A Book of the Cevennes

by S. Baring-Gould

Castle of la Roche Lambert

The castle, which Georges Sand describes as in a dilapidated condition, and a "vrai bijou d'architecture," is small, and its chambers are scooped out of the rock. It has been carefully restored, and is a museum of medieval antiquities, armour, old cabinets, and tapestry.

The road from Le Puy to Paris quits the valley of the Borne, and ascends the slopes of Mont Denise. As it mounts it commands grand views. To the east is stretched the long chain culminating in Mézenc, and Mégal with its group of sucs. M. Paulett Scrope's panorama should be taken so as to identify the peaks.

After turning the flank of Mont Denise, the most modern of the volcanoes, a basin opens before one, out of which starts up the lava mass, like a huge pork-pie, that supports the scanty remains of the Castle of Polignac, the eagle nest of this mighty family. At the foot of the crag lies the village like a red girdle encircling it. Only the donjon of the fortress remains perfect, repaired in 1893-7 by Heracleus Armand XXV., Duke of Polignac. The entire platform was at one time covered with buildings; now only foundations can be traced. But the fallen masses have revealed the fact that this was a stronghold before the Polignacs were thought of. It was certainly a prehistoric fortress, then a Gaulish oppidum, next a Roman station. The name has been supposed to derive from Apollo, who is thought to have had a temple here, whence oracles were delivered. Within the precincts is a vault in which is the mouth of a well 250 feet deep reaching to a spring. It is conjectured that a colossal mask of stone, with open mouth, represents the bearded head of a local Apollo, and that priests concealed in the subterranean chamber uttered oracles which were made to issue from the mouth. What is more certain is that an inscription of the time of the Emperor Claudius has been found here, and that Roman tablets are built into the walls of the little Romanesque church below the rock.

The Paris road leads onwards to S. Paulien, the ancient Ruessio capital of the tribe of the Velavi. It has little to interest the visitor. A stone now surmounted by a cross is called Lou Peyrou dou tresvirs, the stone of the Triumviri, on which are carved three heads; the church, reconstructed in the ninth century, stands on the ruins of an edifice of the fourth. Some Roman fragments are incrusted in the walls. Above the town, built into modern constructions, are many fragments of the old city. The chapel of N. Dame du Haut-Solier has been regarded as occupying the site of a temple dedicated to the sun, and is built up of Gallo-Roman materials. Hereabouts the spade is continually turning up relics, among others were found a head of Jupiter Serapis, and inscriptions, of which one is commemorative of Etruscilla, wife of the Emperor Decius. The chapel of the Sisters of S. Joseph possesses a Romanesque doorway with bold zigzag ornament, removed from the ruined commandery of Montredon.

S. Paulien was the birthplace of the sculptor Julien, of whose work some specimens may be seen in the museum at Le Puy. He was a shepherd boy, the son of very poor parents, but he had an uncle in the Jesuit Order. One day this priest, walking on a bit of wild moor scantily covered with coarse grass and juniper bushes, lit on his nephew, then aged fourteen, guarding his flock, and engaged in modelling a figure out of clay with a bit of stick. The lad looked up with his brown, intelligent eyes, coloured, and said—

"Sorry, mon père, that the figure is so bad."

"Bad!" exclaimed the priest. "Do you call that bad? On the contrary, I pronounce it admirable. Go on and prosper." He hastened back to S. Paulien, burst in on the Julien family, and insisted on their surrendering the lad to him. "He is moulding a saint out of clay," said the Jesuit. "Give me that lump of humanity, and I will shape it into a great artist." So the uncle carried off young Julien and committed him to the sculptor Samuel at Le Puy. The pupil speedily surpassed his master, and went to Lyons, and thence to Paris, where he was under Coustin, sculptor to the King. He was elected to the Academy in 1778, and was highly favoured by Louis XVI. But evil days came, not for nobles only, but also for artists. The Revolution broke out, and men were more busy in framing constitutions than in fostering art. Not till the times of the Consulate and Empire was occupation found for sculptors and painters. However, Julien had made sufficient money before the upheaval to be able to purchase for himself a little estate near Le Puy, and to that he retired till better days came. He was born in 1731, and died in the Louvre, in 1804. His bust as a shepherd boy adorns a fountain at S. Paulien.

After traversing the basin of Emblavès below Le Puy, the Loire enters a second defile, where its passage was barred by a great current of clinkstone, or laminated lava, poured forth from Mézenc, and of this two colossal remnants exist, the rocks Miaune and Gerbison, rising one on each side of the river to a height of 1,800 feet above it. This enormous dyke suddenly thrown across the valley must have caused the waters of the Loire to accumulate into a vast lake, till they effected their escape by sawing through it.