The Roof of France | Page 7

The benefits of the railway in the Lozère and the Jura are incalculable
from an economic point of view, to say nothing of the convenience and
comfort thereby placed within reach of all classes. It is an English habit
to rail at the lavish expenditure of the French Government. Cavillers of
this kind wholly lose sight of the tremendous strides made during the
last fifteen years in the matter of communication. Surely money thus
laid out is a justifiable expenditure on the part of any State?
I lately revisited the Vendée after twelve years' absence. I found the
country absolutely transformed--new lines of railway intersecting every
part, increased commercial activity in the towns, improved agriculture
in rural districts, schools opened, buildings of public utility erected on
all sides-evidences of an almost incredible progress. In Anjou the same
rapid advance, social, intellectual, material, strikes the traveller whose
first acquaintance with that province was made, say, fifteen years ago.
Take Segré by way of example; compare its condition in 1888 with the
state of things before the Franco-Prussian War. And this little town is
one instance out of hundreds.
It was high time that something should be done for Mende. No town
ever suffered more from wolves and wolf-like enemies in human shape.
Down almost to our own day the depredations of wolves were frightful.
The old French traveller before cited, writing in 1816, speaks of the
large number of children annually devoured by these animals in the
Lozère. The notorious 'Bête du Gévaudan,' at an earlier period, was the
terror of the country. It is an exciting narrative, that of the gigantic
four- footed demon of mischief, how, after proving the scourge of the
country for years, desolating home after home, in all devouring no less
than a hundred old men, women, and children, he was at last caught in
1767 by a brave monster-destroying baron, the Hercules and the

Perseus of local story. The ravages of wild beasts were a trifle
compared to the enormities committed by human foes.
It is not my intention to do more than touch upon the religious wars of
the Cévennes. Those blood-stained chronicles have been given again
and again elsewhere. No one, however, can make a sojourn at Mende
without recalling the atrocities perpetrated in the name of religion, and
compared to which the excesses of the Jacquerie and the Terror sink
into insignificance. If any of my readers doubt this, let them turn to the
impartial pages of the eminent French historian, the late M. Henri
Martin; or, to take a shorter road to conviction, get up the history of the
Gévaudan, or of this same little town of Mende.
On a smaller scale, the horrors of the siege of Magdeburgh were here
repeated, the Tilly of the campaign being the Calvinist leader Merle.
Devastated in turn by Catholic and Protestant, Royalist and Huguenot,
Mende was taken by assault on Christmas Day, 1579, and during three
days given up to fire, pillage, and slaughter. A general massacre took
place; the cathedral was fired and partially destroyed, the bells, thirteen
in number--one of these called the 'Nonpareil,' and reputed the most
sonorous in Christendom--being melted down for cannon. All that
fiendish cruelty and the demon of destruction could do was done. In
vain Henry of Navarre tried to put down atrocities committed in his
name. A second time Merle possessed himself of Mende, only
consenting to go forth on payment of a large sum in gold.
The history of Mende is the history of Marvéjols, of one town after
another visited by the traveller in the Cévennes; and in the wake of the
burnings, pillagings and massacres of that horrible period follows the
more horrible period still of the guerilla warfare of the Camisards,
quelled by means of the rack, the stake, and the wheel.
The Revolution, be it ever remembered, abolished all these; torture
ended with the Ancien Régime; and, although M. Taine seems of
opinion that the new state of things could have been brought about by a
few gentlemen quietly discussing affairs in dress-coats and white
gloves, we read of no great social upheaval being thus bloodlessly

effected. At such times a spirit of lawlessness and vengeance will break
loose beyond the power of leaders to hold in check.
The approach to Mende is very fine, and the little city is most
romantically placed; above gray spires, slated roofs and verdant valley,
framing it in on all sides, rise bare, brown and purple mountains.
The cathedral presents an incongruity. Its twin-towers, each crowned
with a spire, recall two roses on a single stem, the one full-blown,
beautiful, a floral paragon, the other withered, dwarfed, abortive.
The first towers over its brother by a third, and is a lovely specimen of
Gothic architecture in