Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc

and it lies to a yard upon the straight line--_quid dicam_--the segment of the Great Circle uniting Toul and Rome.

      The high bank or hillside before me was that which ends the gorge of the Doubs and looks down either limb of the sharp bend. I had here not to climb but to follow at one height round the curve. My way ran by a rather ill-made lane and passed a village. Then it was my business to make straight up the farther wall of the gorge, and as there was wood upon this, it looked an easy matter.

      But when I came to it, it was not easy. The wood grew in loose rocks and the slope was much too steep for anything but hands and knees, and far too soft and broken for true climbing. And no wonder this ridge seemed a wall for steepness and difficulty, since it was the watershed between the Mediterranean and the cold North Sea. But I did not know this at the time. It must have taken me close on an hour before I had covered the last thousand feet or so that brought me to the top of the ridge, and there, to my great astonishment, was a road. Where could such a road lead, and why did it follow right along the highest edge of the mountains? The Jura with their unique parallels provide twenty such problems.

      Wherever it led, however, this road was plainly perpendicular to my true route, and I had but to press on my straight line. So I crossed it, saw for a last time through the trees the gorge of the Doubs, and then got upon a path which led down through a field more or less in the direction of my pilgrimage.

      Here the country was so broken that one could make out but little of its general features, but of course, on the whole, I was following down yet another southern slope, the southern slope of the _third_ chain of the Jura, when, after passing through many glades and along a stony path, I found a kind of gate between two high rocks, and emerged somewhat suddenly upon a wide down studded with old trees and also many stunted yews, and this sank down to a noble valley which lay all before me.

      The open down or prairie on which I stood I afterwards found to be called the 'Pasturage of Common Right', a very fine name; and, as a gallery will command a great hall, so this field like a platform commanded the wide and fading valley below.

      It was a very glad surprise to see this sight suddenly unrolled as I stood on the crest of the down. The Jura had hitherto been either lonely, or somewhat awful, or naked and rocky, but here was a true vale in which one could imagine a spirit of its own; there were corn lands and no rocks. The mountains on either side did not rise so high as three thousand feet. Though of limestone they were rounded in form, and the slanting sun of the late afternoon (all the storm had left the sky) took them full and warm. The valley remaining wide and fruitful went on out eastward till the hills became mixed up with brume and distance. As I did not know its name I called it after the village immediately below me for which I was making; and I still remember it as the Valley of Glovelier, and it lies between the third and fourth ridges of the Jura.

      Before leaving the field I drew what I saw but I was much too tired by the double and prodigious climb of the past hours to draw definitely or clearly. Such as it is, there it is. Then I went down over the smooth field.

      There is something that distinguishes the rugged from the gracious in landscape, and in our Europe this something corresponds to the use and presence of men, especially in mountainous places. For men's habits and civilization fill the valleys and wash up the base of the hills, making, as it were, a tide mark. Into this zone I had already passed. The turf was trodden fine, and was set firm as it can only become by thousands of years of pasturing. The moisture that oozed out of the earth was not the random bog of the high places but a human spring, caught in a stone trough. Attention had been given to the trees. Below me stood a wall, which, though rough, was not the haphazard thing men pile up in the last recesses of the hills, but formed of chosen stones, and these bound together with mortar. On my right was a deep little dale with children playing in it--and this' I afterwards learned was called a 'combe': delightful memory! All our deeper hollows are called the same at home, and even the Welsh have the word, but they spell it _cwm_; it is their mountain way. Well, as I was saying, everything surrounding me was domestic and grateful, and I was therefore in a mood for charity and companionship when I came down the last dip and entered Glovelier. But Glovelier is a place of no excellence whatever, and if the thought did not seem extravagant I should be for putting it to the sword and burning it all down.

      For just as I was going along full of kindly thoughts, and had turned into the sign of (I think it was) the 'Sun' to drink wine and leave them my benediction--

      LECTOR. Why your benediction?

      AUCTOR. Who else can give benedictions if people cannot when they are on pilgrimage? Learn that there are three avenues by which blessing can be bestowed, and three kinds of men who can bestow it.

      (1) There is the good man, whose goodness makes him of himself a giver of blessings. His power is not conferred or of office, but is _inhaerens persona_; part of the stuff of his mind. This kind can confer the solemn benediction, or _Benedictio major_, if they choose; but besides this their every kind thought, word, or action is a _Benedictio generalise_ and even their frowns, curses, angry looks and irritable gestures may be called _Benedictiones minores vel incerti_. I believe I am within the definitions. I avoid heresy. All this is sound theology. I do not smell of the faggot. And this kind of Benedictory Power is the fount or type or natural origin, as it were, of all others.

      (2) There is the Official of Religion who, in the exercise of his office--

      LECTOR. For Heaven's sake--

      AUCTOR. Who began it? You protested my power to give benediction, and I must now prove it at length; otherwise I should fall under the accusation of lesser Simony--that is, the false assumption of particular powers. Well, then, there is the Official who _ex officio_, and when he makes it quite clear that it is _qua sponsus_ and not _sicut ut ipse_, can give formal benediction. This power belongs certainly to all Bishops, mitred Abbots, and Archimandrates; to Patriarchs of course, and _a fortiori_ to the Pope. In Rome they will have it that Monsignores also can so bless, and I have heard it debated whether or no the same were not true in some rustic way of parish priests. However this may be, all their power proceeds, not from themselves, but from the accumulation of goodness left as a deposit by the multitudes of exceptionally good men who have lived in times past, and who have now no use for it.

      (3) Thirdly--and this is my point--any one, good or bad, official or non-official, who is for the moment engaged in an _opusfaustum_ can act certainly as a conductor or medium, and the influence of what he is touching or doing passes to you from him. This is admitted by every one who worships trees, wells, and stones; and indeed it stands to reason, for it is but a branch of the well-known _'Sanctificatio ex loco, opere, tactu vel conditione.'_ I will admit that this power is but vague, slight, tenuous, and dissipatory, still there it is: though of course its poor effect is to that of the _Benedictio major_ what a cat's-paw in the Solent is to a north-east snorter on Lindsey Deeps.

      I am sorry to have been at such length, but it is necessary to have these things thrashed out once for all. So now you see how I, being on pilgrimage, could give a kind of little creeping blessing to the people on the way, though, as St Louis said to the Hascisch-eaters, _'May it be a long time before you can kiss my bones.'_

      So I entered the 'Sun' inn and saw there a woman sewing, a great dull-faced man like an ox, and a youth writing down figures in a little book. I said--

      'Good morning, madam, and sirs, and the company. Could you give me a little red wine?' Not a head moved.

      True I was very dirty and tired, and they may have thought me a beggar, to whom, like good sensible Christians who had no nonsense about them, they would rather have given a handsome kick than a cup of cold water. However, I think it was not only my poverty but a native churlishness which bound their bovine souls in that valley.

      I sat down at a very clean table. I notice that those whom the Devil has made his own are always spick and span, just as firemen who have to go into great furnaces have to keep all their gear highly polished. I sat down at it, and said again, still gently--

      'It is, indeed, a fine country this of yours. Could you give me a little red wine?'

      Then the ox-faced man who had his back turned to me, and was the worst of the lot, said sulkily, not to me, but to the woman--