CHAPTER IV.

THE VAUDOIS MOUNTAIN-REFUGE OF DORMILHOUSE.

The valley of Fressinières could never have maintained a large population. Though about twelve miles in extent, it contains a very small proportion of arable land—only a narrow strip, of varying width, lying in the bottom, with occasional little patches of cultivated ground along the mountain-sides, where the soil has settled on the ledges, the fields seeming in many cases to hang over precipices. At the upper end of the valley, the mountains come down so close to the river Biasse that no space is left for cultivation, and the slopes are so rocky and abrupt as to be unavailable even for pasturage, excepting of goats.

Yet the valley seems never to have been without a population, more or less numerous according to the rigour of the religious persecutions which prevailed in the neighbourhood. Its comparative inaccessibility, its inhospitable climate, and its sterility, combined to render it one of the most secure refuges of the Vaudois in the Middle Ages. It could neither be easily entered by an armed force, nor permanently occupied by them. The scouts on the hills overlooking the Durance could always see their enemies approach, and the inhabitants were enabled to take refuge in caves in the mountain-sides, or flee to the upper parts of the valley, before the soldiers could clamber up the steep Pas de l'Échelle, and reach the barricaded defile through which the Biasse rushes down the rocky gorge of the Gouffouran. When the invaders succeeded in penetrating this barrier, they usually found the hamlets deserted and the people fled. They could then only wreak their vengeance on the fields, which they laid waste, and on the dwellings, which they burned; and when the "brigands" had at length done their worst and departed, the poor people crept back to their ruined homes to pray, amidst their ashes, for strength to enable them to bear the heavy afflictions which they were thus called upon to suffer for conscience' sake.

The villages in the lower part of the valley were thus repeatedly ravaged and destroyed. But far up, at its extremest point, a difficult footpath led, across the face almost of a precipice, which the persecutors never ventured to scale, to the hamlet of Dormilhouse, seated on a few ledges of rock on a lofty mountain-side, five thousand feet above the level of the sea; and this place, which was for centuries a mountain fastness of the persecuted, remains a Vaudois settlement to this day.

An excursion to this interesting mountain hamlet having been arranged, our little party of five persons set out for the place on the morning of the 1st of July, under the guidance of Pastor Charpiot. Though the morning was fine and warm, yet, as the place of our destination was situated well up amongst the clouds, we were warned to provide ourselves with umbrellas and waterproofs, nor did the provision prove in vain. We were also warned that there was an utter want of accommodation for visitors at Dormilhouse, for which we must be prepared. The words scratched on the window of the Norwegian inn might indeed apply to it: "Here the stranger may find very good entertainment—provided he bring it with him!" We accordingly carried our entertainment with us, in the form of a store of blankets, bread, chocolate, and other articles, which, with the traveller's knapsacks, were slung across the back of a donkey.

After entering the defile, an open part of the valley was passed, amidst which the little river, at present occupying very narrow limits, meandered; but it was obvious from the width of the channel and the débris widely strewn about, that in winter it is a roaring torrent. A little way up we met an old man coming down driving a loaded donkey, with whom one of our party, recognising him as an old acquaintance, entered into conversation. In answer to an inquiry made as to the progress of the good cause in the valley, the old man replied very despondingly. "There was," he said, "a great lack of faith, of zeal, of earnestness, amongst the rising generation. They were too fond of pleasures, too apt to be led away by the fleeting vanities of this world." It was only the old story—the complaint of the aged against the young. When this old peasant was a boy, his elders doubtless thought and said the same of him. The generation growing old always think the generation still young in a state of degeneracy. So it was forty years since, when Felix Neff was amongst them, and so it will be forty years hence. One day Neff met an old man near Mens, who recounted to him the story of the persecutions which his parents and himself had endured, and he added: "In those times there was more zeal than there is now; my father and mother used to cross mountains and forests by night, in the worst weather, at the risk of their lives, to be present at divine service performed in secret; but now we are grown lazy: religious freedom is the deathblow to piety."

An hour's walking brought us to the principal hamlet of the commune, formerly called Fressinières, but now known as Les Ribes, occupying a wooded height on the left bank of the river. The population is partly Roman Catholic and partly Protestant. The Roman Catholics have a church here, the last in the valley, the two other places of worship higher up being Protestant. The principal person of Les Ribes is M. Baridon, son of the Joseph Baridon, receiver of the commune, so often mentioned with such affection in the journal of Neff. He is the only person in the valley whose position and education give him a claim to the title of "Monsieur;" and his house contains the only decent apartment in the Val Fressinières where pastors and visitors could be lodged previous to the erection, by Mr. Freemantle, of the pleasant little parsonage at Palons. This apartment in the Baridons' house Neff used to call the "Prophet's Chamber."

Half an hour higher up the valley we reached the hamlet of Violens, where all the inhabitants are Protestants. It was at this place that Neff helped to build and finish the church, for which he designed the seats and pulpit, and which he opened and dedicated on the 29th of August, 1824, the year before he finally left the neighbourhood. Violens is a poor hamlet situated at the bottom of a deep glen, or rocky abyss, called La Combe; the narrow valleys of Dauphiny, like those of Devon, being usually called combes, doubtless from the same original Celtic word cwm, signifying a hollow or dingle.

A little above Violens the valley contracts almost to a ravine, until we reach the miserable hamlet of Minsals, so shut in by steep crags that for nine months of the year it never sees the sun, and during several months in winter it lies buried in snow. The hamlet consists for the most part of hovels of mud and stone, without windows or chimneys, being little better than stables; indeed, in winter time, for the sake of warmth, the poor people share them with their cattle. How they contrive to scrape a living out of the patches of soil rescued from the rocks, or hung upon the precipices on the mountain-side, is a wonder.

One of the horrors of this valley consists in the constant state of disintegration of the adjoining rocks, which, being of a slaty formation, frequently break away in large masses, and are hurled into the lower grounds. This, together with the fall of avalanches in winter, makes the valley a most perilous place to live in. A little above Minsals, only a few years since, a tremendous fall of rock and mud swept over nearly the whole of the cultivated ground, since which many of the peasantry have had to remove elsewhere. What before was a well-tilled meadow, is now only a desolate waste, covered with rocks and débris.

Another of the horrors of the place is its liability to floods, which come rushing down, from the mountains, and often work sad havoc. Sometimes a fall of rocks from the cliffs above dams up the bed of the river, when a lake accumulates behind the barrier until it bursts, and the torrent swoops down the valley, washing away fields, and bridges, and mills, and hovels.

Even the stouter-built dwelling of M. Baridon at Les Ribes was nearly carried away by one of such inundations twelve years ago. It stands about a hundred yards from the mountain-stream which comes down from the Pic de la Séa. One day in summer a storm burst over the mountain, and the stream at once became swollen to a torrent. The inmates of the dwelling thought the house must eventually be washed away, and gave themselves up to prayer. The flood, bearing with it rolling rocks, came nearer and nearer, until it reached a few old walnut trees on a line with the torrent. A rock of some thirty feet square tumbled against one of the trees, which staggered and bent, but held fast and stopped the rock. The débris at once rolled upon it into a bank, the course of the torrent was turned, and the dwelling and its inmates were saved.

Another incident, illustrative of the perils of daily life in Val Fressinières, was related to me by Mr. Milsom while passing the scene of one of the mud and rock avalanches so common in the valley. Etienne Baridon, a member of the same Les Ribes family, an intelligent young man, disabled for ordinary work by lameness and deformity, occupied himself in teaching the children in the Protestant school at Violens, whither he walked daily, accompanied by the pupils from Les Ribes. One day, a heavy thunderstorm burst over the valley, and sent down an avalanche of mud, débris, and boulders, which rolled quite across the valley and extended to the river. The news of the circumstance reached Etienne when in school at Violens; the road to Les Ribes was closed; and he was accordingly urged to stay over the night with the children. But thinking of the anxiety of their parents, he determined to guide them back over the fall of rocks if possible. Arrived at the place, he found the mass still on the move, rolling slowly down in a ridge of from ten to twenty feet high, towards the river. Supported by a stout staff; the lame Baridon took first one child and then another upon his hump-back; and contrived to carry them across in safety; but while making his last journey with the last child, his foot slipped and his leg got badly crushed among the still-rolling stones. He was, however, able to extricate himself, and reached Les Ribes in safety with all the children. "This Etienne," concluded Mr. Milsom, "was really a noble fellow, and his poor deformed body covered the soul of a hero."

At length, after a journey of about ten miles up this valley of the shadow of death, along which the poor persecuted Vaudois were so often hunted, we reached an apparent cul-de-sac amongst the mountains, beyond which further progress seemed impracticable. Precipitous rocks, with their slopes of débris at foot, closed in the valley all round, excepting only the narrow gullet by which we had come; but, following the footpath, a way up the mountain-side gradually disclosed itself—a zigzag up the face of what seemed to be a sheer precipice—and this we were told was the road to Dormilhouse. The zigzag path is known as the Tourniquet. The ascent is long, steep, and fatiguing. As we passed up, we observed that the precipice contained many narrow ledges upon which soil has settled, or to which it has been carried. Some of these are very narrow, only a few yards in extent, but wherever there is room for a spade to turn, the little patches bear marks of cultivation; and these are the fields of the people of Dormilhouse!

Far up the mountain, the footpath crosses in front of a lofty cascade—La Pisse du Dormilhouse—which leaps from the summit of the precipice, and sometimes dashes over the roadway itself. Looking down into the valley from this point, we see the Biasse meandering like a thread in the hollow of the mountains, becoming lost to sight in the ravine near Minsals. We have now ascended to a great height, and the air feels cold and raw. When we left Palons, the sun was shining brightly, and its heat was almost oppressive, but now the temperature feels wintry. On our way up, rain began to fall; as we ascended the Tourniquet the rain became changed to sleet; and at length, on reaching the summit of the rising ground from which we first discerned the hamlet of Dormilhouse, on the first day of July, the snow was falling heavily, and all the neighbouring mountains were clothed in the garb of winter.

This, then, is the famous mountain fastness of the Vaudois—their last and loftiest and least accessible retreat when hunted from their settlements in the lower valleys hundreds of years ago. Driven from rock to rock, from Alp to Alp, they clambered up on to this lofty mountain-ledge, five thousand feet high, and made good their settlement, though at the daily peril of their lives. It was a place of refuge, a fortress and citadel of the faithful, where they continued to worship God according to conscience during the long dark ages of persecution and tyranny. The dangers and terrors of the situation are indeed so great, that it never could have been chosen even for a hiding-place, much less for a permanent abode, but from the direst necessity. What the poor people suffered while establishing themselves on these barren mountain heights no one can tell, but they contrived at length to make the place their home, and to become inured to their hard life, until it became almost a second nature to them.

The hamlet of Dormilhouse is said to have existed for nearly six hundred years, during which the religion of its inhabitants has remained the same. It has been alleged that the people are the descendants of a colony of refugee Lombards; but M. Muston, and others well able to judge, after careful inquiry on the spot, have come to the conclusion that they bear all the marks of being genuine descendants of the ancient Vaudois. In features, dress, habits, names, language, and religious doctrine, they have an almost perfect identity with the Vaudois of Piedmont at the present day.

Dormilhouse consists of about forty cottages, inhabited by some two hundred persons. The cottages are perched "like eagles' nests," one tier ranging over another on the rocky ledges of a steep mountain-side. There is very little soil capable of cultivation in the neighbourhood, but the villagers seek out little patches in the valley below and on the mountain shelves, from which they contrive to grow a little grain for home use. The place is so elevated and so exposed, that in some seasons even rye will not ripen at Dormilhouse, while the pasturages are in many places inaccessible to cattle, and scarcely safe for sheep.

The principal food of the people is goats' milk and unsifted rye, which they bake into cakes in the autumn, and these cakes last them the whole year—the grain, if left unbaked, being apt to grow mouldy and spoil in so damp an atmosphere. Besides, fuel is so scarce that it is necessary to exercise the greatest economy in its use, every stick burnt in the village having to be brought from a distance of some twelve miles, on the backs of donkeys, by the steep mountain-path leading up to the hamlet. Hence, also, the unsavoury means which they are under the necessity of adopting to economize warmth in the winter, by stabling the cattle with themselves in the cottages. The huts are for the most part wretched constructions of stone and mud, from which fresh air, comfort, and cleanliness seem to be entirely excluded. Excepting that the people are for the most part comfortably dressed, in clothing of coarse wool, which they dress and weave themselves, their domestic accommodation and manner of living are centuries behind the age; and were a stranger suddenly to be set down in the village, he could with difficulty be made to believe that he was in the land of civilised Frenchmen.

The place is dreary, stern, and desolate-looking even in summer. Thus, we entered it with the snow falling on the 1st of July! Few of the balmy airs of the sweet South of France breathe here. In the hollow of the mountains the heat may be like that of an oven; but here, far up on the heights, though the air may be fresh and invigorating at times, when the wind blows it often rises to a hurricane. Here the summer comes late and departs early. While flowers are blooming in the valleys, not a bud or blade of corn is to be seen at Dormilhouse. At the season when vegetation is elsewhere at its richest, the dominant features of the landscape are barrenness and desolation. The very shapes of the mountains are rugged, harsh, and repulsive. Right over against the hamlet, separated from it by a deep gully, rises up the grim, bare Gramusac, as black as a wall, but along the ledges of which, the hunters of Dormilhouse, who are very daring and skilful, do not fear to stalk the chamois.

But if the place is thus stern and even appalling in summer, what must it be in winter? There is scarcely a habitation in the village that is not exposed to the danger of being carried away by avalanches or falling rocks. The approach to the mountain is closed by ice and snow, while the rocks are all tapestried with icicles. The tourmente, or snow whirlwind, occasionally swoops up the valley, tears the roofs from the huts, and scatters them in destruction.

Here is a passage from Neff's journal, vividly descriptive of winter life at Dormilhouse:—

"The weather has been rigorous in the extreme; the falls of snow are very frequent, and when it becomes a little milder, a general thaw takes place, and our hymns are often sung amid the roar of the avalanches, which, gliding along the smooth face of the glacier, hurl themselves from precipice to precipice, like vast cataracts of silver."

Writing in January, he says:—

"We have been buried in four feet of snow since of 1st of November. At this very moment a terrible blast is whirling the snow in thick blinding clouds. Travelling is exceedingly difficult and even dangerous among these valleys, particularly in the neighbourhood of Dormilhouse, by reason of the numerous avalanches falling everywhere.... One Sunday evening our scholars and many of the Dormilhouse people, when returning home after the sermon at Violens, narrowly escaped an avalanche. It rolled through a narrow defile between two groups of persons: a few seconds sooner or later, and it would have plunged the flower of our youth into the depths of an unfathomable gorge.... In fact, there are very few habitations in these parts which are not liable to be swept away, for there is not a spot in the narrow corner of the valley which can be considered absolutely safe. But terrible as their situation is, they owe to it their religion, and perhaps their physical existence. If their country had been more secure and more accessible, they would have been exterminated like the inhabitants of Val Louise."

Such is the interesting though desolate mountain hamlet to the service of whose hardy inhabitants the brave Felix Neff devoted himself during the greater part of his brief missionary career. It was characteristic of him to prefer to serve them because their destitution was greater than that which existed in any other quarter of his extensive parish; and he turned from the grand mountain scenery of Arvieux and his comfortable cottage at La Chalp, to spend his winters in the dismal hovels and amidst the barren wastes of Dormilhouse.

When Neff first went amongst them, the people were in a state of almost total spiritual destitution. They had not had any pastor stationed amongst them for nearly a hundred and fifty years. During all that time they had been without schools of any kind, and generation after generation had grown up and passed away in ignorance. Yet with all the inborn tenacity of their race, they had throughout refused to conform to the dominant religion. They belonged to the Vaudois Church, and repudiated Romanism.

There was probably a Protestant church existing at Dormilhouse previous to the Revocation, as is shown by the existence of an ancient Vaudois church-bell, which was hid away until of late years, when it was dug up and hung in the belfry of the present church. In 1745, the Roman Catholics endeavoured to effect a settlement in the place, and then erected the existing church, with a residence for the curé. But the people, though they were on the best of terms with the curé, refused to enter his church. During the twenty years that he ministered there, it is said the sole congregation consisted of his domestic servant, who assisted him at mass.

The story is still told of the curé bringing up from Les Ribes a large bag of apples—an impossible crop at Dormilhouse—by way of tempting the children to come to him and receive instruction. But they went only so long as the apples lasted, and when they were gone the children disappeared. The curé complained that during the whole time he had been in the place he had not been able to get a single person to cross himself. So, finding he was not likely to be of any use there, he petitioned his bishop to be allowed to leave; on which, his request being complied with, the church was closed.

This continued until the period of the French Revolution, when religious toleration became recognised. The Dormilhouse people then took possession of the church. They found in it several dusty images, the basin for the holy water, the altar candlesticks, and other furniture, just as the curé had left them many years before; and they are still preserved as curiosities. The new occupants of the church whitewashed the pictures, took down the crosses, dug up the old Vaudois bell and hung it up in the belfry, and rang the villagers together to celebrate the old worship again. But they were still in want of a regular minister until the period when Felix Neff settled amongst them. A zealous young preacher, Henry Laget, had before then paid them a few visits, and been warmly welcomed; and when, in his last address, he told them they would see his face no more, "it seemed," said a peasant who related the incident to Neff, "as if a gust of wind had extinguished the torch which was to light us in our passage by night across the precipice." And even Neff's ministry, as we have above seen, only lasted for the short space of about three years.

Some years after the death of Neff, another attempt was made by the Roman Catholics to establish a mission at Dormilhouse. A priest went up from Les Ribes accompanied by a sister of mercy from Gap—"the pearl of the diocese," she was called—who hired a room for the purpose of commencing a school. To give éclat to their enterprise, the Archbishop of Embrun himself went up, clothed in a purple dress, riding a white horse, and accompanied by a party of men bearing a great red cross, which he caused to be set up at the entrance to the village. But when the archbishop appeared, not a single inhabitant went out to meet him; they had all assembled in the church to hold a prayer-meeting, and it lasted during the whole period of his visit. All that he accomplished was to set up the great red cross, after which he went down the Tourniquet again; and shortly after, the priest and the sister of mercy, finding they could not obtain a footing, also left the village. Somehow or other, the red cross which had been set up mysteriously disappeared, but how it had been disposed of no one would ever reveal. It was lately proposed to commemorate the event of the archbishop's visit by the erection of an obelisk on the spot where he had set up the red cross; and a tablet, with a suitable inscription, was provided for it by the Rev. Mr. Freemantle, of Claydon. But when he was told that the site was exposed to the full force of the avalanches descending from the upper part of the mountain in winter, and would speedily be swept away, the project of the memorial pillar was abandoned, and the tablet was inserted, instead, in the front wall of the village church, where it reads as follows:—

À LA GLOIRE DE DIEU DONT DE LES TEMPS ANCIENS ET À TRAVERS LE MARTYR DE LEURS PÈRES A MAINTENU À DORMILHOUSE LA FOI DONNE AUX SAINTS ET LA CONNAISSANCE DE LA PAROLE LES HABITANTS ONT ÉLEVÉ CETTE PIERRE MDCCCLXIV.

Having thus described the village and its history, a few words remain to be added as to the visit of our little party of travellers from Palons. On reaching the elevated point at which the archbishop had set up the red cross, the whole of the huts lay before us, and a little way down the mountain-side we discerned the village church, distinguished by its little belfry. Leaving on our right the Swiss-looking châlet with overhanging roof, in which Neff used to lodge with the Baridon-Verdure family while at Dormilhouse, and now known as "Felix Neff's house," we made our way down a steep and stony footpath towards the school-house adjoining the church, in front of which we found the large ash trees, shading both church and school, which Neff himself had planted. Arrived at the school-house, we there found shelter and accommodation for the night. The schoolroom, fitted with its forms and desks, was our parlour, and our bedrooms, furnished with the blankets we had brought with us, were in the little chambers adjoining.

At eight in the evening the church bell rang for service—the summoning bell. The people had been expecting the visit, and turned out in full force, so that at nine o'clock, when the last bell rang, the church was found filled to the door. Every seat was occupied—by men on one side, and by women on the other. The service was conducted by Mr. Milsom, the missionary visitor from Lyons, who opened with prayer, then gave out the twenty-third Psalm, which was sung to an accompaniment on the harmonium; then another prayer, followed by the reading of a chapter in the New Testament, was wound up by an address, in which the speaker urged the people to their continuance in well-doing. In the course of his remarks he said: "Be not discouraged because the results of your Labours may appear but small. Work on and faint not, and God will give the spiritual increase. Pastors, teachers, and colporteurs are too often ready to despond, because the fruit does not seem to ripen while they are watching it. But the best fruit grows slowly. Think how the Apostles laboured. They were all poor men, but men of brave hearts; and they passed away to their rest long before the seed which they planted grew up and ripened to perfection. Work on then in patience and hope, and be assured that God will at length help you."

Mr. Milsom's address was followed by another from the pastor, and then by a final prayer and hymn, after which the service was concluded, and the villagers dispersed to their respective homes a little after ten o'clock. The snow had ceased falling, but the sky was still overcast, and the night felt cold and raw, like February rather than July.

The wonder is, that this community of Dormilhouse should cling to their mountain eyrie so long after the necessity for their living above the clouds has ceased; but it is their home, and they have come to love it, and are satisfied to live and die there. Rather than live elsewhere, they will walk, as some of them do, twelve miles in the early morning, to their work down in the valley of the Durance, and twelve miles home again, in the evenings, to their perch on the rocks at Dormilhouse.

They are even proud of their mountain home, and would not change it for the most smiling vineyard of the plains. They are like a little mountain clan—all Baridons, or Michels, or Orcieres, or Bertholons, or Arnouds—proud of their descent from the ancient Vaudois. It is their boast that a Roman Catholic does not live among them. Once, when a young shepherd came up from the valley to pasture his flock in the mountains, he fell in love with a maiden of the village, and proposed to marry her. "Yes," was the answer, with this condition, that he joined the Vaudois Church. And he assented, married the girl, and settled for life at Dormilhouse.

The next morning broke clear and bright overhead. The sun shone along the rugged face of the Gramusac right over against the hamlet, bringing out its bolder prominences. Far below, the fleecy clouds were still rolling themselves up the mountain-sides, or gradually dispersing as the sun caught them on their emerging from the valley below. The view was bold and striking, displaying the grandeur of the scenery of Dormilhouse in one of its best aspects.

Setting out on the return journey to Palons, we descended the face of the mountain on which Dormilhouse stands, by a steep footpath right in front of it, down towards the falls of the Biasse. Looking back, the whole village appeared above us, cottage over cottage, and ledge over ledge, with its stern background of rocky mountain.

Immediately under the village, in a hollow between two shoulders of rock, the cascade of the Biasse leaps down into the valley. The highest leap falls in a jet of about a hundred feet, and the lower, divided into two by a projecting ledge, breaks into a shower of spray which falls about a hundred and fifty feet more into the abyss below. Even in Switzerland this fall would be considered a fine object; but in this out-of-the-way place, it is rarely seen except by the villagers, who have water and cascades more than enough.

We were told on the spot, that some eighty years since an avalanche shot down the mountain immediately on to the plateau on which we stood, carrying with it nearly half the village of Dormilhouse; and every year the avalanches shoot down at the same place, which is strewn with the boulders and débris that extend far down into the valley.

At the bottom of the Tourniquet we joined M. Charpiot, accompanying the donkey laden with the blankets and knapsacks, and proceeded with him on our way down the valley towards his hospitable parsonage at Palons.