremlett,
and was opened on the 22nd May, 1882, since
when it has remained a centre of great interest
and importance to all antiquarian students,
and an enduring monument to " M'sieu Meelin
of Dondae."

This is a brief outline of the life of a little-
known Scotsman, which is worth recalling as
an example of the quiet, unostentatious way
in which the Scot will carry on any enterprise
that lies near to his heart, with no eye to
personal advertisement, but out of sheer
pleasure in the work his hand has found to do.
Thus it is that one meets with traces of our
countrymen in the remote and unfrequented
corners of earth, and at the ring of an old
name the mind of the wanderer is carried
back across " the waste of seas " to the land

214

" M 'sieu Meelin of Dundae "

whose sons, by some strange irony of fate, are
prone to find their life-work far from home.

IV.

BUT my story must not end here, although
we take our leave of James Miln and his
museum. It is almost impossible to describe
in any adequate way the historic value of this
part of Brittany. Stonehenge, in England, is
a national monument which we zealously
treasure, yet its value, compared with the
neolithic remains of Morbihan, is as a drop in
a bucket of water. In the region to the east
and north of Carnac druidical remains are as
plentiful as blackberries in an autumn hedge.
The sight of what are known as " les aligne-
ments de Carnac " is one never to be forgotten.
Standing on the little mound by the chapel of
Saint Michael already mentioned, and looking
northward across the plain, we see an enor-
mous range of menhirs or druidical stones
standing like an army at attention. There
are no fewer than 2,813 of these massive stones
to be seen from this point, and the imagination
is busy at once striving to picture the strange
rites practised here by unknown people before
the dawn of history. Dotted all over the vast
plains are dolmens and cromlechs of varying
size.

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In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

One of the largest dolmens that I visited is
known as the Merchants' Table. It stands
near Locmariaquer, and consists of an enor-
mous stone laid flat on the top of a series of
smaller stones. Originally the supporting
stones would be only slightly imbedded in the
earth, but in the ages that have passed the
soil has accumulated until they are now sunk
six or eight feet deep, but still project above
the ground to the height of four or five feet.
The roof-stone must weigh some hundred tons,
and one of the mysteries is how a people, whose
instruments were of the most primitive kind,
could place such a mammoth block in so
elevated a position. The dolmens, of which
the Merchants' Table is one of the finest ex-
amples, were probably places of burial, and
are always approached by a smaller chamber of
the same rude construction. The interior of
the one in question bears many strange carv-
ings, that remain an enigma even to the most
erudite.

Some authorities believe these structures
may have been used as houses ; others suppose
them to have been altars, so that it will be
seen their purpose has not yet been decided
upon by their most learned students. The
cromlechs, which are a series of stones standing
in a circle, were most probably sanctuaries,
and there is reason to believe that it was here
the Druid priests practised their unknown

216

" M 'sieu Meelin of Dundae "

rites. They are generally to be found at the
end of an " alignment," and are oriented, so
that the likelihood is the worshippers stood
within the long rows of stones, which would
correspond to the choir of a cathedral, and the
priests were in the cromlech looking toward
the rising of the sun.

To return for the last time to the great army
of menhirs, or single stones, seen from St.
Michael's chapel near Carnac, the legend
popular in the district is that when St.
Corneille, a Pope of Rome, was being pursued
by an army of pagan soldiers, he had with
him two oxen, which carried his belongings
and sometimes himself when he was fatigued.
One evening, when he had arrived near a
village where he would have rested the night,
he determined to press on beyond it because
he had heard a young girl insult her mother !
He saw soon afterwards that the soldiers, who
had been following him, were arranged in line
of battle, and he was between them and the
sea. So he stopped, and transformed the
entire army into stones. This is at least a
picturesque way for accounting for those
marvellous remains that have baffled the
minds of men to explain.

217

Round About a French Fair

THE rambler in old France can seldom under-
take a little journey during the summer with-
out coming upon some town where a fair is in
progress. At least, that has been my own ex-
perience, and in the course of wide wanderings
through the highways and by-ways of the
most delightful land in Europe I have wit-
nessed many fairs in towns so far apart as
Morlaix and Montluson, Orleans and Beau-
caire, Rennes and Lisieux. Nowhere does
the distinctive character of a people show
itself more strongly than in its public fairs and
rejoicings. Thus, if one desired to get at a glance
a glimpse into the different natures of the
Briton and the Gaul, a visit to Glasgow Fair
or Nottingham's famous Goose Fair, followed
by a look round the great fair of Rennes or
Orleans, would do more for one's education in
this regard than a great deal of book learning.
An extensive and peculiar knowledge of

219

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

Scottish and English holiday-making, which
the vagrant life of journalism has enabled me
to acquire, goes far to justify in my mind,
when I think of the Frenchman and his merry-
making, the charge directed against us by our
friends across the Channel — that we take our
pleasures sadly. There is very little to choose
between an English and Scottish festival of
the common people, though that little of
brightness and genuine high spirits is in favour
of the former. A more vulgar, tasteless,
saddening spectacle than a Scottish saturnalia
it is difficult to conceive. For ill manners,
foul speech, stupid and low diversions, I have
seen nothing so lacking in all the elements of
joy as an Ayrshire country fair ; it has made
me blush for my countrymen. But when such
a melancholy festival has awakened memory's
contrasts of sights seen in merry France, I have
been glad to believe that, speaking generally,
while a fair in Scotland or in England stirs up
the less worthy elements in the people's
character, such an occasion in France, on the
contrary, calls forth some of the better traits
of the people.

In our own time, and due in some measure
to the growth of refinement arising out of our
improved education, the institution of the
public fair in this country has been steadily
declining in popularity ; but in France it still
flourishes. There are other reasons for this,

220

Round About a French Fair

though the chief is — again accepting a French
criticism — that we are essentially a nation of
shopkeepers. The origin of the fair was, of
course, the bringing together of people with
goods to sell or barter, and a touch of pleasure
was given to the business by the association of
amusements therewith. Time was when
Nottingham Goose Fair was an event of the
highest importance in the commercial life of
the district, and continued over a period of a
month ; but with the rise of the shopkeeper,
who has ever a jealous eye on the huckster,
this, like many another of our fairs, has been
gradually curtailed, on the plea of its inter-
fering with regular business, until it is now
limited to a week, and is threatened with
reduction to three days. In France, however,
many of the fairs still last for a month, al-
though the most celebrated of all, that of
Beaucaire, which is almost continental in its
importance and is less a festival than a com-
mercial institution, is held for one week only.
At Orleans one of the finest fairs in France
takes place annually in June, and continues
for a whole month. It may be taken as typical
of these provincial carnivals, and in endeavour-
ing to give my readers some idea of its leading
features, I shall be describing to them the
character of French fairs in general.

221

II.

MOST of the towns in France are peculiarly
adapted for the holding of festivals, with their
wide main street and " bit of a square " ; but
Orleans is especially fortunate in this respect.
Although it is a town of not more than seventy
thousand inhabitants, it possesses a series of
spacious boulevards and public squares which
would be thought remarkable in an English
city of three or four times that population.
The chief part of Orleans lies on the north bank
of the wide and swiftly-flowing Loire, and the
boulevards, following roughly the outline of
an arc, compass the town with the river for
base. The great width of these highways — at
a moderate estimate six times that of the
Strand — makes it possible for an immense
number of booths and stalls to be ranged along
them without in any degree obstructing the
regular road traffic. Thus, if you arrive at the
railway station during the fair month, you will
find the entire stretch of the northern
thoroughfares — close on a mile and a half as I
should estimate — occupied by the show people,
who have created a boulevard within a boule-
vard, as the fair-ground is one long avenue of
booths, with a wide promenade between and
roadways as roomy as an English turnpike

222

Round About a French Fair

still remaining free to ordinary traffic on the
outer edges.

If it were the first affair of its kind you had
seen in France, you would be immediately
impressed by the remarkable cleanliness of
the shows and of the attendants at the
numerous stalls, where every variety of goods
are on sale. What may be described as the
business part of the fair is distinct from that
devoted to amusements, and the high-class
character of the stalls and their keepers is
explained when we know that the tradesmen
of the town have become hucksters for the
nonce, most of these temporary structures
being fitted up and conducted by local shop-
keepers. The appointments of some of them
are elaborate to a surprising degree, but never
defaced by such crude and tasteless displays
as we find at English fairs.

III.

To mention the varieties of business repre-
sented by these stalls would be to enumerate
every trade in the town, and a few more.
Bakers and pastrycooks are there in abundance ;
the stalls at which a bewildering choice of
sweetmeats is displayed are marvels of neatness,
and their name is legion. As many as five or
six smartly-dressed young women with white

223

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

oversleeves will be busy at one counter supply-
ing the customers, who are endeavouring to
increase the purchasing value of their coppers
by speculating at the roulette table kept by
the proprietor, for at such time the Frenchman
introduces the gambling element into every
transaction where it can be applied. At the
miscellaneous stalls, where all sorts of fancy
goods are on sale, the " wheel of fortune " is
practically the only method of exchange.
Many of the places are run on the principle of
" all one price," and thrifty housewives may
be seen deliberating on the respective merits
of knives and forks, cruet-stands, butter-
dishes, and scores of minor household utensils,
each to be had at the price of half a franc
(fivepence). It is clear that the women-folk
regard the occasion as an opportunity for
getting unusual value for their money.
Peasants may purchase an entire suit of
clothes at some of the stalls, and if they
are wishful of a crucifix or an image of the
sacred heart, here they are in abundance, with
rosaries, bambinoes, and all the brightly-
coloured symbols of Catholic worship.

But the real interest of the fair, and, of
course, its most picturesque part, lies in the
great Boulevard Alexandre Martin, which
stretches eastward from the railway station.
Here are congregated most of the places
of entertainment. These, no less than the

224

Round About a French Fair

temporary shops of the tradesmen, present a
striking contrast to anything one may see at
an English fair. The Frenchman's instinctive
feeling for art is everywhere noticeable, and
the exterior decoration of the shows exhibits
a lightness and daintiness of touch quite un-
known in the same connection in England.
The gilded horror of the ghost-show exterior,
so familiar a feature of our own fairs, has no
counterpart in France, but the booths wherein
are exhibited " freaks of Nature " are curiously
similar in both countries, the crude pictures
on the canvas fronts being preposterous
exaggerations of the objects to be seen within.

IV.

WHAT strikes one particularly in wandering
through the fair-ground at Orleans is that
while all is different from an English festival,
the difference is one of degree and not of kind.
Here, for example, are several circuses, where
performances very similar to those given by
any travelling circus in our own land are
" about to commence." On the outside plat-
form two clowns are shouting to the crowd to
walk up ; the gorgeous ring-master with his
whip joins in the general advertisement; a girl
and a boy are dancing to the music of a small
but noisy orchestra. There is this difference,

225

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

however, between a French circus and an
English one : the whole enterprise wears a
more noticeable appearance of success, is better
housed, the place being brilliantly lighted by
electricity generated by an excellent portable
plant, the performers better dressed. But
curiously enough, the finest travelling circus I
have ever seen in any land was Anderson* s
" Cirque Feerique," which I came upon during
a flying visit to the industrial town of Vierzon,
some hundred and twenty-five miles south of
Paris. The proprietor was a Scotsman !
"Mother Goose " was the chief item of the
performance, and the coloured posters of the
old lady and her goose had been printed in
England !

Pitched close to such a circus stands a large
wooden opera-house, capable of holding from
six to eight hundred people, the seats being
arranged on an inclined plane, the higher
priced ones as substantial and comfortable as
the stalls of one of our provincial theatres.
The stage is commodious, and the performers
as accomplished as any touring company
that visits the second-class English towns.
Indeed, their performance of " Les Cloches de
Corneville " was given with a verve and a finish
not seldom lacking in more ambitious opera
companies one has seen at home. Instead
of an orchestra, a very clever and good-
1 coking young ladjr pianist played the

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Round About a French Fair

accompaniments throughout the entire per-
formance.

The travelling theatres, too, force com-
parison with the regular playhouses in the
smaller English towns, rather than with the
wretched "tuppenny" shows that represent the
drama at an English fair. Like the opera-
house just described, they are fitted up sub-
tantially, and in good taste, the charges for
admission ranging from half a franc to three
or four francs. Many notable French actors
have graduated from these portable theatres,
and, indeed, those who perform in them are of
a class considerably above the mummers who
exhibit in our " fit-ups " ; they are the best
type of " strolling-players."

One of the most detestable features of an
English fair is the appalling noise created by
mechanical organs. This is happily absent
from the French fete, and of the few contri-
vances of the kind which I remember at
Orleans there was only one designed solely
for the sake of noise. Perhaps the most
remarkable of these orchestrions was a real
triumph of musical machinery, around which,
and contained within an immense and bril-
liantly lighted wooden building, whirled an
endless chain of fairy coaches, hobby horses,
swan boats, and other fantastic vehicles,
eminently contrived for the purpose of pro-
ducing giddiness. This was truly the piece

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In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

de resistance of the Orleans Fair, and it would
be impossible to conceive a more striking
contrast than that between this really mag-
nificent construction and the familiar English
merry-go-round. Externally the building
would have borne favourable comparison with
a " Palace of Electricity " at some of our
international exhibitions. The fa9ade was of
Byzantine style, and myriads of beautifully-
coloured electric lamps picked out the design,
two huge peacocks with outspread tails, also
composed of coloured lights, being introduced
with most artistic effect on each side of the
glittering archway. Inside, the decorations
were gorgeous "to the nth degree/' as Mr.W.
E. Henley might have said, but the scheme
of colours was in perfect harmony, the whole
making up a veritable feast of light that
must dazzle and fascinate the simple country-
folk wherever this wonderful merry-go-round
is set up. At a moderate estimate, I should
name £10,000 as the cost of this single show,
and perhaps that will indicate the lavish way
in which the French are catered for by their
travelling showmen.

Cinematographs there were in profusion,
most of them exhibiting scenes of a kind which
would speedily be suppressed on this side the
Channel ; shooting galleries galore, exactly
like our own ; peep-shows, marionette
theatres, panoramas ; a booth with a two-

228

Round About a French Fair

headed bull and other monsters, a Breton
bagpiper playing his instrument outside being
worthy of inclusion in the list ; but one saw
no " fat women " — possibly because they are
such common objects of French life ! A large
switchback railway seemed to be very popular,
and, like all the rival attractions, its pro-
prietors claimed for it the distinction of having
come " direct from the Paris Exhibition/'
where it had been awarded first prize. The
smallest side-shows, consisting of perhaps a
few distorting mirrors, had all been " exhibited
at Paris/' and the two-headed bull was
advertised by a huge painting showing all the
crowned heads of Europe and President Loubet
examining the beast, which, on inspection,
turned out to be only a little removed from the
normal by having a head slightly broader than
usual, with the incipient formation of a third
eye in its forehead, and a muzzle remotely
suggestive of two joined together.

A PERFORMANCE which I enjoyed not a little
was given by a quack doctor. An enormous
carriage, resembling in outline an old stage-
coach, but decorated with much carved
moulding and thickly covered with gilt and
crimson, which produced a most bizarre effect,

229

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

stood in an open space. Seated on the roof
was a boy, who turned a machine which
emitted the only hideous noise to be heard at
the fair. In the open fore-part, richly
cushioned, a man stood dressed in a dazzling
suit of brass armour, his glittering helmet
lying in front of him, and in his hand a small
bottle of clear liquid. He was of the southern
type, swarthy, wonderfully fluent of speech.
He assured a gaping crowd that his medicine
could cure any disease from toothache to
tetanus, and he invited any sufferer to step up.
Immediately one did so, the boy ground out
the hideous din above, and the doctor sat for
a few noisy seconds while his patient told him
his trouble ! Then the racket was stopped
with a wave of the quack's hand, and he
explained for five minutes, in vivid words, the
terrible nature of the patient's disease, and
invited the poor wretch to pick any bottle
from the stock in front of him. This done, he
had to open his waistcoat and shirt — for it was
a severe pain in the left side from which he
suffered — and the quack in armour struck the
bottom of the bottle on his knee, thus causing
the cork to pop out. He now shook the bottle
vigorously with his forefinger on the neck, and
the fluid changed into green, brown, and
finally black, whereat the simpletons around
marvelled, as they were meant to do. The
comic practitioner next thrust the bottle into

230

Round About a French Fair

the open shirt-front of his patient, and shook
the contents of it against the victim's skin,
pressing his hand for a few moments on the
part. Then he asked the fellow to step down
as cured, and go among the crowd " telling
his experience." A dozen cases were treated
in less than half an hour — people with neural-
gia, sprained wrists and ankles — and always
the same formula as to consultation, explana-
tion, application ! A handful of liquid applied
to a man's cheek evaporated mysteriously and
worked wonders. Intending patients were
told that the doctor could be consulted at the
hotel near by during certain hours each day,
and many must have gone to him there, for
the fluent humbug had every appearance of
driving a prosperous practice.

VI.

BUT the feature of this fair which, more than
any other, distinguished it sharply from any-
thing to be seen in our country, wras " The
Grand Theatre of the Walkyries and of the
Passion of N. S. J. C.J> The mysterious
initials stand for the French of " Our Lord
Jesus Christ." A gentleman with a shaggy
head of hair, dressed in a well-fitting frock-
coat, and possessed of an excellent voice, stood
on the platform outside, surrounded by oil

231

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

paintings of sacred pictures and a dozen or
more performers in the costumes of Roman
soldiers, apostles and other Biblical characters.
Judas was readily distinguished by his red
hair, Mary by her nunlike garb. The show-
man announced that the performance was
" about to commence," and urged us to walk
up and witness the most pleasing spectacle of
the fair. A hand-bill distributed among the
crowd described the entertainment as a
" mimodrame biblique " of the Passion, played,
sung, enterpreted and mimicked by forty
persons ! ( This spectacle, unique in France,
will leave in the minds of the inhabitants of
this town an unforgettable memory. It is
not to be confounded with anything else you
may have seen ; it is no mere series of living
pictures. At each performance M. Chaumont,
the originator, will present twenty-one
tableaux, three hundred costumes will be
used, and three apotheoses will be shown.
The establishment is comfortable, lighted by
electricity from a plant of thirty-horse power.
It is a spectacle of the best taste, pleasing to
everyone, and families may come here with
the fullest confidence. Balloons will be dis-
tributed to the children every Thursday/'
So ran the circular, which also contained the
information (mendacious, I doubt not) that
the entertainment was the property of a
limited company with a capital of £20,000.

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Round About a French Fair

When the signal to begin was given the
place was not more than half filled, and the
audience seemed in no reverential mood. A
pianist began to play on a very metallic piano,
and outside the voice of the manager was
still heard urging the crowd to " walk up "
and '" be in time/* The drop-curtain was
rolled up, and the manager stepped inside
the building as a number of characters in the
sacred drama filed on to the stage. He
explained, in a rapid torrent of words, what
they were supposed to be doing, but Judas
jingled the filthy lucre so lustfully that the
pantomime was very obvious in its purport.
The curtain fell again, and the manager
stepped outside to harangue the crowd while
the second tableau was being prepared ; but
the ringing of a bell brought him in again,
and so on through the whole series.

It must be confessed that the performance
was carried out with no small dramatic ability,
and M. Chaumont gave a wonderfully realistic
interpretation of the role of Chirst, some
of the tableaux being strikingly conceived,
as, for examples, the kiss of Judas and Christ
before Pilate, the latter character being ad-
mirably represented by a performer who
looked a veritable Roman proconsul, and
washed his hands with traditional dignity.
The Crucifixion, too, was represented with
vivid reality ; but the audience was disposed

233

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

to laugh at the writhing of the malefactors
on their crosses, and did indeed giggle when
the soldier held up the sponge of vinegar to
the dying Saviour. It was obvious that the
whole performance, although really dis-
charged by the actors with remarkable fidelity
to tradition, and a commendable assumption
of reverence, was more amusing than im-
pressive to the spectators, who, though moved
to laughter when St. Veronica pressed her
handkerchief to the face of Christ and,
turning to the audience, displayed the miracu-
lous impression of His features, applauded
the more dramatic scenes liberally. What
interested me personally was M. Chaumont's
idea of a miracle. Save that of St. Veronica,
I have forgotten the others enacted ; they
were quite unfamiliar to me, but in the instant
of each miracle a limelight was flashed for
two or three seconds from " the flies/' and
this was supposed to betoken the super-
natural character of the affair.

VII.

OF course, such a spectacle as I have
described would be quite impossible in our
country to-day, although time was in our
history, when miracle plays were a recognised
feature of the church in England. It was

234

Round About a French Fair

in no sense comparable with any of the
passion plays still performed periodically in
some continental towns, and while the
incongruous surroundings of " The Grand
Theatre of the Passion of N.S.J.C." were
not calculated to induce a spirit of reverence
in the spectators, it was a saddening spectacle
to find an audience of Catholic people taking
so lightly the representation of scenes which,
however wrong in the light of history, should
have been to them sacred subjects of faith.

It was characteristically French that im-
mediately opposite the theatre wherein this
Biblical pantomime was presented stood a
large exhibition containing an enormous
collection of pathological models and curiosi-
ties. This was, without doubt, the foulest
display of unspeakable horrors to be seen in
any civilised country in our time, for under
the hypocritical plea of illustrating, by wax
models and otherwise, the obstetrics of human
life and the diseases of the body, its pro-
prietor— a woman, if you will believe me —
had gathered together a collection of incredi-
ble horrors which men and women, and even
young people, were allowed to inspect on the
payment of one franc. The same exhibition,
which is probably not over- valued at £20,000,
was actually brought to London some few
years ago, but the police speedily cleared it
out of our country.

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In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

These blots, however, are the only blemishes
on the Orleans Fair, and for brightness,
gaiety, and general good taste, I must con-
clude as I began, by saying that a French
carnival is in every sense a more pleasing
spectacle than any of our English or Scottish
lairs present.

236

The Palace of the Angels

IT was in Evreux, while cycling through
Normandy one summer, that my wife and I
met three " new women," who were also
touring the country a-wheel. Their route was
for the most part the reverse of ours, but not
so extended, and in discussing the country
with them I asked how long they had spent at
Mont St. Michel. " Oh, we have not gone
there," was the reply ; "we were told it
wasn't interesting, and so we have kept away
from it." We were saddened to find that
three English women, especially of the
"advanced type," could know so little of the
monuments of France as to accept the irre-
sponsible opinion of some one-eyed tourist,
who in his or her idle babble had said Mont
St. Michel was not worth visiting.

Not interesting, indeed ! There is not in
the whole of Normandy, in all France, in
historic England even, an example of so much

237

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

interest concentrated in so small a space. An
enthusiastic Frenchman has described it as
the eighth wonder of the world. Victor Hugo
has said that Mont St. Michel is to France
what the Pyramids are to Egypt. Large and
deeply interesting volumes have been written
about it. It will form a theme for writers for
generations to come, and artists will employ
their pencils here so long as a vestige of the
wonderful buildings remains.

There is a strong temptation in writing of
Mont St. Michel to fall into the style of the
junior reporter, who will blandly tell you that
a thing is indescribable, and immediately
proceed to describe it. One is persuaded that
this marvellous monument of the Middle Ages
cannot be adequately described in plain prose,
however apt the pen, yet one is equally desirous
of making the attempt. But I shall promise my
readers on this occasion to make no effort at
an elaborate description, which, indeed, the
space of a single chapter renders impossible,
and to attempt no more than a general sketch
of the most noteworthy features of the Mount.

II.

To begin with, I take it for granted that the
reader, if he or she has not already visited
Mont St. Michel, is at least aware that it is

The Palace of the Angels

situated in the bay of the same name, near the
point where the coasts of Normandy and
Brittany merge, and thus some forty-three
miles south-east of Jersey. The story of
Mont St. Michel, even had the hand of man
never reared upon the rock one of the most
remarkable structures the human mind has
conceived, could scarcely have failed to be
interesting. During the Roman occupation of
France, or Gaul as it was then called, the great
stretch of sea that lies to-day between the
Mount and Jersey was then a vast forest,
through which some fourteen miles of Roman
military road were constructed. But in the
third century the invasion of the sea com-
pelled the Romans to alter the course of
their road, and in the next century both the
Mount and the small island of Tombelaine,
which lies scarcely two miles away, were
isolated at high tide. So on from century
to century the sea has gradually eaten away
this part of Normandy, until now some hun-
dred and ninety square miles of land are
entirely submerged at high tide. This alone
is sufficient to invest the Mount with a peculiar
interest, for one can stand upon it to-day and,
gazing far away to sea, contemplate the
absolute mastery of Neptune, whose ravages
have left of all the great forest of Scissy nothing
more than a handful of trees growing sturdily
among the rocks on the north side of the Mount.

239

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

But it is the human interest attaching to
Mont St. Michel that outweighs everything
else. The rock is steeped in religious lore, and
in the annals of war there is no place in France
more historic. Originally a monastery, it
became in time an impregnable fortress as
well ; the rough warrior lived side by side
upon it with the studious monk, and there the
clash of battle was as regular an occurrence
for years on end as the mass and vespers. In
its old age it became a prison, one of the most
dreaded in a land of terrible prisons, and just
as it had been absolutely impregnable to
attack (the English without success besieging
it for eleven years in the fifteenth century), so
was it an inviolable prison, only one man ever
having been able to effect his escape, and even
in his case escape would have been impossible
but for the facilities unconsciously placed in
his hands by his gaolers.

III.

THE first thought that comes to the visitor
as he views the Mount from the shore is,
What could have induced anyone to choose
so difficult a site for the foundation of a monas-
tery ? But here legend conveniently steps
in and explains all. In the eighth century
Aubert, the Bishop of Avranches, one of the

240

The Palace of the Angels

most pious in an age of piety, was in the habit
of retiring to the Mount for rest and meditation,
and during one of his visits there the Arch-
angel Saint Michael, the Prince of the Armies
of the Lord, appeared to him and told him to
build on the top of the Mount a sanctuary in
his honour. From which it will be seen that
even angels in those days were not above self-
advertisement. But Aubert, though a bishop,
was " even as you and I," and when he awoke
in the morning he had some doubt as to
whether he had been dreaming or had really
entertained the Archangel ; so he prolonged
his stay in the hope of receiving another visit ;
nor was he disappointed. A few days later
Saint Michael appeared to him once more, and
rather sharply repeated his command. But
even now Aubert was not convinced, and he
determined to give Saint Michael a third
chance, which the Saint was nothing loath to
accept, repeating his instructions in a most
peremptory manner. He also touched the
bishop's head, leaving a hole in the skull " for
a sign." We have heard of a surgical opera-
tion to introduce a joke, but this is the only
case on record where a saint has found it
necessary to perform a surgical operation for
the introduction of a command into the head
of a bishop, and Aubert, like a sensible man,
concluding that one hole in his skull was
sufficient, immediately set about the building

241
17

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

of "the Palace of the Angels." Aubert's
skull is still preserved in the Church of Saint
Gervais at Avranches, and the startling effect
of Saint Michael's touch may be seen to this
day !

This is only one of the innumerable legends
relating to the origin of the Abbey.
Another is worthy of mention, illustrating, as
it does, the advantages of co-operation with an
angel when one is performing so difficult a
task as Aubert took up. On the top of the
Mount were two large rocks which interfered
seriously with building, and could be moved
by no human efforts. Saint Michael, therefore,
appeared to a devout peasant who lived on
the coast and bore the familiar name of Bain,
telling him to take his sons to the Mount and
move the rocks. Despite the Caledonian
flavour of his name, Bain did not wait to have
his skull perforated by the Archangel, but
went forthwith together with eleven of his
children and tried to move the rocks. They
could not stir them one hair's-breadth, how-
ever ; whereupon Aubert asked Bain if he
had brought all his children, and the good man
explained that they were all there except the
baby, which was with its mother. The Bishop
then instructed him to go at once and fetch
the infant, " for God often chooses the weak
to confound the strong." The child was
brought, and at a touch of his little foot the

242

The Palace of the Angels

rocks went tumbling down the Mount, in proof
of which one of them may be seen to this day
with a little chapel to Saint Aubert built on
the top of it.

One more of the many miracles associated
with the beginning of the great work should
not be left unmentioned. Saint Aubert was
naturally much exercised as to where he should
rear his sanctuary, the pinnacle of a lonely
rock being an unusual place to build on even
in those unusual days, but here again the
Archangel, who had manifested so much
personal interest in the work, came to his
rescue, and caused a heavy dew to fall on the
Mount, leaving a dry space on the top. Upon
this dry space was the church to be built.

In 709 Saint Aubert had practically com-
pleted the structure, and the church was
dedicated to Saint Michael after two precious
relics (namely, a piece of a scarlet veil, which
the Archangel had left on the occasion of his
famous appearance at Monte Gargano in
Naples, together with a piece of the marble on
which he had stood) had been placed in a casket
on the altar. Not a vestige of the oratory built
by Saint Aubert, nor of the church erected in
963 by Richard, remains. The oldest part of
the buildings now existing represents a church
founded in 1020 by Richard, second Duke
of Normandy, and constructed under the
direction of the Abbot Hildebert II. The

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In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

transepts, the greater part of the nave, and
the crypts date back to this period.

IV.

THE whole scheme of the wonderful memorial
that fascinates the eye of the latter-day tourist
owed its conception to this eleventh-century
abbot, and surely no heaven-born architect
ever conceived a more audacious plan. His
project was not merely to occupy the limited
space on the summit of the Mount with his
religious buildings, but to start far down the
sides of the rock, and, by utilising the Mount
just as the sculptor makes use of a skeleton
frame whereon to plaster the clay in which he
models his statue, so to rear upward gigantic
walls and buttresses which at the top would
carry a huge platform to hold the super-
structures, creating thus a collection of vast
buildings with the live rock thrust up in the
centre for foundation. It is to the glory of
Saint Michael that for no less than five cen-
turies this colossal scheme of Hildebert's was
carried out with absolute unity of purpose by
his successors, an achievement only possible
among religious workers. The result was that
this lonely Mount gradually became clothed
with a series of most beautiful buildings,
which to the eye of the beholder seem to have

244

The Palace of the Angels

grown by some natural process out of the rock
itself. .

To the student of architecture it would be
impossible to mention any monument more
worthy of study than this. Not only do we
find within its innumerable cloisters, crypts,
and halls, specimens of the purest Gothic that
exists, but at every turn we are presented
with structures that conform to the very
highest ideals of art, in being at once useful
and beautiful. There is not a single buttress,
not a window, not an arch, not a pillar, that
does not discharge some duty, and the removal
of which would not weaken in some degree
a part of the scheme.

THE best way to secure an intelligible notion
of the work of these monkish builders is to
walk around the Mount at low tide and study
the buildings from the outside. The feature
that will most impress one in following this
course is the wonderful north side of the
Mount, known as the Merveille, which rears
its massive walls sheer from the rock face,
supported along its entire length by enormous
buttresses, that spring with a fine suggestion
of strength and permanency from their rocky
base. The principal buildings, apart from

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

the church, are contained within these massive
walls. To the west we have, in three stories,
the Cellar, the Salle des Chevaliers, and
above the latter the open Cloister, the most
perfect example of its kind in the world.
The eastern part begins with the Almonry,
above which is the Salle des Hotes, and on
the top of that the Refectory.

The whole effect of the Merveille is superb,
et what is it more than a great wall, held up
y mighty buttresses, pierced in different ways
to light the chambers within and to make each
suitable for its particular office ? The most
perfect economy has been observed through-
out, the buttresses are terminated the moment
their services are not required, and the
Refectory, which carries a light wooden roof,
is lighted by means of long narrow lancets
which give to the wall far more strength than
would have been possible had it been pierced
by wide windows ; still, the lighting within is
perfect. In brief, the Merveille, apart from the
numerous other buildings that went to form the
monastic and military establishment, is enough
to send an architect into raptures, and might,
if he knew not the dangers of the incoming
tide, which has to cover nine miles of land at
the rate of a race-horse, induce him to tarry
over long in feasting his eyes on this marvel-
lous achievement. It is beautiful beyond
description, and yet we may be certain that

246

The Palace of the Angels

its builders never thought of mere beauty in
its construction, but built purely to meet the
exigencies of the situation, and to provide the
best possible accommodation for the inhabi-
tants of the monastery and their dependants.
As one writer has put it, " the beauty just
happened." It is only when we find builders
striving after effect that we are face to face
with decadent art.

Continuing our walk round the rock on
those sands that have been the scene of many
a bitter battle, we pass under the ramparts,
beginning with the Tour du Nord at the eas-
tern end of the Merveille. Here, again, the
beautiful union of art and Nature is observed,
this magnificent tower seeming to be but the
natural growth of the shelving rocks at its base.
It is no surprise to know that through the ages
which knew not the Maxim or the loo-ton gun,
the splendid fortifications successfully resisted
every attack of the envious English, the
Bretons, and the Huguenots. The modern
town is huddled picturesquely between the
ramparts and the Abbey to the east and
south.

247

VI.

HAVING completed the tour around the
Mount, the visitor should proceed along the
ramparts, and reach the entrance to the Abbey
by the staircase known as the Grand Degre,
which leads into the Barbican, and through
the massive and beautiful Chatelet into the
more ancient entrance of the Abbey, known
as Belle-Chaise, where are situated the Guard
Room and the Government Room. Here the
guide will take us in hand, and march us from
point to point of interest in the interior.
But it is impossible, in the space of a short
chapter, to attempt a description of this, that
would follow in any detail the stipulated
round of the apartments at present shown to
the public.

Suffice it to say that you will first be taken
to the Church, which is now, and likely to be
for many years, in the hands of the restorers.
Only four bays of the seven that went to
the making of the great Norman nave remain,
and these have had to be much restored ;
but here it is a pleasure to record that the
restoration has been carried out with perfect
taste, so that the latter-day visitor has an
excellent idea of the appearance of the
Abbey and its dependent buildings as these

248

The Palace of the Angels

were in the heyday of Mont St. Michel's
prosperity.

From the Church we shall enter the
Cloister, already mentioned as being the
topmost of the three western stories of the
Merveille. Here was the recreation ground
of the monks, and nothing could be more
exquisite than the elegant proportions of the
slender pillars that support the vaulted roofs
of the double arcade. From the Cloister
we visit the Refectory, where many a strange
gathering of monks has taken place in days
of old, for it is one of the interesting things in
the history of Mont St. Michel that, while in
its earlier ages it was a centre of learning and
genuine religion, it became corrupt and
scandalous under the commendatory abbots,
who were men neither of morals nor religion,
and who allowed all sorts of abuses within
these sacred walls. At one time, indeed, the
Abbot of Mont St. Michel was the five-year-
old son of Louis the Just. In the south-west
corner of the Refectory is the pit that
formerly contained a lift whereby provisions
could be hauled up from the bottom story,
and the leavings of the monks sent down to
the Almonry for distribution among the poor.

The Salle des Chevaliers, which will next
be visited, is described by a learned writer as
" perhaps the finest Gothic chamber in the
world," and is believed to have been built as

249

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

a great workroom for the monks, but received
its present name either from the fact that the
first investitures of the Order of St. Michael
were made herein, or that it was the lodging
of the 190 knights who came to the Mount to
defend it against the English. In this beau-
tiful apartment, lighted and ventilated in a
way that is a model to present-day builders,
the monks wrote and illuminated the manu-
scripts which earned for the abbey the title of
"The City of Books/' Reached from this
room is the Salle des Hotes, wherein the grand
visitors were entertained by the abbot in a
style befitting their rank, as under the rule
of St. Benedict it was forbidden for laymen to
enter the apartments reserved for the monks.
Like all the other buildings, however, it has
served many another purpose than that for
which it was originally designed, and at one
time was actually used as a Plomberie where
the lead was worked for roofing and other
purposes connected with the Abbey.

The Cellar is, in its way, as beautiful as any
of the other apartments, although nothing
was attempted by its builders but to provide
a capacious storeroom for the inhabitants of
the Mount, and to secure, in its strong pillars,
strength to support the buildings rising above
it. The provisions were hauled up from the
sands by means of a great wheel and a rope,
the latter being carried out on a little draw-

250

The Palace of the Angels

bridge to enable it to drop clear of the rocks.
This arrangement, by the way, is associated
with one of the most audacious attempts to
secure the Abbey during the wars of the
Huguenots. A traitor within arranged with
two Huguenot leaders that on the day of
St. Michael, in September, at eight o'clock in
the evening, in the year 1591, he would haul
up their men by means of this rope, and intro-
duce them to the Cellar, while the monks were
engaged in devotions, so placing the Mount
at their mercy. But he proved a double
traitor, for after seventy-eight men had been
so hauled up, and, with one exception,
quietly killed by the soldiers of the garrison
as they arrived, the leaders below became
suspicious of a trap, and asked that a monk
should be thrown down as evidence that the
plot was successful. The Governor immedi-
ately had one of the murdered Huguenots
dressed in the gown of a monk and thrown
down, but the Sieur Montgomery was not
satisfied with this, and he called up that one
of his men should come out on the drawbridge
and assure them below that all was well. So
the Governor sent the one man he had spared
and instructed him to answer down that the
Huguenots were masters of the Abbey. He
was faithful to death, however, and called
down that they were betrayed. Instead of
being immediately killed, the Governor was

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

so impressed with his courage, that he spared
him, and the Huguenots hastily rode away.

The Almonry is the last of the great apart-
ments which are contained in the Merveille,
and it is from this that visitors make their
exit into the courtyard of the Abbey ; but
many other interesting chambers are shown,
such as the Crypte de 1'Aquilon, the Charnier,
the Promenoir or ancient cloister, and the
famous Crypte des Gros-Piliers, which is also
known as TEglise Basse, its pillars, of enormous
girth, being designed to support the heavy
masonry of the Abbey above. The Cachots,
or prisons, are also an important feature of
the sights described by the guide, and many
harrowing tales are told of famous prisoners
who went mad during their incarceration in
these dread dungeons. But it is a pity that
this part is shown at all, as the recollection of
these hideous holes is likely to confuse many
visitors' impressions of the place.

VII.

HERE, then, is a very brief and a sadly-
imperfect sketch of this rare legacy which the
Middle Ages have left to lucky France. It
need only be added that not one visit, nor
two, is sufficient to an adequate appreciation
of the beauties of Mont St. Michel ; several

252

The Palace of the Angels

days, instead of several hours, as is too often
the custom of the breathless tourist, should
be spent on the Mount. There is accommoda-
tion in plenty, for the three hotels, all kept
by members of the same family (and each at
daggers drawn with the others), give splendid
entertainment at moderate rates ; and practi-
cally all the houses are annexes to one or
other of these establishments, so that except
during August and September accommoda-
tion is never difficult to obtain. Nor are the
buildings of the Abbey and the Merveille the
only things of interest on the Mount to-day,
for though it is a strangely-different scene from
that in the olden days of pilgrimage, it is,
perhaps, as interesting if we choose to regard
as pilgrims the countless tourists who swarm
here from all the ends of the earth, and we
shall find among them even more material
for study than was afforded to the monks in
ages past. Then if rain should keep us
prisoner for an hour or two at times, we need
not weary sitting at our window, watching
the carriages and bicycles arriving at the
entrance to the Cour de 1'Avancee, where
they are immediately besieged by representa-
tives of each of the hotels, and probably a
simple Briton, innocent of French or the ways
of this curious community, will find himself
divided into three, his luggage being captured
by the representative of Poulard aine, his

253

In the Track of R. L. Stevenson

bicycle being taken by the tout for Poulard
jeune, and he himself led captive by the
buxom female who canvasses for veuve
Poulard.

We remember one occasion when, at a
high tide, which necessitated the use of a boat
for debarking visitors, a solitary English fe-
male, of the type so properly satirised by
French caricaturists, arrived by the diligence,
and was rowed in lonely state through the
entrance to the outer court. As the boat
grounded she stood up, an angular vision in
drab, with dark blue spectacles and a straw
hat. In answer to the inquiring shouts of
the hotel representatives, she innocently re-
plied in the one word she knew, " Poulard/'
and there was a rush for her, in which the
elder Poulard, thanks to exceptional height
and strength, was able to dispose of his rivals,
and lift this representative of British woman-
hood bodily into the kitchen of his hotel.
She would probably be as much surprised as
most of us are on visiting the place for the
first time, to discover that after leaving this
kitchen and ascending two stairs in the hope
of arriving immediately at our bedroom, the
maid calmly opens a door, and we find our-
selves in another street, that rises step after step
for one hundred yards or so, and brings us
to one of the dependencies of the hotel, where
probably we may have two or three stories

254

The Palace of the Angels

to climb. You have a feeling all the time
you are on the Mount that, somehow, you
are living on the top of slates, as the houses
look down upon each other, and in many
cases you can walk from the top flat out on
to a street at the back.

In a word, Mont St. Michel is unique. A
stay here is an experience unlike any to be
had elsewhere in Europe. "Not worth visit-
ing " forsooth!

THE END

PRINTING OFFICB OF THE PUBLISHER

HAMORTON, J.A.

DC
28

.H22

In the track of R.L.
Stevenson: France.

ISSUED TO

TORAGE

HAMMERTQN, J.A.

In the track: of R.L.
Stevenson: France.

23*

.H22

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