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On the Sunday morning we gladly drove away in such an equipage as the place afforded to the not very distant village of St. Laurent en Champsaur. Here we reached our first point in what was fifty years ago the parish of Felix Neff, and has been for centuries a refuge of Protestantism. It is a hamlet of stone cottages, lying on a kind of plateau and overlooking a wide and fertile valley.
Lesdiguières, then scarce twenty-four years old, being informed of their march, hastily assembled a Huguenot force in the valley of the Drac, and, crossing the Col d'Orcières from Champsaur into the valley of the Durance, he suddenly fell upon the enemy at St. Crepin, routed them, and drove them down the valley to Embrun.
Neff's district extended in one direction from Vars to Briançon, and in another from Champsaur in the valley of the Drac to San Veran on the slope of Monte Viso, close to the Italian frontier. His residence was fixed at La Chalp, above Queyras, but as he rarely slept more than three nights in one place, he very seldom enjoyed its seclusion.
We have now reached almost the extreme limits of France; Italy lying on the other side of the snowy peaks which shut in the upper valleys of the Alps. In Neff's time the parish of which he had charge extended from San Veran, on the frontier, to Champsaur, in the valley of the Drac, a distance of nearly eighty miles.
Thus, he considered "the fertility of the commune of Champsaur, and its proximity to the high road and to Gap, great stumbling-blocks." The loftiest, coldest, and most barren spots such as San Veran and Dormilhouse were, in his opinion, by far the most promising.
The triumphant chorus of Rops's admirers comprises the most critical names in France and Italy: Barbey d'Aurevilly, J.K. Huysmans, Pradelle, Joséphin Péladan once the Sâr of Babylonian fame Eugène Demolder, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian poet; Camille Lemonnier, Champsaur, Arsène Alexandre, Fromentin, Vittorio Pica, De Hérédia, Mallarmé, Octave Uzanne, Octave Mirbeau, the biographer Ramiro and Charles Baudelaire.
Laurent du Cros and Champsaur, in the valley of the Drac, provided with a temple, school, &c., principally through the liberality of Lord Monson; and Guillestre and Vars, provided with two temples, a parsonage, and a girls' school. A temple, with a residence for a pastor, has also of late years been provided at Briançon, with a meeting-place also at the village of Villeneuve.
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