Our rooms are so spacious, well-furnished, and clean that once more we regret we cannot stay for weeks. Such quarters might indeed tempt many a tourist to idle away a month here. The people are well-mannered, affable, and strikingly handsome; and if the town requires an advanced ædileship, no one need see much of it. Abundance of excursions are to be made from Mende, and the prices of hotels are very moderate.
At Millau we saw a drunken man, and in the streets of Mende one old woman came up to us begging an alms. I note these facts as we have so rarely encountered either drunkards or mendicants on our way.
Strangers might naturally expect a somewhat low standard of morality in a department so isolated from the great French highways and social centres as that of the Lozère. The railway to Mende, as I have before mentioned, dates from a few years only; up till that time the little bishopric in the mountains would often be completely shut off from the outer world by the snow, the only link being the telegraphic wire. Nevertheless, an exceptional freedom from crime distinguishes the country, as may be gathered from the following statement in a French newspaper, dated August 29th, 1888.
'The opening of the assizes of the Lozère, which should have taken place on the 3rd of September, will now be unnecessary, the list of cases being nil.' What are called 'white sessions' (assises blanches), for the matter of that, are of no infrequent occurrence in the department of the Lozère, eminently an honest one. This is the second time that 'white sessions' have distinguished it during the present year.
As the Lozère is essentially a region of peasant owners, far from the richest of their class, I commend the fact to the opponents of peasant property—albeit, I know too well, to small purpose. The people have no right to the soil in the eyes of these political economists. Whether the possession of the soil makes them better or happier is wholly beside the question. Just as the great autocrat Louis XIV, after very serious reflection on the matter, came to the solemn conclusion that his subjects had no right to any property whatever, and that the sovereign was the divinely-ordained owner of everything supposed to belong to them, so certain writers believe that, according to some direct Providential arrangement—a second choosing of a special people—not a Canaan alone, but every inch of Mother Earth, is the heaven-sent heritage of the superior few.
CHAPTER VIII.
FROM MENDE TO ST. ÉNIMIE.
So, just upon twelve months later, I once more found myself climbing to the summit of the lofty plateau between Mende and St. Énimie.
It was a fortnight earlier in the year, and the weather was perfect; light clouds that had threatened rain cleared off, mild sunshine brightened the scene, and the air, although brisk and invigorating, was by no means cold. Still more enticing now looked the billowy swell of gold and purple mountains, and the dark cliffs frowning over green valleys. To-day, too, the exhilarating conviction of fulfilment was added to that of looking forward. A second time I had reached the threshold of the long-dreamed-of region of marvels, at last really to cross it and enter in.