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Updated: May 18, 2025
Sometimes we passed a flock of sheep guarded by a shepherd much more countrified looking and tanned than those seen in the meadows about our town. Lonely and sun-scorched, Chaumes seemed to me the very threshold of Limoise: it had its very odor, the mingled scent of wild thyme and sweet marjoram. At the end of the rocky moor was the hamlet of Frelin.
And at Chaumes, in that shadeless spot, a place always baked by the sun, I fulfilled the pledge that had been exacted from me at my departure. I opened a large sunshade! oh! how my cheeks reddened and how humiliated I felt when I was ridiculed by a little shepherd-boy who, with head bared to the sun's rays, guarded his sheep.
Small detachments had from time to time been captured ever since the turn at Chaumes, but this was different. There were long lines of them, standing bolt upright, and weaponless. The Subaltern looked at them curiously. They struck him as on the whole taller than the English, and their faces were not brown, but grey. He admired their coats, there was a martial air in the long sweep of them.
This "Chaumes" was a sort of table-land composed of a single stone, and this rock, which undulated slightly, was covered with a carpet of short, dry fragrant plants that snapped under our feet; and a whole world of tiny gayly-colored butterflies and tinier moths fluttered among the rare and delicate flowers growing there.
These are the homesteads or chaumes of the herdsmen, all smiling cheerfulness now, but deserted in winter. Except for such little dwellings, barely discernible, so distant are they, there is no break in the solitary scene, no sign of life at all.
Soon afterwards, when they were marching through a village called Chaumes, he learnt that in the forthcoming battle they were to be in General Reserve, and this relieved the nervous tension for the moment.
After crossing the river we turned off the high-road and took an unfrequented way that led through a region called "Chaumes," a very beautiful place at that time but horribly profaned to-day. "Chaumes" lay at the entrance of a village whose ancient church we saw in the distance. As it was public property it had kept intact its native wildness.
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