For more than two centuries Villeneuvette has been in private hands. It had failed to be a success financially in 1703, and was disposed of to M. Castamé-d'Aurac, who built the church. A century later, in 1803, it became the property of the family of Maistre, and it has remained in the same hands ever since.
It now turns out exclusively cloth for the army and uniforms for colleges and railway officials. Long stretches of dark blue and crimson cloth are seen in the meadows outside the walls, destined to be cut into the jackets and breeches of the military. Villeneuvette has retained much of its curious patriarchal organisation. There is no village outside the embattled walls; of the ninety-eight cottages all are given rent free to the artisans, and nothing more is exacted of them save respect for rules of decency and cleanliness. Here no slops may be thrown out of the windows, nor may birds' nests be molested. These restrictions have been indignantly protested against by the Radicals, who charge the organisation of the little community with being bound down by the chains of feudalism. Where is liberty if a householder may not throw his slops down on the head of any one passing in the street? Where is equality if the urchins of Clermont may rob robins' nests and not those of Villeneuvette? Where is fraternity if the artisans may not get fuddled together and roar and riot in drunken bands?
The road ascends the valley of the Dourbie, but to reach Mourèze it makes a circuit round the conical mountain, Le Puy de Bissou, on the summit of which is a chapel where once lived a hermit, but to which no pilgrimages are now made. A bridge has been thrown over the river, and a new road has been begun which will give speedier access by carriage to Mourèze, but which can now only be traced on foot. The sparkling stream slides over contorted slate rocks, and trout dart through the pools. The hillsides are covered with pale grey flowered heath and the stunted kermes-oak with its glistening leaves. This, the Quercus coccifera, never grows higher than five feet, the garus it is that gives its name to the garigues, the desolate regions of limestone on which nothing else will grow. On its leaves feeds the kermes insect, round as a ball, and formerly supposed to be the fruit growing out of the rib of the leaf as does the berry of the butchers' broom. It produces a red dye, less brilliant than cochineal, and some of the Oriental reds are produced from it. The dye of the kermes is more permanent than cochineal. Suddenly on our eyes bursts Mourèze, one of the most fantastic groups of rock, castle, church, and village to be seen anywhere. We are disposed to regard the pictures by Gustave Doré of rock scenery interspersed with ruined towers as in his series, Le Juif errant, to be the creations of a fevered dream. But they are not so. He must have lived or travelled among the dolomitic formations of Languedoc, and thence drawn his inspiration.
Group at Mourèze
The approach to Mourèze by the old carriage road is different; it is through red sandstone, soft and friable, and torn by streams into gullies. One would suppose that Mourèze had been founded originally by refugees from a world devastated by wars. It is concealed from view on all sides. It is Nature's hiding-place for persecuted men. At its back start up sheer cliffs of limestone, pink and yellow and grey, rising from 1,300 to 1,600 feet. Dolomitic limestone is composed of carbonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia, and the texture is mostly crystalline and granulated. Each grain, having a power of resistance different from the other, yields or remains under the influence of the air and rains, so that alongside of massive rocks, eroded, hollowed out, perforated, or protruding in knots and elbows, are heaps of sand formed by the decomposition of the cement that held the grains in place. Thus are obtained the most bizarre and varied shapes of rock. All that imagination can picture of what is strange is found here—dismantled towers, gigantic monoliths, excavated walls, narrow gullies between monstrous shapes, great porticoes, pyramids standing on their heads, grouped together, and among them cottages clinging to their sides, a church on a ledge above a precipice, and over all a castle, the walls of which can hardly be distinguished from the rock out of which they grow. Contrast adds to the picturesque effect. The dolomite bristling with needles lies in the lap of a great cirque or cradle of more compact calcareous rock, disposed in regular horizontal beds, and attaining to a top over 1,610 feet that supports the ruins of the Romanesque church of S. Jean d'Aureillan. These walls back the scene on the north. The south is closed by the Puy de Bissou, clothed in woods, 1,450 feet. To the west is the mountain of S. Scholastica, 1,500 feet, and wooded ranges to the east of less elevation complete the enclosure and the screen that hides Mourèze from the world without.
The Sentinel, Mourèze