The Story Of Marcel,
The Little Mettray Colonist.
Chapter XI.
"Wide o'er the brim, with many a torrent swelled,
And the mixed ruin of its banks o'erspread,
At last the roused-up river pours along,
Resistless, roaring, dreadful."
Thomson.
The first inundations of the Loire with which we are acquainted have been made known to us by the celebrated historian and bishop St. Gregory of Tours, who has left detailed accounts of eight dreadful disasters that occurred in the space of eleven years; that is, from 580 to 591. In the archives of France there is preserved an edict of Louis le Debonnaire, son and successor of Charlemagne, who, touched by the piteous complaints made to him by the inhabitants of Touraine and Anjou, whose harvests were in constant danger from the sudden risings of the river, ordered the building of dams and embankments, which, modified by some of his successors and strengthened by others, became at last the magnificent structures we behold them at the present day, between Blois and Tours.
Nevertheless, the capricious river has never yet during all these long centuries been kept for any time within its bed. Its devastations were fearful in 1414, and again in 1615, when the sudden melting of the enormous masses of snow which had fallen on the surrounding country during the winter caused so frightful a catastrophe that it has since been known in French history as the "Deluge of Saumur." The beginning of the seventeenth century saw ten risings of the Loire in ten years; and the Duke of Saint-Simon has left us, in his celebrated memoirs, a notice of one in 1708, which was the cause of much misery. In more modern times, France has had, every eight or ten years, to deplore some dreadful misfortune arising from the same source, and the more favored portions of that beautiful land have been compelled repeatedly to come to the aid of the ruined population of the basin of the Loire, whose farm-houses had been swept away by the flood, their harvest-fields devastated, their cattle drowned, and who, too often, alas! had also had to weep over irreparable losses far more bitter than these—the life of dear ones lost in the surging waters.
About five years after Marcel's admission into the Mettray Colony, one of the most terrible of these visitations overtook the inhabitants of the banks of the picturesque stream. A long continuation of rainy weather had swollen the Cher and the Allier, both tributaries of the Loire, and the river, rising suddenly, broke through its strong embankments and spread itself over the country. The local authorities, of every degree and station—prefect, subprefect, and mayors—with the soldiers, engineers, and townspeople of Tours, all hastened to the relief of the drowning villages and farms, and all did their duty; but even among these courageous men the young Colonists distinguished themselves by their energy and self devotion.
The inundation had commenced in the night, and when daylight revealed the extent of the disaster, the director assembled the youths.