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Updated: June 5, 2025
"The view from the couronne didn't show me anything I wanted to see, only a number of men in the distance, spread out over the face of the causse and quartering it like beagles. I reckoned I knew what sort of game they were hunting, and slid down from that couronne and travelled. But they'd seen me, and somebody sounded the view-halloo. It was grand exercise for me and great sport for them.
I was on the border of the Causse de Larzac, one of the highest, most extensive, and hopelessly barren of the calcareous deserts which separate the rivers in this part of France. Not a drop of water, save what may have been collected in tanks for the use of sheep, and the few human beings who eke out an existence there, is to be found upon them.
Perhaps he thought me an escaped madman, or a dangerous tramp, with whom it was better to hold no conversation. The sun was setting when I reached a wood of scattered firs a more melancholy spot at that hour than the bare causse. The weather had been fine for some hours, but now a storm that had been gathering broke.
Swept by freezing winds in winter and burnt by a torrid sun in summer, their climate is as harsh as the soil is ungenerous. But although I was sun-broiled upon this causse, I was interested at every step by the flowers that I found there. Dry, chaffy, or prickly plants, corresponding in their nature to the aridity and asperity of the land, were peculiarly at home upon the undulating stoniness.
The Aigle glided up gradients like the side of a somewhat toppling house, and scarcely needed to change speed, so well did she like the rarefied mountain air. I liked it too, though I had to be thankful for the plaid; and above all I liked the wild loneliness of the Causse, which was unlike anything I ever saw or imagined.
This awful charm which attaches to the enormous envelops the Causse of Mende; for its attributes are all of them pushed beyond the ordinary limit. Each of the four Causses is a waste; but the Causse of Mende is utterly bereft of men. Each is a high plateau; but this, I believe, the highest in feet, and certainly in impression.
This time I did not stop to make tea gipsy-wise on the turf in front of the farmhouse; nor, to my disappointment, did the children run out to share the contents of my bonbon-box. Not a soul was abroad; an eldritch solitude reigned everywhere. The Causse of Sauveterre is not reached till we have left the farmhouse and ruined chateau far behind.
It is the bell of the dead who lie there in the stony burying-ground upon the edge of the wind-blown causse, calling upon the bells of Roc-Amadour to move the living to pity for those who have left the earth.
Soon we were on the flat plateau of the Causse, where last year's faded grass was frosted white, and a torn winding-sheet wrapped the limbs of a dead world. There was no beauty in this death, save the wild beauty of desolation, and a grandeur inseparable from heights.
The Causse Noir was as silent as a crypt. I became very uncertain where this road over the dismal solitude was going to lead me, for it turned about in such a way as to put me out of my reckoning. At length I saw a deep gorge yawning below, and this told me that I had reached the edge of the causse. Oh, the sublime desolation of these heights and depths in the solemn evening!
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