The Fields of France / with Twenty Illustrations in Color
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALI^ORN;.. RIVERSIDE -cLo^c'^^^t^^ /^- ^ o4- ; t/sjt'^'*^*^ (^^« .OM*^ M"^ ^r1 i L, FJEL FRANCE .BY madXme T . .RY RUCLAUX V40R -y Y'RElihn'COLL'ECrED' 83HOOJ ,:^- ^ "^^ - I LOCHES i,pff n I f I THE FIELDS 3^ FRANCE BY mAdXme mAryduclAux (•A- >T>lRY-F-ROB]MSON) AUTHORy- THE LIFEyREIiXrr "COLLE CTED POEMS"-THERB.TURMTOMXTURE-ETCxr-JC7- • WITH- TWEMTY- ILLUS TRATIOnS •in- COLOUR •BY- WBmAcdougAll. First published in Crown 8vo September, 1903 Reprinted December, 1903 Reprinted February, 1904 Reprinted October, 1904 New Edition, in Crown Quarto, with numerous additions, and Illustrations by VV. B. Macdougall September, 1905 Uo MY DEAR MOTHER LIKE ME, A LOVER OF THE FIELDS OF FRANCE CONTENTS PACK A FARM IN THE CANTAL i A MANOR IN TOURAINE .......• 45 THE FRENCH PEASANT • n THE FORESTS OF THE OISE • 133 A LITTLE TOUR IN PROVENCE . 167 HOW THE POOR LIVED IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 19s THE MEDIAEVAL COUNTRY HOUSE. 239 VJl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I. LOCHES Frontispiece II. PUY MARY Facingpage 6 III. THE FARM AT OLMET ... „ 14 IV. THE CERE AT VIC .... „ 22 V. THE OLD HOUSE AT OLMET. „ 30 VI. TREMOULET „ 38 VII. THE COMMANDERIE AT BALLAN . „ 50 VIII. TOURS „ 64 IX. AMBOISE „ 80 X. CHENONCEAUX „ 96 XI. AZAY-LE-RIDEAU „ 112 XII. LUYNES „ 126 XIII. SENLIS „ 136 XIV. VIEW FROM LA MONTAGNE DE LA VERBERIE „ 142 XV. VIEUX MOULIN „ 148 XVI. THE LAKES OF LA ROUILLIE . „ 154 XVII. PIERREFONDS „ 160 XVIII. THE PALACE OF THE POPES AT AVIGNON „ 174 XIX. THE CASTLE OF BEAUCAIRE AT TARASCON „ 182 XX. THE ALISCAMPS AT ARLES . „ 192 A FARM IN THE CANTAL A FARM IN THE CANTAL (Haute-Auvergne) 1902 'T^HE farm lies in a wonderful country. -^ Every landscape has a basis of geology : in order to seize the features of the Cantal, you should stand, if possible, on the pointed crest of the Puy Mary. Before you, where once yawned a crater, rises an ash-grey cone of clink- was the stone : the Puy de Griou, a perfect sugarloaf. Here of long-dead lava centre of volcanic force ; and from this pile some twelve or fifteen deep valleys radiate like the beams of a star. Down every valley runs a river. The rocky fissures of these river-beds separate, by a series of wooded gorges, these, on the group of hills that mark the crater's rim ; and their further flank, roll down towards the plain in immense wavy plateaux, attaining at their highest point an altitude of some 6000 feet. These rolling pastures on the mountain- tops are the wealth of our country and the condition of our cliff agriculture. I have never climbed higher than the long behind our house, which bounds on the south the lovely some thousand valley of the Cere ; even that is an ascent of crowned feet. Green at its base with pastures, our hillside is 2 3 ^ THE FIELDS OF FRANCE with a cornice of fluted rocks, andesite and basalt, which tower above the serried beech woods, mantled on its breast. When at last you reach Les Huttes (the first village on the plateau), you see that our valley—wide, romantic, irregular as it appears— is, none the less, a sort of caiion or ravine sunk between two high table-lands, whose basalt floor is covered with pasture and dotted here and there with odd little huts or cabins, which in fact are cheese-farms ; for the people of the valleys send their herds to pasture on the mountain-tops from May till after Michaelmas. This plateau is not flat ; it rolls and undulates like the sea, and any of its higher points afi"ords a marvellous view. To the north, the Pay de Griou rises sheer, as fine and as sharp as the Fusiyama in a Japanese print. The long-backed ridges of the Plomb du Cantal and Puy Mary, each with its double hump, crouch beside it, like great dragons, with lean, grey, ravined flanks, while the endless blue of the rolling plains stretches in the distance. The Plomb is an old friend ; with the black peaks of the Lioran, it closes our horizon in the valley, as you look to the north-east. Although the highest of our mountains (1858 metres) —and quite a respectable summit, for it is eight metres higher than the Righi —yet the Plomb is less effective than the frail ash-grey peak of Griou (1694 metres). From Olmet, these bound our view to the right. In front of us rises the long saddle-shaped back of the Courpou- Sauvage, strewn with rocks which simulate fantastic ruins. Out of sight, but close at hand, are Peyre-Arse, L'Usclade, Peyroux, Bataillouze, Puy Violent, Chavaroche, le Roc des Ombres. Their names preserve the image of a terror long forgotten. The Wild Creature, with Burnt Rock and Rock Ruddy ; their neighbour, the Scorched Mountain, together with Rock Warful, Mount Violent and the Rock of Shadows, all rest in peace these many thousand years ; the woods 4 A FARM IX THE CAXTAL wave, the pasture flowers, the herds feed upon their rocky sides. Only the black stones, rolled smooth so long ago, fallen among our fields of flowering buckwheat ; only these, and the veins of lava, which burst their veil of mcuntain- pink and heather, remain and tell of that enormous upheaval, still apparent, of an elder world. It is astonishing with what personality an accustomed eye invests a mountain. We say: "The Lioran is darker than usual this morning," as we should say: "Emilia has a headache." And what a pleasure when, towards Sep- tember, the Courpou - Sauvage begins to blush with the blossoming heather ! No mountains have ever seemed to me so friendly as these. They are not very high above our valley, which is situate some 2000 feet above sea-level, so that we behold a scant two-thirds of their real height. But their forms are lovely in their infinite variety. Time cannot wither them, nor custom stale. Woods cling to them ; cliffs and rocks jut from them in peak or turret ; cascades and fountains and innumerable streams gush from their hearts fire of ; pasture, fern or heather robe them higher than the girdle ; only the peaks are bare and take a thousand colours in the changing lights. The hills do not rise sheer from the bottom, as in Swit- zerland. Innumerable landslips have torn their sides which, at periods of great distance, have fallen away from the cliff, heaping the ground with vast swellings and ridges, in much romantic confusion. Even to-day, these landslips continue, and the aspect of the country is slowly but continually transformed. Covered with beechwood or heather near the heights, green with pasture lower down, these ledges and terraces lead the eye to the valley bottom, which itself is never flat, but cradle-shaped. And therein lies the small winding river of the Cere. 5 THE FIELDS OF FRANCE My husband's old house of Olmet stands on one such ledge, some way up the southern bank of the valley, with the farm at its feet. Farm and house no longer belong to each other, but they are still on cordial terms ; which is as well, since from our hinder terrace our eye drops involun- tarily on all the life and business of our neighbours. The farm has been recently rebuilt by its new owner, and is no longer the picturesque hovel we used alternately to admire and deplore. But our tiny mountain manor, or moorland cottage, still bears the stamp of three hundred years on its thick solid walls and tower. The roof is beautiful, very steep, as befits a land of six months* snow, and a soft ash- grey in colour, being covered with thick heart-shaped tiles of powdery mica-schist, which surmount with a pyramid either tiny solid turret : a balcony starts out from the tower, whence you could sling a stone into the bottom of the valley, for Olmet stands on a jutting rock, to the great advantage of our view. The house is stunted from the front, where the garden is on the level of the first floor; but, seen from below, there is about the place a look at once austere and peaceful, rustic and dignified, as befits this land of hay and lava, of mountain peak and cream. Of the four wishes of Horace, three are in our posses- sion. Alas ! we have not the little wood, so necessary in a southern August ; an orchard of gnarled apple trees is all that we can boast. But we have the modest country place, the fountain near the door, the garden of flowers and fruit. '' Qiiand on a vu renclos cTOhnei ! " cries Madame Langeac, at the farm below (as though Marly or Versailles could not compete with our little garden), yet it is merely a bare hilly field or orchard, running to hay, with a flower patch here and there ; but loud with the murmur of the rippling water which sparkles from the rocks, and noble with the vast and 6 PUY MARY 'W ft ifei ' ^Jl^ !,'17 \ vrT" with .)n core IS as nth ..arts :-v- — A FARJNI IN THE CANTAL various beauty of the view. To the south rise the ravined foot-hills, clothed in woods, crowned with cornices and organ- pipes of rock, their green hummocks swelling and rising to the east, ever larger and ever higher, till they reach the black cone of the Lioran, to which the valley ascends in a series of rugged steps, narrowing as it goes.