« En Limousin (Paysages et récits) »

It was in September 1892, during a report on the Limousin for Le Tour du Monde, that Gaston Vuillier discovered Gimel. He was immediately struck by the contrast between the bucolic, romantic aspect of this village perched on the rock, its surroundings drowned in the forest and the violent and wild beauty of the waterfalls that the houses overlooked. He returned regularly and eventually settled there. He died in Gimel in 1915.
His two articles on Limousin, published in 1893, were already largely devoted to Gimel, the beauty of its landscapes and the rustic and singular customs of its inhabitants. Singular because, for Vuillier, “the Limousin has remained primitive”; people there still practised the couvade, the girls continued to sell their hair at fairs and markets, a “barbaric traffic” that, according to Vuillier, one would find shocking among the “savages”. He examines the pages of his travel diary: Beaulieu, Argentat, Naves, Uzerche, the Monédières, whose landscape and architectural beauties he describes, Tulle and its procession of the lunade, for which he solicits the analysis of Elie Reclus. And finally Gimel, where his steps always bring him back. There, he is haunted by folk representations of ghosts and fantastic animals, thus bringing him the melancholy and the winter shivers that were in keeping with his own character.