Puy de Dôme

“ Most of the puys of central France are small cinder-cones, with or without associated lava, whilst others are domes of trachytic rock, like the domite of the Puy-de-Dôme. The puys may be scattered as isolated hills, or, as is more usual, clustered together, sometimes in lines. The chain of puys in central France probably became extinct in late prehistoric time. Other volcanic hills more or less like those of Auvergne are also known to geologists as puys ”

“ Curtains suspended across backs of niches give the artist another colour, while white winding scrolls assist canopy portions in admitting light. Donors are here more important but not yet intrusive, as seen later.
[Pg 160]
CLERMONT-FERRAND
The situation of this city is as beautiful as it is remarkable. Imagine a long, fertile plain from which rises suddenly a great range of hills. The plain is monotonously flat and the hills are abruptly steep, while higher than all their heights towers the round-topped mountain of Puy-de-Dôme, which gives its name to this department of France. ”

“ The Dordogne, while still scarcely formed, flows past Mont-Dore-les-Bains and La Bourboule and is lost in a deep valley which divides this department from that of Corrèze. None of these streams is navigable, but boats can be used on the Allier during floods. The climate of Puy-de-Dôme is usually very severe, owing to its high level and its distance from the sea; the mildest air is found in the northern valleys, where the elevation is least. During summer the hills about Clermont-Ferrand, exposed to the sun, become all the hotter because their black volcanic soil absorbs its rays. ”

“ It rises narrow, sharp, and abrupt from the valley, allowing of no buildings on its sides. But on its very point has been erected a church sacred to St. Michael, that lover of rock summits, accessible by stairs cut from the stone. This, perhaps—this rock, I mean—is the most wonderful of the wonders which Nature has formed at Le Puy. ”

“ Le Puy has both the charm of the quaintest kinds of street life and the challenge of its rare and curious monuments.
One has a restless feeling, a sense of things that "must be done," when one catches a glimpse of the stately old cathedral standing high on the hill, and the massive Rock of Corneille with the great figure of Notre Dame de France on top, or the church of St. Michel pricking up so confidently on its isolated rock. The natural curiosity of man is such that he cannot be content until he has clambered to these and other high places in and around Le 126 Puy. ”

“ So soon as the first snows appeared, the men abandoned their farms and cottages, and went, some to Le Puy, where they occupied an entire quarter, and gained their livelihood as tapsters, farriers, weavers, carpenters, pin-makers, etc., or else departed for Lyons, Nîmes, Montpellier, and Toulouse, to work as masons. All the women of the country pressed into Le Puy. ”

“ The Bible has poems composed by Theodulf prefixed to and following the sacred text.
Five of the early bishops of Le Puy are accounted saints, though almost nothing is known about them. They must have monopolised the stock of sanctity [Pg 47] allotted to that Church, for of their successors none could lay claim to much holiness, and many were a disgrace to their order. But Le Puy was one of the richest sees in France, as the bishop was count as well as prelate. The volcanic soil was extraordinarily fertile, and the Black Virgin acted as a magnet, attracting to it an inexhaustible stream of gold ”

“ Pennell, and among a circle of people who have travelled much in France, I have met none who have ever visited Le Puy. A young English governess to whom I spoke at a little Protestant temple in the town had been staying there for close upon a year, and had not met a single English visitor; so it would appear one has an opportunity here to write of a place that is still untrampled by the tourist hordes that devastate fair Normandy.
There are many and excellent reasons why few English or American tourists make their way to this quaint and beautiful town of the French highlands. ”

“ Above the soul-lighted eyes and the magnificent temple of intellect overshadowing them, we look in vain for the rising dome of Firmness, which, like the keystone of the arch, should strengthen and bind together the rest. Lacking this, the arch must be ever tottering to a fall.
To this weakness of will we may trace nearly every other defect in Poe's character, together with most of the disappointments and failures in whatsoever he undertook. ”

“ Into whatever country you carry war, remember that children, women and churchmen and the poor are not your enemies.— (Dying words of Bertrand Duguesclin, killed near Le Puy, 1380) .
Le Puy is hoary with history. Perched high on basaltic rocks near the source of the Loire, picturesque beyond description, it stood on the great pilgrimage route from Italy to Compostela, the Via Francigena by which French art and poetry passed into Spain and penetrated to Italy, along whose pilgrim roads are found portal images of the Round Table heroes and the sculptured tympanums of France. ”

“ A ramble in the ravine of Borne forms a pleasant and easy excursion from Le Puy. 51⁄2 m. E. from this station, or 31⁄4 m. W. from Le Puy, is Polignac, passed by the train. The village, pop. 2500, with church of 11th cent., is at the foot of a rock of basaltic breccia crowned by the imposing ruins of a fortress dating from the 11th cent. A stair of 132 steps (ascent dangerous) leads up to the terrace of the Keep, 14th cent., commanding an extensive view.
13 m. W. from Le Puy is Darsac, 2914 ft. above the sea. A small hamlet, with a restaurant, the station for Chaise-Dieu, 133⁄4 m. ”

“ No sooner was Domitia there, than she ran to the altar of the Goddess on which burned the perpetual fire, within a domed Temple, and clasped it. Cornelia had followed her, and looked at her with surprise.
“I claim the protection of the Goddess,” said Domitia. “I will not return to the palace! I will be free from him.”
Cornelia became grave.
“If your Goddess has any might, any grace, she will protect me. Do you fear? Have you lost your rights? I claim them.”
“Be it so,” said the Abbess. “None have appealed to the Goddess in vain, none taken sanctuary with her, who have been rejected. ”

“ There are jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through the battered roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where 'want and fever hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and crowded gables, and distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick and mortar penning up deformity of mind and body, choke the murky distance. As Mr Dombey looks out of his carriage window, it is never in his thoughts that the monster who has brought him there has let the light of day in on these things: not made or caused them. ”

“ Little Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood of the Toodles, grew stouter and stronger every day. Every day, too, he was more and more ardently cherished by Miss Tox, whose devotion was so far appreciated by Mr Dombey that he began to regard her as a woman of great natural good sense, whose feelings did her credit and deserved encouragement. ”

“ Nothing can save her. Pray for a speedy death.”
With glazed eyes, with a surging in her ears, and throbbing in the temples—as in some paralyzing nightmare—Domitia looked on.
And now the gag was removed, and with dignity the Great Mother of the Vestals descended from the bier. She stood, tall and with nobility in her aspect, and looked round on the crowd, then down into the moat, at the black hole under the roots of the wall. ”

“ Domitia, here you must stay till somebody comes to take you away. Why! as the Gods love me! I expect yet to hear you proclaimed Augusta, and to have to offer incense and to pour a libation on your altar. Think—what an honor to have your wax head among the ancestors, as a divinity to be worshipped—but no—I am wrong there, you would be in the lararium, or set up in the vestibule, a deified ancestress or member of the family is exalted from the atrium to the temple. I really will go out of my way and have a little supper to honor the occasion. ”

“ The Vestal Great-Mother left, and Domitia was glad to be alone.
The habitation of the Vestals was wonderfully peaceful, in the midst of busy, seething Rome, and in the centre of its greatest movement. As already said, it had no windows, and but one door that opened on the outer world. It drew all its air, all its light, from the patch of sky over the central court. Figures of Vestals glided about like spirits, and the white statues stood ghostlike on their pedestals.
But to be without flowers, without a peristyle commanding a landscape of garden and lake and trees and mountains! ”

“ Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it comes tearing on resistless to the goal: and now its way, still like the way of Death, is strewn with ashes thickly. Everything around is blackened. There are dark pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below. ”

“ Dombey’s world was busiest with the elopement of his wife, that the window of the room in which the brother and sister sat at their early breakfast, was darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man coming to the little porch: which man was Perch the Messenger. ”

“ France, far off in sunshine, brimming with laughter and song, its thousand interests, its innumerable happy associations, were of little account to the fact that now he was in the castle of Doom, under the same roof with a woman who charmed magic flutes, who endowed the dusks with mystery and surprise. ”

“ But the forests of Domrémy—those were the glories of the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. "Abbeys there were, and abbey windows,"— "like Moorish temples of the Hindoos,"—that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. ”

“ The shepherd girl that had delivered France—she, from her dungeon, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream—saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in which her{240} childhood had wandered. That Easter festival, which man had denied to her languishing heart—that resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests—were by God given back into her hands, as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. ”

“ There is a hush through Mr Dombey's house. Servants gliding up and down stairs rustle, but make no sound of footsteps. They talk together constantly, and sit long at meals, making much of their meat and drink, and enjoying themselves after a grim unholy fashion. ”

“ And now, among the knot of servants dressed in mourning, and the weeping women, Mr Dombey passes through the hall to the other carriage that is waiting to receive him. He is not 'brought down,' these observers think, by sorrow and distress of mind. His walk is as erect, his bearing is as stiff as ever it has been. He hides his face behind no handkerchief, and looks before him. ”

“ Here Domenico has shown the water, flowing as a river throughout the whole length of the frieze, and from this the people are drinking in attitudes which are varied to infinity, exhibiting a vivacity and animation so pleasing and so lifelike that no figures could possibly display more graceful, more beautiful, or more elegant movements than we find in this story. ”

“ It was the more questionable justice, Paul thought, in the Doctor, from his having certainly overheard that great authority give his assent on the previous evening, to the proposition (stated by Mrs Blimber) that poor dear little Dombey was more old-fashioned than ever. And now it was that Paul began to think it must surely be old-fashioned to be very thin, and light, and easily tired, and soon disposed to lie down anywhere and rest; for he couldn’t help feeling that these were more and more his habits every day. ”

“ Leaving the Garden of the Gods, and passing massive hills of gypsum, virgin in their whiteness and soft velvety reflection, the roadway north lies through a large prairie-dog village, where scores of wish-ton-wishes, of Indian name, scamper through the grass and lift themselves into comical postures on their little mounds to watch the carriage roll by. To the left is Glen Eyrie, where a few disaffected gods seem to have started a small, independent park of wonders, chief of which is Major Domo, a monolith of red sandstone thirty feet in circumference and more than one hundred feet tall ”

“ That same evening the Major was diffuse at his club, on the subject of his friend Dombey in the City. “Damme, Sir,” said the Major, “he’s a prince, is my friend Dombey in the City. I tell you what, Sir. If you had a few more men among you like old Joe Bagstock and my friend Dombey in the City, Sir, you’d do!” ”

“ Our ride to Pau is down the banks of the Gave de Pau, past quaint towns and churches and many mineral baths. Near noon, that well known watering-place of Southern France comes into view, her famous terrace rising high over the river; crowned by a line of hotels and villas, and with the ancient castle, the birthplace of Henry IV, rising majestically at its further end. In the valley rushes the Gave and beyond the foot-hills the higher Pyrenees rise tier on tier to the snows and clouds. The prospect is enchanting. ”

“ The devil tempted me: I dressed hastily and I ran in the direction of the city. The bridges were crowded to breaking point, and there was a row of curious gazers on the parapets two deep. Only on the Pont Neuf could I manage to see daylight between two [Pg 214] spectators. The river drifted with furniture, books, chasubles, cassocks and priests' robes. The latter objects were horrible as they looked like drowning people. All these things came from the archbishop's palace. ”