The beeches push high upon the declivities, even beyond three thousand feet. Their huge pillars strike down into the hollows where earth is gathered. Their roots enter into the clefts of the rock, lift it, and come creeping to the surface like a family of snakes. Their skin, white and tender in the plains, is changed into a grayish and solid bark; their tenacious leaves shine with a vigorous green, beneath the sun which cannot penetrate them. They live isolated, because they need space, and range themselves at intervals one above another like lines of towers. From afar, between the dull heather, their mound rises splendid with light, and sounds with its hundred thousand leaves as with so many little bells of horn.
II.
But the real inhabitants of the mountains are the pines, geometrical trees, akin to the ferruginous blocks hewn by the primitive eruptions. The vegetation of the plains unfolds itself in undulating forms with all the graceful caprices of liberty and wealth. The pines, on the other hand, seem scarcely alive; their shaft rises in a perpendicular line along the rocks; their horizontal branches part from the trunk at right angles, equal as the radii of a circle, and the entire tree is a cone terminated by a naked spike. The dull little blades that answer for leaves have a melancholy hue, without transparency or lustre; they seem hostile to the light; they neither reflect it, nor allow it to pass, they extinguish it; hardly does the noonday sun fringe them with a bluish reflection. Ten paces away, beneath such an aureole, the black pyramid cuts the horizon like an opaque mass. They crowd together in files under their funereal mantles. Their forests are silent as solitudes; the whistle of the wind makes there no noise; it glides over the stiff beard of the leaves without stirring or rubbing them together. One hears no sound save the whispering of the tops and the shrivelling of the little yellowish lamels which fall in showers as soon as you touch a branch.
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The turf is dead, the soil naked; you walk in the shade beneath an inanimate verdure, among pale shafts which rise like tapers. A strong odor fills the air, resembling the perfume of aromatics. The impression is that made by a deserted cathedral, while, after a ceremony, the smell of incense still floats under the arches, and the declining day outlines far away in the obscurity the forest of pillars.
They live in families and expel the other trees from their domain. Often, in a wasted gorge, they may be seen like a mourning drapery descending among the white glaciers. They love the cold, and in winter remain clothed in snow. Spring does not renew them; you see only a few green lines run through the foliage; they soon grow dark like the rest. But when the tree springs from a spot of deep earth, and rises to a height of a hundred feet, smooth and straight as the mast of a ship, the mind with buoyancy follows to the very summit the flight of its inflexible form, and the vegetable column seems as grand as the mountain which nurtures it.
III.
Higher up, on the barren steeps, the yellowish box twists its knotty feet beneath the stones. It is a melancholy and tenacious creature, stunted and thrust back upon itself; overborne amidst the rocks, it dares not shoot upward nor spread. Its small thick leaves follow each other in monotonous rows, clumsily oval and of a formal regularity. Its stem, short and grayish, is rough to the touch; the round fruit encloses black capsules, hard as ebony, that must be broken open for the seed. Everything in the plant is calculated with a view to utility: it thinks only of lasting and resisting; it has neither ornaments, elegance, nor richness; it expends its sap only in solid tissues, in dull colors, in durable fibres. It is an economical and active housewife, the only thing capable of vegetating in the quagmires that it fills.
If you continue to ascend, the trees begin to fail. The brush-fir creeps in a carpet of turf. The rhododendrons grow in tufts and crown the mountain with rosy clusters. The heather crowds its white bunches, small, open, vase-shaped flowers, from which springs a crown of garnet stamens. In the sheltered hollows, the blue campanulas swing their pretty bells; the least wind lays them low; they live for all that, and smile, trembling and graceful.
But, among all these flowers nourished with light and pure air, the most precious is the thornless rose. Never did petals form a frailer and lovelier corolla; never did a vermilion so vivid color a more delicate tissue.
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IV.
At the summit grow the mosses. Battered by the wind, dried by the sun, they lose the fresh green tint they wear in the valleys and on the brink of the springs. They are reddened with tawny hues, and their smooth filaments have the reflexes of a wolf’s fur. Others, yellowed and pale, cover with their sickly colors the bleeding crevices. Then there are gray ones, almost white, which grow like remnants of hair upon the bald rocks. Far away, upon the back of the mountain, all these tints are mingled, and the shaded fur emits a wild gleam.
The last growths are reddish crusts, stuck to the walls of rock, seeming to form part of the stone, and which you might take, not for a plant, but for a scurf. Cold, dryness, and the height have by degrees transformed or killed vegetation.
V.
The climate shapes and produces animals as well as plants.
The bear is a serious beast, a thorough mountaineer, curious to behold in his great-coat of felted hair, yellowish or grayish in color. It seems formed for its domicile and its domicile for it. Its heavy fur is an excellent mantle against the snow. The mountaineers think it so good, that they borrow it from him as often as they can, and he thinks it so good that he defends it against them to the best of his ability. He likes to live alone, and the gorges of the heights are as solitary as he wishes.
The hollow trees afford him a ready-made house; as these are for the most part beeches and oaks, he finds in them at once food and shelter. For the rest, brave, prudent, and robust, he is an estimable animal; his only faults are that he eats his little ones, when he runs across them, and that he is a poor dancer.
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In hunting him, they go into ambush and fire on him as he passes. Lately, in a battue, a superb female was tracked. When the foremost hunters, who were novices, saw the glitter of the little fierce eyes, and perceived the black mass descending with great strides, beating the underbrush, they forgot all of a sudden that they had guns, and kept whist behind their oak. A hundred paces further on, a brave fellow fired. The bear, which was not hit, came up on a gallop. The man, dropping his gun, slipped into a pit. Reaching the bottom, he felt of his limbs, and by some miracle found himself whole, when he saw the animal hesitating above his head, busy in examining the slope, and pressing her foot upon the stones to see if they were firm. She sniffed here and there, and looked at the man with the evident intention of paying him a visit. The pit was a well; if she reached the bottom, he must resign himself to a tÊte-À-tÊte. While the man reflected on this, and thought of the animal’s teeth, the bear began to descend with infinite precaution and address, managing her precious person with great care, hanging on to the roots, slowly, but without ever stumbling. She was drawing near, when the hunters came up and shot her dead.
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The isard dwells above the bear, upon the naked tops, in the region of the glaciers. He needs space for his leaps and gambols. He is too lively and gay to shut himself, like the heavy misanthrope, in the gorges and forests. No animal is more agile; he leaps from rock to rock, clears precipices, and keeps his place upon points where there is just room for his four feet You sometimes hear a hollow bleating on the heights: it is a band of isards cropping the herbage amidst the snow; their tawny dress and their little horns stand out in the blue of the heavens; one of them gives the alarm and all disappear in a moment.
VI.
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You often hear for a half-hour a tinkling of bells behind the mountain; these are the herds of goats changing their pasture. Sometimes there are more than a thousand of them. You find yourself stopped in crossing the bridges until the whole caravan has filed over. They have long hanging hairs which form their coat; with their black mantle and great beard, you would say that they were dressed for a masquerade. Their yellow eyes stare vaguely, with an expression of curiosity and gentleness. They seem to wonder at their walking in such orderly fashion on level ground. Only to look at that dry leg and horny foot, you feel that they are framed to wander at random and leap about on the rocks. From time to time the less disciplined ones stop, set their fore feet against the mountain, and crop a bramble or a blossom of lavender. The others come and push them on; they start off again with a mouthful of herbage, and eat as they walk. All their physiognomies are intelligent, resigned and melancholy, with flashes of caprice and originality. You see the forest of horns waving above the black mass, and their smooth hair shining in the sun. Enormous dogs, with woolly coat, spotted with white, walk gravely along the sides, growling when you draw near. The herdsman comes behind in his brown cloak, with an eye fixed, glittering, void of thought, like that of the animals; and the whole band disappears in a cloud of dust, out of which comes a sound of shrill bleating.
VII.
Why should not I speak of the happiest animal in creation? A great painter, Karel du Jardin, has taken a liking for it: he has drawn it in all its attitudes, and has shown all its pleasures and all its tastes.
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The rights of prose are indeed equal to those of painting, and I promise that travellers will take pleasure in considering the hogs. There, the word is out. Now mind that in the Pyrenees they are not covered with tainting filth, as on our farms; they are rosy or black, well washed, and live upon the dry gravel, alongside the running waters.
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They make holes in the heated sand, and sleep there in groups of five or six, close set in lines, in admirable order. When any one draws near, the whole mass moves; the corkscrew tails frisk fantastically; two crafty, philosophic eyes open beneath the pendent ears; the mocking noses stretch forth and snuff; they all grunt in concert; after which, becoming accustomed to the intrusion, they are quieted, they lie down again, the eyes close in sanctimonious fashion, the tails retire into place, and the blessed rogues return to their digestion and enjoyment of the sun. All these expressive snouts seem to cry shame upon prejudices, and invoke enjoyment; there is something reckless and derisive about them; the whole countenance is directed towards the snout, and the end of the entire head is in the mouth. Their lengthened nose seems to sniff and take in from the air all agreeable sensations. They spread themselves so complacently on the ground, they wag their ears with such voluptuous little movements, they utter such penetrating ejaculations of pleasure, that you get out of patience with them. Oh genuine epicureans, if sometimes in your sleep you deign to reflect, you ought to think, like the goose of Montaigne, that the world was made for you, that man is your servant, and that you are the privileged creatures of nature. There is but one moment of trouble in their whole life, that is when they are killed. Still they pass quickly away and do not foresee this moment.
VIII.
Myriads of lizards nestle in the chinks of slate and in the walls of rounded pebbles. On the approach of a passer-by, they run like a streak across the road. If you stand quiet for a moment, you see their little restless, sly heads peep out between two stones; the rest of the body shows itself, the tail wriggles, and, with an abrupt movement, they climb zigzag upon the gravelly ledges. There they have as much sun as they please, sun to roast alive in; at noon, the rock burns the hand. This powerful sun heats their cold blood, and gives spring and action to their limbs. They are capricious, passionate, violent, and fight like men. Sometimes you may see two of them rolling the whole length of a rock, one over the other, in the dust, get up again dimmed and dirty, and run briskly away, like cowardly and insubordinate schoolboys taken in a misdeed. Some of them lose their tails in these adventures, so that they look as if they wore a coat that is too short for them; they hide, ashamed of being so ill dressed. Others in their gray justi-coats have slight, graceful motions, an air at once so coquettish and timid that it takes away all desire to harm them. When they are asleep on a slab of stone, you can see their whitish throat and their small, intelligent mouth; but they scarcely, ever sleep, they are always on the lookout; they scamper off at the least sound, and, when nothing troubles them, they trot, frolic, climb up and down, make a hundred turns for pleasure. They love company, and live near or with one another. No animal is prettier or has more innocent ways; with the charming white and yellow sedum, it enlivens the long walls of stone, and both live on dryness, as other things on moisture.
The sun, the light, the vegetation, animals, man, are so many books wherein Nature has, in different characters, written the same thought. If the hogs have a clean and rosy skin, it is because the boiling granite and the sea swarming with fish have during millions of years accumulated and uplifted ten thousand feet of rock.
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