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The little towns of Montdragon and Mornas, which we passed this morning, are each situated under heights of this description. The castle of the former, of which a plate is given in Mr. Cooke's work, I think even superior to that of Caerphilly, in South Wales, in the "awsome eyriness," as a Scotsman would express it, with which its detached masses are grouped.
But I was glad when Mornas, vivid with such bitter memories, dropped out of sight astern. Sleeping dogs of so evil a sort very well may lie; though it is difficult not to waken a few of them when they lie so thickly as here in the Rhône Valley, where almost every town and castle has a chapter of nightmare horrors all its own.
Thereupon the Baron des Adrets, the Huguenot commander in that region, sent one of his lieutenants, Dupuy-Montbrun, to avenge that deviltry. At the end of a three-days' siege Mornas was conquered again, and then came the vengeance: "for which the castle of Mornas, whereof the battlements overhung a precipice falling sheer two hundred feet to broken rocks below, offered great advantages."
At Mornas, the native place of the famous Baron des Adrets, the reception took a very original shape. As we drove up to the posting-house, I saw a great crowd, and the National Guard drawn up in two ranks, on the right and left of the postilions who were to take us on.
These Roman ruins, scattered through Provence and Languedoc, though inferior in historical interest, equal in architectural beauty the greater part of those in the Eternal City itself. The rest of the day the road was monotonous, though varied somewhat by the tall crags of Mornas and Mont-dragon, towering over the villages of the same name.
What they wanted was that their bridge, living up to their own concept of duty, should do the greatest amount of good to the greatest number of men. In truth, the story of Mornas is sombre enough to blacken not merely a brace of hill-tops but a whole neighbourhood.
It is instructive to note that des Adrets, who ordered the vengeance on Mornas, a little later abjured the Reformed religion and became a Papist; and that Dupuy-Montbrun, who carried out his orders and who succeeded him upon his recantation in the command of the Protestant army, but a little while before had renounced Papacy to become a Huguenot.
The castle of Mornas is not so remarkable, but the rocks on which it stands are very striking; for if they have any inclination out of the perpendicular, it is rather towards than from the road. It is indeed impossible, when you stand under the shade of this lofty barrier, and look up to the clouds drifting over it, to fancy that it is not in the act of toppling down upon your head.
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