AN ERA IN TWILIGHT.
"_Pour faire comprendre le caractère d'un peuple, je conterais
trente anecdotes et je supprimerais toutes les théories
philosophiques sur le sujet_,"
--STENDHAL.
Returning to Hendaye, a train takes us again to Bayonne, connecting
there for Orthez and Pau. The ride to Bayonne needs an hour or less, and
from thence to Orthez calls for two. It is not many decades since much
of this journey had to be made by the diligence. Railways and highways
have pushed rapidly toward the Pyrenees. When in the approaching
fortnight we shall come to traverse the Route Thermale, the great
carriage-way along the chain, we shall see modern road-making in its
perfection; and the rail will keep anxious watch, over the road, running
parallel along the distant plain and reaching helpful arms up the
valleys to uphold it.
Toward Pau especially, the railroads converge. That city, a social
capital for centuries, is a social capital still, and its winter influx
of invalids and pleasure-seekers stimulates every facility of approach.
Then, too, it lies on the way crossing southern France from the Bidassoa
to the Rhone, and no line linking these rivers could omit from its chain
the Gave[12] de Pau.
[12] _Gave_ is the generic name among the Pyrenees for a mountain stream
or torrent.
From Bayonne, the train at first traverses an edge of a singular region.
It is a part of the _Landes_. This great savanna, which flattens the
entire space from Bordeaux to Bayonne, was crossed in coming southward
from Bordeaux, and now as we strike eastward and inland we but briefly
skirt its southerly portion. A sandy, marshy waste, infertile,
unhealthful and poor, it lies in utter contrast with the fields and
slopes of neighboring provinces. It is anomalous, incongruous,--
"A bare strand
Of hillocks heaped with ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds."
Its inhabitants are meagre and stunted; it scants them both in food and
drink. Its miserliness is deep-set: artesian wells sunk a thousand feet
through its dull grey sands bring up only a brackish yellow water; a
precarious rye and barley grow grudgingly.
The low stretches of furze and heath and fern are fringed only by
mournful horizons of pines or broken by long files of gashed and wounded
firs. This extensive tree-growth, however, which is comparatively
recent, has at least lessened one terror of the Landes: sand-storms and
snow-storms, which once swept across the wastes, have been shorn of
their strength. Honor for this is due almost alone to one man, a M.
Brémontier. Before his time, forest-making had here been deemed
impossible; pine seeds planted in the lax hold of these sands had
hitherto been unable even to take root, against the unbroken sweep of
the winds. M. Brémontier, after many experiments, conceived the idea of
planting with the pine seeds the seeds of the common broom, whose hardy
tuft should protect the tiny sapling until it could stand by itself.
The result surpassed hope; pine forests, protecting in their turn, have
sprung up and endured throughout the Landes; they have broken forever
the power of the wind-storms; and their pitch and timber are even a
source of some riches to the Department.
Still it remains a region unsmiling and melancholy. A monochrome of
sand, darkened everywhere by long blotches of sickly undergrowth or the
dull reach of the pines; here and there are cork-trees and alders. The
sheen of some slow lagoon is caught in the distance. There is a charm in
the very charmlessness of the scene, as in some sombre-toned etching.
One striking specialty this district has, however; and from the train
windows we watch closely for a specimen. This is the shepherd on stilts,
the _Xicanque_, immortalized by Rosa Bonheur and mentioned by many
travelers. He is peculiar to this region; perched on these wooden
supports, at a perilous height above the ground, he stalks gravely over
the landscape, enabled to behold a horizon of triple range and to
outstride the fleetest of his vagrant flock. When so inclined, he is
quite able, it is said, to skillfully execute a _pas seul_ or even a
jig,--with every appropriate flourish of his timber limbs and with
surprising grace and _abandon_. His stilts are strapped to the thigh,
not the knee, for greater freedom, and he mounts from his cabin-roof in
the early morning and lives in the air throughout the day. A third stilt
forms a seat, and makes of his silhouette a ludicrous and majestic
tripod. This genius's chief amusement is startlingly domestic: it is
knitting stockings; and engaged in this peaceful art he sits with
dignity and whiles away the hours. How he manoeuvres when he
accidentally drops a needle, I have not been able to learn.
A dignitary of Bordeaux arranged a fête and procession in these Landes
on one occasion; triumphal arches were erected, hung with flowers and
garlands; and the feature of the parade was a sedate platoon of these
heron-like shepherds engaged for the occasion, dressed in skins, decked
with white hoods and mantles, preceded by a band of music, and stalking
by fours imposingly down the line of march.
II.
We are nearing the Pyrenees now, and entering the ancient and famous
province of Béarn, once a noted centre of mediæval chivalry. Beam did
not become part of France until almost modern times.[13] For seven
hundred years preceding, its successive rulers held their brilliant
court unfettered and unpledged. "Ours," declared its barons and prelates
in assembly, "is a free country, which owes neither homage nor servitude
to any one." The life of the province was its own, separated entirely
from that of the kingdom. It had its own succession, its own wars and
feuds, its own love of country. It has a national history in miniature.
"If I have excused myself from bearing arms upon either side," said one
of its rulers, replying to the royal remonstrances, "I have, as I think,
good reasons for it: the wars between England and France no way concern
me, for I hold my country of Béarn from God, my sword and by
inheritance. I have not therefore any cause to enter into the service or
incur the hatred of either of these kings."
[13] In 1620.
There is a pleasant old legend which touches the true note of Béarn.
Toward the year 1200, three of its rulers, in turn misgoverning, were in
turn deposed by the barons. The heirs next in line were the infant
twins of one William de Moncade. "It was agreed," as Miss Costello
relates it; "that one of these should fill the vacant seat of
sovereignty of Béarn, and two of the _prudhommes_ were deputed to visit
their father with the proposition. On their arrival at his castle, the
sages found the children asleep, and observed with attention their
infant demeanor. Both were beautiful, strong and healthy; and it was a
difficult matter to make an election between two such attractive and
innocent creatures. They were extremely alike, and neither could be
pronounced superior to the other; the _prudhommes_ were strangely
puzzled, for they had been so often deceived that they felt it to be
most important that they should not err this time. As they hung in
admiration over the sleeping babes, one of them remarked a circumstance
that at once decided their preference and put an end to their
vacillation: one of the little heroes held his hand tightly closed; the
tiny, mottled palm of the other was wide open as it lay upon his snowy
breast. 'He will be a liberal and bold knight,' said one of the
Béarnais, 'and will best suit us as a head.' This infant was accordingly
chosen, given up by his parents to the wise men, and carried off in
triumph to be educated among his future subjects. The event proved their
sagacity, and the object of their choice lived to give them good laws
and prosperity."
III.
The past of Béarn, like an ellipse, curves around two foci. One is the
town of Orthez,[14] the other, the later city of Pau. The hero, the
central figure, of one is Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix; that of the
other, Henry of Navarre.
[14] Anciently written Ortayse, afterward Orthès.
These are the two great names of Béarn. Each lights up a distinctive
epoch,--Gaston, the fourteenth century, Henry, the sixteenth.
* * * * *
In two hours after leaving Bayonne, the train has come to Orthez. There
is little splendor in the old town as one views it to-day; yet in
Gaston's time it was the capital of Béarn, successor of the yet older
Morlaäs, and a centre for knights and squires and men-at-arms, a magnet
for pilgrims and noble visitors from other countries, attracted by its
fame. There were jousts, tourneys, hunts, banquets. The now broken walls
of the old Castle of Moncade on the hill have sheltered more glittering
merrymakings than those of Kenilworth or Fuenterrabia. But decay never
surrenders an advantage once gained; the castle is dying now; dull
modern commonplace has enfolded the once bright town below; and this
Orthez is to-day at best but a lounging-place for the pessimist. We
shall love better Pau, its rival and successor, still buoyant and
prospering, rising not falling. "Good men study and wise men describe,"
avers Ruskin, in a more than half-truth, "only the growth and standing
of things,--not their decay. Dissolution and putrescence are alike
common and unclean ... in State or organism."
For all that, Orthez and its traditions are too significant to hasten
by. Nowhere is the picture of mediæval life more strongly illuminated;
in no spot shall we more fitly pause to summon back the inner past of
the Pyrenees we are approaching. But we would linger over it only as it
was in its best days, and leave to others the drearier story of its
decadence.
It is Froissart, the old historian and traveler, genial, story-loving
Sir John, who tells us most about Orthez and Gaston. Orthez, as the
capital of Béarn, was in his time, at its meridian, (it was afterward
supplanted by Pau,) and Gaston Phoebus, known as the Count de Foix, was
lord both of Beam and of the neighboring county of Foix. It was
precisely five hundred years ago, come next St. Catherine's Day, that
the old chronicler alighted from his horse here in Orthez. He was come
on a visit to the count, well introduced, and seeking further material
for his easy-going history of the times; knowing that foreign knights
assembled in Orthez from all countries, and that there were few spots
more alive to the sound of the world's doings or better informed in the
varying gossip of wars and court-craft.
Froissart liked to write, "and it was very tiresome," he remarks, "to me
to be idle, for I well know that when the time shall come when I shall
be dead and rotten, this grand and noble history will be in much fashion
and all noble and valiant persons will take pleasure in it and gain from
it augmentation of profit." So, seeking fresh chapters, he had come to
Orthez, where he was at once handsomely received by Count Gaston at this
Castle of Moncade. Here he remained through the winter, affable and
inquiring and observant, adding many pages to his history,--which, his
host assured him, would in times to come be more sought after than any
other; "'because,' added he, 'my fair sir, more gallant deeds of arms
have been performed within these last fifty years, and more wonderful
things have happened, than for three hundred years before. '"
"The style of Froissart," says Taine, who has so marvelously divined the
inner spirit of those times, "artless as it is, deceives us. We think
we are listening to the pretty garrulousness of a child at play; beneath
this prattle we must distinguish the rude voice of the combatants,
bear-hunters and hunters of men too, and the broad, coarse hospitality
of feudal manners. At midnight the Count of Foix came to supper in the
great hall. 'Before him went twelve lighted torches, borne by twelve
valets; and the same twelve torches were held before his table and gave
much light unto the hall, which was full of knights and squires; and
always there were plenty of tables laid out for any person who chose to
sup.' It must have been an astonishing sight to see those furrowed faces
and powerful frames, with their furred robes and their justicoats
streaked under the wavering flashes of the torches." And one of
Froissart's characteristic anecdotes is cited, which merits giving even
more in full: "On Christmas Day, when the Count de Foix was celebrating
the feast with numbers of knights and squires, as is customary, the
weather was piercing cold, and the count had dined, with many lords, in
the hall. After dinner he rose and went into a gallery, which has a
large staircase of twenty-four steps: in this gallery is a chimney where
there is a fire kept when the count inhabits it, otherwise not; and the
fire is never great, for he does not like it: it is not for want of
blocks of wood, for Béarn is covered with wood in plenty to warm him if
he had chosen it, but he has accustomed himself to a small fire. When in
the gallery, he thought the fire too small, for it was freezing and the
weather very sharp, and said to the knights around him: 'Here is but a
small fire for this weather.' The Bourg d'Espaign instantly ran down
stairs; for from the windows of the gallery, which looked into the
court, he had seen a number of asses laden with billets of wood for the
use of the house; and seizing the largest of these asses with his load,
threw him over his shoulders and carried him up stairs, pushing through
the crowd of knights and squires who were around the chimney, and flung
ass and load with his feet upward on the dogs of the hearth, to the
delight of the count and the astonishment of all."
IV.
Gaston himself was a type of the time. He had its virtues and its vices,
both magnified. Hence, hearing an eye-witness draw his character for us
is to gain a direct if but partial insight into the character of his
era. Froissart's moral perspective is often curiously blurred, and in
the light of many of his anecdotes about the count his eulogium perhaps
needs qualification: "Count Gaston Phoebus de Foix, of whom I am now
speaking, was at that time fifty-nine years old; and I must say that
although I have seen very many knights, kings, princes and others, I
have never seen any so handsome, either in the form of his limbs and
shape, or in countenance, which was fair and ruddy, with grey and
amorous eyes that gave delight whenever he chose to express affection.
He was so perfectly formed, one could not praise him too much. He loved
earnestly the things he ought to love, and hated those which it was
becoming him so to hate. He was a prudent knight, full of enterprise and
wisdom. He had never any men of abandoned character with him, reigned
prudently, and was constant in his devotions. There were regular
nocturnals from the Psalter, prayers, from the rituals to the Virgin, to
the Holy Ghost, and from the burial service. He had every day
distributed as alms at his gate five florins in small coin to all
comers. He was liberal and courteous in his gifts; and well knew how to
take when it was proper and to give back where he had confidence."
There is an obverse to the medallion. "The Count de Foix was very cruel
to any person who incurred his indignation, never sparing them, however
high their rank, but ordering them to be thrown over the walls, or
confined on bread and water during his pleasure; and such as ventured to
speak for their deliverance ran risks of similar treatment. It is a
well-known fact that he confined in a deep dungeon his cousin-german,
the Viscount de Châteaubon, during eight days; and he would not give him
his liberty until he had paid down forty thousand francs."
And then in the very chapter with his eulogy, Sir John goes on to relate
the count's brutal killing of his own son in a fit of rage and
suspicion, and torturing fifteen retainers as possible accomplices of
the innocent lad; and elsewhere tells of his stabbing his half-brother
and letting him die in a dungeon of the tower, for refusing the
surrender of a fortress. This was the other side of Gaston's character,
and a side quite as representative. It was all in line with the time.
His reign was turbulent, magnificent, cruel, devout,--everything by
extremes. The man is characteristic of the mode, and Orthez in this
summarizes much of the life of the France of the Middle Ages.
V.
These old annalists scarcely pause to censure this spirit of crime, this
hideous quickness to black deeds. They view it as a regrettable failing,
perhaps, and glowingly point to the doer's lavish religiousness in
return. Absolution covers a multitude of sins. To a generous son of the
Church much might be forgiven. "Among the solemnities which the Count de
Foix observes on high festivals," records his visitor, "he most
magnificently keeps the feast of St. Nicholas, as I learnt from a squire
of his household the third day after my arrival at Orthès. He holds this
feast more splendidly than that of Easter, and has a most magnificent
court, as I myself noticed, being present on that day. The whole clergy
of the town of Orthès, with all its inhabitants, walk in procession to
seek the count at the castle, who on foot returns with them to the
church of St. Nicholas, where is sung the psalm _Benedictus Dominus,
Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad proelium et digitos meos ad bellum_,
from the Psalter of David, which, when finished, recommences, as is done
in the chapels of the pope or king of France on Christmas or Easter
Days; for there were plenty of choristers. The Bishop of Pamiers sang
the mass for the day; and I there heard organs play as melodiously as I
have ever heard in any place. To speak briefly and truly, the Count de
Foix was perfect in person and in mind; and no contemporary prince could
be compared with him for sense, honor or liberality."
VI.
As to liberality, these robber barons were able to afford it. Mention is
incidentally made in conversation of Count Gaston's store of florins in
his Castle of Moncade at Orthez. Froissart instantly pricks up his ears:
"'Sir,' said I to the knight, 'has he a great quantity of them?'
"'By my faith,' replied he, 'the Count de Foix has at this moment a
hundred thousand, thirty times told; and there is not a year but he
gives away sixty thousand; for a more liberal lord in making presents
does not exist.'"
We can see the good Sir John's eyes glistening:
"'Ha, ha, holy Mary!' cried I, 'to what purpose does he keep so large a
sum? Where does it come from? Are his revenues so great to supply him
with it? To whom does he make these gifts? I should like to know this if
you please.'
"He answered: 'To strangers, to knights and squires who travel through
his country, to heralds, minstrels, to all who converse with him; none
leave him without a present, for he would be angered should any one
refuse it.'"
With such sums at disposal, Gaston might well indulge his passion for
the chase and keep sixteen hundred hounds. His hospitality too was
unbounded. When the Duke of Bourbon made a three-days' visit to Orthez,
he was "magnificently entertained with dinners and suppers. The Count de
Foix showed him good part of his state, which would recommend him to
such a person as the Duke of Bourbon. On the fourth day, he took his
leave and departed. The count made many presents to the knights and
squires attached to the duke, and to such an extent that I was told this
visit of the Duke of Bourbon cost him ten thousand francs.... Such
knights and squires as returned through Foix and waited on the count
were well received by him and received magnificent presents. I was told
that this expedition, including the going to Castile and return, cost
the Count de Foix, by his liberalities, upwards of forty thousand
francs."
The King of France was entertained by Gaston at a dazzling banquet where
no less than two hundred and fifty dishes covered the tables. But a
succeeding Gaston outdid this in a lavish dinner, likewise to visiting
royalty, of which a faithful record has come down to us from old
documents. There were twelve wide tables, each seven yards long. At the
first, the count presiding, were seated the king and queen and the
princes of the blood, at the others foreign knights and lords according
to their rank and dignity. There were served seven elaborate courses,
each course requiring one hundred and forty plates of silver. There were
seven sorts of soup, then patties of capon, and the ham of the wild
boar; then partridge, pheasant, peacock, bittern, heron, bustard,
gosling, woodcock and swan. This was the third course, concluding with
antelope and wild horse. An _entremet_ or spectacle followed, and then a
course of small birds and game, this served on gold instead of silver.
Next appeared tarts and cakes and intricate pastries, and later, after
another spectacle, comfits and great moulds of conserves in fanciful and
curious forms,--the whole liberally helped down with varied wines, and
joyously protracted with music, dancing and tableaux.
VII.
Gaston Phoebus died suddenly as he had lived violently. He was hunting
near Orthez, three years after Froissart's visit, and to ward evening
stopped at a country inn at Rion to sup. Within, the room was "strewed
with rushes and green leaves; the walls were hung with boughs newly cut
for perfume and coolness, as the weather was marvelously hot even for
the month of August. He had no sooner entered this room than he said:
'These greens are very agreeable to me, for the day has been desperately
hot.' When seated, he conversed with Sir Espaign du Lyon on the dogs
that had best hunted; during which conversation his son Sir Evan and
Sir Peter Cabestan entered the apartment, as the table had been there
spread." He called for water to wash, and two squires advanced; a
knight, the Bourg d'Espaign, (the hero of the Christmas Day exploit,)
took the silver basin and another knight the napkin. "The count rose
from his seat and stretched out his hands to wash; but no sooner had his
fingers, which were handsome and long, touched the cold water, than he
changed color, from an oppression at his heart, and his legs failing
him, fell back on his seat, exclaiming, 'I am a dead man: Lord God, have
mercy on me!'"
It is a significant comment on the period, that amid the commotion at
the inn the first thought was of foul play. "The two squires who had
brought water to wash in the basin said, to free themselves from any
charge of having poisoned him: 'Here is the water; we have already drank
of it, and will now again in your presence,' which they did, to the
satisfaction of all. They put into his mouth bread and water and spices,
with other comforting things, but to no purpose, for in less than half
an hour he was dead, having surrendered his soul very quietly. God, out
of his grace, was merciful to him."
He was entombed before the altar in the little church at Orthez, with
imposing obsequies. No epitaph remains, but this of a preceding Gaston,
buried in the same church, deserves note for its curious, jingling Latin
rhyme:
"Continet hæc fossa Gastonis principis ossa,
Nobilis ac humilis aliis, pulvis sibi vilis,
Subjectis parcens, hastes pro viribus arcens.
Da veniam, Christe, flos militiæ fuit isle,
Et virtute precum, confer sibi gaudia tecum,
Gastonis nomen gratum fert auribus omen,
Mulcet prolatum, dulcescis sæpe relatum,"
Two hundred years afterward, in the tumult of Protestant iconoclasm,
Gaston Phoebus's tomb was broken open, its débris sold, piece by piece,
and Montgomery's Huguenots derisively kicked the august skull about the
streets of Orthez and used it for a bowling-ball:
"They hopped among the weeds and stones,
And played at skittles with his bones."
VIII.
There are a few gleams of humor among these grim recounts. It was always
tinged with the sardonic. Pitard, moralist and pedant, staying at the
Béarnais court, fell into a dispute with a poet, Théophile:
"''T is a pity,' sneered Pitard, finally, 'that, having so much spirit,
you know so little!'
"''T is a pity,' retorted Théophile, 'that, knowing so much, you have so
little spirit!'"
Often the jests take a religious turn. The chaplain of one of the counts
of Orthez, defending his own unpriestly fondness for hunting, asserted
that the ten horns of the stag (_cerf_) stood for the Decalogue; and
that the stag was to be as ardently followed as the sovereign pontiff,
the latter being himself _le cerf des cerfs,--servus servorum_.
If a husband were seriously rasped by his wife, or their tempers could
not agree, he was wont to retire her to a convent. "He did not send her
to the devil," remarks a sly annalist, "but he gave her to the Lord."
And read this whimsical epitaph on an organist of the cathedral at
Lescar, a bishopric near Orthez. He died in the fifteenth century:
"As you pass, pray God for his soul, that having assisted in the
music of this world, he may be received forever among the blessed
to assist in the celestial music. Amen."
Orthez is known to our century as the scene of a spiteful battle
between Wellington and Soult, engaging eighty thousand men, and ending
in the victory of the former and the rout of the French. But the town is
so deeply sunk in the past that its kinship with modern events seems
almost cause for resentment; and we will leave it as it is, with its
older glories and memories thickly crusted upon it.