A Book of the Cevennes

by S. Baring-Gould

On February 6th, 1842, died in the château of Vallon the Marquess Emmanuel de Merle de Lagorce, last male descendant of the eldest branch of the family, and left the château to his sister, married to the Count de Chapelain, who sold it to the town of Vallon in 1846. When the citizens came to take possession and convert the castle into a mairie, school, etc., they discovered in a loft a whole series of superb tapestries rolled up and forgotten. These came from the château of Montréal in L'Argentière, brought thence in 1783. They are from Aubusson looms, and are in seven panel pictures representing scenes from the "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso. They adorn the chamber now used by the magistracy. Very fine is the hammered ironwork of the balustrade of the great staircase.

Vallon had its hour of celebrity under the Empire and the Restoration, when Vanderbourg published the medieval poems of Clotilde de Surville, who lived at Vallon at the period when Joan of Arc was fighting against the English.

Marguerite Eléonore Clotilde de Vallon-Chalys, or de Surville, was supposed to have been a noble lady authoress of a series of sentimental poems. She was said to have been born in 1405 in the château of Vallon. Her mother, Pulchérie de Fay Collon, had lived in the court of Gaston Phœbus, Count of Foix, and had taken advantage of his library to enrich her mind by the study of Greek and Latin authors, of French and Italian poets, and she brought up the young Clotilde with the same tastes. The girl was a precocious genius, and composed verses at the age of twelve. In 1421 she married the Chevalier Béranger de Surville, who quitted her early to fight under the command of the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII. It was then that she wrote a Héroïde, opening with the words "Clotilde au sien amy doulce mande accolade." But the composition contains allusions, and repeats ideas of a period so much later, that suspicions were aroused as to its authenticity when published in 1803. Vanderbourg, the editor, insisted on it being genuine. He had obtained the MSS. from the heirs of the Marquess Joseph Etienne de Surville, a noble who during the period of the Revolution had been executed at Le Puy in 1798. But this de Surville was himself a poet, of a mediocre quality certainly, and it was from his leavings that the editor produced Clotilde's compositions. According to the Memoir prefixed to her poems, from the pen of the Marquess, her graceful verses attracted the attention of Margaret of Scotland, who sent her a crown of golden leaves bearing the inscription: "Marguerite d'Ecosse à Marguerite d'Hélicon."

Clotilde lost her husband at the siege of Orléans after a union that had lasted but one year. About 1450 she married her son to Héloise de Goyon de Vergy. Both died in 1468, leaving to Clotilde a grandchild, Camille, who never married, and Clotilde closed a long life at the end of the fifteenth century, after having celebrated the victory of Fornoue in a poem that she dedicated to Charles VIII.

That the poems are a late fabrication by the marquess, who was shot at Le Puy, cannot be doubted. In the "Verselets à mon premier né" that begin "O cher enfantelet, vray pourtraict de ton père," there is obvious imitation of a romance by Bérguin, published in 1775. But the whole tone and character of the poems make it quite certain that they were composed in the eighteenth century, to be palmed off as the literary achievements of a lady of the forger's ancestry in the fifteenth. Villemain, after showing that they are fictions antiques, concludes: "After one has recognised that the poems of Clotilde are a modern fabrication, betraying itself by the very perfection of the artifice employed, yet the fraud once established, the merit of the fraud remains incontestable."

A good road leads down the Ardèche to the Pont de l'Arc, one of the great natural curiosities of the south of France. The river in descending the ravine between walls of Jura limestone encountered a long spur that barred its way, and drove it to describe a great loop. But the limestone is full of holes, caves, and cracks, and the torrent rushing down and beating against the great escarpment, impatient to get through and resenting the detour, bored till at last it burst a way through, and having once penetrated proceeded to enlarge the portal, till the river even in its greatest floods can rush through. The measurements are 193 feet from side to side, 110 feet to the crown of the arch, and to the summit of the rock 215 feet. Formerly the people of the country used this natural bridge to pass from one side of the river to the other. In the sixteenth century a fortress was erected on it, the possession of which was sharply contested by Catholics and Protestants, and Louis XIII. had it destroyed. The passage can still be made by means of a very narrow path cut in a ledge of the rock, but only one person, and he with a steady head, can traverse it. Louis XIII. had this path broken down, but the gap has been bridged over by poles.

The descent of the cañon is made from Vallon to S. Martin, and takes from five to eight hours according to the amount of water in the river, and costs 30 francs. Rapids are numerous, and some not a little dangerous. The gorge, cut through the lower cretaceous limestone, has not its walls as lofty as those of the famous cañon of the Tarn, but the scenery in it is more varied, and it is of the wildest beauty.

Opposite old Vallon, as already mentioned, is Salavas. Hérail de Merle, son of the great Huguenot captain, abjured Protestantism, and married the daughter of Montréal, chief of the Catholics of the Vivarais. Profiting by his absence, his Huguenot vassals in Vallon revolted, and aided by a locksmith of Salavas entered the castle and butchered all the garrison. They captured the baroness and her children. But as Salavas was unimportant as a stronghold without the Tour du Moulin in the river, the Calvinists brought the Baroness Lagorce and the children under its walls in a boat, drew their long knives and threatened to cut all their throats unless the tower surrendered.

Salavas again fell into the hands of the Catholics, and was held by M. de la Chadenède in 1628, with forty-five men against the Duke de Rohan, head of the Calvinists, at the head of 500 men, 200 cavalry, two cannon, and a body of sappers and miners. Salavas was not taken till 200 of the assailants were killed and wounded. The castle, though in ruins, still has portions of its walls and a gate intact. Le Tour du Moulin, mentioned above, is built on a rock in the middle of the river, and was the key of the passage. It was captured by the Huguenots in 1570 by artifice. The small Catholic garrison one evening saw a train of women leading mules with sacks of corn come down to the waterside.

The garrison at once went over to assist them in unloading. But scarcely had they left their boat than they were fallen upon. The women were, in fact, Huguenot men disguised in female attire. They shot down every one of the soldiers and took possession of the tower.