Just At The Bridge Of
Langogne, As The Long-Promised Rain Was Beginning To Fall, A Lassie Of
Some Seven
Or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 'D'ou'st-ce-
que vous venez?' She did it with so high
An air that she set me
laughing; and this cut her to the quick. She was evidently one who
reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I
crossed the bridge and entered the county of Gevaudan.
UPPER GEVAUDAN
The way also here was very wearisome through dirt and slabbiness; nor
was there on all this ground so much as one inn or victualling-house
wherein to refresh the feebler sort.
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
A CAMP IN THE DARK
The next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock in the
afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired,
for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more
ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard
l'Eveque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was
told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce
too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey might cover
the same distance in four hours.
All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed
alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly;
plentiful hurrying clouds - some dragging veils of straight rain-shower,
others massed and luminous as though promising snow - careered out of the
north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated
basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen, and such-like
sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines,
woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few
naked cottages and bleak fields, - these were the characters of the
country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and
stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three
or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on
hillsides or at the borders of a wood.
There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make a
passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth of
tracks. It must have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and went
on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours afterwards,
the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir-wood
where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village,
but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble hills. For some time
past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead; and now, as I came
out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows and perhaps
as many more black figures, which I conjectured to be children, although
the mist had almost unrecognisably exaggerated their forms. These were
all silently following each other round and round in a circle, now taking
hands, now breaking up with chains and reverences. A dance of children
appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the
marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, who am
well enough read in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an
instant on my mind. The next, I was pricking Modestine forward, and
guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she went
doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the
turf or among heather, and the brute became demented. The tendency of
lost travellers to go round in a circle was developed in her to the
degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep even
a decently straight course through a single field.
While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle
began to disperse, until only a pair of girls remained behind. From
these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were but
little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into
his house, and barricaded the door on my approach; and I might beat and
shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me a
direction which, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood, complacently
watched me going wrong without adding a sign. He did not care a stalk of
parsley if I wandered all night upon the hills! As for these two girls,
they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief.
One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows; and they
both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of Gevaudan ate
about a hundred children of this district; I began to think of him with
sympathy.
Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into another wood
and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and darker. Modestine,
suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own
accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first
sign of intelligence I had occasion to remark in her. At the same time,
the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain
came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sighted
some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of Fouzilhic; three
houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. Here I found a delightful
old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on
the road for Cheylard. He would hear of no reward; but shook his hands
above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly,
in unmitigated patois.
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