Читать книгу In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere in Old France - John Alexander Sir Hammerton - Страница 14

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Stevenson's track now lay somewhat to the west of the course of the Allier, as he made for the little village of Cheylard l'Evêque, on the borders of the Forest of Mercoire, and in this stage of his journey he was more than usually faithful to his ideal of travel: "For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints." There was no need for his quitting the highway, since his further objective lay due south through the pleasant valley of the Allier. But his diversion among the by-ways was rich in adventure, and furnished him with material for perhaps his best chapter, "A Camp in the Dark." He had the good fortune to lose his way after nightfall, and to be forced to camp in a wood of pines in happy ignorance of his whereabouts. When next morning he did reach Cheylard he was fain to confess that "it seemed little worthy of all this searching." With a less keen appetite for losing ourselves in a maze of muddy bullock-tracks, we pressed forward through the fresh green valley to Luc, and here rejoined the path of our adventurer once more. We had the road almost to ourselves, and among the few wayfarers I recall was a travelling knife-grinder, whom we passed near Luc engaged in the agreeable task of preparing his dinner, the first course of which, potage au pain, was simmering in a sooty pot over a fire of twigs. A nation of gourmets, verily, when the humblest among them can thus maintain the national art in the hedges.

VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC

"Why anyone should desire to visit Luc is more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose."—R. L. S.

LA BASTIDE

"At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river."—R. L. S.

"Why anyone should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my much inventing spirit can suppose." Thus our vagabond. But journeying at a more genial season of the year, we found the neighbourhood of Luc not devoid of beauty. The valley of the Allier is here broken into wide and picturesque gorges, and in many ways the scenery is reminiscent of Glen Coe, where Alan Breck and David Balfour dodged the redcoats. But late in September it would bear a very different aspect, and Stevenson tells us that "a more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines. The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady." There is now a railway station at Luc, the line running near the road all the way to La Bastide and as we continued southward that sunny June day, it was only the shrill noise of the crickets and the unusual quilt work of the diligently husbanded hillsides that told us we were not looking on a Perthshire landscape. In a sweet corner of the valley lies La Bastide, a drowsy little town despite its long connection with the railway, which existed even at the time of Stevenson's visit.

Here, he tells us, "I was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardèche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows." Thither we shall follow his steps, more closely than usual, as the road is too steep to admit of our cycling. For some distance the route lies through a great forest of pines, but when the crest of the hill is gained a far-reaching prospect greets the eye. "The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine wood," writes R. L. S., "and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering in veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and, indeed, not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had walked in twisted footpaths in and out among the beeches and up and down upon the channelled slopes." Only when the snow comes down and mantles these abundant hills would this description not apply. It is a perfect picture of what we saw. Presently we noted with no small satisfaction the white statue of the Virgin, which, standing by the highway at a point where a side road strikes northward through the pines, "directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows." He describes the pine wood as "a young plantation," but in the intervening years the trees have grown into a mighty forest, dark and mysterious, and the statue of Our Lady was so overshadowed by branches rich with cones, that it was impossible to get a satisfactory photograph of it. "Here, then," he continues, "I struck leftward, and pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence." On our equally secular cycles we followed the same track, the roadway being dotted on each side with bundles of faggots gathered by the silent monks, probably for the use of the poor.