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Chapter X
THROUGH THE CÉVENNES
The drowsy Provence, with its vineyard slopes and poppied fields, warm lighted and still, is akin to Paradise. But the same Provence, on a windy day, with the chalk dust of its white roads enveloping one in opaque blinding clouds, suggests Sherman's definition of war. We got a taste of this aspect leaving Nîmes on our way north. The roads were about perfect, hard and smooth, but they were white with dust, and the wind did blow. I have forgotten whether it was the mistral or the tramontane, and I do not think it matters. It was just wind – such wind as I used to meet a long time ago in Kansas.
Our first town was Alais, but when we inquired about Alai, according to the French rule of pronunciation, they corrected us and said Alais – sounding the s. That is Provençal, I take it, or an exception to the rule. Alais itself was of no importance, but along the way there were villages perched on hilltops, with castles crowning the high central points, all as picturesque and mediæval as anything well could be. We were always tempted to go up to them, but the climb was likely to be steep; then those villages seen from the inside might not be as poetry-picturelike as when viewed from below, looking up an orchard slope to their weathered balconies and vine-hung walls.
We were in the Cévennes about as soon as we had passed Alais. The Cévennes are mountains – not mere hills, but towering heights, with roads that wind and writhe up them in a multiplicity of convolutions, though always on perfect grade, always beautiful, bringing to view deep vistas and wide expanses at every turn.
There was little wind now – the hills took care of that – and we were warm and comfortable and happy in this fair, lonely land. There were few habitations of any kind; no automobiles; seldom even a cart. Water was scarce, too; it was hard to find a place to replenish our bottles. But we came at last to a cabin in the woods – a sort of wayside café it proved – where a woman sold us half a liter of red wine for about five cents, and supplied us with spring water free. A little farther along, where the road widened a bit, we halted for luncheon. On one side a steep ascent, wooded, on the other a rather abrupt slope, grass-covered and shady with interspaced trees. By and by we noticed that all the trees were of one variety – chestnut. It was, in fact, a chestnut orchard, and proclaimed the industry of this remote land. We saw many such during the afternoon; probably the district is populous enough during the chestnut harvest.
Through the long afternoon we went winding upward among those unpeopled hills, meeting almost nothing in the way of human life, passing through but one village, Grenolhac, too small even to be set down in the road book. In fact, the first place mentioned beyond Alais was Villefort, with a small population and one inn, a hostelry indicated in the book merely by a little wineglass, and not by one of the tiny houses which, in their varied sizes, picture the recommended hotels and the relative importance thereof. There was no mention of rooms in connection with the Café Marius Balme; the outlook for accommodation overnight was not very cheerful.
It was chilly, too, for evening was closing in and we were well up in the air. The prospect of camping by the roadside, or even of sitting up in a café until morning, did not attract a person of my years, though Narcissa and the Joy declared that to build a camp fire and roll up in the steamer rugs would be "lovely." As there were only three rugs, I could see that somebody was going to be overlooked in the arrangement; besides, a night in the mountains in May, let it begin ever so gayly, is pretty sure to develop doubtful features before morning. I have done some camping in my time, and I have never been able to get together enough steamer rugs to produce a really satisfactory warmth at, say, three or four o'clock in the morning, when the frost is embroidering the bushes and the stars have a glitter that drills into your very marrow. Langogne, the first town marked with a hotel, was at least thirty-five miles farther along, and I could tell by the crinkly look of the road as it appeared on our map that it was no night excursion. Presently we descended into a sort of gorge, and there was Villefort, an isolated, ancient little hamlet forgotten among the Cévennes hilltops. We came to an open space and there, sure enough, was the Café Balme, and by the side of it, happy vision, another little building with the sign "Hôtel Balme."
It was balm indeed. To my faithful inquiry, "Vous avez des chambres?" Yes, they had chambers – they were across the open square, over the garage – that is to say, the stable – if the monsieur and his party would accept them.
"Oui, certainement!"
They were not luxurious – they were just bare boxes, but they were clean, with comfortable beds, and, dear me! how inviting on this particularly chilly evening, when one has put in most of the day climbing narrow, circuitous mountain roads – one-sided – that is to say, one side a wall, the other falling off into unknown space.
They were very quiet rooms, for we had the place to ourselves. The car would sleep just under us, and we had a feeling of being nomads, the kind that put up in barns and empty buildings. A better place could hardly have made us happier, and a better dinner than we had could not be produced anywhere. There was soup – French soup; hot fried trout, taken that day from the mountain streams; then there was omelet of the freshest eggs, served so hot that one must wait for it to cool; also a dish of veal of the same temperature and of such tenderness that you could cut it with a fork; and there was steak which we scarcely touched, and a salad, and fruit and cakes and camembert cheese, with unlimited wine throughout. How could they give a dinner like that, and a good bed, and coffee and rolls with jam next morning, all for four francs – that is, eighty cents, each? I will tell you: they did their own cooking, and were lost so far in the mountains that they had not yet heard of the "high cost of living." And if I have not mentioned it before, I wish to say here that all the red road-book hotels are good, however small or humble they appear. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that all French hotels are good – at least that they have good food and beds. With the French, to have good beds and good food is a religion.
You notice I do not mention the coffee. That is because it is not real coffee. It is – I don't quite know what it is. In the large hotels it merely looks like coffee. In these small inns it looks like a dark, ominous soup and tastes like that as much as anything. Also, it is not served in cups, but bowls, porridge bowls, with spoons to match, and the natives break chunks of bread in it and thus entirely carry out the soup idea. This is the French conception of coffee in the remoter districts, but the bread and jam or honey that go with it are generally good and plentiful, and I suppose the fearful drink itself must be wholesome. One hears a good deal in America of delicious French coffee, but the only place to get it is in America, in New Orleans, say, or New York. I have never found any really good coffee even in Paris.
I think not many travelers visit the Cévennes. The road across the mountains from Nîmes toward Paris seemed totally untraversed, at least so far as tourists are concerned. No English is spoken anywhere – not a word. This was France – not the France that is Paris, which is not France at all any more than New York City is America, but the France which is a blending of race and environment – of soil and sky and human struggle into a unified whole that is not much concerned with the world at large, and from generation to generation does not greatly change.
One may suppose, for instance, that the market at Villefort, which we saw next morning, was very much what it was a hundred years ago – that the same sturdy women in black dresses and curious hats had carried the same little bleating kids, one under each arm – that trout and strawberries and cheese and cherries and all the products of that mountain district were offered there, around the old stone fountain, in the same baskets under the shadow of the same walls, with so little difference in the general aspect that a photograph, if one could have been taken then, might be placed beside the ones we made and show no difference in the fashion of things at all.
We bought some of the strawberries, great delicious dewy ones, and Narcissa and the Joy wanted to buy one or even a dozen of the poor little kids, offering to hold them in their laps constantly. But I knew that presently I should be holding one or more of those kids in my own lap and I was afraid I could not do that and drive with safety. I said that some day when we had time we would build a wooden cage on wheels to put behind the car and gradually collect a menagerie, but that I was afraid we didn't have time just now. We must be getting on.
Our landlady was a good soul. She invited us into the kitchen, neat, trim, and shining, and showed us some trout caught that morning, and offered to give us a mess to take along. The entire force of the hotel assembled to see us go. It consisted of herself and her daughter, our waitress of the night before. Our bill was sixteen francs. The old life – the simple life – of France had not yet departed from Villefort.
Chapter XI
INTO THE AUVERGNE
We had climbed two thousand feet from Nîmes to reach Villefort and thought we were about on the top of the ridge. But that was a mistake; we started up again almost as soon as we left, and climbed longer hills, higher and steeper hills, than ever. Not that they were bad roads, for the grades were perfect, but they did seem endless and they were still one-sided roads, with a drop into space just a few feet away, not always with protecting walls. Still there was little danger, if one did not get too much interested in the scenery, which was beyond anything for its limitless distances, its wide spaces and general grandeur.
Whenever we got to a level spot I stopped the car to look at it while the engine cooled. It is a good plan to stop the car when one wishes really to admire nature. The middle of the road ahead is thought to be the best place for the driver to look while skirting a mountainside.
To return to roads just for a moment, there were miles of that winding lofty way, apparently cut out of the solid face of the mountain, through a country almost entirely uninhabited – a rocky, barren land that could never be populous. How can the French afford those roads – how can they pay for them and keep them in condition? I was always expecting to meet a car on the short high turns, and kept the horn going, but never a car, never a carriage – only now and then a cart, usually the stone-cart of some one mending the roads. The building and engineering of those roads seems to me even a greater marvel than the architecture of cathedrals and châteaux. They are as curly and crooked as a vine, but they ascend and descend with a precision of scale that makes climbing them a real diversion. We ascended those hills on high speed – all of them.
We were about at the snow line now. We could see it but a little way higher up, and if the weather had not been so bright and still we should have been cold. Once we saw what we took to be a snowbank just ahead by the roadside. But when we came nearer we saw it was narcissus, growing there wild; later we saw whole fields of it. It flourished up there as the poppies did lower down.
The country was not all barren. There were stretches of fertile mountain-top, with pastures and meadows and occasional habitations. Now and then on some high point we saw a village clustering about an ancient tower. Once – it was at Prévenchères, a tiny village of the Auvergne – we stopped and bought eggs and bread. There were also a few picture postals to be had there, and they showed the Bourrée, which is a native dance of the Auvergne – a rather rough country café dance, I gathered, but picturesque, in the native costume. I wish we might have seen it.
The mountains dwindled to hills, humanity became more plentiful. It was an open, wind-swept country now – rolling and fruitful enough, but barren of trees; also, as a rule, barren of houses. The people live in the villages and their industry would seem to be almost entirely pasturage – that is, cattle raising. I have never seen finer cattle than we saw in the Auvergne, and I have never seen more uninviting, dirtier villages. Barns and houses were one. There were no dooryards, and the cattle owned the streets. A village, in fact, was a mere cattle yard. I judge there are few more discouraging-looking communities, more sordid-looking people, than in just that section. But my guess is that they are a mighty prosperous lot and have money stuffed in the savings bank. It is a further guess that they are the people that Zola wrote of in La Terre. Of course there was nothing that looked like a hotel or an inn in any of those places. One could not imagine a French hotel in the midst of such a nightmare.
Chapter XII
LE PUY
One of the finest things about a French city is the view of it from afar off. Le Puy is especially distinguished in this regard. You approach it from the altitudes and you see it lying in a basin formed by the hills, gleaming, picturesque, many spired – in fact, beautiful. The evening sun was upon it as we approached, which, I think, gave it an added charm.
We were coasting slowly down into this sunset city when we noticed some old women in front of a cottage, making lace. We had reached the lacemaking district of the Auvergne. We stopped and examined their work and eventually bought some of it and photographed them and went on down into the city. Every little way other old women in front of humble cottages were weaving lace. How their fingers did make the little bobbins fly!
I had never heard of a puy (pronounced "pwee") before we went to the Auvergne and I should never have guessed what it was from its name. A puy is a natural spire, or cone, of volcanic stone, shooting straight up into the air for several hundred or several thousand feet, often slim and with perpendicular sides. Perhaps we should call them "needles." I seem to remember that we have something of the kind in Arizona known by that name.
The Auvergne has been a regular puy factory in its time. It was in the Quaternary era, and they were volcanic chimneys in the day of their first usefulness. Later – a good deal later – probably several million years, when those flues from the lower regions had become filled up and solidified, pious persons began building churches on the tops of them, which would seem pretty hazardous, for if one of those chimneys ever took a notion to blow out, it would certainly lift the church sky high. Here at Le Puy the chimney that gives it its name is a slender cone two hundred and eighty feet high, with what is said to be a curious tenth-century church on the very tip of it. We were willing to take it for granted. There are about five hundred steps to climb, and there is a good deal of climbing in Le Puy besides that item. We looked up to it, and across to it, and later – when we were leaving – down to it from another higher point. I don't know why churches should be put in such inconvenient places – to test piety, maybe. I am naturally a pious person, but when I think of the piety that has labored up and down those steps through rain and shine and cold and heat for a thousand years I suffer.
We did climb the stair of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Puy, which sweeps upward in broad majesty, like a ladder to heaven. There are over a hundred steps, and they were originally designed so the overflow congregation could occupy them and look into the church and see the officiating priest. An architectural change has made this impossible to-day, so perhaps the congregation no longer overflows. In fact, there was a time when great pilgrimages were made to Notre Dame du Puy, and it was then that the steps were filled. There are little shops on each rise of this great flight – ascending with it – shops where religious charms and the like are sold. At the earlier period the merchants displayed their wares on small tables, and the street is called Rue des Tables to this day.
The church is built of black and white stone, and has a curiously Turkish look. It all seems very foreign to France, and indeed the whole place was not unlike a mosque, though more somber, less inviting. It was built in the twelfth century, and under its porch are two of the original cedar doors, with Latin inscriptions.
I am sure Le Puy is a religious place. On every high point there is a church or a saint, or something inspiring. A statue of Notre Dame de France is on the highest point of all, four hundred and thirty-five feet above the town. This statue was cast from the metal of two hundred Russian cannons taken at Sebastopol. You can ascend to it by some six or seven hundred steps cut in the solid rock. We did not go up there, either. Even the statement that we could ascend another flight of steps inside the statue and stand in its very head did not tempt us. Americans have been spoiled for these things. The lift has made loafers of us all.
What I think we enjoyed most in Le Puy was its lacemakers. At every turn, in every little winding street, one saw them – singly and in groups; they were at the front of every door. They were of all ages, but mainly, I think, they were old women. Many of them wore the Auvergne costume – quaint hats or caps, and little shawls, and wooden shoes. Lacemaking is the industry of the Haute-Loire district, and is said to employ ninety thousand women. I think that is an underestimate. It seemed to me we saw as many as that ourselves in front of those mediæval doorways of Le Puy.
Chapter XIII
THE CENTER OF FRANCE
It is grand driving from Le Puy northward toward Clermont-Ferrand and Vichy. It is about the geographical center of France, an unspoiled, prosperous-looking land. Many varieties of country are there – plain, fertile field, rich upland slopes. All the way it is picture country – such country as we have seen in the pictures and seldom believed in before. Cultivated areas in great squares and strips, fields of flowers – red, blue, white – the French colors; low solid-looking hills, with little cities halfway to the summit, and always, or nearly always, a castle or two in their midst; winding, shining rivers with gray-stone bridges over them, the bright water appearing and reappearing at every high turn.
Our road made no special attempt to reach the towns. We viewed them from a distance, and there were narrower roads that turned in their direction, but our great national highway – it was No. 9 now – was not intended for their special accommodation. When it did reach a town it was likely to be a military center, with enormous barracks – new, many of them – like those at Issoire, a queer old place where we spent the night and where I had a real adventure.
It was my custom to carry under the back seat a bottle of Scotch whisky in event of severe illness, or in case of acute motor trouble. For reasons I do not at the moment recall – perhaps the cork had leaked – our supply seemed low at Issoire, and I decided to see what I could find. I had little hope, for in France even the word "whisky" is seldom recognized. Still, I would make diligent inquiry, our case being pretty desperate. There was not enough in the bottle to last till morning – I mean, of course, in case anything serious should happen.
I had the usual experience at the cafés. The attendants repeated the word "whisky" vaguely, and in various ways, and offered me all sorts of gayly tinted liquids which I did not think would cure anything I was likely to have. I tried a drug store, where a gentle pharmacist listened awhile to my French, then dug out from the back of a lower drawer a circular on Esperanto. Imagine!
I was about ready to give it up when I happened to notice a low, dim shop the shelves of which seemed filled with fancy bottles. The place had an ancient, mellow look, but I could see at a glance that its liquids were too richly colored for my taste – needs, I mean. I could try, however.
The little gray man who waited on me pronounced the word in several ways and scratched his head.
"Wisky," he said, "visky-viskee!"
Then he seemed to explode. A second later he was digging a dusty book out of a dusty pile, and in a moment was running his fingers down a yellow page. I dare say it was an old stock list, for suddenly he started up, ran to a dark, remote shelf, pulled away some bottles, and from the deeper back recesses dragged a bottle and held it up in triumph.
"Voilà!" he said, "veeskee! Veeskee Eereesh!"
Shades of St. Patrick! It was old Irish whisky – old, how old – perhaps laid in by his grandfather, for a possible tourist, a hundred years before. I tried to seem calm – indifferent.
"Encore?" I said.
But no, there was no encore– just this one. The price, oh yes, it was four francs.
Imagine!
Issoire is a quaint place and interesting. I shall always remember it.
To motorists Clermont-Ferrand is about the most important city in France. It is the home of tire manufacturers, and among them the great benevolent one that supplies the red road book, and any desired special information, free. We felt properly grateful to this factory and drove out to visit it. They were very good to us; they gave us a brand-new red-book and a green-book for Germany and Switzerland. The factory is a large one, and needs to be. About four-fifths of the cars of Europe go rolling along on its products, while their owners, without exception, use its wonderfully authentic guides. Each year the road books distributed free by this firm, piled one upon the other, would reach to a height of more than five miles. They cover about all the countries, and are simply priceless to the motorist. They are amusing, too. The funny fat motor man made of tires, shown in little marginal drawings and tailpieces in all the picturesque dilemmas of the road, becomes a wonderfully real personality on short acquaintance. We learned to love the merry Michelin man, and never grew tired of sharing his joys and misfortunes.
Clermont-Ferrand is also the home of a man with two wooden legs that need oiling. I know, for he conducted us to the cathedral, and his joints squeaked dismally at every step. I said I would go back to the car and get the oil can, but he paid no attention to the suggestion. He also objected to the tip I gave him, though I could not see why an incomplete guide like that, especially one not in good repair, should expect double rates. Besides, his cathedral was not the best. It was not built of real stone, but of blocks of lava from the puys of the neighborhood.
We came near getting into trouble descending a hill to Vichy. The scene there was very beautiful. Vichy and the river and valley below present a wonderful picture. Absorbed in it, I was only dimly conscious of an old woman trudging along at our left, and did not at all notice a single chicken quite on the opposite side. In any case I could not well know that it was her chicken, or that it was so valuable that she would risk her life to save it. She was a very old person – in the neighborhood of several hundred, I should think, wearing an improperly short skirt, her legs the size and shape of a tightly folded umbrella, terminating below in the largest pair of wooden shoes in the world. Familiar with the habits of chickens, she probably thought her property would wait till we were opposite and then start to race across in front of the car. To prevent this she decided to do it herself! Yet I suppose if I had damaged that prehistoric old lady, instead of missing her by the breadth of half a hair, her relatives would have made us pay for her at fancy rates.
We did not tarry at Vichy. It is a gay place – stylish and costly, and worth seeing a little, when one can drive leisurely through its clean, handsome streets. Perhaps if we could have invented any maladies that would have made a "cure" necessary we might have lingered with those other sallow, sad-eyed, stylish-looking people who collect in the pavilions where the warm healing waters come bubbling up and are dispensed free for the asking. But we are a healthy lot, and not stylish. We drove about for a pleasant hour, then followed along evening roads to St. Germain des Fosses, where the Hôtel du Porc was a wayside inn of our kind, with clean, quiet rooms, good food – and prices, oh, very moderate indeed! But I do wonder why garages are always put in such inconvenient places. I have driven in and backed out of a good many in my time, and I cannot now recall more than one or two that were not tucked away in an alley or around some impossible corner, making it necessary to scrape and writhe and cringe to get in and out without damaging something. I nearly knocked a corner from an out-house in St. Germain, backing out of its free and otherwise satisfactory garage.
