Part 8 (2/2)
Thus gossiping, we reached Montclar, on the plateau, a little to the south of the deep gorge of the Tarn. Here we entered an auberge, where the postman was glad to moisten his dry throat with the green-eyed enemy. This inn was formerly one of those small chateaux--more correctly termed _maisons fortes_, or manors--which sprang up all over France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The inhabited part of the building was reached by a spiral staircase enclosed by a tower.
A balcony connected with the princ.i.p.al room enabled me to read an inscription cut in a stone of the tower: 'Tristano Disclaris, 1615.'
But for this record left by the founder, his name would probably have pa.s.sed, long ago, out of the memory of men.
I found that the chief occupation of the people in this house was that of making Roquefort cheeses; indeed, it was impossible not to guess what was going on from the all-pervading odour. And yet: I was still many miles from Roquefort! However, I knew all about this matter before. I was not twenty miles from Albi when I found that Roquefort cheese-making was a local industry. In fact, this is the case over a very wide region. The cheeses, having been made, are sent to Roquefort to ripen in the cellars, which have been excavated in the rock, and also to acquire the necessary reputation. While my lunch was being prepared I looked into the dairy, which was very clean and creditable.
On the ground were large tubs of milk, and on tables were spread many earthenware moulds pierced with little holes and containing the pressed curds.
The hostess was a buxom, good-tempered woman with rosy cheeks. She told me that she could not give me anything better than ham and eggs.
She could not have offered me anything more acceptable after all the greasy cooking, the steadfast veal and invariable fowl which I had so long been compelled to accept daily with resignation. By a mysterious revelation of art she produced the ham and eggs in a way that made me think that she must surely be descended from one of the English adventurers who did all manner of mischief in the Rouergue some five or six centuries ago. Such ham and eggs in her case could only be explained by the theory of hereditary ideas. Nevertheless, she had become French enough to look at me with a dubious, albeit a good-natured eye. My motive in coming there and going farther without having any commercial object in view was more than she could fathom.
After my visit to the dairy I fancy her private notion was that I was commissioned by the English Government to find out how Roquefort cheese was made, with a view to compet.i.tion. At length, as we talked freely, she let the state of her mind with regard to me escape her unawares by putting this question plump:
'How is it the gendarmes have not stopped you?'
'That I cannot tell you,' said I, much amused by her candour; 'but you may be sure of this, I am not afraid of them.'
Her husband was listening behind the door, and I observed an expression of relief in his face when I took up my pack and departed.
If I was to be pounced upon, he preferred, for his own peace of mind and the reputation of his house, that it should be done elsewhere. All the village had heard of my coming, and when I reappeared outside there was a small crowd of people waiting to have a good look at me. I thought from these signs that I was likely to be asked to show my papers again by some petty functionary; but no, I was allowed to pa.s.s on without interference. Perhaps the postman had given a good account of me, the absinthe having touched his heart. There is much diplomacy in getting somebody on your side while travelling alone through these unopened districts far from railways. Wandering among the peasants of the Tarn and the Aveyron teaches one what ignorance really means, what blindness of intellect goes with it. And yet their enlightenment by the usual methods would be a doubtful blessing to themselves and others.
I was now descending to the valley, and not long after leaving the village an attempt to escape from the winding hot road led me into one of those wildernesses which are to me infinitely more pleasing than the most artistic gardens, with their geometric flower-beds and their counterfeit lakes and grottoes. The surface of the land was thrown or washed up into dark-brown hillocks of broken argillaceous schist, which repelled vegetation, but the hollows were wooded with mountain oak and many shrubs. Farther down there were other hillocks, equally bare, but formed of the blue-looking lias marl which the husbandman detests with good reason, for its sterility is incorrigible. This _terre bleue_, as the peasants call it, was not the only sign of a change in the formation; fragments of calcareous stone were mixed with the brown soil. I was leaving the dark schist and was approaching those immense acc.u.mulations of jura.s.sic rock, whose singular forms and brilliant colours lend such extraordinary grandeur to the scenery of the Upper Tarn. There was also a change in the vegetation. A large species of broom, four or five feet high, covered with golden blossom the size of pea-flowers, although the common broom had long pa.s.sed its blooming, now showed itself as well as roseroot sedum, neither of which had I seen while coming over the schist. The cicadas returned and screamed from every tree. I captured one and examined the musical instrument--a truly marvellous bit of mechanism--that it carried in each of its sides. It is not legs which make the noise, as is the case with crickets and gra.s.shoppers, but little hard membranes under the wings are sc.r.a.ped together at the creature's will. The sound is not musical, for when it is not a continuous scissor-grinding noise, it is like the cry of a corncrake with a weak throat; but what delight there is in it! and how it expresses that joy in the present and recklessness of the morrow, which the fabulist has in vain contrasted with the virtuous industry of the ant in order to point a moral for mankind!--vainly, because the _cigale's_ short life in the sunlit trees will ever seem to men a more ideal one than that of the earth-burrowing ant, with its possible longevity, its peevish parsimony, and restless anxiety for the future. I could have lain down under a tree like a gipsy in this wild spot, and let the summer dreams come to me from their airy castles amongst the leaves, if I had not made up my mind to reach St. Affrique before night. There was another reason which, although it clashes with poetry, had better be told for the sake of truth. Insects would soon have taken all pleasure from the siesta. Great black ants, and great red ones, little ants too, that could have walked with comfort through the eye of a fine needle, notwithstanding their wickedness, and intermediate species of the same much-praised family, would have scampered over me and stung me, and flies of bad propensities would have settled upon me. An enthusiastic entomologist has only to lie down in the open air in this part of France at the end of July or in August, and he will soon be able to observe, perhaps feel, sufficient insects travelling on their legs or on the wing to satisfy a great deal of curiosity. Often the air is all aflutter with b.u.t.terflies, many of them remarkable for their size or the beauty of their colouring. One I have particularly noticed; not large, but coloured with exquisite gradations of bright-yellow, orange, and pale-green.
I believe I added to my day's journey by my excursion across country, but the time would have pa.s.sed less pleasantly on the road. The winding yellow line, however, appeared again, and I had to tramp upon it. And a hot, toilsome trudge it was, through that long narrow valley with scrubby woods reaching down to the road, but with no habitations and no water. It was the desert. The afternoon was far advanced when the country opened and I saw a village of coquettish appearance, for most of the houses had been washed with red, and many of the window-shutters were painted green.
I was parched with thirst, for the sun had been broiling me for hours; therefore, when I saw this village on the hillside, I hurried towards it with the impatience of a traveller who sees the palm-trees over a well in the sands of Africa. In a place that could give so much attention to colour there must surely be an auberge, I thought. And I judged rightly, for there were two little inns. I found the door of the first one closed, and learnt that the people were out harvesting.
I walked on to the next, and found that likewise closed, and was again informed that all the family were out in the fields. The whole village was nearly deserted; almost everyone was busy reaping and putting up the sheaves. I stopped beside the village pump and reflected upon my misery. I had resigned myself to water, when a woman carrying a sickle opened the door of one of the inns. Some friendly bird must have told her of my thirst and weariness--perhaps the merry little quail that I heard as I came up from the plain crying 'To-whit! To-whit!' That blessed auberge actually contained bottled beer. And the room was so cool that b.u.t.ter would not have melted in it. These southern houses have such thick stone walls that they have the double advantage of being warm in winter and delightfully cool in summer. I had some difficulty in resisting the temptation to stop the night at this inn; but I did resist it, and was again on the road to St. Affrique before the heat of the day had pa.s.sed. Another toilsome trudge, during which I met an English thres.h.i.+ng-machine being dragged along by bullocks, and the familiar words upon it made me feel for awhile quite at home.
The apparition, however, gave me a shock, for the antique flail is still the instrument commonly used for thres.h.i.+ng in the southern provinces of France.
At a village called Moulin, lying in a rich and beautiful valley, I met the Sorgues, one of the larger tributaries of the Tarn, and for the rest of my journey I had the companions.h.i.+p of a charming stream.
Evening came on, and the fiery blue above me grew soft and rosy. Rosy, too, were the cornfields, where bands of men and women, fifteen or twenty together, were reaping gaily, for the heat of the day was gone, the freshness of the twilight had come, and the fragrance of the valley was loosened. I had left the last group of reapers behind, and the silence of the dusk was broken only by the tree crickets and the rapids of the little river, when a woman pa.s.sed me on the road and murmured '_Adicias!_' (G.o.d be with you!). '_Adicias!_ I replied, and then I was again alone. Presently there was a jangling of bells behind, and I was soon overtaken by three horses and a crowded _diligence_. The sound of the bells grew fainter and fainter, and once more I was alone with the summer night. The stars began to s.h.i.+ne, and the river was lost in the mystery of shadow, save where a sunken rock made the water gleam white, and broke the peace with a cry of trouble.
It was late when I reached St. Affrique, and I believe no tramp arrived at his bourne that night more weary than I, for I had been walking most of the day in the burning sun. But although I lay down like a jaded horse, I was too feverish to sleep. To make matters worse, there was a c.o.c.k in the yard just underneath my window, and the fiendish creature considered it his duty to crow every two or three minutes after the stroke of midnight. How well did I then enter into the feelings of a man I knew who, under similar provocation, got up from his bed, and, taking a carving-knife from the kitchen, quietly and deftly cut off the c.o.c.k's head before the astonished bird had time to protest. Having stopped the crowing and a.s.sured himself that it would not begin again, he went back to bed and slept the sleep of the innocent.
I was out early the next morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves, and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless. Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people.
The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonis.h.i.+ng calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the 'number of souls that have appeared before the Tribunal of G.o.d.' Near a great sundial are these solemn words: 'Sol et luna faciunt quae precepta sunt eis; nos autem pergrimamur a Domino.' The church itself is one of the most fantastically ugly structures imaginable. All possible tricks of style and taste appear to have been played upon it.
It is a jumble of heavy Gothic and Italian, and the apse is twisted out of line with the nave, in which respect, however, it is like the cathedral of Quimper. As I left the church a funeral procession approached, women carrying palls by the four corners a little in front of the coffin, according to the custom of the country when the dead person is of their own s.e.x.
St. Affrique is a small town of about 7,000 inhabitants, lying in a warm valley and surrounded by high hills, the sides of which were once covered with luxuriant vineyards. These slopes, arid, barren, and sun-scorched, are perfectly suited to the cultivation of the vine, the fig, and the almond; but the elevation is still too great for the olive. According to the authors of 'Gallia Christiana,' a saint named Fricus, or Africus, came at the beginning of the sixth century into the valley of the Sorgues, and was the founder of the burg. St.
Affrique was a strong place in the Middle Ages, and for this reason it was disturbed less by the English than some other towns in the Rouergue. After the treaty of Bretigny the consuls went to Millau and swore fealty to the King of England, represented there by John Chandos.
As I toiled up the side of the valley in the direction of Millau, I noticed the Rocher de Caylus, a large reddish and somewhat fantastically shaped block of oolitic rock, perched on the hill above the vineyards. Here the lower formation was schistous, the upper calcareous. The sun was intensely hot, but there was the shade of walnut-trees, of which I took advantage, although it is said to be poisonous, like that of the oleander.
When I reached the plateau there was no shade whatever, baneful or beneficent. If there was ever any forest here all vestige of it has disappeared. I was on the border of the Causse de Larzac, one of the highest, most extensive, and hopelessly barren of the calcareous deserts which separate the rivers in this part of France. Not a drop of water, save what may have been collected in tanks for the use of sheep, and the few human beings who eke out an existence there, is to be found upon them. Swept by freezing winds in winter and burnt by a torrid sun in summer, their climate is as harsh as the soil is ungenerous.
But although I was sun-broiled upon this _causse_, I was interested at every step by the flowers that I found there. Dry, chaffy, or p.r.i.c.kly plants, corresponding in their nature to the aridity and asperity of the land, were peculiarly at home upon the undulating stoniness. The most beautiful flower then blooming was the catananche, which has won its poetic French name, _Cupidon bleu_, by the brilliant colour of its blossom. Mult.i.tudes of yellow everlastings also decked the solitude.
<script>