Ruoms—The church—Aven of Réméjadou—Sampson—Vallon—Captain Merle—The last Marquess—Tapestries—Clotilde de Surville—Pont de l'Arc—Salavas—Slaughter of the garrison—Caves—Goule de Foussoubie—Chames—Castle of Ebbo—Pas du Mousse—Grotte of Oustalas—Rapids—La Madeleine—Tour d'Aiguilles—Aiguèze—S. Martin—The return journey—Two men in a boat—Grotte de S. Marcel—The Gours—Dolmens—The Aven of Vigneclose.
The Gorges of the Ardèche
drop Cap R
RUOMS is a quaint little town on the Ardèche, where that river issues from between parallel walls of lias, not of great elevation, laid in regular horizontal beds. The road follows the river upwards for a short way only, and then turns up the Ligne towards Argentière. Ruoms was a walled town, and a considerable portion of the fortifications remains enclosing the church, old houses, and narrow and dirty lanes. The church is interesting, very early and rude Romanesque, lofty, with three bays and side aisles. There are quasi-transepts, not extending beyond the aisles. The east end is square. The piers and arches are unmoulded. A curious feature is a window on the south, apparently to serve for a clerestory light, with pilasters and sculptured capitals, but it has never been pierced through, so that it acts merely as a relieving arcade in the wall. Another unusual feature is that the wall of the south aisle has in it narrow square-headed [Pg 138] lights in recesses under relieving arches. The tower has a zigzag ornament above the bell windows in black lava alternating with white limestone.
The Ardèche is joined below the town by the river of La Beaume, that flows through a ca?on very similar to that through which the Ardèche itself has run before it reaches the bridge of Ruoms. These ca?ons through the lias are curious rather than picturesque, the strata lie horizontally as regularly disposed as stones in an artificial wall. On the high ground some way up the Beaume, on the plateau, or gras, is the aven or pot-hole of Réméjadou, twenty-five feet in diameter and eighty feet deep. One can hear the rush of water below, and this issues from the rock in the spring of Bourbouillet, two miles off, with sufficient volume to turn a mill. M. Janet says:—
"This aven has water flowing in its depths, filling the entire bottom. This stream issues from an arcade on one side about eighteen feet high, and disappears under a similar arch. It flows from north to south, which agrees with what the shepherd of Bourbouillet asserted, that this subterranean stream issues at the spring of that name. According to him, the inhabitants of Bourbouillet were much surprised one day to see the water of this spring charged with sawdust, and the explanation of the phenomenon was obtained only some days later, when they ascertained that some woodcutters who had been sawing up a good deal of timber had ridded themselves of the sawdust by throwing it into the aven." [7]
This pot-hole was explored in 1892 by M. Gaupillat, and he established the curious fact that the underground stream enters and leaves the aven by natural [Pg 139] syphons, and not through galleries, so that it is not possible to track the stream up or down.
Standing high above the junction of the Chassezac and Ardèche are the mountain and rock of Sampson, supporting a little village and church with spire on a col between the mighty crest of perpendicular rock and the crag that falls abruptly to the Chassezac. A small omnibus conveys travellers to Vallon, which is the place at which to stay, whence to make the descent of the ca?on of the Ardèche. But the visitor who does this must be prepared either to return to Vallon by carriage over the Causse, some twenty miles, or he must be without luggage, and catch the train at S. Just or S. Marcel, and meet his impedimenta elsewhere, perhaps at Le Teil, for the canoes that shoot the rapids of the Ardèche are too small to accommodate baggage.
Vallon is not a town in itself of much interest, but it contains the chateau of the redoubtable Huguenot captain, Merle de Lagorce, who sacked Malzieu and Issoire, and burnt the cathedral at Mende. Vallon was in the hands of the Reformed, but, on the other hand, old Vallon with its castle on the height above it remained to the Catholics. Opposite that, on the further side of the river, is Salavas, where a strong and extensive castle, now in ruins, occupied the crest of a precipitous rock. These two positions Merle was determined on taking; he succeeded, and died in the castle of Salavas at the end of January, 1584, at the age of thirty-five. I have given his life in my Deserts of Central France.
His son Hérail de Merle, Baron de Lagorce, joined the Church, and entered into the service of the King.
On February 6th, 1842, died in the chateau of Vallon [Pg 140] the Marquess Emmanuel de Merle de Lagorce, last male descendant of the eldest branch of the family, and left the chateau to his sister, married to the Count de Chapelain, who sold it to the town of Vallon in 1846. When the citizens came to take possession and convert the castle into a mairie, school, etc., they discovered in a loft a whole series of superb tapestries rolled up and forgotten. These came from the chateau of Montréal in L'Argentière, brought thence in 1783. They are from Aubusson looms, and are in seven panel pictures representing scenes from the "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso. They adorn the chamber now used by the magistracy. Very fine is the hammered ironwork of the balustrade of the great staircase.
Vallon had its hour of celebrity under the Empire and the Restoration, when Vanderbourg published the medieval poems of Clotilde de Surville, who lived at Vallon at the period when Joan of Arc was fighting against the English.
Marguerite Eléonore Clotilde de Vallon-Chalys, or de Surville, was supposed to have been a noble lady authoress of a series of sentimental poems. She was said to have been born in 1405 in the chateau of Vallon. Her mother, Pulchérie de Fay Collon, had lived in the court of Gaston Ph?bus, Count of Foix, and had taken advantage of his library to enrich her mind by the study of Greek and Latin authors, of French and Italian poets, and she brought up the young Clotilde with the same tastes. The girl was a precocious genius, and composed verses at the age of twelve. In 1421 she married the Chevalier Béranger de Surville, who quitted her early to fight under the command of the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII. It was then that [Pg 141] she wrote a Héro?de, opening with the words "Clotilde au sien amy doulce mande accolade." But the composition contains allusions, and repeats ideas of a period so much later, that suspicions were aroused as to its authenticity when published in 1803. Vanderbourg, the editor, insisted on it being genuine. He had obtained the MSS. from the heirs of the Marquess Joseph Etienne de Surville, a noble who during the period of the Revolution had been executed at Le Puy in 1798. But this de Surville was himself a poet, of a mediocre quality certainly, and it was from his leavings that the editor produced Clotilde's compositions. According to the Memoir prefixed to her poems, from the pen of the Marquess, her graceful verses attracted the attention of Margaret of Scotland, who sent her a crown of golden leaves bearing the inscription: "Marguerite d'Ecosse à Marguerite d'Hélicon."
Clotilde lost her husband at the siege of Orléans after a union that had lasted but one year. About 1450 she married her son to Héloise de Goyon de Vergy. Both died in 1468, leaving to Clotilde a grandchild, Camille, who never married, and Clotilde closed a long life at the end of the fifteenth century, after having celebrated the victory of Fornoue in a poem that she dedicated to Charles VIII.
That the poems are a late fabrication by the marquess, who was shot at Le Puy, cannot be doubted. In the "Verselets à mon premier né" that begin "O cher enfantelet, vray pourtraict de ton père," there is obvious imitation of a romance by Bérguin, published in 1775. But the whole tone and character of the poems make it quite certain that they were composed in the eighteenth century, to be palmed off as the literary achievements [Pg 142] of a lady of the forger's ancestry in the fifteenth. Villemain, after showing that they are fictions antiques, concludes: "After one has recognised that the poems of Clotilde are a modern fabrication, betraying itself by the very perfection of the artifice employed, yet the fraud once established, the merit of the fraud remains incontestable."
A good road leads down the Ardèche to the Pont de l'Arc, one of the great natural curiosities of the south of France. The river in descending the ravine between walls of Jura limestone encountered a long spur that barred its way, and drove it to describe a great loop. But the limestone is full of holes, caves, and cracks, and the torrent rushing down and beating against the great escarpment, impatient to get through and resenting the detour, bored till at last it burst a way through, and having once penetrated proceeded to enlarge the portal, till the river even in its greatest floods can rush through. The measurements are 193 feet from side to side, 110 feet to the crown of the arch, and to the summit of the rock 215 feet. Formerly the people of the country used this natural bridge to pass from one side of the river to the other. In the sixteenth century a fortress was erected on it, the possession of which was sharply contested by Catholics and Protestants, and Louis XIII. had it destroyed. The passage can still be made by means of a very narrow path cut in a ledge of the rock, but only one person, and he with a steady head, can traverse it. Louis XIII. had this path broken down, but the gap has been bridged over by poles.
The descent of the ca?on is made from Vallon to S. Martin, and takes from five to eight hours according to the amount of water in the river, and costs 30 francs. [Pg 143] Rapids are numerous, and some not a little dangerous. The gorge, cut through the lower cretaceous limestone, has not its walls as lofty as those of the famous ca?on of the Tarn, but the scenery in it is more varied, and it is of the wildest beauty.
Opposite old Vallon, as already mentioned, is Salavas. Hérail de Merle, son of the great Huguenot captain, abjured Protestantism, and married the daughter of Montréal, chief of the Catholics of the Vivarais. Profiting by his absence, his Huguenot vassals in Vallon revolted, and aided by a locksmith of Salavas entered the castle and butchered all the garrison. They captured the baroness and her children. But as Salavas was unimportant as a stronghold without the Tour du Moulin in the river, the Calvinists brought the Baroness Lagorce and the children under its walls in a boat, drew their long knives and threatened to cut all their throats unless the tower surrendered.
Salavas again fell into the hands of the Catholics, and was held by M. de la Chadenède in 1628, with forty-five men against the Duke de Rohan, head of the Calvinists, at the head of 500 men, 200 cavalry, two cannon, and a body of sappers and miners. Salavas was not taken till 200 of the assailants were killed and wounded. The castle, though in ruins, still has portions of its walls and a gate intact. Le Tour du Moulin, mentioned above, is built on a rock in the middle of the river, and was the key of the passage. It was captured by the Huguenots in 1570 by artifice. The small Catholic garrison one evening saw a train of women leading mules with sacks of corn come down to the waterside.
The garrison at once went over to assist them in unloading. But scarcely had they left their boat than [Pg 144] they were fallen upon. The women were, in fact, Huguenot men disguised in female attire. They shot down every one of the soldiers and took possession of the tower.
Le Pont de l'Arc
Before reaching the Pont de l'Arc the ca?on begins; rocky walls, grey, yellow, and fawn colour, stand up above the river, leaving no space between them but for the river; the road has been cut in cornice in the rock above it. The caves of the Bear, the Temple, and the Pulpit are but some of the thousands that open in cliffs that are honeycombed with them. The two latter were employed for meetings during the time of the revolt of the Camisards. The Prophetess Isabeau, clothed in white and wearing a gold circlet on her head, here went into ecstasies and harangued the insurgents, bidding them slay and spare none of the Philistines, and promising to them invulnerability.
A little further down is the Goule de Foussoubie, a stream that issues from the rocks just above the level of the Ardèche. The water that feeds it consists of seven rills on the Causse, three miles distant, that plunge into a pot-hole and disappear. Various attempts have been made to follow the underground course, but all have failed and one ended fatally. In dry weather very little water issues from the Goule, but it comes forth in volumes after a storm.
The boat shoots under the Pont de l'Arc; the rock that has been pierced is ninety feet thick. As already said, a fortress stood above, destroyed by Louis XIII., on a bit of rising ground on the left bank. There are still remains of the octagonal tower and enclosing wall and of some of the chambers tenanted by the garrison. But it was an oppidum, a place of refuge from prehistoric [Pg 145] times, as early stone weapons, and later Gallo-Roman w............