XXII.
Florac is a small town of white houses, cuddled between the eastern front of the Causse Méjan and the western foothills of the Cevennes, with the river Tarnon, joined by the Mimente to the south, running northward on its outskirts. There are only two thousand inhabitants, but the number and excellence of Florac's hotels are accounted for by its being an important centre for tourists visiting the gorges of the Tarn, which, totally unknown to the outer world at the time of Stevenson's journey, are now admitted to possess the finest scenery in Europe. Our French guide-book frankly stated that Florac is a place "of few attractions," but R. L. S. makes the most of these in a sentence or two, describing the town as possessing "an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill." The old castle is quite without interest, and is indeed the local prison, while the alley of planes, called the Esplanade, is a dusty open space, with many cafés lining it, and the grey, featureless Protestant Temple at its southern end.
"It is notable, besides," he adds, "for handsome women, and as one of two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards." I do not recall having noticed an unusual number of handsome women, though the wife of the Free Church minister was quite the prettiest French woman we saw in the Cevennes, and the Established Church pastor's wife perhaps the most cultured. R. L. S. found the townsfolk anxious to talk of the part played by Florac in the days of the Camisards, and was delighted to see Catholic and Protestant living together in peace and amity. But it may be that the conspicuous absence of all windows from the lower parts of the Protestant churches is a memorial of times when the adherents of the reformed religion were subjected to the prying eyes and perchance the more dangerous attentions of the Catholics without. Most of the public officials were named to us as Protestants, and the religious differences are as strongly marked between the two sects of the latter as between them and their townsmen of the Roman communion. The larger and State-supported church is Rationalistic, corresponding to our Unitarian, and the smaller a Free Church, with a symbol of the open Bible above its doorway.
In what we might call the Free Manse, really an extension of the church for the housing of the minister, a door communicating between the place of worship and the domestic apartments, we found M. Illaire and his wife at play with their children—homely folk, who gave us a cordial welcome, the heartier for the fact that Mme. Illaire had stayed for a year in that "quaint, grey-castled city, where the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat"—Stevenson's own romantic birth-town. She could thus speak our native tongue, and my companion, for once in a way, needed none of my interpreting. M. Illaire, an essential Frenchman, swarthy of features, slight of build, voluble and gesticulative, discoursed with shining eyes of Protestantism, but was something of a pessimist, and seemed to think that at best a cold, bloodless Dieism would rule the intellectual France of the future. I gathered that, as in the old days of enmity between the Established and Free kirks of Scotland, there was no traffic between the two Protestant churches in Florac, for Mme. Illaire confessed that she had never seen the inside of the Temple, which we had thoroughly inspected earlier in the afternoon, receiving the key from the pastor's wife, whose husband unfortunately was absent on a visit to Montpellier.
FLORAC
"On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac. It is notable as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards."—R. L. S.