Yet they
all have names, and are called 'The House, the Knowle, Goodman's Plot,
Mall, and the Patch.'
But here in Rupt, to my extreme astonishment, there was no such
universal and human instinct. For I said to the old man who poured me
out my coffee under the trellis (it was full morning, the sun was well
up, and the clouds were all dappled high above the tops of the
mountains): 'Father, what do you call this hill?' And with that I
pointed to a very remarkable hill and summit that lie sheer above the
village.
'That,' he said, 'is called the hill over above Rupt.'
'Yes, of course,' I said, 'but what is its name?'
'That is its name,' he answered.
And he was quite right, for when I looked at my map, there it was
printed, 'Hill above Rupt'. I thought how wearisome it would be if
this became a common way of doing things, and if one should call the
Thames 'the River of London', and Essex 'the North side', and Kent
'the South side'; but considering that this fantastic method was only
indulged in by one wretched village, I released myself from fear,
relegated such horrors to the colonies, and took the road again.
All this upper corner of the valley is a garden. It is bound in on
every side from the winds, it is closed at the end by the great mass
of the Ballon d'Alsace, its floor is smooth and level, its richness is
used to feed grass and pasturage, and knots of trees grow about it as
though they had been planted to please the eye.
Nothing can take from the sources of rivers their character of
isolation and repose. Here what are afterwards to become the
influences of the plains are nurtured and tended as though in an
orchard, and the future life of a whole fruitful valley with its regal
towns is determined. Something about these places prevents ingress or
spoliation. They will endure no settlements save of peasants; the
waters are too young to be harnessed; the hills forbid an easy
commerce with neighbours. Throughout the world I have found the heads
of rivers to be secure places of silence and content. And as they are
themselves a kind of youth, the early home of all that rivers must at
last become - I mean special ways of building and a separate state of
living, a local air and a tradition of history, for rivers are always
the makers of provinces - so they bring extreme youth back to one, and
these upper glens of the world steep one in simplicity and childhood.
It was my delight to lie upon a bank of the road and to draw what I
saw before me, which was the tender stream of the Moselle slipping
through fields quite flat and even and undivided by fences; its banks
had here a strange effect of Nature copying man's art: they seemed a
park, and the river wound through it full of the positive innocence
that attaches to virgins: it nourished and was guarded by trees.
There was about that scene something of creation and of a beginning,
and as I drew it, it gave me like a gift the freshness of the first
experiences of living and filled me with remembered springs. I mused
upon the birth of rivers, and how they were persons and had a
name - were kings, and grew strong and ruled great countries, and how
at last they reached the sea.
But while I was thinking of these things, and seeing in my mind a kind
of picture of The River Valley, and of men clustering around their
home stream, and of its ultimate vast plains on either side, and of
the white line of the sea beyond all, a woman passed me. She was very
ugly, and was dressed in black. Her dress was stiff and shining, and,
as I imagined, valuable. She had in her hand a book known to the
French as 'The Roman Parishioner', which is a prayer-book. Her hair
was hidden in a stiff cap or bonnet; she walked rapidly, with her eyes
on the ground. When I saw this sight it reminded me suddenly, and I
cried out profanely, 'Devil take me! It is Corpus Christi, and my
third day out. It would be a wicked pilgrimage if I did not get Mass
at last.' For my first day (if you remember) I had slept in a wood
beyond Mass-time, and my second (if you remember) I had slept in a
bed. But this third day, a great Feast into the bargain, I was bound
to hear Mass, and this woman hurrying along to the next village proved
that I was not too late.
So I hurried in her wake and came to the village, and went into the
church, which was very full, and came down out of it (the Mass was low
and short - they are a Christian people) through an avenue of small
trees and large branches set up in front of the houses to welcome the
procession that was to be held near noon. At the foot of the street
was an inn where I entered to eat, and finding there another man - I
take him to have been a shopkeeper - I determined to talk politics, and
began as follows:
'Have you any anti-Semitism in your town?'
'It is not my town,' he said, 'but there is anti-Semitism. It
flourishes.'
'Why then?' I asked. 'How many Jews have you in your town?'
He said there were seven.
'But,' said I, 'seven families of Jews - '
'There are not seven families,' he interrupted; 'there are seven Jews
all told.
