Part 8

"At Pontoise we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them through rain and sunshine so long."--R. L. S.]

"You may paddle all day long," he concludes; "but it is when you come back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek." Yet he was ever an adventurer in search of beauty, and who shall say his quest was vain?

"The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"

"After repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home."--R. L. STEVENSON.

I.

There will, of course, be differences of opinion as to which is the town most worthy of this description; but there is surely no better judge than Mr. Joseph Pennell, who has seen every place of any historic or natural attraction on the Continent, and whose taste for the picturesque none will call in question. He is the author of the phrase that heads this chapter, as applied to the little-known town of Le Puy, "chief place" of the Department of Haute Loire in the south of France. It is one of the few towns that have more than justified the mental pictures I had formed of them before seeing the real thing. But Le Puy is not only the most conceivably picturesque of towns; it is deeply interesting in its character and history, no less than in its appearance.

With the exception of Mr. Pennell, and among a circle of people who have travelled much in France, I have met none who have ever visited Le Puy. A young English governess to whom I spoke at a little Protestant temple in the town had been staying there for close upon a year, and had not met a single English visitor; so it would appear one has an opportunity here to write of a place that is still untrampled by the tourist hordes that devastate fair Normandy.

There are many and excellent reasons why few English or American tourists make their way to this quaint and beautiful town of the French highlands. It lies 352 miles by rail from Paris, and can only be reached by a fatiguing journey in trains that seem to be playing at railways, and have no serious intention of arriving anywhere. A good idea of the roundabout railway service will be gathered from the fact that the actual distance of the town from Paris is nearly 100 miles less than the length of the railway journey. It can be reached by leaving the Mediterranean line at Lyons and continuing for the best part of a day on tiresome local trains; or via Orleans and Clermont Ferrand, which would surely require the best part of two days. It was by the latter route, and in easy stages, that I first arrived there in the early evening of a grey June day four years ago.

Between Clermont Ferrand and Le Puy the railway traverses some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe, but nothing that one sees on the way prepares one for the sensation of the first glimpse of this wonderful mountain-town. The train has been steadily puffing its slow way by green valleys and pine-clad hills, across gorges as deep as the deepest in Switzerland, and past little red-roofed hamlets for hours, when suddenly, as it seems, a great peak thrusts itself heavenward, carrying on its back a mass of tiny buildings, and on the top of all an immense statue of the Virgin. Then another seems to spring up from the valley, holding a church upon its head, and the whole country now, as far as eye can reach, is studded with great conical hills thrown up in some far-off and awful boiling of earth. Curiously, the train seems turning tail on this wonderful scene, and one by one the different objects that had suddenly attracted our attention are lost to view, while we pursue a circuitous route, which in a quarter of an hour brings them all into view again, and presently we have arrived at the station of Le Puy, by the side of the little river Dolezon, between which and the broader Borne extends the hill whereon the town is built.

II.

The modern part of the town lies close to the railway in the level of the valley, and as there is a population of more than 20,000 people, the life of the streets is brisk enough to suggest a town of five times that size in England. Along the Avenue de la Gare, the Boulevard St. Jean, and the Rue St. Haon we go, wary of the electric trams, to our hotel opposite the spacious Place du Breuil, where spouts a handsome fountain to the memory of a local metal-worker who furnished the town with its beautiful Musée Crozatier, and where the elegant architecture of the Municipal Theatre, the Palais de Justice and the Préfecture supply a touch of modern dignity that contrasts not unpleasantly with the ancient and natural grandeur of the town.

I have stayed in many a strange hotel, but that of the "Ambassadeurs," whither we repaired, is perhaps the most uncommon in my experience. It was reached from the main street through a long, dark tunnel, opening at the end into a badly-lighted court, whence a flight of stairs gave entrance to the hotel building, which inside was like an old and partially-furnished barracks, with wide stone stairs and gloomy passages eminently adapted for garrotting. But the bedroom was commodious, and its windows gave on another market-place, where had been the original frontage of the hotel. For all its cheerless appearance, the "Ambassadeurs" was by no means uncomfortable, and, needless to say, the cooking was excellent.

There are some towns that ask of you only to wander their streets, and others that challenge you to closer acquaintance with their sights. Paris or Brussels, for example, pours its bright life through boulevard and park, and you are charmed to walk about with no urgent call to any place in particular; but who can linger in Princes Street of Edinburgh with the grey old castle inviting him to climb up to it, or the Calton Hill boldly advertising itself with its mock Roman remains? Le Puy has both the charm of the quaintest kinds of street life and the challenge of its rare and curious monuments.

One has a restless feeling, a sense of things that "must be done," when one catches a glimpse of the stately old cathedral standing high on the hill, and the massive Rock of Corneille with the great figure of Notre Dame de France on top, or the church of St. Michel pricking up so confidently on its isolated rock. The natural curiosity of man is such that he cannot be content until he has clambered to these and other high places in and around Le Puy. One makes first for the cathedral, and a bewildering labyrinth of ancient and evil-smelling lanes has to be wandered through before the building is reached. These little streets are all paved with cobbles of black lava, and many of the houses are built in part of the same material. Their dirtiness is unqualified, and yet the people seem to live long amid their squalor, for at every other door we note women of old years busy with their needles and pillows making the lace, which is one of the chief industries of the town.

III.

The nearer we come to the cathedral the more difficult is it to observe its general proportions, and, indeed, it can only be seen to advantage from one or other of the neighbouring heights. But it is a building that, in almost any position, would still be remarkable, as it is a striking example of Romanesque architecture. The great porch is reached by a splendid flight of steps, sixty in number, where in the second week of August each year pilgrims come in their thousands to kneel and worship the Black Virgin, the chief glory of the town in the eyes of its inhabitants. The builders of the cathedral have striven to combine dignity and austerity, and the impression which the outside of the building makes upon the visitor is strangely at variance with the flummery that surrounds the worship of the Black Virgin within. One feels that the men who back in the twelfth century reared these massive walls and built this beautiful cloister had not their lives dominated by a cheap and ugly wooden doll such as their fellows of to-day bow down before. We found the sacristan a young man of most amiable disposition; so friendly indeed that on one of our subsequent visits, and during the office of High Mass, when he was attending upon the celebrant, he nodded familiarly to us on recognising us among the congregation. If the truth must be told, we were more interested in the contents of the sacristy than in the cathedral itself. Here were stored many rare and beautiful examples of ancient wood-carving, picture frames, missals, altar vessels, and, above all, a manuscript Bible of the ninth century. This last-mentioned we were shown only on condition that we would tell no one in the town. Then opening a great oaken cupboard, he produced first a brass monstrance, similar to the usual receptacle for the consecrated wafer of the Eucharist, but containing instead behind the little glass disc a tiny morsel of white feather sewn to a bit of cloth.

"This," said he, "is a piece of the wing of the angel who visited Joan of Arc."

"Indeed," I remarked, with every evidence of surprise, "and who got hold of the feather first?"

"The mother of Joan," he replied, as though he were giving the name of his tailor; and he proceeded to describe with much circumstance and detail the wonderful things that had been done by this bit of feather. "It is, M'sieu, an object of the greatest veneration, and has attracted pilgrims from far parts of France. It has cured the most terrible diseases; it has brought riches to those who were poor; it has brought children to barren women,"--and many other wonders I have forgotten.

In a very similar setting he showed us a tiny thorn. "This, M'sieu, is a thorn from the crown that Jesus wore on the Cross," and while we were still gazing upon the sacred relic he produced a small box sealed with red wax and having a glass lid, behind which was preserved a good six inches of "the true Cross." I thought of a Frenchman whom I had met at an hotel recently--an unbelieving fellow--who said that there was as much wood of "the true Cross" preserved in the churches of France as would make a veritable ladder into heaven. Most wonderful of all, the sacristan dived his hand into a sort of cotton bag, and produced a Turkish slipper, worn and battered, but probably no more than fifty years old. The good man handled the thing as if it had been a cheap American shoe he was offering for sale. Then looking us boldly in the face, he said, "_Voici, le soulier de la Sainte Vierge_." The shoe of the holy Virgin! One did one's best to be overcome with emotion, but I claim no success in that effort. The ecclesiastical showman drew our attention to the pure Oriental character of the workmanship of the sacred slipper, but I declare frankly that it was not until the Protestant pastor of the town mentioned the fact next day that I realised that the shoe was "a No. 9!" Among the other contents of the sacristy we noted two maces, one of elaborate design richly ornamented in silver, and the other of plain wood only slightly carved. We were told they were carried in funeral processions, "the ornamental one for people of good family and the plain one for common folk." Oh, land of liberty, equality, fraternity!

After exhibiting to us the costly vestments of the bishops, canons, and other dignitaries of the church, the sacristan came with us to point out the far-famed Black Virgin of the cathedral, which a first inspection of the interior had failed to reveal to us. We now found it to be a small and ugly image fixed above the high altar. It was hardly bigger than a child's doll, and was dressed in a little coat of rich brocade. From the middle of the idol a smaller head, presumably that of the Holy Child, projected through the cloth, and this, like the head of the larger figure, wore a heavy crown of bright gilt. I do not pretend to remember one tithe of the miracles attributed to this most venerated object by our good friend, but I know at least that he assured me it had burned for thirty-six hours during the Revolution without being consumed, and had thrice been thrown by sacrilegious hands into the river Borne, only to reappear mysteriously in its place over the altar. This story does not run on all fours with the curt description of the image given by M. Paul Joanne in his guide to the Cevennes--"an imitation of the old Madonna destroyed in the Revolution." It is eminently a case in which "you pays your money and you takes your choice." I reckoned the entertainment provided by the sacristan cheap at a franc.

IV.

Enough, perhaps, has been indicated to give some idea of the superstitious character of the people of Le Puy. Nowhere in France have I found so many evidences of mediæval superstition; the Black Virgin is throned supreme in the minds of the people, and, unlike most French communities--if we except the priest-ridden peasantry of Brittany--the men-folk of Le Puy seem to be as devoted as their women to the church. The black coats of the clergy swarm in street and alley. In the town itself there are many institutions packed with young priests, and some little way out, on the banks of the Borne, there is a training school as large as a military barracks, with the pale faces of black-gowned youths peeping from many windows. Almost every conceivable type of priest is to be encountered here, from the gaunt, ascetic enthusiast to the fat and ruby-nosed Friar Tuck. The people of the southern highlands, like the old-fashioned folk of Scotland, have had for generations a passion to see at least one of their family in the priesthood, apart very often from any consideration of fitness, moral or intellectual. Here, as I should judge, is the reason for one's seeing so many coarse and ignorant faces among the priests of Le Puy.

The gigantic figure of the Virgin crowning the rock of Corneille, behind the cathedral, is reached by a long and toilsome pathway, but the view from the top--for the statue is hollow, and contains a stairway inside with numerous peep-holes--is perhaps unequalled in the whole of France. For mile upon mile the country stretches away in great billowy masses of dark mountain and green plain, and the little white houses with their red roofs are sprinkled everywhere around Le Puy, suggesting a sweet and wholesome country life that is hard to reconcile with the dark superstition of the town. This monument, however, is of little interest--a vulgar modern affair cast from 213 guns taken at Sebastopol. More to our taste is the quaint little building called the Baptistry of St. John, which, standing near the cathedral, takes us back to the fourth century, and earlier still, for it is built on the foundation of an ancient Roman temple. You see, Le Puy was a flourishing Roman town when our forefathers in England were living in wattle huts. We have made some progress in England since those far-off days, but here, though changes rude and great have taken place, one may reasonably doubt whether there is much to choose between the present condition of Le Puy and that vanished past.

V.

Threading our way downhill among the filthy _ruelles_, we pass into the wide and modern Boulevard Carnot, where the Sunday market is being held and everything may be bought, from a tin-opener to a donkey, from a rosary to a cow. A spirited statue of the great La Fayette, who was born not far away, at the castle of Chavagnac, stands at the top of this street, where the new Boulevard Gambetta strikes westward with its clanging electric trams. Down near the river-side, where the market comes to an end, we visit the old church of the Dominicans, dedicated to St. Laurence, and in a dark and musty corner we are shown a tomb with a recumbent figure carved upon it. Here reposes, we are told, the dust of the greatest of the heroes of old France--none other than that mighty warrior Du Guesclin, memories of whom the wanderer in French by-ways meets with as often as the tourist in England comes upon a house that sheltered Charles II. after the battle of Worcester. There is every reason for believing that the valorous but ugly Du Guesclin--he was an "object of aversion" to his own parents--was buried at St. Denis, but my excellent M. Joanne assures me that this statue is an authentic likeness of the hero; and the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (which in another place mentions St. Denis as the place of burial) says that the church of St. Laurence "contains the remains of Du Guesclin." What will you?

The electric tram lands us at the suburb of Espaly, and from the high road we could almost throw a stone to the massive rock, with its castle-like walls enclosing on the top a little garden of trees. But it is another matter to pick our way, ankle-deep in mire, to the entrance-gate, through the hovels that surround it. Clustering to the rock we pass are buildings from which priests and "sisters" come and go with a surprising mingling of the sexes, and when we have climbed to the top a dark-eyed sister shows us for half a franc a collection of the most extraordinary Romish trash we have ever looked upon. The chapel is free to us, and within its incense-laden interior we find several comfortable priests poring over books or sitting with insensate stare at the candles burning on a particularly tawdry altar. The place is in a way unique, as the chapel is not a building at all, but is hewn out of the volcanic rock, being thus an artificial grotto consecrated to worship. Its rough walls are hung with votive tablets and studded with crude stuccos of many saints, giving it the appearance of a toy bazaar. Only recently the large bronze statue of St. Joseph that crowned the rock of Espaly, above the grotto-chapel, was blown down, and visitors are invited to contribute towards the cost of replacing it.

A little distance away is the higher and more remarkable volcanic mass known as the Pic d'Aiguille, with a handsome and well-proportioned church upon its summit. One has to climb a long and winding footpath and then close on three hundred steps to reach the building, which we found quite deserted, some village lads doing the "cake-walk" around an angelic form with a box of donations to St. Michael, the patron saint of the deserted sanctuary. These _gamins_ also seemed to derive much pleasure from ringing the bell still hanging in the ancient tower. It was a matter of speculation why the priests should continue to use the stuffy and unwholesome grotto of St. Joseph, with this airy, noble building lying vacant. We can only suppose that the toil of climbing the higher rock is greater than their zeal. Near by the base of the Pic d'Aiguille one notices a curious conjunction of old paganism and modern mariolatry--an ancient temple of Diana flanked by a massive crucifix on the one hand and a modern Gothic fountain and shrine to the Virgin on the other.

VI.

After all, and somewhat unwillingly, I find that I have written rather of the religious side of this interesting town than of its picturesqueness. But sensational as the first impression of its unique and beautiful outlines undoubtedly is, it is not that, nor yet the quaint and entertaining habits of the people, that comes uppermost in the mind after some days' acquaintance with the place. One leaves Le Puy convinced, almost at a glance, of its claim to be considered the most picturesque town in Europe, but depressed with the abounding evidence that its people, despite their electric trams and their fine modern buildings, are still largely the thralls of darkest superstition. For the difference between the religion that here passes for Roman Catholicism and that we know by the same name in England is greater than the difference between the latter and the most Calvanistic Protestantism. To me, at least, Le Puy will be ever the city of the Black Virgin.

The Country of the Camisards

"These are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of the Cevennes."--R. L. STEVENSON.

I.

The word Camisard in the south of France, like Covenanter in Scotland, recalls

"Old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago."

Both describe people who had much in common, for the Camisards were the Covenanters of France. The origin of the term need not detain us more than a moment. It is variously attributed to the "Children of God" having worn a _camise_, or linen shirt, as a sort of uniform; to _camisade_, which means a night attack, that having been a feature of their warfare; while some historians have derived it from _camis_, a road runner. Enough that it stands for a race of people whose devotion to the Reformed Faith, whose fearless stand for religious liberty, entitles them to rank among the heroes of Protestantism.

As one may suppose that the general reader, however well informed, is likely to be somewhat hazy in his knowledge of the Camisards--unless, indeed, he has had the good fortune to read one of the later, as it is one of the best, of Mr. S. R. Crockett's romances, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_, which gives a vivid and moving picture of the Protestant rebellion in the Cevennes--it may be well that I set down at once a brief outline of the events which, two centuries ago, made these highlands of the South one of the historic regions in storied France.

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, was a transforming episode in the history of Europe. It represented the triumphant issue of the sinister policy of the Jesuits, who had long been scheming to undo the work of the Huguenot wars, whereby the rights of Protestants to hold public worship and to take part in the government of the country had been recognised as a sort of political compromise.