in itself, and in its contrast with untamed surroundings, the history and the character of this one nation out of the many which live by the tradition of Europe.  As I followed it and saw its exact gradient, its hard and even surface, its square border stones, and, every hundred yards, its carved mark of the distance done, these elaborations, standing quite new among the tumbled rocks of a vague upland, made one certain that Paris had been at work.  Very far back (how far was marked on the milestone) the road had left the swarming gate of Toulouse.  Very far on (how far was marked on the milestone) it was to cross the Saone by its own bridge, and feed the life of Lyons.  In between it met and surmounted (still civilised, easy, complete) this barbaric watershed of the Margeride.

As I followed it, law—­good law and evil—­seemed to go with me up the mountain side.

There was more sound than on the arid wastes of the Causse.  There were trees, and birds in the trees, moving faintly.  The great moon, which had now risen, shone also upon scanty grass and (from time to time) upon the trickle of water passing in runnels beneath the road.

The torrent in the depth below roared openly and strong, and, beyond it, the black wall of the Causse, immense and battlemented above me under the moon, made what poor life this mountain supported seem for a moment gracious by comparison.  I remembered that sheep and goats and men could live on the Margeride.

But the Margeride has rightly compelled its ’very few historians to melancholy or fear.

It is a district, or a mountain range, or a single summit, which cuts off the east from the west, the Loire from the Gironde:  a long, even barrow of dark stone.  Its people are one, suspicious of the plains.  Its line against the sky is also one:  no critical height in Europe is so strict and unbroken.  You may see it from a long way east—­from the Velay, or even from the last of the Forez, and wonder whether it is a land or a sullen bar of black cloud.

All the world knows how snow, even in mere gullies and streaks, uplifts a mountain.  Well, I have seen the dull roof-tile of the Margeride from above Puy in spring, when patches of snow still clung to it, and the snow did no more than it would have done to a plain.  It neither raised nor distinguished this brooding thing.

But it is indeed a barrier.  Its rounded top is more formidable than if it were a ridge of rock; its saddle, broad and indeterminate, deceives the traveller, with new slight slopes following one upon the other when the sharp first of the ascent is done.

Already the last edge of the Causse beyond the valley had disappeared, and already had the great road taken me higher than the buttress which holds up that table-land, when, thinking I had gained the summit, I turned a corner in the way and found a vague roll of rising land before me.  Upon this also, under the strong moonlight, I saw the ruin of a mill.  Water, therefore, must have risen behind it.  I expected and found yet another uncertain height, and beyond it a third, and, a mile beyond, another.  This summit was like those random marshy steps which rise continually and wearily between the sluggish rivers of the prairies.