In The Heart Of The Vosges And Other Sketches Part 10

Our host, dressed in black cloth trousers, black alpaca blouse, and spotless, faultlessly-ironed linen, received us with great cordiality and the ease of a well-bred man. His mother lived with him, a charming old lady, like himself peasant-born, but having excellent manners. She wore the traditional black hood of aged and widowed Huguenot women, and her daughter-in-law and little granddaughter, neat stuff gowns and coloured cashmere kerchiefs tied under the chin.

We were first ushered into the vast kitchen or "living room," as it would be called in some parts of England, to-day with every other part of the house in apple-pie order. Large oak presses, rows of earthen and copper cooking-vessels, an enormous flour-bin, with plain deal table and chairs, made up the furniture, from one part of the ceiling hanging large quant.i.ties of ears of Indian corn to dry. Here bread is baked once a week, and all the cooking and meals take place.

Leading out of the kitchen was the salon or drawing-room, the first I had ever seen in a peasant farmer's house. A handsome tapestry table-cover, chimney ornaments, mirror, sofa, armchairs, rugs, betokened not only solid means but taste. We were next shown the grandmother's bedchamber, which was handsomely furnished with every modern requirement, white toilet-covers and bed-quilt, window-curtains, rug, wash-stand; any lady unsatisfied here would be hard indeed to please.

The room of master and mistress was on the same plan, only much larger, and one most-unlooked-for item caught my eye. This was a towel-horse (perhaps the comfortably-appointed parsonage had set the fashion?), a luxury never seen in France except in brand-new hotels. As a rule the towel is hung in a cupboard. We were then shown several other bedrooms, all equally suggestive of comfort and good taste; yet the owner was a peasant, prided himself on being so, and had no intention of bringing up his children to any other condition. His farm consisted of a few hectares only, but was very productive. We saw his cows, of which he is very fond, the gentle creatures making signs of joy at their master's approach. Four or five cows, as many horses for breeding purposes, a few sheep, pigs, and poultry made up his stock. All that I saw of this family gave me a very high notion of intelligence, morality, thrift and benevolence.

Very feelingly all spoke of their animals and of the duty of human beings towards the animal world generally. It was the first time I had heard such a tone taken by French peasants, but I was here, be it remembered, among Protestants. The horrible excuse made in Italy and Brittany for cruelty to beasts, "Ce ne sont pas des chretiens," finds no acceptance among these mountaineers.

Our second visit brought us into contact with the bourgeois element. The farmhouse, of much better appearance than the rest, also stood in the village. The holding was about the size of that just described. The young mistress was dressed in conventional style, had pa.s.sed an examination at a girls' Lycee, ent.i.tling her to the _brevet superieur_ or higher certificate, her husband wore the dress of a country gentleman, and we were ushered into a drawing-room furnished with piano, pictures, a j.a.panese cabinet, carpets, and curtains.

The bedrooms might have been fitted up by an upholsterer of Tottenham Court Road. It must be borne in mind that I am not describing the wealthy farmers of the Seine and Marne or La Venidee.

The fact that these young people let a part of their large, well-furnished house need not surprise us. There is no poverty here, but no riches. I do not suppose that any one of the small landowners to whom I was introduced could retire to-morrow and live on his savings. I dare aver that one and all are in receipt of a small income from invested capital, and have a provision against sickness and old age.

The master of the house showed me his stock, five or six handsome cows of cross breed, in value from 10 to 16, the latter the maximum price here. We next saw several beautiful mares and young colts, and four horned sheep. Sheepkeeping and farming are seldom carried on together, and this young farmer was striking out a new path for himself. He told me that he intended to rear and fatten sheep, also to use artificial manure. Up to the present time, guanos and phosphates are all but unknown in these regions, only farmhouse dung is used, cows being partly kept for that purpose. Although the land is very productive, my informant a.s.sured me that much remained to be done by departure from routine and the adoption of advanced methods. The cross-breeding of stock was another subject he had taken up. Such initiators are needed in districts remote from agricultural schools, model farms, and State-paid chairs of agriculture.

Each of the four instances just given differed from the other. The first showed us peasant property in its simplest development, a little family contentedly living on their bit of land, making its produce suffice for daily needs, independent of marts and markets as the members of a primitive community.

The second stage showed us a wholly dissimilar condition, yet not without its ideal side. We were brought face to face with that transitional phase of society and pacific revolution, of happiest augury for the future. From the peasant ranks are now recruited contingents that will make civil wars impossible, men who carry into politics learning and the arts, those solid qualities that have made rural France the admiration of the world, and more than once saved her Republic.

The first instance exemplified the intense conservatism of the French peasant. Liberal in politics, enlightened in religion, open to the reception of new ideas, here was nevertheless a man absolutely satisfied with social conditions as they affected himself and his children, utterly devoid of envy or worldly ambition. To reap the benefits of his toil, deserve the esteem of his neighbours, bequeath his little estate, improved and enriched, to his heirs, surely this was no contemptible ideal either.

The last case differed from the other three. We were now reminded of the English tenant, or even gentleman-farmer--with a difference. Alike master and mistress had received a good education and seen something of the world; they could enjoy music and books. But in spite of her _brevet superieur_, the wife attended to her dairy; and although the husband was a gentleman in manners and appearance, he looked after the stock.

They lived, too, on friendliest terms with their less-instructed and homelier neighbours, the black alpaca blouse and coloured kerchief, doing duty for bonnet, being conspicuous at their Sunday receptions. Not even a Zola can charge French village-life with the sn.o.bbishness so conspicuous in England. It will be amply shown from the foregoing examples that peasant property is no fixed condition to be arbitrarily dealt with after the manner of certain economists. On the contrary, it is many-phased; the fullest and widest development of modern France is indeed modern France itself. The peasant owner of the soil has attained the highest position in his own country. No other cla.s.s can boast of such social, moral and material ascendency. He is the acknowledged arbitrator of the fortunes of France.

I will now cite two facts ill.u.s.trating the bright side of peasant property in its humblest phase, where we have been told to expect sordidness, even brutality. The land hereabouts, as I have before stated, is excessively divided, the holdings being from two and a half acres in extent and upwards. It often happens that the younger children of these small owners give up their share of the little family estate without claiming a centime of compensation, and seek their fortunes in the towns. They betake themselves to handicrafts and trade, in their turn purchasing land with the savings from daily wages.

Again, it is supposed that the life of the peasant owner is one of uniform, unbroken drudgery, his daily existence hardly more elevated than that of the ox harnessed to his plough. Who ever heard of an English labourer taking a fourteen days' rest at the seaside? When did a rheumatic ploughman have recourse to Bath or Buxton? They order these things better in France.

Between Osse and Oloron stands Escot, long famous for its warm springs.

The princ.i.p.al patrons of this modest watering-place are the peasants. It is their Carlsbad, their Homburg, many taking a season as regularly as the late King Edward. The thing is done with thoroughness, but at a minimum of cost. They pay half a franc daily for a room, and another half-franc for the waters, cooking their meals in the general kitchen of the establishment. Where the French peasant believes, his faith is phenomenal. Some of these valetudinarians drink as many as forty-six gla.s.ses of mineral water a day! What must be their capacities in robust health? The bourgeois or civilian element is not absent. Hither from Pau and Oloron come clerks and small functionaries with their families.

Newspapers are read and discussed in company. We may be sure that the rustic spa is a little centre of sociability and enlightenment.

Let me now say something about the crops of this sweet Pyrenean valley. The chief of these are corn, maize, rye, potatoes, and clover; the soil being too dry and poor for turnips and beetroot. Flax is grown in small quant.i.ties, and here and there we seen vines, but the wine is thin and sour.

From time immemorial, artificial irrigation has been carried on in the Vallee d'Aspe, and most beautiful is the appearance of the brilliantly green pastures, intersected by miniature ca.n.a.ls in every direction; the sweet pastoral landscape framed by mountain peaks of loveliest colour and majestic shape. These well-watered gra.s.slands produce two or even three crops a year; the second, or _regain_ as it is called, was being got in early in September, and harvest having taken place early, clover was already springing up on the cleared cornfields. Everywhere men and women were afield making hay or scattering manure on the meadows, the latter sometimes being done with the hands.

All these small farmers keep donkeys and mules, and on market-days the roads are alive with cavalcades; the men wearing gay waist-sashes, flat cloth caps, or berets, the women coloured kerchiefs. The type is uniform--medium stature, spareness, dark eyes and hair, and olive complexion predominating. Within the last thirty years the general health and physique have immensely improved, owing to better food and wholesomer dwellings. Goitre and other maladies arising from insufficient diet have disappeared. Epidemics, I was a.s.sured, seldom work havoc in this valley; and though much remains to be done in the way of drainage and sanitation, the villages have a clean, cheerful look.

The last ailment that would occur to us proves most fatal to those hardy country folks. They are very neglectful of their health, and as the changes of temperature are rapid and sudden, the chief mortality arises from inflammation of the lungs. It is difficult indeed to defend oneself against so variable a climate. On my arrival the heat was tropical. Twelve hours later I should have rejoiced in a fire.

Dangerous, too, is the delicious hour after sunset, when mist rises from the valley, whilst yet the purple and golden glow on the peaks above tempts us to linger abroad.

The scenery is grandiose and most beautiful. Above the white-walled, grey-roofed villages and townlings scattered about the open, rise sharp-pointed green hills or monticules, one gently overtopping the other; surmounting these, lofty barren peaks, recalling the volcanic chains of Auvergne, the highest snow-capped point twice the alt.i.tude of the Puy de Dome, two-thirds that of Mont Blanc.

Whichever way we go we find delightful scenery. Hidden behind the folded hills, approached by lovely little glades and winding bridle-path, tosses and foams the Gave d'Aspe, its banks thickly set with willow and salicornia, its solitary coves inviting the bather. The witchery of these mountain streams grows upon us in the Pyrenees. We hunger for the music of their cascades when far away. The sun-lit, snow-lit peaks, towering into the brilliant blue heavens, are not deserted as they appear. Shepherd farmers throughout the summer dwell in huts here, and welcome visitors with great affability.

Let me narrate a fact interesting alike to the naturalist and meteorologist. On the 7th September, 1891, the heat on one of these summits, nine thousand feet above the sea-level, was so intense that a little flock of sheep were seen literally hugging the snow, laying their faces against the cool ma.s.ses, huddled about them, as shivering mortals round a fire in winter. And, a little way off, the eye-witnesses of this strange scene gathered deep blue irises in full bloom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ORc.u.m]

On the lower slopes the farmers leave their horses to graze, giving them a look from time to time. One beautiful young horse lost its life just before my arrival, unwarily approaching a precipitous incline. As a rule accidents are very rare.

The izard or Pyrenean chamois, although hunted as game, is not yet a survival here, nor the eagle and bear, the latter only making its appearance in winter-time.

Tent-life in these mountain-sides is quite safe and practicable. Who can say? A generation hence and these magnificent Alps may be tunnelled by railways, crowned by monster hotels, peopled from July to October with tourists in search of disappointments.

At present the Vallee d'Aspe is the peacefullest in the world. Alike on week-days and Sundays the current of life flows smoothly. Every morning from the open windows of the parsonage may be heard the sweet, simple hymns of the Lutheran Church, master and mistress, servants and children, uniting in daily thanksgiving and prayer.

And a wholesome corrective is the Sunday service after the sights of Lourdes.

The little congregation was striking. Within the altar railings stood two _anciens_, or elders, of the church, middle-aged men, tall, stalwart, the one fair as a Saxon, the other dark as a Spaniard. Both wore the dress of the well-to-do peasant, short black alpaca blouses, black cloth trousers, and spotless collars and cuffs, and both worthily represented those indomitable ancestors who neither wavered nor lost heart under direst persecution.

By the time the pastor ascended the reading-desk, the cheerful, well-kept little church was full, the men in black blouses, the women wearing neat stuff or print gowns, with silk handkerchiefs tied under the chin, widows and the aged, the sombre black-hooded garment, enveloping head and figure, of Huguenot matrons of old--supposed to have suggested the conventual garb.

Among the rest were two or three Catholics, peasants of the neighbourhood, come to look on and listen. The simple, intelligible service, the quiet fervour of the a.s.sembly, might well impress a sceptical beholder. Even more impressive is the inscription over the door. A tablet records how the first Protestant church was pulled down by order of the king after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and rebuilt on the declaration of religious liberty by the National a.s.sembly. Gazing on that inscription and the little crowd of worshippers, a sentence of Tacitus came into my mind. Recording how not only the biographers of good men were banished or put to death, but their works publicly burnt by order of Domitian, the historian, whose sentences are volumes condensed, adds: "They fancied, forsooth"--he is speaking of the tyrant and his satellites--"that all records of these actions being destroyed, mankind could never approve of them." An illusion shared by enemies of intellectual liberty, from the Caesars to their latest imitator, unhappily not wholly dispelled in our own day.

Whether the homeward journey is made through the Landes by way of Bayonne and Bordeaux, or through the Eastern Pyrenees by way of Perpignan, we are brought face to face with scenes of strangest transformation. In the former region the agency has been artificial, the shifting sands being fixed and solidified by plantations on a gigantic scale, and large tracts rendered fertile by artificial irrigation; in the latter, Nature has prepared the field, the more laborious portion of the husbandman's task is already done.

"The districts of sand, as white as snow and so loose as to blow," seen by Arthur Young towards the close of the last century, can hardly be said to exist in our own day. Even within twenty-five years the changes are so great as to render entire regions hardly recognizable. The stilts, or _chanques_, of which our word "shanks" is supposed to be the origin, become rarer and rarer. The creation of forests and sinking of wells, drainage, artificial manures and ca.n.a.ls are rapidly fertilizing a once arid region; with the aspect of the country a proportionate change taking place in the material condition of the people.

No less startling is the transformation of lagoon into salt marsh, and marsh into cultivable soil, witnessed between the Spanish frontier, Perpignan and Nimes.

Quitting Cerbere, the little town at which travellers from Barcelona re-enter French territory, we follow the coast, traversing a region long lost to fame and the world, but boasting of a brilliant history before the real history of France began.

We are here in presence of geological changes affected neither by shock nor convulsion, nor yet by infinitesimally slow degrees. A few centuries have sufficed to alter the entire contour of the coast and reverse the once brilliant destinies of maritime cities. With the recorded experience of mediaeval writers at hand, we can localize lagoons and inland seas where to-day we find belts of luxuriant cultivation. In a lifetime falling short of the Psalmist's threescore years and ten observations may be made that necessitate the reconstruction of local maps.

The charming little watering-place of Banyulssur-Mer, reached soon after pa.s.sing the Spanish frontier, is the only place on this coast, except Cette, without a history. The town is built in the form of an amphitheatre, its lovely little bay surrounded by rich southern vegetation. The oleanders and magnolias in full bloom, gardens and vineyards, are no less strikingly contrasted with the barrenness and monotony that follows, than Banyuls itself, spick and span, brand-new, with the buried cities scattered on the way, ancient as Tyre and Sidon, and once as flourishing. There is much sadness yet poetic charm in the landscape sweeps of silvery-green olive or bluish salicornia against a pale-blue sky, dull-brown fishing villages bordering sleepy lagoons, stretches of white sand, with here and there a glimpse of the purple, rock-hemmed sea. Little of life animates this coast, in many spots the custom-house officer and a fisherman or two being the sole inhabitants, their nearest neighbours removed from them by many miles. Only the flamingo, the heron, and the sea-gull people these solitudes, within the last few years broken by the whistle of the locomotive. We are following the direct line of railway between Barcelona and Paris.

The first of the buried cities is the musically-named Elne, anciently Illiberis, now a poor little town of the department of the Eastern Pyrenees, hardly, indeed, more than a village, but boasting a wondrous pedigree. We see dull-brown walls, ilex groves, and above low-lying walls the gleaming sea. This apparently deserted place occupies the site of city upon city. Seaport, metropolis, emporium had here reached their meridian of splendour before the Greek and the Roman set foot in Gaul.

Already in Pliny's time the glories of the Elne had become tradition. We must go farther back than Phoenician civilization for the beginnings of this town, halting-place of Hannibal and his army on their march towards Rome. The great Constantine endeavoured to resuscitate the fallen city, and for a brief s.p.a.ce Elne became populous and animated. With other once flourishing seaports it has been gradually isolated from the sea, and the same process is still going on.

Just beyond Perpignan a lofty tower, rising amid vineyards and pastures, marks the site of Ruscino, another ancient city and former seaport. The Tour de Roussillon is all that now remains of a place once important enough to give its name to a province. Le Roussillon, from which was formed the department of the Pyrenees Orientales, became French by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. Here also the great Carthaginian halted, and here, we learn, he met with a friendly reception.

Monotonous as are these wide horizons and vast stretches of marsh and lagoon, they appeal to the lover of solitude and of the more pensive aspects of nature. The waving reeds against the pale sky, the sweeps of gla.s.swort and terebinth, show delicate gradations of colour; harmonious, too, the tints of far-off sea and environing hills. Not cities only seem interred here: the railway hurries us through a world in which all is hushed and inanimate, as if, indeed, mankind no less than good fortune had deserted it. The prevailing uniformity is broken by the picturesquely placed little town of Salses and the white cliffs of Leucate. Strabo and Pomponius Mela describe minutely the floating islands or ma.s.ses of marine plants moving freely on the lake of Salses.

Here, as elsewhere, the coastline is undergoing slow but steady modification, yet we are in presence of phenomena that engaged the attention of writers two thousand years ago.

From this point till we approach Cette the region defies definition. It is impossible to determine nicely where the land ends and the sea begins. The railway follows a succession of inland salt lakes and lagoons, with isolated fishermen's cabins, reminding us of lake-dwellings. In some places the hut is approached by a narrow strip of solid ground, on either side surrounded by water, just admitting the pa.s.sage of a single pedestrian. The scene is unspeakably desolate. Only sea-birds keep the fisher-folk company; only the railway recalls the busy world far away.

Of magnificent aspect is Narbonne, the Celtic Venice, as it rises above the level landscape. The great seaport described by Greek historians six centuries before our own era, the splendid capital of Narbonese Gaul, rival of the Roman Nimes and of the Greek Arles, is now as dull a provincial town as any throughout France. Invasions, sieges, plagues, incendiaries, most of all religious persecutions, ruined the mediaeval Narbonne. The Jewish element prevailed in its most prosperous phase, and M. Renan in his history of Averroes shows how much of this prosperity and intellectual pre-eminence was due to the Jews. The cruel edicts of Philip Augustus against the race proved no less disastrous here than the expulsion of Huguenots elsewhere later. The decadence of Narbonne as a port is due to natural causes. Formerly surrounded by lagoons affording free communication with the sea, the Languedocian Venice has gradually lost her advantageous position. The transitional stage induced such unhealthy climatic conditions that at one period there seemed a likelihood of the city being abandoned altogether. In proportion as the marsh solidified the general health improved. Day by day the slow but sure process continues, and when the remaining salt lakes shall have become dry land, this region, now barren and desolate, will blossom like the rose. The hygienic and atmospheric effects of the _Eucalyptus globulus_ in Algeria are hardly more striking than the amelioration wrought here in a natural way. The Algerian traveller of twenty-five years ago now finds n.o.ble forests of blue gum tree, where, on his first visit, his heart was wrung by the spectacle of a fever-stricken population. On the coast of Languedoc the change has been slower. It has taken not only a generation but a century to transform pestilential tracts into zones of healthfulness and fertility.

An interesting fact, ill.u.s.trating the effect of physical agencies upon human affairs, must be here mentioned. Till within the last few years this town counted a considerable Protestant community. The ravages of the phylloxera in the neighbouring vineyards caused a wholesale exodus of vine-growers belonging to the Reformed Church, and in 1886 the number had dwindled to such an extent that the services of a pastor were no longer required. The minister in charge was transferred elsewhere.

The dull little town of Agde is another ancient site. Its name is alike a poem and a history. The secure harbourage afforded by this sheltered bay won for the place the name of Good Fortune, [Greek: agathae tuchae], whence Agathe, Agde. A Greek settlement, its fine old church was in part constructed of the materials of a temple to Diana of Ephesus. Agde possesses interest of another kind. It is built of lava, the solitary peak rising behind it, called Le Pic de St. Loup, being the southern extremity of that chain of extinct volcanoes beginning with Mont Mezenc in the Cantal. A pathetic souvenir is attached to this lonely crater. At a time when geological ardour was rare, a Bishop of Agde, St. Simon by name, devoted years of patient investigation to the volcanic rocks in his diocese. The result of his studies were recorded in letters to a learned friend, but the Revolution stopped the poor bishop's discoveries. He perished by the guillotine during the Terror. The celebrated founder of socialism in France was his nephew.

XI