Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes . NKEY But if things had grown better to thesoutli, it was still desolate and inclementnear at hand. A spidery cross on everyhill-top marked the neighbourhood of areligious house ; and a quarter of a milebeyond, the outlook southward opening outand growing bolder with every step, a whitestatue of the Virgin at the corner of a youngplantation directed the traveller to OurI^ady of the Snows. Here, then, I struckleftward, and pursued my way, driving mysecular donkey before me, and creaking inmy secular boots and gaiters, towards theasylum of silence. I had no
Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes . NKEY But if things had grown better to thesoutli, it was still desolate and inclementnear at hand. A spidery cross on everyhill-top marked the neighbourhood of areligious house ; and a quarter of a milebeyond, the outlook southward opening outand growing bolder with every step, a whitestatue of the Virgin at the corner of a youngplantation directed the traveller to OurI^ady of the Snows. Here, then, I struckleftward, and pursued my way, driving mysecular donkey before me, and creaking inmy secular boots and gaiters, towards theasylum of silence. I had not gone very far ere the windbrought to me the clanging of a bell, andsomehow, I can scarce tell why, my heartsank within me at the sound. I have rarelyapproached anything with more unaffectedterror than the monastery of Our Lady ofthe Snows. This it is to have had a Pro-testant education. And suddenly, on turn-ing a corner, fear took hold on me fromhead to foot — slavish, superstitious fear;and though I did not stop in my advance, 78. FATHER APOLLINARIS yet I went on slowly, like a man who shouldhave passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayedinto the country of the dead. For there,upon the narrow new-made road, betweenthe stripling pines, was a mediaeval friar,fighting with a barrowful of turfs. EverySunday of my childhood I used to studythe Hermits of Marco Sadeler—enchantingprints, full of wood and field and mediaevallandscapes, as large as a county, for theimagination to go a-travelling in ; and here,sure enough, was one of Marco Sadeler sheroes. He was robed in white like anyspectre, and the hood falling back, in theinstancy of his contention with the barrow,disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as askull. He might have been buried anytime these thousand years, and all the livelyparts of him resolved into earth and brokenup with the farmers harrow. I was troubled besides in my mind as toetiquette. Durst I address a person whowas under a vow of silence ? Clearly drawin
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