Never shall I forget the amazement of my host.
'To make a round-about journey like that by rail, when you have your own carriage and horses!' he cried. 'Are you mad? Are you a millionaire,' his face said, 'to pay eighty francs for one day's drive? And the weather—the rain? you have glass windows; you can shut yourselves in; you won't take any harm.'
Say what I would, I could not convince him that it was wiser to forfeit sixty francs than drive across the Lozère in a storm of wind and rain, with the thermometer rapidly falling to freezing-point.
CHAPTER V.
RODEZ AND AURILLAC.
To travel from St. Chély d'Apcher to Rodez is like descending a snow-capped Alpine peak for the flowery, sunbright valley below. Instead of the stern grandeur of the Lozère, frowning peaks, sombre pine-forests, vast stony deserts and wintry blasts, we glide swiftly into a balmy region of golden vineyards, rich chestnut woods, softly murmuring streams, and the temperature of July. The transformation is magical. It is like closing a volume of Ossian and opening the pages of Theocritus.
We had spent our morning indoors at St. Chély, cloaked and shawled over a blazing wood fire, quitting at one o'clock p.m. ice-cold rain, biting winds, and a gloomy sky. By sundown we had reached the chef-lieu of the Aveyron; we were in the South indeed! The scenery during the latter part of the way is beautiful and exhilarating, every feature showing the ripest, most brilliant tints—hills clothed with the yellowing chestnut, soil of deep purplish red, the bright gold foliage of the vine, and between spring-like greenery and azure sky, close to the railway, the crystal-clear Aveyron.
And here all is new and fresh; no familiar tourist element enters into the day's experience. As our train stops at one picturesque village after another, we see young soldiers, réservistes, alight, returning home after the twenty-eight days' service, nuns, curés, village folks, family groups, not an English traveller but myself.
Rodez is superbly situated on a lofty, sunny plateau, surrounded by hills and far mountain chains; but between these and the city, which is almost encircled by the Aveyron, lies a broad belt of fertile country, the soil of a deep claret colour.