but thereafter it grew and grew, a bigger factor in the past, a more
prominent object in our thoughts in the present, the farther south we
travelled; until at Pau, his birthplace and capital, the son of Jeanne
d'Albret, _the Bearnais_, the Navarrese, the Protector of the
Religion, _Henri Quatre_, Henry the Great, seemed to fill all past
history, and dwarf all other figures. We have in English story no
royal personage, no prominent life even, at once so picturesque, so
rich in surprises, so lovable, and so blameworthy. Hot-blooded and
cool-headed, daring to rashness, astute to meanness, a professor and a
profligate, merciful, affectionate, yet letting nothing intervene
between him and his aims--who that is man shall judge him? Surely the
wine which Henry's father raised to his new-born lips, the cold water
which was dashed in his hour-old face, the national song his mother
sang at his birth, did really reproduce themselves in his life.
Leaving Cahors in the evening, we slept at a small village called
Lelbenque, and were on foot before eight next day, and on our way
across the hills to Caylus. The country through which we passed in the
fresh morning air, a range of bleak lime-stone heights sparsely
covered with oak trees, seemed thinly peopled, and little tilled. Here
and there in the wooded depths of a valley, we came upon a sparkling
brook and a few comfortable farm-houses nestling among fruit trees,
and protected by abrupt limestone walls from the cold winds which
swept across the uplands. The distance to Caylus was sixteen miles.
There were no inns, and as we had breakfasted rather meagrely on
coffee and bread, we were driven to beg something at one of the
farm-houses. There were only women at home, and these were with reason
astonished to see foreign tramps in that out-of-the-way district. They
seemed even a little afraid of us, but we got what we wanted
notwithstanding the growling of the dogs; and our offer of payment was
declined with suspicious abruptness. I fancy that they suspected us of
wanting change.
About mid-day we passed over the last ridge of the uplands, and saw
below us a narrow fertile valley squeezed in between mountain-walls.
Halfway through this gorge and in the middle of it, a hill or rock
rose abruptly almost to the height of a thousand feet. On this,
lording it over the road, stood Caylus, its houses and gardens
descending terrace by terrace from the castle-nucleus on the crest
almost to the road. Very old was the church, about the porch of
which are carved green animals in the act of nibbling one another's
tails under the superintendence of St. Michael. We took it for St.
Michael. Old, too, seemed the great stone house opposite, known as the
_Maison du Loup_, and bearing uncouth masks and figures of wolves in
high relief on its front. Older still we judged the market-place to
be, which built of wood rests on stone pillars; and the heavy Arcade
or "Row" which stands in the same tiny square with it, and the
beetle-browed wynds that lead to it--all old, gray, heavy,
time-stained, but still solid. In the market hall we noticed three
ancient corn-measures; hollows scooped out in stones that formed part
of the fabric of the hall, with to each a horizontal outlet or spout
at the side, through which the grain when measured might escape into
bag or basket. Even while we were examining these we remarked women
sitting outside the doors about us, removing the grain from stalks of
maize, and plaiting various articles with the straw.
The weather-beaten castle belongs to Madame St. Cyr, but was occupied
when we visited it by Mr. Wilton, an Englishman, who was not at home.
His housekeeper, however, kindly allowed us to go over the building,
and we found the view from the leads of the keep--used, I suspect, as
a smoking-room--very charming. Caylus, to sum up, is difficult of
access and is not even named in "Murray," but I can highly recommend
it as a quaint example of a mediaeval town, such as cannot now be found
in England without much searching.
From it we passed by means of a top-heavy, jingling country coach to
St. Anthonin, and so by rail to Albi on the Tarn, Albi of the
Albigenses, the unhappy sect whose fate confutes the saying that the
blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. About Albi, from which
place they took their name, they grew and flourished in the latter
half of the twelfth century. But seventy years later, notwithstanding
the attempt which their feudal lord, Raymond of Toulouse, made to
protect them, they were virtually extinct. Save that they dissented
from the Romish Church, their very doctrines are now unknown or to be
found only in the writings of their enemies, and their story and
fortunes are too often confounded with those of the Waldenses. Simon
de Montfort, the father of our Simon de Montfort, took a conspicuous
part in the cruel deeds which attended their suppression. At the fall
of Beziers, heretic and churchman were put to the sword together.
"Slay all--God will know His own," said the gentle Abbot Arnold. And
in a sense wisely: for it is only the man of half measures who fails
as a persecutor. To be perfectly ruthless, perfectly thorough in the
work, is to be successful also. At any rate at Albi, which, like
Cahors, stands among hills, there are no traces of the Albigenses
left; not even such a story as rings about the name of Beziers with
fire. Rather the great cathedral proclaims Rome's victory. Built
externally of bricks, it is a huge blind oblong with an apsidal end. A
swelling base and rounded buttresses add to its heavy appearance. Yet
it is very lofty. The monstrous red tower hung about with giddy
balconies rises nearly to the height of three hundred feet, while the
church itself, the lower part of which has no openings or windows,
seems half that height. In a word, the whole is as much a fortress as
a cathedral. Lofty flights of steps lead to a raised porch, formed by
three arches decorated with carvings lately and successfully restored.
Entering the church through this we find the interior a striking
sight. In shape it is a vast hall surrounded by chapels in two
stories, and with a choir screened off at one end. The interior still
remains in the state to which our Puritans objected, the state
probably characterized more churches than we now imagine. It is
covered from ceiling to floor with frescoes and paintings and
scrollwork, some gaudy, some subdued, some good, some bad. The very
statues are painted and gilded, and although here and there the effect
is garish and unpleasing, I do not agree that the appearance of the
whole, as the vast mass of color presents itself to the eyes, broken
by the exquisite carvings of the stone screen or a bevy of tinted
marbles, is absolutely unharmonious. I found it more pleasing than I
expected. And then what would have been the effect of these plain
walls in their naked monotony?
The paintings are mainly of the date of Francis I., say about 1520.
Two frescoes of Hell and the Passions, done by Italian artists, cover
the west end--cover acres of it as it seems; and in a chapel, among
other anachronisms is a notable picture of Christ, in which He is
figured in a hat and feather and the dress of a courtier of the time
in the midst of Roman soldiers who are kicking Him along. A great
store of information as to the dresses and customs of the early part
of the sixteenth century is laid up here, to be ransacked by any one
who will take the trouble to closely inspect this huge interior. The
groups painted upon the walls, groups of people fighting, tourneying,
feasting, dancing, dying--ay, and doing many things scarcely adapted
to church decoration--are to be counted by thousands; as are the gold
stars that stud the bright blue ceiling. There is something suggestive
in the portrayal of these things in this place; they seem to tell of a
faith which, with all its scandals, abuses, and laxity, was bound up
intimately with the life of the people, with their joys as well as
their griefs; and so smacked of One who did not consider the price of
sparrows as beneath knowledge.
At any rate we were pleased with these things. The interior of Albi
Cathedral may not be in the best taste. It may be meretricious, it may
be gilt rather than of gold. But it is curious; it is almost unique;
it is a museum in itself; and to an Englishman accustomed to the cold
if correct lines of a Gothic church, its warmth and color afford a not
unwelcome change.
At Auch we arrived at night, and found it to be an old-fashioned
archiepiscopal city on the summit and southern slope of a precipitous
hill. Here we came upon the first traces--a Spanish pedler, a
Navarrese bonnet--of that strange borderland between Spain and Western
France in which three languages and a dozen _patois_, French, Spanish,
Basque, the Langue d'Oc, the Langue d'Or, and Gascon and Provencal and
the tongue of Andorra, and I know not what others, are fighting for
the mastery: where two great nations now peaceably march, dividing
between them the wild country where the kingdom of Navarre once sat
enthroned on hills with the free Basque communities about her. It is a
country rich in memories of independence, of strife; of brigandage, of
romance; of the free life of the hunter; a land of snow-clad peaks and
deep valleys, and rolling, wooded hills full of creatures elsewhere
extinct, bears, and izards, and, shall I add, Basques. Here are
Roncesvalles and the Bidassoa, Fontarabia and Orthez, San Sebastian
and the Isle of Peacocks. Moor and Paladin, Scot and Spaniard,
Charlemagne and Wellington, have all passed this way and left deep
foot-prints.
And Auch stands on the verge of this strange country; an old city, but
full of energy and with no trace of decay. From the river, flights of
wide steps with spacious landings, gay with flowers and fountains,
climb the southern face of the hill, which the best road-maker would
find impracticable. At the head of these steps and commanding
extensive prospects stands the cathedral, a beacon to all the country
between it and the skirts of the mountains. The building is fine, but
its pride lies in the wood carvings of the unrivalled choir. My guide,
an ex-soldier, also pointed out with pride some cymbals presented to
the cathedral by the first Napoleon: trophies, so he told me, of the
Egyptian campaign.
We wandered out in the afternoon to the brow of a ridge of hills
lying on the far side of the river, and throwing ourselves down upon
some heather and bracken--it was a warm and sunny but not very clear
day--began to cast speculative glances towards Spain. But while we
thought that we were looking southwards our eyes were really turned
too much to the east. And presently we discovered this in a strange
way. For glancing by chance towards the skyline on our right, we saw,
first, a brown autumnal landscape of woods and hills, and beyond this
a long, gray cloud, the horizon, as we thought; and above that--ah!
what was it we saw above that? A line of silvery peaks, gleaming in a
gray, sheeny atmosphere of their own, so pure, so soft, so far above
this world of ours, that as the words "The Pyrenees!" broke the first
moments of astonished silence, we felt that for once the thing long
looked for had passed our expectations! Our hearts fastened upon the
distance. The pleasant landscape spread out before us lost its charms.
It was homely, it was flat, it was commonplace, it was of the earth
earthy, beside the serene beauty of the snowy crests and untrodden
wastes that shone and sparkled in that far distance, and anon grew
cold and dim as the veil of cloud was drawn before them even while we
watched.
When they were gone, we felt that nothing save the mountains would now
satisfy us. We had a craving for them, such as I have sometimes felt
for the sea. A sudden conviction that we were wasting our time in a
world of small things, while the wonders of the hills lay close at
hand, overwhelmed us. We hurried homewards, talking of peaks, and
glaciers, and passes, of Cauteret and Gavarnie, Mont Perdu and the Pic
du Midi; and packed in the same state of pleasant excitement. The next
morning saw us passing through the same country, rich in autumn tints,
in leafy bottoms, and rippling streams, which we had seen stretched
out before us. And the evening saw us stand on the famous Place
Royale, hard by the castle where Henry of Navarre was born, feasting
our eyes on the cold, bright tints of the great mountains, seen sharp
and clear above the Jurance hills, and listening to the rushing waters
of the Gave. Our Garonne pilgrimage was over.