Valence has been always a place of culture and educational activity. It was capital of Segalauni before the Romans came, and there was a celebrated school there, even then. This information also came from the guidebook, and it surprised me. It was the first time I had heard that the Segalaunians had a school prior to the Roman conquest. It was also the first time I had heard of the Segalaunians. I thought they were all Gauls and Goths and Vandals up that way, and that their education consisted in learning how to throw a spear convincingly, or to divert one with a rawhide buckler. Now I discovered they had a college before the Romans conquered them. One can hardly blame them for descending upon those Romans later, with fire and sword. Valence shared the usual fate. It was ravished by the so-called barbarians, and later hacked to pieces by Christian kings. To-day again it is a fair city, with parks, wide boulevards, and imposing monuments.
Chapter XIV
INTO THE HILLS
Turning eastward from Valence, we headed directly for the mountains and entered a land with all the wealth of increase we had found in Provence, and with even more of picturesqueness. The road was still perfect—hard and straight, with an upward incline, but with a grade so gradual and perfect as to be barely noticeable. Indeed, there were times when we seemed actually to be descending, even when the evidence of gravity told us that we were climbing; that is to say, we met water coming toward us—water flowing by the roadside—and more than once Narcissa and I agreed that the said water was running uphill, which was not likely—not in France. Of course, in England, where they turn to the left, it might be expected. The village did not seem quite like those along the Rhone. The streets were as narrow, the people as mildly interested in us, but, on the whole, we thought the general aspect was less ancient, possibly less clean.
But they were interesting. Once we saw a man beating a drum, stopping on every corner to collect a little crowd and read some sort of proclamation, and once by the roadside we met a little negro child in a straw hat and a bright dress, a very bit of the American South. Everywhere were pretty gardens, along the walls gay flowers, and always the valleys were rich in orchard and vineyard, plumed with tall poplars, divided by bright rivers, and glorified with hazy September sunlight.
We grew friendly with the mountains in the course of the afternoon, then intimate. They sprang up before us and behind us; just across the valleys they towered into the sky. Indeed, we suddenly had a most dramatic proof that we were climbing one. We had been shut in by wooded roads and sheltered farmsteads for an hour or two when we came out again into the open valley, with the river flowing through. But we were no longer in the valley! Surprise of surprises! we were on a narrow, lofty road hundreds of feet above it, skirting the mountainside! It seemed incredible that our gradual, almost imperceptible, ascent had brought us to that high perch, overlooking this marvelous Vale of Cashmere. Everyone has two countries, it is said; his own and France. One could understand that saying here, and why the French are not an emigrating race. We stopped to gaze our fill, and as we went along, the scenery attracted my attention so much that more than once I nearly drove off into it. We were so engrossed by the picture that we took the wrong road and went at least ten miles out of our way to get to Grenoble. But it did not matter; we saw startlingly steep mountainsides that otherwise we might not have seen, and dashing streams, and at the end we had a wild and glorious coast of five or six miles from our mountain fastness down into the valley of the Isère, a regular toboggan streak, both horns going, nerves taut, teeth set, probable disaster waiting at every turn. We had never done such a thing before, and promised ourselves not to do it again. One such thrill was worth while, perhaps, but the ordinary lifetime might not outlast another.
Down in that evening valley we were in a wonderland. Granite walls rose perpendicularly on our left; cottages nestled in gardens at our right—bloom, foliage, fragrance, the flowing Isère. Surely this was the happy valley, the land of peace and plenty, shut in by these lofty heights from all the troubling of the world. Even the towers and spires of a city that presently began to rise ahead of us did not disturb us. In the evening light they were not real, and when we had entered the gates of ancient Gratianopolis, and crossed the Isère by one of its several bridges, it seemed that this modern Grenoble was not quite a city of the eager world.
The hotel we selected from the red-book was on the outskirts, and we had to draw pretty heavily on our French to find it; but it was worth while, for it was set in a wide garden, and from every window commanded the Alps. We realized now that they were the Alps, the Alps of the Savoy, their high green slopes so near that we could hear the tinkle of the goat bells.
We did not take the long drive through the "impossibly beautiful" valleys of Grenoble which we had planned for next morning. When we arose the air was no longer full of stillness and sunlight. In fact, it was beginning to rain. So we stayed in, and by and by for luncheon had all the good French things, ending with fresh strawberries, great bowls of them—in September—and apparently no novelty in this happy valley of the Isère. All the afternoon, too, it rained, and some noisy French youngsters raced up and down the lower rooms and halls, producing a homelike atmosphere, while we gathered about the tables to study the French papers and magazines.