Part 12 (2/2)

I had been walking for some time in the department of the Cantal, but the ferry landed me on the Aveyron side of the river. I had now seriously to consider the shortest way to Conques, separated from me by very rough hill country and an uncertain number of miles. I was on a narrow path skirting the forest and the water, when I met a peasant family dressed in their best clothes, and on their way, as I learnt, to the village of Notre Dame, where the _fete patronale_ was being held. The man, who seemed well pleased with himself in his new black blouse, carried the sleeping baby, and his wife held a great coloured umbrella over it. They were followed by a girl of about fourteen, who wore the open-work hand-made white stockings which the young women of these southern villages use on festive occasions as soon as they begin to grow coquettish. I fell into conversation with these people, who told me that, after reaching the village, I must commence the ascent through the forest. Speaking to the man about the trout, which are plentiful in this part of the river, he entertained me with a story of a selfish angler who once came there, and who had a fish on his hook as soon as he threw a fly. The people of the district--who, it seems, know nothing about fly-fis.h.i.+ng--watched his success with wonder and admiration, and asked him to explain to them how he managed to catch fish in that way; but he was surly, and refused to give them any lessons. He had imitators, nevertheless; but after spending many hours vainly endeavouring to hook the crafty trout, they lost patience, and gave up the attempt.

Two or three score of houses huddled together at the foot of a rocky cliff, a little above the water, was Notre Dame. The village was all in movement. The s.p.a.ce in front of the church was crowded with peasant figures; a bell was swinging backward and forward in the wall-belfry, as though it was trying to turn right over; stall-keepers with cakes, barley-sugar, and other dainties dear to the village child, to whom the opportunity of feasting even his eyes upon such things comes very seldom, were surrounded by eager little faces, and outstretched sunburnt hands, each clutching the sou that offered such a bewildering field for dissipation. In the auberge hard by was a noisy throng, of peasants sitting and standing in a cloud of smoke. Serving-women, hired for the occasion, gaily coifed and be-ribboned, holding bottles and gla.s.ses elbowed their way to the men who shouted the loudest for drink, and, catching the jest in the air, gave one as good or as bad in exchange. The scene was one for another Teniers to paint, although there were no costumes to give a local colour to the picturesque. Most of the older men wore the ugly short blouse--generally black in this part of France; but ambitious youths of eighteen or twenty showed a preference for the cloth coat which the village tailor had tried to cut according to the Paris fas.h.i.+on.

Leaving the rustic revellers, the queer little church, with its ancient calvary, rudely carved, and resting upon a single column, I was soon in the shadow of the old chestnut forest that covered the steep side of the high cliffs above the Lot. The path was very rocky and toilsome. A young man, who was hastening down from his home on the hills to join the merrymakers, said to me, in allusion to the roughness of the way: 'Le bon Dieu ne pa.s.se pas souvent par ici,'

thereby expressing the sentiment of the peasant, who a.s.sociates all that is wild and rugged in nature with the devil. While still in the forest, and not a little puzzled by its paths, I met a woman and a youth, and asked them if the way I was taking led to Conques. '_Ape_'

(yes) was the reply. Not a word of French could I draw from them. When the cliffs were at length scaled, and I was on the open tableland, I found the south wind blowing there with great violence, although in the valley there was scarcely breeze enough to ripple the river pools.

The sun was falling into the yellow haze of the west as I began to descend towards the valley of the Dourdou. I came upon a tributary of this stream in the bottom of a deep and solemn gorge, whose steep sides were densely wooded except where the rock jutted out and revealed its dark nakedness, and where higher, near the sky, showed here and there a patch of heather-purple waste, on which the brilliant light was softening into evening tones. But in the depth of the gorge, where the redly-running stream was nearly hidden under the tent of leaves, the air was already dim, and the forms of the trees were beginning to blend with their own shadows.

Following the stream in its course, I found the Dourdou, and then turned down the broader valley. I was tramping wearily on my way, which seemed endless, when, cl.u.s.tered on the side of another wild and thickly wooded gorge running up amidst the hills, I saw many houses, and a dark pile of masonry, rising far above their roofs. I knew that this must be Conques; it showed its religious origin so plainly in the choice of the site. This was selected not because Nature was gentle and pitiful to man in the cleft of those savage hills, but because she was stern and solemn, and the veil that hides the supernatural was felt to be thinner there, where the rocks and forest seemed to the mediaeval mind to have remained just as the Almighty hand had fas.h.i.+oned them. A monastery arose in the desert, then the abbey church, and gradually a little lay community placed itself under the protection of the religious one.

A long narrow street, steep and stony, leads to the church, which is all that is left of the Benedictine abbey, excepting some ma.s.sive b.u.t.tresses, ruinous arches, and a round tower grafted upon the rock--remnants of the ancient monastery which must have been half a fortress. The burg itself was fortified, and one of the gateways of the old wall is still standing. The existing church dates from the eleventh century, but various details point to the conclusion that it was built on the site of a more ancient structure. For example, in the entrance is a holy-water stoup, the basin having been scooped out of the capital of a column which is supposed to have been one of the supports of a very primitive altar. The figure of an emperor is carved on one of the faces, and on another that of a pagan divinity. The architecture of the church is simple and majestic, the only jarring note being the cupola raised about the time of the Renaissance over the intersection of the nave and transept. The barrel-vaulted nave, crossed by plain broad fillets, is in keeping with the early Romanesque severity of the facade. The ornament is nearly confined to the tympan over the portal, the capitals of columns, and to the choir with its seven absidal chapels. The choir itself is cross-vaulted, and the sanctuary, except at its junction with the nave, is enclosed by an arcade of narrow stilted arches, the only ornament of the capitals being acanthus leaves; but those against the wall are elaborately storied with little figures. A moulding of small billets is carried round the apse. The great height of the nave vaulting, obtained by a triforium and clerestory, is very remarkable in a Romanesque church of such early construction. In accordance with the style of the period, the capitals of the nave show a complete absence of uniformity, some being carved with figures, and others with leaves or intricate line ornament. To obtain an adequate impression of all the fantastic imagination expressed in these capitals, and the craftsmans.h.i.+p brought to bear upon the carving, it is necessary to climb to the triforium galleries. The aisle windows are narrow and placed high in the wall.

The interest of the exterior is centred upon the bas-relief representing the Last Judgment, which fills the entire tympan of the arch covering the two main doorways. The composition, which contains over a hundred figures, is singularly animated, and although the forms are uncouthly proportioned, and the treatment of the subject in some of the details touches what to the modern mind seems grotesque, it is an exceedingly vivid and faithful reflection of the religious ideas of the age that produced it. What now appears grotesque was then sublime and awful. We smile at the barbaric imagination that placed here, at the door of h.e.l.l, the head of a vast and hideous monster of the crocodile family, into whose gaping jaws the d.a.m.ned are being thrust by a pantomime devil; but eight centuries ago Christian people had too lively a faith in the materialistic horrors of the infernal kingdom to perceive anything extravagant in this idea of stuffing a scaly monster with condemned sinners. Eight centuries ago!--the peasant of the Aveyron and of Finistere still look upon these Dantesque sculptures with genuine awe. Those who blame the monks for giving the devil a forked tail and a pair of horns, and otherwise exhausting their invention in the endeavour to materialize the terrors of h.e.l.l, are strangely unphilosophic. The ma.s.s of humanity with whom the monks had to deal had the minds of children in regard to metaphysical ideas; only by the pictorial method could they be sufficiently impressed with the joys or horrors of the future life. Bas-reliefs such as this must have had a great influence on the conduct of many generations; nor has their influence yet ceased, although, as popular education spreads, the interest taken in these quaint sculptures by those for whom they were especially intended, so far from being stimulated, is lessened.

Inasmuch as the mind needs deep ploughing for the new culture, and the majority can get no more than a superficial raking, the peasant of to-day is often a poorer man intellectually than his father was--poorer by the loss of faith and the confusion of ideas.

The sculptor of this Last Judgment--a Benedictine monk, doubtless, like the architect of the church who has left this personal record, 'Bernardus me fecit,' upon a stone in a dim corner--died centuries ago, and although his bones or their dust may be near, his name will never be known. But how his mind lives in the figures that took life under his hand! With what inspired longing of the soul he must have conceived and felt the majesty of Christ sitting in judgment at the end of time to have expressed so much that is sublime in the holy face and figure with his poor knowledge of art! The right hand is raised to bless the just, and the left repels the unforgiven. Grouped around the central figure are saints and angels. Peter, holding his keys, is followed by a crowd of the elect, headed by an old man on crutches, and a crowned sovereign--said to be Charlemagne--carries a reliquary.

In the lower half of the tympan Satan is enthroned, his feet resting upon a writhing and hideously grimacing figure, supposed to be that of Judas. Immediately above, an angel and a fiend are weighing souls in a pair of scales, and the demon is trying to cheat. In this lower division the infernal punishments inflicted upon sinners of different categories are set forth. The sin of Francesca and Paolo is treated less poetically than by Dante, for here two guilty lovers are seen hanging to the same rope. A glutton is being stuffed with flaming viands, sent up from the devil's kitchen. All manner of torture is being inflicted by jubilant demons upon the souls that have fallen into their clutches. One has caught in the net that he has just thrown a mitred abbot and two other monks. As the dead rise from their tombs the justiciary angels bar the way of the wicked who strive to approach the Judge. A seraphim holds the closed book of life, upon which these words are carved: 'Hic signatur liber vitae.' On various parts of the portal are numerous inscriptions, some of which, like the following, are in leonine verses:

'Casti pacifici mites pietatis amici Sic stant gaudentes securi nil metuentes.'

The archaeological interest of Conques is not confined to its church.

Here, hidden from the world in this obscure little gorge, far from any railway-station, is one of the most remarkable collections of ancient reliquaries in France. The chief treasure is the very ancient gold statue of St. Foy (Sancta Fides) virgin and martyr, the patron saint of Conques. It is a seated figure nearly three feet in height, and its appearance is thoroughly Byzantine; indeed, one may go farther, and say that it looks much more pagan than Christian. There is nothing in the treatment that indicates a Christian motive; while the antique engraved gems with which it is studded, ill.u.s.trating, as some of them do, workings of the Greek and Roman mind very far removed from the Christian idea of what is becoming in morals, make this astonis.h.i.+ng statue an archaeological puzzle. The explanation that these gems were placed upon it to symbolize the victory of Christian purity over the impurity of the ancient religions of Greece and Rome is more ingenious than conclusive. This statue of gold (_repousse_), with regal crown enriched with precious stones and enamels on which may be distinguished Jupiter, Mars, Apollo and Diana, among the more respectable of the divinities; if it was originally intended to represent the virgin Fides, martyred at Agen, was certainly one of the most fantastic achievements of ecclesiastical art. But whether this was its origin or not, the style of its workmans.h.i.+p is considered by competent judges to be sufficient proof that it is at least nine hundred years old.

In favour of the opinion that the statue was made at Conques, there is the fact that the cult of St. Foy at this place dates from the early Middle Ages. The ancient seal of the abbey bears the motto:

'Duc nos quo resides, Inclyta Virgo Fides.'

Historians of the abbey state that the relics of the saint were brought from Agen to Conques about the year 874, and that Etienne, Bishop of Clermont, caused a basilica to be raised here in her honour between the years 942 and 984. It was under the direction of Ololric, Abbot of Conques, that the existing church was built between the years 1030 and 1062. Throughout the Middle Ages the relics drew large numbers of pilgrims to the spot. In the dialect of the country they were called _Roumious_, because the pilgrimage to Conques was one of those which enjoyed the privilege of conferring under certain conditions the same advantages as were to be gained by the great pilgrimage to Rome. The pilgrims kept the 'holy vigil'--that is to say, they pa.s.sed an entire night in prayer before the relics with a lighted taper either fixed at their side or carried in the hand. The pilgrimage and the ancient a.s.sociation of St. Foy were revived in 1874.

The darkness of night drove me to take shelter in an inn which, like everything else here, is dedicated to St. Foy. The pilgrims' money had not made it pretentious, nor the people who kept it dishonest --changes which 'filthy lucre' is very apt to bring about in the holiest places. But the pilgrims who come to Conques are, for the most part, peasants who look well before they leap, and who so contrive matters as never to spend more upon anything than they have set aside for it.

Having completed the next morning my impressions of Conques, noting among other things the curious and richly decorated _enfeux_ in the exterior walls of the church, I returned to the bottom of the ravine, and having crossed the old Gothic bridge over the Dourdou, began the ascent of the rocky chestnut forest on the other side of the valley.

Small white crosses planted at intervals amidst the broom and heather of the open wood marked the way to St. Foy's Chapel for the guidance of pilgrims. According to the legend, it was near this spot that, the relics of the saint having been set down by those who had carried them from Agen, a fountain of the purest water burst forth from the earth, and has continued to flow ever since. I found the chapel--a modern Gothic one, with a statue of St. Foy in Roman dress in the niche over the door--under a high rugged rock of schist. There was no one but myself to trouble the solitude of this quiet nook on the wild hillside, all broken up into little gullies and ravines, where the aged chestnuts sheltered the tender moss and fern from the eager sunbeam, and kept the dew upon the bracken until the noonday hours. An exquisitely delicate campanula with minute flowers bloomed with hemp-agrimony and wood-sage along the sides of the rills that -scarcely murmured as they slid down the clefts of the impervious rock.

As I went higher, the chestnuts became more scattered, and at length the rough land was covered only by the tufted heather and broom. Here, instead of the light whispering of leaves, was the drowsy song of mult.i.tudinous bees. The breeze blew freshly on the plateau, and grew stronger as the sun rose. Could it be a cemetery, that grouping of stones that I saw upon the moorland? No; it was a cottage-garden, surrounded by disconnected slabs of mica-schist, standing like little menhirs. peasant family lived in the wretched dwelling, exposed to the full force of the howling winds, and striving continually with nature for their black bread and the vegetables that give flavour to the watery soup.

A young man with a _beret_ on his head overtook me. He was a Bearnais, who had not been long in the district, and who earned his living by certain services that he rendered at widely-scattered farms. He had to walk a great deal in all winds and weathers; therefore he knew the country well, and could give me useful information. I was crossing the hills with the intention of meeting the Lot again in the great coal basin of the Aveyron, and thus cutting off a wide bend of the river.

All went well for some time after the Bearnais left me; but at length I became fairly bewildered by the woods and ravines, the hills and valleys that lay before me in seemingly endless succession. Savage rockiness, sylvan quietude, open solitudes, bare and windblown, gave me all the sensations of nature which expand the soul; but the body grumbled for rest and refreshment long before I had crossed this singularly wild tract of country almost abandoned by man. I had been wading through bracken up to my neck, or wandering almost at hazard through chestnut-woods for an hour or two, when hope was revived by my meeting a peasant, who told me that I was not far from the village of Firmi. I left the great woods, and reached a district that was new in every sense. Entering a little gorge, to me it seemed that nature had been cursed there ages ago, and still carried the sign of the malediction in the sooty darkness of the rocks--jagged, tormented, baleful--that rose on either hand. Nothing grew upon them save a low wretched turf, and this only in patches. Beyond, the metamorphic rock gave place to red sandstone, and the ground sloped down into the little coal basin of Firmi. What a change of scene was there! The air was thick with smoke, the road was black with coal-dust, most of the houses were new and grimy, nearly all the faces were s.m.u.tty. There was a confused noise of wheels going round, of invisible iron monsters grinding their teeth, of trollies rattling along upon rails, and of human voices. Nature had no charm; but of beauty combined with fasting I had had enough for awhile, so my prejudices melted before the genial ugliness of this sooty paradise, knowing as I did that prosperity goes with such griminess, and that where there is money there are inns offering creature comforts both to man and beast.

Either the angel or the goblin who goes a wayfaring with me led me this time into a heated little auberge infested by myriads of flies, which, getting into the steam of the _soupe caix choux_ in their anxiety to be served first, fell upon their backs in the hot mixture, and made frantic signals to me with their legs to help them out. There was no temptation to linger at the table when the purpose for which I was there had been attained; so I was very soon on the tramp again, making for the valley of the Lot.

Leaving Decazeville a few miles to the west, I took the direction of Cransac, being curious to see the 'Smoking Mountains' in that district. Between the little coal basin of Firmi and the large one at Cransac and Aubin lay a strip of toilsome hill country. I had left the round tower of the ruined castle of Firmi below, and was following a winding path up a steep chestnut wood, when two mounted gendarmes pa.s.sed me going down. About five minutes later I heard the sound of horses' hoofs coming near again. 'One of the gendarmes is returning,'

was my reflection, and, looking round, I saw this was really so. The man was trotting his horse up the wood. Being sure that he was coming after me, I walked slower, and gave myself the most indifferent and loitering air that I could put on. In a few minutes he reined up his horse at my side. He was a young man, and his expression told me that he did not much like the duty that his chief had put upon him.

Addressing me, he said:

'Pardon, monsieur, you are a stranger in this country?'

<script>