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Then first it was that the consuls of Mende began to realise that it was no longer an insurrection they had on hand but a war, and Mende being the capital of Gevaudan and liable to be attacked at any moment, they set themselves to bring into repair their counterscarps, ravelins, bastions, gates, portcullises, moats, walls, turrets, ramparts, parapets, watchtowers, and the gear of their cannon, and having laid in a stock of firearms, powder and ball, they formed eight companies each fifty strong, composed of townsmen, and a further band of one hundred and fifty peasants drawn from the neighbouring country.
Night after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert of the wind among the woods, but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these woods of Gévaudan.
I parted first from one and then from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the traveller who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth upon another. Then Modestine and I mounted the course of the Allier, which here led us back into Gevaudan towards its sources in the forest of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn before we left its guidance.
Having fallen sick before Chateauneuf-Randon, a place he was besieging in the Gevaudan, Du Guesclin expired on the 13th of July, 1380, at sixty-six years of age, and his last words were an exhortation to the veteran captains around him "never to forget that, in whatsoever country they might be making war, churchmen, women, children, and the poor people were not their enemies."
We are extremely amused with the wonderful histories of your hyena in the Gevaudan; but our fox-hunters despise you: it is exactly the enchanted monster of old romances.
I have no other feeling but interest in your soul." And there ended my conversion. Honest man! he was no dangerous deceiver; but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long may he tread Gévaudan with his kilted skirts a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death!
When the calcareous region of the Gévaudan is reached, the schist, slate, and gneiss disappear. On descending to the level of the river at Arthez, I saw before me one of the grandest cascades in France the Saut de Sabo.
His Lordship continued: "'Well, be that as it may, said Horry, 'he was an able man of sagacity, this sea-captain, and, like many another, had a penchant for being a gentleman. But he was more of an oddity than Hertford's beast of Gevaudan, and was dressed like Salvinio, the monkey my Lord Holland brought back from his last Italian tour."
He lived ten months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and children and 'shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty'; he pursued armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop.
The Causse was in their possession from the Dordogne to the Lot, and Perigord to the gates of the capital. They overran Auvergne, the Gevaudan, Poitou, the Angoumois, the Rouergue and the Saintonge, to speak only of provinces south of the Loire. The Government exhibited incredible feebleness towards them.
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