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Or, indeed, perhaps more; for the Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into my memory of how the Count of Gevaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the stream.
In appearance he seemed to be about twenty feet high, with hair like bristles; he was following up the sailors, whilst his formidable tail, ten feet long, was sweeping the snow and throwing it up in thick whirlwinds. The sight of such a monster riveted the most daring to the spot. "It's a bear!" said one. "It's the Gevaudan beast!" "It's the lion of the Apocalypse!"
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."
I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of nothing more notable than the child-eating beast of Gevaudan, the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of a romantic chapter or, better, a romantic footnote in the history of the world. What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism?
Such a state of licence, which threatened to spread farther and farther, awoke the religious solicitude of Messire Francois Langlade de Duchayla, Prior of Laval, Inspector of Missions of Gevaudan, and Arch-priest of the Cevennes.
Or indeed, perhaps more; for the Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into my memory of how the Count of Gévaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the stream.
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 Gevaudan with his kilted skirts a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death!
"I don't know," he said; "I will not cross the door." Here was the Beast of Gévaudan, and no mistake. "Sir," said I, with my most commanding manners, "you are a coward." And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who hastened to retire within their fortifications; and the famous door was closed again, but not till I had overheard the sound of laughter. Filia barbara pater barbarior.
I have been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a random woodside nook in Gevaudan not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland castaway was to find a fraction of my day-dreams realised.
For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and all that I beheld lay in another county wild Gévaudan, mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves. Wolves, alas! like bandits, seem to flee the traveler's advance, and you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe and not meet with an adventure worth the name.
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