1910a LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDDD31'^S3S1 r; ^°^ ^o-n^. ^•1°^ •\ 5.°-;^. V : ^> -"^ lO^ •l*^' '^ .5°^ o_ * , . '.* ,'^' "^ •-NWS?** ^^"^ ^^ V ^* 4/ «^. •s^^^NK* A Tm LAKE ENGUSH CLASSICS General Editor LINDSAY TODD DAMON. A. B. Professor of Eug^Iish Literature and Klietoric in Browu University ADDISON— The Sir Roger De Coverley Papers— Aebutt 30c AMERICAN POEMS- English Requirements— Greevjer 25c BROWNING— Seiected Poems— Reynolds 40c BUN VAN -The Pilgrim's Progress— Lath am 30c BURKE— Speech on Conciliation with America— Denney 25c CARLYLE— Essay on Burns— Atton 25c CHAUCER-Selections— Greenlaw 40c COOPER— Last of the Mohicans— Lewis 40c COLERIDGE The Ancient Mariner, i , . , , ,_ LOWELL- Vision of Sir Launfal, / 1 vol.— MoODT ZSc DEFOE- Robinson Crusoe— Hastings — c DE QUINCEY— Jean of Arc and Selections— Mood y 2Sc DE OUINCEY-The Flight of a Tartar Trlbe-P^RENCH 25c DICKENS -A Tale of Two Cities— Baldwin 40c DICKENS— A Christmas Carol, etc.— Broadus , 30c DICKENS David Copperfield— Baldwin SOc DRYDEN— Palamon and Arcite— Oook , 25c EMERSON— Essays and Addr^ses- He ydrick 35c FRANKLIN— Autobiography— Griffin 30c GEORGE ELIOT— Silas Mamer— Hancock 30c GOLDSMITH- The Vicar of Wakefield— Morton 30c HAWTHORNE— The House of the Seven Gables— Herbick 3Sc HAWTHORNE— Twice-Told Tales— Herrick and Bruere 40c IRVING-Life of Goldsmith— Krapp 40c IRVING-The Sketch Book— Krapp 40c IRVING— Tales of a Traveller— and parts of The Sk'etch Book— Krapp 40c LINCOLN, WASHINGTON, WEBSTER— Addresscs-DENNEY 25c LONGFELLOW— Narrative Poems— Powell 40c MACAULAY— Essays on Addison and Johnson— Newcomer 30c MACAULAY— Essays on Milton and Addison- Newcomer 30c MACAULAY— Essays on Clive and Hastings— Newcomer 35c MILTON— L'Allegro, II Penseroso, Comns, and Lycidas— Neilson ZSc MILTON— Paradise Lost, Books I and II— Farley ZSc PALGRAVE— Golden Treasury— Newcomer 40c POE— Poems and Tales, Selected— Newcomer 30c POPE- Homer's Iliad, Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV— Oresst and Moody ZSc RUSKIN— Sesame and Lilies— Linn ZSc SCOTT— Ivanhoe—SlMONDS ■. 4Sc SCOTT— Lady of the Lake— Moody 30c SCOTT- Lay of the Last Minstrel— Moody and Willard ZSc SCOTT— Marmion— Mood Y and Willard SOc SCOTT— Ouentin Durward— Simon ds 45c SHAKSPERE- The Neilson Edition— Edited with Introductions, Notes, and Word Indexes by W. A. Neilson. As Yon Like It, Hamlet, Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Midsummer* Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, each ZSc SHAKSPERE— Merchant of Venice— Lovett 25c STEVENSON— Treasure Island— Broadus ZSc THACKERAY— Henry Esmond— Phelps SOc TENNYSON— Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, The Passing of Arthur. and other Poems— Reynolds 3Sc TENNYSON-The Princess— Oopeland ZSc SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY Educational Publishers CHICAQO NEW YORK ZTbeXafte lengUob Claeetce EDITED BY LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. Professor of English Literature and Rhetoric im Broutn UnivtrtUy AN INLAND VOYAGE AND TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON" • EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE BY ARTHUR WILLIS LEONARD, A. B. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS CHICAGO NEW YORK SCOTT, FORESMAjST AND COMPANY 9^^ Copyright 1910 BY SCOTT, rORESMAN AND COMPANY ©CI.A273310 I TABLE OF CONTEXTS. [ntroduction. page. I. Biographical Sketch 7 II. An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey.... 22 Til . Chronology 24 IV. A Brief Bibliography 2o A.UTHOR 's Preface 27 .A.N Inland Voyage 29 Antwerp to Boom 31 On the Willebroek Canal 35 The Royal Sport Nautique 40 At Maubeuge 45 On the Sambre Canalized 50 At Landreeies 70 Sambre and Oise Canal 74 The Oise in Flood 78 Origny Sainte-Benoite S6 Down the Oise 98 To Moy 98 La Fere of Cursed Memory 103 Through the Golden Valley 109 Noyon Cathedral Ill To Compiegne 115 At Compiegne 117 Changed Times 122 Church Interiors 127 Preey and the Marionettes 133 Back to the World 143 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Travels with a Donkey 145 Velay 147 The Greeu Donkey-Driver 153 T Have a Goad 162 Upper Gevaudan 16s Cheylard and Lnc 17'.' Our Lady of the Snows 183 The Monks 188 The Boarders 196 Across the Goulet 202 A Night Among the Pines 205 The Country of the Camisards 210 Pont de Montvert , 216 In the Valley of the Tarn ' 222 Florae 232 On the Valley of the Mimente 235 The Heart of the Country 239 The Last Day 247 Farewell, Modestine ^52 IXTKODUCTIOX I BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Eobcrt Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on Xo- vember 13, 1850. He came of a family conspicuous for worthy accomplishment. His mother was the daughter of Lewis Balfour, minister of the parish of Colinton, and granddaughter of James Balfour, a professor in the I^ni- versity of Edinburgh. His father, Thomas Stevenson, a nieml)er of a firm of lighthouse builders, continued with distinction a profession in which the family had already won notable success. The firm of Stevensons, which in- cluded Robert Louis's two uncles, Alan and David, built a large number of shore-lights and beacons, chief among them the noble deep-sea light of Skerryvore. Thomas Stevenson was a man fond of books and a somewhat prolific writer on subjects relating to his own profession; a man, his son records with pride, "of reputation comparatively small at home, 3^et filling the world." His chief success was Avon in his inventions for the improvement of light- house illumination, which "entitled their author to the name of one of mankind's benefactors." ^ That Louis should take up the hereditary profession of his family w^as at first assumed as a matter of course, but the leadings of his genius determined otherwise. Many of the influences of his boyhood w^re such as to awaken and stimulate an imaginative nature. The intervals of his formal schooling (which was rendered intermittent by his ^ Memories and Portraits : Thomas Stevenson. 7 3 INTEOD'UCTION frail health) were spent in travel, — to Germany and Hol- land, to Italy and :the south of France, to England, and, not least, to the lighthouses on the coast of Fife, in con- genial neighborhood to the sea. The impression made by all these fresh and changing experiences upon the quick imagination of the boy may be inferred from a passage written in later years: "When the Scotch chikl sees them first [the English windmills] he falls immediately in love ; and from that time forward windmills keep turning in his dreams. And so, in their degree, with every feature of the life and landscape. The warm, habitable age of towns and hamlets, the green, settled, ancient look of the country; the bush hedgerows, stiles, and privy pathways in the fields, the sluggish, brimming rivers; chalk and smock- frocks; chimes of bells and the rapid, pertly sounding Eng- lish speech — they are all new to the curiosity; they are all set to English airs in the child's story that he tells himself at night." The effect of such scenes, and of those in the neighbor- hood of the Manse of C'olinton, where he often visited his grandfather, the Reverend Mr. Balfour, was further increased by Louis's love of reading. Even before he could read with ease — and that ability came some- what tardily, — he began to take keen delight in listening to romantic and adventurous stories, stories of the sort that always appealed to him strongly even in liis maturest years. "For my part," he says, speaking of his boyhood preference, ^^I liked a story to begin with an old wayside inn where, ^towards the end of the year 17 — , several gentlemen were playing bowls.' . . . Give me a highwayman, and I was full to the brim ; a Jacobite would do, but a highwayman was my favorite dish." Such a boy would naturally turn early to writing, though A History of Moses, dictated in his sixth year, and Travels in Perth, written in his ninth, bear no sign of INTKUJUUCTIUN 9 special precocity. The chief Rignificance of these early efforts is that their author was already busy on his "own private end, w^hich was to learn to write/' ^ When he was seventeen, Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh, with the intention of ultimately becoming an engineer. At the various schools which he had previ- ously attended — among them tlie Edinl)urgh Academy — his industry had been languid and interrupted because of his ill health and natural disinclination to perform set tasks. Now, his application to the work of the Uni- versity classes was much impaired 1)y "ai; extensive and highly rational system of truantry.^' But if he had little or no interest in prescribed studies, his mind, "insatiably curious in the aspects of life,'' found much to absorb it. He read widely in English poetry, fiction, and essays, and, if less widely, still considerabh^, in French literature. He took a great interest in Scottish history, and was a genuine student of it. He had a share in founding the Edinburgh Literary Magazine. He be- came a member of the famous Speculative Society. — an undergraduate literary organization which had enrolled Walter Scott among its members, — and took an active part in its discussions. In consequence of much reading and speculation, he began to question certain matters of reli- gious dogma. This attitude of doubt caused for a time a breach between him and his father, who held a strictly orthodox faith; yet the son, though greatly grieved at a difference with one for whom he felt so much affection and esteem, was too sincere wdth himself to conceal his convictions. In the meantime, steady application to what for him was the main business of these university years was showing results. Continuing to practise the art of writing *'as ^ For the full text of this passage, often quoted as good coun- sel for young writers, see Memories and Portraits: A College Magazine. 20 INTKOD'UCTIOX men learn to whittle, in a wager witli liimself," he produced much in both prose and verse — romances, poetical dramas, lyrics, epics — most of which he kept to himself and finally destroyed. In his twent3'-third year he made his first con- tribution to a regular periodical, an essay entitled Roads. In the same year several friends whose opinion he valued urged him to adopt letters as a profession. Several years before this, his purpose to follow the calling of his father, a purpose never more than half- heartedly entertained, had been given over entirely. This change of plan was not made because Stevenson had shown no aptitude for engineering ; in the same year in which he made his decision he received from the Edinburgh Society of Arts a silver medal for a paper on the improvement of lighthouse apparatus. Nor was the engineer's life likely to prove wholly uncongenial, the opportunity for seafaring appealing to him strongly. But for the drudgery of the oftice he was entirely unfitted by reason of his health and his impatience of irksome confinement. Accordingly, in 1871, it was decided, with great reluctance on the fathers part, that Louis should study law. For. his legal studies he manifested somewhat more zeal than for t^e more mechanical subjects that preceded them, though his work was interrupted by a severe illness, with symptoms which threatened consumption. In 1875, he passed his examina- tions with credit, and was admitted to the bar of Scotland. For a time, chiefly to please his parents, he made some attempt to practise ; but, though he attended trials and ap- peared in legal wig and gown, the sum total of his briefs was four. The absence of clients was no sorrow to him ; there w^as all the more leisure for his chosen craft. But even these none too serious attempts he felt to be an impediment to the exercise of his true occupation, and he soon abandoned them altogether. Eeleased from the restrictions of a formal profession, he began to lead a life INTROD'UCTION 11 of such sort as he had long desired. For the next three years he spent much time between Edinburgh, London, and Fontainebleau, in frequent contact with literary men and artists, who, of kindred enthusiasms with himself, were able to discern his unusual promise and in turn to stimulate and inspire him. His life during those days, free from convention and touched with vagabondage, yet filled with the gro^^■ing interests of his profession, passed very pleas- antly. Frequent excursions in the open air, among them those recounted in An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donl-ey, insured him passable health. He was be- ginning to find a footing as an author, and though as yet recognition from the public was slight, several dis- criminating critics saw in him the signs of genius. In 1877 he published his first story, A Lodging for the Night, and, in the next year, his first book. An Inland Voyage. This was followed in 1879 by Travels with a Donkey. About this time he wrote also a considerable number of essays, notably several of the series afterwards printed in Virginihus Pueriscjue and Familiar Studies of Men and Bools; the volume of fantastic tales entitled New Arabian Nights; and the two stories Will o' the Mill and The Sire de Maletroit's Door. In 1876, upon his return from his travels in the Cevennes, Stevenson met at Grez an American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, who, having separated from her husband, was living with her two children in France. He immediately fell in love. When, in the early part of 1879, Mrs. Os- bourne returned to America, he determined, quite unwisely in the judgment of his family and friends, to follow her. That Stevenson should cross the Atlantic practically as a steerage passenger, and, after his arrival in Xew York, continue his journey in an emigrant train, was a proceed- ing quite in accordance with his unconventional character. Moreover, he had little money, and was too independent to 12 INTEOD'UCTTON apply to his father for assistance. Once thrown among emigrants, with whom his contact was, as with all men, sympathetic and observing, he turned his experiences to good account, both for enjoyment at the time and for literary material afterwards. The journey is pleasantly recorded in An Amateur Emif/rant and Across the Plains. In California he fell upon evil days. Poverty, sickness, and exposure all but cost him his life. But even in these most adverse circumstances he kept his customary bravery of spirit, and, though he could write but little, still continued to write. Besides some unimportant work for California newspapers and two or three essays, he wrote The Pavilion on the Linl's and The Amateur Emir/rant, and drafted Prince Otto. Happily the period of straitened circumstances did not last long. In April Stevenson re- ceived from his father the assurance of an income sufficient for his needs. In May he and Mrs. Osbourne, who six months before had been divorced from her husband, were married. As soon as he had recovered, under his wife's nursing, from the worst of his illness, they w^nt to live for a time in a deserted mining camp above Calistoga — the scene of The Silverado Squatters. The following August Stevenson returned with his wife to Scotland. For the next seven years, in quest of health for both, they made frequent changes of residence, sojourn- ing at different places in Scotland, at Davos Platz, at the pleasfint Chrdet la Solitude at Hyeres, and finally at Bournemouth, England. Under these conditions, to which the energies of most men would have succumbed entirely, Stevenson continued to work, not only persistently but bravely and cheerfully, as if indeed, as he said, the medicine bottle on his chimney and the blood on his hand- kerchief were but accidents. It was during these years that popular recognition, so long withheld, came to him at last. Treasure I si and, which, had attracted but little notice when INTEOD'UCTIOX 13 publislied as a serial in a boys' paper, achieved, upon its appearance in book form in 1883, a rapid and widespread popularity. Three years later, the author's reputation was still further increased, and his supremacy among tlie younger English writers of the day was established, by two stories. Kidnapped and Dr. Jel-yll and Mr. Hyde. In Kidnapped, if the interest of romantic adventure was not, in. the minds of some readers, so exciting or so sustained as in Treasure Island, there was yet the sign of a surer hand for character, and the very atmosphere of Scotland. Dr. Jel-yll and Mr. llyde, in which the conception of two opposing moral natures in man was presented in realistic- ally concrete form, with vivid effects of mystery and terror, produced an even w4der response. To this period belong also two remarkable tales, Thrawn Janet and The Merry Men, and two volumes of poetry, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods. In 1887 Stevenson began that period of wanderings which was to lead him through many new scenes and strange adventures, and to end in romantic exile. Feeling, upon the death of his father, no longer so strictly bound to the neighborhood of his native country, he was free to follow the urgent advice of his physician to try the chances of health in a complete change of climate. Colorado seemed to offer the desired advantages, and, moreover, Stevenson's reputation in the United States made that country seem particularly attractive. 'Accordingly, in August, acompanied by his wife, his mother, and his step- son, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, he set sail for New York. Far from displeased when, after leaving port, he discovered that he had taken passage in a cattle boat carrying a strange cargo of horses and apes, he made the best of the situation, and, with characteristic enthusiasm, enjo3^ed the experience *^to the mast-head." "We could really be a little at sea/' 14 INTROD'UCTION he wrote, — "]\ry heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as that.'' In New York he met with flattering evidences that his fame had preceded him, and he no douht could have spent more time there very pleasantly. But the condition of his health made it necessary for him to seek more favorable surroundings at once. Instead of going to Colorado, how- ever, as had been the original intention, the family de- cided to spend the winter in the Aclirondacks. Here, in a house on Saranac Lake, they remained from October until April. The climate, though intensely cold, proved on the whole favorable to Stevenson's health ; and, in a region that reminded him of his native Scotland, he was able to work to good purpose. He began The Master of Ballantrae and wrote besides a series of essays. Some of these, Pulvis et Umbra, The Lantern Bearers, and A Christmas Sermon, reveal the best of his characteristic powers in essay writing. In April came fresh plans. We have seen how Stevenson delighted in the sea. "The two uses of wealth," he had once written, "are to afford a yacht and a stringed quar- tette." The romance of the South Seas had long fascinated him, and a favorite amusement on winter nights at Saranac had been to plan a South Sea cruise. Wealth sufficient to charter a yacht was forthcoming in the form of a legacy from his father; besides, he had contracted with the Ameri- can publishers, Messrs. McClure, for a series of letters on his cruises, to be written if his health should be restored. In June, 188(S, he set sail with his family from San Francisco in the yacht Casco. Their course lay three thou- sand miles to the Marquesas, and thither for three weeks the Casco "ploughed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help." Stevenson's delight in the cruise was great, and the inliuence of the sea began to tell on his health for the better. INTKOIWCTION ) T) In late July, the Casco came to anchor in the harbor of Nukahiva, in the Marquesas. As the land was revealed to Stevenson with the coming of the dawn, there fell upon him the spell of tlie South Seas. "The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are moments apart, and touched a virginity of sense. . . . The land heaved up in peak^^ and rising vales; it fell in cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fifty modulations in a scale of pearl and rose and olive ; and it was crowned above with opalescent clouds. The schooner turned upon her heel; the anchor plunged. It was a small sound, a great event; my soul went down with these moorings whence no windlass may fetch it up; and I, and some part of my ship's company, were from that hour the bondslaves of the isles of Vivien." ^ Stevenson was not to see his own land again. After a three weeks' stay at Nukahiva he l)egan a series of cruises lasting more than two years. Now in the Casco, now in the trading vessels the Equator and the Janet Nicoll, he visited almost every important group of islands in the Eastern and Central Pacific. Traveling among peoples scarcely emerged from barbarism, he found them in many ways attractive and lovable, and through an uncommon power to enter into sympathy with native feeling, made many devoted friends among them. His tolerance towards the traditional customs and moral codes of the islanders enabled him to break down the barriers of reserve whicli stood between them and most foreigners, so that he was admitted into intimate relations with some of the chiefs. Men of all classes and interests, even the despised half- caste whites, found him kindly and courteous. During these cruises and the various sojourns that inter- rupted them — at Tahiti, Hawaii, or Samoa — the work of ' The South Seas. 16 INTEOD'UCTION writing went forward. At sea, he began The Wrecker, in collaboration with his stepson, and set about composing the long promised letters on his travels. At Honolulu, he completed The Master of Ballantrae and two ballads based on native life and legend. The Feast of Famine and The Song of Rahero. In Samoa he wrote The Bottle Imp, the first of his prose tales of South Sea life. In the meantime, he had become convinced that no other climate was so favorable to his health as that of the islands and the neighboring seas. In 1890, he purchased, near Apia, on the island of Upolu, Samoa, a tract of about four hundred acres, intending at first to make it a winter home and the base for further cruises. Twice he had made plan3 to visit his own country and had gone some distance on the journey, but each time, falling sick, he had prolonged his stay. Finally, after a severe illness in Sidney, he gave up tiie hope of seeing Scotland again. Accordingly, in Xovember, he returned to x\pia, and set about the arduous labors of making the estate habitable. Upon this estate, to which he gave the name of Vailima (Five Rivers), Stevenson lived until his death. It stood about three miles from the coast, and six hundred feet above the sea. Behind it rose the slopes of Vaea Moun- tain, clothed with a dense growth of tropical forest. In these surroundings, at the head of a large household, which included, besides his immediate family, a number of native servants, or ^^boys," the exile lived in the relation of a Highland chief to his clan. Those sulgect to his authority he ruled kindly, yet very firmly, and won from them a strong devotion. His influence spread quickly beyond his own household; he was consulted, says his stepson, on every conceivable subject. Soon his interest in the natives involved him in local politics. Two officials appointed by the powers in INTROD'UCTION 17 control of Samoan affairs — Gerinanv, England, and the United States — were clearly gnilty of unsympathetic and unjust dealings with the natives. The situation was further complicated by the rivalry of two claimants to the throne, the chiefs Malietoa Laupepa and Mataafa. Laupepa was supported by the representatives of the powers, and Mataafa, notwithstanding the strength of his claims, was forced to withdraw. In this troubled state of affairs Stevenson intervened. Whether his intervention was Judicious, has been doubted, l)ut his influence was wholly designed to further peace and to secure justice to the islanders. His protest against the misapplication of the trusts of office, published under the title A Footnote to HMory, brought about the recall of the two incompetent officials. But so strong was the resentment raised against him by this work that for a time he firmly believed lie was in danger of being deported.^ In spite of the many interruptions to which he was sub- ject, Stevenson's life in Samoa was, on the whole, more favorable to literary work than any he had yet enjoyed. His health, though suffering occasional lapses, was much improved ; consumption had definitely ceased. For two years, at least, he was able to work as he had never worked before. He would often begin at six in the morning, before the rest of the family were astir, and continue until noon ; at times he would labor all day long. Even in a year of relatively slight production (1891) he completed the letters on the South Seas and The Beach of Falesa, in his own opinion the first realistic South Sea story. The following year, despite the demand made upon his time and energy by A Footnote to History, he wrote David Bat- four, published Across the Plains, and undertook, besides a ^For a full account of the Samoan troubles, see A Footnote to Eisiory. 18 INTROD'UCTION life of his family, the writing of six different romances. Of these only the Ehb Tide, begun in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, was completed by Stevenson's own hand.^ But he had long been spending his strength too freely. There came a time of depression, when some of the friends to whom he wrote (he acknowledged no change of feeling to his family) could detect a flagging of the spirit that had so long sustained him. He gave expression to discontent with his own life and work, and even spoke of a premoni- tion of death. This depression, however, was followed by a renewal of the old time buoyancy and energy. As he worked upon Weir of Hermiston, he had a sense of powers as yet unrealized, an assurance that his greatest work was yet to come. But the death of which he had felt a premonition was near at hand. During the morning of December 3, 1894, he had worked hard on Hermiston. In the evening, while gayly talking with his wife, he fell at her feet, unconscious, and in a few hours he was dead. His death brought forth new tributes of the love and loyalty of the Samoans. Twice during his life he had had unusual evidence of this: once when a feast was given to him and his family such as had never been given to white people before ; again, and more touchingly, when a number of chiefs whose release he had secured from prison during the troubled political times, built a road for him with their own hands and called it "The Eoad of the Loving Hearts." Now, among those who sought to do him their last rever- ence, came one of these chiefs. "Behold !" he cried, "Tusi- tala^ is dead. We were in prison, and he cared for us. ^Of the other five, Sopliia Scarlet, Heatliercat, The Young Chevalier, and TFeir of Hermiston remain in their unfinished form; St. Ives was completed by A. T. Qiiiller-Coueh, in 1897. -''The Teller of Tales" — the name the Samoans applied to Stevenson. INTKOD'UCTION 19^ We were sick, and he made us well. We were hungry^ and he fed us. The day was no longer than his kindness. You are a great people, and full of love. Yet who among you is so great as Tusitala ? Wliat is your love to his love ?'' The next morning a party of forty of the natives cut a path through the forest to the summit of Mt. Vaea, and • others dug the grave upon the narrow ledge that crowns ; the height. Here, "under the wild and starry sky" ^ he I lies buried, his resting place marked by a simple tomb. I Stevenson's personality was many-sided, and a brief '. biographical sketch can not convey an adequate impression of the "spirit intense and rare" that exercised so strong a j fascination over his friends. Such a character eludes sum- [ mary, but if a single trait can be selected as representative, jit would seem to be the feeling and imagination of boy- hood still fresh and living in the man. Stevenson had an unusual power to recall in after years the senti- j ments and associations, as well as the happenings, of his I childhood. "And throughout his life," writes Mr. Balfour, I "for Stevenson to throw himself into any employment which would kindle his imagination was to see him trans- figured. ... He drove stray horses to the pound [this was at Vailima,] and it became a border foray. He held an inquiry into the theft of a pig, and he bore himself as if he were the Lord President of the Inner House." And so, too, certain natural objects which are charged with romantic suggestion to children never lost their power to move him. *'It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Some- thing must have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back to members of my race; and when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them with a proper story. Some places speak distinctly. Cer- -Eequiem in Underivoods. This poem of Stevenson 's is inscribed on the monument. 20 IXTEODUCTTON tain 'lark gardens cry aloud for murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck.''^ In this spirit of imaginative child's pla}-, the ready response to the influences that quicken the fancies of youth, lies much of the secret of Stevenson's charm as a writer for young people. Over against this essential spirit of boyishness, for a balance of character, was a counterweight of moral serious- ness and of genuine religious feeling. "The word must return," Stevenson once wrote to Sidney Colvin, "to the word duty. There are no rewards, and plenty of duties. And the sooner a man sees that and acts upon it like a gentleman or a fine old barbarian, the better for himself." And so again, in Songs of Travel: ' ' Wanted Volunteers To do their best for twoscore years! A ready soldier, here I stand Primed for Thy command, With burnished sword. ' ' The character of his religious faith, and its relation to his daily life, are reflected in the prayers composed at Vailima. FOR GRACE. ''Grant that we here before Thee may be set free from the fear of vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before us of our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others, and when the day comes, may die in peace. Deliver us from fear and favour, from mean hopes and from cheap pleasures. Have mercy on each in his deficiency; let him not be cast down; support the stumblers on the way, and give at last rest to the weai'y. ' ' Stevenson's position in the history of nineteenth century literature is a striking one. That he was "the most inter- esting and brilliant by far of those English writers whose life is comprised in the last half of the century,"^ is a judg '^Ilemories and Portraits: A gossip on a Novel of Dumas. "iSaintsbury : A Histonj of Nineteenth Century Literature, INTEOD'UCTION o]^ ment in which one may readily acquiesce, if only on the ground of the general quality and scoj^e of his work, and the stamp which it bears of an unusual and charming personality. His poetry, which is not, to be sure, of the best, and which often lacks his characteristic fitness and finish of phrase, has nevertheless found many approving readers; and his essays, even though, when critical, they show the want of the broadest sympathy and the soundest judgment, are delightfully graceful, fresh, and stimulating. But apart from all these qualities, Stevenson has another claim to consideration : he most fully represents, and most strongly influenced, the return to the spirit of romantic adventure in fiction. For a generation before his stories began to catch the attention of the public, romance, almost entirely supplanted since the waning of Scott's influence by the realistic novel of ordinary life, had f@r the most part been neglected by the more important writers and more critical readers alike. The enthusiastic welcome given to Treasure Island and the stories published by Ste- venson during the next decade, if it revealed the natural reaction already going on in public taste, revealed also the sufficiency of the authors powers to stimulate and satisfy the new demand. Writing in accordance with a definite literary creed,^ in opposition to literary methods firmly established, he produced stories in strong contrast to the realism so long dominant. The life they deal with, though often real enough in its essence, is a life of un- usual circumstance, filled with exciting action, mystery, and tragic menace. The characters are conceived in the spirit of the world they move in. Broadly delineated, with- out subtlety or minute analysis, they reveal such traits as are called forth by the circumstances that confront them — ■ motives and passions easily perceived on a stage of action. They are far from being mere puppets moved by the author iSee A Gossip on Bomance and A Humhle Bemonstrance. 22 INTROD'UCTION throiigli a tangle of eventSj or mere personifications of the qualities assigned to them ; they impress with a sense of living personality. Besides acting as a strong influence in restoring popular- ity and vitality to a neglected literary form, Stevenson is specially notable for anotlier achievement. The great writers of romantic fiction who preceded him, — Scott, for example, — had lacked perfection, or even superior finish of style. This superior finish, if not perfection, Stevenson had acquired. But style in his hands is something more than an added adornment which the work of his predeces- sors lacked. It is, on the whole, despite certain faults and afi^ectations that must be admitted, a manner of expression so flexible and various, and so thoroughly at his command, that he can make it take oh life and color in accordance with the spirit of what he is writing, can key the whole tone of it to the whole tone of his subject. It is in this sense that he merits the distinction, among writers in English, of having imparted the final grace to the story- tellei-'s art. II AN INLAND VOYAGE AND TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY An Inland Voyage, published in 1878, was Stevenson's first book; Travels ivitli a Donl-ey, published the following year, his third. These volumes are, in a sense, representa- tive of a considerable amount of the authors earlier work. Indeed, essays and descriptive records of his travels form the bulk of his writing from 1873, the date of Roads, until after the publication of Treasure Island. And though his final great achievement lies in the field of romance,^ yet the work of this other sort, if less important, is hardly less characteristic. Neither book made much impression upon the pub- lic at the time of its appearance, though each won very INTKODUCTION" 23 favoraljle comment from the reviews. The author's own criticism of the Voyage was that it ''w as n ot hadl}^ written^ tliin^ nildly cheery a n(i_s,tralned/' Of both books* he said, later in life, "that, though the}' contained nothing but fresh air and a certain style, they were good of their kind, and possessed a simplicity of treatment which afterwards he thought had passed out of his reach. "^ "Fresh air and a certain style'' — the phrase is sug- gestive. Both books show a striking quality — likewise present in the tales and romahccs^^the power of language to reproduce, notjhe. form and_ color merely, Init the very atniospILere . of the scene. As one reads, it is as if the senses had been appealed to directly and not through the form of words. One feels the very genius of the place. One can scarcely read this passage, for example, without the sensation of being actually with Stevenson among the pines : **The stars were clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the white- ness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munch- ing at the sward ; but there was not another sound, save the inde- scribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the color of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light in the landscape. ''A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the air was being renewed all night. ' ' And so, repeatedly, though the descriptions are not al- ways so full or closely wrought, one gets the sense of be- ing in the very place : one travels, not in the author's pages, but by his side. * Balfour 's Life. 24 INTEODUCTION For the rest, one finds the charm of style as style — sometimes too self-conscious — which moves smoothly- on from page to page in happy phrase and graceful sentenci' ; kindly and humorous observation of character and man- ners; quiet meditations by the way, sometimes iresh and engaging, not always quite spontaneous, never too pro- found, — the musings of the philosophic vagabond. Ill CHRONOLOGY 1850 Stevenson born, November 13, at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh. 1858-1867 At school. 1867 Enters the University of Edinburgh. 1871 Abandons the study of engineering and begins to study law; contributes to the Edinburgh Univer- sity Magazine. 1873 Publishes a paper entitled Roads in the Portfolio, — his first contribution to a regular periodical; spends the winter on the Riviera to restore his health. 1875 Passes his final examination in law and is admitted to the bar of Scotland ; makes the first of a num- ber of visits to the neighborhood of Fontainebleau. 1876 Stevenson and Sir Walter Simpson make the canoe trip in Belgium and France recorded in An In- land Voyage; Stevenson begins the essays after- wards collected in Virginihns Puerisque and Fa- miliar Studies of Men and Books. 1877 Stevenson publishes his first s^tory, A Lodging for the Night. 1878 Stevenson takes the walking tour through tlie Cevennes recorded in Travels luith a Donkey; pul)- lishes his first book, An Inland Voyage. INTEOD'UCTTON 25 1879 Publishes Travels iv'dli a Donlrij; sails in June for America. 1880 Marries Fanny Van cle Grift (Mrs. Osbourne) in San Francisco on May 19 ; returns in August to Scotland. 1880-1885 Stevenson and his wife living in various places in Scotland or on the Continent. 1882 Treasure Island; Netv Arabian Nights. 1885-1887 The Stevensons at Bournemouth. A Child's Garden of Verses. 1886 Dr. Jel-yll and Mr. Hyde; Kidnapped; The Merry Men. 1887 Thomas Stevenson dies; the Stevensons go to Amer- ica and spend the winter in the Adirondacks. Undenvoods. 1888 In June the Stevensons set sail in the Casco for tlio Marquesas. 1888-1890 The South Sea cruises. 1889 The Master of Ballantrae. 1890 In November, the Stevensons begin their permanent residence at Vailima. Ballads. 1891-1893 The Samoan troubles. 1892 A Footnote to History. 1893 David Balfour (Catriona). 1894 Stevenson dies December 3. IV A BEIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY The Worl's of Robert Louis Stevenson. Twenty-five vol- umes. Charles Scribners Sons. The Thistle Edition. Twenty-four volumes. Sold only by subscription. By the same publishers. The standard American edition. 2G INTROD'UCTION Edition cle Luxe. The Greenock Press. The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Graham Balfour. Two volumes. Scri])ners. The standard biography. TJie Letters of Rohert Louis Stevenson. Edited by Sid- ney Colvin. Two volumes. Scribners. Vailima Letters. Edited by Sidney Colvin. Two vol- umes. Scribners. Rohert Louis Stevenson. T. Cope Cornford. Dodd, Mead and Company. This, and the two follow^ing, are brief, one- volume lives. Rohert Louis Stevenson. (Famous Scots Series.) Mar- garet M. Black. Scribners. Roher^t Louis Stevenson. A Life in Criticism. H. B«l- lyse Baildon. A. Wessels & Co. Stevenson, Rohert Louis. Sidney Colvin. A brief sketch in The Dictionary of National Biography. Rohert Louis Stevenson. Walter Ealeigh. Edwin Ar- nold. An appreciation. Stevenson 8 Attitude Toward Life. J. F. Genung. Thomas Y. Crowell. In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere in Old France. J. A. Hammerton. E. P. Button & Co. Contains one chapter on An Inland Voyage and one on Travels with a Donkey, and is freely illustrated with photographs of the scenes of Stevenson's journeys. See also essays and comments on Stevenson by Henry James in Partial Portraits; J. J. Chapman, in Emerson and Other Essays : J. M. Barrie, in An Edinhurgh Eleven; Edmund Gosse, in Questions at Issue and Critical Kit- Kats; and the various magazine articles accessible through the indexes to periodical literature. AUTHOE'S PREFACE To equip so small a book witli a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labors. When the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public eye. So with the writer in his preface : he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the por- tico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanor. It is best, in such circumstance, to represent a delicate shade of manner between humility and superiority : as if the book had been written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was good. But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that perfection ; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my senti- ments towards a reader ; and if I meet him on the thresh- old, it is to invite him in with country cordiality. To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this lit- tle book in proof than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. It occurred to me that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but the last as well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow my steps. The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for read- ers. What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua^ 1 Calch (nul Joshua. See Xumhcrs XIII. 27 28 ■ AUTHOR'S PREFACE brought back from Palestine a formidable Imncli of grapes ; alas ! my book produces naught so nourishing ; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? For, from the negative point of view, I flatter myself this vol- ume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to consid- erably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a l)etter one myself, — I really do not know where my head can have been. I seemed to have forgotten all that makes it glo- rious to be man. 'Tis an omission that renders tlie book philosophically unimportant ; but I am in hopes the eccen- tricity may please in frivolous circles. To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed I wish I owed him nothing else ; Ijut at this moment I feel towards him an almost exaggerated tender- ness. He, at least, will become my reader, — if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine. E. L. S. AN INLAND VOYAGE An Inland Voyage. The voyage was made from Antwerp, in Belgium, to a point on the French frontier near Maubeuge, and thence through France to Pointoise, a town seventeen miles northwest of Paris. "The inhabitants of Belgium are composed of two distinct races, almost as different from each other in racial characteristics as are the Germans from the French. The northern provinces, bordering mainly on the North Sea, are inhabited by the Flemings, a sturdy, blue-eyed, fair-haired people of Teutonic origin, somewhat akin to the Dutch. In fact, the language spoken by them closely resembles that of Holland, and the Dutch and Flemish read each other's newspapers, although they cannot very well understand each other's conversation. In this portion of Belgium — which constitutes the real Flanders — are located the interesting old cities, Bruges and Ghent, as well as the great seaport, Antwerp. . . . "In southern Belgium, however, which is the manufacturing part of the kingdom, lives an entirely different people, known as the Wal- loons. They are the descendants of the Gauls, and are, as a rule, of a high-strung, nervous temperament, with dark complexions and lively dispositions, like the French. These people speak not only French, but a dialect of the French language, known as the Walloon, which more closely resembles the old prorenqal of southern France than does the modern French itself." — John L. Stoddard. AN INLAND VOYAGE ANTWERP TO BOOM We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and a lot of dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the slip. A crowd of children followed cheer- ing. The Cigarette'^ went otf in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. Next moment the Arethusa was after her. A steamer was coming down, men on the paddle- box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the qua3^ But in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 'long-shore vanities were left behind. The sun shone brightly ; the tide was making — four jolly miles an hour; the wind Ijlew steadily, with occasional squalls. For my part, I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my first experiment out in the mid- dle of this big river was not made without some trepida- tion. What would liappen when the wind first caught my little canvas ? I suppose it was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the unknown as to publish a first book, or to marry. But my doubts were not of long duration; 1 The Cigarette. The name designates also the companion of Steven- son's voyage. Sir Walter Simpson. "He was of slow fighting mind." Stevenson writes of him in the unfinished AutohiOfjraphn. "You would see him, at times, wrestle for a minute at a time with a refractory jost. and perhaps fail to throw it at the end. I think his special character was profound shyness, a shyness which was not so mucli exhibited in society as it ruled in his own dealings \>nth himself. He was shy of his own virtues and talents, and above all of the former. He was even ashamed of his own sincere desire to do the right." 31 S2 AN INLAND VOYAGE anci in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I had tied my sheet. I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle ; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened ; but I had never before weighed a com- fortable pipe of to1)acco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a commonplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely more con- soling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought. I believe this is every one's experience : but an apprehension that they may l^elie them- selves in the future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been some one to put me in a good heart al:»out life when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight ; and how the good in a nu^n's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature ; and not a man among us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums. It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past laden with hay. Eeeds and willows bordered the stream ; and cattle and gray, venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the embankment. Here and there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy ship- ping yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. The wind served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the I^upel ; and we were running pretty free when we began to sight ANTWEEP TO BOOM 33 the l)rickrards of Boom, lying for a loDg way on the right bank of the river. The left bank was still green and pas- toral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here and there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with every minute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over the river, indicated the central quarters of the town. Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing : that the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that they can speak English, which is not justified by fact. This gave a kind of haziness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel de la Xavigation, I think it is the worst feature of the place. It boasts of a sanded parlor, with a bar at one end, looking on the street; and another sanded' parlor, darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tricolor subscription box by way of sole* adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three uncommu- nicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman.^ The food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character ; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the nature of a meal among this pleasing people ; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit : tentatively French, truly German, and somehow falling between the two. The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the old piping favorite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer apprentices would, have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman ; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us ^hof/waiK In England, a somewhat contemptuous name for a commoi'cial traveler. 34 AN INLAND VOYAGE in the gaslight- with a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in the Scotch phrase) bar- nacled. There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out of England to pick up all sorts of funny- foreign idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as to the manners of the present day in England, and obligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. But as we Avere dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was not so much thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority. It is good policy, and al- most necessary in the circumstances. If a man finds a woman admires him, were it only for his acquaintance with geogTaph}^ he will begin at once to build upon the admira- tion. It is only by unintermittent snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe^ would have said, "are such encroachers." For my part, I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine huntress. It is no use for a man to take to the woods ; we know him ; Anthony tried the same thing long ago,^ and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this about some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist^ among men, that they suf- fice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone without the countenance of any trousered being. I declare, although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to women for this ideal than I should be to the ma- '^Miss Hoice or Miss Harlowe. Characters in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe. -Anthony tried the same thing, etc. Saint Anthony, horn in the middle of the third century. Devoting himself to an ascetic life, he retired into solitude. Hero the devil (so he helieved) appeared to him in a variety of alluring and terrible forms. ^ fjifmnosophist. One of a sect of ancient Hindu philosophers who were devoted to rigid asceticism. ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 35 jority of tlicni, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. There is notliing so encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficienc}^ And when I think of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all night to the note of Diana's^ horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched by the commotion of man^s hot and turbid life — although there are plenty other ideals that I should prefer — I find my heart beat at the thought of this one. 'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a grace ! That is not lost which is not regretted. And where — here slips out the male — where would be much of the glory of inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome ? ON THE WILLEBEOEK CANAL Xext morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Ca- nal, the rain began heavy and chill. The water of the canal stood at about the drinking temperature of tea ; and. under this cold aspersion,- the surface was covered with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through this misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home humors. A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the light in tu- multuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear ; Ijut down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. There was hardly enough ''-Diana's horn. Diana, the divine huntress, was a virgin goddess wlio lived in lier forest haunts aloof from men. The "slim" and lovely niaidens" were her nymphs, who accompanied her in the chase. ^aspersion. Here u.sed in the sense of sprinkling. (Latin, asper- gere — aspersus : to sprinkle.) 36 AN INLAND VOYAGE to steer by. Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with a "C'est vite, rnais cest long.'"^ The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or overtook a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of the windows ; a dingy following behind ; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children. These barges were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the number of twenty-live or thirty; and the line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange construction. It had neither paddle-wheel nor screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded scows. Until one had found out the key to the enigma, there was something solemn and uncomfortable in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved gently along the water with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy alongside dying away into the wake. Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the wind-mill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green cornlands : the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot- pace as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long. It is a mystery how things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily the world may be taken. There should 1 "Cest lite, mais c'cst long.'' "It's swift, but it's long." ON THE WILLEBROEK CAXAL 3; l)e many contented spirits on ])oar(l, for such a life is l)otli to travel and to stay at home. The chimney smokes for dinner as you go alonu" : the banks of the canal slowly unroll their scenery to contempla- tive eyes; the barge floats by great forests and through great cities with their public buildings and their lamps at night ; and for the bargee, in his floating home, ''traveling abed/' it is merely as if he were listening to another man's story or turning the leaves of a picture book in which he had no concern. He may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside. There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of health ; Imt a high measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier. I am sure I would rather l)e a bargee than occupy any position under Heaven that required attendance at an of- fice. There are few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for regular meals. The ])argee is on shipboard ; he is master in his own ship : he can land whenever he will ; he can never be kept beating ofl^ a. lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron ; and so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly still with him as is compatible with the return of bedtime or the dinner-hour. It is not easy to see why a Ijargeo should ever die. Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beau- tiful reach of canal like a squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the Aretliusa ; and two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the Cigarette. The mas- ter of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might 38 AN INLAND VOYAGE still be cooked a la papier, lie dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain began .to patter on our shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as we could. The spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught flame every minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long there were several burnt fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so much display ; and when we desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound Qgg was a little more than loo-warm ;^ and as for a la papier, it was a cold and sordid fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg-shell. AYe made shift to roast the other two by putting them close to the burning spirits, and that with better success. And then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees. It rained smartl}^ Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pi-etensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business : and people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for laughter. From this point of view, even egg a la papier ofl'ered by way of food may pass mus- ter as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not in- vite repetition ; and from that time forward the Etna voy- aged like a gentleman in the locker of the Cigarette. It is almost unnecessaiT to mention that when lunch was over and we got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away. The rest of the journey to Villevorde we still spread our canvas to the unfavoring air, and with now and then a puff, and now and then a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock Ijetween the orderly trees. '^loo-warm. Irregular spelling for lew-warm (=luke-warm) ; Century Dictionary. ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 39 It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or rather a mere green water-lane going on from village to village. Things had a settled look, as in places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from the hridges as we went below, with a true conservative feeling. But even more conserva- tive were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go by without one glance. They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. They were indifferent like pieces of dead nature. They did not move any more than if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they continued in one stay, like so many churches established by law. You might have trepanned every one of their innocent heads and found no more than so much coiled fishing line below their skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in India-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod ; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art forever and a day by still and depopulated waters. At the lock just beyond Villevorde there was a lock mis- tress who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple of leagues from Brussels. At the same place the rain began again. It fell in straight, parallel lines, and the surface of the canal was thrown up into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There were no beds to be had in the neighborhood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the rain. Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of the canal. I seem to have seen something of the same effect in engravings : opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the pas- sasfe of storm. And throuo-hout wc had the escort of a 40 AN INLAND VOYAGE hooded cart, which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform distance in our wake. THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE The ram took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between tbe pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the Allee Verte/ and on the very threshold of Brussels we were confronted by a serious difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere was there any convenient landing place; nowhere so much as a stal)le-yard to leave the canoes in for the night. We scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet^ where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord. The landlord was pretty round with us ; he knew of no coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the sort ; and seeing we had come with no mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us. One of the sorry fellows' "came to the rescue. Somewhere in the corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by his hearers. Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin ; and at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The Arethusa addressed himself to these. One of them said there would be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by Searle & Son. The name was quite an introduction. Half a dozen other young men came out of a boat-house bearing the super- ^ Allee Verte (Green Lane). A double avenue of limes extending- along the Willebroeck canal. 2 estaminet. A coffee house and smoking room. THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 41 scription Eoyal Sport Xautique, and joined in the talk. They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic ; and their discourse was interlarded with English boating terms, and the names of English boat-builders and Englisli clubs. I do not know, to m}- shame, an}- spot in my native land where I should have been so warmly received b}^ the same number of people. AVe were English boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. I wonder if French Huguenots^ were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great tribulation. But, after all, what religion knits people so closely as common sport ? The canoes were carried into the Ijoat-house; they were washed down for us by the club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything made as snug and tidy as a picture. And in the mean while we were led up-stairs by our new-found ])rethren, for so more than one of them stated the relationship, and made free of their lavatory. This one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags. And all the time such ques- tions, such assurances of respect and sympathy ! I declare I never knew what glory was before. "Yes, yes, the Eoyal Sport Nautique is the oldest club in Belgium.'' "We number two hundred." "We" — this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract of many speeches, -the impression left upon my mind vafter a great deal of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems to me to be — "We have gained all races, except those where we were cheated by the French." "You must leave all your wet things to be dried." ^French Hufjuenots and English Protestants. The Huguenots were the Protestants of France. Many of them were slaughtered at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew (August, 1J572). Later persecutions drove hundreds of thousands into exile, many across the Channel to England. 42 AN INLAND YOYAGK "0 ! entre freresl'^ In any boat-house in England we should find the same." (I cordially hope they might.) ''En Angleterre, voiis empJoijez des sliding-seats, nest-ce 2ms f " "We are all emplo3^ed in commerce during the day; but in the evening, voyez-vous, nous sommes serieux/'^ These were the words. They were all employed over the frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in the evening they found some hours for the serious concerns of life. I may have a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark. People connected "with literature and philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards. It is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover their old fresh view of life, and dis- tinguish what they really and originally like from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce. And these Eoyal Xautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite legible in their hearts. They had still those clean per- ceptions of what is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which envious old gentlemen refer to as illu- sions. The nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug of custom gradually squeezing the life out of a man's soul, had not yet begun for these happy-stai-'d young Bel- gians. They still knew that the interest they took in their business was a trifling afl'air compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering afi^ection for nautical sports. To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. Such a man may be generous; he may l)e honest in something more than the commercial sense ; he may love his friends with an elective, personal sympath}', 1 "Entre frerefi." "Among brothers." ^"En Anglcfcrre," etc. "In England you use sliding seats, do you not V" ^ "vojjcz-roiis.'' etc. — "You see, we are serious.'" THE ROYAL SPOET XAUTIQUE 43 and not accept them as an adjunct of the station to which he has heen called. He may be a man, in short, acting on his own instincts, keeping in his own shape that God made him in ; and not a mere crank in the social engine house, welded on principles that he does not understand, and for purposes that he does not care for. For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. And for certain the one is a great deal better for the health. There should be nothing so much a man's business as his amusements. Xothing but money-grubbing can be put forward to the contrary; no one but Mammon/ the least erected spirit that fell From Heaven, durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that would represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their transactions ; for the man is more important than his services. And when my T\oyal N'autical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk. When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to the club's prosperity, one of their number escorted us to a hotel. He would not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass of wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing ; and I begin to understand why prophets were 1 Mammon, in the Bible, is the personification of worldliness and riches. Cf. Mattheir VI. 24 : "Ye cannot s'^vve God and Mammon." In Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the passage in the text is f]Uot('d, Mammon is represented as one of the fallen angels. 44 AN INLAND VOYAGE unpopular in Judaea/ where they were best known. For three stricken hours did tins excellent young man sit lieside us to dilate on boats and boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough to order our bedroom candles. AVe endeavored now and again to change the subject ; but the diversion did not last a moment : the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied, answered the question, and then breasted once more into tlie swelling tide of his subject. I call it his subject ; but I think it was he who was subjected. The Arcthusa, who holds all racing as a creature of the devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance for the honor of old England, and spoke away about English clul)S and English oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears. Several times, and, once above all, on the question of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of exposure. As for the Cigarette, who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more desperate ; for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should take an oar in one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the Eng- lish with the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend per- spiring in his chair whenever that particular topic came up. And there was yet another proposal which had the same effect on both of us. It api^eared that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as most other champions) was a Eoyal Nautical Sportsman. And if we would only wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be so con- descending as to accompany us on our next stage. Neither of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of the sun against Apollo.- ^ Why prophets were unpopular in Jtidwa. Lu7:e IV, 24: "No prophet is accepted in his own country." 2 "To drive the coursers of the sun against Apollo." In classic myth, the sun, in its apparent passage across the sliy, was supposed to be the flaming chariot of Apollo, the sun god. Phaeton, the son of Apollo and the nymph Clymene, once essayed to drive his father's steeds, but almost consumed the earth with fire, .and was hurled from his seat by Jove's thunderbolt. AT MAUBEUGE 45 When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and ordered some brandy and water. The great billows had gone over our head. The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a man would wish to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought too nautical for us. We began to see that we were old and cynical; we liked ease and the agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and the other subject ; we did not want to disgrace our native land by messing at eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist. In short, we had recourse to flight. It seemed ungrateful, but we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere compliments. And indeed it was no time for scruples ; we seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks. AT MAUBEUGE Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Iioyal Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by train across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks in a day's journey was pretty Avell tantamount to trudging the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an o1:)ject of astonishment to the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking children. To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for the Aretliusa. He is, somehow or other, a marked man for the official eye. Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered together. Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly 46 AN INLAND VOYAGE clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in gray tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry pour un- hindered, Murray in hand,^ over the railways of the Conti- nent, and yet the slim person of the ArctJiusa is taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated by a general in- credulity. He is a born British subject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality. He flatters himself he is indiiferent honest; yet he is rarely known for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . . For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, too, have been knolled to church and sat at good men's feasts, but I bear no mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles. I might come from any part of the globe, it seems, except from where I do.- My ancestors have labored in vain, and the glorious Constitution cannot protect me in my walks abroad. It is a great thing, be- lieve me, to present a good normal type of the nation you belong to. Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to IMaubeuge, but I was; and although I clung to my rights, 1 Mitrraij in hand. Jolm Mui'ray was a London publisher of guide books. 2''/ mifjht come from any part of the (pohe, it seems, except from nhere I do." "In his movements he was most graceful : every gesture was full of unconscious beauty. ... To this unusual and most un-English grace it was principally due that he was so often taken for a foreigner. We have seen that Mr. Lang found his appearance at twenty-three like anything but that of a Scotsman, and the same difficulty pursued Stevenson through life, more especially on the continent of Europe. . . . In France he was sometimes taken for a Frenchman from some other province; he has recorded his imprisonment as a German spy ; and at a later date he wrote, 'I have found out what is wrong with me — I look like a Pole'." Balfour: Life, II, iOO. AT MAUBEUGE 47 I had to c-lioose at last between accepting the humiliation and being left behind 1)}' the train. I was sorr}' to give wa}', but I wanted to get to ^laubeuge. Maubeuge is a fortified town with a very good inn, the Grand Cerf.^ It seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen ; at least, these were all that we saw except the hotel servants. We had to stay there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back to liberate them. There was nothing to do, nothing to see. We had good meals, wnich was a great matter, but that was all. The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the fortifications : a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. And l)esides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the other's fortified places already, these pre- cautions are of the nature of shutting the stable door after the steed is away. But I have no doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even the Free- masons, who have been shoAvn up to satiety, preserve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom but comes home from one of their coenacula- with a portentous significance for himself. It is an odd thing how happily two people, if there are two, can live in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think the spectacle of a whole life in which 3^011 have no part paralyzes personal desire. You are content to be- come a mere spectator. The baker stands in his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by to the cafe at if7?e Grand Cerf. The Great Stag. ^ Ccennctila. Cenacle, or coenaciilum, means a supping room, spocific- ally the upper chamber in which Christ and His disciples ate the Last Supper. Mere ccenacula has the sense of exclusive banquets. 48 AN INLAND VOYAGE night ; the troops drum and trumpet and man the ramparts as Ijold as so many lions. It would task language to say how placidly you behold all this. In a place where you have taken some root you are provoked out of your indif- ference; you have a hand in the game, — your friends are fighting with the army. But in a strange town, not amall enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so large- as to have laid itself out for travelers, you stand so far apart from the business that you positively forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around you that you do not remember yourself to be a man. Perhaps in a very short time you would l)e one no longer. Gymnosophists go into a wood with all nature seething around them, with romance on every side ; it would be much more to the pur- pose if they took up their abode in a dull country town where they should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale externals of man's life. These externals are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears. They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. We are so much accustomed to see married couples going to church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and novelists are driven to rehal)ilitate adultery, no less, when they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live for each other. One person in ]\Iaubeuge, however, showed me something more than his outside. That was the driver of the hotel omnibus : a mean-enough looking little man, as well as I can remember, but with a spark of something human in his soul. He had heard of our little journey, and came to me at once in envious sympathy. How he longed to travel ! he told me. How he longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world before he went into the grave ! "Here T am," said he. "1 drive to the station. Well. And then I drive AT MAUBEUGE 49 back again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the week round. My God, is that life?" I could not say I thought it was — for him. He pressed me to tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to go ; and as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed, flight not this have been a brave African traveler, or gone to the Indies after Drake ?^ But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the wealth and glory. I wonder if my f-riend is still driving the omnibus for the Grand Cerf ! Not very likely, I believe ; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny when we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined him for good. Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that it is a respectaJ^le position to drive an omnibus? Very well. What right has he who likes it not to keep those who would like it dearly out of this respectable position? Suppose a dish were not to my taste, and you told me that it was a favorite among the rest of the com- pany, what should I conclude from that ? Xot to finish the dish against my stomach, I suppose. Eespectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a I moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste ; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is ad- mittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and super- fluously useless, although it were as respectable as the Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned. ^ Gone to the Indies after Dnil-c. Sir Francis Drake (1540?-1596) was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. After two voyages to the West Indies, he made a freebooting expedition to the Spanish Main, where he took seve.ral towns and much treasure. 50 AN INLAND VOYAGE ON THE SAMBHE CANALIZED TO QUARTES About three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the Grand Cerf accompanied us to the water's edge. The man of the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. Poor cage-bird ! Do I not remember the time when I myself haunted the station, to watch train after train carry its complement of freemen into the night, and read the names of distant places on the time-bills with indescribable long- ings? We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain be- gan. The wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky. For we passed through a blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the wind blew so hard we could get little else to smoke. There were no natural objects in the neighborhood, but some sordid workshops. A group of children, headed by a tall girl, stood and watched us from a little distance all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder what they thought of us. At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable ; the land- ing place being steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. Xear a dozen grimy workmen lent us a liand. They refused any reward ; and, what is much better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of insult. "It is a way we have in our country-side," said they. And a very becoming way it is. In Scotland, where also you will get services for nothing, the good people reject your money as if you had been trying to corrupt a voter. When people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 51 take a little more, and allow the dignity to be common to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost offensively ; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war against the wrong. After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and a little paddling took us beyond the iron works and through a delectable land. The river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was at our backs and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river ])efore us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On either hand meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. The hedges were of great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms ; and the fields, as they were often very small, looked like^a series of bowers along the stream. There was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky ; but that was all. The heaven was bare of clouds. The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity. The river doubled among the hillocks, a shining- strip of mirror glass ; and the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink. In the meadows wandered black and wdiite cattle fan- tastically marked. One beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me as I went by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play. A moment after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling to shore. The bank had given way under his feet. Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and a great many fishermen. These sat along the 52 AN INLAND VOYAGE ^dges of the meadows, sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score. They seemed stupefied with <:ontentment ; and, when we induced them to exchange a few words with us about the weather, tlieir voices sounded quiet and far away. There was a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the kind of fish for which they set their hires ; although they were all agreed in this, that the river was abundantly supplied. Where it was plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them had ever caught a fish at all. I hope, since the after- noon was so lovely, that they were one and all^ rewarded ; and that a silver booty went home in every basket for the pot. Some of my friends would cry shame on me for this ; but I prefer a man, were he only an angler, to the l)ravest pair of gills in all God's waters. I do not affect iishes unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an angler is an important piece of river scenery, and hence deserves some recognition among canoeists. He can always tell you where you are, after a mild fashion ; and his quiet presence serves to accentuate the -.solitude and stillness, and remind you of the glittering citizens below your boat. The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes. There were some children on the tow- jiath, with whom the Cigarette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. It was in vain that I warned him. In vain I told him in English that boys were the most dangerous creatures ; and if once you began with them, it was safe to end in a shower of stones. For my own part, whenever anything was addressed to me, I smiled gently nnd shook my head, as though I were an inoffensive person inadequately acquainted with French. For, indeed, I have had such an experience at home that I would sooner meet many wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins. ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 53 But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters. AMien the Cigarette went off to malve in- quiries, I got out upon the bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once the centre of much amiable curiosity. The children had been joined b}^ this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and tliis gave me more security. When I let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl nodded her head with a comical grown-up air. "Ah, you see," she said, "he understands well enough now : he was just making believe." And the little group laughed together very good-natu^ecTl3^ They were much impressed when they heard we came from p]ngland; and the little girl proffered tlie information that England was an island "and a far way from here — hieri loin d'ici." "Ay, you may say that, a far way from here," said the lad with one arm. I was nearly as homesick as ever I was in my life ; they seemed to make it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first saw the day. They admired the canoes very much. And I observed one piece of delicacy in these children which is worthy of record. They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with petitions for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune next morning when we came to start; but then, when the canoes were lying empty, there was no word of any such petition. Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel? I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil ; unless perhaps, the two were the same thing. And yet 'tis a good tonic ; the cold tub and bath-towel of the sentiments ; and positive^ necessary to life in cases of advanced sensibility. From the 1)oats tliey turned to my costume. They could not make enough of my red sash ; and my knife filled them with awe. 54 AN INLAND VOYAGE "They make them like that in England," said the bo}^ with one arm. I was glad he did not know how badly we make them in England nowadays. "They are for people who go away to sea/' he added, "and to defend one's life against great fish." I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little group at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even my pipe, although it was an ordinary French clay, pretty well "trousered," as they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so far away. And if my feathers were not very fine in themselves, they were all from over seas. One thing in my outfit, however, tickled tliem out of all politeness ; and that was the bemired condi- tion of my canvas shoes. I suppose they were sure the mud at any rate was a home product. The little girl (who was the genius of the party) displayed her own sabots in competition ; and I wish you could have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it. The young woman's milk-can, a great amphora^ of ham- mered brass, stood some way off upon the sward. I was glad of an opportunity to divert public attention from my- self and return some of the compliments I had received. 80 I admired it cordially both for form and color, telling them, and very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold. They were not surprised. The things were plainly the boast of the country-side. And the children expatiated on the costli- ness of these amphorae, which sell sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried on donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in them.selves; and how they were to be seen all over the district, and at the larger farms in great number and of great size. 1 amphora. An ancient .iar, usually with two handles and a pointed haso, used by the ancients to contain wine. PONT-SUE-SAMBRE 55 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE WE AKE PEDLARS The Cigareite returned with good news. There were beds to be had some ten minutes' walk from where we were, at a place called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a granar}^, and asked among the children for a guide. The circle at once widened round us, and our offers of reward were re- ceived in dispiriting silence. We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children ; they might speak to us in pub- lic places, and where they had the advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to venture off alone with two un- couth and legendary characters, who had dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet afternoon, sashed and beknived, and with a flavor of great voyages. The owner of the granary came to our assistance, singled out one little fellow, and threatened him with corporalities ; or I suspect we should have had to find the way for ourselves. As it w^as, he was more frightened at the granary man than the strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the former. But I fancy his little heart must have been going at a fine rate, for he kept trotting at a respectful distance in front, and looking back at us with scared eyes. Not otherwise may the children of the young world have guided Jove or one of his Olympian compeers on an adventure.^ A miry lane led us up from Quartes, with its church and bickering windmill. The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields. A brisk little old woman passed us by. She was seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering milk-cans, and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her ^fhe cMldren of ihr yoiuiff irorld hm-e f/uided Jove, etc. In classic myth, Jove, the kin^" of ijods and men. and other gods who dwelt on Mt. Olympus, are frequently represented as seeking adventure — usually some love adventure — among mortals. Jove's wooing of lo, Danae, or Semele is typical. 56 AN INLAND VOYAGE heels upon the donkey's side, and scattered shrill remarks among the wayfarers. It was notable that none of the tired men took the trouble to reply. Our conductor soon led us out of the lane and across country. The sun had gone down, but the west in front of us was one lake of level gold. The path wandered a while in the open, and then passed under a trellis like a bower indefinitely prolonged. On either hand w^ere shadowy orchards ; cottages lay low among the leaves and sent their smoke to heaven ; every here and there, in an opening, appeared the great gold face of the west. I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic frame of mind. He waxed positivejy lyrical in praise of country scenes. I was little less exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows, the rich lights, and the silence made a symphonious accompaniment about our walk; and w^e both determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep in hamlets. At last the path went between two houses and turned the party out into a wide, muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach on either hand by an unsightly vil- lage. The houses stood well back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on either side of the road, where there were stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish heaps, and a little doubt- ful grass. Away on the left, a gaunt tow^r stood in the middle of the street. What it had been in past ages I know not : probably a hold in time of war ; but nowadays it bore an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron letter-box. The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was full, or else the landlady did not like our looks. I ought to say, that with our long, damp india-rubl^er bags, we presented rather a -doubtful type of civilization : like rag-and-bone men, the Cigarette imagined. "These gentle- men are pedlars?" — Ces messieurs sont cles marchands? — - PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 57 asked the landlady. And then, without waiting for an answer, which' I suppose she thought superfluous in so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who lived hard l)y the tower and took in travelers to lodge. Thither went we. But the butcher was flitting, and all his beds were taken down. Or else he didn't like our look. As a parting shot, we had, ^'These gentlemen are pedlars ?" It began to grow dark in earnest. We could no longer distinguish the faces of the people Avho passed us by with an inarticulate good evening. And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with their oil, for we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village. I believe it is the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our ' predicament every pace counted three times over. We were much cast down when we came to the last auberge,^ and, looking in at the dark door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the night. A female voice assented, in no very friendly tones. We clapped the bags down and found our way to chairs. The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and ventilators of the stove. But now^ the landlady lit a lamp to see her new guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved us another expulsion, for I cannot say she looked gratified at our appearance. We were in a large, bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of the Law against Public Drunkenness. On one side there was a bit of a bar, with some half a dozen bottles. Two laborers sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two, and the landlady began to derange the pots upon the stove and set some beef -steak to grill. ''These gentlemen are pedlars?" she asked sharply: and ^ aiiherge. Inn. 58 AN INLAND VOYAGE tliat was all the conversation forthcoming. AVe began to think we might be pedlars, after all. 1 never knew a l^opulation with so narrow a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre. But manners and bearing- have not a wider currency than bank-notes. You have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your ac- complished airs will go for nothing. These Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the average pedlar. Indeed, we had some grounds for reflection while the steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and how our best politeness and best efforts at entertainments seemed to fit quite suitably with the character of packmen. At least it seemed a good account of the profession in France, that even before such judges we could not beat them at our own weapons. At last we were called to table. The two hinds (and one of them looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with over-work and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of bread-berry,^ some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with sugar candy, and one tumbler of swipes.- The landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid took the same. Our meal was quite a banquet by comparison. We had some beef-steak, not so tender as it might have been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and white sugar in our coffee. You see what it is to be a gentleman, — I beg your par- don, what it is to be a pedlar. It had not before occurred to me that a pedlar was a great man in a lal)orer's ale- house ; but now that I had to enact the part for the evening, I found that so it was. He has in his hedge quarters some- what the same pre-eminency as the man who takes a private 1 hrcnd-herry. An article of food made by pouring boiling water ob toasted bread and sweetening with sugar. - swiijcs. Poor, weak beer. PONT-SUR-SAMBKE 59 parlor in a hotel. The more you look into it the more infinite are the class distinctions among men; and possibly, 1)V a happy dispensation, there is no one at all at the l)ot- tom of the scale; no one but can find some superiority over somebody else, to keep up his pride withal. We were displeased enough with our fare. Particularly the Cigarette: for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the adventure, tough beef-steak and all. According to the Lucretian maxim,^ our steak should have been flavored by the look of the other people's bread-l3erry ; but we did not find it so in practice. You may have a head knowledge that other people live more poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable — I was going to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe — to sit at the same table and pick your awn superior diet from among their crusts. I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy boy at school with his birthday cake. It was odious enough to witness, I could remember; and I had never thought to play the part my- self. But there, again, you see what it is to be a pedlar. There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. And I fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks. A workman or a |)edlar cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts? . . . Thus the poor man, camp- ing out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every 1 tJie Lucretian maxim. Possibly the following passage : "When that the mighty sea's by tempest lashed To fury, sweet it is from land to gaze On one who's fiercely battling with the waves. Not that another's peril gives us joy. But that 'tis sweet when ivc are free from icoes Which otJiers suffer." (Lucretius : De Naturci Rerum.) 60 AN INLAND VOYAGE mouthful he puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry. But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sub-lunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself invol- untarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He does not pre- cisely sing, of course ; but then he looks so unassuming in his open Landau ! If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks. PONT-SUR-SAMBRE THE TRAVELING MERCHANT Like the lackeys in Moliere's farce,^ when the true nobleman broke in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted with a real pedlar. To make the lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration than the sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for ; like a lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon two cock-boats. Indeed, he did not deserve the name of pedlar at all ; he was a traveling merchant. I suppose it was about half past eight when this worth}^, Monsieur Hector Gilliard, of Maubeuge, turned up at the alehouse door in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a lean, nervous flib- bertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor 1 Like the lackeys in Moliere's farce. Except for the phrase "below Btairs," the allusion applies to Les Precieuses Ridicules. PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 61 and something the look of a horse jockey. He had evi- dently prospered without any of the favors of education, for he adhered Math stern simplicity to the masculine gender/ and in the course of the evening passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture. Witli him came his wife, a comely young woman, with her haii- tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi.- It was notable that the child was many degrees better dressed than either of the parents. We were informed he was already at a board- ing school ; but the holidays having just commenced, he was off to spend them with his parents on a cruise. An enchanting holiday occupation, was it not? to travel all day with father and mother in the tilt cart full of count- less treasures ; the green country rattling by on either side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him with envy and wonder. It is better fun, during the holidays, to be the son of a traveling merchant, than son and heir to the greatest cotton spinner in creation. And as for being a reigning prince, — indeed, I never saw one if it was not Master Gil Hard ! While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the donkey and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed up the remains of our beef- steak and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the light. He was no sooner awake than he began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette,^ unripe pears, and cold potatoes^, with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit to his appe- tite. The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her 1 masculine riender . . . fancif futures. The pedlar's grammatiral erroi'.s consist in disregarding tlie distinctions of gender in French nouns and pronouns, and in forming his future tenses incorrectly. 2 kepi. A flat-topped military cap with a horizontal visor. -gahtte. Cake. (32 AN INLAND VOYAGE own little girl, and the two cliildren were confronted. Master Gilliard looked at her for a moment, very much as a dog Jooks at his own reflection in a mirror before he turns away. He was at that time absorbed in the galette. I lis mother seemed crestfallen that he should display so little inclination towards the other sex, and expressed her disappointment with some candor and a very proper refer- once to the influence of years. Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the girls, and think a great deal less of his mother; let us hope she will like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But it is odd enough ; the very women who pro- fess most contempt for mankind as a sex seem to find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded in their own sons. The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably because she was in her own house, while he was a traveler and accustomed to strange sights. And, besides, there was no galette in the case with her. All the time of supper there was nothing spoken of but my young lord. The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child. Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity; how he knew all the children at school by name, and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would sit and think — and think, and if he did not know it, "my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all — ma foi, 11 nc vous Je dim pas/' Which is certainly a very high degree of caution. At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full of beef-steak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a time when he had said or done something memorable; and I noticed that Madame usually pooh- poohed these inquiries. She herself was not boastful in her vein ; but she never had her fill of caressing the child ; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all PONT-SUE-SAMBKE 63 that was fortunate in his little existence. No school-boy could have talked more of the holidays which were just be- ginning and less of the black schooltime which must in- evitably follow after. She showed, v/ith a pride perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen with tops, and whistles, and string. When she called at a house in the way of business, it appeared he kept her company ; and, whenever a sale was made, received a sou out of the profit. Indeed, they spoiled him vastly, these two good people. But they had an eye to his man- ners, for all that, and reproved him for some little faults in breeding which occurred from time to time during sup- per. On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar. I might think that I ate wdth greater delicacy, or that my mistakes in French belonged to a different order; but it was plain that these distinctions would be thrown away upon the landlady and the two laborers. In all essential things we and the Gilliards cut very much the same figure in the alehouse kitchen. M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and took a higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the ground of his driv- ing a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot. I dare say the rest of the company thought us dying with envv, though in no ill sense, to be as far up in the profes- sion as the new arrival. And of one thing I am sure ; that everyone thawed and became more humanized and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon the scene. I would not very readily trust the traveling merchant with any ex- travagant sum of money, but I am sure his heart was in the right place. In this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places in a man ; above all, if you should find a whole family living together on such pleasant terms, you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest for granted; (34 AN INLAND A^OYAGE or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind tiiat you can do. perfectly well without the rest, and that ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good one any the less good. It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went oil to his cart for some arangements, and my young gentleman proceeded to divest liimself of the better part of his taiment and play gymnastics on his mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of laugh- ter. ^'xVre you going to sleep alone?" asked the servant lass. "There's little fear of that," says Master Gilliard. "You sleep alone at school," objected his mother. "Come, come, you must be a man." But he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays; that there were dormitories at school, and silenced the discussion with kisses, his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she. There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should sleep alone, for there was but one bed for the trio. We, on our part, had firmly protested against one man's accommodation for two; and we had a double- bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat pegs and one table. There was not so much as a glass of water. But the window would open, by good fortune. Some time before I feel asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty snoring; the Gilliards, and the laborers, and the people of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent. The young moon outside shone ver}^ clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the alehouse where all we pedlars were abed. TO LANDRECIES 65 ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED TO LAXDKECIES In the morning, when we came downstairs the landlady pointed out to us two pails of water behind the street door. ''VoUd dc Vcau pour vous deharhouiller/'^ says she. And so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame Gil Hard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling- cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day's campaign in a portable chest of draw- ei"s, which formed a part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor. 1 wonder, by the way, what they call Waterloo- crackers in -France; perhaps Austerlitz crackers. There is a great deal in the point of view. Do you remember the French- man who, traveling by way of Southampton, was put down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge? He had a mind to go home again, it seems. Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometr^, by water. We left our bags at the inn and walked to our canoes through the wet orchards unencumbered. Some of the children were there to see us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night before. A departure is much less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the golden evening. Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity. The good folks of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags, were overcome with marvelling. At the sight of these two dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union ^"Yoila cle Vcau pour vous deharhouiUer." There's water to wash your face with. 2 Waterloo . . . Austerlitz. At W^aterloo the French under Napo- leon were decisively defeated ; at Austerlitz, decisively victorious. QQ AN INLAND A^OYAGE Jaek^ on each, and all the varnish shining from the sponge, they hegan to perceive that the}^ had entertained angels un- awares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably la- menting she had charged so little ; the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbors to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of rapt observers. These gentlemen pedlars, indeed ! Xow you see their quality too late. The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps. We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once more. But there were some calm intervals, and one notably, wdien we were skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear,^ but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the river-side, drooping its boughs into the water, and j)iling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and in- nocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison. And, surely, of all smells in the world the smell of many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude pistolling sort of odor, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasess it by many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely ^ Union Jach. The national ensign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. - Mormal, a sinister name to the ear. Apparently because of its resemblance in sound to the French woi-ds mort (death) and mal (evil). i TO LANDEECIES G7 changeful ; it varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, hut in character; and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere. Usu- ally the rosin of the fir predominates. But some woods are more coquettish in their hahits ; and the breath of the forest Mormal, as it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweet])rier. I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most civil society. An old oak that has been grow- ing where he stands since before the Eeformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their knees; a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving color to the light, giving perfume to the air; what is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? Heine wished to lie like j\Ierlin under the oaks of Broceliande.^ I should not be satisfied with one tree ; but if the wood grew together like a ban3^an grove, I would be buried under the tap-root of the whole ; my parts should circulate from oak to oak ; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green spires, so that it, also, might rejoice in its own loveliness and dignity. I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum ; and ^Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. For the fate of Merlin, the magician of King Arthur's court, see Tennyson's Merlin and Vivien. — "Then, in one moment slie put forth the charm Of woven paces and of waving hands, And in the lioUow oalc he lay as dead. And lost to life and use and name and fame." 68 AX INLAND VOYAGE the birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy surface. Alas ! the forest of Mornial is only a little bit of a wood, and it w^as but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries. And the rest of the time the rain kept com- ing in squirts and the wind in squalls, until one's heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding M^eather. It was odd how the showers began when we had to carry the boats over a lock and must expose our legs. They always did. This is a sort of thing tliat readily begets a personal feeling against nature. There seems no reason why the shower should not come five minutes l)efore or five minutes after, unless you suppose an intention to affront you. The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties. But I had to bear the brunt un- covered. I Ix'gan to rememljer that nature was a woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my jeremiads,^ and ironically concurred. He instanced, as a cognate matter, the action of the tides, ^'which," said he, ''was altogether designed for the con- fusion of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated to minister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon." At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I re- fused to go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I took to have ijeen the devil, drew near, and questioned me about our journey. In the fulness of my heart I laid bare our plans before him. He said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to mention that, at this season of the year, we should find the Oise quite dry ? "Get into a train, my little young man,'' said he, "and go you away 1 jeremiads. Utterances of wo? or despair ; derived from Jeremiah, tlie name of tlie autlior of the book of Lamentations. TO LAXDRECIES 69 home to your parents." I was so astounded at the man's malice tliat I could only stare at him in silence. A tree would never have spoken to me like this. At last I got out with some words. We had come from Antwerp already, I told him, which was a good long way ; and we should do the rest in spite of him. Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not. The pleasant old gentlemen looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to my canoe, and marched off, wagging his head. I was still inwardly fuming when up came a pair of young fellows, who imagined I was the Cigarette's servant, on a comparison, I suppose, of my hare jersey with the other's mackintosh, and asked me many questions about my place and my master's character. I said he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head. "Oh, no, no," said one, "you must not say that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him." I l)elieve these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again. It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man's insinu- ations, as if they were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman, and have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young men. " When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, "They must have a curious idea of how English servants behave," says he, dryly, "for you treated me like a brute beast at the lock." I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suf- fered, it is a fact. .^0 AN INLAND VOYAujii AT LANDRECIES At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew ; but we found a double-bedded room with plenty of furni- ture, real water-jugs with real water in them, and dinner, a real dinner, not inuocent of real wine. After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next day, these comfortal)le eir- cumstances fell on my heart like sunshine. There was an English fruiterer at dinner, traveling with a Belgian fruit- erer: in the evening at the cafe we watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at corks, and I don't know why, but this pleased us. It turned out that we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected; for the weather next day was simply bedlamite. It is not the place one would have chosen for a day's rest, for it consists almost entirely of fortifications. Within the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, and a church figure, with what countenance they may, as the town. There seems to be no trade, and a shop-keeper from whom I. bought a sixpenny flint and steel was so much afl'ected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the bargain. The only public buildings that had any interest for us were the hotel and the cafe. But we visited the church. There lies Marshal Clarke. But as neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude. In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, and such like, make a fine, romaiitic interlude in civic business. Bugles, and drums, and fifes are of themselves most ex- .cellent things in nature, and when they carry the mind to marching armies and the picturesque vicissitudes of war they stir up something proud in the heart. But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, witli little else mov- AT LANDRECIES 71 ing, these points of war made a proportionate commotion. Indeed, they were the only things to remember. It was just the place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. It reminded you that even this place was a point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns. The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and not- able physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise. And if it be true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with asses' skin, what a picturesque irony is there in that ! As if this long-suffering animal's Hide had not been sufficiently belabored during life, now by Lyonnese costermongers,^ now by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder quar- ters after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after night round the streets of every garrison town in Europe. And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren,- and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer boy, hurrying with Avhite face over fallen com- rades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donke3'S. Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this state of ^ Ljjonnese costermongcrs are the hawkers of Lyons. For the explanation of •'presumptuous Hebrew prophets, " see the story of Baalara {Sumhers XXII, 21-25). • • -Alma and SpicJieren. Alma is a river in the Crimea; on its banks, during the Crimean war, the Russians were defeated by the combined forces of the British. French, and Turkish. At Spicheren, a village in. German Lorraine, the French were defeated by the Germans on August G, 1870. 72 AN INLAND VOYAGE mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hol- low skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking, nickname Heroism, — is there not some- thing in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's perse- cutors? Of old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale and I must endure; but now that I am dead tliose dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in coun- try lanes have become stirring music in front of the brigade, and for every blow that you lay on my old great- coat, you will see a comrade stum])le and fall. Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the Cigarette and the Aretliusa began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was only a door or two away. But although we had been somewhat indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us. All day, we learned, people had been running out between the squalls to visit our two boats. Hundreds of persons, so said re- port, although it fitted ill with our idea of the town, — hundreds of persons had inspected them where they lay in a coal-shed. We were becoming lions in Landrecies, who had been only pedlars the night before in Pont. And now, when we left the cafe, we were pursued and overtaken at the hotel door by no less a person than the Juge de Paix ;^ a functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scotch Sheriff Substitut'^. He gave us his card and invited us to sup w^ith him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these things. It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he ; and although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place, we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so politely introduced. '^Jiipe (le Paix. Justice of the peace. — Scotch Sheriff Suhstitute. In Scotland, the sheriff, who is Ihe chief local judge of a county, is assisted by officers with judicial functions, called sheriffs-substitute. I AT LAXDRECIES 73 The liouse of the judge was close by; it was a well- appointed bachelor's establishment, witli a curious collec- tion of old brass warming-pans upon the walls. Some of these were most elaborately carved. It seemed a pictur- esque idea for a collector. You could not help thinking how many nightcaps had wagged over these warming-pans in past generations; what jests may have been made and kisses taken while they were in service; and how often they had been uselessly paraded in the l)ed of death. If they could only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not been present? The wine was excellent. When we made the judge our compliments upon a bottle, "I do not give it you as my worst," said he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces. They are worth learning; they set off life and make ordinary moments ornamental. There w^ere two other Landrecienses present. One was the collector of something or other, I forget what; the other, we were told, was the principal notary of the place. So it happened that we all five more or less followed the law. At this rate, the talk was pretty certain to become technical. The Cigarette expounded tlie poor laws very magisterially. And a little later I found myself laying down the Scotch law of illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know nothing. The collector and the notary, who were both married men, accused the judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the subject. He deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all the men I have ever seen, be they French or English. How strange that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the women ! As the evening went on the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits proved better than the wine; the com- pany was genial. This was the highest water mark of popular favor on the whole cruise. After all, being in a 74 AN INLAND VOYAGE judge's house, was there not something semi-official in tlie tribute? iVnd so, remembering what a great country France is, we did full justice to our entertainment." Lan- drecies had been a long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and the sentries on the ramparts were already looking for daybrcalv. SAMBEE AND OISE CANAL CANAL BOATS Next day we made a hite start in the rain. The judge politely escorted us to the end of the lock under an um- brella. We had now brought ourselves to a pitch of hu- mility, in the matter of weather, not often attained except in the Scotch Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was not heavy we counted the day almost fair. Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal, many of them looking mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jerkin of Archangel tar^ picked out with white and green. Some carried gay iron railings and quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Caron side; men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside un- til he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word to the dog aboard the next. AYe must have seen something like a hundred of these embarkations in the course of that day's paddle, ranged one after another '^ Archanficl tor. Tar is an important export of Archangel, the capital cf the most northern government of Russia. SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 75 like the houses in a street ; and from not one of them were we disappointed of this accompaniment. It was like visit- ing a menagerie, the Cigarette remarked. These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the mind. They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene ; and yet if only the canal be- low were to open, one junk after another would hoist sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of France; and the impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four winds. The childrerr who played together to- day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his own father's threshold, when and Avhere might they next meet? For some time past the subject of barges had occupied ar great deal of our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of Europe. It was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a swift river at the tail of a steam- boat, now waiting horses for days together on some incon- siderable junction. We should be seen pottering on deck in all the dignity of years, our white beards falling into our laps. AVe were ever to be busied among paint-ix)ts, so that there should be no white fresher and no green more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals. There should be books in the cabin, and tobacco jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as a violet in April. There should be a flageolet whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars ; or perhaps, laying that aside, up- raise his voice — somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace note — in rich and solemn psalmody. All this simmering in my mind set me wishing to go aboard one of these ideal houses of lounging. I had plenty to choDse from, as I coasted one after another and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. At last I saw a nice old 76 AN INLAND VOYAGE man and liis wife looking at me with some interest, so I gave them good day and pulled up alongside. I Ijegan with a remark upon their dog, which had somewhat the look of a pointer; thence I slid into a compliment on Madame^s flowers, and thence into a word in praise of their way of life. If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get a slap in the face at once. The life would be shown to be a vile one, not without a side shot at your better fortune. Now, what I like so much in France is the clear, unflinching recognition by everybody of his own luck. They all know on which side their bread is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which is surely the better part of religion. And they scorn to make a poor mouth over their povert}^ which I take to be the better part of manliness. I have heard a woman in quite a bet- ter position at home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer to her own child with a horrid whine as "a poor man's child." I would not say such a thing to the Duke of West- minster.^ And the French' are full of this spirit of inde- pendence. Perhaps it is the result of republican institu- tions, as they call them. Much more likely it is because there are so few people really poor that the whiners are not enough to keep each other in countenance. The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired their state. They understood perfectly well, they told me, how Monsieur envied them. \Vithout doubt Mon- sieur was rich, and in that case he might make a canal- boat as pretty as a villa — joli com me un chateau. And with that they invited me on board their own water villa. They apologized for their cabin ; they had not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be. 'The fire should have been here, at this side," explained 1 The Duke of Westminster is onp of the wealthy lancllords of London. SAMBEE AND OISE CANAL 77 the husband. "Then one might have a writing-table in the middle — books — and" (comprehensively) "all. It would be quite coquettish — i;a sera it tout-d-fait coquet/' And he looked about him as thougli the improvements were already made. It was plainly not the first time that he had thus beautified his cabin in imagination; and when next he makes a hit, I should expect to see the writing-table in the middle. Madame had three birds in a cage. They were no great thing, she explained. Fine birds were so dear. They had fcought to get a Hollandais last winter in liouen (Rouen, thought I; and is this whole mansion, with its dogs, and birds, and smoking chimneys, so far a traveller as that, and as homely an object among the cliffs and orchards of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?) — they had sought to get a Hollandais last M'inter in Iiouen ; but these cost fifteen francs apiece — picture it — fifteen francs ! 'Tour un tout petit oiseau — For quite a little bird/' added the husband. As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good people began to brag of their barge and their happy condition in life, as if they had been Emperor and Einpress of the Indies. It was, in the Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good-humor with the world. If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I believe they would do it more freely and with a better grace. They began to ask about our voyage. You should have seen how they sympathized. They seemed half ready to give up their barge and follow us. But these canal etti^ are only gypsies semi-domesticated. The semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's 1 Canoletti, an Italian woid, moans '"little canals.*' Stevenson usos- it in the sense of "canal-mcu." 78 AN INLAND VOYAGE brow darkened. '^Cepcndant,"^ slic began, and then stopped; and then began again by asking me if I were single. "Yes," said I. "And 3^our friend who went by just now?" He also was unmarried. Oh, then, all was well. She could not have wives left alone at home; but since there were no wives in the ques- tion, we were doing the best we could. "To see about one in the world," said the husband, "il ny a que ca — there is nothing else worth while. A man, look you, who sticks in his ow^n village like a bear," he w^ent on, "very well, he sees nothing. And then death is the end of all. And he has seen nothing." Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this canal in a steamer. "Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene," I suggested. "That's it," assented the husband. "He had his wife and family with him, and servants. He came ashore at all the locks and asked the name of the villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down. Oh, he wrote enormously ! I suppose it was a wager." A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but jt seemed an original reason for taking notes. THE OISE IN FLOOD Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light country cart at Etreux ; and we were soon fol- lowing them along the side of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars. Agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope of the hill : notably Tupigny, with the ^ "Cependant." "However." THE OISE IN FLOOD 79 liop-poles lianging their garlands in the very street, and the houses clustered with grapes. There was a faint enthusi- asm on our- passage ; weavers put their heads to the win- dows ; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the two "boaties" — harquettes; and bloused pedestrians, who were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the nature of his freight. We had a shower or two, but liglit and flying. The air was clean and SAveet among all these green fields and green things growing. There was not a touch of autumn in the weather. And when, at Vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise. The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt all the way to Origny it ran with ever-quick- ening speed, taking fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea. The water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among half-sub- merged willows, and made an angry clatter along stony shores. The course kept turning and turning in a narrow and well-timbered valley. Now the river would approach the side, and run gliding along the chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open colza fields among the trees. Now it would skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the checkered sunlight. Again, the foliage closed so thickly in front that there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of willows ovei'topped by elms and poplars, under which the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue sky. On these different manifestations the sun poured its clear and catholic looks. The shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the stable meadows. The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into com- munion with our eyes. And all the while the river never so AN INLAND A^OYAGE stoiopecl running or took breath; and the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering from top to toe. There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on the shivering of the reeds. There are not many things in nature more striking to man's eye. It is such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every nook along the shore is enough to infect a silly human with alarm. Perhaps they are only acold, and no wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. Or, perhaps, they have never got accustomed to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or the miracle of its continuous body. Pan^ once played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays upon these later generations down all the valley of the Oise ; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and the ter- ror of the world. The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took it up and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Cen- taur carrying off a nymph. To keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying of the paddle. The river was in such a hurry for the sea ! Every drop of water ran in a panic, like so many people in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was ever so numerous or so sin- gle-minded? All the objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument, and ihe blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation were but a holiday jour- ney and not the daily moil of threescore years and ten. 1 Pan. The god of pastures, forests, flocks, and shepherds. He is frequeutly represented as playing upon the syrinx, or Pan's pipes, an inritrument made of reeds of graduated lengths. THE OISE IN FLOOD 81 The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and witli tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy under- neath the wallows. But the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who stand still are always timid advisers. As for us, we could have shouted aloud. If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with us. I w^as living three to the minute. I was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream. I have rarely had better profit of my life. For I think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his ex- travagances as so much gained upon the thieves. And above all, where, instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and al)Ove all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We sliall have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomachs, when he cries. Stand and deliver. A swift stream is a favorite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum ; but when he and I come to settle our accounts I shall whis- tle in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise. Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sun- shine and the exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer contain ourselves and our content. The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and stretch ourselves on shore. And so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on tlie grass, and smoked deifying tobacco, and proclaimed tliG world excellent. It was the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it witli extreme complacency. 82 AN INLAND VOYAGE On one side of the valle}^ high upon the chalky summit of the hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and dis- appeared at regular intervals. At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds against the sky, for all the world (as the Cigarette declared) like a toy Burns^ who had just ploughed up the Mountain Daisy. He was the only living thing within view, unless we are to count the river. On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. There w^as something very sweet and taking in the air he played, and we thought we had never heard bells speak so intelligently or sing so melodiously as these. It must have been to some such measure that the spinners and the young maids sang, "Come away. Death,''- in the Shakespearian Illyria. There is so often a threatening note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing them ; but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the burden of a popular song, w^ere always moderate and tun- able, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall oi' the babble of a rookery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the time of his meditations. I could have blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever may be con- cerned with such affairs, in France, who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not held meet- ings, and made collections, and had their names repeatedly ij. toy Burns, etc. The reference is to Robert Burns's poem entitled To a Mountain Daisif. ^"Come aioay, Death." See Shakspere's Ttcelfth Night, Act. II, sc. iv, 11. 56-67. The scene of the play is "A city in illyria and a sea coast near it." THE OISE IN FLOOD 83 printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted^ substitutes, who should bom- bard their sides to the provocation of a brand-new bell- ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with terror and riot. At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew. The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of the Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who have sat out a noble joerformance and return to work. The river was more dan- gerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and violent. All the way down we had had our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from the water and carry them round. But the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds. Every two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and usually involved more than an- other in its fall. Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the twigs. Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank, there was room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, where the stream was too impetuous for this, there was nothing for it but to land and "carry over." This made a fine series of accidents in the day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves. Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honor of the sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the '^Birmingham-hearted. Birmingham, a city in Warwickshire, Eng- land, is noted for metal manufactures. g4 AN INLAND VOYAGE river made one of its leonine pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another fallen tree within a stone-cast. I had my back-board down in a trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough above the w^ater, and the branches not too thick to let me slip below. When a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with the universe he is not in a temper to take great determinations coolly, and this, which might have been a very important determi- nation for me, had not been taken under a happy star. The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands and bereaved me of my l)oat. The Arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and, thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away down stream. I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about. My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung to my paddle. The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers pockets. You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man. Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscade, and he must now join personally in the fray. And still I held to my paddle. At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humor and injus- tice. A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team. But there was the paddle in my hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: "He clung to his paddle." The Cigarette had gone past awhile before; for, as I THE OISE IN FLOOD 85 might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side. He had offered his serv- ices to haul me out, but, as I was then alread}^ on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant Arethiisa. The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side. I was so cold that my heart was sore. I had now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered. I could have given any of them a lesson. The Cigarette, remarked, facetiously, that he thought I was "taking exercise" as I drew near, until he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold. I had a rub-down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber bag. But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body. The strug- gle had tired me; and, perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I was a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the universe had leaped out against me, in tliis green val- ley quickened ])y a running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would the wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed ? and look so beauti- ful all the time ? Nature's good-humor was only skin deep, after all. There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in Origny Sainte-Benoite when we arrived. 86 AN INLAND VOYAGE ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE A BY-DAY The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest; indeed, I do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice of services as were here offered to the devout. And while the bells made merry in the sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the beets and colza. In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music, "0 France, mes amours/'^ It brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady called in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. She was not the first nor the second who had been taken with the song. There is something very pathetic in the love of the French people, since the war, for dismal patriotic music-making. I have watched a forester from Alsace while some one was singing, ''Les malheurs de la France/'^ at a baptismal party in the neighborhood of Fontainebleau. He arose from the table and took his son aside, close by where I was standing. ^'Listen, listen," he said, bearing on the boy's shoulder, "and remember this, my son." A little after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing in the darkness. The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine^ made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people ; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire. In what other i^'O France, mes amours." "O France, my loves." 2 ''Les malheurs de France." "The ills of France." ^Alsace and Lorraine now constitute an imperial territory of the German empire. Tliey were ceded by France to Germany in 1871 as a result of the I'ranco-German war, which had been needlessly precipi- tated by the Second French Empire through a desire to acquire territory and to revive the former military prestige of France. The cession caused great and lasting bitterness among the French. ORIGNY SAINTE-BEXOITE 87 country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into the street ? But altliction heightens love ; and we shall ne\er know we are Englishmen until we have lost India. Independent America is still the cross of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer George^ without abhorrence; and 1 never feel more warmly to my own land than when I see the stars and stripes, and remember what our empire might have been. The hawker's little book, which I purchased, was a curi- ous mixture. Side by side with the flippant, rowdy non- sense of the Paris music-halls there were many pastoral pieces, not without a touch of poetr}^ I thought, and in- stinct with the brave independence of the poorer class in France. There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried iii his axe, and the gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade. It was not very well written, this poetiy of labor, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed what was weak or wordy in the expression. The martial and the patriotic pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish produc- tions one and all. The poet had passed under the Caudine Forks- he sang for an army visiting the lomb of its old renown, with arms reversed; and sang not of victory, but of death. There was a number in the hawker's collection called Consents FranQCiis,^ which ma}^ rank among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on record. It would not be possible to fight at all in such a spirit. The bravest con- script would turn pale if such a ditty were struck up beside him on the morning of l^attle ; and whole regiments would pile their arms to its tune. ^Fanner George. A nicknnme appUed to George III of England. He is said to have actually made money from a farm near Windsor. 2 the Caudine Forks. In the Second Samnite War the Roman army was caught in a defile called the Caudine Forks and was compelled to surrender to the Samnite general. Pontius. ^ Conscrits Fraiii-ais. Frouch conscripts. 88 AN INLAND VOYAGE If Fletcher of Saltoim^ is in the right about the influ- ence of national songs, you would say France was come to a poor pass. But the thing will work its own cure, and a sound-hearted and courageous people weary at length of snivelling over their disasters. Already Paul Deroulede- has written some manly military verses. There is not much of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir a man's heart in his bosom ; they lack the lyrical elation, and move slowly ; but they are written in a grave, honorable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a good cause. One feels as if one would like to trust Deroulede with something. It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow- countrymen that they may be trusted with their own fu- ture. And, in the mean time, here is an antidote to "French Conscripts" and much other doleful versifica- tion. We had left the boats over night in the custody of one whom we shall call Carnival. I did not properly catch his name, and perhaps that was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position to hand him down with honor to pos- terity. To this person's premises we strolled in the course of the day, and found quite a little deputation inspecting the canoes. There was a stout gentleman with a knowl- edge of the river, which he seemed eager to impart. There was a very elegant young gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of English, who led the talk at once to the Ox- ford and Cambridge boat race. And then there were three handsome girls from fifteen to twenty; and an old gentle- man in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a strong ''^ Fletcher of Saltoun. Andrew Fletclier, a Scotch political writer, born at Saltoun, in East Lothian, in the middle of the seventeenth century. The allusion is to a passage in one of his political works ; ". . . if a man were allowed to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a country." • PavJ DerouU'de. A French writer whose plays and poems owed their success chiefly to the burning hatred which they expressed against the Germans. He served in the Franco-rrussian wnr. ORIGXY SAIXTE-BENOITS 89 country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, I should sup- pose. The Cigarette had some mysteries to perform with his rigging in the coach-house; so I was left to do the parade single-handed. I found myself very much of a hero whether I would or not. The girls were full of little shud- derings over the dangers of our journey. And 1 thought it would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies. My mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep sensation. It was Othello over again, with no less than three Desdemonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the background.^ Xever were the canoes more flattered, or flattered more adroitly. - "It is like a violin," cried one of the girls in an ecstasy. "I thank you for the word, mademoiselle," said I. "All the more since there are people who call out to me that it is like a coffin." "Oh ! but it is really like a violin. It is finished like a violin," she went on. "And polished like a violin," added a senator. "One has only to stretch the cords," concluded another, "and then tum-tumty-tum" ; he imitated the result with spirit. Was not this a graceful little ovation ? AYhere this peo- ple finds the secret of its pretty speeches I cannot imagine, unless the secret should be no other than a sincere desire to please. But then no disgrace is attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas in England, to talk like a book is to give in one's resignation to society. The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach- house, and somewhat irrelevantly informed the Cigarette 1 It was Othello over again, etc. See Shakspei-e's Othello, Act I, sc. iii. 11. 138-170. — "She [IJesdemona] loved me for the dangers I had passed." 90 AN INLAND VOYAGE that he was the father of the three girls and four more; quite an exploit for a Frenchman. "You are very fortunate/^ answered the Cigarette po- litely. And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, stole away again. We all got very friendly together. The girls proposed to start with iis on the morrow, if you please. And, jesting apart, every one was anxious to know the hour of our de- parture. Now, when you are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesir- able, and so we told them not before twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ten at latest. Towards evening we went abroad again to post some letters. It was cool and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for one or two urchins who followed us as they might have followed a menagerie ; the hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides through the clear air, and the bells were chiming for yet another service. Suddenly we sighted the three girls, standing, with a fourth sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. We had been very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure. But what was the etiquette of Origny ? Had it been a country road, of course we should have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow ? I consulted the Cigarette. ''Look,'' said he. I looked. There were the four girls on the same spot ; but now four backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious. Corporal Modesty had given the word of com- mand, and the well-disciplined picket had gone right-about- face like a single person. They maintained this formation all the while we were in sight ; but we heard them tittering among themselves, and the girl whom we had not met ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 9X Jauglied with open mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at the enemy. I wonder was it altogether mod- esty after all, or in part a sort of country proVocation ? As we were returning to the inn we beheld something floating in the ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees that grow along their summit. It was too high up, too large, and too steady for a kite; and, as it was dark, it could not be a star. For, although a star were as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so ampl}^ does the sun bathe heaven witli radiance that it would sparkle 'like a point of light for us. The village was dotted with people with their heads in air; and the chil- dren were in a bustle all along the street and far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where we could still see them running in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, which had left Saint Quentin at half past five that evening. Mighty composedly the majority of the grown people took it. But we were English, and were soon running up the hill with the best. Being travelers ourselves in a small wa}^ we would fain have seen these other travelers alight. The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill. All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared. Whithe]'? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven ? or come safely to land somewhere in that blue, uneven distance, into which the roadway dipped and melted before our eyes ? Probably the aeronauts were already warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these unhomely regions of the air. The night fell swiftly. Eoadside trees and disappointed sightseers, returning through the meadows, stood out in black against a margin of low red sunset. It was cheerfuller to face the other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the color of a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the white clilfs behind us faintlv reddened bv the fire of the chalk-kilns. 92 AN INLAND VOYAGE The lamps were iightetl^ and the salads were being made in Origny Sainte-Benoite by the river. OEIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE THE COMPANY AT TABLE Although we came late for dinner, the company at table treated ns to sparkling wine. 'That is how we are in France/^ said one. "Those who sit down with us are our friends." And the rest applauded. They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday with. Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north. One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Sam- son's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of dis- proportion in the w^orld, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, sul)dued person, blond, and lymphatic, and sad, with something the look of a Dane: "Tristcs tetes de DanoisT'^ as Gaston Lafenestre used to say. 1 must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good fellows, now gone down into the dust. We shall never again see Gaston in his forest costume, — he was Gaston with all the world, in affection, not in disre- spect, — nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau- '^"Trisiefi ieies de Danois." Sad Danish countenances. /^ Fontainehleau. A town thirty-seven miles southeast of Paris. The palace of Fontainebleau was for centuries one of the chief places of residence of the French kings. The forest, which is among the most beautiful in France, has become the resort of many artists, notably those of the modern French school of landscape painters.. OEIGNY SAINTE-BEXOTTE 93 with the woodland liorn. Never again shall his kind smile put peace among all races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in France. Xever more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his industrious pencil. He died too early, at the very moment when he was heginning to put forth fresh sprouts and blossom into something worthy of himself; and yet none who knew him will think he lived in vain. I never knew a man so little, for whom yet I had so much affection ; and I find it a good test of others, how much they had learned to understand and value him. His was, indeed, a good influence in life while he was still among us; he had a fresh laugh; it did you good to see him ; and, however sad he may have been at heart, he al- ways bore a bold and cheerful countenance and took for- tune's worst as it were the showers of spring. But now his mother sits alone by the side of rontaine])leau woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. Many of his pictures found their way across the chan- nel ; besides those which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in I^ondon with two English pence, and, perhaps, twice as many words of English. If any one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the manner of Jacques,^ with this fine creature's signature, let him tell himself that one of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his lodging. There may be better pictures in the National Gallery; but not a painter among the generations had a better heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints. It had need to be precious; for ^Jacqties. Charles Emile Jacques, a French painter of landscape and animals, particularly of cows and sheep. "His inns, his farms, and poultry yards . . . are full of the familiar sentiment of life. . . . Not less does he catch the distinctive detail of the movement, action, attitude, and relations of animals." — C. 11. Stranahan : A History of French Painting. 94 AN INLAND VOYAGE it is very costly, when, by a stroke, a mother is left deso- latQ, and the peace-maker and peace-looker of a whole so- ciety is laid in the ground with Caesar and the Twelve Apostles. There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontaine- hleau ; and when the dessert comes in at Barbizon/ people look to the door for a figure that is gone. The tliird of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the landlady's husband ; not properly the land- lord, since he worked himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at evening as a guest; a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with bald- ish head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. On Satur- day, describing some paltry adventure at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into a score of fragments. Whenever he made a remark he would look all round the table with his chin raised and a spark of green light in either eye, seeking approval. His wife appeared now and again in the door- way of the room, where she was superintending dinner, with a ''Henri, you forget yourself,^' or a "Henri, you can surely talk without making such a noise." Indeed, that was what the honest fellow could not do. On the most trifling matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. I never saw such a petard of a man; I think the devil was in him. He had two favorite expressions, ''It is logical," or illogical, as the case might be; and this other thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous story : "I am a proletarian, you see." Indeed, we saw it very well. V God forbid that ever I should find him handling a gun in Paris streets. That will not be a good moment for the general public. 1 BarMzon. A small village near the forest, a favorite haunt of artists. UKiGNr SAINTE-BENOITE 95 I thought liis two phrases very much represented the good and evil of his class, and, to some extent, of his coun- try. It is a strong thing to say what one is, and not he ashamed of it; even although it he in douhtful taste to repeat the statement too often in one evening. I should not admire it in a duke, of course ; but as times go the trait is lionorable in a workman. On the other hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put one's reliance upon logic; and our own logic particularly, for it is generally wrong. We never know where we are to end if once we begin following words or doctors. There is an upright stock in a man's own heart that is trustier tlian any syllogism; and the eyes, and the sympathies, and appetites know a thing or two that have never yet been stated in controversy. Rea- sons are as plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuifs, they serve impartially with all sides. Doctrines do not stand or fall by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly put. An able controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates the justice of his cause. But France is all gone wandering after one or two big words; it will take some time before they can be satisfied that they are no more than words, however big ; and, when once that is done, they will perhaps find logic less divert- ing. The conversation opened with details of the da3^'s shoot- ing. When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory pro indiriso,^ it is plain that many ques- tions of etiquette and priority must arise. "Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, *^here is a field of beet-root. Well. Here am I, then. I advance, do I not? EJl hien! sacristi" ;- and the statement, waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation of oaths, the 1 Pro indh-iso. Latin, Each for himself. ^^'Eh Men! sacristi." "WeU, by gad!" 96 AN INLAND VOYAGE speaker glaring about for sympathy, and everybody nod- ding his head to him in the name of peace. The ruddy Northman tohl some tales of his own prowess in keeping order : notably one of a Marquis. "Marquis," I said, "if you take another step I fire upon you. You have committed a dirtiness, Marquis." AV hereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and withdrew. The landlord applauded noisily. "It was well done," he said. "He did all that he could. He admitted he was wrong." And then oath upon oath. He was no marquis- lover, either, but he had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian host of ours. From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a gen- eral comparison of Paris and tlie country. The proletarian beat the table like a drum in praise of Paris. "What is Paris? Paris is the cream of France. There are no Pa- risians; it is you, and I, and everybody who are Parisians. A man has eighty chances per cent to get on in the world in l^iris." And he drew a vivid sketch of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles that were to go all over the world. Eli hicn, quoi, c'est magnifique, QCi!'''^ cried he. l^he sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant's life ; he thought Paris bad for men and women. "Cen- tralization," said he — But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. It was all logical, he showed him, and all magnificent. "What a spectacle ! What a glance for an eye !" And the dishes reeled upon the table under a cannonade of blows. Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the liberty of opinion in France. I could hardly have shot more amiss. There was an instant silence and a great wagging of significant heads. They did not fancy the sub- "^Bh JjieUj quoi, c'cst magnifique, ga." "Well, I guess that's fine." ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 97 ject, it was plain, but tlie}^ gave me to understand that the sad Northman was a mart}'! on account of his views. "Ask him a bit/' said they. ."Just ask him." "Yes, sir," said he in liis quiet way, answering me, al- tliougli I had not spoken, "I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in France than you may imagine." And with that he dropped his eyes and seemed to consider the sub- ject at an end. Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or why, or when was this lymphatic bagman martyred ? We concluded at once it was on some religious question, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition,^ which were principally drawn from Poe's horrid story, and the ser- mon in Tristram Shandy, I believe." On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the question ; for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathizing deputation at our departure, we found the hero up before us. He was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of mar- tyr, I conclude. AYe had a long conversation, and made out what we wanted ki spite of his reserve. But here was a truly curious circumstance. It seems possible for two Scotchmen and a Frenchman to discuss during a long half- hour, and each nationality have a different idea in view throughout. It was not till the very end that we discov- ered his heresy had been political, or that he suspected our mistake. The terms and spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to religious be- liefs. And vice versa. 1 ihc Inquisition. A court for the trial and punishment of heretics. The punishments were often excessively cruel. Poe's horrid story is The Pit and the Pendulum. ^ the sermon in Tristram Shandy. The passage referred to occurs in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne : "Go with me for a moment into the prisons of the Inquisition. — Behold Religion, with Mcrey and Justice chained down under Irpr feet,— there sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks and instruments of torment," etc. 98 AN INLAND VOYAGE Nothing could be more characteristic of the two coun- tries. Politics are the religion of France ; as N^anty Ewart^ would have said, ^'A d — d bad religion/^ while we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for all differences about a hymn-book or a Hebrew word which, perhaps, neither of the parties can translate. And perhaps the misconception is typical of many others that may never be cleared up ; not only between people of different race, but between those of different sex. As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist, or perhaps only a Communard, which is a very different thing, and had lost one or more situations in consequence. I think he had also been rejected in marriage ; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering business which deceived me. He was a mild, gentle creature, anyway, and 1 hope he has got a better situation and married a more suitable wife since then. DOWN THE OISE TO MOY Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. Finding us easy in our ways, he regretted having let us off so cheapl}^, and, taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull story, with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner and kept him in his place as an inferior, with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have re- funded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. He wished me to drink Avith him, l)ut I would none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender in his professions, 1 Nantu Etrart. Captain of the smuggler's brig in Scott's Redgauntlct. DOWN THE OISE 99 but I walked beside liim in silence or answered liim in stately courtesies, and, when we got to the landing-place, passed the word in English slang to the Cigarette. In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, there must have been fifty people about the bridge. AVe were as pleasant as we could be with all but Carnival. We said good by, shaking hands with the old gentleman who knew the river and the young gentleman who had a smattering of English, but never a word for Carnival. Poor Carnival, here was a humiliation. He who had been so much identified with the canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had shown off the boats and even the Ijoatmen like a private exhibition of his own, to be now so .publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan! I never saw anybody look more crestfallen than he. He hung in the background, coming timidly forward ever and again as he thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humor, and falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. Let us hope it will be a lesson to him. I would not have mentioned Carnival's peccadillo had not the thing been so uncommon in France. This, for in- stance, was the only case of dishonesty or even sharp prac- tice in our whole voyage. We talk very much about our honesty in England. It is a good rule to be on your guard wherever you hear great professions about a very little piece of virtue. If the English could only hear how they are spoken of abroad, they might confine themselves for a while to remedying the fact, and perhaps even when that was done, give us fewer of their airs. The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at our start, but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it was black with sight-seers ! AYe were loudly cheered, and for a good way below young lads and lasses ran along the bank, still cheering. What with current and paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. It was no 100 AN INLAND VOYAGE joke to keep up with us upon the woody shore. But the girls picked up tlieir skirts, as if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed until their breath was out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of com- })anions; and just as they, too, had had enough, the fore- most of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not Diana herself, although this was more of a A'enus, after all, could have done a graceful tiling more gracefully.^ "Come back again!" she cried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated the words, "Come back." But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the green trees and running water. Come back? Tliere is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous stream of life. The merchant bows unto the seaman 's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes. And we must all set our ^Docket watches by the clock of fate. There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is full of curves like this, your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. For though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it will have made an ample sweep between whiles; many little streams will have fallen in; many ex- halations risen towards the sun; and even although it were the same acre, it will not be the same river Oise. And thus, graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my life should carry me back again to where you await death's whistle by the river, that will not be the old I who ^ Not Diana . . . Venus. Grace was one of the marked characteristics of Diana, goddess of tlie hunt, as well as of Venus, goddess f^f love and beauty. DOWN THE OISK 101 walks the street; and those wives and mothers, say, will those be you? There was never any mistake aljout the Oise, as a mat- ter of fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a pro- digious hurry for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that I strained my thumb fighting- with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of tlie way with one hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve* mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. We had to put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of the bot- tom with our feet. And still it went on its way singing among the poplars, and making a green valley in the "world. After a good wonian, and a good book, and to- bacco, there is nothing so agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my life: which was, after all, one part oMing to the unruly winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but from its great preoccupation over its own business of getting to the sea. A difficult business, too; for the detours it had to make are not to be counted. The geographers seem to have given up the attempt ; for I found no map. to represent the infinite contortion of its course. A fact will say more than any of them. After we had been some hours, three, if I mistake not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, breakneck gallop, when we came upon a ham- let and asked where we were, w^e had got no further than four kilometres (say two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were not for the honor of the thing (in the Scotch saying), we might almost as welh have been standing still. We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of pop- lars. The leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. - The river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to 102 AX INLAND VOYAGE cliide at our dela}'. Little we cared. The river knew where it was going; not so we; the less our hurry, where we found good quarters, and a pleasant theatre for a pipe. At that hour stock-brokers were shouting in Paris Bourse for t^^'o or three per cent; but we minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb^ of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurr}^ is the re- source of the faithless. Where a man can trust his own heart, and those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to- da}^ And if he die in the meanwhile, why, then, there he dies, and the question is solved. We had to take to the canal in the course of the after- noon : l)ecause where it crossed the river there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. If it had not been for an excited fellow on the bank we should have paddled right into the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. We met a man, a gentleman, on tlie tow-path, who was much inter- ested in our cruise. And I was witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette ; who, because his knife came from Xorway, narrated all sorts of adventures in that country, where he has never been. He was quite feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession. Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little village, gath- ered round a chateau in a moat. The air was perfumed with hemp from neighboring fields. At the Golden Sheep we found excellent entertainment. German shells from the siege of La Fere, Niirnberg figures,- gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the public room. The landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted, '^hccaiom'b. In Greok antiquity, a sacrifice of a linndred oxen, 2 La Fere, on the Oise, in the department of Aisne, was besieged by Henry IV of France in 150(5. At La Fere Champenoise, in the depart- ment" of Marne, the French, during the Napoleonic wars, were defeated (March 25, 1814) by the allies. The allusion, which is of no essential importance, may be slightly inaccurate. JViirnhcrg figures. Niirnborg, or Nuremberg, a famous old city of Bavaria, is noted for the manu- facture of toys and fancy articles, many of whicli are ingeniously carved. In Germany, "Nviremberg wares" is a synonym for "trifles" or "knick-knacks." DOWN THE OlSE 103 iiiotherh' body, with soinetliing not far short of a genius for cookery. She liad a guess of her excellence herself. After every dish was sent in, she would come and look on at the dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes. 'X"cst hon, nest-ce pasf^ she would say; and, when she had received a proper answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. That common French dish, partridge and cab- bages, became a new thing in my eyes at the Golden Sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in consequence. Sweet was our rest in the Golden. Sheep at Moy. LA FEKE OF CUIJSKD MEMORY We lingered in Moy a good i)art of the day, for we were fond of being philosophical, and scorned long journeys and early starts on principle. The place, moreover, invited to repose. People in elal)orate shooting costumes sallied from the chateau with guns and game-bags; and this was a ])leasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning. In this way all the world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the reigning monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tranquillity. An imperturbalde demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds can- not be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunder-storm. AVe made a very short day of it to La Fere ; but the dusk was falling and a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats. La Fere is a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart. Between the first and the second extends a region of waste land and cultivated patches. i"C"tsf hon, n'cst fjosf" "It's good, isn't it?" -[04 AN INLAND VOYAGE Here and tliere along the wayside were posters forbidding trespass in the name of military engineering. At last a second gateway admitted us to the town itself. Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the air. The town was full of the mili- tary reserve, out for the French Autumn manoeuvres, and the reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable great-coats. It was a fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows. The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate each other on the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fere. Such a dinner as we were going to eat ! such beds as we were to sleep in ! and all the while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the poplared country-side. It made our mouths water. The inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which. But T shall never forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. A rattle of many dishes came to our ears ; we sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to eat. Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hostelry, with all its furnaces in action and all its dressers charged with viands, you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not be- lieve I have a sound view of that kitchen ; I saw it through a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady, however; there she was, head- ing her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. Her I asked politely — too politel}^ thinks the Cigarette — if DOWN THE OISE 105 we could have beds, she surveying us coldly from head to foot. ^"You will finds beds in the suburb/' she remarked. "We are too busy for the like of you." If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I felt sure we could put things right ; so said I, "If we cannot sleep, we may at least dine," — and was for depositing my bag. What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the landlady's face ! She made a run at us and stamped her foot. ^^Out with you, — out of the door !" she screeched. ''Sor- tez! sortez! sortez par la porte!" I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the rain and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a disappointed mendicant. Where were the boating men of Belgium? where the judge and his good wines? and where the graces of Origny? Black, black was the night after the hrelit kitchen, but what was that to the blackness in our heart ? This was not the first time that I have been refused a lodging. Often and often have I planned what I should do if such a misadventure happened to me again. And nothing is easier to plan. But to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the indignity? Try it; try it only once, and tell me what you did. It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of police surveillance (such as I have had) or one brutal rejection from an inn door change your views upon the subject like a course of lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world bowing to 3'ou as you go, social arrangements have a very hand- some air; but once get under the wheels and you wish society were at the devil. I will give most respectable men 106 AN INLAND VOYAGE a fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer them two- pence for w^hat remains of their morality. For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire if it had been handy.^ There was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval of human insti- tutions. As for the Cigarette, I never knew a man so altered. "We have been taken for pedlars again," said he. ^'Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in reality !" He particularized a complaint for every joint in the land- lady's body. Timon was a philanthropist alongside of him.- And then, when he was at the top of his maledic- tory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whim- peringly to commiserate the poor. "I hope to God," he said, — and I trust the prayer was answered, — "that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this the imperturbable Cigarette f This, this was he. Oh, change beyond report, thought, or belief ! Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew brighter as the night increased in darkness. We trudged in and out of La Fere streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people were copiously dining ; we saw stables where carters' nags had plenty of fodder and clean straw; we saw no end of reservists, Avho were very sorry for themselves this wet night, I doubt not, and 1 set the temple of Diane em fire. The temple of Diana at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the world, was set on fire by Erostratus with the purpose of immortalizing his name. - Timon was a philanthropist. Timon of Athens, in ShakspL>re"s play of that name, upon discovering the ingratitude of a throng of flatterers whom he has treated with lavish generosity, suffers bitter and violent reaction of feeling. The following passage illustrates the point of Stevenson's allusion : "Timon will to the woods, where he shall find The uukindest beast more kinder than mankind. The gods confound — hear me, you good gods all I — The Athenians both within and out that wall ! And grant as Timon grows, his hate may grow To the whole race of mankind, high and low I Amen." (Act IV, sc. i, 11. 35-40.) DOWN THE OlSE 107 yearned for their country homes; but had they not each man his place in La Fere barracks ? And we, what had we ? There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. People gave us directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace. We were very sad people indeed, by the time we had gone all over La Fere ; and the Cigarette had already made up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But right at the other end, the house next the town-gate was full of light and bustle. ''Bazin, aubergiste, loge a pied/'^ was the sign. ''A la Croix de Malte/'~ There were we received. The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smok- ing ; and were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the streets* and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be oft* for the barracks. Bazin was a tall man, running to fat ; soft-spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type of the workman- innkeeper from the bawling, disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his 3^outh. There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. And if any one has read Zola's description^ of the workman's marriage party visit- ing the Louvre they would do well to have heard Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted in the museums in his youth. "One sees there little miracles of work," he said ; "that is what makes a good workman ; it kindles a spark." AVe asked him how he managed in La Fere. "I am married," he said, "and I have my pretty children. ^ "Bazin, auhergiste, loge a pied." "Bazin, innkeeper, lodges pedes- trians." 2.4 la Croix de Malte." At [the sign of] ttie Maltese Cross." ^Zola's description. In L'Assommoir. 108 AN INLAND VOYAGE But frankl}^, it is no life at all. From morning to niglit I pledge a pack of goocl-enoiigli fellows who know nothing/' It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the clouds. We sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. At the guard-house opposite the guard was being forever turned out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in out of the night or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their cloaks. Madame Bazin came out after a while; she was tired with her day's w^ork, I suppose; and she nestled up to her husband and laid her head upon his breast. He had his arm about her and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. I think Bazin was right, and he was really married. Of how few people can the same be said ! Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were charged for candtes, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spec- tacle of their married life. And there was yet another item uncharged. For these people's politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. We had a thirst for consid- eration ; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits ; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the world. How little we pay our way in life ! Although we have our purses continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? perhaps they, also, were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in my manner? DOWN THE OlSE 109 DOWN THE OISE THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY Below La Fere the river runs through a piece of open pastoral country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the Golden Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of water visits and makes green the fields. Kine, and horses, and little humor- ous donkeys browse together in the meadows, and come down in troops to the river-side to drink. They make a strange feature in the landscape; above all when startled, and you see them galloping to and fro, with their incon- gruous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as of great, unfenced iDampas, and the herds of wandering nations. There were hills in the distance upon either hand ; and on one side, the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gobain. The artillery were practising at La Fere; and soon the cannon of heaven joined in that loud play. Two conti- nents of cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hillSc What with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frighted in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hoofs thundering abroad over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, w^e had a very rousing battle piece performed for our amusement. At last, the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the wet meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicino- trees and grass; and the river kept 110 AN INLAND VOYAGE unweariodly carrying us on at its best pace. There was a manufacturing district about Chauny; and after that the banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow after another. Only here and there we passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank would stare after us until we turned the corner. I dare say we continued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a night after. Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours longer by their variety. When the showers were heavy I could feel each drop striking through my jer- sey to my warm skin ; and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I decided I should l)uy a mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me flail the water witli my paddle like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly amused -by these ebullitions. It gave him something else to look at besides clay banks and willows. All the time the river stole away like a thief in straight places, or swung round corners with an eddy ; the willows nodded and were undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had been so many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy and be bent upon undoing its performance. What a number of things a river does b}^ simply following Grav- ity in the innocence of its heart ! DOWN THE OISE m NOYOX CATHEDRAL XoYOX stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight- backed cathedral with two stiff towers. As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble ui^-hill one upon another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling they did not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. As the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through the market-place under the Hotel de Yille,^ they grew emptier and more composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows w^ere turned to the great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." The Hotel du Nord,- never- theless, lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast of the church, and we had the superb east end before -our eyes all morning from the window of our bedroom. I have seldom looked on the east end of a church with more com- plete s^'mpathy. As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some great old battle-ship. Hollow-backed but- tresses carry vases, which figure for the stern lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just ap- pear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climb- ing the next billow. At any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat and proceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail the sea. no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church 1 Hotel (Ir rule. Town Hall. -HOUl at you are any the less immor- tal for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. To detect the flavor of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colors of the sunset. Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the proper inclination, now right, now left ; to keep the head down stream; to empty the little pool that gathered in the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against the glittering sparkles of sun upon tlie water ; or now and again to pass below the whistling tow-rope of the Deo Gratias of Conde, or the Four Sons of Aymon, — there was not much art in that ; certainly silly muscles managed it between sleep and waking : and meanwhile the brain had a whole holiday, and went to sleep. We took in .at a glance the larger features of the scene, and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling washerwomen on the bank. Now and again we might be half wakened by some church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away. But these luminous intervals were only partially luminous. A little more of us was called into action, but never the whole. The central bureau of nerves, what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without disturbance, like a Government Othce. The great wheels of intelligence turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist. I have gone on for half an hour at a time, counting my 1 Brr/f/.s'7/OK-'s f/uide. Georpje Bx-adshaw, a Quaker map-maker, was the originator, in 1839, of railwaj' guides. -Wait Whitman. An American poet (1819-1892) whose work is characterized by an intentional crudity of form and a boldly inde- pendent and original attitude toward life and literary art. His works had a strong influence on Stevenson's mind. 12G AN INLAND VOYAGE strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid that, as a low form of consciousness. And \vhat a pleasure it was ! What a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about ! There is noth- ing captious about a man who lias attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and longevous like a tree. There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied what I may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my abstraction. What philosophers call me and not me, ego and no7i ego, preoccupied me whether 1 would or no. There was less me and more not me than I was accustomed to expect. I looked on upon somebody else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody else's feet against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks. Xor this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the pad- dling. I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of myself. I Avas isolated in my own skull. Thoughts pre- sented themselves unbidden; they were not my thoughts, they were plainly some one else's; and I considered them like a part of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near Nirvana^ as would be convenient in prac- tical life; and, if this be so, I make the Buddhists my sin- cere compliments; 'tis an agreeable state, not very con- sistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a money point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one that sets a man superior to alarms. It may be best figured by supposing yourself to get dead drunk, and 3^et keep sober to enjoy it. I have a notion that open-air labor- 1 'Sirvana. According to Buddhism, a condition after death in which all personal consciousness is lost. DOWN THE OISE 127 ers must spend a huge poition of tlieir clays in this eestatic stupor, which explains their high composure and endurance. A pity to go to the expense of laudanum when here is a better paradise for nothing ! This frame of mind was the great exploit of our vo3^age, take it all in all. It was the farthest piece of travel accom- plished. Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of lan- guage that I despair of getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up from time to time into my notice, like solid ol)jects through a rolling cloudland ; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object of pleased consideration; and all the time, with the river running and the shores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my strokes and forget- ting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France. DOWN THE OISE CHURCH INTERIORS We made our fii^t stage below Compiegne to Pont Sainte Maxence. I was abroad a little after six the next morning. The air was biting and smelt of frost. In an open place a score of women wrangled together over the day's market; and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and queru- lous, like that of sparrows on a winters morning. The rare passengers 1)1 ew into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, although the chimneys were smoking over- 128 AN INLAND VOYAGE head in golden sunshine. If 3'Ou wake early enough at this season of the year, you may get up in December to break your fast in June. 1 found my way to the church, for there is always some- thing to see about a church, whether living worshippers or dead men's tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it looked colder. The white nave was posi- tively arctic to the eye ; and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel reading and waiting penitents ; and out in the nave one very old woman was engaged in her devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and slapping their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the nature of her exercises. She went from chair to chair, from altar to altar, circunmavigating the church. To each shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal length of time. Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in a great variety of heavenly secu- rities. She would risk nothing on the credit of an}^ single intercessor. Out of the whole company of saints and angels, not one but was* to suppose- himself her champion elect against the Great Assizes !^ I could only think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based .upon unconscious unbelief. She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with which she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what you call seeing, whether you 1 ihc Great Assizes. The Day of Judgment. DOWN THE OISE. 129 iniglit not call lier blind. Perhaps she had known love: perliaps borne children, suckled tlieiii, and given them pet names. But now that was all gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp that I escaped into the streets and the keen morning air. Morning? why, how tired of it she would be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? It is fortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justify our lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower of their years, and go away to sufl'er for their follies in private somewhere else. Other- wise, between sick children and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life. I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's l)addle : the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But I was soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hun- dreds ; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation. At Crei], where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with washerwomen, red - handed and loud- voiced ; and they and their broad jokes are about all I remember of the place. I could look up my history books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or two; for it figured rather largely in the English wars. But I prefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interest for us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because 130 AN INLAND VOYAGE we imagined we had rather an interest for it. At least, there were the girls about the garden; and here were wc on the river; and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by. It caused quite a stir in my heart ; and 3'et how we should have wearied and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been introduced at a croquet party ! But this is a fashion I love : to kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall never see again, to play with possibility, and knock in a \^eg for fancy to hang upon. It gives the traveler a jog, reminds him that he is not a traveler everywhere, and that his journey is no more than a siesta by the way on the real march of life. The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out w^ith medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an ex voto,^ which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should con- duct the Saint Nicholas of Creil to a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, and would have made the de- light of a party of boys on tlie water-side. But what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. You might hang up the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome : one that is to plough a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle and a mass. But the Saint Nicliolas of Creil, which was to be tugged for some ten years by jDatient draught horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chatter- ing overhead, and the skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its errands in green inland places, and never got out of sight of a village belfry in all its cruising; wlw, ^ Ex voto. Latin, according to one's vow or prayer ; in reference to the practice of placing before a shrine some votive offering, either as a token of a prayer for favoi- or protection, or in fulfilment of a vow previously made. DOWN THE OTSE. 131 yon would have tliouglit if anything could be done witliout the intervention of Providence, it would be that ! But per- haps the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet, reminding people of the seriousness of life by this pre- posterous token. At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favorite saint on the score of punctuality. Day and hour can be specified ; and grateful people do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers have been punctually and neatly answered. Whenever time is a consideration, Saint Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a sort of pleas- ure in observing the vogue he had in France, for the good man plays a very small part in my religion at home. Yet I could not help fearing that, where the saint is so much commended for exactitude, he will be expected to be very grateful for his tablet. This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance any way. Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come to them be wisely conceived or duti- fully expressed is a secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude. The true ignorance is when a man does not know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for himself. The self-made man is the funniest windbag after all ! There is a marked difference between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlor with a box of patent matches; and, do what we will, there is always something made to our hand, if it were only our fingers. But there was something worse than foolishness pla- carded in Creil Church. The Association of the Li^■ing Rosary (of which I had never previously heard) is respon- sible for that. This association was founded, according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of January, 1832 : according to a colored bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, some time 132 AN INLAND VOYAGE or other^ by tlie Virgin giving one rosaiy to Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving anotlier to Saint Catlierine of Sienna. Pope Gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly make out whether the association was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good works; at least it is highly organized: the names of four- teen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of the month as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at tlie top for Zelatrice,^ the choragus- of the band. Indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of the association. "The partial indulgences are attached to the recitation of the rosary." On "the reci- tation of the required dizaine,"^ a partial indulgence l^romptly follows. When people serve the kingdom of Heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I should always be afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spirit into their dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid business of this life. There is one more article, however, of happier import. "All these indulgences," it appeared, "are applicable to souls in purgatory." For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory without delay ! Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his countr}^ out of unmixed love. Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman,* mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse either here or hereafter. 1 cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether a Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these signs, and do them wdiat justice they "^ Zelatrice. Zealot; further explained by the apposltive phrase. 2 choragus. The leader of a chorus or theatrical performance at the religious festivals of ancient Athens. 3 the required dizain e. Ten prayers. * imitate the e-rciseman. Robert Burns acted for a time as excise- aian, or inspector of liquor customs. DOWN THE OISE 133 deserve; and I cannot help answering that he is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and mean to the I'aithful as they do to me. I see that as clearly as a proposition m pAiclid. For these believers are neither weak nor wicked. They can pnt up their tablet commending Saint Joseph for his despatch as if he were still a village carpenter; they can "recite the required dizaine/' and metaphorically pocket tlie indulgences as if they had done a job for heaven; and then they can go out and look down unaljashed upon this wonderful ri\er flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which are themselves great worlds full of flowino- rivers greater than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I .ay as a proposition in Euclid, that my Protestant mmd has missed the point, and that there goes with these deform- ities some higher and more religious spirit than I dream. I wonder if other people would make the same allow- ances for me? Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, I look for my indulgence on the spot. PEECY AND THE MARIONETTES We made Precy about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts of poplar. " In a wide, luminous curve the Oise hiy under the hillside. A faint mist began to rise and con- found the different distances together. There was not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops alono- the street, all seemed to have been deserted the dav before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden we came round a corner, and there, in a little green round the church was a bevy of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. Their lauo-hter and the hollow sound of ball and mallet made a 134: AN INLAND VOYAGE cheery stir in the neighborhood ; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced an an- swerable disturbance in our liearts. We were within snift' of Parisy it seemed. And here were females of our own species playing croquet, just as if Precy had been a place in real life instead of a stage in the fairy-land of travel. For, to be frank, the peasant-woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after having passed by such a succession of people in petticoats digging, and hoeing, and making dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and con- vinced us at once of being fallible males. The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. Not even in Scotland have I found worse fare. It was kept by a brother and sister, neither of whom M-as out of their teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us ; and the brother, who had been tippling, came in and brought with him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. We found pieces of loo-warm pork among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the ragout } The butcher entertained us Avith pictures of Parisian life, with which he professed himself well acquainted ; the brother sitting the while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling pre- cariously, and sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst of these diversions bang went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a proclamation. It was a man with marionettes announcing a performance for that evening. He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part of the girls' croquet green, under one of those open sheds which are so common in France to shelter mar- kets; and he and his wife, by the time we strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the audience. It was the most absurd contention. The show-people ^ragout. Stew. DOWN THE OISE 135 had set out a certain number of benches ; and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple of sous' for the accommo- dation. They were always quite full— a bumper house- as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show- woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of the tambourine the audience slipped off the seats and stood round on the outside, with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried an angeFs temper. The showman roared from the proscenium; he had been all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, "not even on the borders of Germany," had he met with such misconduct. Such thieves, and rogues, and rascals as he called them ! And now and again the wife issued on another round, and added her shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the material of insult. The audience laughed in high good- humor over the man's declamations ; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honor of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these mounte- banks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of this she was down upon them with a swoop; if mes- dame>; could persuade their neighbors to act with common honesty, the mountebanks, she assured them, would be polite enough ; mesdames had probably had their bowl of soup, and, perhaps, a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks, also, had a taste for soup, and did not choose to have their little earnings stolen from them before their eyes. Once, things came as far as a brief personal en- counter between the showman and some lads, in which the 1 sous. Half-pennies. 136 AN INLAND VOYAGE former went down as readily as one of his own marionettes to a peal of jeering laugliter. I was a good deal astonished at this scene, hecause I am pretty well acquainted with the ways of French strol- lers, more or less artistic; and have always found them singularly pleasing. Any vstroller must be dear to the right-thinking heart ; if it were only as a living protest against offices and the mercantile spirit, and as something to remind us that life is not by necessity the kind of thing we generally make it. Even a German band, if you see it leaving town in the early morning for a campaign in country places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavor for the imagination. There is nobody under thirty so dead but his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. "We are not cotton-spinners all ;" or, at least, not all through. There is some life in humanity yet ; and youth will now and again find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situation to go strolling with a knap- sack. An Englishman has always special facilities for inter- course with French gymnasts ; for England is the natural home of gymnasts. This or that fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to know a word or two of English, to have drunk English aff-'n-aff,^ and, perhaps, performed in an English music hall. He is a countryman of mine by pro- fession. He leaps like the Belgian boating-men to the notion that I must he an athlete myself. But the gymnast is not my favorite; he has little or no tincture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small ■and pedestrian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor that lie can stumble thromgh a farce, he is made free of a new "^ Aff'n-aff. Half and half; a mixture of two malt liquors, as ale and porter. DOWN THE OiSE 137 order of thonghts. He lias something else to think ahoiit heside the money-box. He has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an aim before him that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a pil- grimage that will last him his life-long, because there is no end to it short of perfection. He will better himself a little day by day ; or, even if he has given up the attempt, he will always remember that once upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time he fell in love with a star. " 'T is better to have loved and lost.'"^ Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endym- ion,^ although he should settle down with Audrey" and feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The louts he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty. To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves a line stamp on a man's countenance. I remember once dining with a party in the inn at Chateau Landon. Most of them were unmistakable bagmen; others well-to-do peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood out from among the rest surprisingly. It looked more finished ; more of the spirit looked out through it ; it had a living, expressive air, and you could see that his eyes ^"'Tis tetter/' etc. From Tennyson's Iti Memoriam: " "lis better to have loved and Jost Than never to have loved at all." -Although the moon, etc. Diana, the goddess of the moon, passing one night above the earth in her chariot, saw Endymion, a beautiful shepherd, asleep on a hillside. She at once became enamoured of him, and, drawing near him as he slei^t, kissed him upon the lips. Before he was fully awake, she had withdrawn, and he saw only the moon in the sky. Though she visited him in this manner often, yet the moon had "nothing to say to Endymion." He, however, even while he slept, was conscious of her presence, as of a beautiful vision, and loved her in return ; hence the "reminiscence in Endymion's heart." ^Audrey is a country wench in Shakspere's As You Like It, whom Touchstone, the clown, finds tending her goats in the forest, and weds. "An ill favoured thing, sir," he says of her. "but mine own ; a poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will." 138 AN INLAND VOYAGE took things in. My companion and I wondered greatly who and wliat he could be. It was fair time in Chateau Landon, and when Ave went along to the booths we had our question answered; for there was our friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. He was a wandering violinist. A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying, in the department of Seine et Marne. There were a father and mother ; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss. The mother was the genius of the party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to such a pack of incompe- tent humbugs : and her husband could not find words to express his admiration for her comic countryman. "You should see my old w^oman," said he, and nodded his beery countenance. One night they performed in the stable- yard with flaring lamps : a wretched exhibition, coldly looked upon by a village audience. Next night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and they had to sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to the barn, where they harbored, cold, wet, and supperless. In the morning a dear friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers as I have myself, made a little collection, and sent it by my hands to com- fort them for their disappointment. I gave it to the father ; he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, and hard times. AYhen I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat. "I am afraid," said he, "that Monsieur will think me altogether a beggar; but I have another demand to make upon him." I began to liate him on the spot. "We play again to-night," he went on. "Of course I shall refuse to accept any more money from Monsieur and his friends. DOWN THE OlSE 139 who have been already so liberal But our programme of to-night is something truly creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honor us with his presence/' Ami then, with a shrug and a smile : "Monsieur understands, — the vanity of an artist !*' Save the mark ! The vanity of an artist ! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman and the vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect ! But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin. It is nearly two years since I saw him first, and indeed 1 hope I may see him often again. Here is his first programme as I found it on the breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of bright days : — ''Mesclames et Messieurs,^ ''Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront Vlion- neur de chanter ce soir les inorceaux sidvants. ''Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera — Mignon — Oiseaux Legers — France — Des Frangais dorment let — Le chateau hleu — Oil voulez-vous alter ^ "M. de Vauversin — Madame Fontaine et M. Rohinet — Les plongeiu's a cheval — Le Marl mecontent — Tais-toi, gamin — Mon voisin Voriginal — Heureux comme ga — Connne on est tronipe." They made a stage at one end of the salle-a-manger.- And what a sight it was to see M. de A^auversin, with a cig- arette in his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following '^"Mesdames et Messieurs," etc. "Ladies and Gentlemen : "Mademoiselle Ferrario and M. de Vauversin will have the honor to sing this evening the following selections : "Mademoiselle Ferrario will sing: 'Mignon (Darling),' 'Birds Light of Wing,' 'France,' "Frenchmen Sleep There,' 'The Blue Castle,' 'Whither will you go?' "M. de Vauversin : 'Madame Fontaine and M. Rohinet,' 'The Divers on Horseback.' 'The Discontented Husband,' 'Shut up, you Rascal.' 'My Queer Neighbor,' 'As Happy as Can Be,' 'How <^ne is Deceived.' " ~ SaJIc-d-niangcr. Dining room. 140 AN INLAND VOYAGE Mademoiselle Ferrario's eves with the oheclient, kintlly look of a dog! The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no ho^^e of gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it is a competi- tion who shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario. M. de Yauversin is a small man, with a great head of black hair, a vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be delightful if he had better teeth. He was once an actor in the Chatelet; but he contracted a nervous af- fection from the heat and glare of the foot-lights, which unfitted him for the stage. At this crisis Mademoiselle Ferrari'o, otherwise Mademoiselle Kita of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wandering fortunes. "I could never forget the generosity of that lady," said he. He wears trousers so tight that it has long been a problem to all who knew him how he manages to get in and out of them. He sketches a little in water-colors, he writes verses; he is the most patient of fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of the inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river. You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle of wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep. For it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only amounted to a franc and a half to cover three francs of railway fare and two of board and lodging'. The Maire,^ a man worth a million of money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mile. Ferrario, and yet I gave no more than three sous the whole evening. Local I Mnire. INIayor. DOWN THE OlSE 141 authorities look with such an evil e^^e upon the strolling artist. Alas ! I know it well, who have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the strength of the misapprehension/ Once, M. de Vauversin visited a com- missary of police for permission to sing. The commissary, who was smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance. "Mr. Commissary," he began, "I am an artist." And on went the commissary's hat again. No courtesy for the companions of Apollo !- "They are as de- graded as that," said M. de Vauversin, Avith a sweep of his cigarette. But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been talking all the evening of the rubs, in- dignities, and pinchings of his wandering life. Some one said it would be better to have a million of money down, and Mile. Ferrario admitted that she would prefer tliat mightily. "Eli lien, moi non; — not I," cried De Vauversin;- striking the table with his hand. "If any one is a failure in the world, is it not I ? I had an art, in which I have done things well, — as well as some, better, perhaps, than others ; and now it is closed against me. I must go about the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. Do you think I regret my life ? Do you think I would rather be a fat burgess, like a calf ? Not I ! I have had moments when I have been applauded on the boards : I think noth- ing of that ; but I -have known in my own mind sometimes, when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture ; and tl:ien, messieurs, I have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing well, what it was to be an artist. And to know what art is, is to have an interest forever, 1 Local anfhorifies, etc. Stevenson is referring to the incident of his imprisonment during- a wallcing tour in the valley of the Loing. See Epilo!/uc to an "Inland Yoijaiie.'' ^Apollo represented not only the sun but enlightenment; hence he was the patron of music and the arts. 142 AN INLAND VOYAGE such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns. Tenez, 7nessieurs, je vais vous h dire,^ — it is like a religion." Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de A^auversin. I have given him his own name, lest any other wanderer should come across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario; for should not all the world delight to honor this unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses? May Apollo send him rhymes hitherto undreamed of; may the river be no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, nor the village jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners ; and may he never miss Made- moiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes and accompany on the guitar ! The marionettes made a very dismal entertainment. They performed a piece called Pyramus and Thishe, in five mor- tal acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully as long as tlie performers. One marionette was the king; another the wicked counsellor; a third, credited with exceptional beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen. Nothing particular took place during the two or three acts that I sat out; but 3'Ou will be pleased to learn that the unities^ were properly respected, and the whole piece, with one exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. That exception was the comic countryman, a lean marionette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad patois" much appreciated by the audience. He took unconstitu- tional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked his 1 "Tenez, messieurs, je rais vons dire." "Now then, gentlemen, I'm going to tell you." - Unities. According to the law of dramatic unities, which was observed in the ancient classic drama and the classic drama of France, the action of the play must he controlled by a single purpose, must not shift from place to place, and must not assume a passage of time exceeding the space of a single day. -patois. An illiterate dialect. BACK TO THE WOELD 143 fellow-marionettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever none of the versif3ing suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his own account in comic prose. This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference to applause and hisses, and their single devotion to their art, were the onl}^ circumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy would so much as raise a smile. But the villagers of Precy seemed delighted. Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to amuse. If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty ! But these things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe ; and the Abstract Bagman^ tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively not aware of the fioAvers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather overhead. BACK TO THE WORLD Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and nothing whatever in my note-book. The river streamed on steadily through pleasant river-side landscapes. Washer- women in blue dresses, fishers in blue blouses, diversified tiie green banks; and the relation of the two colors was like that of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A symphony in forget-me-not ; I think Theophile Gautier- might thus have cliaracterized that two days' panorama. The sky w^as blue and cloudless; and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror to the '^Abstract Bagman; i. e., the commercial traveler in general, stand- ing as a type of those who are blind to the heauty of the world. 2 Theophile Gautier. A French poet, critic, and novelist (1811-1872). 144 AN INLAND VOYAGE heaven and the sliores. The washerwomen hailed us laugh- ingly; and the noise of trees and water made- an accom- paniment to our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream. The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held the mind in chain. It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of determination. The surf was roaring for it on the sands of Havre. For ni}^ own part slipping along this moving- thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was be- ginning to grow aweary for my ocean. To the civilized man there must come, sooner or later, a desire for civiliza- tion. I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was weary of living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick of it once more ; I wished to get to work ; I wished to meet people wdio understood my own speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, as a man, and no longer as a curiosity. And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them, through rain and sun- shine, for so long. For so many miles had this fleet and footless beast of burden charioted our fortunes that we turned our back upon it with a sense of separation. We had a long detour out of the world, but now we were back in the familiar places, where life itself makes all the run- ning, and we are carried to meet adventure without a stroke of the paddle. Now we were to return, like the voyager in the plav, and see what rearrangements fortune had per- fected the while in our surroundings ; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; and whither and how far the world had voyaged in our absence. You may paddle all day long; 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. TRAVELS ^¥ITH A DONKEY MY BEAR SIDNEY COLVIN, The journey wliicli this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth begin- ning, I had the Ijest of luck to the end. But we are all travelers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world, — all, too, travelers with a donkey; and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a for- tunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves ; and, when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent. Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet, though the letter is directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the out- side to one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affectionately yours, E. L. S. TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY VELAY^ THE DOXKEY, THE PxiCK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparal- leled political dissension. There are adherents of each of the four French parties- — Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperial- ists, and Republicans — in this little mountain-town ; and they all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Ex- cept for business purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have laid aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain Poland.^ Tn the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-point ; every one was 1 Yelaij. An ancient' torritory of southwestern France, now included in the department of Haute-Loire. - When, after the defeat of the French at the Battle of Sedan (September, 1870), the second French empire was abolished and a provisional government established, strong factions arose regarding the question of a permanent form of government. Of these parties, the Legitimists desired a monarchy and the accession of the Count of Chamboi'd. a descendant of the elder, or Bourbon, line, who, before the Revolution, had for generations been kings of France^, and had since had two representatives on the throne. "The Orleanists advocated a limited monarchy and the accession of the Count of Paris or the Duke of Aumale* both descendants of the Duke of Orleans, younger brother of the Bourbon king. Louis XIV. The Imperialists, or Bona- partists, supported the Prince Imperial, the son of the recently deposed emperor. Louis Xapoleon. The Republicans, as their name implies, were opposed to monarchy and empire alike. A republic was finally established in 1875 — between three and four years before the time of Stevenson's journey through the Cevennes. ^mountain Poland. Tn reference to the political dissensions of Poland. 147 1-18. TEAVELS WITH A DONKEY anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes/ A traveler of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were ready to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathizers supported me at the critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by glasses round and cele- brated by a dinner or a breakfast. It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indian summer to be looked for. I was de- termined, if not to camp out, at least to have the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveler, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again ; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready — you have ^ The Cevenncs. "The mountainous district of France to which, somewhat loosely, Stevenson applies the name Cevennes, lies alons the confines of Provence, and overlaps on several departments [in the southwestern part of the country], chief of which are Ardeche, Lozere, Gard, and tierault. In many parts the villages and -the people have far less in common with France and the French than Normandy and the Normans have with provincial England. Here in these mountain fastnesses and sheltered valleys the course of life has flowed along almost changeless for centuries, and here, too, we shall find much that is best in the romantic history and natural grandeur of France." — J. A. Hammerton : In the Track of R. L. Steroison and Elserrhere in Old France. For a further description of the Cevennes see the Century Dictionary. VELAY 149 only to get into it; it serves a double purpose — a bed by night, a 'portmanteau by day ; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to e^■e^y curious passe^-b3^ This is a huge point. If the camp is not secret, it is but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open, and be up before the da}^ I decided on a sleeping-sack; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and, a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and triumphally brought home. This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom of the sack by day. I call it 'the sack,^ but it was never a sack by more than courtesy : only a sort of long roll or sausage, green water-proof cart- cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It was com- modious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears and a band to pass under my nose like a respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my water-proof coat, three stones, and a bent branch. It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of burden. Xow, a horse is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous road pats him out of liis wits; in short, he's an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy, and 150 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to a donkey. There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the color of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. Our first interview was in Mon- astier market-place. To prove her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air ; until a want of confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the ex- periment was discontinued from a dearth of subjects. 1 was already backed by a deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came round and helped me in the bargain ; and the ass and I and Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At length she passed into my service for the con- sideration of sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that Avas as it should be ; for she was only an appurtenance of my mat- tress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors. I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard- room at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. He professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often bought white bread for the donkey when he had been content with black bread for himself ; but this, according to the best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass ; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear made a clean mark down one cheek. VELAY 151 By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and 1 thoughtfully completed my kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armory and utensils, I took a revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing — besides my traveling wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer^ — some books, and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage than from any thought that I should want it on my jour- ney. For more immediate needs, I took a leg of cold mut- ton, a bottle of Beaujolais, an empty *bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a considerable quantity of black bread and white, like Father Adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the destinations were reversed. Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous misadven- tures, and with sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left out. Like Christian,- it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my own mishaps, let me, in two words, relate the lesson of my experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length — not doubled, for your life — across the pack-saddle, the traveler is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the im- 1 spencer. A knitted coat or jacket, somewhat like a jersey or sweater. -Like Christian. See PUyrim's Profjress. 152 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY perfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset ; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone. On the day of my departure I was up a little after five ; by six, we began to load the donkey ; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gos- sips looking on and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads ; and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendl^^, and spoke with a deal of freedom. I had a common donkey pack-saddle — a barde, as they call it — fitted upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects. The doubled sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck- cargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders, with noth- ing below to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless traveler should have seen disaster brcAving. That elaborate system of knots, again, was the w^ork of too many sympathizers to be very artfully designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a will ; as many as three at a time would have a foot against Modestine's quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned afterwards that one thoughtful per- THE GREEN DOXKEY-DIUVER 153 son, without any exercise of force, can make a ni<^ie solid job than half a dozen heated and enthusiastic grooms. I was then bnt a novice ; even after the misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my security, and I went forth from the stable-door as an ox goeth to the slaughter. THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. As long as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford without difficulty — there was no doubt about the matter, she was docility itself — and once on the other bank, where the road begins to mount througli pine- woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps three steps, and tlien re- lapsed into her former minuet. Another application had the same effect, and so with the third. I am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over from head to foot ; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her breathing was distressed ; it was plain that she could go no faster on a hill. God forbid, thouglit 1, that I should brutalize this innocent creature; let her go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow. What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to 154 TKAVELS WITH A DONKEY describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run; it kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers ; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a few Awards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse. The thought that this was to last from here to Alais nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, this prom- ised to be the most tedious. I tried to tell mj^self it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco ; but I had a vision ever present to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, ap- proaching no nearer to the goal. In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy counte- nance, and arrayed in the green tail-coat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance. ''Your donkey," says he, ''is very old?'^ I told him, I believed not. Then, he supposed, we had come far. I told him, we had but newly left Monastier. "Et voiis marcliez commc ^^a .^^'' cried he; and, throwing back his head, he laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half prepared to feel offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, "You must have no pity on these animals," said he ; and, plucking a switch out of a thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the stern-works, uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a ^'^Et vous marches comme c« /" "And you're walking like that?" THE GREEN DONKEY-DEIVER 155 good round pace, which she kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least sjaiiptoni of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. Her former panting and shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of comedy. My deus ex machind/ before he left me, supplied some excellent, if inhumane, advice; presented me with the switch, which he declared she would feel more tenderly than my cane; and finally taught me the true cry or ma- sonic word of donkey-drivers, "Proof !" All the time, he regarded me with a comical incredulous air, which was embarrassing to confront; and smiled over my donkey- driving, as I might have smiled over his orthography, or liis green tail-coat. But it was not my turn for the mo- ment. I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned the art to perfection. And certainly. Modestine did won- ders for the rest of the forenoon, and I had a breathing space to look about me. It was Sabbath; the mountain- fields were all vacant in the sunshine; and as we came down through St. Martin de Frugeres, the church was crowded to the door, there were people kneeling without upon the steps, and the sound of the priest's chanting came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a home feeling on the spot; for I am a countryman of the Sab- bath, so to speak, and all Sabbath observances, like a Scotch accent, strike in me mixed feelings, grateful and the re- verse. It is only a traveler, hurrying by like a person from another planet, w^ho can rightly enjoy the peace and beauty of the great ascetic feast. The sight of the resting country does his spirit good. There is something better '^ Dens ex machind. The god [let down] from the machine: in reference to a mechanical contrivance in the classic drama by which the play was brought abruptly to a close : hence, a mechanical device outside of an author's plot, or, as here, a person who renders somewhat unexpected assistance. 156 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY than music in the wide unusual silence; and it disposes him to amiable thoughts, like the sound of a little river or the warmth of sunlight. In this pleasant humor I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Chateau Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool betv.-een them. Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of France; and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up at the snow- clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in an isolation, you would think, like that of Homers Cyclops.^ But it is not so ; the postman reaches Goudet with the letter-bag ; the aspiring youth of Goudet are Avith- in a day's walk of the railway at Le Puy : and here in the inn you may find an engraved portrait of the host's nephew, Eegis Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two Americas," a distinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars, at Tammany Hall, New York, on the 10th April, 1876. I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, "Proot !" seemed to have lo^t its virtue. I proofed like a lion, I proofed mellifluously like a sucking- dove ; but Modestine would be neither softened nor intimi- dated. She held doggedly to her pace ; nothing but a blow w^ould move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly belaboring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she relapsed into her own private gait. I think I never heard of any one in as mean a situa- 1 WA-e that of Homer's Cvolopf^. Polyphemus, who dwelt in a cavei-n alone with his flocks. See Homer's Odusseij, Book IX. THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER I57 tion. I must reach the lake of Boiichet. where I meant to camp, before sundown, and, to have even a hope of this, 1 must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once, when 1 looked at her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my ac- quaintance who formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased m}^ horror of my cruelt}^ To nuike matters worse, we encountered another donkey, ranging at will upon the roadside; and this other donkey clianced to be a gentleman. He and Modestine met nicker- ing for jo}^, and I had to separate the pair and beat down their young romance with a renewed and feverish bastinado. If the other donkey had had the heart of a male under his hide, he would have fallen upon me tooth and hoof ; and this was a kind of consolation — he was plainly un- worthy of Modestine's affection. But the incident saddened me, as did everything that spoke of my donkey's sex. It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehe- ment sun upon my shoulders; and I had to labor so con- sistently with my stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket, and the pilot- coat would take an ugly slew to one side or the other; and I had to stop Modestine, just when I had got her to a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. And at last, in the vil- lage of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole hypothec turned round and grovelled in the dust below the donkey's belly. She, none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to smile; and a party of one man, two women, and two children came up, and, standing round me in a half-circle, encouraged her by their example. I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted ; and the instant I had done so, without hesitation, it top- pled and fell down upon tlie other side. Judge if I was hot ! And yet not a hand was offered to assist me. The 158 TEAYELS WITH A DONKEY man, indeed, told me I ought to have a package of a dif- ferent sliape. I suggested, if he knew nothing better to the l)oint in my predicament, he might hold his tongue. And the good-natured dog agreed with me smilingly. It was the most despicable fix. I must plainly content myself with the pack for Modestine, and take the following items for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quart flask, a pilot- jacket heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black bread, and an open basket full of meats and bot- tles. I believe I may say I am not devoid of greatness of soul ; for I did not recoil from this infamous burden. T disposed it. Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length ; and, en- cumbered as I was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A ])riest, with six or seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But 0, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it ! A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, set her heart upon a by-road, and positively refused to leave it. I dropped all my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice across the face. It was pitiful to see her lift up her head with shut eyes, as if waiting for another blow. I came very near crying; but I did a wiser thing than that, and sat squarely down by the roadside to consider my situation under the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. Modestine, in THE GEEEN DOXKEY-DRIVEE 159 the meanwhile^, munched some black bread with a contrite h3'pocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice to the gods of shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottle destined to carry milk ; I threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act by general average, kept the black bread for Modestine; lastly, I threw away the cold leg of mutton and the egg-whisk, although this last was dear to my heart. Thus I found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed the boating-coat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it under one arm; and although the cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that I set forth again. I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cruelly I chastised her. If I were to reach the lakeside before dark, she must bestir her little shanks to some tune. Al- ready the sun had gone down into a windy-looking mist; and although there were still a few streaks of gold far off to the east on the hills and the black firwoods, all was cold and gray about our onward path. An infinity of little country by-roads led hither and thither among the fields. It was the most pointless lal)yrintli. I could see my desti- nation overhead, or rather the peak that dominates it ; but choose as I pleased, the roads .always ended by turning away from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or north- ward along the margin of the hills. The failing light, the waning color, the naked, unhomely, stony country through which I was traveling, threw me into some despondency. I promise you, the stick was not idle; I think every decent step til at Modestine took must have cost me at least two emphatic blows. There was not another sound in the neighborhood but that of my unwearying bastinado. Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the dust, and, as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously loosened, and the road scattered with my 160 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY dear possessions. The packing was to begin again from the beginning; and as I had to invent a new and better system, I do not doubt Imt I lost half an hour. It began to be dnsk in earnest as I reached a wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of being a road which should lead everywliere at the same time; and I was falling into some- thing not unlike despair when I saw two figures stalking to- wards me over the stones. They walked one behind the other like tramps, but their pace was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall, ill-made, sombre, Scotch-looking man; the motlier followed, all in her Sunday's best, with an ele- gantly-embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and proffering, as she strode along with kilted petti- coats, a string of obscene and blasphemous oaths. I hailed the son and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west and northwest, muttered an inaudible com- ment, and, without slacking his pace for an instant, stalked on, as lie was going, right athAvart my path. The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I shouted and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself, I was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped as I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she was a handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son once more answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But this time I simply collared the mother, who was nearest me, and, apologizing for my vio- lence, declared that I could not let them go until they had put me on my road. They were neither of them offended — rather mollified than otherwise; told me I had only to follow them ; and then the mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I replied, in the Scotch man- ner, by inquiring if she had far to go herself. She told me, with another oath, that she had an hour and a half s THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 161 road before her. And then, without salutation, the pair strode f(n-ward again up the hillside in the gathering dusk. 1 returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward^, and, after a sharp ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a plateau. The view, looking back on my day's journey, was both wild and sad. Mount Mezenc and the peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a cold glitter in the east; and the intervening field of liills had fallen together into one broad wash of shadow, except liere and there the outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here and there a white irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Lausonne wandered in a gorge. Soon we were on a liigh-road, and surprise seized on my mind as I beheld a village of some magnitude close at hand ; for I had been told that the neighborhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout. The road smoked in the twilight with children driving home cattle from the fields : and a pair of mounted stride-legged women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at a hammering trot from the canton where they had been to church and market. I asked one of the children where I was. At Bouchet St. Nicolas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south of my destination, and on the other side of a. respectable summit, had these confused roads and treacherous peasantry con- ducted me. My shoulder was cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like toothache from perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my design to camp, and asked for the auberoe.i 1 aitherge. Inn, tavern. 162 TKAVELS WITH A DONKEY I HAVE A GOAD The auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least 23reteiitious I liave ever visited ; but I saw maii}^ more of the like upon my journey. Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench l)efore the door ; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other din- ing; furniture of the plainest, earthen floors, a single bed- chamber for travelers, and that without any convenience but beds. In the kitchen cooking and eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. Any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table. The food is sometimes spare; hard fish and ome- lette have been my portion more than once; the wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to man; and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and rub- bing against your legs, is no impossible accompaniment to dinner. But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the doors j^ou cease to be a stranger; and although this peasantry are rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to join me. He would take but little. "I am an amateur^ of such wine, do you see?'^ he said, "and I am capable of leaving you not enough." In these hedge-inns the traveler is expected to eat with his own knife ; unless he ask, no other will be supplied : with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid. My knife was cordially admired by the ^ omateur. French : lover. I HAVE A GOAD 163 landlord of Boiichet, and the spring filled him with wonder. "I should never have guessed that/' he said. "I would het/'' he added, weighing it in his hand, ''that this cost you not less than five francs.'' When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped. He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, astonishingly ignorant. His wife, who was not so pleasant in her manners, knew how to read, although I do not sup- pose she ever did so. She had a share of brains and spoke with a cutting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast. "My man knows nothing," she said, with an angry nod ; ''he is like the beasts." And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. There was no contempt on her part, and no shame on his ; the facts were accepted loyally, and no more about tlie matter. I was tightly cross-examined about my journey; and the lady understood in a moment, and sketched out what I should put into my book when I got home. "Whether people harvest or not in such or such a place ; if there were forests; studies of manners; what, for example, I and the master of the house say to you; the beauties of Nature, and all that." And she interrogated me with a look. "It is just that," said I. "You see," she added to her husband, "I understood that." They were both much interested by the story of my mis- adventures. "In the morning," said the husband, "I will make you something better than your cane. Such a beast as that feels nothing; it is in the proverb — dar coinmc un dne;^ you might beat her insensible with a cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere." Something better ! I little knew what he was offering. ^ (7t(r comme un unc. Tough as an ass. 1(51 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY The sleeping-room Avas furnished with two beds. 1 had one ; and I will own I was a little abaslicd to find a young man and his wife and child in the act of mounting into the other. This was my first experience of the sort; and if I am always to feel equally s-illy and extraneous, I pray God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of the w^oman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit abashed by my appearance. As a mat- ter of fact, the situation was more trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. He told me that he was a cooper of Alais traveling to St. Etienne in search of work, and that in his spare moments he followed the fatal calling of a maker of matches. Me he readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant. I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23d), and hastened my toilet guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set if to explore the neighborhood of Bouchet. It was perisliing cold, a gra}^ Avindy, wintry morning; misty clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform ; and the only speck of color was away behind Mount Mezenc and the eastern hills, where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn. It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea ; and I had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People were trooping out to the labors of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to stare upon the stranger. I had seen them coming back last night, I saw them going afield again; and there was the life of Bouchet in a nutshell. "When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the I HAVE A GOAD IGo landlady was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair ; and I made her my compliments upon its beauty. '^0 no," said the mother ; '4t is not so beautiful as it oiidit to l)e. Look, it is too fine." Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse physical circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, the defects of the majority decide the type of beauty. ''And where," said I, "is monsieur?" ''The master of the house is up-stairs," she answered, "making you a goad." Blessed be the man who invented goads ! Blessed the innkeeper of Bouchet St. Nicholas, who introduced me to their use ! This plain wand, with an eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it in my hands. Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. A prick, and she passed the most inviting stable-door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gallant little trotlet that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable speed, when all was said ; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the best of it'. But what a heavenly change since yesterday ! ^o more wielding of the ugly cudgel ; no more flailing with an aching arm; no more broadsword exercise, but a dis- creet and gentlemanly fence. And what although now and then a drop of blood should appear on Modestine's mouse- colored, wedge-like. rump? I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed ; but yesterday's exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The perverse little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go with pricking. It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride-legged ladies and a pair of post-runners, the road was dead solitary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce remem- ber an incident but one. A handsome foal with a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch of 16(3 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY common^ sniffed the air martially as one about to do great deeds, and, suddenly thinking otherwise in his green young heart, put al)()ut and galloped off as he had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long while afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the note of his bell; and when I struck the high-road, the song of the telegraph-wires seemed to continue the same music. Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, sur- rounded by rich meadows. , They were cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave the neighborhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of liay. On the oppo- site bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon; a tanned and sallow autumn landscape, with black blots of fir-wood and white roads wandering through the hills. Over all this the clouds shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing, exag- gerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, but one stimulating to a traveler. For I was now upon the lim-it of Vela}', and all that I beheld l^y in another county — wild Gevaudan, mountainous, un- cultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves. Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveler's ad- vance; and you may trudge through all our comfortalole Europe, and not meet with an adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorable Beast, the Na^^oleon Buonaparte of wolves. What a career was .his ! He lived ten months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and children and "shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty ;" he pursued armed horsemen ; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop. He was pla- I HAVE A GOAD IG7 carded like a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And jet, when he was shot and sent to A^ersailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for that. "Though I could reach from pole to pole/' sang Alexander Pope; the little corporaP shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf, they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie Berthet has made him the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do not wish to read again. 1 hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the land- lady's desire that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, "who performed many miracles, although she was of wood ;" and before three-quarters of an hour I was goading Modes- tine down the steep descent that leads to Langogne on the Allier. On both sides of the road, in big dusty fields, farm- ers were preparing for next spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-iiecked stolid oxen were patiently haling at the plough. I saw one of these mild, formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying lay at an angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice ; but - he screwed round his big honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a laborer here and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy, breathing, rustic landscape; and as I con- tinued to descend, the highlands of Gevaudan kept mount- ing in front of me against the sky. I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the Allier; so near are tliese two confluents in their youtlh Just at the bridge of Langogne, as the long-prom- 1 The little corporal. Napoleon Bonaparte. rl68 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY ised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, "D'oast que vous venez?"^ She did it with so high an air that she set me langhing; and this cut her to the quick. She was evi- dently one who reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I crossed the bridge and entered the county of Gevaudan. UPPER GEVAUDAN- " The way also here was vern wearisome through dirt and slabhiness ; nor was there on all this grownd so much as one inn or victualling -house wherein to refresh the feebler sort." — Pil- grim 's Progress. The next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock in the afternoon before 1 got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired, for 1 was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard TEveque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered Avith a donkey might cover the same distance in four hours. All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed alternately ; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly; plentiful hurrying clouds — some drag- ging veils of straight rain-shower, others massed and lumi- nous, as though promising snow — careered out of the north '^"D'ou'st que roiis renez?" "Where do you come from?" ^Upper Gevaudan. Gevaudan was an ancient district in southern France nearly corresponding to the present department of Lozere. UPPEE GEVAUDAN 169 and followed me along my way. 1 was soon out of the cul- tivated basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen, and snch-like sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cnt- tages and bleak fields, — these were the characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on hillsides or at the borders of a wood. There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make a passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth of tracks. It must have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and went on my w^ay rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours after- wards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, T issued from a fir-wood where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead; and nov\-, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows and perhaps as many more black figures, which I conjectured to be children, although the mist had almost unrecognizably exaggerated their forms. These were all silently following each other round and round in a circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and rever- ences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, who am well enough read in Herl)ert Spencer,^ felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, I was pricking ^Herbert Spencer. Stevenson is apparently alluding to Spejicer's characteristic endeavor to connect his philosophic position with natural phenomena and scientific laws. 170 TKAVELS WITH A DONKEY Modestine forward, and guiding lier like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she. went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as hefore a fair wind ; Ijut once on the turf or among heather, and the brute became demented. The tendency of lost travelers to go round in a circle was devel- oped in her to the degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a single field. While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle began to disperse, nntil only a pair of girls remained behind. From these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were but little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into his house, and barricaded the door on my approach ; and I might beat and shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me a direction Avhich, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood, complacently watched me going wrong without adding a sign. He did not care a stalk of parsley if 1 wandered all night upon the hills I As for these two girls, they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief. One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows; and they both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of Gevaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; I began to think of him with sympathy. Leaving the girls, I pushed on tlirough the bog, and got into another wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and darker. Modestine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first sign of intelligence 1 had occasion to remark in her. At the same time, the wind freshened into half, a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain came flying np out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sidited some red UPPER GEVAUDAN 171 windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of Fouzilhic; thiee houses on a hillside, near a wood ot birches. Here I found a delightful old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on the road for Cheylard. He would hear of no reward; but shook his hands above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrillv, in unmitigated patois. All seemed right at last. My thouglits began to turn upon dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeal)ly softened in my bosom. Alas, and I was on the brink of new and greater miseries ! Suddenl}^ at a single swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a tree, — this was all that I could discriminate. The sky was simply darkness overhead ; even the flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to human eye- sight. I could not distinguish my hand at arm's length from the track, nor my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or the sky. Soon the road that 1 was following split, after the fash- ion of the country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. Since Modestine had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this predicament. But the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from the name; in half a miniite she was clambering round and round among some boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have camped long before had I been properly provided ; but as this was to be so short a stage, 1 had brought no wine, no bread for myself, and a little over a pound for my lady-friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were both handsomely wetted by the showers. But now, if I could have found some water, I should have camped at once in spite of all. Water, however, being 172 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY entirely absent, except in the form of raia, I determined to return to Fonzilhic, and ask a guide a little further on my way — "a little farther lend thy guiding hand." The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this sensible roaring blackness 1 was sure of nothing but the direction of the wind. To this I set my face; the road had disappeared, and I went across country, now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to Modestine, until I came once more in sight of some red windows. This time they were differently disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of its in]ial)itants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg' in bog, until I gained the entrance of the village. In the first lighted house there was a woman who would not open to me. She could do nothing, she cried to me through the door, being alone and lame; but if I would apply at the next house, there was a man who could help me if he had a mind. They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. The man was not ill-looking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned against the doorpost, and heard me state my case. All I asked was a guide as far as Cheylard. "C'cst que, voyez-vous, il fait noir/'^ said he. J told him that was just my reason for requiring help. *'I understand that," said he, looking uncomfortable; " inais — cest — de la pcine."^ 1 was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I rose as high as ten francs; but he continued to shake his head. ^'Xai:ne your own price, then," said I. "Ce nest pas Qa''^ he said at length, and with evident '^"C'est que, voyez-vous, il fait noir." "Look here, let me tell you it's getting dark." 2 "mais — c'est — de la peine." "But — it's — difficult." 3"Ce n'est pas Qa." "It isn't that — that's not what's bothering me." UPPER GEVAUDAN 173 difficulty ; "but I am not going to cross the door — mais je nc soriirai pas de la porte/' I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that I should do. "Where are you going beyond Cheylard?'' he asked by way of answer. "That is no affair of yours,'' I returned, for I was not going to indulge his bestial curiosity ; "it changes nothing in my present predicament." ''C'cst vrai, t^a,"^ he acknowledged, with a laugh; ''oul, c'est vrai. Et cVou venez-vous?" A better man than I miglit have felt nettled. "'0/' said I, "I am not going to answer any of your questions, so you may spare yourself the trouble of putting them. I am late enough already; I want help. If you wiJi not guide me yourself, at least help me to find some one else who will." "Hold on," he cried suddenly. "Was it not you who passed in the meadow while it was still day ?" "Yes, yes," said the girl, whom I had not hitherto recog- nized; "it was monsieur; I told him to follow the cow." "As for you, mademoiselle," said I, "you are a farceuse/'^ "And," added the man, "what the devil have you done to be still here?" What the devil, indeed ! But there I was. "^The great thingj" said I, "is to make an end of it;" and once more proposed that he should help me to find a guide. "C'cst que," he said again, ''c'est que — il fait noir." "Very well," said 1 ; "take one of your lanterns." "Xo," he cried, drawing a thought backward, and again intrenching himself behind one of his former phrases; "I will not cross the door." I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror struggling on 1 "CV.sf vrai, <^a,'' etc. "That's true, to be sure ;— yes, that's true. But whore do yor come from?" ^"farceuse." Ridiculous persou, tom-fuol. 174 TEAYELS WITH A DONKEY Ids face with unaffGctcd shame; he was smiling pitifully and wetting his lip with his tongue, like a detected school- 1)0}^ I drew a hrief picture of my state, and asked him what I was to do. "I don't know," he said ; ^^I will not cross the door." Here was tlie Beast of Gevaudan, and no mistake. "Sir/' said T, with m}^ most commanding manners, "you are a coward."' And with that I turned my hack upon the family party, who hastened to retire within tlieir fortifications; and the famous door was closed again, hut not till I had overheard the sound of laughter. FIlia harhara paler harharior} Let me say it in the plural : the Beasts of Gevaudan. The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I ploughed distressfully among stones and ruhhish-heaps. All thp other houses in the village were hoth dark and silent; and though I knocked at here and there a door, my knocking was unanswered. It was a had husiness ; I gave up Fouzil- liac with my curses. The rain had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, hegan to dry my coat and trousers. "Very well," thought I, "water or no water, I must camp.'' But the first thing was to return to Modestine. I am pretty sure I was twenty minutes gi'oping for my lady in the dark; and if it had not heen for the unkindly services of the bog, into which I once more stumbled, I might have still been groping for her at the dawn. My next business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was cold as well as boisterous. How, in this well-wooded district, I should have been so long in finding one, is another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures; but I will take my oath that I put near an hour to the discovery. At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, sud- '^ Fllia harhara paicr harharior. Father more barbarous than thy barbarous daughter : a parody on the first line of Horace's ode (Book I, XVI), "O matro pulchra filia pulchrior" ; "O daughter lovelier than thy Icvoly mother."' UPPER GEVAUDAN 175 denh' crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated 1)lack- ness right in front. I call it a cave without exaggeration ; to pass below tliat arch of leaves was like entering a dun- geon. I felt about until my hand encountered a stout branch, and to this 1 tied Modestine, a haggard, drenched, desponding donke}-. Then I lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the road, and unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where the lantern was; but where were the candles? I groped and groped among the tumbled articles, and, while I was thus groping, suddenly I touched the spirit-lamp. Salvation ! This would serve my turn as well. The wind roared unwearyingly among the trees ; I could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churn- ing through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. At the second match the wick caught flame. The light was both livid and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe, and doubled the darkness of the sur- ]-ounding night. I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up half the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half against the morning. Then I gathered what I should want within reach, took off my wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my knap- sack for a pillow under the flap of my sleeping-bag, insin- uated my limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in like a bambino.^ I opened- a tin of Bologna sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all I had to eat. It may sound offensive, l)ut I ate them together, bite by bite, by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat brand}^: a revolting beverage in itself. But I was rare and hungry ; ate well, and smoked one of the best cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over 1 hamhino. Italian ; baby. 176 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY my neck and eyes, })ut my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down among the sheepskins. I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excite- ment to wliich my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come separate. The wind among the trees was my lunal)y. Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a steady even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own bedroom in tlie country, I have given ear to tliis perturl)ing concert of tlie wind among the Avoods; but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and hearkened ; and meanwhile sleep took grad- ual possession of my body and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at the foreign clamor in my ears. Twice in the course of the dark hours — once when a stone galled me underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient Modestine, growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road — I was recalled for a brief while to con- sciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace- like edge of the foliage against the sky. When I awoke for the third time (Wednesday, September 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves laboring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine, tied to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again. UPPER GEVAUDAN 177 and set to thinking over the experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me woukl not have been there, liad I not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience, except when my feet encountered the lan- tern or the second volume of Peyrat's Pastors of the Desert among the mixed contents of my sleeping-bag ; nay, more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and clear sensations. With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and, breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to see in what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca,^ and with a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have been after an adventure all my lite, a pure dispas- sionate adventure, such as befell early and iieroic voyagers ; and thus to be found by morning in a random woodside nook in Gevaudan — not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland castawa}' — was to find a fraction of my day- dreams realized. I was on the skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and in front, it broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy dale. All around there were bare liill-tops, some near, some far away, as the perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much higher than the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiver- ingly. Overhead the sky was full of strings and shreds of vapor, flying, vanishing, reappearing, and turning about an 1 Ulysses left on Ithaca. When Ulysses, or Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey, after twenty years of absence from his ishmd king- dom of Ithaca, had been set ashore in his sleep by the I'haeacians, I'allas Athene shed a mist about him, so that the objects of his native •and appeared strange to his eyes. 178 TRAA^ELS WITH A DONKEY axis like tumblers^ as the wind hounded them through heaven. It was wild weather and famishing cold. I atu some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the cold should have time to dis- able my fingers. And by the time I had got all this done, and had made my pack and bound it on the pack-saddle, the day was tiptoe on the threshold of the east. We had not gone many steps along the lane, before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold over some cloud moun- tains that lay ranged along the eastern sky. The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly forward. I buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on in a pleasant frame of mind with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there was Fouzilhic, once more in front of me. Nor only that, but there was the old gentleman who had escorted me so far the night before, running out of his house at sight of me, with hands upraised in horror. "My poor boy !'' he cried, "what does this mean?" I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me go ; but when he heard of the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind. "This time, at least," said he, "there shall be no mis- take." And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about half a mile, and until I was almost within sight of Cheylard, the destination I had hunted for so long. CHEYLARD AND LUC 179 CHEYLARD AND LUC Candidly, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. A few hroken ends of village, with no particular street, bnt a succession of open places heaped with ]ogs and fagots ; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine to our Lady of all Graces on the summit of a little hill ; and all this, upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked valley. What went ye out for to see ? thought I to myself. But the place had a life of its own. I found a board commemorating the liber- alities of Cheylard for the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering church. In 1877, it ap- peared, the inhabitants subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes for the "Work of the Propagation of the Faith.'' Some of this, I could not help hoping, would be applied to my native land. Chejdard scrapes together halfpence for the darkened souls in Edinburgh ; while Balquidder and Dunrossness bemoan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with evangelists, like school-boys bickering in the snow. The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen : the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest. There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be forthcoming. I was kindly received hy these good folk. They were much interested in my misadventure. The wood in which I had slept belonged to them; the man of Fouzilhac they thought a monster of iniquity, and coun- seled me warmly to summon him at law — "because I might have died." The good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over a pint of uncrcamed milk. "You will do yourself an evil," she said. "Termit me to boil it for you." ^gO TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she having an infinity of things to arrange, I was per- mitted — nay, requested — to make a bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and gaiters were hung up to dry, and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest daughter let down a hinged table in the chimney-corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, drank my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before I left. The table was thick mth dust; for, as they explained, it was not used except in winter weather. I had a clear look up the vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapor, to the sky; and whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my legs were scorched by the blaze. The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when I eame to charge Modestine showed himself full of the pru- dence of his art. ^'You will have to change this package," gaid he ; "it ought to be in two parts, and then you might have double the weight." I explained that I wanted no more weight; and for no donkey hitherto created would I cut- my sleeping-bag in two. "It fatigues her, however," said the innkeeper; "it fa- tigues her greatly on the march. Look." Alas, there were her two forelegs.no better than raw beef cm the inside, and 'blood Was running from under her tail. They told me when I left, and I was ready to believe it, that before a few days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. Three days had passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty enough to look at; but then she had given proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own this new discovery seemed another point against her. "What the devil iras the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping- CHEYLARD AND LUC 181 bag and a few necessaries? I saw the end of the fable^ rapidly approaching, when I should have to carry Modes- tine, .^sop was the man to know the world ! I assure yoii 1 set out with heavy thoughts upon my short day's march. It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted me upon the way; it was a leaden business alto- gether. For first, the wind blew so rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one hand from Cheylard to Luc ; and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly coun- tries in the world. It was like the worst of the Scotcfi highlands, onl}^ worse; cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life. A road and some* fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the road Avas marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow. Wh}^ any one should desire to visit either Luc or Chey- lard is more than my much-inventing -spirit can suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. T travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move ; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the glo])e granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is*a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to Qccupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exact- ing, who can annoy himself about the future? I came out at length above the Allier. A more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dab- bled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines. The color throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the 1 In the fable referred to, a miUer and his son, whose manner of driving an ass along the road has boen variously criticised by passei's-by, finally tie him to a pole and carry him. 183 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY castle of Luc, which pricked up inipudeiitly from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of our Lady, wdiich, I heard with interest, weighed fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October. Through this sorry landscape trickled the AUier and a tributary of nearly equal size, which came down to join it through a broad nude valley in Yivarais. The weather had somewhat light- ened, and the clouds massed in squadron; but the fierce wind still hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly splashes of shadow and sunlight over the scene. Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged between hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was there any notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brand-new Madonna. But the inn was clean and large. The kitchen, with its two box-beds hung with clean check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its chim- ney-shelf four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious statuettes, its array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise. Xor was the scene disgraced by the landhidy, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, clothed and hooded in black like a nun. Even the public bedroon? had a character of its own, with the long deal tables and 'benches, where fifty might have dined, set out as for .a harvest-home, and the three box-beds along the wall. In one of these, lying on straw and covered with a pair of table-napkins, did I do penance all night long in goose-flesh and chattering teeth, and sigh from time to time as I awakened for my sheepskin sack and the lee of some great wood. OUE LADY OF THE SNOWS 183 OUE LADY OF THE SNOWS "I behold The House, the Brotherhood austere — And what am I, that I am here." — Matthew Arnold. FATHER APOLLIXARIS Next morning (Thursday, 20th September) I took the road in a new order. The sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end. It was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would insure stability, blow high, blow low. But it was not without a pang that I had so decided. For although I had purchased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet jealously uneasy lest the flaps should tumble out and scatter my effects along the line of march. My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march of Vivarais and Gevaudan. The hills of Gevaudan on the right were a little more naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais upon the left, and the former had a monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in solitary burrs upon the shoul- ders and the summits. Black bricks of fir-wood were plas- tered here and there upon both sides, and here and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the river; the only bit of railway in Gevaudan, although there are many proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell me, a station standing readv-built in Mende. A 3'ear or two hence and this may be another world. The desert 184 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY is beleaguered. Xow may some Languedocian Wordsworth^ turn the sonnet into patois : "Mountains and vales and floods, heard ye that whistle ?" At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardeche ; for I was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the Trai)pist- monastery of our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed tlie view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect ; and indeed not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had walked in twisted footpaths in and out among the beeches, and up and down upon the channeled slopes. The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly in the sun. I drew a long breath. It was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction for the human heart. I own I like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon ; and if landscapes were sold, like tlie sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence colored, I should go the length of twopence every day of my life. ''■ Lanfiucdocian WordsuortJi. Langiiedoc was an ancient govern- ment of southern France : tire name is stiU applied to the section which constitutes its territory. The reference is to one of two sonnets written hy William Wordsworth in protest against the intrusion upon rural retirement and the injury to natural scenery threatened by the building of a railway. The lines Stevenson has in mind are : '"Heard ye that whistle? As her long-linked Train Swept onwards . . . Mountains, and Vales, and Floods, I call on you To share the passion of a just disdain." 2 Trappist. The Trappists, so called from the Abbey of La Trappe, in France, are a branch of the Cistercian order. Their discipline enjoins severe self-denial. OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 185 But if things had grown better to the south, it was still desolate and inclement near at hand. A spidery cross on every hill-top marked the neighborhood of a religious house; and a quarter of a mile beyond, the outlook south- ward opening out and growing bolder with every step, a white statue of the Virgin at the corner of a young planta- tion directed the traveler to our Lady of the Snows. Here, then, I struck leftward, and pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence. I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why, my heart sank within me at the sound. 1 have rarely ap- proached anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant education. And suddenly, on turning a corner, fear took hold on me from head to foot — slavish superstitious fear; and though I did not stop in my ad- vance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead. For there upon the narrow new-made road, between the stripling pines, was a mediaeval friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs. Every Sunday of my childhood I used to study the Hermits of Marco Sadeler — enchanting prints, full of wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as large as a county, for the imagination to go a-traveling in ; and here, sure enough, was one of Marco Sadeler^s heroes. He was robed in wliite like any specter, and the hood fall- ing back, in the instancy of his contention with the barrow, disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as a skull. He might have been buried any time these thousand years, and all the lively parts of him resolved into earth and broken up with the farmer's harrow. I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I address a person who was under a vow of silence? Clearly 186 TEAVELS WITH A DONKEY not. But drawing near, 1 clolfed my cap to liim with a far- away' superstitious reverence. lie nodded back, and cheer- fully addressed me. Was I going to the monastery ? Who was I ? An Englishman ? Ah, an Irishman, then ? "Xo," I said, "a Scotsman.'' A Scotsman ? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman before. And he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny counte- nance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I learned with disgust that I could not be received at our Lady of the Snows; I might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out that I was not a pedlar, but a literary man, who drew landscapes and was going to write a book, he changed his manner of thinking as to my recep- tion (for I fear they respect persons even in a Trappist monastery), and told me I must be sure to ask for the Father Prior, and state my case to him in full. On second thoughts he determined to go down with me himself; he thought he could manage for me better. Might he say that I was a geographer ? No; I thought, in the interests of truth, he positively might not. "Yerj well, then" (with disappointment), "an author.'' It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young Irishmen, all priests long since, who had received news- papers and kept him informed of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in England. And he asked me eagerly after Dr. Pusey,^ for whose conversion the good man had continued ever since to pray night and morning. "I thought he was very near the truth,'' he said ; "and he will reach it yet ; there is so much virtue in prayer." He must be a stiff ungodly Protestant who can take any- 1 Dr. Piiscif. An English theologian of the nineteenth century. About the year 1833 he was associated with John Henry Newman and John Keble in the Tractarian movement, a reaction in the Church of England toward Catholicism. It was expected for a time that Pusey, like Newman, would go over to the Roman Church. OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 187 thing but pleasure in tliis kind and hopeful story. While he was thus near the subject, the good father asked me if I were a Christian; and when he found I was not, or not after his way, he glossed it over with great good-will. The road which we were following, and which this stal- wart father had made with his own two hands within the space of a year, came to a corner, and showed us some white buildings a little further on beyond the wood. At the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the monastery. Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) stopped me. "1 must not speak to you down there," he said. "Ask for the Brother Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as you go out again through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made your acquaint- ance." And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and crying out twice, "I must not speak, I must not speak !" he ran away in front of me, and disappeared into the mon- astery-door. I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to revive my terrors. But where one was so good and simple, why should not all be alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would permit. It was the first door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had not shown an indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form, though with a quaking heart. Father Mi- chael, the Father Hospitaller/ and a pair of brov/n-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me awhile. I think my sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it to the Father Prior. But whether it was my address, or the sack, or the idea speedily pub- 1 Father Hospitaller. The head of a charitable brotherhood. 188 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY lished among that part of tlie Ijrotherhood who attend on strangers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no diffi- culty as to my reception. Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and my pack were received into our Lady of the Snows. THE MONKS Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of thirty-five, took me to the pantr}^, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say he listened to my prattle indul- gently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly when I remember that I descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken bread, I can well understand that he would find an earthly savor in my con- versation. But his manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious ; and I find I have a lurking curiosity as to Father Michael's past. The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery garden. This is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of party-colored dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the Vir- gin in the center. The buildings stand around it four- square, bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and weather, and with no other features than a belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in brown, passed si- lently along the sanded alleys; and when I first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at their prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind ; the snow falls off and on from October to THE MOXKS 189 May, and sometimes lies six weeks on end; but if they stood in Eden, with a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless as- pect; and for my part, on this wild September day, before I was called to dinner, I felt chilly in and out. When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a hearty conversable Frenchman (for all those who wait on strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a little room in that part of the building which is set apart for MM. Jcs rctraitants} It was clean and whitewashed, and furnished with strict necessaries, a crucifix, a bust of the late Pope, the Imitation- in French, a book of religious meditations, and the life of Elizabeth Seton, evangelist, it Avould appear, of North America and of New England in particular. As far as my experience goes, there is a fair field for some more evangelization in these quarters ; Ijut think of Cotton IMather !" I should like to give him a reading of this little work in heaven, where I hope he dwells: but perhaps he knows all that already, and much more; and perhaps he and Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the table, to conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of regula- tions for MM. les retraitants: what services they should attend, when they were to tell their beads or meditate, and when they were to rise and go to rest. At the foot was a notable N. B. : ''Le temps lihre est employe a rexmnen dc conscience, a la confession, a faire de bonnes resolutions/' etc.* To make good resolutions, indeed ! You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head. 1 MM. les retraitants. Those who wish to withdraw from the world for a time in order to devote themselves to meditation and prayer. ^Imitation. De Imitatione Christl (On the Imitation of Christ) of Thomas a Kempis. "Cotton Mather. A Congregational clergyman (1663-1728), for years minister of the North Church in Boston. He was one of the most devout and narrow of the early New England divines. *"Le temps," etc. "The unoccupied time is to be employed in nn examination of the conscience, in confession, and in making good reso- lutions." 190 TEAA^ELS WITH A DONKEY I had scarce explored n^y niche when Brotlier Ambrose returned. An English boarder, it appeared, would like to speak with me. I professed my willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young little Irishman of fifty, a deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in default of knowledge, I can only call the ecclesiastical shako. He had lived seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in Belgium, and now five at our Lady of the Snows ; he never saw an English newspaper ; he spoke French imperfectly, and had he spoken it like a native, there was not much chance of conversation where he dwelt. With this, he was a man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and simple-minded like a child. If I was pleased to have a guide about the monastery, he was no less delighted to see an English face and hear an English tongue. He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries,^ Hebrew Bil)les, and the \Yaverley novels. Thence he led me to the cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the vestry, where the brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his religious name upon a board, — names full of legendary suavity and inter- est, such as Basil, Hilarion, Eaphael, or Pacifique; into the library, where were all the works of Veuillot- and Cha- teaubriand,^ and the Odes et Ballades, if you please and even Moliere, to say nothing of innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians. Thence my good Irishman took me round the workshops, where broth- ers bake bread, and make cartwheels, and take photographs ; 1 hreviaries. In the Roman Catholic ritual, a breviary is a book eontaininc: the daily offices and prayers. 2 Veuillot. A French journalist and author, who strongly opposed legislation hostile to the Iloman Catholic Church. ^^ Ghateauhriand. A French author and statesman, who was con- verted from infidelity to the Catholic faith. He subsequentlv published a eulogy of Christianity. The fathers were the early teachers of the Christian church, whose writings are the main source of early church history and doctrine. THE MONKS 191 where one superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits. For in a Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his own choice, apart from his religious duties and the general labors of the house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir ; but in his private hours, although he must be occupied, he ma}^ be occupied on wliat he likes. Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with literature; while Father Apolli- naris busies himself in making roads, and the Abbot em- ploys himself in binding books. It is not so long since this Abbot was consecrated, by the way ; and on that occa- sion, by a special grace, his mother was permitted to enter the chapel and witness the ceremony of consecration. A proud day for her to have a son a mitred abbot ; it makes you glad to think they let her in. " In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to our passage than if we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good deacon had a permission to ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in swimming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain air of contrition, as of a man Mdio was steering very close to evil. The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two meals a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, which begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and during which they eat but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil and vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly ; and though each is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of 192 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labor of life. Although excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at our Lady of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live healthily in the mean- time, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in color; and tlie only morbid sign that I could observe, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather to increase the general impression of vivacity and strength. Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet-tem- pered, with what I can only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conversation. There is a note, in the direction to vis- itors, telling them not to be offended at the curt speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to speak little. The note might have been spared; to a man the hospitallers were all brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the monastery, it w^as easier to begin than to break off a conversation. With the exception of Father Michael, who was a man of tlie world, they showed themselves full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of subjects — in politics, in voyages, in my sleeping-sack — and not without a certain pleasure in the sound of their own voices. As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder how they bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, apart from any view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, not only in the exclusion of women, but in this vow of silence. I have had some experience of lay THE MONKS 193 phalansteries/ of an artistic, not to sa}^ a bacchanalian, character ; and seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. With a Cistercian rule, per- haps they might have lasted longer. In the neighborhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association that can be formed among defenceless men; the stronger electricity is sure to triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. And next after this, the tongue is the great divider. I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious rule; but there is yet another point in which the Trappist order appeals to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the morning the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided amony different occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory, all day long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and occupied with manifold and changing busi- ness. I know many persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of their lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery-bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of nrind and healthful activity of body? We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner. 1 laif phalansteries. Specifically, phalansteries were dwellings which, according to the reorganization of society proposed by the French socialist, Fourrier, separate industrial groups were to occupy in com- mon. Here lay phalansteries moans informal or unprofessional organi- zations of people living in common — apparently the art communities that Stevenson was accustomed to frequent. 194 TEA \' ELS WITH A DONKEY From this point of view, we may perhaps better micler- stancl the monk's existence. A long novitiate, and every proof of constancy of mind and strength of ])ody is re- quired before admission to the order ; but I could not find that many were discouraged. In the photographer's studio, u'hicli figures so strangely among the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a 3^oung fellow in the uni- form of a private of foot. This was one of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the garri- son of Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen l)oth sides of life before deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he returned to finish his novitiate. This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of death as he has prayed and labored in his frugal and silent existence ; and when the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbor- hood that another soul has gone to God. At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the gallery to hear compline and Salve Regina/ Avith which the Cistercians bi'ing every day to a conclusion. There were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the white-washed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads 1 Compline and Salve Regina. Compline is the last service of common prayer for the day. Salve Rcfjina. so named from the first words, "Salve Regina miserecordiae" ("Hail, Queen of Compassion"), is a hymn to the Virgin. THE MONKS 195^ ]30wed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over and the hour of sleep had come; and when 1 remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewild- ered in the windy starry night. But I was weary ; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth Seton's memoirs — a dull work — the cold and the raving of the wind among the pines — for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins the woods — disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel ; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labors of their day. The dead in life — there was a chill re- flection. And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of the best of our mixed existence : — ' Que t 'as de belles filles, Girofle ! Girofla ! Que t'as de belles filles, L' Amour les compteral' ^ And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love.- 1 Que t'as, etc. '•What fino girls you have, Girofle ! Girofla ! What fine gii'ls you have ! Love will number them." "Girofle Girofla" is a nonsensical refrain. -And I hlessed God, etc. See also, in Underwoods, the poem, Our Lady of the t^noics. •And ye, O brethren, What if God, When from Heav'n's top he spies abroad, And sees on this tormented stage The noble war of mankind rage : What if his vivifying eye, O monks, should pass your corner by ? For still the Lord is Lord of might ; In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight." 196 TEAVELS WITH A DONKEY THE BOARDERS But there was another side to n\y residence at our Lady of the Snows. At this late season there were not many l)oarders; and yet I was not alone in the public part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining-room on the ground-floor, and a whole corridor of cells similar to mine up-stairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for a regular retraHant; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like mj^self might give what they chose as a free-Avill offering, but nothing was demanded. I may mention that when I was going away, Father Michael refused twenty francs as excessive. I ex- plained the reasoning which led me to offer him so mucii ; but even then, from a curious point of honor, he would not accept it with his own hand. "I have no right to refuse for the monastery," he explained, "but T should prefer if you would give it to one of the brothers." I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at supper 1 found two other guests. One was a country parish priest, who had walked over that morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy four days of solitude and prayer. He was a grenadier in person, with the hale color and cir- cular wrinkles of a peasant ; and as he complained much of how lie had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy portrait of him, striding along, upright, ])ig-boned, with kilted cassock, through the bleak hills of Gevaudan. The other was a short, grizzling, thick-set man, from forty-five to fi^ty, dressed in tweed with a knitted spencer, and the red ribbon of a decoration^ in his buttonhole. This last was a hard person to classify. He was an old soldier, who had seen service and risen to the ■> rcfl nh'bon, etc. A decoration is a badge of distincnisTiod service consistinc; of a cross, medal, etc., attached to a colored ribbon. The ribbon of the French Lesion of Flonor is red. THE BOARDERS I97 rank of commandant; and he retained some of the brisk decisive manners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon as his resignation was accepted, he had come to our Lady of the Snows as a boarder, and, after a brief ex|>erience of its Avays, had decided to remain as a novice. Already the new life was beginning to modify his appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the character of each. And cer- tainly here was a man in an interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms, communicate by signs. At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in France, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell on the example of Poland, mucli as some alarmists in England dwell on the example of Carthage.^ The priest and the Commandant assured me of their sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy sigh- ing over the bitterness of contemporary feeling. "Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not absolutely agree,'' said I, "but he flies up at you in a temper." They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian. While w^e were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but a word in praise of Gambetta's- mod- 1 the example of Carthage. Internal strife weakened Carthas;e and precipitated the Third Punic War (B. C. 149-140), during which the Romans destroyed the city. - Gamhetta. A French statesman (1838-1882). When NapoI<-on III surrendered at Sedan, Gambetta, then a member of the Chamber of Deputies, declared him deposed. Gambetta was a member of the pro- visional government. When he was President of the Chamber of Depu- ties, in 1879. an Orleanist paper said of him : "The ministers are noth- ing ; the president of the republic is less than nothing. Gamb<'tta, as lias been wittily remarked, is the emperor of the republic. He is more than that ; he is the republic itself." 198 TKAVELS WITH A DONKEY eration. The old soldier's countenance was instantly suf- fused with blood ; with the palms of his hands he beat the table like a naughty child. ''Comment, monsieur?''^ he shouted. ''Comment? Gam- betta moderate? A\'ill you dare to justify these words?'' But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk And suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warning look directed on his face ; the absurdity of his behavior was brought home to him in a flash; and the storm came to an abrupt end, without another word. It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, September 27th), tliat this couple found out I was a here- tic. I suppose I had misled them by some admiring ex- pressions as to the monastic life around us; and it was' only by a point-blank question that the truth came out. I had been tolerantly used, botli by simple Father Apol- linaris and astute Fatlier Michael; and the good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weakness, had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, "You must be a Catholic and come to heaven." But I was now among a different sect of orthodox. These two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the worst of Scotsmen, and in- deed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted aloud like a battle-horse. ''Et voiis pretendez mourir dans cette espece de croy- ance T"^ he demanded ; and there is no typ3 used by mortal printers large enough to qualify his accent. I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing. But he could not aAvay with such a monstrous attitude. "No, no," he cried ; "you must change. You have come here, God has led you here, and you must embrace the op- portunity." I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affee- '^''Vouxmcni, monsieur?" "What, sir?" - "A7 roHs," etc. '"And you mean to die in that sort of faith?" THE BOARDERS 199 tions, though I was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life. '^Your father and mother?" cried the priest. "Very well ; you will convert them in their turn when you go home." I think I see my father's face ! I Avould rather tackle the Ga^tulian lion^ in his den tlian emhark on such an en- terprise against the family theologian. But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my conversion; and the Work of the Propa-' gation of the Faith, for which the people of Cheylard suh- scrihed forty-eight francs ten centimes during 1877, was heing gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most effective proselytizing. They never sought to con- vince me in argument, where I might have attempted some defence; but took it for granted that I was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on the point of time. Now, they sai-d, when God had led me to our Lady of the Snows, now was the appointed hour. "Do not be withheld !)y false shame," observed the priest, for my encouragement. For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this or that creed on the eternal side of things, however .much he may see to praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus created was both unfair and painful. I committed my second fault in tact, and tried to plead tliat it was all the same thing in the end, and we Avere all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and undiscriminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay-spirits, would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men '^ GaeMiaii lion. In ancient geography, Cjaetiilia was a region In northern Africa. 200 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY think differently ; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of hell. The damned, he said — on the authority of a little book wdiich he had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to con- viction, he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket — were to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in tlie midst of dismal tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with his enthusiasm. As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out tlie Prior, since the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately before him. ''C'est mon conseil comiiie aiicleii miliiaire/' observed the Commandant; ''et celui de inonsieiir comme pretre."^ "Oui/' added the cure, sententiously nodding; ''comme ancien inilitaire — et comme pretre/' At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in came one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig, and with an Italian accent, who threw himself at once into the contention, but in a milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant brethren. Look at him, he said. The rule was very hard ; he would have dearly liked to stay in his own country, Italy — it was well known how beautiful it was, the beauti- ful Italy; but then there were no Trappists in Italy; and he had a soul to save ; and here he was. I am afraid I must be at l)ottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has dubbed me, ''a faddling hedonist;" for this de- scription of the brother's motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should have preferred to think he had chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes; and this shows how profoundly I was out of sympathy witli "^"G'est mon conseil," etc. "It is my advice as an old soldier and that of this gentleman as a priest." THE BOAEDEES 201 these good Trappists, even when I was doing my best to sympathize. But to tlie cure the argument seemed de- cisive. "Hear that!'' he cried. '^'And I have seen a marquis liere, a marquis, a marquis"' — he repeated the holy Avord tliree times over — "and other persons high in society; and generals. And here, at your side, is this gentleman, who has been so many years in armies — decorated, an old war- rior. And here he is, ready to dedicate himself to God." I was by this time so thoroughly endjarrassed that I pleaded cold feet, and made my escape from the apartment. It was a furious windy morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; and I wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely staggered and beaten upon by the gale, but rewarded with some striking views. At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith w^as recommenced, and on this occasion still more distaste- fully to me. The priest asked me many questions as to tlie contemptible faith of my fathers, and received my replies with a kind of ecclesiastical titter. "Your sect," he said once; "for I think you will admit it w^ould be doing it too much honor to call it a religion." "As you please, monsieur," said I. ''La parole est a vous/'^ At length I grew -annoyed beyond endurance; and al- though he was on his own ground, and, what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so holding a claim upon my toleration, I could not avoid a protest against this uncivil usage. He was sadly discountenanced. "I assure you," he said, "I have no inclination to laugh in my heart. I have no other feeling but interest in your soul." '^'^La parole est a tons." "I'lie word is your own; the word is of yoiu- own choosing."' 202 TEAYELS V.'ITII A DONKEY And there ended my conversion. Honest man ! lie was no dangerous deceiver; but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long nuiy he tread Gevaudan with his kilted skirts — a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death ! I dare say he would beat bravely through a snow-storm where his duty called him ; and it is not always the most faithful believer who makes the cun- ningest apostle. UPPER GEVAUDAN (Continued.) * * The hed ivas made, the room was fit, By punctual eve the stars were lit; The air teas sweet ,jthe water ran; No need icas there for maid or man, When we put up, my ass and I, At God's green caravanserai." —01(1 Plav ACROSS THE GOULET The wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear ; so it was under better auspices that I loaded Modestine before the monastery-gate. My Irish friend accompanied me so far on the way. As we came through the wood, there was Pere Apollinaire hauling his barrow; and he too quitted his labors to go with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between both of his in front of him. I parted first from one and then from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the traveler who shakes oif the dust of one stage before hurrying forth upon another. Then Modestine and I mounted the course of the Allier, which here led us back into Gevaudan towards its sources in the forest of Mercoire. It was but an in- considerable burn before we left its guidance. Thence, UPPEK GEVAUDAX 203 over a hill, our way lay through a naked })latcau, initil we reached Chasserades at sundown. The company in the inn-kitchen that iiight were all men employed in survey for one of the projected railways. The}^ were intelligent and conversable, and we decided the fu- ture of France over hot wine, until the state of the clock frightened us to rest. There were four beds in the little up-stairs room ; and we slept six. But I had a bed to my- self, and persuaded them to leave the window open. ''He, honrgeois; il est cinq lieures!"'^ was the cry that wakened me in the morning (Saturday, September 28th). The room was full of a transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other three beds and the five different nightcaps on the pillows. But out of the window the dawn was growing ruddy in a long belt over the hill-tops, and day was about to flood the plateau. The hour was inspirit- ing; and there seemed a promise of calm weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. I was soon under way with Modes- tine. The road lay for a while over the plateau, and then descended through a precipitous village into the valley of the Chassezac. This stream ran among green meadows, well hidden from the world by its steep banks ; the broom was in flower, and here and there was a hamlet sending up its smoke. At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a bridge, and, forsaking this, deep hollovr, set itself to cross the mountain of La Goulet. It wound up through Lestampes by upland fields and woods of beech and birch, and with every corner brought me into an acquaintance with some new interest. Even in the gully of the Chassezac my ear had been struck by a noise like that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of many miles; but this, as I con- tinued to mount and draw nearer to it, seemed to change -i "He. 'bourgeois; U est einq heures !" "Hey, master: it's five •'clock 1" 204 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY in character, and I found at length that it came from some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural horn. The narrow street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, from wall to wall — black sheep and Avhite, bleating like the birds in spring, and each one accompanying himself upon the sheep-bell round his neck. It made a pathetic concert, all in treble. A little higher, and I passed a pair of men in a tree with pruning-hooks, and one of them was singing the music of a hourree} Still further, and when I was al- ready threading the birches, the crowing of cocks came cheerfully up to my ears, and along with that the voice of a flute discoursing a deliberate and plaintive air from one of the upland villages. I pictured to myself some grizzled, apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden in the clear autumn sunshine. All these beautiful and interesting sounds filled my heart with an unwonted expectation; and it appeared to me that, once past this range which I was mounting, I should descend into the garden of the world. Nor was I deceived, for I was now done with rains and winds and a bleak country. Tlie first part of my journey ended here; and this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the other and more beautiful. There are other degrees of feyness,- as of punishment, besides the capital ; and I was now led by my good spirits into an adventure which I relate in the interest of future donkey-drivers. The road zigzagged so widely on the hill- side that I chose a short cut l)y map and compass, and struck through the dwarf woods to catch the road again upon a higher level. It was my one serious conflict witli Modestine. She would none of my short cut; she turned in my .face, she backed, she reared ; she, ^vhom I had hither- 1 hoiirne. A woodcutter's danco or sons. 2 feyness. In Scotland one is said to be "fey" when he is unlike him- self, as a person is seen to be in the hour of threatened death or disaster. A NIGHT A>]OXG THE PINES 205 to imagined to l)e diiiiil), actually braved with a loud lioaise flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. 1 plied the goad with one hand; with the other, so steep was the ascent, I had to hold on the pack-saddle. Half a dozen times she was nearly over backAvards on the top of me; half a dozen times, from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly giving it up, and leading her down again to fol- low the road. But I took the thing as a wager, and fought it through. I was surprised, as I went on my way again, by what appeared to be chill rain-drops falling on my hand, and more than once looked up in wonder at the cloudless sky. But it was only sweat which came dropping from my brow. Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked road — only upright stones posted from space to space to guide the drovers. The turf underfoot was springy and well scented. I had no company but a lark or two, and met but one bullock-cart between Lestampes and Bley- mard. In front of me I saw a shallow valley, and beyond tliat the range of the Lozere, sparsely wooded and well enough modelled in the flanks, but straight and dull in out- line. There was scarce a sign of culture; only about Bley- mard, the white high-road from Yillefort to Mende trav- ersed a range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and sounding from side to side with the bells of flocks and herds. A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES From Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to scale a portion of the Lozere. An ill-marked stony drove-road guided me forward; and I 'met nearly half a dozen bullock-carts descending from the woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon 206 TRAVELS WITH A DOXKEY tins cold ridge, 1 stiiick lel'twaid ])y a path aiiiung tlio pines, until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water-tap. "In a more sacred or sequestered bower — nor nymph nor faunus haunted.'^ The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there was no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrange- ments and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep. Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, Avith its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to an- nounce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and houseless men, wdio have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night. At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the -same hour to life? Do the stars rain down an influence, or do ^ve share some thrill of mother earth below our resting A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 207 bodies? Even shepherds and old conntry-folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana^ have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightl}' resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place; and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleasant incident. AVe are disturbed in our slumber only, like the luxurious Montaigne, "that we may the better and more sensibly relish it." We have a moment to look upon the stars, and there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with all out- door creatures in our neighborhood, that we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilization,^ and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep of Na- ture's flock. When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water. I emptied it at a draught; and feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigar- ette. The stars were clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock- still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward; Ijut there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the color of the sky, as we call the \oid of space, from where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I w^ear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or low- ered the cigarette ; and at each whiff the inside of my hand ^BasiiUe of civUizaiion. The BastiUe was a state prison in Paris noted i'oi' the terrors it inspired. It fell before the attack of a mob in the beginning of the French Kevolntion. 208 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY~ Avas illuniinatt'd, and became for a second the highest light in the landscape. A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I thought with horror of the inn at Chas- serades and the congregated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more inde- pendent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habita- ble place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, w^as laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths which are revealed to savages and hid from political economists: at the least, I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet even while I was exulting in my solitude I became aware of a strange lack. I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly under- stood, is solitude made perfect. And to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most com- plete and free. As I thus lay between content and longing, a faint noise stole towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm ; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in my ears, until I became aware that a passenger was going by upon the high-road in the- valley, and sing- ing loudly as he went. There was more of good-will than grace in his performance ; but he trolled with ample lungs ; and the sound of his voice took hold upon the hillside and set the air shakins: in the leafy glens. I have heard people A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 209 passing by night in sleeping cities; some of tliem sang; one, 1 remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring np suddenly after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally Avith wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night ; and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone- in the pine-woods be- tween four and five thousand feet towards the stars. When I awoke again (Sunda}^, 29th September), many of the stars had disappeared ; only the stronger companions of the night still burned visibly overhead ; and away to- wards the east I saw a faint haze of light upon the horizon such as had been the Milky Way when 1 was last awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, and Ijy its glow-worm light put on my boots and gaiters; then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my can at the water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil nwself some chocolate. The blue darkness lay long in the glade where 1 had so sweetly slumbered ; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting into gold along the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day. I heard the runnel with delight;, I looked round me for something beautiful and unexpected ; but the still black pine-treei?, the hollow glade, the munch- ing ass, remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had al- tered but the light, and that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and moved me to a strange exhilaration. I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if it was not ricli, and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. While I was thus delaying, a gush of steady 210 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY wind, as long as a heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It was cold, and set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed their black plumes in its passage; and I could see the thin distant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to and fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows and sparkles, and the day had come completely. I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent that lay before me; but I had something on my mind. It was only a fancy; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or the inimita- ble ceiling, nor yet of the view which I commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some ont's debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half- laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had left enough for my night's lodg- ing. I trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover. THE COUNTEY OF THE CAMISAEDS i "We traveled in the print of olden wars; Yet all the land was green; And love we found, and peace, Where fire and ivar had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword — No wore the sword they wield; And 0, how deep the corn Along the battlefield!" — W. P. Bannatyne. 1 The Camisards. The French Protestants of the Cevennes. who in 1702 rose in rebeUion as^ainst religious persecution instigated by the clergy of the established Church. They received tlieir name from the blouse, or shirt (camisa). which their soldiers wore over then- armor as a means of identification in night forays. The first overt act of the war was the killing of the Abbe du Chayla, recounted by Stevenson in the next chapter. The final overthrow of the insurgents was accomplished only after 100,000 men were put into the field. THE COUNTRY OF THE CA^IISARDS 211 ACROSS THE LOZERE The track that I had followed in the evening soon died out. and I continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was already warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that sent the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gevaudan, extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path ; they perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and I saw them circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to time, translucent flickering wings between the sun and me. Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like a distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to think it the voice of a neighboring water- fall, and sometimes a subjective result of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I continued to advance, the noise in- creased and became like the hissing of an enormous tea- urn, and at the same time breaths of cool air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. At length I under- stood. It was blowing stiffly from the south upon the other slope of the Lozere, and every step that I took I was draw- ing nearer to the wind. Although it had been long desired, it was quite unex- pectedly at last that my eyes rose above the summit. A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded it — and, "like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, lie stared on the Pacific," I took poshes- 212 TEAA^ELS WITH A DONKEY sioii, in my own name, of a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart 1 had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet. The Lozere lies nearly east and west, cutting Gevaudan into two unequal parts; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises upwards of -five thousand six hundred feet above the sea, and in clear weather commands a view over all lower Languedoc to the ^Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken with people who either pretended or believed that they had seen, from the the Pic de Finiels, white ships sailing by Montpelier and Cette. Be- hind was the upland northern country through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, without wood, without much grandeur of hill-form, and famous in the past for little beside wolves. But in front of me, half-veiled in sunny haze, lay a new Gevaudan, rich, picturesque, illus- trious for stirring events. Speaking largely, I was in the (■evennes at Monastier, and during all my journey; but there is a strict and local sense in which only this confused and shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this sense the peasantry employ the word. These fire the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of the C'evennes. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a ^var of bandits, a war of Avild beasts, raged for two years between the Grand Monarch^ with all his troops and mar- shals on the one hand, and a few thousand Protestant mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and eighty years ago, the Camisards held a station even on the Lozere, where 1 stood ; they had an organization, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy ; their affairs w^ere "the discourse of every coffee-house" in London; England sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied and murdered; with colors and drums, and the singing of old French 1 flie Qrand Monarch. Louis XIV of France. THE COUNTEY OF THE CAMISARDS 213 psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daj^light, marelied before walled cities, and dispersed the generals of the king; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade, pos- sessed themselves of strong castles, and avenged treachery upon their allies and cruelty upon their foes. There, a hundred and eighty years ago, was the chivalrous Eoland, "Count and Lord Roland, generalissimo of the Protestants in France," grave, silent, imperious, pock-marked ex-dra- goon, whom a lady followed in his wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at fifty-five the English governor of Jersey. There again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a voluminous peruke and with a taste for controversial divinity. Strange generals, who moved apart to take counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an un- guarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their hearts I And there, to follow these and other leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and disciples, bold, patient, indefatiga- ble, hardy to run upon the mountains, cheering their rougli life with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of brainsick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls v.ith which they charged their muskets. I had traveled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of nothing "more notable than the child-eating Beast of Gevaudan, the Napoleon Buonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of a romantic chapter — or, better, a romantic foot-note — in the history of the world. What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism? I was told that Protestantism still survived in- this head seat of Protestant resistance; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery parlor. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively and gen- erous tradition. Again, if in the northern Cevennes the 214 TRAA^ELS WITH A DONKEY people are iiarroAv in religious judgments, and more filled with zeal than charity, what was I to look for in this land of persecution and reprisal — in a land where the tyranny of the Church produced the Camisard rebellion, and the terror of the Camisards threw the Catholic peasantry into legalized revolt upon the other side, so that Camisard and Florentin skulked for each other's lives among the mountains ? Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end ; and only a little below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a breakneck slope, turning like a cork- screw as it went. It led into a valley between falling hills^ stubbly with rocks like a reaped field, of corn, and floored further down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation ; the steepness of the slope, the contin- ual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old un- wearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many foun- tains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Some- times it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley had closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. The track became a road, and went up and down in easy undula- tions. I passed cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted ; and I saw not a human creature, nor heard any sound ex- -cept that of the stream. I w^as, however, in a different country from the day before. The stony skeleton of the world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. The slopes were steep and changeful. Oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown, wealthy in leaf, and touched by the THE COUNTEY OF THE CxiMISAEDS 215 autumn \^'itli strong and luminous colors. Here and there another stream would fall in from the right or the left, down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary boulders. The river in the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed awhile in desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue ; crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by half so green ; and at every pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body in the mountain air and water. All the time as I went on I never forgot it was the Sabbath ; the stillness was a per- petual reminder; and I heard in spirit the church-bells clamoring all over Europe, and the psalms of a thousand churches. At length a human sound struck upon my ear — a cry strangel}^ modulated between pathos and derision ; and looking across the valley, I saw a little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the rogue had picked me out as I went down the road, from oak- wood on to oak-wood, driving Modestine; and he made me the compliments of the new country in this tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises are lovely and natural at a sutficient distance, this also, coming through so much clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river. A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the Tarn, at Pont de Montvert of bloody memory. ^16 TEAVELS WITH A DONKEY PONT DE MONTYERT One of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I rememher rightl}^, the Protestant temple; but tills was bnt the type of other novelties. A subtle atmos- phere distinguishes a town in England from a town in France, or even in Scotland. At Carlisle you can see you are in one country; at Dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure that you are in the other. I should find it diffi- cult to tell in what particulars Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or even Bleymard; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to the eyes. The place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescribable air of the South. All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public- house, as all had been Sabbath peace among the mountains. There must have been near a score of us at dinner by- eleven before noon; and after I had eaten and drunken, and sat writing up my journal, I suppose as many more came dropping in one after another, or by twos and threes. In crossing the Lozere I had not only come among new natural features, but moved into the territory of a differ- ent race. These people, as they hurriedly despatched their viands in an intricate sword-play of knives, questioned and answered me with a degree of intelligence which excelled all that I had met, except among the railway folk at Chas-- serades. They had open telling faces, and were lively botli in speech and manner. They not only entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. Even physically there was a pleasant cliange. I had not seen a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there but one. Xow of the three who sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly not beautiful — a poor timid thing of PONT DE MOXTVERT 0^7 forty, quite troubled at this roaring table d'hote, whom J squired and helped to wine, and pledged, and tried gener- ally to encourage, Avith quite a contrary effect; but the other two, both married, were both more handsome than the average of w^omen. And Clarisse? What shall I say of Clarisse ? She waited the table with a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; but her great gray eyes were steeped in amorous languor; her features, al- though flesh}^, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and, with training, it offered the promise of delicate sentiment. It seemed piti- ful to see so good a model left to country admirers and a country way of thought. Beauty should at least have touched society ; then, in a moment, it throws off a weight that lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an elegance, learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment, patet dea} Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was some confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays ; but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years. Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might say at home, is a place memorable in the story of the Cam- isards. It was here that the war broke out; here that those southern Covenanters- slew their Archbishop Sharpe. '^ patet dea. I.atin ; the goddess stands reveaK^. - Sou them Covenanters. ^ In resistance to foims of worship and church government which Charles I and Arclihishop Laud sought to Impose upon them, the Scotch Presbyterians adopted a National Cov- enant, in which they bound themselves to resist aU changes in religion. James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, assisted in the restoration of Episcopacy in Scotland. He was murdered by the Covenanters. :218 TKAVELS WITH A DONKEY The persecution on the one hand^ the febrile enthusiasm on the other, are abnost equally clithcult to understand in these quiet modern days, and with our easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protestants were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. They were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the breast would exhort their parents to good works. "A child of fifteen months at Quissac spoke from its mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly and with a loud voice." Marshal Yillars^ has seen a town where all the women '^'seemed pos- sessed by the devil,'' and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Viva- rais was hanged at Montpelier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she declared that she was weeping- tears of blood for the misfortunes of the Protestants. And it was not only women and children. Stalwart, dangerous fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield the forest axe, were likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and streaming tears. A persecution un- surpassed in violence had lasted near a score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted; hanging, burn- ing, breaking on the wheel, had been vain; the dragoons had left their hoof-marks over all the country-side; there were men rowing in the galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church ; and not a thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant. Now the head and forefront of the persecution — after Lamoignon de Bavile^ — Frangois cle Langlade du Chayla (pronounced Cheila), Archpriest of the Cevennes and In- spector of Missions in the same country, had a house in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de Mont- 1 Marshal ViUars was the marshal who finally reduced the Camisard rebellion, in 1704. 2 Lamoignon de Bavile. "A crafty and cold-bloodedly cruel politician, without the excuse of any zealous religious conviction." — Guizot. At one time during the war, he had three hundred children imprisoned, and afterward sent to the galleys. PONT DE MOXTVERT 219 vort. He was a conscientious person, who seems to have l)een intended hy nature for a pirate, and now fifty-five, an age hy which a man has learned all the moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in his youth in China, he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only succored and brought back to life by the cliarity of a pariah. We must suppose the pariah devoid of second sight, and not purposely malicious in this act. Such an experience, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the desire to persecute; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put together; and, having been a Christian martyr, Du (^hayla became a Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of the Faith went roundly forward in his hands. His house in Pont de Montvert served him as a prison. There he plucked out the hairs of the beard, and closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coals, to con- vince them that they were deceived in their opinions. And yet had not he himself tried and proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the Boodhists in China ? Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight was rigidly forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the mountain-paths, had already guided several troops of fugitives in safety to Geneva ; and on him, with another convoy, consisting mostly of women dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands. The Sunday following, there was a con- venticle of Protestants in the woods of Altefage upon Mount Bouges; where there stood up one Seguier — Spirit Seguier, as his companions called him — a wool-carder, tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. He declared, in the name of God, that the time for submission had gone by, and they must betake themselves to arms for the deliverance of their brethren and the destruction of the priests. The next night, 2-ith July, 1702, a sound disturbed the 220 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY Inspector of Missions as he sat in his prison-house- at Pont de Montvert ; the voices of many men upraised in psahnody drew nearer and nearer through the town. It was ten at night; he had his court aljout him, priests, soldiers, and servants, to the number of twelve or fifteen; and now dreading the insolence of a conventicle below his very win- dows, he ordered forth his soldiers to report. But the psalm-singers were already at his door, fifty strong, led by the inspired Seguier, and breathing death. To their sum- mons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old persecu- tor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. One Cam- isard (for, according to some, it was in this night's work that they came by the name) fell at this discharge; his comrades burst in the door with hatchets and a beam of wood, overran the lower story of the house, set free the prisoners, and finding one of them in the vine, a soi't of Scavenger's Daughter^ of the place and period, redoubled in fury against Du Chayla, and sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors. But he, on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely held the staircase. "Children of God,'' cried the prophet, "hold your hands. Let us burn the house, with the priest and the satellites of Baal."2 The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du Chayla and his men lowered themselves into the garden by means of knotted sheets ; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyr- dom drew near ? A poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least one telling word to say in his defense; for when the roof fell in and 1 Scavenger's Daughter. An instrument of torture invented by Sir William Skevington (of which name Scavenger is a corruption). ^"nriests and satellites of Baal." See II Kings, X, 19. PONT DE MONT VERT 991 the upbiirsting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged him to the pn1)lic place of tlie town, raging and calling him damned — "If I be damned/' said he, "why should yon also damn yourselves?" Here was a good reason for the last ; but in the course of his inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a contrary direction ; and these he was now to hear. One by one, Seguier first, the Camisards drew near and stab1)cd him. "This," they said, "is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed con- vents." Each gave his blow and his reason; and then all Icneeled and sang psalms around the body till the dawn. AVith the dawn, still singing, they defiled away towards Frugeres, further up the Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance, leaving Du Chayla's prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced with two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place. 'Tis a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of psalms; and it seems as if a psalm must always have a sound of threatening in that town upon the Tarn. But the story does not end, even so far as concerns Pont de Mont vert, with the departure of the Camisards. The career of Seguier was brief and bloody. Two more priests and a whole family at Ladeveze, from the father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders ; and yet he was ])ut a day or two at large, and restrained all the time by the presence of the soldiery. Taken at length by a famous soldier of fortune. Captain Poul, he appeared unmoved before his judges. "Your name ?" they asked. "Pierre Seguier." "Why are you called Spirit ?" "Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me." "Your domicile?" 222 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY "Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven." "Have you no remorse for your crimes ?" "I have committed none. My soul is like a garden full of shelter and of fountains." At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had his ] ight hand stricken from his body, and was burned alive. xVnd his soul was like a garden ? So perhaps was the soul of Du Chayla, the Christian martyr. And perhaps if you could read in my soul, or I could read in yours, our own composure might seem little less surprising. Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the bridges of the town, and if you are curious you may see the terrace-garden into wliich he dro^Dped. IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN A NEW road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florae by the valley of the Tarn ; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I went in and out, as I fol- lowed it, from bays of shadow into promontories of after- noon sun. This was a pass like that of Killiecrankie ;^ a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine high above. A thin fringe of ash-trees ran about the hill-tops, like ivy on a ruin; but on the lower slopes, and far up every glen the Spanish chestnut-trees stood each four-square to heaven under its tented foliage. Some were planted each on its own ter- 1 KillecranJcie. A pass in Perthshire, Scotland. Here, during the revolution in Scotland in 1G8S-1G92. the Highlanders commanded by Viscount Dundee, the representative of James II, defeated the govern- ment forces which supported the sovereignty of William and Mary. t IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 223 race, no larger than a bed; some, trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and prosper and be straight and lixrge npon the rapid slopes of the valley; others, where there was a margin to the river, stood marshaled in a line and mighty like cedars of Lebanon. Yet even where they grew most thickly tliey were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart individuals ; and the dome of each tree stood forth separate and large, and as it were a little hill, from among the domes of its companions. They gave forth a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air of the afternoon; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the green; and the sun so shone through and kindled the broad foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against an- other, not in shadow, but in light. A humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in despair. I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees ; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the pillars of a church; or like the olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. Thus they partake of the nature of many different trees ; and even their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the sky, have a cer- tain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. But their individuality, although compounded of so many ele- ments, is but the richer and the more original. And to look down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts cluster "like herded elephants'' upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature. Between Modestine's laggard humor and the beauty of the scene, we made little progress all that afternoon ; and at last finding the sun, although still far from setting, was 324 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY already beginning to desert the narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp in. This was not easy to find ; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was nnterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I should have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet or my head in the river. After perhaps a mile, 1 saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble, I goaded and kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there 1 hastened to unload her. There was only room for myself upon the })lateau, and I had to go nearly as high again before I found so much as standing room for the ass. It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut, and having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chest- nut-leaves, of which I found her greedy, I descended once more to my own encampment. The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went by upon the road; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed myself, for all the world like a hunted Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut trunk; for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of Jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw that I must be early awake ; for these chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no farther gone than on the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped branches, and here and there i a great package of leaves was propped against a trunk; for ■ even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. I picked a meal in fear and treml)ling, half lying down to hide myself from the road ; and I dare say I was as much concerned as if I had been a scout from Joani's band above upon the IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 225 Lozero or from Salomon's^ across the Tarn in the old times of psahn-singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps mor^; for the Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into my memory of how the Count of Gevaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered a valle}^ in the woods, and found Gavalier and his men at dinner, gayly seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with box-tree garlands, while fif- teen women washed their linen in the stream. Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date Antony Watteau- would be painting similar subjects. This was a very different camp from that of the night l)efore in the cool and silent pine-woods. It was warm and even stifling in the valley. The shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in it, rang up from tlie riverside before the sun was down. In the grow- ing dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro among the fallen leaves; from time to time a faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my ear; and from time to time I thought I could see the movement of something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of large ants swarmed upon tlie ground ; bats whisked by, and ^mosquitoes droned overhead. The long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung against the sky like garlands; and those immediately above and around me had somewhat the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked and half overthrown in a gale of wind. Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids; and just as I was beginning to feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settling densely on my mind, a noise at my head startled me broad awake again, and, I will frankly confess it, 1 Joani and Salomon (Salomon Coudoiv) wore l>oth leaders of the Camisards. Salomon took a loremosl part in the murder of Du Chayla -Antony Watieau (1G84-1721) was a French painter of subjects representing conventional shepherds and shepherdesses. 226 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY brought n\y heart into my mouth. It was such a noise as A person would make scratching loudly with a finger-nail, it came from under the knapsack which served me for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before I had time to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be seen, nothing more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and the frogs. I learned next day tliat the chestnut gardens are infested by rats ; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these ; l)ut the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and I had to compose myself for sleep, as best I could, in wondering uncertainty about my neighl)ors. I was wakened in the gray of the morning (Monday, 30th September) by the sound of footsteps not far off upon the stones, and opening my eyes, I beheld a peasant going by among the chestnuts by a footpath that I had not hitherto observed. He turned his head neither to the right nor to the left, and disappeared in a few strides among the foliage. Here was an escape ! But it was plainly more than time to be moving. The peasantry were abroad ; scarce less terrible to me in my nondescript position than the sol- diers of Captain Poul to an undaunted Camisard. I fed i Modestine with what haste I could ; but as I was returning ; to my sack, I saw a man and a boy come down the hillside; in a direction crossing mine. They unintelligibly hailed I me, and I replied with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, and! hurried forward to get into my gaiters. The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up to the plateau, and stood close beside me for some timei in silence. The bed was open, and I saw with regret my revolver lying patently disclosed on the blue wool. At last, after they had looked me all over, and the silence hadli grown laughably embarrassing, the man demanded in what seemed unfriendly tones : "You have slept here?" IX THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 227 "Yes," said T. "As you see.'' "Why ?*Mie. asked. "My faitli,'' 1 answered lightly, ''I was tired." He next inquired where 1 was going and what I had had for dinner; and then, without the least transition, ''C'est hicn/'^ he added. "Come along.'' And he and his son, without another word, turned off to the next chestnut- tree but one, which they set to pruning. The thing had passed off more simply than I hoped. He w^as a grave, respectable man; and his unfriendly voice did not imply that he thought he Avas speaking to a criminal, but merely to an inferior. I was soon on the road, nihl^ling a cake of chocolate and seriously occupied with a case of conscience. Was I to pay for my night's lodging? I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in the shape of ants, there was no water in the room, the very dawn had neglected to call me in the morning. I might have missed a train, liad there been any in the neighborhood to catch. Clearly, I was dissatisfied with my entertainment; and I decided I should not pay unless I met a beggar. The valley looked even lovelier by morning; and soon the road descended to the level of the river. Here, in a 1)1 ace where many straight and prosperous chestnuts stood together, making an aisle upon a swarded terrace, I made my morning toilette in the water of the Tarn. It was mar- velously clear, thrillingly cool ; the soap-suds disappeared as if by magic in the swift current, and the white boulders gave one a model for cleanliness. To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful sol- emnity or semi-pagan act of worship. To dabble among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body; but the imagination takes no share in such a cleansing. I went ^'•C'est lien:' "AU right, vory wcU:"' 228 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY on with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psahns to the sj^iritiial ear as 1 advanced. Suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank de- manded alms. "Good !" thought I ; "here comes the waiter with the bilL" And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. Take it how you please, but tliis was the first and the hist beggar that I met with during all my tour. A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a brown nightcap, clear-eyed, Aveather-beaten, with a faint, excited smile. A little girl followed him, driving- two sheep and a goat; but she kept in our wake, Avhile the old man walked beside me and talked aljout the morning and the valley. It was not much past six; and for healthy people wdio have slept enough, that is an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk. ''Connaissez-vous h Seigneur?"'^ he said at length. I asked him what Seigneur he meant ; but he only repeated the question with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denoting hope and interest. "Ah !" said I, pointing upwards, "I understand you now. Yes, I know Him ; He is the best of acquaintances." The old man said he was delighted. "Hold," he added, striking his bosom ;' "it makes me happy here." There were a few who knew the Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me; not many, but a few. "Many are called," he quoted, "and few chosen." "My father," said I, "it is not easy to say who know the Lord ; and it is none of our business. Protestants and Catholics, and even those who worship stones, may know Him and be known by Him; for He has made all." I did not know I was so good a preacher. The old man assured me he thought as I did, and re- '^"Connaisscs-voiis,- etc. '"Do vou know the Lord?" I I>^ THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 029 peated his expressions of pleasure at meeting me. ^'We are so few/' he said. "They call us Moravians^ here: but down in tlie department of Gard, where there are also a t;ood num1)er, they are called Derbists, after an Engl is] 1 pastor.'' I began to understand that I was figuring, in question- ahle taste, as a member of some sect to me unknown; but I was more pleased with the pleasure of my companion than embarrassed hy my own equivocal position. Indeed I can see no dislionesty in not avowing a difference; and especially in these high matters, where we have all a suffi- cient assurance that, whoever may be in the wrong, we ourselves are not completely in the right. The truth is much talked about; but this old man in a brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet, and friendly that I am not unwilling to profess myself his convert. He was, as a matter of fact, a Plymouth Brother. Of what that involves in the way of doctrine I have no idea nor the time to inform m3^self ; but I know right well that we are all eml)arked upon a troublesome world, the children of one Father, striving in many essential points to do and to become the same. And although it was somewhat in a mis- take that he shook hands with me so often and showed himself so ready to receive my words, that was a mistake of the truth-finding .sort. For charity begins blindfold; and only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at length into a settled principle of love and patience, and a firm belief in all our fellow-men. If I deceived this good old man, in the like manner I would willingly go on to deceive others. And if ever at length, out of our separate 1 Moravians. A religious sect, founded in Moravia in the fifteenth century by the followers of John IIuss, and now existing chiotiy in the United States. Great Britain, and Germany ; called also United Brethren. The Derbists (pronounced Daroists). or Darbyites. who are called also Plymouth Brethren, are the members of a sect originating in Plymouth, England, under the influence of John Darby. They have no formal creed or church organization, acknowledging as brethren all who believe in Christ and the Holy Spirit. 230 TiiA\ J^i^lS WITH A JJUx\KJl.i: and sad ways, we should all come together into one com- mon house, I have a hope, to which 1 cling dearly, that my mountain Pkniouth Brother will hasten to shake hands with me again. Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful^ by the way, he and I came down upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place, called" La Vernede, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here he dAvelt; and here, at the inn, I ordered my breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stone-breaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl. The village school-master dropped in to speak with the stranger. And these were all Protestants — a fact which pleased me more than I should have expected ; and, what pleased me still more, they seemed all upright and simple people. The ]^lymoutli Brother hung round me with a sort of yearning interest, and returned at least thrice to make sure I was enjoying my meal. His behavior touched me deeply at the time, and even now moves me in recollection. He feared to intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand. When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, I sat for near half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who talked pleasantly over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the beauties of the Tarn, and old family affec- tions, broken up when young folk go from home, yet still subsisting. Hers, I am sure, was a sweet nature, with a country plainness and much delicacy underneath ; and he who takes her to his heart will doubtless be a fortunate young man. The valley below La A^ernede pleased me more and more as I went forward. Xow the hills approached from either hand, naked and crumbling, and walled in the river be- 1 Chrisliun and Faithful. Sec Pihjrim's Progress. IN THE VALLEY OF THE TAK^ 231 tween cliffs; and now the valle}^ widened and became green. The road led me pa?t the old castle of Miral on a steep; past a battlemented monastery, long since broken np and turned into a church and parsonage; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocures, sitting among vineyards and meadows and orchards thick with red apples, and where, along the highway, they were knocking down walnuts from the roadside trees, and gathering them in sacks and baskets. The hills, however much the vale might open, were still tall and bare, with cliffy battlements and here and there a pointed summit; and the Tarn still rat- tled through the stones with a mountain noise. I had been led, by bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a horrific country after the heart of Byron ;^ but to my Scotch eyes it seemed smiling and plentiful, as the weather still gave an impression of high summer to my Scotch body; although the chestnuts were already picked out by the autumn, and the poplars, that here began to mingle with them, had turned into pale gold against the approach of winter. There was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, that explained to me the spirit of the Southern Cov- enanters. Those who took to the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts; for once that they receiv-ed God's comfort they would be twice engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright ifl JiorrifiG count)'!/ after the heart of Byron. An allusion to Byron's fonduoss for the wild, awe-inspiring aspects of natural scenery. "Iloiritic" has the connotation of "bristling" or "rough." The follow- ing )>assage from Byron's Childe Harold will illustrate Stevenson's meaning : "The roar of waters ! from the headlong height Veiino cleaves the wave worn precipice. The fall of waters I rapid as the light, The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss : "The hell of waters I where they howl and hiss, And boil an endless torture ; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this, Their Phlegethon curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf aro'ind, in pitiless horror set." 232 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY and supporting visions. They dealt niiicli more in blood, both given and taken ; yet I find no obsession of the Evil One in their records. With a light conscience, they pur- sued their life in these rough times and circumstances. 1*lie soul of Seguier, let us not forget, was like a garden. They knew they were on (Jod's side, with a knowledge that has no parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they might be certain of the cause, could never rest confi- dent of the person. ^^We flew," says one old Camisard, ^Svhen we heard the sound of psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings. AYe felt within us an animating ardor, a transporting desire. The feeling cannot be expressed in words. It is a thing that must have been experienced to be understood. However weary we might be, we thought no more of our weariness and grew light, so soon as the psalms fell upon our ears." The valley of the Tarn and the people whom 1 met at La Vernede not only explain to me this passage, but the twenty years of suffering which those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves to war, endured with the meekness of children and the constancy of saints and peasants. FLORAC On a branch of the Tarn stands Florae, the seat of a sub- prefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill. It is notable, besides, for handsome women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the coun- try of the Camisards. The landlord of the inn took me, after I had- eaten, to an adjoining "cafe, where I, or rather my journey, became the topic of the afternoon. Every one had some sugges- FLORAC 233 tion for my guidance; and tlie subprefectorial map was fetched from the subprefectiire itself, and much thumbed among coffee-cups and glasses of liqueur. Most of these kind advisers were Protestant, though I observed that Prot- estant and Catholic intermingled in a very easy manner; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory still suh- sisted of the religious war. Among the hills of the south- west, hy ^lauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse, serious Presbyterian people still recall the days of the great persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are still piously regarded. But in towns and among the so-called better classes, I fear that these old doings have become an idle tale. If you met a mixed com- pany in the King's Arms at Wigtown, it is not likely that the talk would run on Covenanters, ^ay, at Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had not so much as heard of Prophet Peden. But these Cevenols were proud of their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility : and where a man or a race has had but one adven- ture, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country was still full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard from them about Cavalier's descendants — not direct descendants, be it understood, but only, cousins or nephews — who were still prosperous people in the scene of the boy-general's exploits ; and one farmer had seen the bones of old combatants dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the great- grandchildren were peaceably ditching. Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so good as to visit me: a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom I passed an hour or two in talk. Florae, he told me, is part Protestant, part Catholic; and the differ- ence in religion is usually doubled hy a difference in poll- 234 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY tics. Yon may judge of my surprise, coming as I did from 8uch a babbling, purgatorial Poland of a place as Monas- tier, when I learned that the population lived together on very quiet terms; and tliere was even an exchange of hos- pitalities between households thus doubly separated. Black Camisard and White Camisard, militiaman and Miquelet^ and dragoon, Protestant prophet and Catholic cadet of the White Cross, they had all been sabring and shooting, burn- ing, pillaging and murdering, their hearts hot with indig- nant passion ; and here, after a hundred and seventy years, Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in mutual toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man, like that indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its own ; the years and seasons bring various harvests ; the sun returns after the rain ; and man- kind outlives secular animosities, as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. We judge our ancestors from a more divine position; and the dust being a little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides adorned with human virtues and fighting with a show of right. I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even harder than I thought. I own I met these Protestants with delight and a sense of coming home. I was accus- tomed to speak their language, in another and deeper sense of the word than that which distinguishes between French and English; for the true babel is a divergence upon morals. And hence I could hold more free communication with the Protestants, and judge them more justly, than the Catholics. Father Apollinaris may pair off with my mountain Plymouth Brother as two guileless and devout old men; yet I ask n^yself if I had as ready a feeling for the virtues of the Trappist ; or had I l^een a C^atholic, if '' I should have felt so warmly to the dissenter of La Ver nede. With the first I was on terms of mere forbearance; | 1 Miquelet. An irreg^ulav soldier. IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 235 but with the other, although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on selected points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange some honest thoughts. In this world of imperfection we gladly welcome even partial inti- macies. If we find but one to whom we can speak out of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and sim- plicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of quar- rel with the Avorld or God. IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE On Tuesday, 1st October, we left Florae late in the after- noon, 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 moun- tains 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 en- campment. Even under the oaks and chestnuts the ground liad 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 v/ith lieather. The sun had left the highest peak in front of me, and the valley Avas 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, t3dng Modest ine pro- visionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the neigh- borhood. A gray pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted baf- 236 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY flingly into each other; and the darkness was rising stead- ily 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 neighbors 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 lan- tern 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 Idle 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 Eoland 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.'' ^ a la belle ctoile. In the open air : under the open sky. A survival of the older a Venseigne de la hcllc ctoile (at the sign of the beautiful star). IN THE A' ALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 937 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 1 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 domes- tic affections come clamoring round you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp, cruel note of a dog's hark 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 clergy- man or the law3'er about this engaging animal ; and if he were not amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrinlc from traveling 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 2cl ) 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 extin- guished. The heaven was of that enchanting mild gray- 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 traveled high enough, we should see the same thing all night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space. 238 TEAA^ELS WITH A DONKEY 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 direc- tion. A few steps farther, and I saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun ; and still a little beyond, between two peaks, a center 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, mili- tary-looking wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a bal- dric ; but he made a remark that seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or Catholic — ^'0/' 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 nat- ural 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 hoof and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can change one tittle of a plough- man'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 philos- ophy 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 THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 239 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 Plym- outh 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 mean- ing, change his mind. 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 chest- nut 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 char- coal 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 neighborhood. 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 w^ho had joined their voices Avith his in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the arch- 240 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY priest of the Cevennes, Seguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Coiulerc, 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 tlie sacrament or refused them by "intentively viewing every man'' between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures off by rote. And this was vsurely 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 ef- fectually; for this legion of Cassagnas was truly patri- archal 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 the}^ harbored. M. de C'aladon, taking a stroll one fine da}', walked without warning into tlieir midst, as he miglit have walked into "a flock of sheep in a plain/' and found some asleep and some awake and j)salm-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 friend- ship."' Thus, among their intricate hills, tlie rustic troop subsisted ; and history can attribute few exploits to them but sacraments and ecstasies. People of this tough and simple stock Avill not, as T have just been saying, prove variable in religion ; nor will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external con- formity like that of Xaaman in the house of Eimmon.^ 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 1 For the story of Naaman in the house of Rimmon see II Kings, V. THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 241 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's worth not- ing, is disapproved by the Protestant villagers. "It is a bad idea,^' said one, ''for a man 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 farther re- spect. For we had something not unlike a religious con- troversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with whom 1 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 might}^ 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 trod- den 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 Avhile ^ Bruce and ^Tanace. Robert Bruce (1274-1329). Robert I of Scotland, resisted the claims of the English king, Edward I, to the suzerainty of Scotland. He defeated Edward II at Bannockburn in ^^.'AA. His independent title was recognized by England in 132S. William Wallace likewise resisted the English power under Edward I. In 121)7 he defeated the English at the battle of Stirling Bridge. He was finally betrayed to the English and executed for treason." 242 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY longer, skirmishing upon their borders; but that, when the time came, tliey 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 sulmiitted, was a far too risky business as a whole to make each additional particular of danger worth re- gard. "Something," said I, "might burst in your inside any day of the week, and there would be an end of you, if vou were locked into your room with three turns of the"^key." ^^Ce pendant," said he, "coiichrr dehors T^'^ "God," said I, "is everywhere." "Cependant, coucher dehors" he rejoeated, and his voice was eloquent of terror. He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw any- thing hardy in so simple a proceeding ; although many con- sidered it superfluous. Only one, on the other hand, pro- fessed much delight in the idea; and tliat was my Plym- outh Brother, who cried out, when I told him I some- times preferred sleeping under the stars to a close and noisy alehouse, "^ow 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 1 Cepcmlonf, rniiclirr deltoi!^." "'HTit to think of sleeping out of doors !" THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 243 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 Avas now on the separation of two vast watersheds; 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 Eo- land 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 chest- nut gardens, in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when the day's work is done, to his chil- dren 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 i/SiV Cloudesley Shovel. An English Admiral (1650-1707). The Camisards expected aid from England. On one occasion, Sir Cloudes- loy's ship appeared in the offing, and was joined by two other men-of- war. But receiving no answer to the signals which they made to the insurgents, they withdrew and returned to England. 044 TKAA^ELS WITH A DONKEY a coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from set- ting, sent a drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys were alread}^ 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 honor of his near- ness to the grave, directed me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was something solemn in the isola- tion 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. Xot far off upon my right was the famous Plan de Font ivlorte, where Foul with his Armenian sabre slashed down the Camisards of Seguier. This, methought, might be some Iiip, A^an AYinkle 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 Poland 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 liiiu Y\'aving me to come back with one of his two sticks. I had already got some way past him ; but, leaving Modest ine once more, retraced my steps. Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentle- man had forgot to ask the j^edlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this neglect. I told him .sternly, ^'Xothing.'^ "Nothing?" cried he. I repeated "Xothing,'' and made off. It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as in- explicable to the old man as he had been to me. The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a ham- let or two below me in the vale, and many lone houses of | tlie chestnut farmers, it was a very solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began early underneath the THE HEART OF THE COrXTET 045 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 hel 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, weav- ing, like Pippa in the poem,^ ]uy 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, aiid 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 moun- tain ; when on turning a corner my donkey and I issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out my brandy at Florae, 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 un- conscious 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 1 Pippa in the poem. In Browning's Pippa Passes', Pippa. a silk- weaver, having but one holiday in all the year, decides to enjoy it by fancying that she tastes "of the pleasures" and is "called by the names of the Happiest Four in Asolo." As she passes through the city sing- ing, the words of her songs are heard by the "Flappiest Four," just at the moment when each confronts a grave crisis in his life, and influence his decision for good. 246 TRAA'ELS WITH A DONKEY 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 mountainlike 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 w^as 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 travel- ing feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain were faintly designed in the moon- sliine ; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of sad nocturnal coloring. At a certain point, as I Avent downward, turning many acute angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill; and I pursued my way in great darkness, until another turn- ing shot rpe without preparation into St. Germain de Cal- l)erte. The place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night. Only from a single open door, some lamp- light escaped upon the road to show me 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 re- kindled ; half an hour later, and I must have gone supper- less to roost. THE LAST DAY 247 THE LAST DAY WiiEX I awoke (Thursday, 2d Octobci), and, hearing a great flourishing of coeks and chuckling of contented liens, betook me to the window of the clean and comfortable room where 1 had slept the night, I looked forth on a sun- shiny 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 Cath- olic; 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 might}^ 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 I)u 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 popu- lation 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. 248 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY their horses' heels, some ea^^t, some west, and the cure himself as far as Alais. Strange was the position of tliis little Catholic metrop- olis, a thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighborhood. On the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas; on the other, it was cut off from assistance by tiie legion of Roland at Mialet. The cure, LouvrclcnU, although he took a panic at the archpriest's funeral, and so liiirriedly decamped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence uttered ful- minations against the crimes of the Protestants. Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but was l)cat back. Tlie militiamen, on guard before the cures door, could be heard, in tlie l)lack houi's, 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 tlie Camisards for a con- sideration. Un trusty guardians for an isolated priest ! That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de Call)erte, the imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so (piiet, 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 THE LAST DAY 249 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 am- phitheatre 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 beau- tiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their features ; as though a god, traveling by our green highways, should but ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go again forever. 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 mar- ried 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 250 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY pursued me; and for myself, I believe it is the current philosophy in these parts. 1 have some difficulty in imagin- ing 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 hair's-breadth to the eyes of God. Honor 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 neighborhood; 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 an- other pitcher from the well, and ever another grape ex- ploding 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 be- fore I left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down be- side the Garden of Mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St. Etienne de Vallee rran(;aise, or Val Francesque, as they used to call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of St. Pierre. ^ Phylloxera. A genus of plant lice. THE LAST DAY 251 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; hut, unlike others, he was sure of vrhat I had to sell. He had noticed the hlue 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 gray 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 C*amisards ; 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 liis mountain citadel, a young and pretty lass called Ma- riette. There were great rejoicings; and the bridegroom released five-and-twenty prisoners in honor 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 da v. 252 TKAYELS WITH A DONKEY _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 eat- ing 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 hiii in little l)evond six hours! FAEEWELL, MODESTINE On examination, on the morning of Octv)l:)er 3d, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need at least two days' repose according to the ostler; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters ; and, being in a civil- ized country of stage-coaches, I determined to sell my lady-friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with the testimony of the driver wlio had pursued us up the long hill of St. Pierre, spread a favorable notion of my donkey's capabilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an unrivalled opportunit3^ Be- fore ten I had an offer of twenty-five francs; and before noon, after a despei-ate engagement, I sold her, saddle and all, for five-and-tliirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but I had bouglit freedom into the bargain. St. Jean du Gard is a large place and largely Protestant. The maire,^ a Protestant, .asked me to help him in a small matter which is itself characteristic of the country. The young women of the Cevennes profit l)y the common re- ligion and the difference of the language to go largely as 1 maire. Mayor. FAKEWELL, MODESTINE 253 governesses into England ; and here was one, a native of JMialet, struggling witli English circulars from two differ- ent agencies in London. I gave what help I could; and volunteered some advice, which struck me as being ex- cellent. One thing more I note. Tlie phylloxera has ravaged the vineyards in this neighborhood; and in the early morning, under some chestnuts by the river, I found a party of men working with a cider-press. I could not at first make out what they were after, and asked one fellow to explain. ^'Making cider," he tsaid. ''Oui, c'est commc ga. Comme dans h nord!"^ There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice: the country was going to the devil. It was not until I was fairly seated l)y the driver, and rattling through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I became aware of my bereavement. I had lost Modestine. V\) to that luoment I had thought I hated her; but now she was gone. And, 0. The difference to me! For twelve days we had Ijeen fast companions; we had traveled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rock}' and many a boggy by-road. After the first da}', although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul ! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the color of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race and sex ; her virtues were her own. Farewell, and if forever — '^"Oui, ('est comnic fo." "Yes, that's what we're doing. As they do in the north I" 254 TEAA'ELS WITH A DONKEY Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had Rold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example ; and heing alone with a stage-driver and four or five agree- ahle voung men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion. f 80 ^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. ^ ^ ( Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide I" '^M fS Treatment Date: May 2009 ^ ^ PreservationTechnologies <: A V^fORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township^ PA 16066 * (724)779-2111 *• /^fe\ v./ .^if^fA'. "^^..^^ /.^^\ "^^ 0-^ '^^ %_