I finished the book last evening and hoped it would turn out to be just a bad dream but nope, it still exists. The literary trip to the Cévennes in France with Robert Louis Stevenson was a nightmare. Stevenson, the scholar Protestant male aware of the time which passes, and Modestine, descendant from the donkey who carried the catholic Blessed Virgin Mary, a couple sometimes funny, more often sad because of the bad behaviour of Stevenson is to be read.Īnd like in a good lovestory, Stevenson regrets his bad thoughts and facts towards Modestine and will understand he loved her once gone away. Stevenson will be angry about her, sometimes very bad and finally resigned, because, thanks to Modestine, he’ll understand that the important thing in his travel, like in all travels, wasn’t to go somewhere, but to walk.Ī short book with beautiful thoughts about the Beauty of earth, about how men can live together even if some are Catholics and some others are Protestants. Modestine is stubborn, pretty, fragile, whimsical, loving, submissive, curious about a thistle bunch, a farmyard or a small conversation with a donkey crossed on the way. But…īut Modestine the donkey doesn’t care about roads, time or history. He planned his trek, knows each day where he has to go and had calculated how many hours it should take him to reach a lake he would like to see before the night comes.
Stevenson was well-versed in the history and evokes scenes from the rebellion as he passes through the area of the rebellion during the final days of his trek.
Stevenson was Protestant by upbringing, and a non-believer by philosophy. The Protestant insurgents were known as the Camisards. Stevenson, like a school teacher would have done, tells us about the Cévennes which were the site of a Protestant rebellion around 1702, severely suppressed by Catholic French king Louis XIV. Why the title Travel with a Donkey in the Cevennes ? Because Modestine, the female donkey is as important as Stevenson in this travel. And Stevenson is much more my kind!įirst he seems, from the first pages, totally franck: he tells us about his troubles, his mistakes, his faults, as well as his joys and the pleasure he takes for this travel as a young and enthousiastic man a tiny twelve days travel, but after which, definitively, nothing will ever be the same for Stevenson. But also so many differencies between Thoreau and Stevenson.
There are similar ways of living their adventures, similar thoughts about nature, food, Men, society and philosophy. Two men living for a certain time in the nature. Few days ago, after finishing Walden by Thoreau, I picked it up… just because it was small ! And what an interesting reading after Walden : I had this book on my shelves for one or two years.
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