A New Impression with a Frontispiece by Walter Crane London: Chatto & Windus, 1907 Frontispiece, by Walter Crane My Dear Sidney Colvin, The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me.  After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the end.  But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world—all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend.  He is a fortunate vo

In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days.  Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension.  There are adherents of each of the four French parties—Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans—in this little mountain-town; and they all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other.  Except for business purposes, or t

The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common.  As long as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine.  She tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small under the bundle that my mind misgave me.  We got across the ford without

The auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least pretentious I have ever visited; but I saw many more of the like upon my journey.  Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands.  Imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other dining; furniture of the plainest, earthern floors, a single bedchamber for travellers, and that without any convenience but beds.  In the kitchen cooking and eating

The next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o’clock in the afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired, for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard l’Évêque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire.  A man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey might cover

Candidly, it seemed little worthy of all this searching.  A few broken ends of village, with no particular street, but a succession of open places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine to Our Lady of all Graces on the summit of a little hill; and all this, upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked valley.  What went ye out for to see? thought I to myself.  But the place had a life of its own.  I found a board, commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard

Next morning (Thursday, 26th September) I took the road in a new order.  The sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end.  It was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would ensure stability, blow high, blow low.  But it was not without a pang that I had so decided.  For although I had purchased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet jealousl

Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner.  We had some talk, or rather I should say he listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay.  And truly, when I remember that I descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken bread, I c

But there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the Snows.  At this late season there were not many boarders; and yet I was not alone in the public part of the monastery.  This itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining-room on the ground-floor and a whole corridor of cells similar to mine upstairs.  I have stupidly forgotten the board for a regular retraitant ; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a day, and I think most probably the first.  Chance visitors like mys

The bed was made, the room was fit, By punctual eve the stars were lit; The air was still, the water ran; No need there was for maid or man, When we put up, my ass and I, At God’s green caravanserai. OLD PLAY....

The wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear; so it was under better auspices that I loaded Modestine before the monastery gate.  My Irish friend accompanied me so far on the way.  As we came through the wood, there was Père Apollinaire hauling his barrow; and he too quitted his labours to go with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between both of his in front of him.  I parted first from one and then from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the trav

From Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to scale a portion of the Lozère.  An ill-marked stony drove-road guided me forward; and I met nearly half-a-dozen bullock-carts descending from the woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter’s firing.  At the top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to

The track that I had followed in the evening soon died out, and I continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the Goulet.  It was already warm.  I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat.  Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that set the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat.  The view, back upon the northern Gévaudan, extended w

One of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I remember rightly, the Protestant temple; but this was but the type of other novelties.  A subtle atmosphere distinguishes a town in England from a town in France, or even in Scotland.  At Carlisle you can see you are in the one country; at Dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure that you are in the other.  I should find it difficult to tell in what particulars Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or even Bl

A new road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florac by the valley of the Tarn; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I went in and out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into promontories of afternoon sun.  This was a pass like that of Killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine high above.  A thin frin

On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac, the seat of a sub-prefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill.  It is notable, besides, for handsome women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards. The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an adjoining café, where I, or rather my journey, became the topic of the afternoon.  Every one had some suggestion for my guidance;

On Tuesday, 1st October, we left Florac late in the afternoon, a tired donkey and tired donkey-driver.  A little way up the Tarnon, a covered bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the Mimente.  Steep rocky red mountains overhung the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in stony terraces; here and there was a red field of millet or a few apple-trees studded with red apples; and the road passed hard by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please the heart

I was now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks.  The road along the Mimente is yet new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first cart arrived at Cassagnas.  But although it lay thus apart from the current of men’s business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the history of France.  Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the fi

When I awoke (Thursday, 2nd October), and, hearing a great flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me to the window of the clean and comfortable room where I had slept the night, I looked forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut gardens.  It was still early, and the cockcrows, and the slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me to be out and look round me. St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about.  At the period of the wars, an

On examination, on the morning of October 3rd, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel.  She would need at least two days’ repose, according to the ostler; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters; and, being in a civilised country of stage-coaches, I determined to sell my lady friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon.  Our yesterday’s march, with the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill of St. Pierre, spread a favourable notion of my donkey’s capabilit