CHAPTER XIV.
THE GLACIÈRE OF FONDEURLE, IN DAUPHINÉ.
There cannot be any better place for recruiting strength than the lovely primitive valley of Les Plans, two hours up the course of the Avençon from hot and dusty Bex. Here I rejoined my sisters, intending to spend a month with them before returning to England; and the neighbouring glaciers afforded good opportunities for quietly investigating the structure of the ice which composes them, with a view to discovering, if possible, some trace of the prismatic formation so universal in the glacières. On one occasion, after carefully cutting steps and examining the faces of cleavage for an hour and a half, I detected a small patch of ice, under the overhanging rim of a crevasse, marked distinctly with the familiar network of lines on the surface; but I was unable to discover anything betokening a prismatic condition of the interior. This was the only case in which I saw the slightest approach to the phenomena presented in ice-caves.
There remained one glacière on M. Thury's list, which I had so far not thought of visiting. It was described as lying three leagues to the north of Die in Dauphiné, department of the Drôme, at an altitude of more than 5,000 feet above the sea. M. Héricart de Thury discovered this cavern in 1805, and published an account of it in the Annales des Mines[[82]] to which M. Thury's list gave a reference. I have since found that this account has been translated into various scientific periodicals, among others the Philosophical Journal of Edinburgh.[[83]] earlier than I had intended, I could take advantage of the new line connecting Chambéry and Grenoble and Valence, and so visit this glacière without making the journey too long; and accordingly I bade farewell to Madame Chérix's comfortable room, leaving my sisters in their quarters in a neighbouring châlet, and started for Geneva.
The line was advertised to open on the 15th of August; but on the 16th the officials declared that it was not within a month and a half of completion, so that I was compelled to go round by Lyons. I was easily reconciled to this by the opportunity thus afforded of a visit to the ancient city of Vienne, which well repays inspection. Its history is a perfect quarry of renowned names, Roman, Burgundian, and ecclesiastical. Tiberius Gracchus left his mark upon the city, by bridling the Rhône--impatiens pontis--with the earliest bridge in Gaul: and here tradition has it that the great Pompey loved magnificently one of his many loves; while the site of the Prætorium in which Pontius Pilate is said to have given judgment can still be pointed out. The true Mount Pilate lies between Vienne and Lyons, being one of the loftiest northern summits of the Cevennes, on the borders of the Lyonnaise.[[84]] The Romans recognised the fitness of the neighbourhood of Vienne for the cultivation of the grape, and the first vine in Gaul was planted on the Mont d'Or in the second century of the Christian era. In Burgundian times the city held a very prominent place, and became infamous from the frequent shedding of royal blood; so that early historians describe it as 'tousiours fatale à ceux qui vueillent la corone des Bourgougnons,'[[85]] and as 'fatale et de malencõtre aux tyrãs et mauvais princes.'[[86]] Ecclesiastically, its interest dates of course from a very early period, from the times of the martyrs of Gaul and the first Rogations. The Festival of Les Merveilles long commemorated the restoration of the bodily forms of the Lyonnese martyrs, as their scattered dust floated past the home of Blandina and Ponticus; and the dedication of the cathedral to S. Maurice keeps alive the tradition that Paschasius, bishop of Vienne, was warned by an angel to watch on the banks of the Rhône, and so rescued the head and trunk of the soldier-martyr, which had been cast into the river at Agaunum (S. Maurice in Valais), and had floated down--probably on sounder hydrostatical principles than the 'Floating Martyr'--through the Lake of Geneva, and so to Vienne. There are still many very interesting Roman remains in the city, as the Temple of Augusta and Livia, the Arcade of the Forum, and the monument seen from the railway to the south of the town. The temple is being carefully restored, and the large collection of Roman curiosities which it contained is to be removed to the church of S. Peter, now in course of restoration, which will in itself be worth a visit to Vienne when the restoration is completed.[[87]] All the buildings connected with the Great Council in 1311 have disappeared; and the only relic of the council seems to be the Chalice, or, surmounted by the Sacred Host, argent, in the city arms, in remembrance of the institution of the Fête of the S. Corps. If the Emperor would but have the town and its inhabitants deodorised, few places would be better worth visiting than Vienne.
The poste leaves Valence--the home of the White Hermitage--for Die at 2.30 P.M., and professes to reach its destination in six hours; but sad experience showed that it could be unfaithful to the extent of an hour and a half. So long as the daylight lasted, there was no dearth of objects of interest; but when darkness came on, the monotonous roll of the heavy diligence became aggravating in the extreme. The village of Beaumont, once the residence of an important branch of the great Beaumont family,[[88]] retains still its square tower and old gateway; and the remains of a château near Montmeyran, the end of the first stage, mark the scene of the victory of Marius over the Ambrons and Teutons, local antiquaries believing that the name of Montmeyran is from Mons Jovis Mariani.[[89]] The road lies through the bright cool green of wide plantations of the silkworm mulberry,[[90]] with its trim stem and rounded head; and, in the more open parts of the valley, walnut trees of size and shape fit for an ornamental park in England relieve the monotony. The nearer hills are covered to the top with vines, and the higher and more distant ranges have a naked and thoroughly burned appearance, which suggests the idea of volcanoes to a traveller ignorant of volcanic facts. The villages which lie at the foot of these rocky hills are built of stones taken from the beds of the streams, and are so completely of one colour with the background of rock, that in many instances it is difficult to determine whether a distant mass of grey is a village or not. Ruined castles and towers abound; and these, and still more the walls which surround many of the villages, point unmistakeably to times of great disturbance. The valley of the Drôme, up which the road after a time turns, was an important locality in the religious wars; and the town and fort of Crest especially, as its name might suggest, was a famous stronghold, and resisted all the efforts of the Reformed party. In yet earlier times, Simon de Montfort had frequently tried to take it, without success; and four years after S. Bartholomew, Lesdiguières met with a like repulse.[[91]] The same80 story of sieges and battles might be told of almost every village and defile of the valley. Thus, Saillans, the third stage, was taken by the Protestant leader Mirabel, and the Catholic Gordes, in 1574, and its fortifications were razed by the Duc de Mayenne in 1581. Pontaix, again, a remarkable place, with a vaulted street and fortified houses overhanging the river, which here fills up the whole valley and leaves room only for the road and the narrow village-town, was the scene of an obstinate and murderous fight between the Marquis de Gordes on one side, and Lesdiguières and Dupuy-Montbrun on the other, when the latter was captured, and shortly after beheaded at Grenoble.
The town of Die, Dea Vocontiorum, lies in a broad part of the valley. It claims to be not Dea Vocontiorum only, but also Augusta Vocontiorum, thereby apparently defrauding the village of Aouste, near Crest, of the earliest form of its name. Die is possessed of old walls, and has four gates with towers. The great goddess from whose worship it derives its name was Cybele, notwithstanding the vehement assertions of the official in the Poste-bureau in favour of Ceres; and three different Tauroboles have been discovered here, one of which is in excellent repair, and shows a Roman inscription surmounted by three bulls' heads. The ceremony of the Taurobolium was new to me, and appears to have been conducted as follows:--A small cave was hollowed out, with a thin roof formed by the outer surface of the earth; and immediately above this a bull was sacrificed, so that the blood ran through the earth and dropped on to a priest who was placed in full robes in the cave. The priest and the blood-stained garments were thenceforth specially sacred, the garments retaining their sanctity for twenty years. The inscription on the Tauroboles which have been found in and near Die record the names of the priest, the dendrophore, the person who provided the victim, and the emperor for whose safety the sacrifice was offered.
The people of Die have been quarrelsome from the earliest times. A century before the estates of the Dauphins of the Viennois were known as Dauphiné,[[92]] the chronic contests between the Bishops and the Counts of Die had come to such a crisis, that the Dauphin Guiges André intervened, and produced a certain amount of peace; but, twenty years after, the people killed Bishop Humbert before the gate which thence received its name of Porte Rouge. When the Counts of Valentinois had succeeded to the fiefs of the Counts of Die, Gregory X. became so weary of the constant wars, that he suppressed the bishopric, and united it to Valence in 1275; but the canons, who were not suppressed, raised a mercenary army and carried on the struggle. Eventually, the canons and the people made common cause, and joined the Pope during the Seventy Years; but when he left Avignon they came to terms with Charles VI. of France, and so the Diois was united to Dauphiné in 1404. Louis XIV. restored the separate bishopric, but ruined the town by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The large number of mosaics and inscriptions found in Die prove conclusively that in Roman times it was a favourite place of residence; and, so far as situation goes, it is not difficult to understand how this should have been the case. But in the condition in which the town found itself in the pitiless heat of August 1864, the only question for an English visitor was whether he could live through the time it was absolutely necessary to spend there. The poste arrived, as has been said, an hour and a half after its time; and the sole occupant of the coupé, who had lived on fruit and gooseberry syrup, and three penny worth of sweet cake at Crest, since a seven-o'clock breakfast, had wiled away the last hour by inventing choice bills of fare for the meditated supper. When the lumbering vehicle stopped in the main street of Die, which is here something under seven yards wide, an elderly woman stepped out from the dim crowd, with an uncovered tallow candle in her hand, and asked if there was anyone for the hotel. The unwonted 'yes' seemed to create some surprise; but she led the way promptly to her hotel, diplomatically meeting the rapid volley of questions respecting supper with an unpromising silence, and the first sight of the house itself dispelled for ever all hope. An entrance was effected by the kitchen; and not only was there no fire, but there was no light of any description; and the one dip we brought on to the scene betrayed such squalor on all sides, that the suggestion of a salle-à-manger in connection with such a kitchen became at once an impudent mockery. When this farther room was reached, it proved to be even worse than the kitchen. It was shut up for the night--had been shut up apparently for a week--and was in the possession of the cats of the town, and the flies of Egypt. Two monstrous hounds entered with us; and the cats fled hastily by a window which was slightly open at the top, spitting and howling with fear when they missed the first spring, and came within the cognisance of their mortal foes.
The first thing to be done was to wash off some of the accumulated dust; but when I asked for a bedroom for that purpose, I was conducted to a copper in the kitchen, the water in which had been a permanency for some time past, and was told to wash there. As for supper, there was some cold mutton; but the landlady unfortunately opened the door of the cupboard as she said so, and displayed a state of things which decided the point against the mutton. There was nothing else in the house, and there was no fire for cooking anything; but when they discovered that I really would not wait till the next morning, they proposed to light a fire and warm some soup, which I declined to see in its present state. In the way of wine, I had been recommended to make a great point of the clairette de Die, an excellent species of vin mousseux; but the chief of the women rather recommended the ordinary wine of the country, as the monsieur might not like to give a strong price. 'Was it, then, so strong?' 'Yes, the price was undoubtedly strong.' 'How much, then?' 'A franc a bottle.' With an eye to the future bill, the monsieur pretended to ponder awhile, as if in doubt whether his resources could stand such a strain, and then, with a reckless air, decided upon the extravagance. The clairette proved to be quite worthy of the praise which had been bestowed upon it, being a very pleasant and harmless sparkling white wine.[[93]]
The neighbours kept dropping into the kitchen, to see how the landlady got on with the stranger of uncouth speech; and four of the female part of her company brought in at various times to the salle-à-manger some piece of table-furniture, in order to indulge in a closer view than the open door of the room afforded. One of them told me she had seen an Englishman once before, a few months back; but he only had one eye, and she seemed to think I was out of order in possessing two. At length the soup came, and the first attempt upon it proved it to be utterly impossible. The landlady was called in, and this fact was announced to her. 'What to do, then?--it was a good soup, a soup which the people of Die loved,--it was a soup the household eat morning and night.' All the same, it was not a soup the present Englishman could eat, and some other sort of food must be provided, for she declined to furnish soup without garlic and fat. She suggested an omelette; but a natural generalisation from all I had so far seen drew an untempting picture of the probable state of the frying-pan, and I declined to face the idea until I was convinced there was nothing else to be had. But, alas! notwithstanding the righteous indignation with which the landlady met my request that the omelette might not be all fat, the manipulation of the eggs eventuated in a dish even more impracticable than the soup, flooded with unmentionable grease, and so at last the cold mutton became a necessity. To show how hunger may work upon the feelings, I may say that, in spite of the marks of the feet of mice in the cold gravy which remained on the dish, I forced myself to cut off a wedge, and, after removing a thick layer of meat on the exposed sides, essayed to eat the heart of the wedge. The sheep and its progenitors had been fed on garlic from all time, and the mutton had been boiled in a decoction of that noxious herb; and this dish was in its turn rejected like the others. There was nothing for it but salad, and bread, and wine; but when the salad appeared, after a long time had been spent in the kitchen in saturating the withered greens with oil and vitriolic vinegar, there, perched on the top like one of those animals which sometimes spoil one's enjoyment of a strawberry-bed, was a huge onion, with numerous satellites peeping out from under the leaves. About this time, a short diversion was caused by the reappearance of one of the large hounds, whose mind was not at ease as to the completeness of the previous elimination of the cats from the salle-à-manger; and the diabolical noise and scuffle which ensued upon his investigation of a dark corner, showed that his doubts had been well grounded. Then I discovered that there was no butter to be had, and no milk; and when coffee was mentioned, a pan was brought out for making that beverage, which a bullet-maker with any regard for appearances would have declined to use for melting his lead in. Finally, under the pressure of dire hunger, I returned to the mutton, and contrived to swallow a small piece, the taste of which did not leave me for four or five days.
The interior of the house, where the bedrooms were, gave forth an odour which must be familiar to all who have burrowed in out-of-the-way places in France, approaching more nearly, perhaps, to the smell of damp cocks and hens than anything else; and the bedroom door was guarded by a huge mis-shapen dog, which evidently intended to pass the night there, if it could not get into the room itself. The street on to which the window looked was still populous with the inhabitants of Die; and a man with whom I had already had a conversation respecting the glacière, who appeared to perform some of the functions of landlord of the hotel, was audibly engaged in hiring a man to accompany me on the following day. The man whom he was attempting to persuade was evidently of an independent turn of mind, and said that as it would be an affair of fifteen or sixteen hours at least, he would not go through so much unless his proposed comrade were a true bonhomme; a difficulty which the landlord set at rest by asseverations so ready and so circumstantial, that I determined to take everything he might tell me, on any subject, with many grains of allowance.
It was only natural to expect a night of horrors; but in this I was most agreeably disappointed, and the few hours passed quietly enough till it was time to get up. By morning light, the salle-à-manger did so bristle with squalor that the kitchen was made the breakfast-room; though as that meal only lasted two minutes, and meant nothing beyond an attempt to eat some of the bread I had been unable to eat the night before, one place was much the same as another. It is generally believed that coffee is to be obtained in perfection in France; but that belief is not founded on experience of the provinces, and had long ceased to be a part of my creed: nevertheless, with the idea that there is always some redeeming-point in the darkest situation, I had hopes of the coffee of Die, in spite of the appearance of the pan; and if these hopes had been realised, the place might still have been tolerable. But they were not realised. When the landlady was asked for the promised coffee, she brought out a small earthenware pitcher containing a black liquid, and proceeded to bury its lower extremity in the hot embers of the wood fire, by which means the liquid was speedily warmed up, and also thickened with unnecessary ashes. When served--in the same dusty pitcher--it had a green and mouldy taste, combined with a sour bitterness which made it utterly impossible as an article of food, and so the breakfast was confined to the rejected fragments of the loaf of the preceding night.
The guide, or comrade as he preferred to call himself, appeared in good time, and we started about half-past six, under a sun already oppressively hot, and through heavy flaky dust, which made us feel very thankful when our route branched off from the high road. Liotir was strong in mulberry trees and vines, for he was a keeper of silkworms, and a wine-merchant. Silkworms had not been profitable for a year or two, and he was almost in low spirits when he talked of them.[[94]] An epidemic had visited the district, and the worms ate voraciously and refused to spin--a disease which he believed to be beyond the power of medicine.[[95]] As is so often the case with the Frenchman, as compared with the Englishman of corresponding social status, he had his information cut and dried, and poured it out without hesitation. Silkworms' eggs cost 15, 20, or 25 francs an ounce, according to quality; and an ounce of good seed should produce from two to three hundred francs' worth of cocoons. A man who 'makes' an ounce of seed requires six tables, 8 feet by 4, for his cages; and as some men make thirty-five ounces, chambers of great size are necessary for the accommodation of their worms; but breeders to so large an extent as this are the princes of the trade. As we passed a farmhouse surrounded by mulberry trees and vineyards, my companion informed me that the farmer was his partner in worms and wine both, and that the wine promised to be the better speculation this year, for the fruit was in immense abundance. I saw afterwards that, at the time of vintage, grapes sold for pressing at from 6 to 10 francs the hundred kilos, while 12 and 13 francs was the price in 1863, and that in some districts of the Drôme the owners of the presses had not barrels enough for even the first pressing.
The great want of wood on the hills in whose neighbourhood we now found ourselves, attracted attention in the time of Louis XIV., and that sovereign passed severe laws for the protection of the forests that still remained. As usual, the mere severity of the laws made them fail of their object. Banishment and the galleys were the punishment for unauthorised cutting of forest trees, and death if fire were used. There is a paper in the Journal de Physique of 1789,[[96]] on the disappearance of the forests of Dauphiné, pointing out that when the woods are removed from the sides of mountains, the soil soon follows, and the district becomes utterly valueless. The writer traced the mischief to the emancipation of serfs, and the consequent formation of communes, where each man could do that which was right in his own eyes.
At any rate, whatever the reason, nothing can be conceived more bare than the dun-coloured rounded hills between the town of Die and the Col de Vassieux, towards which we were making our way. The whole face of the country had the same parched look, and the soil seemed to be composed entirely of small stones, without any signs of moisture even in the watercourses. The Col de Vassieux is not much more than 4,000 feet high, and forms a saddle between the Pic de S. Genix (5,450 feet) and the But de l'Aiglette (5,200 feet). A new foot-road has been made to the Col, with many windings; and great care has been taken to plant the sides of the hill with oak and hazel; so that already there is some appearance of coppice, and in the course of time there will be shade by the way--a luxury for which we longed in vain. The lower ground was covered with little scrubs of box, and with lavender, dwarfed and dry; but near the summit of the Col the lavender became vigorous and luxuriant, and carpeted the hillside with a rich abundance of blue, tempting us more than once to lie down and roll on the fragrant bed; though some of the older roots were not sufficiently yielding to make that performance as satisfactory as it might have been. This lavender is highly prized by the silkworm-keepers of Die, its bushy heads being almost exclusively used for the worms to spin their cocoons in.
When we reached the top of the Col, Liotir confessed that he did not know which way to turn, and we agreed to follow the path till we should find some one to direct us. There was a farmhouse at no great distance, and thither we bent our steps; but the sole inhabitant could give no assistance, and, in default of information, Liotir generously proposed to treat me to a bottle of wine, over which we might discuss our further proceedings. The state of fever, however, to which the garlic and the dirt of Die had brought me, made it seem impossible to eat or drink anything; so I suggested instead that I should treat him, and that seemed to be rather what he had meant by his proposal. Nothing much came of our discussion, and we marched on hot and faint for an hour more, when a casual man told us that our straight line to the Foire de Fondeurle lay across the plain on our left hand, and up a most objectionable-looking hill beyond, thickly covered with brushwood and showing no signs of a path.
As we crossed the plain, there was still the same total absence of water, and we reached the bottom of the hill in a state of mind and body which rebelled against the exertion of struggling with the sand and shingle and brushwood. Liotir thought it was useless to attempt it with no hope of water, and I held much the same view, only it was impossible really to think of giving it up. When at last we had surmounted all the difficulties which beset us, and stood on the highest point which had so far been in sight, we found ourselves on the edge of a vast plain of parched grass, with nothing to guide us in one direction rather than another. There was no human being in sight, no sign of water, nor any particle of shade; nothing but grass, brown and monotonous, with white cliffs miles away at the extremity of the plain. This was evidently the Foire de Fondeurle, and in it somewhere lay the glacière, if only we could make out in which direction to begin to traverse the plain. In the earlier part of this century, a very famous fair was held on this wild and out-of-the-way table-land, to which many thousands of horses and mules and cattle of various kinds were brought from all quarters; but the fair has fallen off so much, that the man who had turned us up the last hill said there were only fourteen head of cattle in 1863, and very few of those were sold. M. Héricart de Thury describes this plain as lying in the calcareous sub-Alpine range of the south-east of France. The woods here terminate at a height of 5,147 feet above the sea, and the Foire de Fondeurle lies immediately above this point.
At last we made a bold dash across the plain, and after a time came upon some sheep, standing in a thick row, with their heads thrust under a low bank which afforded a little shade; and at no great distance from them sat the shepherd. He was a cripple, and his clothes were something worse than rags. He offered us a portion of the water he had in a detestable-looking skin; but he assured us it was quite warm, and had not been good to begin with, so we did not try it, though we were thirsty enough to have hailed a muddy pool with delight. Our new acquaintance knew nothing of the glacière, but he belonged himself to the Chalêt of Fondeurle, and as that was the only house on the whole plain, he told us to make for it. The surface of the plain seemed to have fallen through in many places, forming larger and smaller pits with steep sides of limestone. These were often of the size of a large field, and, as the deeper of them required circumvention, the shepherd told us that we must follow the line of little cairns which we should find here and there on our way, the only guide across the plain. He could not be sure himself in what direction the châlet lay; but if we kept to a certain tortuous line, we should come to it in time.
The way proved to be so very long, that we doubted whether such a consummation of our wishes would ever arrive: but at length, in a small dip at the farthest extremity of the plain, we saw the châlet, and, what was much more to us, saw a little run of water, carried from the rising ground by wooden pipes. It will be well for any future visitor to the châlet to go very warily, and to intrench himself in a strong position when he sees half-a-dozen huge dogs like black and white bears come out to attack him. Liotir had a stout stick, and I had a formidable ice-axe; and, moreover, we fortunately secured a wall in our rear: but with all this the dogs were nearly too much for us, and Liotir was pressing me earnestly to chop at the ringleader's head, when a man came and called off 'Dragon,' and the others then dispersed. The new-comer wished to know our business, but, without satisfying his curiosity, we rushed to the water-trough, and drank and used in washing an amount of water which he evidently grudged us. Then we were able to tell him that our business was something to eat for Liotir, and a guide to the glacière; though I trembled when I suggested the latter, for, after all our labours, I had a sort of fear that the cave would prove a myth. On this point the man cleared away all doubts at once,--we could certainly have a guide, as the patron would be sure to let one of them go with us. As to food, there was more doubt, for the master was not yet at home, and his wife would not be able to give us an answer without consulting him. The wife confirmed this statement: they saw very few strangers, and did not profess to supply food to people crossing the plain. I assured her that we intended to pay well for anything she could let us have, but she merely rejoined that they did not keep an auberge; however, her husband would be home some time in the course of the afternoon--it was now about half-past twelve--and she could ask his opinion on the subject. But Liotir objected that he was meanwhile dying of hunger, and the monsieur of thirst which only milk or cream could assuage; he suggested that some one should be sent to look for the husband, and obtain his permission for us to be fed. To this she assented, very dubiously, and with a constrained air, as if there were some mysterious reason why the presence of strangers was peculiarly unacceptable on that particular afternoon. At any rate, she said when pressed, she thought there could be no harm in our entering the châlet and sitting down on a bench, where we should be sheltered from the sun.
Here accordingly we sat, more or less patiently, till the master himself appeared. He had no welcome for us; but he was willing that we should eat some of his black bread, and try his wine. Liotir begged for cheese, and the wife was told she might supply cheese of two kinds, and also cream, for the monsieur evidently was malade and could not swallow wine. The cream and the black bread were delicious; but still the horrors of Die hung about me, and I could only dispose of such a small amount, that Liotir waxed funny, and told me it would never do for me to die there, as there was not earth enough to scrape a grave in on the whole plain. Then, being a practical man, he declared he should like to contract for my keep, and thought he could afford to do it at very small cost to me, and still leave a fair margin for himself. He thought it right to make up for my want of appetite; and so, in addition to his own share, he took in an exemplary manner the share of wine which I should have taken, had I been a man like himself. The master of the châlet sat on the family bed, smoking silently and sullenly; and as soon as Liotir had come to an end of his second bottle, he proposed to accompany us himself to the cave, as he doubted whether any of his men knew the way, and he was sure they were all busy. When I came to pay his wife for what we had consumed, I administered thanks as well as money; to which she sternly rejoined, 'Who pays need not give thanks;' and to that surly view she held, in spite of my attempts to soften her down. There was, after all, much force in what she said, under the circumstances. They had given us no welcome, nothing but mere food, and all they expected in return was a due amount of money; thanks were a mockery in their eyes.
The cavern was reached in a few minutes, when once we got away from the châlet. Two large pits, formed apparently by the subsidence of the surface, lay in a line about east and west, and there proved to be an underground communication between them. From this tunnel, as it were, a long low archway led to a broad slope of chaotic blocks of stone, down which we scrambled by the aid of such light as our candles afforded. The roof of this inner cave was horizontal for some distance, and then suddenly descended in a grand wall; and in consequence of a series of such inverted steps, the cave never assumed any great height. The whole length of the slope was 190 feet, and its greatest breadth about 140 feet; but the breadth varied very much. Half-way down the slope the ice commenced, fitfully at first, and afterwards in a tolerably continuous sheet. The most careless explorer could not have failed to notice the polygonal figures stamped upon its surface. They were larger and bolder than any I had seen before; and the prismatic nuts into which the ice broke, when cut with the axe, were of course in proportion larger than in the previous caves. The signs of thaw, too, were unmistakeable. Though the upper surface of the earth had seemed to be utterly devoid of moisture of any kind, large drops fell freely from the roof of the cave,[[97]] and the ice itself was wet. The patron said there was no ice whatever in the winter months, and that from June to September was the time at which alone it could be found. He declined to explain how it was that we found it so evidently in a state of general thaw in the very height of its season. To give us some idea of the climate of the plain in winter, he informed us that the snow lay for long up to the top of the door of his châlet.
There were in all four columns of ice in the cave, only two of which were of any considerable size. One of these was peculiarly striking from the very large grain which its structure displayed; it measured 19 feet across the base, being flat towards the extremity of the cave, and round towards the entrance. Three thermometers in various parts of the glacière gave all the same temperature, namely, a fraction under 33° F.: a rough French thermometer gave 1/2° C. The extreme wall of the cavern was completely covered by a layer of stalagmitic material, and some of the forms the substance assumed were sufficiently striking. In contact with the wall, though standing clear of it in parts where the wall fell inwards, stood a thick round column of the same material, shaped like the ordinary ice-columns of the glacières, with a cavity near the base, and in all ways following the usual laws of such columns. Considering that I had observed a layer of limestone-paste collecting on one of the ice-columns of the Glacière of La Genollière, I could not help imagining that this stalagmitic column had been originally moulded on a norm of that description. It had a girth of 12 feet in the part where we were able to pass the tape round it. Its surface was smooth; but when we drove a hole through this, with much damage to the pic of my axe, we found that the interior was in a crystalline form.
There was, on the whole, very little to be seen in the glacière. Had it been my first experience of an ice-cave, it would doubtless have seemed very remarkable, as it did to Liotir, who, by the way, had steadily disbelieved the possibility of natural ice in summer except in the glaciers; but as I had now seen so many, several of them much more wonderful than this, I did not care to stay longer than was absolutely necessary for measurements and investigation. Besides, the food of Dauphiné rather takes the energy and love of adventure out of an unaccustomed visitor.
Without long delay, then, we bade farewell to the patron, not returning to the inhospitable châlet, and started on our way for Die, each carrying a large block of ice slung in a network of string. Liotir's purpose was to convince some mysterious female friend that he really had seen ice in summer, within five or six hours of Die; and mine, to apply the ice to the butter which I had specially ordered the landlady to have ready for me, that so I might be able to get through the night, and leave Die by the diligence the first thing next morning. It was remarkable how well the ice bore the great heat. For long the bulk of the masses we carried seemed scarcely to diminish; and if it had not been for a course of heavy falls as we descended through the brushwood, we should have succeeded in getting a large proportion of it safely to Die. The precision of the prismatic structure also showed itself in a very marked manner; and when we came to a crisis of thirst, which happened at shorter and shorter intervals as the afternoon wore on, we separated the prisms with our fingers from the edges of the ice without any difficulty, and made ourselves more hot and thirsty by eating them.
When we arrived at the farmhouse at the Col de Vassieux, we reaped full benefit from our ice. The wine, which had been hot and heavy and unpalatable in the morning, when we had tried it unmixed, became delightfully refreshing when disguised with an abundance of water and sugar and ice; and Liotir found that contracting for my keep at a low rate would not, after all, secure him the comfortable income he had before calculated. After this refreshment, he became communicative, and told me he had served seven years in the French army, three of which were spent in working on railways. He had fought the Italian campaign, and was full of details of the battle of Solferino, on which occasion his bataillon was led on by the Emperor in person. According to his account, four bataillons were drawn up for the assault of a tower, and when the first advanced it was swept away to a man. The second met with a like fate, and Liotir was in the third. His officers had all been killed, and a corporal was in command. The Emperor rode up and called to them to advance as far as he advanced. This was about a hundred yards; and then, after halting them for a moment, the Emperor cried, 'Allez, mes enfants! nous ne sommes pas tous perdus!' sending the fourth bataillon close upon their heels. In answer to my question, Liotir said, slowly and solemnly, that he did not think the Emperor was under fire; a few dropping shots reached them while he was yet addressing them, but he believed the Emperor Napoleon was not in the fire at Solferino. I took the opportunity of asking whether he was green on that occasion, as Mr. Kinglake believes that he is in times of personal danger; but my companion utterly scouted the idea, and declared that he saw no man through all that day so cool and capable as the Emperor. Pale he undoubtedly was, but that was his habit. Like all other French soldiers with whom I have had much conversation, Liotir complained of the army arrangements in the matter of food; on all other points he was most amiable, but when he spoke of the extortions of the cantinière he completely lost his temper. At a café, the soldiers could get their cup for 15 centimes, or 20 with liqueur; whereas the cantinière charged a franc, and gave them very bad coffee. Wine, too, which would cost them 60 centimes the kilo in the town, was valued at 2 francs by their grasping enemy. He had an idea that English soldiers are allowed to take their whole pay in money, and spend it as they will; whereas the French foot-soldier, according to his account, gets 25 centimes a day in money, and has everything found except coffee. A young trooper at Besançon was very eloquent on this subject. He represented himself as a man of small appetite and a gay spirit; he could well live on very little solid food, and yet he had as much deducted from his pay on that account as anyone in the army--as much, for instance, he groaned, as a certain stout old warrior who was then reposing on a corn-bin. If he could have drawn all his pay in money, and lived on almost nothing for food, he would have had abundance of sous for cards and tobacco; and what a career would that be!
The blocks of ice were by this time becoming rather small; and as we had now once more reached the region of lavender, we cut a large quantity and wrapped the ice in it, and thus protected it from further thaw. For some time before arriving at the farm where my companion's partner lived, he indulged in praises of the wine which their vineyard produced, and assurances of the safety with which it would perform a journey to England. He urged its excellent bouquet, and gave me a card of prices which certainly seemed marvellously reasonable. Finally, he proposed to join me at a bottle of white muscat, from the farmer's cave, in order that I might have an opportunity of seeing how true was his account of the wine. We seated ourselves accordingly in the farmyard, and drank a bottle of delightful wine at 65 centimes the bottle, clear and sparkling, and with a strong muscat flavour. Liotir combined with it intoxication of a different kind, and showed unmistakeable signs of his determination to take another member of the farmer's household into partnership,--the mysterious friend, in fact, for whose astonishment the ice was intended. The white muscat, they told me, would not keep over the year; but they had a wine at the same price which they highly recommended, and warranted to keep for a considerable number of years. Liotir was very anxious that we should have a bottle of this, for he was confident that I should give them an order if I once tasted it; but we had been in at the death of so many bottles that day, that I declined to try the muscat rosat. I have since had a hundred litres sent over by Liotir, and find it very satisfactory. It has a rich, clear, port-wine colour, sparkling, and with the true frontignac flavour.
The effect of the wine on Liotir was peculiar. In the earlier part of the walk, he had never seen Algeria; but after half a bottle of muscat, he had spent six months in that country, and he enlivened the remainder of the way with many details of his experiences there. We reached Die about half-past seven, and the arrival of real ice was hailed as a marvel. Although I had been sent off so unhesitatingly by the landlord in the morning, it seemed that they none of them knew what a glacière meant. They had determined that we should never reach the Foire de Fondeurle, and that if we did, we should find nothing there to repay our toil. As I sat at an open window afterwards, Liotir's voice was to be heard holding forth in a neighbouring café upon the wonders of the day; and among the crowd which is a normal condition of the evening streets of Die, the words Fondeurle, Vassieux, Anglais, glace, &c., showed what the general subject of conversation was.
The landlady had obeyed orders, and was provided with butter and bread. The tea was served in an open earthenware pitcher, with the spout at right angles with the handle. There was no cup; but the woman remarked that if monsieur was particular about that, he could turn out the sugar and use the basin, which he did. The milk had a basin to itself; but it had offered so large and tempting a surface to the flies of the town, that it remained untouched. The knife and spoon were imbued with ineradicable garlic, and my own trusty clasp-knife was the only weapon I could use for all table purposes. If it had not been for the ice and the lavender, I think I should never have got away from Die. The former made it possible to eat some bread-and-butter; and of the latter I made a sort of respirator for nose and mouth, which modified the odour of cocks and hens prevailing in the house.
Next morning the diligence was to start early, and, in preparation for the six hours' drive, I ordered two eggs to be boiled for breakfast. As the first proved to have been boiled in tepid water, I requested the landlady to boil the second afresh, which she did in a manner that may partly account for the observed fact that the very eggs of some towns taste of garlic. There was household soup simmering on the fire, reeking with onion and garlic, and many other abominations; and, as if it was quite the right and usual thing to do, she slipped the unfortunate egg into this, and left it there to be cooked. After all, garlic must be cheap as an article of food, for the whole bill amounted only to 7-1/2 francs.
This was the last glacière on my list. It was quite as well that such was the case; for the trials of Dauphiné had been too great, and I should scarcely have been inclined to face further adventures of a like kind.