Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes: Annotated

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

In twelve days, from September 22, 1878, to October 3, 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson walked from the Monastier to Saint-Jean du Gard in the C vennes. His only companion was Modestine, a donkey. He traveled as he pleased, stopping to sleep whenever the opportunity arose. One morning, after a night's sleep outside, Stevenson scattered rooms along the road on the grass in exchange for his overnight accommodation.

Modestine, the donkey, asked his owner to exercise all his ingenuity. At first, he hated her for her insoluble differences of opinion displayed on the pace of travel to maintain. The repeated blows didn't seem to influence him until he learned to use the magic word "Proot" to get her moving. Later, he got a real spur from a sympathetic innkeeper at Bouchet Saint-Nicolas. Modestine was delicate to eat. She seemed to prefer white bread, but she learned to share half of Stevenson's brown breads with him.

Modestine and her owner argued over a shortcut. She hacked, she raised; she even bawled loudly and pained. However, he forced her to give in. A few days later, Stevenson began to understand his willful donkey; he came to understand his stupidity, and he forgot his flights of ill-judged levity.

Stevenson, like many who buy at the insistence of others and sell as they please, was eager to dismiss the question of Modestine's cost. He had paid her sixty-five francs and a glass of cognac, but he sold her for thirty-five francs. Stevenson pointed out that the pecuniary gain was not obvious, but that he had bought freedom in the market.

More captivating than the pleasure with which Stevenson contrasted his life as a wanderer with that of deeply rooted monks and peasants were his long-remembered interest in local conflicts. One such conflict was that of the struggle at the Pont de Montvert where the Camisards, led by Pierre S guier, assassinate the archpriest of the C vennes. S guier was soon taken and his right hand cut off. He himself was then burned alive. Stevenson also identified the character-defining elements of the landscape as they went along. He found the C vennes remarkably beautiful.

Stevenson's account of the local peasantry was less appreciable than his account of the landscape. He described two misadventures. In the first place, the peasants looked with suspicion on a traveler wandering on their dreary high hills with very little money and with no other obvious purpose than to look at them. When he approached a village, people hid. They barricaded their doors and gave him the wrong directions from their windows. Second, two girls he called "cocky and sneaky bitches" ordered him to follow the cows. For these reasons, Stevenson came ...