THE LAST DAY
WHEN I awoke (Thursday, 2nd October), and, hearing a great
flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me to
the window of the clean and comfortable room where I had slept the
night, I looked forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of
chestnut gardens. It was still early, and the cockcrows, and the
slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me to be out and
look round me.
St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about.
At the period of the wars, and immediately before the devastation,
it was inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five families, of which
only nine were Catholic; and it took the CURE seventeen September
days to go from house to house on horseback for a census. But the
place itself, although capital of a canton, is scarce larger than a
hamlet. It lies terraced across a steep slope in the midst of
mighty chestnuts. The Protestant chapel stands below upon a
shoulder; in the midst of the town is the quaint old Catholic
church.
It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept his
library and held a court of missionaries; here he had built his
tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he had
redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his death they
brought the body, pierced with two-and-fifty wounds, to be
interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in
the church. The CURE, taking his text from Second Samuel,
twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'And Amasa wallowed in his
blood in the highway,' preached a rousing sermon, and exhorted his
brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and
illustrious superior. In the midst of this eloquence there came a
breeze that Spirit Seguier was near at hand; and behold! all the
assembly took to their horses' heels, some east, some west, and the
CURE himself as far as Alais.
Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a
thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. On
the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas;
on the other, it was cut off from assistance by the legion of
Roland at Mialet. The CURE, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic
at the arch-priest's funeral, and so hurriedly decamped to Alais,
stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence uttered fulminations
against the crimes of the Protestants. Salomon besieged the
village for an hour and a half, but was beaten back. The
militiamen, on guard before the CURE'S door, could be heard, in the
black hours, singing Protestant psalms and holding friendly talk
with the insurgents. And in the morning, although not a shot had
been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their flasks.
Where was it gone? All handed over to the Camisards for a
consideration. Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest!
That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de
Calberte, the imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so
quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this
hamlet of the mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, like a
timid sort of lion-hunters; and people turned round to have a
second look, or came out of their houses, as I went by. My passage
was the first event, you would have fancied, since the Camisards.
There was nothing rude or forward in this observation; it was but a
pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human
infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the
street.
I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with
sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes
of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and
again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me,
with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a
thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful
human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in
their gains. Looking up, I could see the brown nut peering through
the husk, which was already gaping; and between the stems the eye
embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green with leaves.
I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an
atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. But
perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my spirit.
Perhaps some one was thinking of me in another country; or perhaps
some thought of my own had come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me
good. For some thoughts, which sure would be the most beautiful,
vanish before we can rightly scan their features; as though a god,
travelling by our green highways, should but ope the door, give one
smiling look into the house, and go again for ever. Was it Apollo,
or Mercury, or Love with folded wings? Who shall say? But we go
the lighter about our business, and feel peace and pleasure in our
hearts.
I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation
of a young man, a Catholic, who had married a Protestant girl and
gone over to the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they
could understand and respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind
of an old Catholic woman, who told me that same day there was no
difference between the two sects, save that 'wrong was more wrong
for the Catholic,' who had more light and guidance; but this of a
man's desertion filled them with contempt.
'It is a bad idea for a man to change,' said one.
It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued
me; and for myself, I believe it is the current philosophy in these
parts. I have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's not
only a great flight of confidence for a man to change his creed and
go out of his family for heaven's sake; but the odds are - nay, and
the hope is - that, with all this great transition in the eyes of
man, he has not changed himself a hairbreadth to the eyes of God.
Honour to those who do so, for the wrench is sore. But it argues
something narrow, whether of strength or weakness, whether of the
prophet or the fool, in those who can take a sufficient interest in
such infinitesimal and human operations, or who can quit a
friendship for a doubtful process of the mind. And I think I
should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for
other words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and
truth, and find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other
communions
The phylloxera was in the neighbourhood; and instead of wine we
drank at dinner a more economical juice of the grape - La
Parisienne, they call it. It is made by putting the fruit whole
into a cask with water; one by one the berries ferment and burst;
what is drunk during the day is supplied at night in water: so,
with ever another pitcher from the well, and ever another grape
exploding and giving out its strength, one cask of Parisienne may
last a family till spring. It is, as the reader will anticipate, a
feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste.
What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before I left
St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon of Mialet,
a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St.
Etienne de Vallee Francaise, or Val Francesque, as they used to
call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of St.
Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me an empty
carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept hard upon my tracks,
and near the summit overtook me. The driver, like the rest of the
world, was sure I was a pedlar; but, unlike others, he was sure of
what I had to sell. He had noticed the blue wool which hung out of
my pack at either end; and from this he had decided, beyond my
power to alter his decision, that I dealt in blue-wool collars,
such as decorate the neck of the French draught-horse.
I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for I dearly
desired to see the view upon the other side before the day had
faded. But it was night when I reached the summit; the moon was
riding high and clear; and only a few grey streaks of twilight
lingered in the west. A yawning valley, gulfed in blackness, lay
like a hole in created nature at my feet; but the outline of the
hills was sharp against the sky. There was Mount Aigoal, the
stronghold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as an active
undertaking leader, deserves some mention among Camisards; for
there is a spray of rose among his laurel; and he showed how, even
in a public tragedy, love will have its way. In the high tide of
war he married, in his mountain citadel, a young and pretty lass
called Mariette. There were great rejoicings; and the bridegroom
released five-and-twenty prisoners in honour of the glad event.
Seven months afterwards, Mariette, the Princess of the Cevennes, as
they called her in derision, fell into the hands of the
authorities, where it was like to have gone hard with her. But
Castanet was a man of execution, and loved his wife. He fell on
Valleraugue, and got a lady there for a hostage; and for the first
and last time in that war there was an exchange of prisoners.
Their daughter, pledge of some starry night upon Mount Aigoal, has
left descendants to this day.
Modestine and I - it was our last meal together - had a snack upon
the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, she standing by me in
the moonlight and decorously eating bread out of my hand. The poor
brute would eat more heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of
affection for me, which I was soon to betray.
It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Gard, and we met no one but
a carter, visible afar off by the glint of the moon on his
extinguished lantern.
Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper; fifteen miles
and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours!
