Part 11 (2/2)

These bulls, by-the-bye, stopped and looked at me in a way that was anything but respectful, and I delayed the study of the metaphysical question until I could watch them from the rear.

I found on the top of the hill the village or hamlet that the old tramp had mentioned; but there was no sign of an inn--indeed, there was no sign of anybody being alive in the place. I threaded the steep little lanes between the houses and hovels, up to the ankles in dirty straw that had been turned out of the animals' sheds, but saw nothing moving except fowls. I knocked at various doors, and obtained no response. It was clear that all the people, including the children, were away in the fields, and had left the village to take care of itself. Hungry and thirsty, I was resigning myself with a heavy heart to trudge on, when I observed a column of blue smoke rise suddenly from a chimney, and I was not long in finding the house to which it belonged. It was a dilapidated building, very wretched now, but with an air of bygone superiority. This was chiefly shown in the Renaissance doorway, a rather elaborate piece of work, over which was the date 1602. I ascended the steps with a little misgiving, for I thought that perhaps some cantankerous person whose family had seen better times might be living there, and that my questions as to food and drink might meet with surly answers. I knocked, nevertheless, with my stick upon the old door studded with nail-heads. It was opened, and before me stood a woman who looked old, but who was probably middle-aged; she was very poorly clad, very imperfectly washed, but on her tired and toil-worn face there was no forbidding expression. I told her that I was looking for an auberge, and she said that hers was one _au besoin_. It was the only one that answered at all to the name thereabouts. So the smoke had led me to the right place. I followed the heiress of the dilapidated house--she was a descendant of the original owner--through the dingy kitchen, where upon the hearth the fire of sticks that she had just lighted was blazing cheerfully, into a back room, where there were two beds without linen, and with nothing but patchwork quilts over big bundles of dry maize leaves. It is thus that many of the peasants of the Aveyron sleep. This is not a part of France where the study of cleanliness and comfort is carried to excess. If the floor of the room that I now entered had ever been washed, the boards must have forgotten the scrubbing sensation a century or more ago. The appearance of everything indicated that I was in a fleas' paradise; but as it was by no means the first of the kind of which I had had experience, I merely took the precaution of keeping my feet off the ground, so as to offer as few travelling facilities as possible to the enemy. The room, although it was dirty, was cheerful; for the suns.h.i.+ne streamed in through the open window, and the view of the green valley beneath and the woods beyond soon drove the fleas out of mind. Upon the sill were plums laid out on wooden trays to dry in the sun and become what English people call prunes.

The excellent woman, who installed me before a little table on which she laid a cloth, said that she had little to offer me; but that all she had was at my service. She first fished out of the wood-ashes in which it was preserved one of those dry, stringy sausages with which everyone who knows this part of France must be familiar. Then she brought in some white bread which a presentiment of my coming had perhaps caused her to buy a month before, for it was green with mildew. She thought that I should prefer this to the very dark bread of her own making. The choice was perplexing. My meal was chiefly made upon a dish of firm cream like that of Devons.h.i.+re, with plums and fresh cob-nuts for dessert. Then my hostess made me some coffee, a luxury rarely used in the house; and when she had set it on the table, I induced her to stay and talk awhile. The conversation was made easier because, notwithstanding her poverty, she spoke French with much more facility than most of the people in these rural districts.

She told me that her husband and children had not yet returned from the fields, and that she was at home because she was so tired after thres.h.i.+ng buckwheat all yesterday in the sun.

'In winter,' I said, 'you have an easier time?' 'Oh no! In winter we are always working at something or another. We then make our linen from the hemp, patch up the clothes, prepare the walnuts for pressing, and blanch the chestnuts.[*] We have always something on hand.'

[*] _Blanchir les chataignes_. In Guyenne, after the first sale of chestnuts in their natural state, the peasants prepare a large quant.i.ty of those that remain in a special manner, which consists of removing the first and second skins, and artificially drying the nuts until they become quite hard. They will then keep an indefinite period, and can be boiled for food when required. In the winter evenings, while the women work at their distaffs, the men frequently skin chestnuts either for drying or for food the next day.

But while there was any work to be done out-of-doors, there they were busy from sunrise until dusk. Supper over, the beasts were looked after. 'Then,' she added, 'we say our prayers and go to bed.' She volunteered no statements respecting her ancestry, but when I questioned her concerning the house, she said that her family had been living in it for nearly 300 years. At one time they were the princ.i.p.al people in the district. It was true that they had come down in the world, but she felt thankful for the blessings that had been given her, and was satisfied. The family were all in good health, and that was the main thing. Her mother was still living with her--eighty-seven years of age, and had never been ill in her life.

Here was a simple but eloquent story of human vicissitude and uncertainty that was told without a word of regret or repining, and as though it were a tale of no interest to anybody. This poor, humble woman before me, whose back was still aching from the movement of bending and lifting the flail hour after hour, was, by right of birth, what we call in England a 'gentlewoman.' But she was poor, and ignorant of all books except the one that contained her prayers. She was not less a peasant than any of the women around her, nor did she wish to be thought anything better. That her ancestors were gentlemen, that, they may have borne a forgotten t.i.tle (many that were borne in France have been forgotten by the descendants), was as nothing to her.

She clung only to what, in her simple but grand philosophy, was really to be valued--the blessings of life and health, opportunities of labour, independence, and faith in G.o.d.

This woman would only take the equivalent of a s.h.i.+lling for her wine, her coffee, and her food; then she made me drink some of her _eau de noix_ (spirit prepared with the juice of green walnuts), and as I left she pressed more nuts and plums upon me.

The old woman who had never been ill was waiting for me under a tree.

She could not speak a word of French, but she said a great deal in _patois_, of which all that I could make out was that she was afraid the _calour_ (heat) would hurt me if I left so early in the afternoon.

A little beyond the village I pa.s.sed a party of threshers, men and women--two rows of them facing each other like dancers; the figures bending and straightening in unison, and all the. flails whirling together in the air. They had spread a large cloth upon the ground, and were thras.h.i.+ng out the grain upon it.

A block of granite cropping out of the sandstone indicated a change in the formation, and this came, for the rocks gradually pa.s.sed into gneiss and schist, frequently covered with moss and ferns, golden-rod in bloom, and purple heather. St. Geniez by the Lot was reached long before sundown; but although I had the time, I was not tempted to walk any farther that day.

The little town is picturesquely situated on the river-bank, and it has some old houses with turrets, and other interesting details. There is a late Gothic church that was formerly attached to an Augustinian monastery, of which part of the cloisters remains. Inside the edifice every flagstone covers a tomb, and in several instances masons'

hammers and other tools are carved upon them.

It fell out that several commercial travellers and superior pedlars came into St. Geniez on the same day as myself, but in more genteel fas.h.i.+on, for they had their traps, and would not for all the world have risked their reputation for respectability, and rendered themselves despicable in the eyes of customers, by entering on foot.

Nevertheless, their first impression (as I afterwards learnt), when I sat down with them to dinner at the comfortable inn, which, thanks to their patronage, had found the courage to style itself a hotel, was that I might be a new rival in the field. But the difficulty was to guess the particular field that I had marked out for my own distinction and the confusion of compet.i.tors. Was I in the grocery line, or the oil and colour line? Was I _dans les spiritueux_ or _dans les articles d'eglise_? Then they had a suspicion that I was, perhaps, a German traveller trying to open up a fresh market for potato spirit, or those scientific syrups which are said to change any alcohol into 'old cognac' or the most venerable Jamaica rum. This may have accounted for the somewhat chilly reserve that fell upon my table companions as I took my seat among them. But, as this was unpleasant for everybody, I soon found an opportunity of dispelling the mystery that hung over me. Then they threw off all restraint, and showed themselves to be the jolly, rollicking, good-natured beings that these men almost invariably are. They were much more polite to me than Englishmen generally are to strangers, who are felt to be something like intruders--recognising me as a guest, and insisting upon my helping myself first to every dish that was brought on the table. It is customary for tourists to speak of the French commercial traveller as a very ridiculous or vulgarly offensive person. I have found these so-called 'bagmen' to be among the most pleasant-mannered, agreeable, and intelligent people whom I have met while roaming in provincial France. I have been disturbed at night by their uproariousness, for they are convivial to a fault; but in my immediate relations with them I have always found them frank, kindly, and courteous.

Before eight o'clock the next morning I had left St. Geniez behind me in the light mist, and was again on the banks of the Lot. At a waterside village called Sainte-Eulalie--a saint so much venerated by the French in the Middle Ages that a mult.i.tude of places have been named after her--was a church with a broad tower and low broach spire.

I was struck by the n.o.ble simplicity and elegance of the Romanesque apse, which was much in the Auvergnat style. The village was very picturesque, partly on account of its position by the sunny, babbling water, and partly because of its numerous old houses, some with projecting stories, and others with exterior staircases communicating with an open gallery covered by the prolonged eaves of the roof.

Outside of the doors mushrooms (_boleti_) after being cut in slices, were spread in the sun to dry. As I continued my way down the valley I met several women and girls returning from the chestnut woods on the hillsides carrying baskets of these _cepes_ on their heads. Although I hoped to sleep that night at Espalion, I soon left the direct road and struck off across country to the south-west in order to take in the village of Bozouls, a place that some soldier whom I had met told me was like Constantine in Algeria. I therefore left the valley of the Lot, and proceeded to cross the hills and tablelands which separated me from the gorge of its tributary, the Dourdou.

In taking by-paths to reach the _causse_, I pa.s.sed over hillocks of chocolate-coloured marl mixed with broken schist and flints: here the broom and juniper, the heather and bracken, flourished. At length I felt the fresh breeze and drank the invigorating air of the limestone plateau. Descending the hill beyond, on the road to Rodez, I pa.s.sed a very strange-looking spot where huge flat blocks of bare gneiss, laid together as though giants of the t.i.tanic age had here been trying to pave the world, sloped with extraordinary regularity towards the highway. And these prodigious slabs of gneiss now lay amidst schistous marl and calcareous rock.

Farther down in the valley was a small village of which the houses were dwarfed by a gloomy strong hold, apparently of the fifteenth century, whose four high and ma.s.sive towers, occupying the angles of a small quadrilateral, gave it the appearance of a vast _donjon_. At a small inn kept by a blacksmith I was able to get a meal and the rest that was now needed. The blacksmith's wife, a pleasant young woman; who seemed much amused at the sight of a being from the outer and, to her, half-fabulous world, drew part of a duck out of the grease in which it had been preserved, and gave me this with rice for my lunch.

During the repast I was not a little worried by the questions of the blacksmith and some other village worthies who were drinking coffee in the small room that had to do for everybody, and who had so placed themselves that they could watch me at their ease. Such a strange bird as myself did not drop into their midst every day. They were not unfriendly, but their curiosity was troublesome, and I perceived that nothing that I might have said would have removed the impression from their minds that I was a mysterious character.

The country beyond this village was not unpleasant to the eye, with its vineyards on the slopes and its green pasturage in the valleys, but the hours went by drearily as I tramped upon the long road. I felt solitary, and was not in the mood to be interested easily; nevertheless, I lingered on the wayside awhile before a remarkable relic of the past: a rectangular machicolated tower of great height and strength rising out of a dark grove of trees. The afternoon was drawing towards evening, when I descended suddenly into a deep and narrow ravine where the suns.h.i.+ne was lost, and the twilight dwelt with greenness and dampness. At the bottom the Dourdou ran swiftly over its pebbly bed. After following it a little distance I found myself between towering walls of Jura.s.sic rock, vertical towards the summit, capped on each side by a long row of houses. There was also a church, likewise on the edge of the precipice. This was Bozouls--a place scarcely known beyond a small district of the Aveyron, but one of the most curious in France. The traveller, when he reaches the gorge, after crossing a somewhat monotonous country, is quite unprepared for such a startling revelation of the sentiment of human fellows.h.i.+p in the midst of the savagery of nature. Why did men build houses in rows on the brink of these frightful precipices? It appears to have been all done for the sake of the artist and the lover of the picturesque.

And yet Bozouls grew to be a village in an age when men of work and action only knew two kinds of enthusiasm--war and religion. Either a castle or a religious foundation must have been the beginning of this community. There are no remains of a fortress, but the church is very old, and its elaborate architecture suggests that it was at one time attached to a monastic establishment. After crossing the stream I climbed to this church by a path that wound about the rocks, and found it an exceedingly interesting example of the Southern Romanesque. The portal opens into a narthex, where there is a very primitive font like a low square trough. The nave entrance has two columns on each side supporting archivolts, and upon the capitals of these columns are carved figures of the quaintest Romanesque character, ill.u.s.trating Biblical subjects. The nave has an aisle on each side scarcely four feet wide, and most of the separating columns are out of the perpendicular. The capitals here are wrought with acanthus-leaves or little figures. The sanctuary and apse are in the style of Auvergne, with this peculiarity, that the capitals of the slender columns are singularly ma.s.sive, and bear only the mere outline of the acanthus-leaf for ornament.

The long street of the village, white and sunbaked, running within a few yards of the precipice, was almost as deserted as the church. But for a Sister who stood by the convent gate like a statue of Eternal Silence, and a man who was killing a wretched calf in the middle of the road, I might have asked myself if this fantastic Bozouls was not some spectral village, reproducing the past in all except the living beings who had gone down into their graves. When I recrossed the Dourdou, the light was several tones lower than it was when I first descended to the bottom of the ravine, and the vegetation was of a deeper and sadder green. And the stream rushed onward with a low wail, and a distressful cry, as of a soul pa.s.sing down the Dark Valley and not yet free from the panic of death.

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