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In the last and preceding chapters, the imaginative and romantic have predominated almost to the entire exclusion of any description of the wild sports of Le Morvan, and I fear that the sporting reader, not generally of a very sentimental taste, will ere this have become impatient, and perhaps a little angry at the delay.
Is it peace, or is it war?" "This stranger," answered Morvan with a smile, "is an envoy of the Franks; but bring he peace or bring he war, is the affair of men alone; as for thee, content thee with thy woman's duties." Thereupon Ditcar, perceiving that he was countered, said to Morvan, "Sir king, 'tis time that I return; tell me what answer I am to take back to my sovereign."
There is then no more doubt; resistance is now impossible; the widow, the family and the servants of Morvan arrive, are brought before Louis the Debonair, accept all the conditions imposed upon them, and the Franks withdraw with the boast that Brittany is henceforth their tributary. On arriving at Angers, Louis found the empress Hermengarde dying; and two days afterward she was dead.
The capital of Le Morvan partially owed its rise to a celebrated nunnery, founded by Gerard de Roussillon, a great hero of romance and chivalry, who lived, loved, and fought under Pepin, the father of the grand Charlemagne.
The large numbers of the Franks, who covered the ground for some distance, dismayed the Britons, and many of them fled, seeking where they might hide themselves. Morvan, beside himself with rage, and at the head of his most devoted followers, rushed down upon the Franks as if to demolish them at a single stroke; and many fell beneath his blows.
But the great Architect of the universe has said, nothing is perfect everything human has its weak point. Well, it cannot be helped, and it must be told, the curés of Le Morvan have their weak points; trifles, to be sure mere bagatelles but still they have them. They are rather too fond of old wine and good cheer.
But Le Morvan is certainly not a country for a petit-mâitre or a delicate lady to live in; to enjoy yourself there you must have the fire and energy of youth in your veins, a stout heart, the lungs of a mountaineer, and a sinewy frame. You must love a forester's life, the hound and the rifle; you must be a Gordon Cumming in a small way.
All three had the comfort and well-being of that one man before their minds as the sole end and object of all their thoughts. Brought to him at sixteen, she would be sent away at nineteen. All these girls, carefully chosen at Auxerre, Clamecy, or in the Morvan, were enticed by the promise of future prosperity; but Madame Rigou persisted in living.
The best plan for the tourist wishing to see the Morvan is to hire one of the light carriages called a caleche, and drive, not only round the country so called, but right through a journey occupying about a fortnight when leisurely made. Travellers pressed for time may, however, visit Chateau-Chinon in a day from Autun.
In the first days of May, that interesting epoch in which in the forest, the woods, and the plain, the majority of all animals are with young; and in the commencement of December, the period of storm and tempest and the heavy rains, which precede the great snows, two general battues take place in Le Morvan.
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