Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk Second proofby Margaret Price.
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
by Robert Louis Stevenson
A New Impression with a Frontispiece by WalterCrane
London: Chatto & Windus, 1907
My Dear Sidney Colvin,
The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeableand fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the bestof luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyancalls the wilderness of this world—all, too, travellers with adonkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, tofind them. They are the end and the reward of life. Theykeep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearerto the absent.
Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friendsof him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find privatemessages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, droppedfor them in every corner. The public is but a generous patronwho defrays the postage. Yet though the letter is directed toall, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outsideto one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of hisfriends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride thatI sign myself affectionately yours,
R. L. S.
VELAY
Many are the mighty things, and nought is more mightythan man. . . . He masters by his devices the tenant of the fields.
SOPHOCLES.
Who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass?
JOB.
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE
In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valleyfifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedomof language, and for unparalleled political dissension. Thereare adherents of each of the four French parties—Legitimists,Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans—in this little mountain-town;and they all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Exceptfor business purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl,they have laid aside even the civility of speech. ’Tis amere mountain Poland. In the midst of this Babylon I found myselfa rallying-point; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to thestranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality ofmountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regardedas a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when he mightjust as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose agood deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man who should project a journeyto the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like one setting forthfor the inclement Pole. All were ready to help in my preparations;a crowd of sympathisers supported me at the critical moment of a bargain;not a step was taken but was heralded by glasses round and celebratedby a dinner or a breakfast.
It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth,and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indiansummer to be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out,at least to have the means of camping out in my possession; for thereis