Clermont.
As it had been arranged that I should take an hour's start with my cabriolet, and bespeak horses for my companions as I went on, I set off for Clermont early.
As you advance through the Bourbonnais, towards the south, the country warms upon you: warms in its sunny climate, and in the glowing colours of its landscape. Not but that France is smiling enough, even in the north: Witness Normandy, that chosen land of green meadow, rich glebe, stately forests, and winding streams: nor that even in Champagne, where the eye stretches over endless plains, towards the Germanic frontier, there are not rich valleys, and deep woodlands, and sunny glades. Do not quarrel with the chalky ground of the Champenois—remember its wine—think of the imprisoned spirit of the land, that quintessence of all that is French—give it due vent; 'twill reward you for your pains. Oh! certes, France is a gay and a pleasing land. My fastidious and gloomy countrymen may say what they please, and may talk of the beauties of England till they are hoarse again; but there is not less natural beauty in Gaul than in Britain. Take all the broad tracts from London to York, or from Paris to Lyons, France has nothing to dread from the comparison. But, in the Bourbonnais, flat and open as it is, the scene begins to change. The sun shines more genially, more constantly; he shines in good earnest; and your rheumatic pains, if you have any still creeping about your bones, ooze out at every pore, and bid you a long adieu. That grey, cold haze of the north, which dims the horizon in the distant prospect, here becomes warmed into a purpler, pinker tint, borrowed from the Italian side of the Alps: the perpetual brown of the northern soil here puts on an orange tinge: above, the sky is more blue; and around, the passing breeze woos you more lovingly. Come hither, poor, trembling invalid! throw off those blankets and those swathing bandages; trust yourself to the sun, to the land, to the waters of the Bourbonnais; and renovated health, lighter spirits, pleasant days and happy nights, shall be your reward.
How can it be, that in a country where nature is so genially disposed towards the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms of her wide empire, she should have played the niggard so churlishly when she peopled it with human beings? The men of the Bourbonnais are short and ordinary of appearance, remarkable more for the absence than for the presence of physical advantages, and the women are the ugliest in France!—mean and uninviting in person, and repulsive in dress! They are only to be surpassed in this unenviable distinction by those of Auvergne. Taking the two populations together, or rather considering them as one, which no doubt they originally were, they are at the bottom of the physiological scale of this country. Some think them to be the descendants of an ancient tribe that never lost their footing in this centre of the land, when the Gauls drove out their Iberian predecessors. They certainly are not Gauls, nor are they Celts; still less are they Romans or Germans. Are they then autochthonous, like the Athenians? or are they merely the offscourings, the rejected of other populations? Decide about it, ye that are learned in the ethnographic distinctions of our race—but heaven defend us from the Bourbonnaises!
See how those distant peaks rise serenely over the southern horizon!—is it that we have turned towards Helvetia?—for there is snow on the tops of some, and many are there towering in solitary majesty. No, they are the goal of our pilgrimage; they are the ridges of the Monts Dor—the Puys and the extinct volcanoes of ancient France. Look at the Puy de Dôme, that grand and towering peak: what is our friend Ben Nevis to this his Gallic brother, who out-tops him by a thousand feet! And again, look at Mont Dor behind, that hoary giant, as much loftier than the Puy de Dôme as this is than the monarch of the Scottish Highlands! We are coming to the land of real mountains now. Why, that long and comparatively low table-land of granite, from whence they all protrude, and on which they sit as a conclave of gods, is itself higher than the most of the hills of our father-land. These hills, if we have to mount them, shall sorely try the thews of horse and man.
There is something soothing, and yet cheering, in the southern sky, which tells upon the spirits, and consoles the weary heart. Just where the yellow streaks of this low white horizon tell of the intensity of the god of day, come the blue serrated ridges of those mountains across the sight. If I could fly, I would away to those realms of light and warmth—far, far away in the southern clime, where the wants of the body should be few, and where the vigour of life should be great. The glorious south is, like the joyous time of youth, full of hope and promise: all is sunny and bright: there, flowers bloom and birds sing merrily. Turn we our backs to the cold gloomy north, to the wet windy west, to the dry parching east—on to the south!
But what a magnificent plain is this we are entering upon: it is of immense extent. Those distant hills are at least fifty miles from us; and across it, from Auvergne to Le Forez, cannot be less than twenty; and, in the midst, what a gorgeous show of harvests, and gardens, and walnut groves, and all the luxuriance of the continental Flora. This is the Limagne, the garden of France—the choicest spot of the whole country for varied fertility and inexhaustible productiveness. Ages back—let musty geologists tell us how long ago—'twas a lake, larger than the Lake of Geneva. The volcanic eruptions of the mountains on the west broke down its barriers, and let its waters flow. Now the Allier divides it; and the astonished cultivator digs into virgin strata of fertile loams, the lowest depths of which have never yet been revealed. Corn fields here are not the wide and open inclosures such as we know them in the north and west, where every thing is removed that can hinder a stray sunbeam from shining on the grain: here they are thickly studded with trees—majestic, wide-spread, fruit-laden, walnut-trees; where the corn waves luxuriantly beneath its thickest shade, and closes thickly round its stem. Bread from the grain below, and oil from the kernel above; wine from the hills all around, and honied fruits from many a well-stocked garden; such are the abundant and easily reared produce of this land of promise. A Caledonian farmer, put down suddenly in the Limagne, would think himself in fairy regions; so kindly do all things come in it, so pure and excellent of their sort—in such variety, in such never-failing succession. Purple mountains, red plains, dark green woods, and a sky of pure azure—such is the combination of colours that meets the eye on first coming into Auvergne.
And yet man thrives not much in it; he remains a stunted half-civilized animal—with his black shaggy locks, his brown jacket, red sash, and enormous round beaver; ox-goad in hand, and knife ready to his grip, his appearance accords but ill with the luxuriant beauty of the scene in which he dwells. His diminutive but hardy companion—she who shares his toils in the fields, and serves as his equal if not his better half—is well suited to his purpose, and resembles him in her looks. Here, she can climb the mountain-side as nimbly as her master; here, she can drive the cattle to their far-distant pastures with courage and skill; here, she mounts the hot little mountain-steed, not in female fashion, but with a true masculine stride; laborious and long-enduring, simple, honest, and easily contented; but withal easily provoked, and hard to be appeased without blood; such is the Auvergnat, and his wife.
Riom seemed a picturesque town when we drove through it; but our eyes could not bear to be diverted from the magnificent scenery that kept rising upon us from the south. We had now approached closely to the foot of the mountain-ranges, and their lofty summits were high above us in mid-air. On the right, the Puy de Dôme, cut in half by a line of motionless clouds, reared itself into the blue sky like some gigantic balloon, so round was its summit—so isolated. The granite plateau which constituted its base, was broken into deep and well-wooded ravines; while at intervals there ran out into the Limagne, for many a league, some extended promontory of land, capped all along by a flood of crystallized basalt, which once had flowed in liquid fire from the crater in the ridge. Here and there rose from the plain a small conical hill, crowned with a black mass of basaltic columns, and there again topped with an antique-looking little town or fortress, stationed there, perhaps, from the days of Cæsar. In front stood Gergovia, where Roman and Gallic blood once flowed at the bidding of that great master of war, freely as a mountain torrent; now only a black plain, where the plough is stopped in each furrow by bricks and broken pots, and rusted arms,—tokens of the site of the ancient city.
On turning short round a steeply sloping hill, crowned with a goodly château, and clad on its sides with vines and all kinds of fruit-trees, we saw a deep vale running up into the mountains towards the west, and Clermont covering an eminence in the very midst. What a picturesque outline! How closely the houses stand together—how agreeably do they mix with the trees of the promenades; and how boldly the cathedral comes out from amongst them all! It is a lofty and richly-decorated pile of the fourteenth century; and tells of the labours and the wealth of a foreign land. Anglo-Norman skill and gold are said to have formed it; but however this may be, we know that it witnessed the presence of our gallant Black Prince, and that it once depended on Aquitaine, not on France. Yet what fancy can have possessed its builder to have constructed it of black stone? Why not have sought out the pure white lime-rocks of the flat country, or the grey granite of the hills? This is the deep lava of the neighbouring volcanic quarry; here basalt, and pumice, and cinder, and scoriæ, are pressed into the service of the architect; and there stands a proof of the goodness of the material—hard, sharp, and sonorous, as when the hammer first clinked against its edge five centuries ago.
"Entrons, Monsieur," said the fair Marquise, as I stood with her on the esplanade before the Cathedral—the Marquis had gone to see the commandant. "Entrez donc, 'tis the work of one of your compatriots; and here, though a heretic, you may consider yourself on English ground."
Now, positively, I had never thought a bit about Catholic or Protestant ever since I had quitted my own shores. All I knew was, that I was in a country that gave the same evidences of being Christian as the one that I had left; and that, however frivolous and profligate might be the appearance of its capital, in the rural districts, at least, the people were honest and devout. I was not come to quarrel, nor to find fault with millions of men for thinking differently from—but perhaps acting better than—myself. So we entered.
The old keeper of the benitier bowed his head, and extended his brush; the Marquise touched its extremity, crossed herself, and fell on her knees.
Thou fell spirit of pride, prejudice, ignorance, and mauvaise honte! why didst thou beset me at that moment, and keep me, like a stiff-backed puritan, erect in the house of God? Why, on entering within its sacred limits, did I not acknowledge my own unworthiness to come in, and reverence the sanctity of the place? No; there I stood, half-astonished, half-abashed while the Marquise continued on her knees and made her silent orisons. 'Tis an admirable and a touching custom: there is poetry and religion in the very idea. Cross not that threshold with unholy feet; or if thou dost, confess that unholiness, and beg forgiveness for the transgression ere thou advancest within the walls. I acknowledge that I felt ashamed of myself; yet I knew not what to do. One of the priests passed by: he looked first at the lady and next at me; then humbly bowing towards the altar, went out of the church. My embarrassment increased; but the Marquise arose. "It is good to pray here," she said, in a tone the mildness and sincerity of which made the reproach more cutting. "Let us go forward now."
"I will amend my manners," thought I; "'tis not well to be unconcerned in such things, and when so little makes all the difference."
"Is Monsieur fond of pictures? Look at that painting of the Baptist, how vigorously the figure is drawn! And see what an exquisite Virgin! Or turn your eyes to that southern window, and remark the flood of gorgeous light falling from it on the pillar by its side!"
I was thinking of any thing but the Virgin, or the window, or the light; I was thinking of my companion—so fair, and so devout. Had she not called me a heretic? Had she not already put me to the blush for my lack of veneration? Strange linking of ideas! "Thou art worthy to be an angel hereafter," said I to myself, "as truly thou resemblest what we call angels here."
We were once more at the western door; Madame crossed herself again; we went out.
"Pour l'amour de Dieu, mon bon monsieur!" "Que le ciel vous soit ouvert!" whined out half-a-dozen old crones with extended hands; their shrivelled fingers seeking to pluck at any thing they could get.
Now I had paid away my last sous to the garçon d'écurie at the Poste: so I told them pettishly that I had not a liard to give. A coin tinkled on the ground; it had fallen from the hand of the Marquise; and as I stooped to reach it for her, I saw that it was gold.
"Let them have it, poor things. I thought it was silver; but it has touched holy ground, and 'tis now their own."
I turned round, thrust my purse into the lap of the nearest, and with a light heart led the lady back to the hotel.