Here shall
you see no enemies but winter and rough weather. And if a pang
comes to you at all, it will be a pang of healthful hunger. All
the puling sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of
duty that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight of
these woods, fall away from you like a garment. And if perchance
you come forth upon an eminence, where the wind blows upon you
large and fresh, and the pines knock their long stems together,
like an ungainly sort of puppets, and see far away over the plain a
factory chimney defined against the pale horizon--it is for you, as
for the staid and simple peasant when, with his plough, he upturns
old arms and harness from the furrow of the glebe. Ay, sure
enough, there was a battle there in the old times; and, sure
enough, there is a world out yonder where men strive together with
a noise of oaths and weeping and clamorous dispute. So much you
apprehend by an athletic act of the imagination. A faint far-off
rumour as of Merovingian wars; a legend as of some dead religion.
CHAPTER VI--A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE {5} A FRAGMENT 1879
Originally intended to serve as the opening chapter of 'Travels
with a Donkey in the Cevennes.'
Le Monastier is the chief place of a hilly canton in Haute Loire,
the ancient Velay. As the name betokens, the town is of monastic
origin; and it still contains a towered bulk of monastery and a
church of some architectural pretensions, the seat of an arch-
priest and several vicars.
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