CASCADE, GORGE OF LOUP
FALL IN THE GORGE OF THE LOUP
There are views one sees that never leave one, that fix themselves in the mind indelibly; and the view of the mouth of the Loup Gorge is certainly one such scene.
The ravines of the Tarn are visited by increasing numbers of tourists every year, and I know them well; but I do not think them superior to those of the Loup, the Cians, and the Var. Visitors to the Riviera are for the most part content to hug the coast and cling to the great centres of civilization, where there are shops, casinos, and theatres, and do not branch off afield. Only the day before writing this page, I heard a gentleman who had spent several winters on the Côte d’Azur remark that “After a while one gets very sick of the Riviera.” I promptly inquired whether he had penetrated any of the ravines sawn in the limestone; whether he had visited the mountain villages, such as Thouet de Bëuil; whether he had explored the Estérel. No—he knew nothing of them. In fact, through a dozen winters he had seen naught save the vulgar side of Provence.
It does not suffice to look at the mouth of the Gorge of the Loup. The ravine must be ascended, and that not by the new track, cut to accommodate the lazy, high up in the cliff, but by the footpath at the bottom. This will lead in the first place to an exquisite subject for the artist. On the farther bank is planted a little chapel with a cell once tenanted by a hermit. In mid torrent is a pile of rocks, and a light bridge of rudest construction traverses the river; above the piles of stone in the centre, against the purple gloom of the gorge, rises a crucifix, bathed in golden sunlight. Below, where it can root itself, is flowering laurestinus.
Farther up, after a succession of magnificent scenes, one drops upon a little house, where trout can be eaten, lying behind a waterfall; and to assist the visitor in reaching it, the proprietor runs out with a big umbrella to protect him from the torrent dissolved into rain. Further up the ravine come other and finer leaps of water, the main stream of the Loup, in maddest gambol of youth; and over all flash out gleams of the eternal snows.
Le Bar has a painting in the church, representing a Dance Macabre; it is, like all other such dances, of the fifteenth century. It represents Death armed with his bow among a party of dancers. Some are dying, and their souls are leaving their bodies. The picture is accompanied by a long Provençal inscription.
High above the entrance to the Gorge of the Loup stands the village of Gourdon, on the limestone terrace. The only spring water the place was supplied with came from a fountain in a cave in the face of a sheer precipice, reached by a thread of path, a foot to eighteen inches wide, along the cliff, and this, moreover, interrupted by a rift, usually crossed by a plank. But not infrequently this plank fell, or was carried away. Then those in quest of water leaped the gap, went on to the cave, filled their pitchers, and returned the same way, springing over the interval, where a false step would entail certain death.