Descent from La Bastide—Viaduct of the Luech—Coal-beds—The town of Alais—Rochebelle—Ancient oppidum—Hermitage—The last hermit—Sidonius Apollinaris—The Citadel—Family quarrels—The Cambis family—A ghost story—Making polemical use of a ghost—Huguenots take Alais—Murders—The Bishopric—The Cathedral—Silk culture—Introduction of the mulberry and the worm to Europe—Silk husbandry in France—Favoured by Henry IV.—Olivier de Serre—Colbert—The Magnanerie—Silk-weaving introduced into England—A disaster that proved a blessing—Transformations of the caterpillar—Florian—The faults of an Englishman.
WHEN the train, after quitting La Bastide, has passed through a tunnel at the highest point of the pass, you rush out of a northern clime, with northern vegetation, into a climate with tree, shrub, and flower wholly southern. The Allier and its tributaries were making full gallop for the Atlantic; you see at once torrents racing down gorges to fling themselves into the Mediterranean in which no Greenland icebergs ever float to chill alike the currents and the air. Gulfs open beside the line clothed in chestnuts, mulberries, almonds, vines; oleanders appear, and the kermes oak with its varnished leaves covering the slopes.
The line does not descend the first valley entered, but bores its way through spur after spur of the mountain chain till it reaches the furrow through which flows the Gardon d'Alais. Génolhac is passed, that suffered cruelly from Catholic and Camisard alike, whence Pont-de-Montvert may be visited, and the house seen where lived the Abbé du Chayla.
A magnificent curved viaduct crosses the basin of the Luech, carried on two stages of arcades 180 feet above the river to Chamborigaud, the tragic story of which has been told in the preceding chapter. The line traverses the masses of a rock and earth slide from the Montagne du Gouffre, and enters a region of coal-beds. The coal seams can be seen between sandstone in the cuttings for the line. On the right is the donjon of La Tour commanding the abbey of Cendras, burnt by the Camisards, then gorges and smoking cinder heaps, and we arrive at Alais, a neat, pleasant, cheerful town, once the seat of a bishop, situated in a loop formed by the Gardon, with the lofty rock of Rochebelle opposite on the further side of the river. This height was the site of the primitive oppidum of Alesia, or Alestia. The cyclopean walls remain in places fairly perfect, and the enclosure can be traced throughout. Alais never was a Roman city; it was, however, probably a place where the iron mines were worked. A hermitage was there till the Revolution. When the plague raged in Alais in 1721, a Carmelite, Esprit Boyer, worked indefatigably among the sick, and on its cessation obtained leave to retire to this hermitage, where he planted a garden and reared a chapel. On his death another hermit took his place, and he assumed the honoured name of Esprit, but as he was a drunkard he was nicknamed Esprit de Vin. He ran away, carrying with him the chapel bell, but was caught and ordered to return to his hermitage. In 1793 he was denounced as suspect, and some individuals were sent up the height to arrest him. He refused to open to them, and threw stones at their heads and threatened to shoot the first man who entered. They, however, stove in the door with a pole, whereupon Esprit escaped out of a window, but in trying to crawl away unseen fell over the rocks and broke his leg. He was taken to the hospital and died there.
In the year 472 that magnificent prelate, Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont, and a great noble to boot, came to Alais to pay a visit to Tonantius Ferreolus, Prefect of Gaul, who had his villa at Prusianus, now Brégis, a little to the south-west of Alais. Another friend, a Roman senator, had his country house on the opposite or Alesian side of the river. Sidonius says: "The Vardo (Gardon) separates the two domains. These splendid dwellings were commanded by hills covered with vines and olives; before one of them stretched a rich and vast plain, the other looked out on woods. Every morning there was a strife between our two hosts, very flattering to myself, as to which should have our society for the day, which should make his kitchen smoke on our behalf. With them we flew from pleasure to pleasure. Hardly had we set foot in the vestibule of one or the other, before there appeared bands of those who played tennis, and above their noisy shouts we could hear the braying of cornets.... Whilst any one of us was occupied in reading or in playing, the butler would come to inform us that it was time for us to take our places at table. We dined promptly, after the manner of senators."
Where stands now the citadel of Alais stood formerly two castles frowning at one another side by side. The lordship of Alais was in the family of De Pelet, but the last of the name died in 1405, leaving two daughters and the barony to be divided between them. Naturally they quarrelled. Each would have the rock and a castle on the summit, and as neither could be induced to yield a right, they had their two castles and scolded and swore at one another out of the windows. At last the situation became so intolerable that first one and then the other sold their half baronies to a De Cambis, and he ran the two castles into one.
Jacques de Cambis, lord of Alais, was engaged in Catalonia under the great Condé. His war-cry was "Allez comme Alès!" and on his son's sword was inscribed:
"Je suis Cambis pour ma foi,
Ma maitresse et mon roi,