I.
There will, of course, be differences of opinion as to which is the town most worthy of this description; but there is surely no better judge than Mr. Joseph Pennell, who has seen every place of any historic or natural attraction on the Continent, and whose taste for the picturesque none will call in question. He is the author of the phrase that heads this chapter, as applied to the little-known town of Le Puy, "chief place" of the Department of Haute Loire in the south of France. It is one of the few towns that have more than justified the mental pictures I had formed of them before seeing the real thing. But Le Puy is not only the most conceivably picturesque of towns; it is deeply interesting in its character and history, no less than in its appearance.
With the exception of Mr. Pennell, and among a circle of people who have travelled much in France, I have met none who have ever visited Le Puy. A young English governess to whom I spoke at a little Protestant temple in the town had been staying there for close upon a year, and had not met a single English visitor; so it would appear one has an opportunity here to write of a place that is still untrampled by the tourist hordes that devastate fair Normandy.
There are many and excellent reasons why few English or American tourists make their way to this quaint and beautiful town of the French highlands. It lies 352 miles by rail from Paris, and can only be reached by a fatiguing journey in trains that seem to be playing at railways, and have no serious intention of arriving anywhere. A good idea of the roundabout railway service will be gathered from the fact that the actual distance of the town from Paris is nearly 100 miles less than the length of the railway journey. It can be reached by leaving the Mediterranean line at Lyons and continuing for the best part of a day on tiresome local trains; or via Orleans and Clermont Ferrand, which would surely require the best part of two days. It was by the latter route, and in easy stages, that I first arrived there in the early evening of a grey June day four years ago.
Between Clermont Ferrand and Le Puy the railway traverses some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe, but nothing that one sees on the way prepares one for the sensation of the first glimpse of this wonderful mountain-town. The train has been steadily puffing its slow way by green valleys and pine-clad hills, across gorges as deep as the deepest in Switzerland, and past little red-roofed hamlets for hours, when suddenly, as it seems, a great peak thrusts itself heavenward, carrying on its back a mass of tiny buildings, and on the top of all an immense statue of the Virgin. Then another seems to spring up from the valley, holding a church upon its head, and the whole country now, as far as eye can reach, is studded with great conical hills thrown up in some far-off and awful boiling of earth. Curiously, the train seems turning tail on this wonderful scene, and one by one the different objects that had suddenly attracted our attention are lost to view, while we pursue a circuitous route, which in a quarter of an hour brings them all into view again, and presently we have arrived at the station of Le Puy, by the side of the little river Dolezon, between which and the broader Borne extends the hill whereon the town is built.