In That Undecipherable Labyrinth Of Hills, A War Of Bandits, A
War Of Wild Beasts, Raged For Two Years Between The Grand Monarch With
All His Troops And Marshals 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 I stood; they
Had
an organisation, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy; their
affairs were 'the discourse of every coffee-house' in London; England
sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied and murdered; with
colours and drums, and the singing of old French psalms, their bands
sometimes affronted daylight, marched before walled cities, and dispersed
the generals of the king; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade,
possessed 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 Roland, 'Count and Lord Roland, generalissimo of
the Protestants in France,' grave, silent, imperious, pock-marked
ex-dragoon, 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 unguarded camp, as the
Spirit whispered to their hearts! And there, to follow these and other
leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and disciples, bold, patient,
indefatigable, hardy to run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life
with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the
oracles of brain-sick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat
among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets.
I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of
nothing more notable than the child-eating beast of Gevaudan, the
Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of
a romantic chapter - or, better, a romantic footnote 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
parlour. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively
and generous tradition. Again, if in the northern Cevennes the people
are narrow 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 legalised 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 break-neck slope, turning
like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley between falling hills,
stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored farther down
with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation; the
steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of the
descent, and the old unwearied 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 fountains, and soon making
a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes 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 undulations. I passed
cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted; and I saw not a human
creature, nor heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, 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 autumn with strong and luminous
colours. 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 a while 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 perpetual reminder; and I heard
in spirit the church-bells clamouring all over Europe, and the psalms of
a thousand churches.
At length a human sound struck upon my ear - a cry strangely 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.
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