And If A Pang
Comes To You At All, It Will Be A Pang Of Healthful Hunger.
All
the puling sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of
duty that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight of
these woods, fall away from you like a garment.
And if perchance
you come forth upon an eminence, where the wind blows upon you
large and fresh, and the pines knock their long stems together,
like an ungainly sort of puppets, and see far away over the plain a
factory chimney defined against the pale horizon - it is for you, as
for the staid and simple peasant when, with his plough, he upturns
old arms and harness from the furrow of the glebe. Ay, sure
enough, there was a battle there in the old times; and, sure
enough, there is a world out yonder where men strive together with
a noise of oaths and weeping and clamorous dispute. So much you
apprehend by an athletic act of the imagination. A faint far-off
rumour as of Merovingian wars; a legend as of some dead religion.
CHAPTER VI - A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE {5} A FRAGMENT 1879
Originally intended to serve as the opening chapter of 'Travels
with a Donkey in the Cevennes.'
Le Monastier is the chief place of a hilly canton in Haute Loire,
the ancient Velay. As the name betokens, the town is of monastic
origin; and it still contains a towered bulk of monastery and a
church of some architectural pretensions, the seat of an arch-
priest and several vicars. It stands on the side of hill above the
river Gazeille, about fifteen miles from Le Puy, up a steep road
where the wolves sometime pursue the diligence in winter. The
road, which is bound for Vivarais, passes through the town from end
to end in a single narrow street; there you may see the fountain
where women fill their pitchers; there also some old houses with
carved doors and pediment and ornamental work in iron. For
Monastier, like Maybole in Ayrshire, was a sort of country capital,
where the local aristocracy had their town mansions for the winter;
and there is a certain baron still alive and, I am told, extremely
penitent, who found means to ruin himself by high living in this
village on the hills. He certainly has claims to be considered the
most remarkable spendthrift on record. How he set about it, in a
place where there are no luxuries for sale, and where the board at
the best inn comes to little more than a shilling a day, is a
problem for the wise. His son, ruined as the family was, went as
far as Paris to sow his wild oats; and so the cases of father and
son mark an epoch in the history of centralisation in France. Not
until the latter had got into the train was the work of Richelieu
complete.
It is a people of lace-makers.
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