IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE
ON Tuesday, 1st October, we left Florac late in the afternoon, a
tired donkey and tired donkey-driver. A little way up the Tarnon,
a covered bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the
Mimente. Steep rocky red mountains overhung the stream; great oaks
and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in stony terraces; here and
there was a red field of millet or a few apple-trees studded with
red apples; and the road passed hard by two black hamlets, one with
an old castle atop to please the heart of the tourist.
It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encampment.
Even under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not only a very
rapid slope, but was heaped with loose stones; and where there was
no timber the hills descended to the stream in a red precipice
tufted with heather. The sun had left the highest peak in front of
me, and the valley was full of the lowing sound of herdsmen's horns
as they recalled the flocks into the stable, when I spied a bight
of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river.
Thither I descended, and, tying Modestine provisionally to a tree,
proceeded to investigate the neighbourhood. A grey pearly evening
shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew
indistinct and melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness
was rising steadily like an exhalation. I approached a great oak
which grew in the meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to my
disgust the voices of children fell upon my ear, and I beheld a
house round the angle on the other bank. I had half a mind to pack
and be gone again, but the growing darkness moved me to remain. I
had only to make no noise until the night was fairly come, and
trust to the dawn to call me early in the morning. But it was hard
to be annoyed by neighbours in such a great hotel.
A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed Modestine
and arranged my sack, three stars were already brightly shining,
and the others were beginning dimly to appear. I slipped down to
the river, which looked very black among its rocks, to fill my can;
and dined with a good appetite in the dark, for I scrupled to light
a lantern while so near a house. The moon, which I had seen a
pallid crescent all afternoon, faintly illuminated the summit of
the hills, but not a ray fell into the bottom of the glen where I
was lying. The oak rose before me like a pillar of darkness; and
overhead the heartsome stars were set in the face of the night. No
one knows the stars who has not slept, as the French happily put
it, A LA BELLE ETOILE. He may know all their names and distances
and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind,
- their serene and gladsome influence on the mind. The greater
part of poetry is about the stars; and very justly, for they are
themselves the most classical of poets. These same far-away
worlds, sprinkled like tapers or shaken together like a diamond
dust upon the sky, had looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier,
when, in the words of the latter, they had 'no other tent but the
sky, and no other bed than my mother earth.'
All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns fell
pattering over me from the oak. Yet, on this first night of
October, the air was as mild as May, and I slept with the fur
thrown back.
I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear
more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver, and is besides
supported by the sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet with
encouragement and praise; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights
of property and the domestic affections come clamouring round you
for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp cruel note of
a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance; and to a tramp like
myself, he represents the sedentary and respectable world in its
most hostile form. There is something of the clergyman or the
lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not amenable to
stones, the boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. I
respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway, or
sleeping afield, I both detest and fear them.
I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, October 2nd) by the same dog
- for I knew his bark - making a charge down the bank, and then,
seeing me sit up, retreating again with great alacrity. The stars
were not yet quite extinguished. The heaven was of that enchanting
mild grey-blue of the early morn. A still clear light began to
fall, and the trees on the hillside were outlined sharply against
the sky. The wind had veered more to the north, and no longer
reached me in the glen; but as I was going on with my preparations,
it drove a white cloud very swiftly over the hill-top; and looking
up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. In these high
regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. If
only the clouds travelled high enough, we should see the same thing
all night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space.
As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out
of the seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to run
overhead in an almost contrary direction. A few steps farther, and
I saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little
beyond, between two peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared
floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face with the big
bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system.
I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military-looking
wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark
that seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were
Protestant or Catholic -
'Oh,' said he, 'I make no shame of my religion. I am a Catholic.'
He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural
statistics; for it is the language of one in a minority. I thought
with a smile of Bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride
rough-shod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the
more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic; the
Cevennes still Protestant. It is not a basketful of law-papers,
nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can
change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. Outdoor rustic people
have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants, and
thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a long
while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at
night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman,
has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers of the
universe, and amicable relations towards his God. Like my mountain
Plymouth Brother, he knows the Lord. His religion does not repose
upon a choice of logic; it is the poetry of the man's experience,
the philosophy of the history of his life. God, like a great
power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to this simple fellow
in the course of years, and become the ground and essence of his
least reflections; and you may change creeds and dogmas by
authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of trumpets,
if you will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will
stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He is a Catholic, a
Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same indefeasible sense
that a man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not
vary from his faith, unless he could eradicate all memory of the
past, and, in a strict and not a conventional meaning, change his
mind.
