THE HAUTE-LOIRE
The particular day of which I am now writing was Sunday, and when we came to Moulin, the ancient capital of the Bourbonnais, there was a baptismal ceremony going on in the cathedral; the old sexton in the portico outside was pulling the rope that led up to the great booming bell. He could pull and talk too, and he told us that the bell was only rung for baptisms, at least that was what we thought he said as he flung himself aloft with the upward sweep, and alow with the downward sweep, until his chin nearly touched the stone floor. I got into the swing of it directly, and signified that I should like to ring the bell a little myself. I realize now that it was decidedly brazen to ask to assist at a sacred function like that, but he let me do it, and I took the rope and for a minute or two swayed up and down in a pride I can hardly express, ringing that five-hundred-year-old bell to notify the world of the latest baptism in France.
We came upon an unexpected treat at Moulin—the Souvigny bible, an illuminated manuscript of 1115, with one hundred and twenty-two marvelously executed pictorial designs. The bible was in a museum across from the cathedral, a splendid museum indeed for little Moulin, being the reconstructed château of the Bourbons, filled with beautiful things of the Bourbon period. The bible is in a room by itself in a glass case, but the guardian opened it for us and turned the leaves. This bible, discovered at the old priory of the little town of Souvigny, is in perfect condition and presents a gorgeous piece of hand illumination. The drawing itself is naturally primitive, but the coloring is rich beyond telling, the lettering marvelously perfect. J. Pierpont Morgan is said to have offered a million francs for the Souvigny bible, a vast sum to little Moulin. I am glad they did not sell it. It seems better in the quiet, choice museum which was once the castle of the Bourbon dukes.
It is curious how conventions establish themselves in the different districts and how absolutely they prevail in the limits of those districts. In certain sections, for instance, we found the furnishings in each hotel exactly alike. The same chairs, the same little table, the same bedsteads and wardrobes, the same tableware. We could tell by the change of furnishing when we had reached a new district. A good portion of the Auvergne remains to us the "Land of Squatty Pitchers," because in every bedroom the water pitcher was a very short, very corpulent and saucy-looking affair that amused us each evening with its absurd shape. Then there were the big coffee bowls and spoons. They got larger and larger from Nîmes northward until we reached Issoire. There the bowls were really immense and the spoons had grown from dessert spoons to table spoons, from table spoons to soup spoons until at Issoire they were like enormous vegetable spoons, such as cooks use to stir the pot with. From Moulin northward we entered the "Land of Little Ladders." All the houses outside the larger towns were story-and-a-half affairs, built facing the road, and the half-story was not reached by an inside stairway, but by a short outside ladder that led up to a central gable window, which was really a door. It was curious to see a string of these houses, all with the little ladders, and all just alike. Our first thought was that the ladders were used because they were cheaper to build than a stairway, and saved inside room. But, reflecting later, I thought it more likely that they originated in the old need of defense. I think there was a time when the family retired to the loft at night and drew the ladder up after them, to avoid a surprise.
It had been raining softly when we left Moulin. Somehow we had strayed from the main road, and through the misty mid-region of the Haute-Loire followed ways uncharted, but always good—always interesting, and somewhere in that lost borderland we came to Dornes, and the daintiest inn, kept by the daintiest gray-haired woman, who showed us her kitchen and her flower garden and her tame pheasants, and made us love her dearly. Next day at St. Pierre le Moutier we got back on our route, and when Narcissa, out of the book she had been reading, reminded us that Joan of Arc had once fought a battle there the place became glorified. Joan must have been at Nevers, too, though we found no record of it.
I think we should have stayed longer at Nevers. There was an ancient look about portions of it that in a brighter day would have invited us. Crossing the Loire and entering the city, with its ancient bastioned walls, carried one back a good way into the centuries. But it was still dull and drizzly, and we had a feeling for the open road and a cozier lodgment.
The rain ceased, the sun tried to break through the mist. The glistening world became strangely luminous, a world not of hard realities at all. The shining river winding away into mystery; far valley reaches fading into haze; blurred lines of ancient spires and towers—these things belonged only to a land of romance. Long ago I saw a painting entitled a dream of Italy. I did not believe then that any real land could be as beautiful— I thought it only an artist's vision. I was mistaken. No painting was ever so beautiful—so full of richness and light and color as this haze-haunted valley of the Loire.
We rested at Neuvy, at the little red-book inn, Hôtel de la Paix, clean and inviting like the rest. It is the best compliment we can pay these little hotels that we always want to remain in them longer, and plan some day to come back to them.