Essays of Travel Tale 9 - A Mountain Town in France

Robert Louis Stevenson (0:00)

Section 9 of Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6 A Mountain Town in France A Mountain Town in France A fragment, 1879

Originally intended to serve as the opening chapter of Travels with a Donkey and the Sevinne, Le Monastier is the chief place of a hilly canton in Haute Loire, the ancient belay.

As the name betokens, the town is of monastic origin, and it still contains a towered bulk of monastery and a church of some architectural pretensions, the seat of an archpriest and several vicars. It stands on the side of hill above the river Gizea, about 15 miles from Lepoy, up a steep road where the wolves sometimes pursue the diligence in winter. The road, which is bound for Vivere, passes through the town from end to end in a single narrow street. There you may see the fountain where women fill their pitchers. There are also some old houses with carved doors, and pediment and ornamental work and iron. From a nastier, like Mabel, in Eiershire, was a sort of country capital, where the local aristocracy had their town mansions for the winter. And there is a certain baron, still alive, and, I am told, extremely penitent, who found means to ruin himself by high living in this village on the hills.

He certainly has claims to be considered the most remarkable spendthrift on record. How he said about it, in a place where there are no luxuries for sale, and where the board at the best inn comes to little more than a shilling a day, is a problem for the wise. His son, ruined as the family was, went as far as Paris to sow his wild oats. And so the cases of father and son, mark an epoch in the history of centralization in France. Not until the latter had got into the train, was the work of Richelieu complete.

It is a people of lace makers. The women sit in the streets by groups of five or six, and the noise of the bobbins is audible from one group to another. Now and then, you will hear one woman clattering off prayers for the edification of the others at their work. They wear gaudy shawls, white caps with a gay ribbon about the head, and sometimes a black felt brigand hat above the cap. And so they give the street color and brightness and a foreign air.

A while ago, when England largely supplied herself from this district with a lace called torchon, it was not unusual to earn five francs a day, and five francs a monastier is worth a pound in London. Now, from a change in the market, it takes a clever and industrious workwoman to earn from three to four in the week. Or less than an eighth of what she made easily a few years ago.

The tide of prosperity came and went, as with our northern pit men, and left nobody the richer. The women bravely squandered their gains, kept the men in idleness, and gave themselves up, as I was told, to sweet hearting and a merry life. From week's end to week's end, it was one continuous gala and monastier. People spent the day in the wine shops, and the drum or the bagpipes led on the berets up to ten at night. Now these dancing days are over. Il n'y a plus de jeunesse, said Victor the Garçon. I hear of no great advance in what are thought of essentials of morality. But the beret, with its rambling, sweet, interminable music, and alert and rustic figures, has fallen into disuse, and is mostly remembered as a custom of the past. Only on the occasion of the fair shall you hear a drum discreetly in a wine shop, or perhaps one of the company singing the measure while the others dance. I am sorry at the change, and marvel once more at the complicated scheme of things upon this earth, and how a turn of fashion in England can silence so much mountain merriment in France. The lace makers themselves have not entirely forgiven our country women, and I think they take a special pleasure in the legend of the northern quarter of the town, called Langlade, because there the English freelancers were arrested and driven back by the potency of a little Virgin Mary on the wall. From time to time a market is held, and the town has a season of revival. Cattle and pigs are stabled in the streets, and pig pockets have been known to come all the way from Lyon for the occasion. Every Sunday the country folk throng in with daylight to buy apples, to attend Mass, and to visit one of the wine shops, of which there are no fewer than 50, in this little town.