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Enimie, then, meant two long days' drive, i.e., from six a.m. to perhaps eight p.m., in the lightest, which stands for the most uncomfortable, vehicle, across a country the greater part of which is as savage as Dartmoor. Our first halting-place would be Meyrueis, and between Le Vigan and Meyrueis relays could be had, but at that point civilization ended.
He preached for only six months and then died a natural death, for nearly all who followed him were first tortured and then hung. We have already referred to Fulcran Rey, who preached for about nine months, and was then executed. In the same year were executed Meyrueis, by trade a wool-carder, and Rocher, who had been a reader in one of the Protestant churches.
Yes: it is amusing, but quite true; though it would need a deal of contriving, something little short of a revolution to bring it about, to precisely such a future as that did Duchemin most seriously propose to dedicate himself. But always, they say, it is God who disposes.... Nor would he heed the dubious head shaken by his host of Meyrueis, who earnestly advised a guide.
Never for him the slippered ease of middle age, the pursuit of bourgeois virtues, of which he had so fondly dreamed in Meyrueis. Adventures were his portion, as surely as humdrum and eventless days were many another's. Wars might come and wars might go: but his mere presence in its neighbourhood would prove enough to turn the Palace of Peace itself into Action Front.
Rain at length interned the traveller for three days in a little place called Meyrueis, which lies sweetly in the valley of the Jonte, at its confluence with the Butézon, long leagues remote from railroads and the world they stitch together that world of unrest, uncertainty and intrigue which in those days seemed no better than a madhouse.
Otherwise the journey was not unlike an exaggerated version of his walk from Meyrueis to Montpellier-le-Vieux, except that the road was clearly marked and he found less climbing to do. He saw neither hamlets nor farmsteads, and found no water. By the middle of the afternoon his thirst had become sheer torture.
And, naturally, his papers were unimpeachable. A freedom which, consistent with the native inconsistency of man, he exercised by electing to stop over in Nant for another day or two, at least; assuring himself that he found the town altogether charming, more so even than Meyrueis and sometimes believing this fiction for as much as twenty minutes at a stretch.
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