Cévennes Mountains (France); France -- Description and travel
On June 16th, annually, is celebrated at Vorey a Mass "de la Lepreuse,"
which is attended by the people of the hamlets of Vertaure and
Eyravazet. Once upon a time a ragged leper woman arrived at the latter
cluster of houses and begged for food. No one would give her even a
crust of bread or a bowl of milk. She went on to Vertaure, and there
fared as ill; and she crept for the night into an abandoned shed, where
she remained too exhausted to proceed further, and there she died.
Whereupon the people dug a deep pit and cast in the corpse and the
woodwork and thatch of the shed, and heaped earth over the grave. The
spot is still pointed out, and is called Las Cabannas. After that, for
several years in succession, hailstorms smote the harvests and blighted
the vines, whereas about Las Cabannas all remained green and flowery.
Then the inhabitants of the two hamlets conceived that they were being
punished for their lack of charity, and vowed a Mass in perpetuity for
the repose of the leper-woman's soul. Her body was exhumed, conveyed
to Vorey, and there buried in holy ground, and she herself received a
popular canonisation as Ste. Juliette.
The Loire receives a goodly addition of water through the Arzon, and
below Vorey descends through profound gorges to Chamalières, a village
inhabited by quarry-men, and preserving one of the most curious and
interesting Romanesque churches of the department. It is of the twelfth
century, and has an arcaded clerestory. There are three windows in
this clerestory on each side, and between the windows blind arches,
some circular, some trefoil-headed. The tower is of two stages, with
four windows on the first and two on the second, on each side; it is
capped by a curious octagonal stone spire, rising from an octagonal
lantern, with trefoil-headed windows, and nothing but a slight moulding
indicates the junction.
[Illustration: MÉZENC]
The Mézenc, the highest of the Cévennes, rises out of a dreary plateau.
It is, says M. Paulett Scrope:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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