CHAPTER V.

GUILLESTRE AND THE VALLEY OF QUEYRAS.

We left Palons on a sharp, bright morning in July, with the prospect of a fine day before us, though there had been a fall of snow in the night, which whitened the tops of the neighbouring hills. Following the road along the heights on the right bank of the Biasse, and passing the hamlet of Chancellas, another favourite station of Neff's, a rapid descent led us down into the valley of the Durance, which we crossed a little above the village of St. Crepin, with the strong fortress of Mont Dauphin before us a few miles lower down the valley.

This remote corner in the mountains was the scene of much fighting in early times between the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots, and afterwards between the French and the Piedmontese. It was in this neighbourhood that Lesdiguières first gave evidence of his skill and valour as a soldier. The massacre of St. Bartholomew at Paris in 1572 had been followed by like massacres in various parts of France, especially in the south. The Roman Catholics of Dauphiny, deeming the opportunity favourable for the extirpation of the heretical Vaudois, dispatched the military commandant of Embrun against the inhabitants of Val Fressinières at the head of an army of twelve hundred men. Lesdiguières, then scarce twenty-four years old, being informed of their march, hastily assembled a Huguenot force in the valley of the Drac, and, crossing the Col d'Orcières from Champsaur into the valley of the Durance, he suddenly fell upon the enemy at St. Crepin, routed them, and drove them down the valley to Embrun. Twelve years later, during the wars of the League, Lesdiguières distinguished himself in the same neighbourhood, capturing Embrun, Guillestre, and Château Queyras, in the valley of the Guil, thereby securing the entire province for his royal master, Henry of Navarre.

The strong fortress of Mont Dauphin, at the junction of the Guil with the Durance, was not constructed until a century later. Victor-Amadeus II., when invading the province with a Piedmontese army, at sight of the plateau commanding the entrance of both valleys, exclaimed, "There is a pass to fortify." The hint was not neglected by the French general, Catinat, under whose directions the great engineer, Vauban, traced the plan of the present fortifications. It is a very strong place, completely commanding the valley of the Durance, while it is regarded as the key of the passage into Italy by the Guil and the Col de la Croix.

Guillestre is a small old-fashioned town, situated on the lowest slope of the pine-clad mountain, the Tête de Quigoulet, at the junction of the Rioubel and the Chagne, rivulets in summer but torrents in winter, which join the Guil a little below the town. Guillestre was in ancient times a strong place, and had for its lords the Archbishops of Embrun, the ancient persecutors of the Vaudois. The castle of the archbishop, flanked by six towers, occupied a commanding site immediately overlooking the town; but at the French Revolution of 1789, the first thing which the archbishop's flock did was to pull his castle in pieces, leaving not one stone upon another; and, strange to say, the only walled enclosure now within its precincts is the little burying-ground of the Guillestre Protestants. One memorable stone has, however, been preserved, the stone trough in which the peasants were required to measure the tribute of grain payable by them to their reverend seigneurs. It is still to be seen laid against a wall in an open space in front of the church.

It happened that the fair of Guillestre, which is held every two months, was afoot at the time of our visit. It is frequented by the people of the adjoining valleys, of which Guillestre is the centre, as well as by Piedmontese from beyond the Italian frontier. On the principal day of the fair we found the streets filled with peasants buying and selling beasts. They were apparently of many races. Amongst them were many well-grown men, some with rings in their ears—horse-dealers from Piedmont, we were told; but the greater number were little, dark, thin, and poorly-fed peasants. Some of them, dark-eyed and tawny-skinned, looked like Arabs, possibly descendants of the Saracens who once occupied the province. There were one or two groups of gipsies, differing from all else; but the district is too poor to be much frequented by people of that race.

The animals brought for sale showed the limited resources of the neighbourhood. One hill-woman came along dragging two goats in milk; another led a sheep and a goat; a third a donkey in foal; a fourth a cow in milk; and so on. The largest lot consisted of about forty lambs, of various sizes and breeds, which had been driven down from the cool air of the mountains, and, gasping with heat, were cooling their heads against the shady side of a stone wall. There were several lots of pigs, of a bad but probably hardy sort—mostly black, round-backed, long-legged, and long-eared. In selling the animals, there was the usual chaffering, in shrill patois, at the top of the voice—the seller of some poor scraggy beast extolling its merits, the intending buyer running it down as a "misérable bossu," &c., and disputing every point raised in its behalf, until the contest of words rose to such a height—men, women, and even children, on both sides, taking part in it—that the bystander would have thought it impossible they could separate without a fight. But matters always came to a peaceable conclusion, for the French are by no means a quarrelsome people.

There were also various other sorts of produce offered for sale—wool, undressed sheepskins, sticks for firewood, onions and vegetable produce, and considerable quantities of honeycomb; while the sellers of scythes, whetstones, caps, and articles of dress, seemed to meet with a ready sale for their wares, arranged on stalls in the open space in front of the church. Altogether, the queer collection of beasts and their drivers, who were to be seen drinking together greedily and promiscuously from the fountains in the market-place; the steep streets, crowded with lean goats and cows and pigs, and their buyers and sellers; the braying of donkeys and the shrieking of chafferers, with here and there a goitred dwarf of hideous aspect, presented a picture of an Alpine mountain fair, which, once seen, is not readily forgotten.

There is a similar fair held at the village of La Bessie, before mentioned, a little higher up the Durance, on the road to Briançon; but it is held only once a year, at the end of October, when the inhabitants of Dormilhouse come down in a body to lay in their stock of necessaries for the winter. "There then arrives," says M. Albert, "a caravan of about the most singular character that can be imagined. It consists of nearly the whole population of the mountain hamlet, who resort thither to supply themselves with the articles required for family use during the winter, such as leather, lint, salt, and oil. These poor mountaineers are provided with very little money, and, to procure the necessary commodities, they have recourse to barter, the most ancient and primitive method of conducting trade. Hence they bring with them rye, barley, pigs, lambs, chamois skins and horns, and the produce of their knitting during the past year, to exchange for the required articles, with which they set out homeward, laden as they had come."

The same circumstances which have concurred in making Guillestre the seat of the principal fair of the valleys, led Felix Neff to regard it as an important centre of missionary operations amongst the Vaudois. In nearly all the mountain villages in its neighbourhood descendants of the ancient Vaudois are to be found, sometimes in the most remote and inaccessible places, whither they had fled in the times of the persecutions. Thus at Vars, a mountain hamlet up the torrent Rioubel, about nine miles from Guillestre, there is a little Christian community, which, though under the necessity of long concealing their faith, never ceased to be Vaudois in spirit. Then, up the valley of the Guil, and in the lateral valleys which join it, there are, in some places close to the mountain barrier which divides France from Italy, other villages and hamlets, such as Arvieux, San Veran, Fongilarde, &c., the inhabitants of which, though they concealed their faith subsequent to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, never conformed to Roman Catholicism, but took the earliest opportunity of declaring themselves openly so soon as the dark period of persecution had passed by.

The people of these scattered and distant hamlets were, however, too poor to supply themselves with religious instructors, and they long remained in a state of spiritual destitution. Felix Neff's labours were too short, and scattered over too extensive a field, to produce much permanent effect. Besides, they were principally confined to the village of Dormilhouse, which, as being the most destitute, had, he thought, the greatest claim upon his help; and at his death comparatively little had been done or attempted in the Guillestre district. But he left behind him what was worth more than any endowment of money, a noble example, which still lives, and inspires the labourers who have come after him.

It was not until within the last twenty years that a few Vaudois families of Guillestre began to meet together for religious purposes, which they did at first in the upper chamber of an inn. There the Rev. Mr. Freemantle found them when paying his first visit to the valleys in 1851. He was rejoiced to see the zeal of the people, holding to their faith in the face of considerable opposition and opprobrium; and he exerted himself to raise the requisite funds amongst his friends in England to provide the Guillestre Vaudois with a place of worship of their own. His efforts were attended with success; and in 1854 a comfortable parsonage, with a commodious room for public worship, was purchased for their use. A fund was also provided for the maintenance of a settled ministry; a pastor was appointed; and in 1857 a congregation of from forty to seventy persons attended worship every Sunday. Mr. Freemantle, in a communication with which he has favoured us, says: "Our object has not been to make an aggression upon the Roman Catholics, but to strengthen the hands and establish the faith of the Vaudois. And in so doing we have found, not unfrequently, that when an interest has been excited among the Roman Catholic population of the district, there has been some family or hereditary connection with ancestors who were independent of the see of Rome, and such have again joined themselves to the faith of their fathers."

The new movement was not, however, allowed to proceed without great opposition. The "Momiers," or mummers—the modern nickname of the Vaudois—were denounced by the curé of the place, and the people were cautioned, as they valued their souls' safety, against giving any countenance to their proceedings. The curé was doubtless seriously impressed by the gravity of the situation; and to protect the parish against the assaults of the evil one, he had a large number of crosses erected upon the heights overlooking the town. On one occasion he had a bad dream, in which he beheld the valley filled with a vast assembly come to be judged; and on the site of the judgment-seat which he saw in his dream, he set up, on the summit of the Come Chauve, a large tin cross hearted with wood. We were standing in the garden in front of the parsonage at Guillestre late in the evening, when M. Schell, the pastor, pointing up to the height, said, "There you see it now; that is the curé's erection." The valley below lay in deep shadow, while the cross upon the summit brightly reflected the last rays of the setting sun.

The curé, finding that the "Momiers" did not cease to exist, next adopted the expedient of preaching them down. On the occasion of the Fête Napoleon, 1862, when the Rev. Mr. Freemantle visited Guillestre for the purpose of being present at the Vaudois services on Sunday, the 10th of August, the curé preached a special sermon to his congregation at early morning mass, telling them that an Englishman had come into the town with millions of francs to buy up the souls of Guillestre, and warning them to abstain from such men.

The people were immediately filled with curiosity to know what it was that this stranger had come all the way from England to do, backed by "millions of francs." Many of them did not as yet know that there was such a thing as a Vaudois church in Guillestre; but now that they did know, they were desirous of ascertaining something about the doctrines taught there. The consequence was, that a crowd of people—amongst whom were some of the highest authorities in the town, the registrar, the douaniers, the chief of a neighbouring commune, and persons of all classes—assembled at noon to hear M. de Faye, the Protestant pastor, who preached to them an excellent sermon under the trees of the parsonage orchard, while a still larger number attended in the afternoon.

When the curé heard of the conduct of his flock he was greatly annoyed. "What did you hear from the heretics?" he asked of one of the delinquents. "I heard your sermon in the morning, and a sermon upon charity in the afternoon," was the reply.

Great were the surprise and excitement in Guillestre when it became known that the principal sergeant of gendarmerie—the very embodiment of law and order in the place—had gone over and joined the "Momiers" with his wife and family. M. Laugier was quite a model gendarme. He was a man of excellent character, steady, sensible, and patient, a diligent self-improver, a reader of books, a botanist, and a bit of a geologist. He knew all the rare mountain plants, and had a collection of those that would bear transplantation, in his garden at the back of the town. No man was more respected in Guillestre than the sergeant. His long and faithful service entitled him to the médaille militaire, and it would have been awarded to him, but for the circumstance which came to light, and which he did not seek to conceal, that he had joined the Protestant connexion. Not only was the medal withheld, but influence was used to get him sent away from the place; and he was packed off to a station in the mountains at Château Queyras.

Though this banishment from Guillestre was intended as a punishment, it only served to bring out the sterling qualities of the sergeant, and to ensure his eventual reward. It so happened that the station at Château Queyras commanded the approaches into an extensive range of mountain pasturage. Although not required specially to attend to their safety, our sergeant had nevertheless carefully noted the flocks and herds as they went up the valleys in the spring. When winter approached, they were all brought down again from the mountains for safety.

The winter of that year set in early and severely. The sergeant, making his observations on the flocks as they passed down the valley, noted that one large flock of about three thousand sheep had not yet made its appearance. The mountains were now covered with snow, and he apprehended that the sheep and their shepherds had been storm-stayed. Summoning to his assistance a body of men, he set out at their head in search of the lost flock. After a long, laborious, and dangerous journey—for the snow by this time lay deep in the hollows of the hills—he succeeded in discovering the shepherds and the sheep, almost reduced to their last gasp—the sheep, for want of food, actually gnawing each other's tails. With great difficulty the whole were extricated from their perilous position, and brought down the mountains in safety.

No representation was made to head-quarters by the authorities of Guillestre of the conduct of the Protestant sergeant in the matter; but when the shepherds got down to Gap, they were so full of the sergeant's praises, and of his bravery in rescuing them and their flock from certain death, that a paragraph descriptive of the affair was inserted in the local papers, and was eventually copied into the Parisian journals. Then it was that an inquiry was made into his conduct, and the result was so satisfactory that the sergeant was at once decorated not only with the médaille militaire, but with the médaille de sauvetage—a still higher honour; and, shortly after, he was allowed to retire from the service on full pay. He then returned to his home and family at Guillestre, where he now officiates as Regent of the Vaudois church, reading the prayers and conducting the service in the absence of the stated minister.

We spent a Sunday in the comfortable parsonage at Guillestre. There was divine service in the temple at half-past ten A.M., conducted by the regular pastor, M. Schell, and instruction and catechizing of the children in the afternoon. The pastor's regular work consists of two services at Guillestre and Vars on alternate Sundays, with Sunday-school and singing lesson; and on week days he gives religious instruction in the Guillestre school. The missionary's wife is a true "helpmeet," and having been trained as a deaconess at Strasbourg, she regularly visits the poor, occasionally assisting them with medical advice.

Another important part of the work at Guillestre is the girls' school, for which suitable premises have been taken; and it is conducted by an excellent female teacher. Here not only the usual branches of education are taught, but domestic industry of different kinds. Through the instrumentality of Mr. Milsom, glove-sewing has been taught to the girls, and it is hoped that by this and similar efforts this branch of home manufacture may become introduced in the High Alps, and furnish profitable employment to many poor persons during their long and dreary winter.

By the aid of a special fund, a few girl boarders, belonging to scattered Protestant families who have no other means for the education of their children, are also received at the school. The girls seem to be extremely well taken care of, and the house, which we went over, is a very pattern of cleanliness and comfort.

The route from Guillestre into Italy lies up the valley of the Guil, through one of the wildest and deepest gorges, or rather chasms, to be found in Europe. Brockedon says it is "one of the finest in the Alps." M. Bost compares it to the Moutier-Grand-Val, in the canton of Berne, but says it is much wilder. He even calls it frightful, which it is not, except in rainy weather, when the rocks occasionally fall from overhead. At such times people avoid travelling through the gorge. M. Bost also likens it to the Via Mala, though here the road, at the narrowest and most precipitous parts, runs in the bottom of the gorge, in a ledge cut in the rock, there being room only for the river and the road. It is only of late years that the road has been completed, and it is often partly washed away in winter, or covered with rock and stones brought down by the torrent. When Neff travelled the gorge, it was passable only on foot, or on mule-back. Yet light-footed armies have passed into Italy by this route. Lesdiguières clambered over the mountains and along the Guil to reach Château Queyras, which he assaulted and took. Louis XIII. once accompanied a French army about a league up the gorge, but he turned back, afraid to go farther; and the hamlet at which his progress was arrested is still called Maison du Roi. About three leagues higher up, after crossing the Guil from bank to bank several times, in order to make use of such ledges of the rock as are suitable for the road, the gorge opens into the Combe du Queyras, and very shortly the picturesque-looking Castle of Queyras comes in sight, occupying the summit of a lofty conical rock in the middle of the valley.

As we approached Château Queyras the ruins of a building were pointed out by Mr. Milsom in the bottom of the valley, close by the river-side. "That," said he, "was once the Protestant temple of the place. It was burnt to the ground at the Revocation. You see that old elm-tree growing near it. That tree was at the same time burnt to a black stump. It became a saying in the valley that Protestantism was as dead as that stump, and that it would only reappear when that dead stump came to life! And, strange to say, since Felix Neff has been here, the stump has come to life—you see how green it is—and again Protestantism is like the elm-tree, sending out its vigorous offshoots, in the valley."

Château Queyras stands in the centre of the valley of the Guil, which is joined near this point by two other valleys, the Combe of Arvieux joining it on the right bank, and that of San Veran on the left. The heads of the streams which traverse these valleys have their origin in the snowy range of the Cottian Alps, which form the boundary between France and Italy. As in the case of the descendants of the ancient Vaudois at Dormilhouse, they are here also found at the farthest limit of vegetation, penetrating almost to the edge of the glacier, where they were least likely to be molested. The inhabitants of Arvieux were formerly almost entirely Protestant, and had a temple there, which was pulled down at the Revocation. From that time down to the Revolution they worshipped only in secret, occasionally ministered to by Vaudois pastors, who made precarious visits to them from the Italian valleys at the risk of their lives.

Above Arvieux is the hamlet of La Chalp, containing a considerable number of Protestants, and where Neff had his home—a small, low cottage undistinguishable from the others save by its whitewashed front. Its situation is cheerful, facing the south, and commanding a pleasant mountain prospect, contrasting strongly with the barren outlook and dismal hovels of Dormilhouse. But Neff never could regard the place as his home. "The inhabitants," he observed in his journal, "have more traffic, and the mildness of the climate appears somehow or other not favourable to the growth of piety. They are zealous Protestants, and show me a thousand attentions, but they are at present absolutely impenetrable." The members of the congregation at Arvieux, indeed, complained of his spending so little of his time among them; but the comfort of his cottage at La Chalp, and the comparative mildness of the climate of Arvieux, were insufficient to attract him from the barren crags but warm hearts of Dormilhouse.

The village of San Veran, which lies up among the mountains some twelve miles to the east of Arvieux, on the opposite side of the Val Queyras, was another of the refuges of the ancient Vaudois. It is at the foot of the snowy ridge which divides France from Italy. Dr. Gilly says, "There is nothing fit for mortal to take refuge in between San Veran and the eternal snows which mantle the pinnacles of Monte Viso." The village is 6,692 feet above the level of the sea, and there is a provincial saying that San Veran is the highest spot in Europe where bread is eaten. Felix Neff said, "It is the highest, and consequently the most pious, in the valley of Queyras." Dr. Gilly was the second Englishman who had ever found his way to the place, and he was accompanied on the occasion by Mrs. Gilly. "The sight of a female," he says, "dressed entirely in linen, was a phenomenon so new to those simple peasants, whose garments are never anything but woollen, that Pizarro and his mail-clad companions were not greater objects of curiosity to the Peruvians than we were to these mountaineers."

Not far distant from San Veran are the mountain hamlets of Pierre Grosse and Fongillarde, also ancient retreats of the persecuted Vaudois, and now for the most part inhabited by Protestants. The remoteness and comparative inaccessibility of these mountain hamlets may be inferred from the fact that in 1786, when the Protestants of France were for the first time since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes permitted to worship in public without molestation, four years elapsed before the intelligence reached San Veran.

We have now reached almost the extreme limits of France; Italy lying on the other side of the snowy peaks which shut in the upper valleys of the Alps. In Neff's time the parish of which he had charge extended from San Veran, on the frontier, to Champsaur, in the valley of the Drac, a distance of nearly eighty miles. His charge consisted of the scattered population of many mountain hamlets, to visit which in succession involved his travelling a total distance of not less than one hundred and eighty miles. It was, of course, impossible that any single man, no matter how inspired by zeal and devotion, could do justice to a charge so extensive. The difficulties of passing through a country so wild and rugged were also very great, especially in winter. Neff records that on one occasion he took six hours to make the journey, in the midst of a snow-storm which completely hid the footpath, from his cottage at La Chalp to San Veran, a distance of only twelve miles.

The pastors who succeeded Neff had the same difficulties to encounter, and there were few to be found who could brave them. The want of proper domestic accommodation for the pastors was also felt to be a great hindrance. Accordingly, one of the first things to which the Rev. Mr. Freemantle directed his attention, when he entered upon his noble work of supplying the spiritual destitution of the French Vaudois, was to take steps not only to supply the poor people with more commodious temples, but also to provide dwelling-houses for the pastors. And in the course of a few years, helped by friends in England, he has been enabled really to accomplish a very great deal. The extensive parish of Neff is now divided into five sub-parishes—that of Fressinières, which includes Palons, Violins, and Dormilhouse, provided with three temples, a parsonage, and schools; Arvieux, with the hamlets of Brunissard (where worship was formerly conducted in a stable) and La Chalp, provided with two temples, a parsonage, and schools; San Veran, with Fongillarde and Pierre Grosse, provided with three temples, a parsonage, and a school; St. Laurent du Cros and Champsaur, in the valley of the Drac, provided with a temple, school, &c., principally through the liberality of Lord Monson; and Guillestre and Vars, provided with two temples, a parsonage, and a girls' school. A temple, with a residence for a pastor, has also of late years been provided at Briançon, with a meeting-place also at the village of Villeneuve.

Such are the agencies now at work in the district of the High Alps, helped on by a few zealous workers in England and abroad. While the object of the pastors, in the words of Mr. Freemantle, is "not to regard themselves as missionaries to proselytize Roman Catholics, but as ministers residing among their own people, whose faith, and love, and holiness they have to promote," they also endeavour to institute measures with the object of improving the social and domestic condition of the Vaudois. Thus, in one district—that of St. Laurent du Cros—a banque de prévoyance, or savings-bank, has been established; and though it was at first regarded with suspicion, it has gradually made its way and proved of great value, being made use of by the indigent Roman Catholics as well as Protestant families of the district. Such efforts and such agencies as these cannot fail to be followed by blessings, and to be greatly instrumental for good.

Our last night in France was spent in the miserable little town of Abries, situated immediately at the foot of the Alpine ridge which separates France from Italy. On reaching the principal hotel, or rather auberge, we found every bed taken; but a peep into the dark and dirty kitchen, which forms the entrance-hall of the place, made us almost glad that there was no room for us in that inn. We turned out into the wet streets to find a better; but though we succeeded in finding beds in a poor house in a back lane, little can be said in their praise. We were, however, supplied with a tolerable dinner, and contrived to pass the night in rest, and to start refreshed early on the following morning on our way to the Vaudois valleys of Piedmont.