Where, further up, the Arzon flows into the Loire is Vorey, lapped in a fold of the mountains, facing Gerbison, which is striated with rills descending in small cascades.
On June 16th, annually, is celebrated at Vorey a Mass "de la Lepreuse," which is attended by the people of the hamlets of Vertaure and Eyravazet. Once upon a time a ragged leper woman arrived at the latter cluster of houses and begged for food. No one would give her even a crust of bread or a bowl of milk. She went on to Vertaure, and there fared as ill; and she crept for the night into an abandoned shed, where she remained too exhausted to proceed further, and there she died. Whereupon the people dug a deep pit and cast in the corpse and the woodwork and thatch of the shed, and heaped earth over the grave. The spot is still pointed out, and is called Las Cabannas. After that, for several years in succession, hailstorms smote the harvests and blighted the vines, whereas about Las Cabannas all remained green and flowery. Then the inhabitants of the two hamlets conceived that they were being punished for their lack of charity, and vowed a Mass in perpetuity for the repose of the leper-woman's soul. Her body was exhumed, conveyed to Vorey, and there buried in holy ground, and she herself received a popular canonisation as Ste. Juliette.
The Loire receives a goodly addition of water through the Arzon, and below Vorey descends through profound gorges to Chamalières, a village inhabited by quarry-men, and preserving one of the most curious and interesting Romanesque churches of the department. It is of the twelfth century, and has an arcaded clerestory. There are three windows in this clerestory on each side, and between the windows blind arches, some circular, some trefoil-headed. The tower is of two stages, with four windows on the first and two on the second, on each side; it is capped by a curious octagonal stone spire, rising from an octagonal lantern, with trefoil-headed windows, and nothing but a slight moulding indicates the junction.
Mézenc
The Mézenc, the highest of the Cévennes, rises out of a dreary plateau. It is, says M. Paulett Scrope:—
"The most elevated of an extensive system of volcanic rocks, resting partly on granite or gneiss, and in part on the Jurassic formation, which by their position and constitution prove themselves to be the remains of a single and powerful volcano, of the same character as those in the Mont Dore and Cantal. Its products, however, are disposed in a somewhat different manner, being spread over an almost equally extensive surface without accumulating into such mountainous masses around their centre of eruption. Two causes seem to have contributed to occasion this diversity of aspect, namely: first, that the eruptions of this volcano appear to have been less frequent than in the other instances; secondly, that its lavas consist either of basalt or clinkstone almost exclusively. They therefore were possessed of great comparative fluidity; and having burst out on one of the highest eminences of the primary platform, which afforded a considerable slope in most directions, they appear to have flowed to great distances immediately upon their protrusion from the volcanic vent.
"We shall be fully justified, by the universal declination of these volcanic beds from the Mont Mézenc, in fixing the site of the eruptions in its immediate proximity; and on the south-east of this rocky eminence, in the vicinity of the Croix des Boutières, there still exists a semicircular basin whose steep sides are entirely formed of scoriæ and loose masses of very cellular and reddish-coloured clinkstones."