The Blue Darkness Lay Long In The Glade Where I 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-trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass,
remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered 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 rich, and
strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. While I was
thus delaying, a gush of steady 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 inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I
commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one'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 lodging. I trust they did not fall to some
rich and churlish drover.
THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS
We travelled in the print of olden wars;
Yet all the land was green;
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.
They pass and smile, the children of the sword -
No more the sword they wield;
And O, how deep the corn
Along the battlefield!
W. P. BANNATYNE.
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 set 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 neighbouring waterfall, and sometimes a subjective result
of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I continued to advance, the
noise increased, 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 understood. It was blowing stiffly from the
south upon the other slope of the Lozere, and every step that I took I
was drawing nearer to the wind.
Although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly 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, he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own
name, of a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross
turf rampart I 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 Pic de Finiels, white ships sailing
by Montpellier and Cette. Behind 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, illustrious for stirring events. Speaking largely, I was in
the Cevennes 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 are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of the
Cevennes.
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