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.
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