Roux had made for the woods.
“That year we had bad weather on our mountains toward the end of winter. A snow-storm gripped the country for a whole week. It came from Roccalte and fell on Luzette for a whole day, and the following day Luzette seemed to send it back to Roccalte.
“After this snow, the storm came up from the direction of Rouergue and we had rain for a fortnight. This was not, as in autumn, a heavy rain, that swelled the mountain brooks into torrents and brought disaster to the valley. It was a little steady rain. with sometimes a good hour of sunlight during the day. … You know that sort of weather. It is good for making consumptives, and when it invades the country nobody can keep warm, because the dampness is everywhere (in the sheets on the beds as on the walls of the bedrooms, on the stones of the chimney as on those of the doorstep). When it snows, the air is clear and you can manage to get warm, but with this fine rain you shiver all day long. … It was indeed bad weather for Roux in his hiding-places on the mountain, where the rain must have soaked in as into the bed of the river.
“But after this snow and rain, the winter was over. We no longer heard anything of Roux and we thought some misfortune had befallen him during this end of the bad season. People were saying:
“ ‘It will have done him no good not to do as the others. He must have perished on the mountain, while he might perhaps have come back from the war.’
“At the beginning of that spring, I had to pass through Sauveplane, according to my wont, with the cart.
“I have already told you that after the bad winter season, when the roads became firm, we went up on the mountain to look after our sheepfold. The winter weather never did the building any good: it tore away the tiles, it rotted the beams, it loosened the big nails of the doors better than a pair of pincers could, and it crumbled the strongest cement into sand like that from the river. So we had to take along a few tools to repair the roof, the doors, and the barriers of the sheepfold. We also had to take along the iron bed, our herdsman’s straw mattress and cooking utensils, because, if we left them up there during the winter, we could not keep them. Every time we found our mattress rotted and our pots eaten away with rust.
“For all this luggage we had to take the cart, and with the cart we were forced to pass through Sauveplane. …
“So that year, as on others, I passed before Finette’s door, starting off on my trip up the mountain. I had not seen it since the day when I came there with the two gendarmes, and I must say I was far from calm at the idea of finding myself before it.
“I wondered if I had better pass without speaking, averting my face from her door, or if it was better to stop and pay her a brief visit, as I had been accustomed to do for twenty years.
“Because of my anger against her son, I should have liked to pass without speaking, but on the other hand I had reasons for pitying her and even esteeming her. After all, she was like the rest of us, deprived of her boy and all alone with her two daughters, on the rough land, with work too heavy for women. …
“Nevertheless, up to the last moment, I did not quite know what I was going to do, and I was still of two minds as I followed the road that climbs up to Sauveplane. But when I had turned the corner before the spring, beside the three poplars, and found myself before the farm, I stopped my horse as I was wont to do, without hesitating.
“Everything was in order and nothing had changed, apart from the rye-fields that had not been tilled. La Finette was at her door and looked at me without stirring. She was not going to be the first to speak and she was quite right.
“I called out to her and jumped down from my cart; she came toward me and we began to talk in the usual way. We talked about the soil and the beasts, then about the winter which was quite likely to have harmed the sheepfolds on the mountain, and finally about the fine weather which did not yet seem entirely settled, and which might let the Rouergue come back over the valley.
“In all this talk there was not a word about her son, in spite of my desire to know what had happened during these last weeks. I wondered if she knew her boy was safe in some hiding-place, or if, on the contrary, she pictured him dead in some lonely spot on the mountain, and I looked at her askance to try and divine what was in her head.
“She looked tired and was certainly sad, but, as she had always had this air of sadness, one could not attach any significance to it and this languor was indeed a part of her very nature.
“I had to go away without learning anything, but this visit to La Finette had taught me something just the same, and that day, as I was following the great trail, I told myself over and over that this war, no matter how one took it, brought misfortune to everybody.”
III
“About this time the son of Pagès, who had been in x.the war from the beginning, came home to spend a leave of convalescence; he had been hit in the shoulder, which did not prevent him from going about and looking after his affairs.
“As the snow had completely disappeared from the peaks, he took it into his head to go and see if the roof of his sheepfold, at Pueylong, had suffered much from the bad weather. … This sheepfold is in one of the worst spots on the mountain, far beyond ours, in the direction of Aire de Côte. The snow lasts there for more than six months, but in summer there is good grass for the beasts and there is always shade along its borders and running water at the foot of its meadows.
“Pagès, then, took the short-cuts up Aire de Côte, passed the meadow of Roquelongue, and began to follow the ridge.
“He had not gone five hundred metres under the beeches (at least this is how he told me the story himself) when he saw a man coming toward him. A man still young, with his clothes in tatters, a long beard, and streaming hair.
“When this man was only a few steps away he stopped directly in front of Pagès, calling him by name.
“Pagès recognised Roux and thought at first that it was a trève1 he had before him. But it was actually Roux the Bandit who was speaking to him, as much alive as you or I.
“Pagès felt a rush of anger, and, in spite of his wounded shoulder, he wanted to leap on Roux and drag him off to Saint-Jean by the collar of his jacket. He would not have had much difficulty in doing so, for Roux was a mere shadow of himself, after his winter hardships.
“As they stood face to face, Pagès gave way to his anger and asked Roux, ‘Why didn’t you do like the rest of us?’
“He did not ask him this question with any idea of listening to his reply, but simply shouted his anger at him, so that for a few minutes Roux was prevented from saying a word, while Pagès kept saying to him:
“ ‘Finiels of Vernède was killed four months ago; Randon has been listed as missing since September. My shoulder is smashed and Buffart from Borie has lost a leg. You, all this time, have stayed here, quite at your ease.’
“But Roux, by dint of obstinacy and patience, succeeded just the same in making himself heard. Calmly, gravely, he set himself to explain his conduct, and Pagès, who had thought like all of us that he had been afraid to enlist, was astonished to hear him give good reasons for not doing so.
“To tell the truth, Pagès has never been able to repeat to us all that Roux managed to say to him that day, but the evening after this meeting he replied unceasingly to all the questions put to him:
“ ‘He is not a bad man. He did not wish to do what he had to do, but you can’t say that he is not doing right. … He is a man of God, who could not go off like the rest of us because he understands things that we do not understand.’
“We had a fine dispute with Pagès that evening, all of us old people of the village. If he had not just come back from the war, and wounded as well, we should have howled him down like some urchin who doesn’t know what he is talking about.
“Old Pagès shouted to his boy, ‘If you think he has done well you have only to do the same thing, you rapscallion.’
“But Pagès replied, ‘Everybody does as he thinks right. I have my reasons for going to war, but Roux h
as his for not wishing to enlist.’
“ ‘Fine reasons,’ his father answered him, ‘reasons of a rapscallion.’
“ ‘Reasons that are understandable,’ Pagès continued. But when we asked him to explain them to us, he did not know what to say.
“ ‘He talked to me for an hour better than a pastor; the good God seemed to be speaking from his mouth and everything he said about himself was like passages from Scripture. He repeated to me over and over: “The Eternal has abandoned the world, and the world is mad. You do well to act as you do, and in the madness of the world your submission is wisdom. But we do not need to be deaf to the Eternal or to despise His word, and it is to follow His teachings and to keep His law that I have refused to go to war.” ’
“All these explanations only increased our anger, and old Pagès spoke for us when he answered his son:
“ ‘If he has something to say to the good God, he should share the suffering of the others, instead of refusing to submit to it.’
“But Pagès persisted in defending Roux, and he retorted to his father:
“ ‘He suffers as much as the rest of us, and I would not change my troubles for his. He has more to complain of than many people who pretend they have gone to war, but who have never been in the bad places, and have done nothing but parade around in automobiles.’
“ ‘He has bewitched you with all his reasons, but you should understand that he cannot be as badly off as he has made you believe: he must have found out how to get food somehow, on the mountain.’
“ ‘He can’t get much of anything to have become so thin, even if he comes down from time to time to see his mother. … But it is not hunger or storms that bring him his greatest sufferings: if he is to be pitied it is for having to stay always in the wilderness, never having anybody to talk to, and spending his time like an animal, hiding from men. … If he had not been at school with me, he would have fled at the sight of me, as he always does when he meets anyone on his path: but we were always good comrades before the war, we spent a whole summer together cutting wood on the summit of Luzette, and besides, our families are somewhat related: it is because of all this that he couldn’t help coming to talk to me a little, and I don’t regret having kept him company for an hour.’
“As Pagès warmed up more and more in this dispute, we finally all wearied of contradicting a man who had come back from the war, and who had more right to talk than any of us. Old Pagès himself could only reply to his boy:
“I know very well that Roux was not a bad friend before he committed that folly. I have always said he was one of the most honest men in the valley, and I was well pleased when I saw you take a job with him. … But since that time, he has done something that should not be done, and you have no right to let him off so easily.’
“ ‘Everybody does as he believes,’ resumed Pagès, ‘and Roux has his reasons for not wanting to fight.’
“Although I wasn’t on Pagès side, I was not as angry as the others and I followed the dispute especially to try to form some idea about this affair. What seemed to me most blameworthy in Roux’s conduct was his having condemned himself to live without doing anything useful. I said to myself:
“ ‘What does he ever do with himself in the forests, on the mountain? He can only spend his time in idleness while his valley lands waste away like other people’s, as they would have wasted away if he had gone to war.’
“To be assured about this thing, I asked Pagès if he could tell me how Roux spent his days on the mountain, and Pagès replied:
“ ‘I asked him that, and he said, “I walk and I pray, I have a Bible, and I read it under the beeches, then I go and stretch out on the rocks on the summit, and I look at the valley and the villages.
“ ‘ “When it is cold, I sleep by day in the sun, between two rocks that protect me from the wind, and I spend my nights walking on the mountain, along the deserted trails.
“ ‘ “Even during the worst weather, it is difficult for me to light a fire when the wind is blowing hard, because the smoke would soon betray me. But I light it sometimes in the caves and remain for hours before the burning logs, then before the red embers, as if I were back in the winter evenings at Sauveplane.” ’ ”
Finiels stopped speaking for a few minutes: we respected this silence, but our suspended attention did not allow it to become an interruption of the story. … The dogs outside were bewailing their fatigue from the hunt and their regret for the morning’s run. Their plaintive baying—as if in chase—brought before us the night’s excursion, the long walk on the mountain, following the trail over the fine, close-cropped grass, the waiting for the frosty dawn at the highest corner of the beech wood: this waiting, which had been, for me, not a vigil, but only an attentive reverie, induced by the sight of the three slopes of this great promontory, that fall perpendicularly toward the triple valley and the high meadows of the land about Sauveplane. …
But old Finiels took up his tale again, and it was to me that he addressed himself directly, as if he had to convince me, as if it were necessary for him to prove something to me.
“You know, Monsieur André, I am no great habitué of the chapel. You see, it is a long time since I have gone there, except for marriages and baptisms, for the sake of propriety. … But you know too that I respect the faith of others and that I even admire those who put the word of God into practice.”
This was not the first time that Finiels had tried to assure me of his detachment and of his respect for religious things. Many a time, during our excursions on the mountain, when we were walking side by side and the going was not too hard, he had acquainted me with the grounds for his doubts. I have discussed them with him, adopting his point of view, using the language and the images familiar to him. In these discussions, we have always been in complete accord regarding such problems, and since Finiels had gathered from this that I believed him to be an atheist, and considered him free from all the bonds of religion, he has taken pains very frequently to assure me of his respect for religious matters, perhaps through a taste for moderation, and, no doubt, also through an instinct for his veritable affinities. But these declarations were quite useless and I could not be the dupe of our dialogues: when I examined them in solitude, far from concluding that Finiels was indifferent, I associated him, on the contrary, with that religious and almost ascetic race to which he belonged.
Finiels had not been able to remain Protestant, as his fathers had not been able to remain Catholic; but these ruptures with the Church were still religious acts. This tendency to heresy, this taste for theological controversies and for the schisms which they arouse, is only the result of a mystical application of the soul. Heresies, even negations, cannot give the right to pretend to indifference in regard to religious things; they prove, on the contrary, that the examination of religion is, to the spirit, the only research that matters.
In behaving in this way, Finiels was only obeying the genius of his race. Since the tenth century, simple pastors have prophesied on the mountains of the three Gardons and of Hérault, and the annals of the great abbeys of the Cévennes, that bear witness to their presence, all prove them to have had a miraculous eloquence and something like a mystical possession of the Word. I have often regretted that their improvisations have never been transcribed and that it is not even possible for us to find their primitive themes in the oral traditions and the proverbs of the mountain. At least we can imagine their tendencies from the more recent religious crises that have convulsed this region.
These mountaineers did not desire a learned and measured initiation, but a sudden and complete revelation. It was no doubt for this reason that they turned away from Albigensianism, a doctrine more subtle than mystical, more rhetorical than eloquent, and that a few centuries later they adopted the Reformation with enthusiasm.
The New Religion exalted their tendency to lyricism and their taste for prophecies. With the Old Testament and the Apocalypse it delivered to them unreservedly the inexhausti
ble themes that Catholicism had indeed presented to them, but with too much prudence—perhaps too much moderation—for their taste, and in a fashion that was more material than verbal.
Today, the majority of these men seek to free themselves from the practices of Protestantism, but if they do not wish to go to church, as their ancestors did not wish any longer to go to mass, for all that, they do not lose their respect for sacred things, and it is still religious discussions that delight them most. They pretend to be indifferent, but when they converse gravely, the only problems they can bring up are those of sin, death, and eternal life. …
Having allowed a few seconds of silence to elapse after his profession of faith, Finiels went on:
“When I knew that Roux the Bandit had not yielded to fear, but to his conscience, and that he had not wished to go and fight because the Scripture said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ I felt less angry with him.
“I did not think he was right, and I would not have told others to act like him, but I respected his belief. Everything he had said to Pagès caused me to reflect, and I could no longer think of him as an animal you hunt, but rather as a capable man with whom you talk things over.
“But work and the anxieties of war and of my property obliged me to think of many other things. Time passed: hard times for everybody. Now and then, the boy left us without news for a week or two, which caused us as much anguish as if he had been killed. All the plots of land which I had, here and there, had to be tilled, and, with only my two hands, I never got to the end of my work.
“During this time, Roux was still on the mountain. He became a little less wary and at rare intervals someone from this neighbourhood would meet him going to cut his wood over by Roquelongue. He only approached those whom he knew well or who were in some way related to him on one side or the other, and all these people came back saying the same thing as Pagès—so much so that a few old people were already reporting that the Holy Ghost spoke through Roux’s mouth. …
Roux the Bandit Page 5
