Part 3

I was not encouraged to sit up late. As the eldest daughter of the inn showed me my night quarters, she said:

'Your room is not beautiful, but the bed is clean.'

This was quite true. The room, in accordance with a very frequent arrangement in these rural auberges, was not used exclusively for sleeping purposes, but also for the entertainment of guests, especially on fair and market days, when space is precious. There was a table with a bench for the use of drinkers. There were, moreover, three beds, but I was careful to ascertain that none would be occupied except by myself. I would sooner have slept on a bundle of hay in the loft than have had an unknown person snoring in the same room with me. One has always some prejudice to overcome. The bed was not soft, and the hempen sheets were as coarse as canvas, but these trifles did not trouble me. I listened to the song of the crickets on the hearth downstairs until drowsiness beckoned sleep and consciousness of the present lost its way in sylvan labyrinths by the Dordogne.

At six o'clock the next morning I was walking about the village, and I entered the little church, already filled with people. It was Sunday, and this early mass was to be a funeral one. The man for whom the bell was tolled last night was soon brought in, the coffin swathed in a common sheet. It was borne up the nave towards the catafalque, the rough carpentry of which showed how poor the parish was. Following closely was an old and bent woman with her head wrapped in a black shawl. She had hardly gone a few steps, when her grief burst out into the most dismal wailing I had ever heard, and throughout the service her melancholy cries made other women cover their faces, and tears start from the eyes of hard-featured, weather-beaten men.

Most of the women present wore the very ugly headgear which is the most common of all in Auvergne and the Corrèze, namely, a white cap covered by a straw bonnet something of the coal-scuttle pattern. There were many communicants at this six o'clock mass, and what struck me as being the reverse of what one might suppose the right order of things, was that the women advanced in life wore white veils as they knelt at the altar rails, while those worn by the young, whose troubles were still to come, were black. These veils were carried in the hand during the earlier part of the rite. Throughout a very wide region of Southern France the custom prevails. The church belonged to different ages. Upon the exterior of the Romanesque apse were uncouth carvings in relief of strange animal figures. They were more like lions than any other beasts, but their outlines were such as children might have drawn.

I returned to the inn. The baker had come back, and was preparing to heat his oven with dry broom. I learned that he had not only to bake the bread that he sold, but also the coarser rye loaves which were brought in by those who had their own flour, but no oven. Three francs was the charge for my dinner, bed, and breakfast. The score settled and civilities exchanged, I walked out of Messeix, expecting to strike the valley of the Dordogne not very far to the south. The landscape was again that of the moorland. On each side of the long, dusty line called a road spread the brown turf, spangled with the pea-flowers of the broom or stained purple with heather. There were no trees, but two wooden crosses standing against the gray sky looked as high as lofty pines. I met little bands of peasants hurrying to church, and I reached the village of Savennes just before the grand messe. Many people were sitting or standing outside the church--even sitting on the cemetery wall. When the bell stopped and they entered, literally like a flock of sheep into a fold, all could not find room inside, so the late-comers sat upon the ground in the doorway, or as near as they could get to it. As the people inside knelt or stood, so did they who had been left, not out in the cold, but in the heat, for the sun had broken through the mist, and the weather was sultry. As I walked round the church I found women sitting with open books and rosaries in their hands near the apse, amidst the yarrow and mulleins of forgotten grave mounds. They were following the service by the open window. I lingered about the cemetery reading the quaint inscriptions and noting the poor emblems upon wooden crosses not yet decayed, picking here and there a wild flower, and watching the butterflies and bees until the old priest, who was singing the mass in a voice broken by time, having called upon his people to 'lift up their hearts,' they answered: 'Habemus ad Dominum.'

I had a simple lunch at a small inn in this village, where I was watched with much curiosity by an old man in a blouse with a stiff shirt-collar rising to his ears, and a nightcap with tassel upon his head. The widow who kept the inn had a son who offered to walk with me as far as some chapel in the gorge of the Chavannon. We were not long in reaching the gorge, the view of which from the edge of the plateau was superbly savage. Descending a very rugged path through the forest that covered the sides of the deep fissure, save where the stark rock refused to be clothed, we came to a small chapel, centuries old, under a natural wall of gneiss, but deep in the shade of overhanging boughs. It was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and on St. John's Day mass was said in it, and the spot was the scene of a pilgrimage. Outside was a half-decayed moss-green wooden platform on which the priest stood while he preached to the assembled pilgrims. The young man left me, and I went on alone into the more sombre depths of the gorge, where I reached the single line of railway that runs here through some of the wildest scenery in France. I kept on the edge of it, where walking, although very rough, was easier than on the steep side of the split that had here taken place in the earth's crust. Upon the narrow stony strip of comparatively level ground the sun's rays fell with concentrated ardour, and along it was a brilliant bloom of late summer flowers--of camomile, St. John's wort, purple loosestrife, hemp-agrimony and lamium. At almost every step there was a rustle of a lizard or a snake. The melancholy cry of the hawk was the only sound of bird-life. Near rocks of dazzling mica-schist was a miserable hut with a patch of buckwheat reaching to the stream. A man standing amidst the white flowers of the late-sown crop said, in answer to my questioning, that I could not possibly reach the village of Port-Dieu without walking upon the line and through the tunnels.

When I had left him about fifty yards behind, his curiosity proved more than he could bear in silence; so he called out to me, in the bad French that is spoken hereabouts by those who use it only as the language of strangers: 'Quel métier que vous faites?'

I waved my hand in reply and left him to his conjectures.

On I went, now over the glittering stones, now wading through the pink flowers of saponaria, then in a mimic forest of tall angelica by the water's edge, until I realized that the peasant's information was sound--that it was impossible to walk through this gorge except upon the railway.

Presently the rocks rose in front of me and the line disappeared into the darkness of a tunnel. I did not like the idea of entering this black hole, for I had brought no candle with me, but the prospect of climbing the rocks was still more forbidding. It proved to be a short and straight tunnel with daylight shining at the farther end. After this came another short one, but the third was much longer and had a curve; consequently I was soon in total darkness. The only danger to be feared was a passing train, so I felt with my stick for the wires between the rock and the metals, and crept along by them. From being broiled by the sun ten minutes before I was now shivering from the cold. I longed to see again the flowers basking under the warm sky, and to hear the grasshoppers' happy song. By-and-by I saw the blessed light flashing at the end of the black bore. When I came out again into the sunshine, I was following, not the Chavannon, but the Dordogne.

The gorge widened into a valley, where there were scattered cottages, cows, sheep, and goats. Here I found a fair road on the western side of the river, in the department of the Corrèze, and being now free of mind, I loitered on the way, picking strawberries and watching the lizards. It was dark when, descending again to the level of the Dordogne, I sought a lodging in the little village of Port-Dieu. I stopped at a cottage inn, where an old man soon set to work at the wood-fire and cooked me a dinner of eggs and bacon and fried potatoes. He was a rough cook, but one very anxious to please. The room where I passed the night had a long table in it, and benches. There was no blanket on the bed, only a sheet and a heavy patchwork quilt. Ah, yes, there was something else, carefully laid upon the quilt. This was a linen bag without an opening, which, when spread out, tapered towards the ends. Had I not known something about the old-fashioned nightcap, I should have puzzled a long time before discovering what I was expected to do with this object. The matter is simple to those who know that the cap is formed by turning one of the ends in. There were mosquitoes in the room, but they sang me to sleep, and if they amused themselves at my expense afterwards, I was quite unconscious of it.

The murmur of the rushing Dordogne mingled not unpleasantly with the impressions of dreams as I awoke. I got up and opened the small worm-eaten window-frame. High thatched roofs, not many yards in front, were covered with moss, which the morning rays, striking obliquely, painted the heavenly green of Beatrice's mantle. Down the narrow road goats were passing, followed by a sunburnt girl with a barge-like wooden shoe at the end of each of her bare brown legs. The pure, life-giving air that entered by the window made the blood glow with a better warmth than that of sparkling wine. I soon went outside to see something of the place which I had entered in the darkness.

I found that the village was built partly in the bottom of the gorge and partly on one of its craggy sides. Closely hemmed in by rocks and high hills overgrown with forest was a bright and fertile little valley, with abundance of pear and walnut trees, luxuriant cottage-gardens, and little fields by the flashing torrent, where shocks of lately-cut buckwheat stood with their heads together waiting for the warm September hours to ripen their black grain.

Many of the houses were half hidden in leafy bowers. I threaded my way between these towards some ivy-draped fragments of an ancient priory upon a mass of rock much overgrown with brambles glistening with blackberries and briars decked with coral-red hips. Before descending to the road and beginning the day's journey I indulged for a little while the musing mood of the solitary wanderer in the grassy burying-ground on the edge of the cliff.

I started for Bort ere the intensely blue sky began to pale before the increasing brilliancy of the sun. The road ran along the bottom of the deep valley, where there was change of scene with every curve of the Dordogne. A field of maize showed how different was the climate here from that of the bleak plateau above the deep rift in the rocks. I stopped beside a little runnel that came down from the wooded heights to pick some flowers of yellow balsam, and while there my eye fell upon a splendid green lizard basking in the sun. Here was another proof of the warm temperature of the valley, notwithstanding its altitude. As I went on I skirted long fields of buckwheat upon the slope, but reaching only a little way upwards. The white waxen flowers had turned, or were turning, rusty; but what a variety of beautiful colour was on the stems and leaves! Greens and yellows passed into carmine, purple, and burnt sienna. A field of ripening buckwheat has a charm of warm colour that gladdens the eye, especially when the morning or evening sunshine is upon it. But this glow of many tints was a sure sign of approaching autumn; so, too, were the reddened stalks of persicaria, filling the dry ditches by the wayside.

The valley narrowed, and upon its rocky sides was many a patch of purple heather--little gardens for the wild bees, but not for man. Neither peasant nor local Nimrod ever sets his foot there. Still higher, the outlines of the topmost crags were drawn hard against the sky, for there was no vapour in the air. Verily, the ground seemed quite alive with brown lizards darting along at my approach and raising little clouds of dust, whilst blue-winged grasshoppers--which, perhaps, would be more correctly described as locusts--crossed and recrossed the road in one flight. In the midst of such beautiful scenery, and with such happy creatures for companions, I felt no wish to hurry. Moreover, the blackberries sometimes tempted me to loiter. If they are unwholesome, as French peasants often maintain, I ought to have been dead long ago. Strange that this prejudice should be so general in France with regard to the fruit of so harmless a tribe. But these same peasants gather the leaves of the bramble to make a decoction for sore throat. I passed a cottage that had a vine-trellis, the first I had seen on this side of the Auvergne mountains, and it was half surrounded by a forest of beans in full flower on very high sticks. In a sunny space was a row of thatched beehives.

After walking some eight miles, I was not unwilling to take advantage of a village inn. Here I had a meal of bacon and eggs, haricots, cheese and walnuts, with some rather rough Limousin wine. I soon became aware that there was something amiss in the rustic auberge, and catching a dim glimpse of a figure lying in a bed in a small room adjoining, I asked the young woman who waited upon me if anybody was ill there. 'Yes,' she replied dolefully. Then I learnt from her that her father, struck with apoplexy, was lying in a state that was hopeless. There is no escaping the mournfulness of life. When our minds are least clouded the shadow of death suddenly stands between us and the sunshine. I was in no mood to linger at the table.

What a relief to be out again in the sunshine and the light air, to see the Dordogne flashing through meadows where women were haymaking with bare feet!

It was early in the afternoon when I entered the small but active town of Bort. The burg is only interesting by its exceedingly picturesque situation on the right bank of the Dordogne, under a very high hill, capped by a basaltic table, which is flanked towards the town, or rather a little to the south of it, by a long row of stupendous columns of basalt, known as the Orgues de Bort, from their resemblance at a distance to organ-pipes. The basalt here is of a reddish yellow. The table, with its igneous crystallizations, lies upon the metamorphic rock.

I decided to climb to the summit of the prodigious organ-pipes, and to look at the world from that remarkable point of view. For the greater part of the distance the way lay up a tiresome winding road on the side of the hill. A woman, who was tying buckwheat into sheaves, said the distance was 'three small quarters of an hour.' It would have been simpler arithmetic to have said 'half an hour,' but the peasant thinks it safer not to be more explicit than he or she can help. Experience has taught me that 'three-quarters of an hour,' whether they are called little or not, mean an hour or more, and that 'five quarters of an hour' mean an hour and a half, or even two hours. I passed a team of bullocks descending from the moor with loads of dry broom for the bakers, headed by a little old man in a great felt hat, with a long goad in his hand, with which he tickled up the yoked beasts occasionally, not because they needed it, but from force of habit. This goad, by-the-bye, is a slender stick about six feet long, with a short nail at one end, so fastened that the point is turned outwards. A bullock is not goaded from behind, but from the front between the shoulder-blades, and it generally suffices for the animal to see a man in front of him with a stick. Instead of drawing back, as might be supposed, he steps forward at his best pace. Cows and bulls are harnessed, to the wain and plough as well as oxen; they have all to work for their living. English cattle are allowed to grow fat in idleness, and their troubles do not begin until the time comes for them to be eaten. It is otherwise in France.

On the banks were fragrant, mauve-coloured pinks, with ragged petals; but at the foot of the Orgues was a rocky waste, where little grew besides the sombre holly and fetid hellebore.

The view from the top of the cliff made me fully realize the wildness, the sterility, the desolation of nature in this region. Beyond the valley far beneath me where the Dordogne lay, a glittering thread, was the department of the Cantal. The whole southern and eastern prospect was broken up by innumerable savage, heath-covered or rocky hills, with little green valleys or dense woods filling the hollows, the southern horizon being closed by the wavy blue line of the Cantal mountains. To the north-east the sky-line was marked by the Mont-Dore range, with the highest peak of Auvergne, the Puy de Sancy, clearly visible against the lighter blue of the cloudless air. The feeling that prevailed throughout this wide expanse of country was solemn sternness.

I returned to Bort, and as there were still about two hours of light left, I crossed the river and went in search of the cascades, two or three miles from the town, formed by the Rue in its wild impatience to meet the Dordogne. When I was skirting the buckwheat fields of the valley in the calm open country, there was a sweet and tender glow of evening sunshine upon the purple-tinted sheaves standing with their heads together. The Titan-strewn rocks felt it likewise with all their heather and broom. There was no husbandman in the plain, no song of the solitary goat-girl, no creak of the plough, no twitter even of a bird. It was not yet the hour when Virgil says every field is silent, but the repose of nature had commenced.

The dusk was falling when I reached a silk-mill by the side of the Rue, and passed up the deep gorge full of shadows, led by the sound of roaring waters. A narrow path winding under high rocks of porphyritic gneiss brought me to the cascade called the Saut de la Saule, where the river, divided into two branches by a vast block, leaps fifteen or twenty feet into a deep basin to whirl and boil with fury, then dashes onward down the stony channel, to leap again into the air and fall into another basin.

I reached a rock in the channel by means of a tree that had been laid between it and the bank, and stood in the midst of the seething, broken torrent, from which arose that saddening odour which water in wild commotion gives forth when daylight is dying and the darkened trees stand like mourning plumes. On either hand the forest-covered sides of the ravine and their savage crags seemed to reach higher as they grew darker. Where was I? There was a tree hard by that looked very like the infernal elm beneath whose leaves the vain dreams cluster; but it was probably an oak.

ACROSS THE MOORS OF THE CORRÈZE.

The night being passed at Bort, the next morning I continued my journey by the Dordogne. Again the sky was cloudless. I kept on the right bank of the river--the Limousin side, leaving the Cantal to some future day, that may never come. A little beyond the spot where the Dordogne and the Rue met and embraced uproariously, the path entered a narrow lane bordered by tall hedges chiefly of hazel and briar overclimbed by wild clematis--well termed the traveller's joy, for it is a beautiful plant that reminds many a wanderer of his far-away home.