Part 12 (1/2)

When I had reached the plateau that I had left an hour or more ago, the sun was about to set. As I knew that the _diligence_ to Espalion would soon pa.s.s, I preferred to wait for it rather than to walk any farther. The south wind was blowing with such force that I lay down on the leeside of a bush to be sheltered from it. Here I watched the sun burning dimly in a yellow haze on the edge of the world. The wind wailed amongst the leaves of the hawthorn-bushes, but over the brown land, flushed with the sad yellow gleam, came the sound of cattle-bells, softening the harshness of the solitude, and bringing almost a smile upon the careworn face of Nature. I watched the dingy golden light rising up the stubble of the hills. Now the sun began to dip behind a knoll; a far-off tree stood in the line of vision, and I could see the leaves shaking as if in frenzy against the disc of sullen fire. Then from the edge of the western sky shot up into the yellow haze fair colours of pink and purple that seemed to say: 'The south wind may blow and burn the beauty of the earth, but the west wind will come again, its light wings laden with refreshment and joy.'

The sun was gone, the shadows of night were being laid upon the dreary land, when the wavy clouds about the brightening moon became like a shower of rose-petals; the breeze grew softer and softer, for it was, in the language of the peasant, the 'sun-wind,' and the nocturnal peace began to reign over the sadness of the day's death.

The sound of jingling bells coming rapidly nearer roused me from my contemplative mood. The _diligence_, so called, was in sight, and a few minutes later I took my place in the very stuffy box on wheels, nearly filled with women and bundles. As it was only a drive of some seven or eight miles to Espalion, the town was reached in good time for dinner. I sat at a side-table in the large room of the inn, at the door of which the coach stopped. The central table was already occupied by half a dozen persons--all fat, vulgar, and noisy. They were examples of the _pet.i.t bourgeois_ cla.s.s whom one meets rather too frequently wherever there are towns in this part of France, and with whom the disposition to grossness is equally apparent in mind and body. There were women in the party, but had they been absent, the language of the men would have been no coa.r.s.er. These fat and middle-aged women, married, doubtless, and highly respectable after their fas.h.i.+on, when struck by each gust of humour, such as might issue from the mouth of a foul-minded buffoon at a fair, rolled like s.h.i.+ps at sea.

I pa.s.sed a troubled night at Espalion, for there were a couple of feathered fiends just underneath the window crowing against each other with maddening rivalry. One, an old c.o.c.k, had a very hoa.r.s.e crow, and seemed to be suffering from chronic laryngitis brought on by an abuse of his vocal powers; and the other was a young c.o.c.k with a very squeaky crow, for he was still taking lessons, and, as is the case with many beginners, he had too much enthusiasm.

I had had more than enough of this duo before the night was through, and was out very early in the morning looking at the ancient town of Espalion, which witnessed both the victory and the defeat of British arms long ere the Maid of Domremy came to the rescue of the golden lilies. Its capture took place soon after the Battle of Crecy. The lords of Espalion were the Calmont d'Olt, who played an active part in the wars with the English. The town deserves a prominent place among the many picturesque old burgs stamped with mediaeval character on the banks of the Lot. One may stand upon its Gothic bridge of the thirteenth century and dream of the past without risk of being hustled by a crowd except on market days. This venerable bridge must have been admirably built to have withstood all the floods which have smote it in the course of six centuries. The great central arch is so much higher than the others that in crossing you go up a hill and then down one. Close by on the river-bank is the sixteenth-century Hotel de Ville, a castle, partly built on a rock, in the gracefully-ornamental style of the French Renaissance, with turrets, mullioned windows, and a loggia.

Having crossed the river, I went in search of the chief architectural curiosity in or near Espalion--that known as the Church of Pers, or the Chapel of St. Hilarion. It is on the outskirts of the town, and stands in the old cemetery. I had first to find a potter who kept the key, and I discovered him at length in a narrow street in the midst of his clay and the vessels of his handicraft. He gave me the great key, and it was one that some fervent archaeologist might press reverentially to his heart, for the smith who forged it must have died centuries ago. Entering the cemetery, I saw, surrounded by a mult.i.tude of closely-packed tombs and grave mounds, on which the long gra.s.s stood with the late summer flowers, a small Romanesque building that seemed to have sunk far into the soil, like the ancient lichen-covered slabs from which the inscriptions had been washed away by time's inexorable and ever-wearing sea. Perhaps the soil had risen about the walls.

This church of the twelfth century is built of red sandstone, the blocks being laid together without mortar. On entering it such a dimness falls, with such a sacred silence; the air is so heavy with dampness and the odour of mildew, that you feel as if you were already in the vestibule of the Halls of Death, where darkness and stillness have never known the sound of a human voice or the blessed light of the sun. The design of the building is that of a nave with transept and apse. At each end of the transept is some curious cross-vaulting.

The columns have all very large capitals in proportion to the diameter and height; some are ornamented with plain acanthus leaves, others are carved with numerous small figures of men and animals, ideally uncouth and typical of the fantastic medley of Christian symbolism and the barbaric imagination that found a mystical relations.h.i.+p between the monsters of its own creation and the problems of the universe. The exterior of the church is not less interesting than the interior. The charming Romanesque apse, with its three narrow windows, its blind arcade, the capitals ornamented with the acanthus, the row of fantastic modillions above carried all round the building, their sculpture exhibiting the strangest variety of ideas--heads of men, women, beasts, birds, and fabulous monsters; and then the venerable portal, with its elaborate bas-relief of the Last Judgment, furnish much matter for reflection and study. In this 'Judgment' Christ is standing in the midst of the Apostles, and the dead are rising from the tombs below. Fiends are pulling the wicked out of their coffins, and others are throwing the condemned into the wide-opened jaws of a frightful monster. Above are numerous figures separated by various mouldings forming archivolts. The arch of the door is Gothic, but all the other work is Romanesque. The belfry is simply a roofed wall pierced with four arched openings for bells.

Espalion had once its strong fortress on a neighbouring hill--the Castle of Calmont d'Olt. It is now a ruin. I climbed to it, and found the undertaking more tedious than I had supposed. The narrow path winding through the vineyards was bordered with cat-mint, agrimony, vervain, and camomile. Then it pa.s.sed through a little village, where there were old walnut-trees and mossy walls, and a small church with these words over the door: 'C'est ici la maison de Dieu et la porte du ciel.' After the village, the path was almost lost amidst blocks of sandstone and the _debris_ of the fortress, where snakes basking in the sun slid away at my approach, hissing indignantly at the intruder.

On the summit there had been in the far-off ages an outpour of basalt, which had crystallized into columnar prisms, and upon this foundation of ancient lava the castle was built. A good deal of wall and the lower part of a rectangular keep remain of this fortress, which dates from the twelfth century. The outer wall was strengthened with semicircular bastions, the ruins of which are seen. Fennel now thrives amongst the fallen stones, which were dumb witnesses of so much that was human.

Returning to the inn, I resisted the temptation held out to stop and lunch, although the preparations in the kitchen were far advanced, and started off on the road to Estaing. I was again following the Lot, which here flows between high vine-clad hills. After walking a few miles, I saw a bush over the door of a roadside cottage, and, entering, found that the only person in charge of this very rustic inn was a pretty girl of about seventeen. She looked a little scared at first; but when I had sat down with the evident intention of making myself at home, she became reconciled to the sight of me, and consented to let me have what there was in the house to eat. This was not much, as she took care to point out. The nearest approach to meat there was eggs, excepting, of course, the fat bacon--quite uneatable in the English fas.h.i.+on--which is the basis of all the soup made throughout a great part of France. Having lighted a fire on the hearth, and fried me some eggs with bits of fat bacon instead of b.u.t.ter, she said she must go and call 'papa,' who was working in the vineyard. So she left me in charge of the inn while she went to fetch her father on the hillside. While I was alone, I looked at the sunny view of green meadows and trees through the open door that faced the s.h.i.+ning river, and easily fancied that what I saw was a bit of verdant England. In the room, too, the twittering of a pair of canaries recalled impressions of other days; but the plague of flies was thoroughly French, and it soon brought me back to realities. When the girl returned with her father, she gave me some excellent goat-cheese, and for my dessert some hazelnuts, together with a spirit distilled from plums, similar to the _quertch_ of Alsace.

I had not been long in the suns.h.i.+ne again, when I noticed a large house in the midst of the vines not far off the road. On drawing near I found that it was ruinous, and had been long since abandoned. It had been a rather grand house once, and must have belonged to people of importance in the country. There was a finely-carved scutcheon with arms over the Gothic door, and the mullioned windows, which had lost all their gla.s.s, had something of the pathos of gentility that, becoming poor and old, has been abandoned to all winds and weathers.

The little courtyard was full of high weeds and shrubs, and the wild flags that grow on the rocks had laid their green leaves together to hide the wounds of the old walls. Swallows, sparrows, and bats were now the tenants of this mysterious house, which must have had a troubled history. The picture has since haunted my memory; the mind goes back to it in a strange way, and the sentiment of it, as it was communicated to me, I find perfectly expressed in these lines by Alphonse Karr:

'De la solitaire demeure Une ombre lourde d'heure en heure, Se detache sur le gazon, Et cet ombre, couchee et morte Est la seule chose qui sorte Tout le jour de cette maison.'

Some distance farther I pa.s.sed another deserted dwelling. It was perched upon rocks, and was overgrown with ivy and clematis. The road led me down beside the Lot, which now began to rush again over rocks as the hills drew closer, and the valley became once more a gorge. On one side were dense woods; on the other vines reached up to the sky.

At length I saw before me a row of houses beside the river in a bright bit of valley hemmed in by high cliffs. On the rocks behind the houses were a church and a castle.

This was Estaing. It is a little place full of originality, and looks as if it had been built to set forth the dream of some old writer of romance. The late-Gothic church is more quaint and odd than beautiful.

The architect sported with the laws of symmetry, and revelled in the fanciful. The nave is much wider at one end than the other. The great sundial over the door, bearing the date 1636, is scarcely less useful now than when it was placed there. The castle is a strange pile, all the more picturesque by its incongruity. It stands upon a ma.s.s of schistous rock about fifty feet above the river. Most of the visible portion of the building is late Gothic and Renaissance; but this was grafted upon the lower walls and arches of a feudal fortress. Towers rise from towers, mullioned windows have their lines cut in the shadow of beetling machicolations, and higher still are dormer windows with graceful Gothic gables. This castle is now a convent and village school. From the court I could see the Sisters' little garden, where flowers and melons and potherbs were curiously mixed without the gardener's systematic art, which is so often a deadly thing to beauty; and nasturtiums climbing the weedy walls from rough deal boxes were basking in the steady glow of afternoon sun, which seemed to me so intensely brilliant because I was in the dark shadow. A Sister consented to let me go to the top of the highest tower, and she went before me rattling her keys officially. On the way she showed me a fine Renaissance chimney-piece with florid carvings.

After Estaing the valley became wilder, and the river fell over rocks in a series of cascades. Clouds came up and hid the sun; a rainy wind made the willows h.o.a.ry, and set all the poplar leaves sighing and quivering. The vines had disappeared, and the wooded gorge became very solemn in the fading light. There was one figure in the landscape--that of a peasant woman bending and rolling up into bundles the hemp that had been spread out to dry. It added the human touch of melancholy to the sadness of the picture. More and more gloomy became the scene. Great black precipitous rocks of schist, their hollows filled with sombre foliage, rose in solemn grandeur far above me, and in the bottom the plunging stream foamed and roared. The mad wind caught up the dust from the road and whirled it onward, and then the rain began to fall. Rockier and darker became the way, and louder the roar of the stream. So narrow was the gorge at length that the road ran along a ledge that had been cut in the gneiss.

When I was still some miles from Entraygues (called by the peasants Entrayou), I met a young gendarme. He did not ask me for my papers, for he was a native of the district of Lourdes, and had been brought into contact with so many English people at Pau that he detected at once my Britannic accent, which has not been worn away by many years'

residence in France. To him the fact of my being an Englishman was a sufficient a.s.surance that I was respectable. He was a rakish, devil-may-care fellow, who, after being a sub-officer in the army, had lately been moved into the gendarmerie. His heart had been deeply touched by an English governess whom he had met at Pau, and he spoke to me about her with 'tears in his voice.' He talked much about Lourdes, where he said the people were sincerely religious, and not hypocritical. His opinion of the Aveyronnais was somewhat different, but perhaps unjust, for as yet he could not have had much experience of them. Having taken the precaution to tell me that he was anything but a strict Catholic himself, he declared that he was a believer in miracles.

'Why?' I asked.

'Because,' said he, 'my father saw Bernadette go up a rock on her knees--one that no man could climb--and I myself have been a witness of miracles at Lourdes. I have seen at least twenty people cured at the fountain. One was a captain, who was so paralyzed that he had to be carried to the water, and when he came away he walked as if nothing had been the matter with him.'

Thus talking we reached Entraygues. I allowed the gendarme to take me to the inn of his fancy, which he praised with true Southern warmth for its comfort and good cheer. The large kitchen as we entered was only lighted by the flame of the wood-fire on the hearth, in front of which a fowl and a piece of veal were turning on the same spit, moved by clockwork that said 'click-clack, click-clack;' which was as genial an invitation to dinner as any I had ever heard. Presently the lamp was lighted, the table was laid, and I sat down to dinner with the innkeeper and the gendarme from the Ba.s.ses Pyrenees. The meal was of the substantial kind, such as gives complete satisfaction to the wayfarer at the end of his day's wandering, after putting up with frugal fare on the road. The aubergiste brought out his best wine, and his best cheeses made from goat's milk, and which had been kept carefully wrapped up in vine leaves. These little cheeses, when they have been allowed to mature in a wrapping of vine or plane leaf, are among the best made. The landlord had studied all matters relating to the stomach within the range of his experience. He said that hares were not fit to eat unless they had fed chiefly on thyme, and that a starling had no value in the kitchen until it had been feeding on juniper berries.

This night when I went to bed I had not the frantic crowing of c.o.c.ks to keep me awake, but the soft murmuring of the flowing river to lull me asleep. The weather being now fair and calm after the troubled evening, I threw the window open, so that I could feel the wafting of the great invisible wings of the summer night, and listen to the soothing song of the water repeating the tales that were told to it by the rocks and the woods on its way down from the Lozere mountains.

I was again on the banks of this beautiful river--at no place more beautiful than at Entraygues--when the rising sun was gilding only the topmost vines of the high western hill that shadows it. The little town of 2,000 inhabitants is close to the spot where the Thuyere falls into the Lot. It lies in the angle where two lovely valleys meet. The Thuyere comes down from the Cantal mountains, and as it reaches Entraygues it spreads out over a broad smooth bed of pebbles, its water as clear as rock-crystal; and when the morning sun looks down upon it over the vine-clad hills, it is like something that has been seen in the happiest of dreams. There is a castle at Entraygues, and, as in the case of the one at Estaing, it is now used as a convent and school. The archaeologist will find perhaps more to interest him in the two thirteenth-century bridges which span the Lot and the Thuyere, both n.o.ble specimens of Gothic work.

As I left Entraygues the bells in the church-tower were ringing--not the monotonous ding-dong with which French people generally have had to content themselves since the Revolutionists turned the old bell-metal into sous, but a blithe and joyous peal of high silvery tones that seemed to belong to the blue air, and to be the voices of the little spirits that flutter about the morning's rosy veil. My design was to reach the abbey of Conques before evening, but instead of going directly towards it over the hills, I preferred to keep as long as possible in the valley of the Lot, which is here of such witching loveliness. As there was a road on the river-bank for many miles, I could follow this fancy, and yet feel the comfort of walking on good ground. Although the season was getting late, I found the valley below Entraygues very rich in flowers. Agrimony, mint, and marjoram, with a tall inula, and the pretty, sweet-scented white melilot, were in great abundance along the bank. Upon the rocks, which now bordered the road, were the deep red blossoms of the orpine sedum, and a small crimson-flowered stock with very h.o.a.ry stem. A tall handsome plant about three feet high, with large white flowers, drew me down a bank to where it was growing near the water. I found that it was a very luxuriant specimen of the thorn-apple (_datura_). While I was admiring its poisonous beauty a woman stopped on the road just above me, and, after contemplating me in silent curiosity for a few minutes, said to me first in _patois_ and then in French (when I replied to her in this language):

'It is a wicked plant, that! The beasts will not touch it, so you had better leave it alone.'

Although I did not think this a.s.sociation of ideas very complimentary to myself, I thanked her for her good advice. I nevertheless took away as a souvenir a flower and one of the th.o.r.n.y apples, seeing which the peasant trudged on her way, saying no doubt that it was wasting time and words to give advice to lunatics. Again the cliffs drew very close together, and the valley was nothing more than a deep crack in the earth's crust. On one side was unbroken forest; on the other vines were terraced up the rocky steep to the height of seven or eight hundred feet. Even amidst the jutting crags the adventurous vine lifted its sunny leaves; but, alas! here, too, the phylloxera had begun its work of desolation, and I had little doubt that these hills laden with fruit were destined in a few years to become a waste of stones like so many others that I had seen nearer the plains which had once streamed with wine. The cultivated land by the river was only a narrow strip, and the crops were chiefly maize and buckwheat. At length the vine cultivation was only carried on at intervals. Then the long blue line of water lay between high rocky hills covered with box and broom, bracken and heather. A stream came tumbling down a deep ravine over blocks of gneiss to join the Lot, and a little beyond this was a hamlet.

The morning was now far advanced; so, as I was pa.s.sing a cottage inn, I wavered a minute, and the result of the wavering was that I crossed the threshold. I said to myself: 'Perhaps I may walk on for miles, and not find another chance so good as this.' It was one of the poorest of inns, but it was able to give me a meal of bread and cheese and eggs, which was as much as I could expect hereabouts. There was also a light wine of local growth--sparkling, fragrant, and deliciously cool. What more could I want? Two motherless girls looked after this waterside inn, and also the ferry belonging to it. The boat lay a few feet from the door. When I was ready to leave, the younger of the two girls ferried me to the other side of the river, and a very pretty figure she made for an artist to sketch--the simplicity of childhood in her face, and the strength of a woman in her bare sunburnt arms. As is the case with so many of the peasants in this district, where the old Gaulish stock (the _Ruteni_ and the _Cadurci_) has been much less influenced than in the towns by the tumultuous pa.s.sage of races from the south, the east, and the north, she was fair-haired, and naturally fair-skinned; but exposure to the sun had darkened her by many shades.