letter to a tourist and a friend

Come to the Cévennes. Enter the country which is mine; you will like it because it has greatness and it will like you if you have simplicity.

It is a strange discovery which you will make, with the wisdom and the softness of living. In every bend, the history waits for you, hidden in copses, living in the valleys, murmuring with the falls of the cascades, solidified in the turrets of the castle.
There are no ride in Gévaudan Cévennes where come to join you Lord with shield and hauberk, Bishops, Martyrs, happy Pope, Princess of blood, Poets, Men of Science and Letters, brave Generals, famous Bonesetter, King with ruff and Supreme commander. No town of province will practice in you of so profound echoes.

Caress the skate of their stones.
The beauty of a village is thing as mysterious as the beauty of a being.

Our cities are secret, it is necessary to know how to conquer them slowly.

While strolling in their medieval streets, under halls, near fountains and places, in the shade of bell towers, you will feel beating their heart. Then you will not have more than a desire, than a thirst of knowledge, to interrogate this hermitage, this cathedral, these ruins, this castle, these doors, this bridge, this tower and to dive more deeply into their past.

Charming and withdrawn are our villages. Stop in front of the arched sheepfold, the shepherd returns late, because the evening... he keeps stars and dreams.

The penetrating odour of the soil travels on the breeze of the evening. Inhale this natural peace. Bind with our farmers. Others are more demonstrative, of a more exuberant nature. They, in their comments, will put a great delicacy at their sympathy, a discrete reserve in their hospitality, a heat measured in their feelings. Listen to in Cévennes country the purity of the French language acquired by the daily reading of the Bible of the Assemblies of the Desert.
Where to find elsewhere all at the same time, with this slow and solemn progress of the Cévennes chains, this power of Lozère and Margeride Mounts, these Causses paved of dolmens, these peaks haloed with pure light, these steep slopes, these Gorges of the Tarn which perforate the azure, this freshness of the rivers and this sweetness of the small valleys ?

Use all subtleties of your imagination and guess the hidden character of the meadow and the brook which sinks lively and pressed in the hollow of the ravine.
If there are detractors of the Cévennes, pity them ; they are pessimists who miss the faculty to be filled with wonder - and make itself happy.

The Cevenne deceives their sarcasms! Do the ravens which escape from niches of the cathedral distort its majesty?

Come to listen to the sound of the wind which moans in the forest of our fathers.