Are there good hotels in Vals? So there are in Aubenas. Shops? As good in both. Electric illumination, telegraph and telephone? Each is similarly supplied. That which draws a crowd in the season to Vals is the baths. But the baths are a mere excuse. The fashion has set in and the crowd follow the fashion.
The river Ardèche, after having ploughed its way through beds of basaltic lava, runs between the prismatic columns as though sweeping through a forest of petrified bulrushes. It emerges above Aubenas into a broad, luxuriant, and well-peopled valley, where white walls smile and glass windows wink in the sun as far down as the eye can reach, and as far up the sides of the hills as folk choose to climb to their homes.
Moreover, factories stretch their long roofs below the rock of Aubenas and throw up their smoke, but without disfigurement to the scene or vitiation of the limpid air.
Come to Aubenas from the junction at Vogué on a Sunday evening, and you will see something of merry girl-life. The factory-hands from the lower country are returning from their homes to resume their work on Monday morning. They swarm into every carriage, crowding in at every station, each with a basket in one hand and a sack over the shoulder or under the arm. All are chattering, laughing; one wiping away a tear either because she is suffering from toothache or heartache at parting with her intended. But neither ache is very enduring. Before the train has gone a thousand mètres, she is laughing and chirping like the rest. When settled into their seats they open their baskets to show each other the posies of flowers they are taking to Aubenas to brighten the poor little attic bedrooms and diffuse through them a fragrance and memory of home. But the sacks—what do they contain? As I helped some of the girls to heave these into the carriage and stow them under the seats or into the shelf above, I could guess from the feel, and see when the sack mouth gaped and discharged some of its contents. It holds their factory clothing washed by their mothers—aprons, bibs, and among them huge loaves of bread and greasy sausages, these latter wrapped round with a newspaper that has transferred its information reversed on to the skin of the saucisson.
These mill-hands do not wear the pretty scarlet or blue handkerchief over the head that adorns the Lancashire and Yorkshire factory girl, the theme of one of our most charming folk-songs.
"Why wear you that kerchief tied over your head?
'Tis the country girls' fashion, kind sir, then she said;
And the fashion young maidens will always be in,
So I wear a blue kerchief tied under the chin.
Why wear a blue kerchief, sweet maiden? I said.