THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY
I WAS now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon
the hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and
looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road along
the Mimente is yet new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their
surprise when the first cart arrived at Cassagnas. But although it
lay thus apart from the current of men's business, this hamlet had
already made a figure in the history of France. Hard by, in
caverns of the mountain, was one of the five arsenals of the
Camisards; where they laid up clothes and corn and arms against
necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves
gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. To
the same caves, amid this multifarious industry, the sick and
wounded were brought up to heal; and there they were visited by the
two surgeons, Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women of
the neighbourhood.
Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it was
the oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by
Cassagnas. This was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who had joined
their voices with his in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by
night on the archpriest of the Cevennes. Seguier, promoted to
heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, whom Cavalier treats in
his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole army of the Camisards.
He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart, who admitted people
to the sacrament or refused them, by 'intensively viewing every
man' between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures off by
rote. And this was surely happy; since in a surprise in August
1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only
strange that they were not surprised more often and more
effectually; for this legion of Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in
its theory of war, and camped without sentries, leaving that duty
to the angels of the God for whom they fought. This is a token,
not only of their faith, but of the trackless country where they
harboured. M. de Caladon, taking a stroll one fine day, walked
without warning into their midst, as he might have walked into 'a
flock of sheep in a plain,' and found some asleep and some awake
and psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no recommendation to
insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond 'his faculty of singing
psalms'; and even the prophet Salomon 'took him into a particular
friendship.' Thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic troop
subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but
sacraments and ecstasies.
People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been
saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to
apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the
house of Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict,
'convinced by the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and
rather from necessity than sympathy,' granted at last a royal grace
of toleration, Cassagnas was still Protestant; and to a man, it is
so to this day. There is, indeed, one family that is not
Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is that of a Catholic
CURE in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a schoolmistress. And
his conduct, it is worth noting, is disapproved by the Protestant
villagers.
'It is a bad idea for a man,' said one, 'to go back from his
engagements.'
The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countrified
fashion, and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a
Protestant myself, I was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with
history gained me further respect. For we had something not unlike
a religious controversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with
whom I dined being both strangers to the place, and Catholics. The
young men of the house stood round and supported me; and the whole
discussion was tolerantly conducted, and surprised a man brought up
among the infinitesimal and contentious differences of Scotland.
The merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and was far less pleased
than some others with my historical acquirements. But the gendarme
was mighty easy over it all.
'It's a bad idea for a man to change,' said he; and the remark was
generally applauded.
That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at Our Lady of
the Snows. But this is a different race; and perhaps the same
great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to
differ in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage; but where a
faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow
population. The true work of Bruce and Wallace was the union of
the nations; not that they should stand apart a while longer,
skirmishing upon their borders; but that, when the time came, they
might unite with self-respect.
The merchant was much interested in my journey, and thought it
dangerous to sleep afield.
'There are the wolves,' said he; 'and then it is known you are an
Englishman. The English have always long purses, and it might very
well enter into some one's head to deal you an ill blow some
night.'
I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate
judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in
the arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a far too
risky business as a whole to make each additional particular of
danger worth regard. 'Something,' said I, 'might burst in your
inside any day of the week, and there would be an end of you, if
you were locked into your room with three turns of the key.'
'CEPENDANT,' said he, 'COUCHER DEHORS!'
'God,' said I, 'is everywhere.'
'CEPENDANT, COUCHER DEHORS!' he repeated, and his voice was
eloquent of terror.
He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything hardy in
so simple a proceeding; although many considered it superfluous.
Only one, on the other hand, professed much delight in the idea;
and that was my Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I told him I
sometimes preferred sleeping under the stars to a close and noisy
ale-house, 'Now I see that you know the Lord!'
The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, for he
said I should be something to talk of in the future, and desired me
to make a note of his request and reason; a desire with which I
have thus complied.
A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a rugged
path southward up a hillside covered with loose stones and tufts of
heather. At the top, as is the habit of the country, the path
disappeared; and I left my she-ass munching heather, and went
forward alone to seek a road.
I was now on the separation of two vast water-sheds; behind me all
the streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western Ocean;
before me was the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from the Lozere,
you can see in clear weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and
perhaps from here the soldiers of Salomon may have watched for the
topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and the long-promised aid from
England. You may take this ridge as lying in the heart of the
country of the Camisards; four of the five legions camped all round
it and almost within view - Salomon and Joani to the north,
Castanet and Roland to the south; and when Julien had finished his
famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which lasted all
through October and November 1703, and during which four hundred
and sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly
subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked forth
upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's
activity have now repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more
roofed and sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens,
in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when
the day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. And
still it was perhaps the wildest view of all my journey. Peak upon
peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging southward, channelled
and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered from head to foot
with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out into a coronal of
cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, sent a drift of
misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys were already
plunged in a profound and quiet shadow.
A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing a
black cap of liberty, as if in honour of his nearness to the grave,
directed me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was
something solemn in the isolation of this infirm and ancient
creature. Where he dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or how
he proposed to get down again, were more than I could fancy. Not
far off upon my right was the famous Plan de Font Morte, where Poul
with his Armenian sabre slashed down the Camisards of Seguier.
This, methought, might be some Rip van Winkle of the war, who had
lost his comrades, fleeing before Poul, and wandered ever since
upon the mountains. It might be news to him that Cavalier had
surrendered, or Roland had fallen fighting with his back against an
olive. And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him
hailing in broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with
one of his two sticks. I had already got some way past him; but,
leaving Modestine once more, retraced my steps.
Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman had
forgot to ask the pedlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this
neglect.
I told him sternly, 'Nothing.'
'Nothing?' cried he.
I repeated 'Nothing,' and made off.
It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable to
the old man as he had been to me.
The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or two
below me in the vale, and many lone houses of the chestnut farmers,
it was a very solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began
early underneath the trees. But I heard the voice of a woman
singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed to be
about love and a BEL AMOUREUX, her handsome sweetheart; and I
wished I could have taken up the strain and answered her, as I went
on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem,
my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told her? Little
enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives and
takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again
into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet
which makes the world a garden; and 'hope, which comes to all,'
outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand
beyond the grave and death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's
mercy, both easy and grateful to believe!
We struck at last into a wide white high-road carpeted with
noiseless dust. The night had come; the moon had been shining for
a long while upon the opposite mountain; when on turning a corner
my donkey and I issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out
my brandy at Florac, for I could bear the stuff no longer, and
replaced it with some generous and scented Volnay; and now I drank
to the moon's sacred majesty upon the road. It was but a couple of
mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my
blood flowed with luxury. Even Modestine was inspired by this
purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little hoofs as to a
livelier measure. The road wound and descended swiftly among
masses of chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and flowed away.
Our two shadows - mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically
bestridden by the pack - now lay before us clearly outlined on the
road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the ghostly
distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. From time to
time a warm wind rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts
dangling their bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled
with whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next
moment the breeze had gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved
except our travelling feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous
ribs and gullies of the mountain were faintly designed in the
moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned one
lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of sad
nocturnal colouring.
At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute angles,
the moon disappeared behind the hill; and I pursued my way in great
darkness, until another turning shot me without preparation into
St. Germain de Calberte. The place was asleep and silent, and
buried in opaque night. Only from a single open door, some
lamplight escaped upon the road to show me that I was come among
men's habitations. The two last gossips of the evening, still
talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. The landlady was
getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already out, and had, not
without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I must
have gone supperless to roost.
