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A BOOK OF
THE CEVENNES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

• MEHALAH
• THE TRAGEDY OF THE CÆSARS
• THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE
• STRANGE SURVIVALS
• SONGS OF THE WEST
• A GARLAND OF COUNTRY SONG
• OLD COUNTRY LIFE
• AN OLD ENGLISH HOME
• YORKSHIRE ODDITIES
• HISTORIC ODDITIES
• OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES
• THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW
• FREAKS OF FANATICISM
• A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

• A BOOK OF BRITTANY
• A BOOK OF DARTMOOR
• A BOOK OF THE WEST
• I. DEVON
• II. CORNWALL
• A BOOK OF NORTH WALES
• A BOOK OF SOUTH WALES
• A BOOK OF THE RHINE
• A BOOK OF THE RIVIERA
• A BOOK OF THE PYRENEES

THE TAMARGUE FROM LA SOUCHE

A BOOK OF
THE CEVENNES

BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.

"ILLE TERRARUM MIHI PRÆTER OMNES
ANGULUS RIDET, UBI NON HYMETTO
MELLA DECEDUNT, VIRIDIQUE CERTAT
BACCA VENAFRO;
VER UBI LONGUM, TEPIDASQUE PRÆBET
JUPITER BRUMAS."
Hor. Od. ii. 6.

WITH FORTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
EIGHT OF WHICH ARE IN COLOUR, AND A MAP

London
John Long
Norris Street, Haymarket
[All rights reserved]

First Published in 1907

Illustrations reproduced by the Hentschel-Colourtype Process

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

IN COLOURS

IN MONOTONE

IN THE TEXT

PREFACE

THE Cévennes are a mountain fringe to the uplifted plateau of Central France, and are less visited by English tourists than any other mountainous district in la belle France. They have been most unjustly neglected. The scenery is singularly varied. The historical associations are rich, but mainly tragic.

This is not a guide-book, but an introduction to the country, to be supplemented by guide-books. The area is so extensive, that I have had to exercise restraint and limit myself to a few of the most salient features and most profitable centres whence excursions may be made. The Cévennes should be visited from March to June, afterwards the heat is too great for travelling to be comfortable. For inns, consult the annual volume of the French Touring Club; Baedeker and Joanne cannot always be relied on, as proprietors change, either for the better or for the worse. I have been landed in unsatisfactory quarters by relying on one or other of these guide-books, owing to the above-mentioned reason.

The "Touring-Club de France," Avenue de la Grande Armée 65, Paris, is doing excellent work in refusing to recommend a hotel unless the sanitary arrangements be up-to-date.

THE CEVENNES

CHAPTER I

THE CRESCENT

The great central plateau—The true Cévennes—The character of the range—The watershed—The Garrigues—The Boutières—Mézenc—The Coiron—The mountains of the Vivarais—The Ardèche—Volcanoes—The Camisard country—Larzac—The Hérault—The Espinouse—The Montagne Noire—Neglect of the Cévennes—Their great interest.

THE great central plateau of France that serves as the watershed between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and severs France proper—the old medieval France—from Languedoc, is due to a mighty upheaval of granite, carrying with it aloft on its back beds of schist, Jura limestone, chalk, coal, and red sandstone. The granite has not everywhere reached the surface, it has not in all parts shaken off the burden that lay on it. The superincumbent beds do not lie in position one above another, like ranges of books on shelves. Many of them over a large tract have been carried away by denudation through the action of water.

The plateau under consideration stretches over an area of 3,000 square miles. It dies down towards the north-west, but reaches its highest elevation in the east and in the south. This great upland district had to be crossed before the peoples dwelling north and south of it could be fused into one. The plateau extends through the old provinces of Marche and Limousin, Auvergne, Forez, the Velay, the Vivarais, Rouergue, and the Gévaudan. But it was disturbed, broken up, and overlaid by volcanic eruptions at a comparatively recent date, pouring forth floods of lava and clouds of ash in Auvergne, le Velay, and le Vivarais. In its upheaval, moreover, the granite turned up, snapped, and exposed the superposed beds, and left them as bristling ridges to the east and south. It is this fringe that constitutes the Cévennes. These describe a half-moon, with its convexity towards the basin of the Rhône. Locally, indeed, the name Cévennes is limited to a tangle of schist ridges and deep-cleft ravines, constituting that portion of the arc which is between the Coiron and the limestone plateau of Larzac. But such is not the original limitation. The Romans undoubtedly, looking from the basin of the Rhône on the long purple chain, behind which set the sun in a glow of amber, as they passed up and down between Arles and Vienne—designated that range Cebennæ, and geographers still are disposed to so name the entire series, as constituting an orological entity, although the several portions have received distinguishing appellations.

They all belong to the same system, were all in their main lines thrown up at the same time, though not by any means all of the same geological formation; and they are all peopled by the same race, all speaking the Langue d'Oc.

The Cyclopses, Mourèze

It seems therefore reasonable to take the entire curve as forming the Cévennes from the depression of the Jarrêt, through which runs the line from Lyons to the coalfields of S. Etienne, as the northern limit, and the Montagne Noire, east of the gap of Revel, by which the road by which Castelnaudary and Castres are linked, as the western termination.

"The Cévennes," says Onésime Reclus, "have this striking feature, that they separate two climates, two vegetations, two natures. To the north and to the west are rain, snow, light fog silvered by the moon, and dense vapours which the sun cannot pierce; and the streams that water the smallest valleys nourish rich green meadows; to the south and east is a blazing sun, are glare, heat, drought, barrenness, dust, the vine, the olive, springs of water few and far between, but where they do issue, copious and clear; here—contrasts of colour, sharp-cut horizons, more beautiful than those of the north. What a contrast within a few leagues' distance between the verdure of Mezamet and the vari-coloured marbles of Cannes, between the Agout and the Salvetat d'Angles ... between the valley of the Dourbie at Nant and the Hérault at Ganges, between the Tarn at Pont-de-Montvert and the embattled gorges of the Gardons, between the Allier at La Bastide and the ravines down which rushes the Cèze, between the young Loire and the terrible rapids of the Ardèche ... on one side a French Siberia, on the other an Africa where the sirocco does not parch up the harvests, but where the mistral shrieks, itself producing a brief winter." [1]

The chain of the Cévennes, of which Mézenc may be regarded as the hinge, forms a ridge on the right bank of the Rhône, running for a while parallel to the French Alps upon the left bank. But whereas these latter turn and curve to the east, forming the Maritime Alps, the Cévennes have bent in exactly the opposite direction.

Geographically and historically the Cévennes divide into two great sections—the Cévennes Méridionales and the Cévennes Septentrionales. This continuous mountain ridge, in fact, forms a line of separation of waters very distinct, without solution of continuity, and which, in spite of the variety of its geological structure, has been determined by the same fold in the earth's crust, by one and the same act of pressure.

From the main chain, like the rib of a fern, extend lateral offshoots, between which are valleys watered by the drainage of the principal spinal chain. On the east side of the Cévennes these are all approximately at right angles to the axis. But this is not the case on the west side; nor is it so on the south. On this latter, before the main range a sort of outwork has been thrown up that deflects the streams, where they have not cut through it. These bastions are the Garrigues and the Espinouse.

The eastern face of the Cévennes towards the Rhône is torn and steep. That towards the west exhibits a different aspect altogether, as there the range starts out of a high uplifted plain but little eroded.

The Garrigues above mentioned form a barren, waterless bastion, with little growing on them but the dwarf Kirmes oak (Quercus coccifera) evergreen, with spiky leaves, locally called garrus, giving the name to the range. They are full of pot-holes (avens), down which the rain that falls sinks to travel underground and reappear often at great distances in copious springs.

Sketch Map of the Cevennes

The northernmost portion of the Cévennes is the chain of the Boutières, composed of granite and gneiss, and they are the least interesting portion of the series. Few of the summits surpass 3,600 feet, but they throw out a spur that is a supreme effort, the Mont Pilat, 4,700 feet; precisely as the Pyrenees, before expiring in the east, have projected to the north-east, and tossed aloft the noble pyramid of the Canigou. The Boutières attach themselves at their southern extremity to Mézenc, the loftiest peak of the Cévennes, 5,750 feet. So also does the chain of the Mégal, separated from the Boutières by the valley of the Lignon. Seen from Le Puy, this ridge is fine, broken into peaks. The Mégal itself attains to the height of 4,345 feet. This cone formerly belched forth a torrent of lava reaching to a thickness of 450 feet, and extending to a distance of fifty miles by eight miles wide.

From the volcanic nucleus of Mézenc branches south-east the chain of the Coiron, volcanic as well, stretching to the Rhône, where its last deposits of lava are crowned by the ruins of Rochemaure. The geologist Cordier, who had travelled in Auvergne, Italy, Syria, and Egypt, declared that he had never seen a volcanic region comparable to the Coiron. This chain is of special interest to the geologist, and is full of surprises to the ordinary traveller, for the lava bed caps the mountains, composed of friable limestone, that once formed a great calcareous plain. The Rhône has lowered its bed a thousand feet since the liquid stone flowed, and torrents have cut through lava and limestone, fashioning deep and even broad valleys. Next, the weather ate into the flanks where the stone was soft, undermined the basalt, that came down for lack of support in huge masses.

Not only so, but man from the remotest period has burrowed into the rock to form habitations for himself. Near S. Jean-le-Centenier are the Balmes de Montbrul, a volcanic crater 300 feet in diameter and 480 feet deep. Men have scooped out rudimentary dwelling places in the sides in fifteen to twenty stages, one above another; a chapel and a prison were among these excavations. A troglodyte family lived in one of these caves at the end of the eighteenth century.

The mountains of the Vivarais are the finest portion of the Cévennes, so noble are their outlines, so deep are the clefts that seam them, so tumbled is the aspect of range heaped on range; and they are supremely interesting on account of the volcanic vents that remain in good preservation, and the wondrous walls of prismatic basalt that line the rivers.

The Ardèche is certainly the most extraordinary river in Europe; after leaping, and burrowing, and sawing its way through basalt, it passes down a cleft of lias disposed in beds completely horizontal, and rising like the walls of houses. In fact, it traverses a long white street, many miles in length, and then enters the great ravine between lofty precipices of Dolomitic limestone, where runs no road, and where one must descend in a boat, shooting rapid after rapid in the midst of scenery only rivalled by the noted gorges of the Tarn.

It is not necessary to do more than indicate the general aspect of this portion of the Cévennes, to give an outline that may be filled in with details later on.

But before quitting this department, I must quote some words of Mr. Hammerton, no mean judge of landscape:—

"The department of Ardèche on the right bank of the Rhône is but little visited by tourists, and does not contain a single mountain whose name is known in England. It is natural that the hills of the Ardèche should be little known, as the fame of them is extinguished by the Alps; yet they are highly picturesque and full of geological interest. As to the altitudes, they are not considered high mountains in France, but there are twelve of them that exceed Ben Nevis."

The volcanic region of Mézenc and the Coiron to the east of the granitic plateau separates the southern from the northern Cévennes. The first volcanic cones are met with immediately north of Mont Tanargue (4,785 feet). The southernmost is the Coupe de Jaujac. There are six of these volcanoes lying at the foot of the granite plateau, but they are insignificant in comparison with those of the principal range, which forms the watershed between the Loire and the Rhône, in the centre of which range is the three-toothed Mézenc, surrounded by subsidiary cones, among which is the Gerbier de Jonc (5,090 feet), which was 5,610 feet high before a landslip occurred in 1821, that reduced its height. On the flank of this mountain rises the Loire.

The department of Gard takes it name from several Gardons, a name as common in this part of the Cévennes as Gave is in the Pyrenees.

We are now in the midst of the Camisard country, an inextricable network of mountains of lacerated schist and of deeply furrowed valleys, in which the revolted Cevenols held at bay the armies of Louis XIV. At the present day the department of Gard contains more Protestants than any other in France, and whole villages are entirely Calvinist, with scarce a Catholic in them.

The Cévennes are drifting westward. In Hérault they take a definitely western direction. Here comes in the limestone plateau of Larzac, that feeds the countless flocks from which are derived Roquefort cheese. This is a barren land. It was not always so, but man has devastated it with the axe, and the sheep devour every plant that shoots, and kill the future of Larzac. Little soil now remains on this elevated white tableland; what there is is swept away by the rains and carried underground in the avens or pot-holes. M. Martel says:—

"Nowadays that atmospheric condensation is weak, the rains so soon as they touch the calcareous rock are engulfed in its thousands of fissures, at once, as if evaporated by contact with red-hot iron. The porosity of the soil is guilty of this legerdemain. Save on the morrow of great storms, drunk up thirstily by the parched causse in a few hours, there is not a drop of water on the plateau. In the stony bed of the torrents one may make almost a complete circuit of such a peninsula as that circumscribed by the Vis on the east, and the Virenque on the north, west, and south, where run their trenches, cut to the depth of 600 to 900 feet, forming tortuous chaplets of rubble beds, grey and sunburnt. Torrent beds these, sufficiently large to accommodate the Dordogne with ease, but now only rivers of ballast, where the flood of a passing storm rarely troubles the sleep of the sand and the solitary pebbles."

The river Hérault, that gives its name to the department, flows through a ravine, up which runs no road, save to S. Guilhem-le-Désert. Another river not easy to be explored is its tributary, the Vis. One can look down into the cañon from above, but not thread it.

We come next to the coalfields that are more or less energetically exploited. Some talk has been about running a special line from them to Marseilles, so as to furnish the vessels with home-produced steam-coal. But the fuel here turned out has not the heating power of the anthracite of Cardiff, and it has proved cheaper to obtain a supply by water from Wales than to employ that which is dug out of the flanks of the Cévennes 150 miles distant.

The Espinouse gives birth on one slope to affluents of the Tarn, that discharges its waters into the Garonne and finally into the Atlantic. On the southern face, which is not a slope but a precipice, through chasms it sends feeders to the Orb that throws its waters into the Mediterranean. The Espinouse is composed of gneiss and schist, penetrated by veins of eruptive matter. Although the actual heights are not great, rarely exceeding 3,300 feet, yet the sheer cliffs, and the manner in which they have been cleft by torrents, gives them a grandeur which makes this portion of the Cévennes well deserving of a visit.

The Monts de Lacaune, almost wholly sterile, link the Cévennes of Hérault to those of Aveyron. The highest crest is the Pic de Montalet, 3,810 feet. They are composed of mica-schists, granite, and porphyry, and stretch in barren plateaux, or monotonous rolling ground, frozen for a great part of the year. The Montagne Noire, on the other hand, is well wooded. From its wretched hamlets come the men who help to gather in the vintage in the more fertile plains.

"These mountaineers arrive," says Mme. L. Figuier, "to earn in one month enough to support them and their families all the rest of the year in their contracted valleys, rich in vegetation but very poor in products. The Languedoc peasants treat them harshly. The unfortunate mountaineers, who ought to inspire compassion, are often enough badly treated, and serve as butts for chaff to the grape gatherers of the country to which they have come as assistants. The farmer who has hired a band of these montagnards gives them a granary and some hay in and on which to rest after the fatigues of the day. Here they are huddled together, men, women, and children, living on the grapes and on a coarse soup which they cook in common in the evening, and eat together out of one porringer. But these veritable pariahs are linked together by strong ties of affection. They rise, walk, work, eat, sleep together always in herds. In the evening, on returning from the vineyards, they dance their national bourées, not so much for enjoyment, as to bring back to their minds their native country, and sometimes great tears may be seen rolling down the cheeks of the young girls, who think of the happy times when they danced so merrily on the earthen floors of their cottages. The most fertile plains, the most brilliant cities, cannot compensate, to these poor people, for the century-old nut trees and the chestnuts which nourish them in their miserable hovels. Their hearts crave for the freshness of their valleys, the fragrance of their meadows, their snowy mountains, and the distaff over the fire of the winter's evenings." [2]

I have not in this book included the Montagne Noire. I have not described the range beyond the Espinouse westward, nor the mountains about Annonais and Mont Pilat, as these portions of the Cévennes are less interesting than that which intervenes, and, also, lest I should unduly extend the book.

It is strange that the region of the Cévennes should have been neglected by tourists to such an extent as it has; but it is explicable.

Those who seek sunshine during the winter in the Riviera leave the Cévennes far away as a bank of cloud silver-fringed on their right hand beyond the Rhône. On their way back to England in spring they are disinclined to loiter, and break their home journey for the sake of excursions into this region, so little explored. In like manner, those who go to Pau are carried by the railway far away to the west, and see nothing of the plateau, because it slants downwards from the lofty ridge to the east.

Those who travel from Toulouse to Montpellier by the railway have their eyes attracted south to the snows and glaciers of the Pyrenees, and do not turn their heads to look north at the range that is so unassertive, sheltering itself behind the desolate Garrigues.

In 1894 I published a book, The Deserts of Central France, in which I described the great tableland high uplifted that lies in the penumbra of the great crescent, and I shall say nothing in this of the plateaux of Lot, Tarn, and Lozère, dealt with in the former work, but confine myself to the marginal range. Since M. Martel first drew attention to the gorges of the Tarn, and possibly due in a measure to my work, these gorges are becoming annually frequented more and more by tourists. However fine they may be, there are others in the departments of Ardèche, Gard, and Hérault, that fall but little, if at all, short of them in savagery and strangeness.

There are no great towns in the Cévennes. Such as there are are sleepy and stationary; but from Béziers, Montpellier, Nîmes, Le Puy, where every comfort may be found, it is easy to run into the mountains, and return from them to recruit. Hotels are vastly improved of late years owing to the insistence of the Touring Club on the sanitary arrangements being at least decent, which they were not ten years ago.

Enough has been said to show that the Cévennes abound in scenes of great beauty, and that they are of special interest to geologists. They are interesting in another way. The limestone hills are overgrown with aromatic herbs, mint, marjoram, thyme, sage, lavender, rosemary, so as to be veritable spice mountains over which the warm air wafts fragrance. The shrubs and trees present to our eyes, familiar with northern vegetation, an unfamiliar appearance. They are for the most part evergreens, where the chestnuts do not spread in forests, or the mulberry is not cultivated for silkworm culture.

For the geology of the volcanic district of Haute Loire and Ardèche, an excellent guide is Mr. Paulett Scrope's Geology and Extinct Volcanoes in Central France, London, second edition, 1858.

Lovers of the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson know his Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes—a delightful book, but dealing very little with the Cévennes proper, mainly with the Upper Gévaudan, and with that portion of Lozère threaded by the Tarn, and with neither of these do I deal in this volume.

Le Suc de Sara

FOOTNOTES:

[1] France: Algérie et Colonies, Paris, Hachette et C^ie.

[2] Figuier (L). Mos de Lavène, Paris, Marpon.

CHAPTER II

LE VELAY

Haute Loire—Geological structure of the plateau—Trap dykes—Volcanoes—Crater of Bar—The Lac de Bouchet—Legends—Offerings made to lakes—Mézenc—Direction of the rivers—Peculiarities in their course—How the basalt was broken through—The River Loire—The Borne—The Ceysac—Process of valley formation—The climate—Lacemaking—La Béate—The peasantry—Costume—History of Le Velay—The Polignacs—The Mint—The Revolution.

THE department of Haute Loire is made up mainly, but not wholly, of the ancient province of Le Velay. It is situated at the limit of the Langue d'Oc, on the confines of the region of the Langue d'Oïl. Le Velay forms a rude triangle of which the bounds are the mountains of the Vivarais on the east, those of the Velay on the west, and the broad basis of the triangle is to the north towards Auvergne and Forez, fringed there by lower heights. It consists of an uplifted plateau with an average elevation above the sea of 2,700 feet, and is the least rainy portion of France. The summers there are never oppressively hot; but, on the other hand, in winter it is a Southern Siberia. Originally composed of granite, it has been pierced by volcanic cones, and covered with igneous dejections. As many as a hundred craters have been counted in it, and through the rents in the granite and schist opened during the throes of eruption, dykes of trap have been thrust, forming spires and truncated columns. The heat of the molten matter so altered and disintegrated the rocks through which it was driven, that in many places these rocks have crumbled away, and have left the dykes erect in black nakedness high above the surrounding level. Such is the Aiguilhe by Le Puy, 210 feet high, to reach the summit of which a flight of steps has been hewn in the side, and on the top, in 962, Truan, Dean of Le Puy, erected a church in honour of S. Michael, and called it Seguret, The Secure Refuge; the church was consecrated in 980. Another of these obelisks is at Fay le Froid, another basaltic monolith is La Roche Rouge on the banks of the Gagne.

But sometimes the eruptive dykes are more massive, and form stone tables with precipitous sides, as at Polignac, the cradle of an illustrious family, and at Arlempdes on the Loire.

There are few crags of basalt or tufa in the Velay that are not crowned by a ruined castle, and to enumerate these would be a tedious and unprofitable task.

The last of all the volcanoes to explode was the Denise, near Le Puy, and that erupted when man was on the earth, for under the lava, in a bed of breccia or volcanic ash, was found in 1884 the skeleton of a man; another was discovered shortly after, and a third is reported to have been recently disinterred. In the case of the first of these, the man seems to have been overtaken by the shower of falling ash, to have sat down, placed his head between his knees, and held his hands over his skull to protect it, and so perished, and the rain of cinders finally enveloped and buried him. No weapons or ornaments have been found with these bodies. The relics of plants and animals in the same bed belong to species still existing in the neighbourhood.

Of the craters the most perfect is that of Bar, thus described by Georges Sand:—

"This ancient volcano rises isolated above a vast plateau that is as bare as it is sad. It stands there as if planted as a boundary mark between the old Velay and Auvergne. From the summit of its truncated cone a superb view is obtained extending to the Cévennes. A vast forest of beech crowns the mountain and clothes its sides, which are much rifted towards the base. The crater is a mighty bowl full of verdure, perfectly circular, and with the bottom covered with a turfy sward in which grow pale birch trees thinly scattered. Here was at one time a lake, dried up in the times of Roman occupation. The tradition of the country is strange. It was said that this tarn bred storms; and the inhabitants of Forez accordingly came hither, sword in hand, and forcibly drained it." [3]

The Lac de Bouchet is not a sheet of water filling an ancient crater, but occupies a hollow produced by the bursting of a great bubble of air in the molten lava. It is almost circular, and the ground around it is very slightly raised. Curiously enough, Roman substructures have been traced in the lake. Probably some Gallo-Roman noble had his summer villa there, overhanging the water, as at Baiæ.

"Nullus in orbe sinus Baiis prælucet amœnis,

Si dixit dives—lacus et mare sentit amorem

Festinantis heri."

This originated a tale told by the peasantry to the effect that a city lay submerged under the crystal water. The story is this: Our Lord visited Le Velay to see what way the Gospel was making there. He lodged with an aged widow, who nourished herself on the milk of a single goat. The people received Christ badly, and pelted Him with stones. Then He laid hold of the widow by the hand and drew her away; and she, leading the goat, followed. They had not proceeded far before she turned and looked back. And lo! where the town had been was now a lake. Three stones mark the spot where the widow took up her final residence, and on one of these she is said to have sat to milk her goat. The same story is told of another of these lakes, that of Arconne, near Fay le Froid, and there also are found three blocks ranged in a line.

That these lakes were held sacred admits of no dispute.

Gregory of Tours, in the sixth century, says that in the land of the Gabali (the adjoining Gévaudan) was a Mount Helanus, where was a lake. Every year the inhabitants of the country flocked thither and cast oblations into the water—linen, weaving-materials, cheese, wax, bread, and coins. They arrived in wagons, bringing their food with them, and feasted by the lakeside during three days. On the last day a storm of thunder, lightning, and hail was wont to break over the sheet of water. This usage lasted till a bishop of Clermont went thither, and preached to the people; but as he found it impossible to dissuade the natives from the practice, he built there a chapel to S. Hilary, and exhorted them to leave their gifts there instead of throwing them into the tarn. This lake is now called Lac S. Andéol, on the mountains of Aubrac, and the ruined chapel of S. Hilary remains. The people still reverence the pool, which they call the Father of Hail Storms, and till last century continued to cast offerings into the water. The visible result of the efforts of the good bishop so many centuries ago was no more than the construction of a chapel now in ruins.

It is probable enough that were the Lac de Bouchet drained, it would yield a rich spoil of coins. The lake is 2,800 feet across and 98 feet deep. In the morass occupying the bowl of Bar have been found a great many early coins, a necklace, and bracelets of bronze.

The loftiest of the Cévennes is Mézenc, on the frontier of Haute Loire. It is 5,750 feet high, and was at one time the central point of violent Plutonic eruptions. Several craters poured forth trachyte, phonolith, and basalt, which overflowed the granite, gneiss, clay deposits, and limestone to a great distance.

One of the craters, La Croix-des-Boutières, remains very distinct.

"The phonolith of which Mézenc is composed," says Elisée Reclus, "appears to have issued from the crater in a state of high fluidity, and to have spread very rapidly over the slopes of the crystalline plateau. The result is that the volcanic cones have, relatively to the anterior formations that support them, but a feeble elevation. The lavas which issued from the crater of Mézenc, of very unequal texture, have been attacked by storms, so as to represent a range of distinct cones on which grow forests of oak and pine."

If the map be studied, it will be seen that there are two features in the water system of this region that merit notice.

In the first place, we have the Allier on the west, and the Loire in the midst of this tableland flowing due north to shed their waters ultimately into the Atlantic. Parallel with them, divided from the Loire only by the chain just described, distant from it from forty to fifty miles, is the Rhône, running in a precisely opposite direction, due south, to discharge into the Mediterranean.

Then, again, going west, we have the Lot, the Tarn, the Jonte, the Truyère, and the Dordogne, all in their early youth streaming from east to west, their sources, or those of some of them, twenty miles from the Allier, which is racing as hard as it can run to the north. The explanation of this last feature is easy. When the granite was upheaved it lifted a crust of Dolomite on its back like a huge shell, and in lifting split the shell in many places.

The rivers, rising in the granite of the Margeride, the Mont d'Aubrac, the Aigoual, the Monts de Lozère, and slipping off their impervious sides looking for outlets, found these fissures, took possession of them, and rushed down them on their way to the plains in the west.

The average depth of these chasms is from 1,300 to 1,500 feet, and their width at the bottom varies from 160 to 1,500 feet. Their rocky walls are carved by rain and frost into the most fantastic forms. At one time I held, with M. Martel, that these cañons were originally subterranean watercourses, and that the caverns formed by the underground waters became open valleys by the falling in of their roofs. But this idea is untenable, as I now see. The rivers descending from the granitic range must have found a passage, and they found it in the already cleft masses of the Causses. They rise outside the limestone area, and cut right through it, separating one Causse from another. [4]

A second feature in the river system of Haute Loire is that a certain number of the affluents of the Loire run into it from the direction in which it is flowing, and their mouths are more or less against the stream they are about to feed. A river usually affects the form of a deciduous tree, of which the branches represent the tributaries. The branches are attached to the trunk at an obtuse angle, as seen from below. With pines it is different; with them the limbs are attached in the reverse fashion, at an acute angle as seen from below. Some of the affluents of the Loire come into it in the way in which a fir branch grows out of the main trunk. This is notably the case with the Arzon and the Borne. The reason for this is that the basin of Le Velay has a rim to the north, and the drainage from the north naturally runs down to the lowest point in the basin. But on reaching this spot the streams come on the Loire, which has cut for itself a huge gap through the northern lip of the bowl, and is able to discharge its waters through that.

How this was done demands some explanation. The Rhône is the mightiest of the rivers of France, but its sources are in the Swiss Alps, and it does not enter France till after it has passed through the Lake of Geneva. But the Loire is next in size and importance, and it flows through French soil only. The source is under the Gerbier de Jonc, in the department of Ardèche, but flows in it for a short course only. It is still a feeble stream when it enters the department of Haute Loire, through which it makes its way till it leaves it for Forez. The Loire rises 4,500 feet above the sea, and when it quits the department it has fallen to 1,450 feet. When the volcanoes of Le Velay were in eruption and the tableland was overflowed with molten lava, the Loire must have been arrested and have mounted to heaven in a column of steam. In time the lava cooled, and the stream groped for beds of scoria and fallen dust through which it could nibble its way with ease. But when it encountered a barrier of basalt the case was altered. This blocked its course as with rows of iron piles rammed into the ground and running far back. But the crystallisation of the lava into basaltic prisms helped the river to break through.

The molten matter, of the consistency of treacle, flowing over the country followed its undulations, filling hollows here and rounding obstructions there. When it cooled it began to crystallise, and form hexagonal columns that are upright. But when the surface of the original soil would not allow of regular crystallisation, there the columns shaped themselves in all directions and in great confusion; the result being that in many places the basalt was fractured, fissured, and ruinous from the very first. The water speedily detected these weak points, worked at them, tumbled the columns down, overleaped them, bored further, and did not rest till it had cut its way completely through the barrier.

Hercules in his cradle strangled a couple of serpents, and the infant Loire, a ridiculously small stream for the work it effected, on entering the department laid hold of and split the bed of Plutonic deposit, and held on its way between basaltic escarpments. It is, however, below Le Puy, after the Sumène has entered it, under the mighty rocks of Peyredeyre that begin its finest achievements. The eruptions that took place in this part were later than those which had obstructed it in its infancy. They entirely blocked the exit, and the Loire was dammed back in the basin of Le Puy, where it spread into an extensive lake. In time, however, it succeeded in sawing a way through. The railway from Le Puy to St. Etienne runs through the furrow that it formed. The barrier had been thrown up from both sides by the meeting and overlapping of lava floods from the volcanoes of Velay in the west, and those of the Vivarais in the east, and the beds were piled one upon another. It is marvellous to see the passage which the river forced for itself through these superincumbent beds, from Peyredeyre to La Voute. The rock at this latter place sustains a restored castle belonging to the Duke of Polignac.

Castle of La Voute-sur-Loire

Cascade des Estreys

Below this point the gorge ceases for a while, till another barricade was reached below Vorey, where the Arzon enters the Loire.

There the river struggles between the Miaune and the Gerbizon, in the defiles of Chambon and Chamalières. The beds of phonolith of these mountains, which formerly corresponded unbrokenly, are now separated by a gash 1,500 feet deep, which the waters of the Loire have achieved, cutting through the lava to the granite beneath.

The Borne, on which is Le Puy, also traverses gorges, notably that of Estreys, and passes the well-preserved castle of the Leaguer Baron de S. Vidal. Then it sweeps under the pillared rocks of Espaly and slides beneath l'Aiguilhe. Perhaps as interesting an example as any of the way in which an insignificant stream has overmastered all difficulties may be seen in the Valley of Ceyssac. The rill flows into the Borne at an acute angle against the current. The valley was choked with a mass of tufa ejected from La Denise, and the current was arrested in its downward course. The stream then formed a lake that rose till it overflowed the dam in two places, leaving between them a prong of somewhat harder rock. When the water had poured for a considerable time over the left-hand lip, and it had worn this down to the depth of about seventy feet, it all at once abandoned this mode of outlet and concentrated its efforts on the right-hand portion of the barrier, where it found that the tufa was less compact, and it sawed this down till it reached its present level, leaving the prong of rock in the middle rising precipitously out of the valley with the water flowing below it, but attached to the mountain-side by the neck it had abandoned. The Polignacs seized on the fang of tufa and built a castle on the top, only to be reached by steps cut in the face of the rock; and the villagers covered the neck with their houses. They then proceeded to scoop out a great vault in the body of the living rock, blocked the entrance with a wall in which is inserted a pretty Romanesque doorway, and so provided themselves with a parish church at very little expense. On a saddle overhead they constructed a belfry for three bells.

In no part of Europe can be studied with greater facility the process of valley formation, for here that process is comparatively recent. That which has been accomplished elsewhere in hundreds of thousands of years, has here been achieved in thousands only. The great elevation of the valley, and the fact that it lies open to the north cause it to be a cold country. The high tableland is swept by the winds, of which the most dreaded is that of the south, le vent blanc, bringing with it tempest that devastates the harvest.

"In these quasi-Alpine regions," says M. Malegue, "snow, scourged by the blasts, flies in clouds, heaps itself up in drifts, encumbers the roads that have to be marked out with poles to guide the traveller, buries the cottages of the poor mountaineers, holding them prisoners for months at a time in their dwellings, and by its long stay, as by the intensity of the cold, makes administrative and commercial relations often impossible and sometimes perilous."

To this fact is due the creation of the great industry of the land—lacemaking.

A LACEMAKER, LE PUY

In feudal times Le Velay was a small province inaccessible for half the year, obliged accordingly to depend on itself for its existence. Auvergne, Forez, the Vivarais circumscribed it; these were rich provinces. Moreover, the Velaviens had to pay tax and tithe and toll to the barons, the clergy, the king. Such burdens might be borne elsewhere with a grumble, but here they ate into the sinews of life, unless the culture of the soil were supplemented from some other source. And it was precisely this that created the industry of Le Velay—lacemaking.

So soon as the first snows appeared, the men abandoned their farms and cottages, and went, some to Le Puy, where they occupied an entire quarter, and gained their livelihood as tapsters, farriers, weavers, carpenters, pin-makers, etc., or else departed for Lyons, Nîmes, Montpellier, and Toulouse, to work as masons. All the women of the country pressed into Le Puy. There they formed congregations under the name and patronage of some saint. Each of these congregations had its hall, and in this gathered the wives and daughters of the absent men, and spent their days and evenings in making pillow-lace, in singing, telling tales, and in gossip. There they remained working at their little squares with flying bobbins, till the spring sun brought back fathers and husbands and brothers, when the women put aside their bobbins and returned to their several farms.

Lacemaking was a flourishing business till the year 1547, when a sumptuary law was promulgated by the Parliament of Toulouse and sanctioned by the King, forbidding the wearing of lace by any save nobles, for the odd reason that there was no means of obtaining domestic servants in Le Velay, as every girl was a lacemaker.

Great consternation was caused by this edict. That same year a late frost smote the vines, corn was dear, and a pestilence broke out. In the midst of this discontent, Huguenot preachers appeared in the land, and they did their utmost to direct the disaffection of the people against the Church. Happily, S. Francis Regis arrived in Le Velay on a preaching mission, and speedily saw that the limitations imposed on the production of lace was the real grievance angering the people and inducing them to hit out blindly at all authority. He hurried to Toulouse and obtained the withdrawal of the law. He did more: his brethren of the Jesuit Order, incited by him, spread abroad the passion for lace in the New World, became in fact commis voyageurs for the industry, and thus opened out fresh fields for the produce. It is due to this that the memory of S. Francis Regis is still fragrant in the land, and that his figure so often adorns the pillows on which the lace is made, and that his tomb at Lalouvesc, where he died on December 31st, 1640, receives such streams of pilgrims.

La Béate

The paralysis of the industry had hit more than the women of Le Velay. It had affected the colporteurs who brought to the market of Le Puy the linen thread out of which the lace was made. It is remarkable that at a time when roads were execrable, and means of communication faulty, the lacemakers were dependent on Holland for the material with which they worked. The linen of the district was too coarse to serve, and all that was used by them was derived from the Low Countries.

Lacemaking continues to be the main industry of the country. In fact, Haute Loire is the most important centre in the world. In the report on the lace at the Exhibition at Chicago, it is stated that the number of women there engaged on this dainty and beautiful art was 92,000, whereas in Belgium but 65,000 are thus employed.

In the most remote hamlets, in the most solitary cottages among the mountains, the societies of lace workers still gather, in summer before their doors, in winter in the cottage of la béate. The house of this woman is surmounted by a little bell-cott. One such is to be found in the smallest cluster of cottages. The house consists uniformly, on the ground floor, of one large room that serves as chapel, refuge, school, and place of assembly. In the upper story lives la Béate. This woman, whose official title is Dame de l'Instruction, fulfils many duties. In a land where the children are occupied in the fields throughout the summer, they can attend school only in winter, precisely when communications are difficult and are often impossible. It is then that they flock to the house of the Béate, who gives them the first elements of instruction. She also teaches the young girls how to use the bobbins. During the summer she has a crêche, and attends to the infants whilst their mothers are in the fields; she nurses the sick, lays out the dead, and exerts her influence, which is second only to that of the curé, to counsel those who are in perplexity, to console the sorrowful, and to reconcile those who have quarrelled. She is the peace-maker in every little agglomeration of cottages. As a return for her services she obtains her lodging gratis, corn and wood sufficient for her needs. Every well-to-do peasant also contributes fifty centimes per month for her maintenance. In her house in the winter evenings the women gather to work together, and each meeting is begun and concluded with prayer. How valuable are the services of these women may be judged by the fact that in Haute Loire there are 265 parishes, but made up of 3,300 widely-scattered hamlets.

The peasant of the uplands of Le Velay and Le Vivarais is of medium height, is strongly built, and of a vigorous constitution. Accustomed from childhood to follow his sheep and oxen in their leisurely movements, he also becomes a being of slow habit of body and even slower of mind. He is shy, timorous, and cautious of compromising himself in any way with his neighbours, above all with the officials.

A writer in 1829 says:—

"His broad-brimmed hat shades a face that when calm seems to be incapable of expression. Chestnut hair flows over his shoulders. His eye is calm and assured. In speech he is curt, to the point; but he is often figurative in his expressions. He makes no distinction in his address to any one to whatever rank he may belong, and however wealthy he may be. Communicative when on terms of familiarity with him, an expression of goodwill steals out on and overspreads his usually rugged and harsh features, like the flowers that open on the face of a rock. But should one inadvertently offend his pride, at once wrath, prompt and fierce, flames forth, an oath breaks from his lips, and in a moment the weapon, hidden but never quitted, is drawn and raised, and often blood flows to efface a quite trivial offence."

Cevenol Peasant

Descriptions of character of a people are never satisfactory. I shall give in a subsequent chapter the story of the Tavern of Peyrabeille, that shows what the character of this people is in a way unmistakable.

Robert Louis Stevenson's account of the people of Le Velay is peculiarly unpleasant. He speaks of their discourtesy, and accentuates their brutality of manner and speech. I venture, with all due deference, to differ from him. The peasant in Languedoc is much towards you as you are to him. If you meet him with courtesy and kindliness it is cordially reciprocated, and my experience is altogether the reverse of his. I do not think that R. L. Stevenson treated the French peasant quite as he expects to be treated. Here is one instance:—

"At the bridge of Langogne a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 'D'où 'st 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."

But I will quote again, and this time from Georges Sand:—

"I find here a race very marked in its characteristics, altogether in harmony with the soil that supports it; meagre, gloomy, rough, and angular in its forms and in its instincts. At the tavern every one has his knife in his belt, and he drives the point into the lower face of the table, between his legs; after that they talk, they drink, they contradict one another, they become excited, and they fight. The houses are of an incredible dirtiness. The ceiling, made up of a number of strips of wood, serves as a receptacle for all their food and for all their rags. Alongside with their faults I cannot but recognise some great qualities. They are honest and proud. There is nothing servile in the manner in which they receive you, with an air of frankness and genuine hospitality. In their innermost soul they partake of the beauties and the asperities of their climate and their soil. The women have all an air of cordiality and daring. I hold them to be good at heart, but violent in character. They do not lack beauty so much as charm. Their heads capped with a little hat of black felt, decked out with jet and feathers, give to them, when young, a certain fascination, and in old age a look of dignified austerity. But it is all too masculine, and the lack of cleanliness makes their toilette disagreeable. It is an exhibition of discoloured rags above legs long and stained with mud, that makes one totally disregard their jewellery of gold and even the rock crystals about their necks."

The elder women alone preserve a distinctive costume, and that is confined to the head-dress. Its main feature consists in a white frilled cap with a highly coloured broad ribbon forming a bow in front; the ends are carried back over the ears, and a little peculiarly shaped black felt hat, fit only for a child, is perched on the front of the head. It is not becoming, therefore the young women will have none of it. But in flying the smoke they fall into the smother, for in place of this they adopt the most tawdry modern hats, a congeries of feathers and cheap sham flowers.

The history of Le Velay is involved in that of the bishops of Le Puy, who were counts under the sovereignty of the King of France. They were either under the domination of the Polignacs, or were fighting with them over the rights to coin money. This right had been conceded to the bishops in 924. But the viscounts of Polignac also had their mint, and neither could debase his coinage lest his rival should obtain a predominant circulation for his currency. In the twelfth century Pons de Polignac fought the bishop on this question. Louis VII. had to intervene. He carried off the viscount and his son Heracleus prisoners to Paris, and the strife was only concluded four years later, in 1173, by a compact, by virtue of which the bishop and the viscount were to share equally the profits of a mint held in common.

The Polignacs were a thorn in the side of the Bishop and Chapter of Le Puy. Sometimes by menace with the sword they determined the elections to the see, and when it suited them they appointed one of the family to the throne. At the close of the eleventh century, one of these Polignac prelates, Stephen Taillefer, surnamed "The Ravager," brought down on his head the anathema of Pope Gregory VII. He had been Bishop of Clermont, but in 1073, when the see of Le Puy was vacant, transferred himself to it as the wealthier of the two. Another Stephen had been elected by the Chapter, and there was fighting in the streets. Taillefer summoned his kinsman of Polignac to his aid, and drove the rival candidate out of the city. But as the canonicity of his election was disputed, he deemed it advisable to visit Rome with a valise stuffed with gold, and establish his claim by the most cogent of all arguments. He persuaded the Pope to consent to his retaining the see, but the case was so gross, and his hands were so steeped in blood, that Gregory imposed the condition that he should not exercise episcopal functions, which were to be delegated to a suffragan, and that he should revisit Rome with another load of gold somewhat later. This was in 1074, but in 1076 the Pope excommunicated him because he had not fulfilled his promise of again visiting Rome. Gregory was in the midst of his strife with the Emperor Henry IV., whom he deposed in that year, and he was sorely in need of money wherewith to support William of Utrecht, whom he had set up in opposition.

It is remarkable how sensitive Rome was to simony when practised anywhere else save in Rome itself.

At a council held at Clermont in 1077, Stephen was deposed by order of Gregory. Nevertheless, he managed to retain the see till 1078.

After a while open oppression of the Church by the Polignacs came to an end; cadets of the family quietly appropriated to themselves the canonries and best benefices; and the last bishop of the name, William de Chalençon, has left a memory that was even savoury.

But if the Polignacs were meddlesome neighbours of the see, they lent lustre to Le Velay. These masters of the rock were brave nobles. They fought in the Crusades; they fought the English. They espoused the faith, the passions, the fervour of their native land. In every generation illustrious marriages added to the splendour of their escutcheon. As the feudal towers of Polignac dominated, and dominate still, the green and flowery land that lies spread below it, so does the name of Polignac dominate the history of Velay. The race was one that abounded in energy, was robust and patriotic.

Velay was ravaged by the Free Companies, and summoned Du Guesclin to its aid against them. Of its troubles in the Wars of Religion I shall have to speak in the next chapter. Le Puy was occupied by the Leaguers, who made themselves masters of nearly every stronghold in Velay, and it was not till some years after Henry IV. had come to the throne that it submitted to his authority.

The Revolution brought the same results in Velay as elsewhere; the cathedral of Le Puy was pillaged, the monasteries destroyed, and a certain amount of blood was shed; sixty priests were hung or shot, and many nobles guillotined. Since then it has enjoyed tranquillity, only recently ruffled by the taking of the Inventories, leading to the breaking open of the church doors.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Jean de la Roche, Paris, Calmann-Lévy.

[4] See "The Cañons of Southern France," by A. T. Jukes-Browne, in Natural Science, vol. vi., 1895.

CHAPTER III

LE PUY

The basin of Le Puy—Situation of the city—Mont Anis and l'Aiguilhe—How to reach Le Puy—The Velauni—Their capital—Transferred—The feverstone—Temple of Adido—Monument of Scutarius—Baptistery—The Black Virgin—The cathedral—Murder of a chorister by Jews—Western entrance and façade—Cloister—Vaulting of nave—Tower—Lay canonry—Paintings—Walls—Old houses—S. Michel de l'Aiguilhe—How did the builders work?—S. Laurent—Du Guesclin—The Bible of Theodulf—Wealth of the see—Bad bishops—Bertrand de Chalençon—William de la Roue—Revolt of the people—Murder of the bailiff—The White Hoods—Antoine de S. Nectaire—His sister—Massacre ordered—The bishop at Fay-le-Froid—Espaly—Vidal Guyard—Capture of castle—Defence of Le Puy—Church militant—The old gunner—Christopher d'Allègre—The Huguenots retire—The Revolution.

ASSUREDLY no city in Europe occupies a site so fantastic as does the capital of the Velay. The high wind-and-snow-swept tableland to south and west falls away and forms a pleasant basin covered with vineyards and sprinkled over with white villas or summer-houses of the citizens, as if there had been a giant's wedding and much rice had been thrown.

The Borne, that has hitherto struggled through ravines and tumbled in cascades, here ceases to be boisterous, and puts on an air of placidity as it glides past the cathedral city.

West Front of Cathedral, Le Puy

In this basin the climate is mild compared with that of the uplands, and the soil is fertile. The train from Arvant curves round the town before it settles into the station, much as a dog turns about before he lies down to snooze.

What at once arrests the eye on approaching Le Puy is that out of the very midst of the basin up start two rocks; the largest is Mont Anis, and about this, up its steep sides, the town scrambles. On a ledge above all the houses is the cathedral, and soaring above that again is the rock of Corneille, crowned by a colossal statue of the Virgin fifty-two feet high, and the largest in the world. It is run out of two hundred Russian cannons taken at Sebastopol, and stands on a pedestal of twenty feet. It is a disfigurement to the town, for it dwarfs the venerable cathedral. The site was formerly occupied by a ruined tower.

The other rock is the Aiguilhe, the Needle, on the summit of which stands the church of S. Michel, reached by 265 steps cut in the face of the rock.

The town is composed of houses grappling to every ledge; the streets are stone stairs, and the place is staged on steps. When to this is added that the cathedral is unique in its way, a marvel of Romanesque architecture, treated in original fashion, then it will be conceived that Le Puy is an attractive place to visit.

But when we come to consider how it may be reached we are beset with difficulties. The direct line from Paris is undoubtedly that leading to Vichy, but the trains from Vichy onward do not correspond, and are moreover omnibus trains that loiter for six hours and a half over seventy-four miles.

Nor can we reach Le Puy by the main line from Paris to Nîmes in a day, for at the junction, S. George's d'Aubrac, the trains do not communicate, and there is no tolerable inn at this junction where one can spend the night.

The third way is by Lyons and S. Etienne, and this is by far the best, for by it the whole journey can be effected in a day; but for that one must travel by express first-class as far as Lyons.

The people anciently occupying Le Velay were the Velauni, and they had their capital at Rheusio, so called from rhew, the Celtic for cold; and that was at S. Paulien. There also was the first seat of a bishop, but S. Evodius (351-374), whose name has been corrupted into Vosy, transferred his throne to Le Puy, then called Anisium. It is supposed that a dolmen stood on the platform now occupied by the cathedral, and that a large slab of trachyte laid down in the porch, its blue colour distinguishing it from the rest, was the capstone. This slab is called the Feverstone, and those with fire in their blood were wont to sleep a night upon it. The earliest mention of a cure performed by this means is in the time of S. Vosy. To the dolmen, if it ever existed, succeeded a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to a local deity, Adido, conjointly with Augustus.

When Scutarius, the second bishop of Le Puy, was buried, a monument was erected over him. To save the trouble of shaping a stone for the purpose, the mason of that day took a slab on which was an inscription, "Adidoni et Augusto Sex. Tolonius musicus D. S. P.," turned this about and carved on the other side a monogram of Christ, and under that "Scutari Papa vive Deo." The form of the letters, the title of Pope applied to the bishop, not yet restricted to the pontiff at Rome, and the expression of hope so like those found in the Catacombs, speak for the antiquity of this inscription. But it was not allowed to remain where placed; when the present cathedral was built, this stone was employed as lintel to one of the north doorways.

The oldest building in Le Puy is the baptistery of S. John, near to the cathedral. It was much altered in the Middle Ages, but is still an interesting relic of the fourth century. From it was removed the white marble sarcophagus of the fifth century, now in the museum of the town, on which are figured the cure of the paralytic, the cursing of the barren fig tree, and other scriptural themes.

This baptistery was in use till 1791, as the exclusive place where children of Le Puy could be christened. In this Le Puy resembled Florence, Pisa, and other North Italian towns, where baptism was a sacrament reserved for administration at the Mother Church.

The fame acquired by Le Puy as the chief seat of the worship of the Virgin dates from an early but unknown period. Charlemagne in 803 founded ten poor canonries la pauperad in connection with the church; but the great prosperity of the church as an attractive point for pilgrims is due to a black image said to have been brought from the East by Louis IX. But as it happens, the Eastern Church does not tolerate carved images, and contents herself with paintings of sacred subjects. Le Puy was, however, an objective of pilgrimage long before that, for in 1062, Bernard, Count of Bigorre, went thither, and in a fit of devotion vowed himself and his county to Our Lady of Le Puy, and undertook to pay to this church annually a considerable sum of money.

High above the altar is now set up what looks like an Aunt Sally at a fair. It has a black head, from which the garments are spread out like the feathers of a shuttlecock. But this is not the original doll, for that was burned at the Revolution. One might have supposed, perhaps expected, that the clergy on returning to the church would have rejoiced to be rid of such an object of degrading superstition. But not so, they had another black virgin made by a joiner, and dressed it in frills and furbelows, and set it up to receive the adoration of the ignorant and the stupid. One thing they did change; the new doll was made a little less grotesque and uncouth than was the first, of which representations remain.

The original image was of cedar wood, swathed about with bands of papyrus glued to it and partly inscribed. Upon this the features of the face, of negro tint, the flesh of hands and feet and the draperies were painted in distemper, in an archaic style. One story relative to it was that it came from Mount Carmel, and had been carved by the prophet Jeremiah in prophetic ecstasy. What seems most probable is that it was an Egyptian idol representing Isis and the infant Horus. S. Louis may have found this on his crusade to Egypt, and have frankly believed that it was a representation of the Virgin and Child, and so have presented it to the church of Le Puy. It certainly had a suspiciously Egyptian appearance.

Devotion to the original image brought kings and nobles to it, and made them open their purses and pour forth gold, and sign charters delivering over to bishop and chapter vast estates and privileges. The church became extremely wealthy, and it was owing to its wealth that the glorious cathedral was built. The basilica is approached from the west by the Rue des Tables, so named on account of the stalls set out there at the time of the great pilgrimages. At the foot of the ascent is a fountain erected in commemoration of a choirboy, supposed to have been murdered by the Jews in 1320 and thrown into a well. He was given up as lost, when on Palm Sunday he reappeared, took his place in the procession, and told how he had been slaughtered, and how, by the intervention of Our Lady, he had been resuscitated. The mob believed the story, burst into the Jew's house, tore him to pieces, and cast his dismembered limbs to be devoured by dogs.

If they had but looked closer into the matter, they would have discovered that the urchin had been playing truant, and disguised his idleness by a lie.

From the Rue des Tables the remarkable west front of the minster may be seen in full. It is Romanesque in style, of the Auvergnat character, the façade is enriched with stones white and red and black, arranged in alternating bands, in lozenges and in lattice work. The zebra-like appearance is not pleasing. The eye desires repose, and is teased with the intricacy of the pattern.

This western façade is actually the frontispiece of a vast porch or narthex that stretches back through four of the bays of the nave, with flights of steps, eleven in each, and with landings between. Half-way up the porch are two chapels, one on each side, with large oak doors carved and painted. They represent groups of figures from the story of the Gospel. The background is sunk, but the surface left smooth, and is painted. The chapel on the right is dedicated to S. Stephen, that on the left to S. Giles. Neither is now used.

On two of the steps of the ascent is inscribed in Latin, "Ni caveas crimen, caveas contingere limen, Nam Regina poli vult sine sorde coli." "Unless free from guilt shun this threshold, for the Queen of Heaven will be worshipped only by a guiltless soul."

Formerly at the head of the fourth landing was a central doorway leading into the nave by another flight of steps continued inside the church; and it was said of Notre Dame du Puy, that you went in at the navel and came out at the ears, i.e. at the lateral doors in the transepts. But the central entrance has been walled up, and a floor been laid over these steps. Access is now obtained to the nave by a side flight that turns round the church and gives admission in the south transept. The corresponding lateral flight gives access to the magnificent cloister, partially closed by a gate of intricate and beautiful ironwork. The arcade in the cloister rests on twin columns with richly carved capitals, no two alike, and the wall space above the arcade is filled in with mosaic work of red, yellow, white, and black.

The interior of the church is not less remarkable than the exterior. Originally it consisted of a small square basilica, now forming the retro-choir; this was prolonged into nave with aisles, and transepts were added forming a Greek cross, with a dome at the intersection. Later on the church was carried further westward, and the singular western portion, a nave over a porch, was raised in the twelfth century.

Porch, Cathedral, Le Puy

Each bay of the nave is surmounted by an octagonal cupola. Two sides contain windows looking north and south. Two sides have also windows sustained on an arch flung across the nave, and looking into it. The four other sides of the octagons are in the depth of the wall. The lateral south porch, opening on to the little Place du For, where is the episcopal palace, is a noble piece of work. Two bold arches give access to it. To the left is a doorway only opened for a pope to pass through; the other gives admission to ordinary personages into the transept.

The tower is a campanile detached from the church, unbuttressed, and though fine, is too small for the size of the minster. But this is due to the fact that every inch of space on the rock was precious, and had to be economised. Accordingly a tower of greater bulk at base would have encroached on the way of access to the basilica. There are two more doorways, one, further on, a bold and daring sweep that spans not the entrance only, but also the little street. A third is on the north side.

Until this year, 1906, the head of the French State, King, Emperor or President was ex officio lay canon of Le Puy, just as our King is a lay canon of S. David's. But with the separation of Church and State in France, this has ceased, and M. Loubet was the last of the lay canons of Le Puy.

At one time there existed a promising school of painting in Le Velay, but it was killed by the troubles of the Wars of Religion. The frescoes in the cathedral and in some of the churches exhibit great merit. Such as remain, unfortunately very few, may be best studied in the Museum, where are accurate copies.

The finest of all represents the liberal arts, and was discovered by Mérimée in the capitular hall of the cathedral, in 1856. It is of the fifteenth century, and is conjectured, but on insufficient grounds, to have been the work of Jean Perréal, painter to Kings Charles IX. and Francis I. In the Museum may be seen reproductions of some paintings from Langeac, in which the figures are in gold on a brown diapered background. One series represents the Annunciation, the Nativity, Christ among the Doctors, speaking from a pulpit, and the Good Shepherd. The Incarnation is figured allegorically by the Blessed Virgin alluring to her the Lamb of God.

The city of Le Puy was formerly surrounded by walls erected by the citizens against the Routiers, the Free Companies, and those troublesome near neighbours the Polignacs. But their house was divided against itself, for bishop and chapter were continually at strife with the citizens, and to protect themselves against the turbulence of these latter, the ecclesiastics drew an inner ring of walls about themselves on the height above the town.

In the tortuous streets may be seen many specimens of medieval domestic architecture, angle-turrets, doorways richly carved, and if one can look into the courtyards, some dainty subjects for the pencil may be obtained.

But after having seen the cathedral and the old town, the feet are attracted to S. Michel l'Aiguilhe.

"The rock of S. Michel," says M. Paulett Scrope, "seems to contain a dyke, which may probably have been erupted on this spot. It is, however, of course evident that the conglomerate of which it is composed must have been originally enveloped and supported by surrounding beds of softer materials, since worn away by aqueous erosion."

L'Aiguilhe, Le Puy

The plan of the church on the pinnacle of rock is peculiar, resembling the attitude of a sleeping dog. The chancel lies beside the main entrance, at a higher level, and the nave is curved and has an aisle also on a curve, divided from it by columns and arches, the former with carved capitals of the end of the twelfth century, but with one or two of an earlier date. The entrance is a superb specimen of Byzantine-Romanesque work. The carving in tufa is delicate, and every portion of surface not sculptured is inlaid with mosaic. The chancel is the oldest part of the church, and may possibly belong to the original structure consecrated in 980; but all the rest is two centuries later, and the tower is a copy in small of that of the cathedral.

How did the builders of those days construct churches and donjons on the tops of these obelisks? The Rabbis say that an angel can pirouette on the point of a needle, but the work done here is more wonderful than that of balancing for a few minutes on an acute point, for the masons had to fill in all the rifts of the rock so as to form a terrace on which to build. They must have been let down in cradles. As to the tower, it was probably built up from within, as is done nowadays with a factory chimney. On a lower level than the doorway are the ruins of the habitation of the chaplain who served the church. He could obtain plenty of fresh air there to fill his lungs, but could not get exercise to circulate his blood, save by running up and down the stair in the face of the rock.

On the way up to the chapel may be noticed recesses cut out of the cliff. These formerly contained statues of saintly helpers in all kinds of difficult and unpleasant situations. Among these was S. Wilgefortis, a young lady with beard and moustache, much invoked by women with vexatious husbands, who wanted to be rid of them. A fine statue of her is in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster. The Huguenots destroyed all these figures in the niches. They were restored and again broken up at the Revolution, but have not been reinstated.

In the same hamlet of l'Aiguilhe is a circular Romanesque chapel, called the Temple of Diana, but which is actually a structure of the twelfth century. It is now undergoing repair.

The church of St. Laurent has been given a modern gable with pinnacles to the west front out of keeping with the character of the original architecture. The western doorway was once rich, and had on it two ranges of angels, twelve in each. The Huguenots broke the figures in their hatred of everything beautiful, and mutilated the delicate foliage as well.

The church has a broad nave with narrow side aisles. It contains a carved stone organ gallery once rich with statuary, but the niches are now empty. On the north side in the aisle is the tomb of Du Guesclin, who did more than any other, except the Maid of Orléans, to drive the English out of France. Even this monument did not escape the iconoclastic rage of the Calvinists; but it has been judiciously restored.

Guyenne, Poitou, Saintonge, Perigord, Brittany had been in turn the theatre of his victories; but the war continued in Languedoc. Bands of the Free Companies desolated the Gévaudan, Auvergne, and Le Velay. The nobles and towns unassisted could not expel them, and appealed to Charles V. to send them an experienced captain who would aid them against these brigands, and he despatched thither Du Guesclin. In August, 1380, the Constable entered Le Puy, and in a few days had assembled an army. He then departed for the Gévaudan to lay siege to Châteauneuf Randon, the head-quarters of the English routiers. The Constable besieged the place, attempted to take it by assault, but failed; and he vowed that he would not withdraw till it was captured. The garrison defended themselves valiantly, but at length agreed to capitulate. Du Guesclin was suffering at the time from a mortal sickness, and he lay on his deathbed when the terms of capitulation were agreed upon.

He died on the 13th of July according to history, on the 14th as stated on his monument; and upon the day fixed for the surrender the Governor laid the keys on the coffin of the deceased Constable. Charles V. ordered the body to be transported to S. Denys; but it was first taken to the Dominican church of Saint Laurent, there to be embalmed. The intestines of the great warrior that were removed alone occupy the tomb there erected.

The recumbent statue well answers to the description he gave of himself: "Les épaules larges, le col court, la tête monstreuse; je suis fort laid, jamais je ne serai bienvenu des dames, mais saurais me faire craindre des ennemis de mon roi."

The cathedral library of Le Puy contains a copy of the Bible written by Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans (788-821), a friend of Alcuin of York. This MS. was written by his own hand whilst in prison at Angers for having been involved in the conspiracy of Bernard, King of Italy, against Louis "le Débonaire," a son of Charlemagne. On Palm Sunday the King was at Angers and rode through the streets. As he passed under the prison, Theodulf thrust his head out of the window, and at the top of his voice chanted a poem he had composed in honour of Louis. The prince drew rein and listened. Flattery, however fulsome, goes a long way. He was pleased with it, though "laid on with a trowel," and ordered the release of the Bishop. It is said that, when in captivity, Theodulf had vowed to give to the church of Le Puy the Bible he had transcribed in his dungeon.

The MS. is written partly on white vellum and partly on vellum stained purple. On the white sheets the letters are in black, with the capitals in vermilion; but on the purple pages are in silver, and the capitals in goldleaf. The cover was repaired in the reign of Francis I., the velvet of the ninth century being overlaid with velvet of the sixteenth. At the Revolution this precious relic would have been flung into the flames that consumed the Black Virgin had it not been for the richness of the cover, with its ornaments of silver-gilt and the precious stones with which it was encrusted. The text is not divided into verses, and there is no punctuation, for the use of punctuation did not become general till the tenth century. The text is that of the Vulgate as corrected by Alcuin. Several of the passages in the Vulgate as now used differ from those in the version employed by Theodulf; and the Psalter is not that of the Vulgate. The preservation of the writing is due to pieces of fine tissue having been placed between the leaves, and of these fifty-three remain, and are interesting specimens of the textures of the time of Charles the Great. The Bible has poems composed by Theodulf prefixed to and following the sacred text.

Five of the early bishops of Le Puy are accounted saints, though almost nothing is known about them. They must have monopolised the stock of sanctity allotted to that Church, for of their successors none could lay claim to much holiness, and many were a disgrace to their order. But Le Puy was one of the richest sees in France, as the bishop was count as well as prelate. The volcanic soil was extraordinarily fertile, and the Black Virgin acted as a magnet, attracting to it an inexhaustible stream of gold; and this made the see to be coveted by ambitious and appropriated by unscrupulous prelates. Add to this that the bishop was under the jurisdiction of no archbishop, and was responsible to the Pope alone, who was too far off and too busy with affairs of greater importance to trouble himself about the misdeeds of the prelate princes of Le Puy.

It is open to debate which does most harm to the Church, the occasional torrential rush through the ranks of the episcopate of some wild blood, whose life is conspicuously at variance with his profession, or a continuous and unabating flood invading every see of smug, smooth, and colourless nonentities, who dilute the quality, abate the force, and lower the temperature of the Church to insipidity, lukewarmness, and inertia.

Some instances will suffice to show what manner of men they were who now and then were bishops of Le Puy.

Adhelmar (1087-98), who died at Antioch as a Crusader, was succeeded by Ponce de Tournon, who was an assassin. Bertrand de Chalençon's hands were also stained by blood; he exasperated his flock to madness by his exactions, heavily fining widows who remarried, and levying exorbitant fees on burials. When Innocent III. proclaimed a holy war against the Albigenses, and promised pardon for all sins to such as should outrage, rob, and murder these heretics, Bertrand headed an army of Crusaders, composed of the riff-raff of Velay, Auvergne, and the Gévaudan, and marched south. The citizens of one town at his approach, terrified at the prospect presented to them, fired their city and fled to the dens and caves of the earth. They were premature. Bertrand was more greedy of gold than of blood, and he made the towns as he passed buy exemption from destruction, and pocketed the money himself, to the rage and resentment of his followers. But they had full scope for their brutal instincts at Béziers on June 22nd, 1209, when, at the most moderate calculation, 20,000 persons, men, women, and children, indiscriminately Catholics and heretics, were butchered, and the papal legate looking on, is reported to have said, smiling, "Kill all; God will know His own!"

Bernard de Montaigu (1237-48), to enforce recognition of his seigneurial rights, subjected the city to an interdict, and excommunicated the flock he was set to feed.

William de la Roue (1263-82) had appointed De Rochebaron as his bailiff. This man fell in love with the beautiful wife of a butcher in the town, lured her within the precincts of the ecclesiastical fortifications, and outraged her. The guild of the butchers complained to the prelate, who scoffed at the deputation, and refused to reprimand his bailiff. The city was in commotion. When a party of the prelate's men-at-arms returned from an expedition, after harrying the peasantry in the country, and were laden with the spoils, the people rose. The tocsin sounded. The butchers came down with their cleavers. There was fighting in the streets. The troopers were despoiled of their plunder, and were obliged to take refuge within the walls of the bishop's fortress. William de la Roue was furious. He sent down the obnoxious bailiff with all the force he could muster to chastise the citizens. But they were surrounded by the enraged populace, and driven to take refuge in the Franciscan convent. The butchers with their choppers hewed down the door and slew the provost and six sergeants. De Rochebaron fled up the tower. The butchers pursued, caught him hiding among the bells, flung him down, and his mangled body was hewn to pieces.

Eventually the bishop reduced the city to subjection. He had its consuls hung in chains, and put to death all the butchers on whom he could lay his hands. The old town, built about a volcanic dyke, was ill provided with water. The wells tapped no springs, and were filled with surface-water only, and the soil was impregnated with sewage soaking down from every street and yard and lane through the joints in the rock. As a natural result typhoid fever—or the Pestilence, as the people called it—broke out, and became endemic. Frantic at this, the citizens looked about for a cause, and looked in the wrong direction. It did not occur to them that they poisoned their own wells. They assumed that the sickness was due to a league among the lepers, jealous of the health and happiness of sound men, and that they insidiously poured poison into the pits. In 1321, after a great outbreak of the plague, the citizens complained to the bishop, Durand de S. Pourcain. Perhaps he shared their conviction, perhaps he sought only to gratify the people. He swept together all the lepers in the county and burned them alive.

Le Puy saw the formation of a remarkable confederacy that promised at first to achieve the liberation of the country from the scourge of the routiers.

These bands of lawless men, under captains of their own selection, overran the country, levying blackmail, and pretending that they were in the service of the English King; or, if it suited them better, in that of the King of France. They passed from one allegiance to the other indifferently. Actually they served neither one side nor the other, but themselves. The merchants were robbed, the farmers despoiled, towns plundered. Existence became intolerable. Castles were erected on the top of rocks accessible only by a goat-path, or by steps cut in the stone, and there nests were built by the robbers for themselves. In these strongholds the captains and their companies lived riotously with bold women, sometimes nuns, whom they had carried off. The routiers held churches in special aversion, and plundered them without scruple. At their orgies they drank out of chalices, and vested their harlots in the silks and velvets of ecclesiastical wardrobes.

Such was the condition of affairs when, in 1182, a carpenter of Le Puy, named Pierre Durand, announced that a paper had fluttered down to him from heaven bearing on it a likeness of the Blessed Virgin, and that he had been commanded to found a society to combat and extinguish the routiers. At first the Bishop of Le Puy looked coldly on the carpenter. But the man obtained adherents. The need of combination to rid the country of a general nuisance was so largely felt, that Durand readily obtained a hearing and enrolled followers. According to the Laon Chronicle, the carpenter was a tool in the hands of one of the canons, who got a young man to dress up and pose as an apparition of the Virgin and so influence Durand. Be that as it may, the movement grew with rapidity. Durand gave to his adherents a white hood, with a medal to be worn on the breast, bearing a representation of N. D. du Puy, and the invocation, "Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us Thy peace." Bishop Peter IV., now that the movement promised to be a success, thought well to assume a lead in it. He had a platform erected, on which he took his stand along with the carpenter; he flourished the heaven-sent daub, asserted its genuineness, and exhorted his hearers to assume the white hood. The growth of the confraternity was now rapid. Clergy, monks, merchants, farmers, artisans, nobles joined it. Great armies of these Brethren of Peace marched against the routiers, defeated them in pitched battles, stormed their castles and burnt them. After a victory, no quarter was accorded. For the nonce the freebooters were quelled, and quailed before the people risen in a body to lynch their tormenters. But the victories they had won, the applause they had drawn on themselves, made the White Hoods headstrong and presumptuous. They knew well enough that the routiers only existed because the princes and nobles were at strife with one another; and now they pressed on the feudal lords, to insist on the abolition of private war, and to threaten such as would not submit, with the same treatment as that dealt out to the routiers. At the same time they adopted communistic notions, and refused submission to all authorities save those of their own election. They swarmed over the country and devoured the produce of the land. They had lost all appetite for peaceful avocations; and they threatened to become as great a peril as had been the freebooters. The nobles leagued against them, the royal forces were set in motion; the White Hoods were defeated and butchered without compunction, and the society founded for a good purpose came to an end, and its disappearance gave free scope for the great Companies to reorganise and resume their depredations.

When the massacre of S. Bartholomew was determined on in 1572, sealed orders were sent to the Count-Bishop of Le Puy as to all other governors to order a butchery of the Huguenots. Antoine de S. Nectaire was bishop at the time. He was the brother of the famous Madelaine who had been married to Guy de Miremont. Left a widow when young, beautiful, and rich, she was surrounded by aspirants after her hand. Madelaine had embraced the reform of Calvin. She enrolled her sixty lovers in a corps to serve as bodyguard. A word, a look sufficed to send this enthusiastic corps to smash crucifixes, burn villages, and storm castles. She rode in armour at the head of her suitors, and of an army that had gathered about her eager for plunder. She advanced to the gates of Riom and Clermont at its head, taking fortresses and burning towns and villages on her way. The King's Lieutenant, the Sieur de Montal, was routed by her in several encounters, and he, exasperated at his humiliation, resolved on storming and destroying her castle of Miremont, to which she had withdrawn. So soon as he appeared before it, at the head of the royal troops, she issued from the gates, her visor raised and mounted on a noble steed, sword in hand, followed by her bodyguard, engaged the lieutenant in single combat and smote him from his steed. Finally, after an ineffectual siege that lasted forty days, Madelaine forced the royal host to retire. "Ventre saint gris!" exclaimed Henry of Navarre, "if I were not king, I would desire to be Madelaine de Saint Nectaire!" This by the way.

Her brother was Bishop of Le Puy, and by no means inclined to accept Calvinism. When the order came to him requiring a massacre of the Huguenots in Le Puy, he called the consuls together, and read to them the royal letter. "Messieurs," said he, "this concerns only rebels and disloyal Calvinists, and there are none such here. We read in the Gospel that the love of God and of our neighbours form the sum of the Law and the Prophets. Let us live together as a Christian people in all good charity."

This was excellent. If we knew no more of him than this, we would set him down as an enlightened prelate and a man of high principle. But unhappily it is not all.

Next year the Calvinists had entered the Province, and had captured several places; amongst others Fay-le-Froid. The Bishop at once, with promptitude, marched thither at the head of five hundred men. He rode a richly caparisoned mule, clad in black armour, with a gold cross on his breast, and his arms, five silver spindles on a field azure, emblazoned on his mantle. He was a magnificent man, ruddy-faced, with bright blue eyes and a flowing white beard. He was of Herculean strength, and as canon law forbade a Churchman shedding blood, he bore a heavy club with which to brain the enemies of the King and of the Church. In his train were two cannons. As he arrived unexpectedly before Fay-le-Froid, the town surrendered. He swept the inhabitants and the rebel garrison together, and hung as many as were involved in the insurrection. "What a lamentable scene it was," wrote a contemporary author; "poor women weeping, tearing their hair, pleading for the lives of their husbands, their brothers, and their friends; but Mgr. de Saint Nectaire would not so much as vouchsafe them a look."

Then, with the bodies dangling from the gibbets, he had an altar erected in the public square and a Mass sung, whilst his pikemen prodded the Calvinists at the proper moment to oblige them to cross themselves and to kneel.

The Bishop returned to Le Puy highly elated at his success, but his elation was damped on his arrival by hearing that in the meantime the Huguenots had captured his castle at Espaly, at the very door of Le Puy, and were menacing the capital. He made his way in with all speed, and despatched a courier to the Baron de S. Vidal to come to his aid.

Espaly was then a walled town at the foot of a trap dyke that shoots above the Borne, and on which stood a castle, the summer residence of the bishops.

The castle had been erected in the thirteenth century by William de la Roue, of whose misdeeds I have already told. It was completed by Jean de Bourbon (1443-85). The part taken by this prelate in the League of the Public Good brought on Espaly the horrors of a siege. But it suffered especially in the Wars of Religion. Within thirty years it was taken and retaken by Huguenots and Catholics eight times.

The story of the last siege is sufficiently curious to be told.

In 1574, Vidal Guyard, a hatmaker of Le Puy, placed himself at the head of a hundred and twenty Calvinists, and, favoured by the moon, on the night of January 9th approached Espaly, and by penetrating into the castle by a drain succeeded in surprising the garrison and making themselves masters of the place. The news reached Le Puy through fugitives from the town, and next day the young men of the city, acting against the advice of the Bishop, determined on retaking the fortress. A crowd of citizens armed, assumed a white cross on their breasts, and marched against the place. But heavy rain came on, they were drenched to the skin, and their powder and courage were damped, so they returned having effected nothing. The Calvinists now set to work to destroy the houses in the little town, sparing only such as were redeemed by their owners with a heavy money payment.

On January 20th the Baron de S. Vidal, whom the Bishop had summoned to his aid, assembled troops at Le Puy and marched to Espaly, forced his way into the town, but could effect nothing against the castle, that was accessible by one path only, cut in the face of the rock. One of the garrison with his arquebus wounded S. Vidal in the shoulder. After that they made a sortie and did much execution among the besiegers.

S. Vidal, despairing of reducing the place by force of arms, resolved on trying negotiation. But Guyard demanded such an exorbitant sum for its surrender that it was refused. S. Vidal now tried stratagem. He framed a letter, as from Guyard, addressed to the consuls of Le Puy, offering to deliver up the castle, his lieutenant Morfouse, and the garrison, if his own life were spared and he were liberally rewarded. This letter was smuggled into the fortress, read by Morfouse, and in a paroxysm of jealousy and alarm he and the rest fell on Guyard and killed him. Then they entered into communication with S. Vidal, and surrendered on February 3rd, the day on which the baron received the news of his nomination by the King to be governor of Le Velay. Le Puy itself had undergone a siege by the Huguenots twelve years before this.

In 1562 the terrible Baron des Adrets, who was in Dauphiné stamping out every spark of Catholicism, deputed his lieutenant, Blacons, to secure Le Puy. Blacons was a man as ruthless as his commander, but without his military genius. It was settled that Blacons should assemble an army at Pont-en-Peyrat, a village on the borders of Forez and Velay. Thither accordingly gathered the Calvinists and a horde of adventurers thirsting for the pillage of the wealthy city and the shrine of the Madonna. The consuls of Le Puy sent the brother of their seneschal, Christopher d'Allègre, with 20,000 livres to treat with Blacons, and offer this sum if he would divert his column on some other town. Christopher d'Allègre, who was himself a Calvinist, and had been selected for the embassy on that ground, pocketed the money without intimating to Blacons the purpose for which it had been confided to him, and was instant in urging the Huguenot captain to capture and sack the city. The consuls, bishop, and chapter met in consultation and armed all the male inhabitants of the place, and hastily repaired the fortifications.

On August 4th arrived the citizens of S. Paulien, escaping with their goods and chatels from the Calvinists with terrible stories of outrage and murder committed by them. The alarm-bells pealed; a message was sent to the Viscount Polignac for aid, but he remained inert on the top of his rock, alleging that he had not a force sufficient at his disposal to be able materially to assist the citizens.

On the night of the same day the siege began. The Huguenots crossed the Borne, which was then dry, and planted their cannon. After a steady bombardment they rushed to the assault, and a desperate struggle ensued. Towards evening of August 5th the resistance of the citizens slackened, and the Calvinists pressed on, when a postern was thrown open and out poured a body of monks and friars variously armed. They fell upon the enemy in flank and put them to rout. The members of the monasteries and convents round Le Puy had fled to the city at the approach of Blacons, and had been clustered on the top of the rock Corneille watching events. Observing the progress of the Huguenots, and knowing that if the city fell every one of them would be hung or hurled down the rock, they had gone to the episcopal armoury and seized whatever weapons came to hand; and these men determined the fate of the engagement.

The disconcerted Huguenots retired for the night to Espaly. Next day they returned to the assault, and planted their cannon on a height whence they could play on the town. The suburb of Aiguilhe fell into their hands and was sacked. The hospital and the monasteries were burnt, the church of S. Laurence and the chapel of S. Michael were plundered and the carved work mutilated. If the latter escaped better than the former, it was due to the height at which it stood, and the danger attending any who climbed aloft to smash the sculptures with axes and hammers.

On the third day the Calvinists met with no better success. One man troubled them greatly, an aged hermit from the Mont Denise, who had been an artillery officer in his younger days. He was now very old and bent double; but the fire of battle kindled in his veins, and he undertook the disposition of the artillery and pointed the guns. "That holy man," says a contemporary historian, "did so well that he killed more men than did all the arquebusiers together."

The Huguenots lost heart and demanded a parley. They sent Christopher d'Allègre as their envoy into the city. This man must have been endowed with considerable effrontery to accept such an office, after having betrayed and robbed his fellow-citizens. He appeared before the consuls with a confident air, and demanded that the gates should be thrown open to Blacons. "How can you suppose," said he, "that we intend harm, we who are zealous propagators of the Reformed religion and the defenders of the oppressed? We are incapable of committing acts of violence. We will not exact of you any contribution, not even food for our men. All that we seek is to hew in pieces the gods of wood and stone and emblems that profane the temple of the living God."

But the consuls knew what such protestations were worth, by the experience of the refugees of S. Paulien, which had offered no resistance to the Huguenots. They dismissed the envoy, and he returned to stimulate the investing army to renewed exertions. At once, in a paroxysm of zeal, the host rushed again to the attack; but the citizens sallied forth, cut them down, and made many captures.

Next day the consuls and the bishop hoisted flags on every tower, and minstrels paraded the walls playing lively tunes on hautboys, fifes, and clarions.

Blacons supposed that they must have received reinforcements. He called his officers together and said, "See, gentlemen, how the citizens of Le Puy mock us! Let us chastise them severely for such imprudent and unseemly mirth." But he could no longer rouse his host to venture on another assault. His soldiery dispersed over the open country to sack and burn villages, desecrate churches, and hang such priests as they could take. They completely wrecked five or six monasteries, the castles of the bishop, and they set fire to the peasants' harvests, so that a sheet of flame ran over the country as far as the eye could see. In a few days the cannon were withdrawn, and not a Calvinist in arms remained before the walls of Le Puy.

So the city can boast proudly, "Civitus non vincitur, nec vincetur," or in the words of Odo de Gissey, "Ne fut oncq' surmontée, ni le sera."

CHAPTER IV

ROUND ABOUT LE PUY

Limitations of language—Guides to Le Velay—Espaly—The castle—Death of Charles VI.—The Orgues—Baron de S. Vidal—La Roche Lambert—Polignac—The oracle of Apollo—S. Paulien—Roman remains—Julien, the sculptor—Barrier of the Loire—Vorey—La Lepreuse—Chamalières—Mézenc—Les Estables—Ascent—La Foire aux Violettes—The violet harvest—Flora of Mézenc—Gerbier de Jonc—View—Lake of Issarlès—Menaced—A man without a chance in life—Le Monastier—Stevenson's estimate of the people—The abbey—Change of names—Arlempdes—Caves of Chacornac—Mandrin—The haunted mill of Perbet.

THERE exist but a limited number of terms wherewith to describe an infinite variety of natural objects that possess one common character, but differ from one another in every other particular. Needle, spike, pinnacle, spire, obelisk have to serve for all rocks that start up from the soil and terminate in a point. Ravine, gorge, fissure, chasm, cañon have to be employed indiscriminately for those clefts in the surface, rents formed by the contraction on cooling of the earth's crust, or by the erosion of water. And yet all the difference in the world exists between spires of tufa and trap and those of granite or of limestone. The gorge down which swirls the river between calcareous walls is one thing, that which is cleft into a street lined with basaltic columns is another, yet the same term must be employed for both.

Basalt, Espaly

If it fell to me to describe all the most remarkable sites in Le Velay, I should have to use these expressions ad nauseam, and leave off with the consciousness that I had conveyed to the mind of the reader but a poor idea of the wonders of a wondrous land.

Happily for me, my purpose is not so extensive. I have not undertaken to write a guide-book. Baedeker has given us the skeleton of a tour in this region in five pages. Joanne has clothed the bones with flesh and blood in thirteen or fourteen, and Ardouin Dumazet has breathed into it the breath of life in three hundred and seventy. Moreover, a Syndicat d'Initiative exists at Le Puy that distributes gratis a capital guide to the sights around. But it does more than this. Throughout the summer, at a trifling cost, it organises excursions, provides vehicles to every point of interest that can be visited in a day.

A farmer does not take to market all the corn thrashed out of his stack, but a sample of his produce. He opens his hand and displays the grain to a would-be purchaser, and all I can pretend to do in this chapter is to give a few samples of what Le Velay has to show to a visitor, and I shall begin with Espaly, easily reached by electric tram. There, out of the valley of the Borne, rise two volcanic crags, washed by the river. One of these is surmounted by a toy castle, a battlemented summer-house that belongs to a gentleman of Le Puy. The other, and by far the finer, was once capped by the castle of the bishops of Le Puy. In this a bishop-designate halted the night before making his entry into the city, and here, before he was suffered to enter, the consuls of the town exacted from him an oath to respect its liberties. Charles the Dauphin, son of Charles VI., was staying in this castle in 1422, on October 25th, when, at 7 p.m., he received the tidings of the death of his father, which had taken place five days before. He at once ordered the De profundis to be chanted, and put on mourning, which he quitted on the 27th to array himself in purple velvet. Mass was performed, and then the banner of France was unfurled to shouts of "Vive le Roy!" After that he departed for Poitiers, where he was crowned.

By far the finest view of the rocks is to be had from the bridge over the Borne.

Of the castle almost nothing remains. It was blown up by order of S. Vidal, and now the fragments are incorporated in a wall set with peepholes, and surmounted by what looks like a gigantic gasholder, but which is intended to serve as a pedestal for a colossal statue of S. Joseph.

The Orgues d'Espaly attract visitors. The organ front forms the face of a spur of Mont Denise, and is composed of ranges of basaltic columns. We shall see others far finer in the gorge of the Allier and in the mountains of Vivarais.

Some way up the valley of the Borne stand the well-preserved ruins of the castle of Saint Vidal, the sturdy Leaguer. Near this are a cascade of the Borne and the ravine of Estreys.

Antoine, Baron de la Tour, and de Segard, and de S. Vidal, Governor of Le Velay, made a desperate and ineffectual effort, conjointly with the Governor of the Vivarais, in 1572, to capture the castle of Beaudiné in Velay, held by the Huguenot captain, La Vacheresse, who had secured it by stratagem, and who from it issued to ravage the country, destroy churches, hang priests and monks, and levy blackmail on the villages.

Two months later he was wounded at Espaly, as related. In the same year he was successful in dispossessing the Calvinists of five other castles. Then he besieged and took the town of Tence, hung the pastors, and gave up the inhabitants to massacre.

In 1577 he laid siege to Ambert in Auvergne, but failed to take it, and retired discomfited. By royal command, in 1580 he advanced upon S. Agrève, which had become the head-quarters of the Calvinists in the Vivarais. During the siege he lost an eye. After having taken measures for the defence of Le Puy, which was menaced by Polignac, who was at war with the city, he hastened to the relief of Bédoués in the Gévaudan, that was besieged by the redoubted Captain Merle, but was unsuccessful.

A few years later, in 1586, he left Le Puy with six cannons to assist the Duke of Joyeuse in the siege of Malziac. It was taken, and he was appointed governor; he also obtained the governorship of Marvejols, which capitulated after a siege of eight days. In 1588 he was before S. Agrève for the second time, and he took it and levelled the town walls. Devoted to the cause of the League, he hotly and zealously contested the governorship of Velay with De Chattes, who had been appointed by Henry IV. In 1590 he besieged Espaly again, burnt the town, and blew up the castle. In a negotiation in 1591 between the Royalists and the Leaguers the quarrel took so personal a turn that S. Vidal and the commandant of Le Puy challenged De Chattes and another to duel, and in it S. Vidal fell.

Still further up this picturesque stream is the Castle de La Roche Lambert, the theatre of Georges Sand's novel Jean de la Roche.

"I may say without exaggeration that I was reared in a rock. The castle of my fathers is strangely incrusted into an excavation in a wall of basalt five hundred feet high. The base of this wall, with that face to face with it of identically the same rock, form a narrow and sinuous valley, through which winds and leaps an inoffensive torrent in impetuous cascades, athwart delicious meadows shaded by willows and nut trees.

"This Château de la Roche is a nest—a nest of troglodites, inasmuch as the whole flank of the rock we occupy is riddled with holes and irregular chambers which tradition points to as the residence of ancient savages, and which antiquaries do not hesitate to attribute to a prehistoric people.

"The castle of my fathers is planted high up on a ledge of rock, but so that the tops of the conical roofs of the towers just reach above the level of the plain. One detail will illustrate our situation. My mother having poor health, and having no other place to walk save one little platform before the castle on the edge of the abyss, took it into her head to create for herself a garden at the summit of the crag on which we were perched."