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I made a rather long stay at Vers, in order to visit the site of a Celtic town on the causse; but I did not start upon this journey until the next day. The inn where I put up was much more comfortable than some others which I had chosen for night-quarters while wandering down the valley.
Upon the barren causse, besides the short turf, the gray ribs of rock, and scattered stones, little was to be seen but dark little junipers, tall broom, not yet in flower, hellebore, with bright tufts of new leaves and evil-looking green blossoms edged with dull purple, and the numberless gilded umbels of the spurge, which in springtime lend such beauty to the Southern desert.
Gracious and lovely the shifting scenes of the landscape around, stern and magnificent of aspect the Causse, its ramparts as of iron girding it round, its gloomy escarpments showing deep clefts and combes, lines of purply gold and green breaking the gray surface.
The road between Le Rozier and Millau is delightful; the verdure and brilliance of the valley in striking contrast with the sombre, dark- ribbed Causse Noir frowning above. For two-thirds of the way we follow the Tarn as it winds here a placid stream amid poplars, willows, and smooth green reaches.
A little to the east, beyond the valley of the Cernon, which I intended to cross, were high hills or cliffs, treeless and sterile, with hard-cut angular sides, terminating upwards in vertical walls of naked stone. These were the buttresses of the Causse de Larzac. The lower sides of some of the hills were blue with lias marl, and wherever they were steep not a blade of grass grew.
The highest limestone rocks in this region, those which rise from the plateau or causse and strike the imagination by the strangeness of their forms, are dolomite; in the gorges they approach the character of lias towards the base, and not unfrequently contain lumps of pure silex embedded in their mass.
She sprang upon his horse, and away they both went through the oak forest which then covered the greater part of the causse; but the gleam of the knight's armour in the moonlight kept the pursuers constantly upon his track. Slowly but surely they gained upon the fugitives.
In the former, whilst the Causses figure in the map, beyond a brief allusion to the Causse Noir, they are ignored altogether. St. Enimie is not once mentioned, and nothing is said about the gorges of the Tarn. As to Montpellier-le-Vieux, it could find no place in a guide-book of that date, seeing that it was only discovered ten years later. We now take the edition of 1883.
Enimie has grown terrace-wise, zigzagging the steep sides of the Causse, its quaint spire rising in the midst of rows of whitewashed houses, with steel-gray overhanging roofs, vine-trellised balconies, and little hanging gardens perched aloft.
The hush of evening and its long shadows were on the land when finally he scrambled out to the Causse again. Then he lost his path another time, missed entirely the village of Maubert, where he had thought to find a conveyance, or at least a guide, and in the silver and purple mystery of a perfect moonlight night found himself looking down from a hilltop upon Montpellier-le-Vieux.
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