"THE LITTLE PARIS OF THE SOUTH."
When the Count of Foix made a hunting trip to his _château mignon_ on
the present site of Pau, he found it a goodly journey. There were
quagmires and waste land to pass, and the visit and return were not to
be made in a sun's shining. More greatly than avenging spirits from his
dungeons the spirit of steam would affright him to-day, as it goes
roaring over the levels in a hundred minutes to the same destination.
From Orthez, it is less than two hours by rail, and we are at last in
Pau. The _Midi_ line is accurately on time. These French railroads are
operated by the State; they are not afflicted with parallel lines and
bitter competition; they have no occasion, as our roads have, to
advertise a faster schedule than can possibly be carried out.
Consequently their time-tables aim to state the exact truth, and the
roads can and do live up to it.
It is late in the evening when we arrive, and we seek no impressions. A
comfortable omnibus winds us up an infinity of turns, through an
apparent infinity of streets, and we are at the Hotel Gassion.
It is impossible to be entirely impressionless, even for travelers at
ten at night. It is the hotel itself which makes the dent. Our vague
misgivings as to the "dismal roadside inns" awaiting our tour have
already been arrested at Biarritz and San Sebastian. They are sent into
exile from Pau. The Hotel Gassion, whose name honors a stout old
Béarnais warrior, is fitly a palace. It cost four hundred thousand
dollars. A cushioned elevator lifts us smoothly upward to our rooms,
which prove high-ceiled and unusually large and have dressing-rooms
attached. The dark walls accord with a deep mossy carpet. The
furnishings are massive in mahogany, polished and carved: a wardrobe,
dressing-cases, a writing-desk; a sofa-couch, made inaccessible, as
everywhere in Europe, by the barrier of a huge round table; padded
arm-chairs, upholstered in silk damask; and, acme of prevision, a
praying-chair. The beds seem beds of state, covered and canopied with
some satiny material; and both silk and lace curtains part before the
windows, showing separate balconies in the night outside. The
dining-hall and the parlors, which we do not seek until the morning,
prove to be on an equally expensive scale; paintings of the Pyrenees
hang in the wide halls; and there is a conservatory and winter-garden
opening on the terrace. The building is of grey stone, with corner
towers and turrets and an imposing elevation, and has less the look of a
hotel than of a royal _Residenz_.
Our estimates of the standards of comfort in the Pyrenees are
perceptibly heightened by the evening's impressions alone, as we discuss
our surroundings and the Apollinaris. With Pau thus rivaling Lucerne, we
grow more confident for Eaux-Bonnes and Cauterets, Luchon and Bigorre.
And as, from the balcony, we look in vain across the murky night to see
the snow-peaks which we know are facing us, we agree that here at the
good Hotel Gassion we could luxuriously outstay the lengthiest storm to
view them.
II.
We are glad when daylight comes, as boys are on Christmas morning. The
present we are eager for is the sight of the Pyrenees snow-peaks. The
sun is shining, the sky clear. Even coffee and rolls seem time-wasters,
and we hasten out to the terrace.
Yes, the Pyrenees are before us. There stretches the range, its relief
walling the southern horizon from west to the farthest east, the line of
snow-tusks sharp and white in the sunshine. They are distant yet, but
they stand as giants, parting two kingdoms. Austere and still, they face
us, as they have faced this spot since that stormy Eocene morning when
they sprang like the dragon's white teeth from the earth.
The view is a far-reaching one. The eye sweeps the broadside of the
entire west-central chain,--a full seventy miles from right to left. The
view might recall, as the greater recalls the less, the winter summits
of the Adirondacks, seen from the St. Regis mountain. It has been more
equally paired with the line of the distant Alps seen from the platform
at Berne. I may parallel it, too, again in Switzerland, with the view of
the Valais peaks which bursts on one when, winding upward past the
Daubensee and its desolation, he comes out suddenly upon the brink of
the great wall of the Gemmi. But here there is a warmth in the view
beyond that of Switzerland. Some one has said that "snow is regarded as
the type of purity not because it is cold but because it is spotless."
This distant snow-line is spotless, but to the eye at least it is not
cold.
Here as there, the separate peaks have their separate personality. It is
not a blur of nameless tips. Two especially arrest attention, south and
southeast, for they rise head and shoulders above their neighbors. Each
bears the name of the _Pic du Midi_. That opposite us, dominating the
valley of Ossau, is the _Pic du Midi d'Ossau_. It is ice-capped and
jagged,--
"A rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splintered pinnacle,"--
the Matterhorn of the Pyrenees. That on the left is the noted _Pic du
Midi de Bigorre_, famed for the view from its top. Other prominent peaks
are also pointed out. _Mont Perdu_ and the _Vignemale_, two of the
princes of the chain, are partly hidden by other summits, and are too
distant to rule as they ought. The monarch _Maladetta_, the highest
summit of the Pyrenees, is farther eastward still and cannot be seen
from Pau.
It is a repaying prospect; a majestic salutation, preceding the nearer
acquaintance to come. One thing we know instantly. There will be no lack
of noble scenery in these mountains. We shall find wild views among
their rocks and ice,--views, it must be, which shall dispute with many
in the Alps.
This prospect from the terrace at Pau is a celebrated one. Icy peaks are
not all that is seen. In front of them the ranges rise, still high from
the plain, but smoothed and softened with the green of pines and turf.
Between these and the Pau valley spread hidden leagues of rolling
plains, swelling as they approach us into minor ravelins of foothills
known as the _coteaux_; and little poplar-edged streams, "creaming over
the shallows," winding their way toward the valley just below us, are
coming from the long slopes to join the hurrying Gave de Pau. Houses and
hamlets are here and there, and the even streak of the railway; and
over toward the coteaux we see the village of Jurançon, famed for its
wines.
The terrace falls sheer away, a fifty-foot wall from where we stand, and
at its base, as we lean over the parapet, we see houses and alleys and
just beneath us a school-yard of shouting, frolicking children. We
brighten their play with a few friendly sous, as one enlivens the
Bernese bear-pit with carrots.
Behind us, the Hotel Gassion rises to cut off the streets beyond it; to
the right, along the terrace a few hundred yards, stands a stout old
building, square and firm, which we know at once for the castle of Henry
of Navarre.
III.
"In most points of view," as Johnson observes, in his _Sketches in the
South of France_, "we look down the valley and see on either side its
mountain walls; or we are placed upon culminating points overtopping all
the rest of the prospect; but here the view is across the depression and
against the vast panorama, which opposes the eye at all quarters, and
comprehends within it the whole of the picture. High up in the snow the
very pebbles seem to lie so distinctly that, but for the space between,
a boy might pick them up; lower down, from among the brown heather thin
blue streaks stream aloft from some cottage chimney, winding along the
brae-side till melted into air. We half expect to see some human figure
traverse those white fields and mark the footprints he leaves behind,
some shepherd with his dog crossing from valley to valley. Alas! it is
twenty miles away, the pebbles are huge masses of projecting rock,
precipices on which the snow cannot rest; yonder smoke is from the
charcoal-burner's fire, which would take in a cottage for a mouthful of
fuel, and a dozen men piled on each other's shoulders might at this
moment be swallowed up in these snow-beds and we never the wiser.
"With the warm sunlight upon it, and the pure, clear blue above, into
which these great shapes are wedged like a divine mosaic, the scene
looks so spotless and holy in its union with the heavens that one might
fancy it a link between this earthliness and the purity above, 'the
heaven-kissing hill' on which angels' feet alight. The great vision of
marvelous John Bunyan seemed there realized, and we had found the
Immanuel's Land and these were the Delectable Mountains. 'For,' said he,
'when the morning was up they bid him look South; so he did, and behold,
at a great distance he saw a most pleasant mountainous country
beautified with woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts, flowers also;
with springs and fountains very delectable to behold.... It was common,
too, for all the pilgrims, and from thence they might see the gates of
the Celestial City.'"
IV.
At the other side of the hotel we are in Pau. There is not very much
that is impressive in its general appearance. We go by a patch of park
and through a mediocre street, and find ourselves in the public
square,--the Carfax of the city. From this run east and south its two
chief streets. All of the buildings are low and most of them dingy. We
expected newer, higher, more Parisian effects. At the right of the
square is the long, flat market-building, vocal, in and out, this early
morning, with bustling hucksters superintending their stalls. The
square itself is bright with the colors of overflowing flowers and
fabrics and other idols of the market-place. Neat little heaps of fruit,
apexed into "ball-piled pyramids," are guarded by characterful old
women, alert and intent, whose heads, coifed with striped kerchiefs, nod
a reward to the purchaser with a hearty "_Merci, monsieur_!"
[Illustration]
Few of the streets in the town are well paved, and few of the villas
seen in driving in the suburbs aid to raise the architectural average.
Except for its palace-hotels, Pau seems to show little of artistic
building enterprise.
This city, so popular with the English, is rarely spoken of in America.
There, in fact, it is singularly little known. This is no truer of Pau
than of the Pyrenees themselves; but even to Englishmen who may know as
little as we of the latter, the former is familiar ground. Four thousand
Britons winter here annually, besides French and other visitors, and Pau
runs well in the hibernal race, even against Mentone and Nice. Its
hotels alone would evidence this. Up to these, there are all grades of
good accommodation,--the _pensions_, of good or better class; furnished
apartments, or a flat to be rented by the season; whole villas to be
leased or purchased, as the intending comer may prefer.
One can leave Paris or Marseilles by the evening express and be in Pau
the next afternoon,--about the same length of time as required to reach
St. Augustine from New York. This is certainly far from a formidable
journey, and it is matter for surprise that the adventurous American
does not oftener take it.
The favor of the spot, it owes to its climate. Something there is,--some
meteorological idiosyncrasy in its location,--which guards its still,
mild air, the winter through. Storms rage impotently down from the
mountains or across the Landes; they cannot pass the charmed barrier of
the coteaux. Winds are rare in Pau. Rain is not rare; but the
atmosphere, even when damp, is not chilling, and the lines of rain fall
soft and never aslant. There is a tradition of an old sea-captain who
once made a brief stay here and who, as he took his daily walks, was
noticed as constantly and restlessly whistling. He finally left in
disgust, with the remark that there was not a capful of wind to be had
in the place.
The winter colony takes full possession of the town. It passes thirty
thousand inhabitants under the yoke, as Rome passed their forefathers
the Aquitani. Pau in the season is a British oligarchy. Society fairly
spins. There are titles, and there is money; there are drives, calls,
card-parties; dances and dinners; clubs,--with front windows; theatres,
a Casino, English schools, churches; tennis, polo, cricket; racing,
coaching,--and, _Anglicissime_, a tri-weekly fox-hunt! For some years,
too, the position of master of the hounds, a post of much social
distinction in Pau, was held by a well-known American, so we are
told,--a fact certainly hitherto unheralded to many of his countrymen.
Socially, there is a wide range of entertainment at Pau. What Johnson
wrote of it thirty years ago is not materially inapplicable to-day: "One
set, whom you may call the banqueteers, give solemn, stately dinners
immediately before going to bed; another perform a hybrid entertainment,
between the English tea-party, and the Continental soirée, where you may
enjoy your Bohea and Souchong, play long small whist, and occasionally
listen to ponderous harmonies solemnly performed. A third are the
formal rout-givers, the white-kid-and-slipper, orchestra-and-programme,
dance-and-sit-down-to-supper folks; so like home that it only requires
Gunter's men to fancy oneself in Baker Street of olden times. Another is
the delightful soirée _pur sang_, where everybody comes as a matter of
course, and where everybody who does not sing, dances or plays, or is a
phenomenon in charades, or writes charming impromptus, or talks like the
last book, or can play at any known game from loto to chess, or knows
all the gossip of the last six hours; and where everybody chats and
laughs, and sends everybody else comfortably home in the best of humors
just about the time that the great people are expecting the _coiffeur_
to arrive."
Thus there is a stir in the Pyrenees the year around. In the winter, at
Pau; in summer, at the twenty cures and centres among the mountains. The
proprietor of a winter hotel here will own also his summer hostelry at
Bigorre or Cauterets. In the summer, it is the French and Spanish to
whom he caters, for they have so far been the ones most appreciative
both of the springs and the scenery of these mountains. And so, with the
rise and dip of the seasons, the European element waxes as the English
wanes, in a kind of solstitial see-saw. And the smiling landlord stands
upon the pivot.
* * * * *
The clouds are closing in, after granting us that glittering panorama,
and the morning grows dull and dark. We explore the book-stores, and
finally find the old Library in the upper story of the market-building.
Here two of us at least pass a long and contentful forenoon.
V.
In fierce Count Gaston's time, Béarn centred in Orthez, and Pau was but
his hunting-box. Two hundred years later, Pau had become the focus, and
Béarn and Foix not only, but French Navarre as well, were its united
kingdom. Gaston's Castle of Moncade had aged into history,--
"Outworn, far and strange,
A transitory shame of long ago,"
and the hunting-box had grown in its turn to castle's stature.
The world had brightened during the two centuries. Constantinople had
fallen and the Renaissance came. Luther had posted his theses on the
Wittemberg church door and the Reformation took root. Men were older
than when Froissart lived and wrote. And this active province of Béarn
kept pace; it opened quickly to the new influences, was alive to the
changing _zeitgeist_. There remained the chivalric still,--and a trace
of the barbaric,--as with the outer world; in short, in its faults and
fervor's, in its codes and standards, the sixteenth century is aptly
summed up in Béarn-Navarre,--and Navarre in its famous Henry.
VI.
And so, on the following morning, we pass into the courtyard of his
castle here at Pau with the feeling that in some sense we are evoking
the shade of the era, not of the man. The feeling dies hard; but the
robustious, business-like guide that herds us together with other
comers, and shepherds us all briskly through the official round, goes
very far toward killing it. There is little that one needs to remember
of the successive rooms and halls; it is a confusion of polished floors,
and vases, and tapestry, and porphyry tables, and the rest,--adorned and
illumined by a voluble Gallic description. Later French kings have
restored the old building, and stocked it with Paris furniture, and made
it modern and comfortable. One is always divided in spirit over these
restorations. The castle needed help painfully; it had been badly used
by the Revolution; and it had been debased to a barrack by Napoleon's
troops, who "stabled their steeds in the courts and made their drunken
revelry resound in the chambers of Marguerite of Angoulême." Dismantled,
half-roofless, its great halls, unsheltered and unsheltering, it was
wasting fast under the elements into picturesque but irreparable ruin.
And I suppose the pleasure of kings and the peace of utilitarians ought
fairly to outweigh the disappointments of the touring impression-seeker.
In one apartment, however, we make a stand. The herd and its shepherd
can pass along. This, he has told us, is the birthplace of Henry IV. The
floor is polished like the rest, and the furniture has been in part
renewed, but the room is the same which that alert baby first laughed
upon. In the corner at the right is an antique bed of carved walnut,
with four posts and a rich canopy. Around its side are cut in the wood
an elaborate series of medallions, each a foot square, representing the
heads of the kings of France. Across the apartment swings still a great
tortoise-shell, which served the royal infant for a cradle,--saved
afterward from the furies of the Revolution by the substitution of a
false shell in its place.[15]
[15] The genuineness of the present shell has frequently been
questioned; but the testimony of LAGRÈZE has now fairly established the
story of its preservation.
In this room, Jeanne d'Albret sang a Béarnais song as the hero of Ivry
was born, and so won the wager with her martial old father, the King of
Navarre; and the boy came into the world smiling and unafraid. And
writers tell us how delighted the old king was, and how he took the
infant into his arms, and rubbed its lips with a garlic clove, and
tilted into its little mouth from a golden goblet some drops of the
manly wine of Jurançon. When Queen Jeanne herself was born in this very
castle, twenty-five years before, the Spaniards had sneered: "A miracle!
the cow (of the arms of Béarn) has given birth to a ewe!" "My ewe,"
exclaimed the happy old father now, "has brought forth a lion! _Tu seras
un vray Béarnais!_"
VII.
Henry's life was as martial and as merry as his grandfather sought to
form it. He grew up on the coteaux in a hardy, fresh-air life, and at
nineteen became King of Navarre,--the title including Béarn and Foix.
Into this old room in the castle where we stand throng reminders of his
career, its beginnings so closely twined with Pau. Independent still as
under Gaston, the sovereigns of the stout little kingdom had lived
friends but no subjects of the King of France; and the Court at Pau,
always proud and autonomous as the Court at Paris, had become defiantly
Protestant besides. And now if ever it had a sovereign after its own
heart. Henry was kingly, but a king of the people. He had their spirit.
His long, keen, grizzled face was alight with ready comradeship. "I want
my poorest subject," he said, "to have a fowl for his pot on Sundays."
He was a Béarnais from sole to crown,--in bravery and craft, tact and
recklessness, in virtues, and--which pleased them as much--in vices. "He
was plain of speech, rough in manner,--with a quaint jest alike for
friend or foe; his hand upon his sword, his foot in the stirrup, his gun
slung across his shoulder, the first in assault, the last in retreat.
Irregular in his habits, eating at no stated times, but when hungry
voraciously devouring everything that pleased him, especially fruit and
oysters; negligent, not to say dirty, in his person, and smelling strong
of garlic. A man who called a spade a spade, swore like a trooper, and
hated the parade of courts; was constant in friendship, promised
anything freely, a boon companion, a storyteller, cynical in his
careless epicureanism, and so profound a believer in the 'way of fate,'
that reckless of the morrow he extracted all things from the passing
hour."[16]
[16] ELLIOTT: _Old Court Life in France_.
Time had not jogged on so far, in journeying from Orthez to Pau, as to
forget all his mediæval ways,--his promptings to strife and feuds, his
liking for adventures. Henry had abundance of them, in his running fire
against his neighbor-enemies, in his hot Protestant struggles against
the Medicis, in his hotter fight for the throne of France. There are
both meats and sweetmeats in his career,--strong deeds and knightly
diversions. "These old wars are the most poetic in French history; they
were made for pleasure rather than interest. It was a chase in which
adventures, dangers, emotions were found, in which men lived in the
sunlight, on horseback, amidst flashes of fire, and where the body as
well as the soul had its enjoyment and its exercise. Henry carries it on
as briskly as a dance, with a Gascon's fire and a soldier's ardor....
This is no spectacle of great masses of well-disciplined men coming
heavily into collision and falling by thousands on the field, according
to the rules of good tactics. The king leaves Pau or Nérac with a little
troop, picks up the neighboring garrisons on his way, scales a fortress,
intercepts a body of arquebusiers as they pass, extricates himself
pistol in hand from the midst of a hostile troop, and returns.... They
arrange their plan from day to day; nothing is done unless unexpectedly
and by chance. Enterprises are strokes of fortune.... To act, to dare,
to enjoy, to expend force and trouble like a prodigal, to be given up to
the present sensation, be forever urged by passions forever lively,
support and search the extremes of all contrasts, that was the life of
the sixteenth century."[17]
[17] _Tour Through the Pyrenees_.
Exciting incidents abound among Henry's dashing forays. He exposed
himself to every risk he asked of his men, deaf even to their own
entreaties that he should take more care of his life. More than once it
was his personal leadership alone that carried the day. For example,
there was a hostile city on the river Lot. Henry coveted it. Its
garrison was strong; its governor scoffed: "a fig for the Huguenots!"
Henry would brave defeat sooner than brook defiance. He marched to the
town at once. "It was in the month of June," as Sully relates it in his
_Memoirs,_ "the weather extremely hot, with violent thunder but no rain.
He ordered us to halt in a plantation of walnut trees, where a fountain
of running water afforded us some refreshment;" and after a brief rest,
he disposed his little army, and planned his attack:
"We had three gates to force; these we made haste to throw down with the
petard, after which we made use of hatchets. The breaches were so low
that the first who entered were obliged to creep through on their hands
and feet. At the noise of the petard, forty men armed and about two
hundred arquebusiers ran almost naked to dispute our entry; meantime the
bells rung the alarm, to warn everybody to stand to their defence. In a
moment, the houses were covered with soldiers, who threw large pieces of
wood, tiles and stones upon us, with repeated cries of 'Charge, kill
them!' We soon found that they were resolved to receive us boldly; it
was necessary therefore at first to sustain an encounter, which lasted
above a quarter of an hour and was very terrible. I was cast to the
ground by a large stone that was cast out of a window; but by the
assistance of the Sieur de la Bertichère and La Trape, my valet de
chambre, I recovered, and resumed my post. All this time we advanced
very little, for fresh platoons immediately succeeded those that fled
before us; so that before we gained the great square, we had endured
more than twelve battles. My cuisses being loosened, I was wounded in
the left thigh. At last we got to the square, which we found barricaded,
and with infinite labor we demolished those works, being all the time
exposed to the continual discharge of the artillery, which the enemy had
formed into a battery.
"The King of Navarre continued at the head of his troops during all
these attacks; he had two pikes broke, and his armor was battered in
several places by the fire and blows of the enemy. We had already
performed enough to have gained a great victory; but so much remained
to do that the battle seemed only to be just begun; the city being of
large extent and filled with so great a number of soldiers that we in
comparison of them were but a handful. At every cross-way we had a new
combat to sustain, and every stone house we were obliged to storm; each
inch of ground so well defended that the King of Navarre had occasion
for all his men, and we had not a moment's leisure to take breath.
"It is hardly credible that we could endure this violent exercise for
five whole days and nights, during which time not one of us durst quit
his post for a single moment, take any nourishment but with his arms in
his hand, or sleep except for a few moments leaning against the shops.
Fatigue, faintness, the weight of our arms, and the excessive heat,
joined to the pain of our wounds, deprived us of the little remainder of
our strength; our feet, scorched with heat and bleeding in many places,
gave us agonies impossible to be expressed.
"The citizens, who suffered none of these inconveniences and who became
every minute more sensible of the smallness of our numbers, far from
surrendering, thought of nothing but protracting the fight till the
arrival of some succors, which they said were very near; they sent forth
great cries, and animated each other by our obstinacy. Though their
defence was weak, yet they did enough to oblige us to keep upon our
guard, which completed our misfortunes. In this extremity the principal
officers went to the king, and advised him to assemble as many men as he
could about his person and open himself a retreat. They redoubled their
instances at the report which was spread and which they found to be
true, that the succors expected by the enemy were arrived at the bar
and would be so soon in the city that he would have but just time to
force the wall and secure himself a passage. But this brave prince,
whose courage nothing was ever able to suppress, turning toward them
with a smiling countenance and air so intrepid as might have inspired
courage into the most pusillanimous heart: ''Tis heaven,' said he,
'which dictates what I ought to do upon this occasion; remember then
that my retreat out of this city, without having secured one also to my
party, shall be the retreat of my soul from my body. My honor requires
this of me; speak therefore to me of nothing but fighting, conquest or
death.'"
There could be but one issue to such words. Henry fought till
reinforcements came to him, and the town fell.
* * * * *
Anecdotes of Henry are in a very real sense anecdotes of Béarn. The one
following, lines out two of the king's best qualities. He was besieging
a strong city in Poitou. "We applied ourselves without ceasing to the
trenches and undermining. The King of Navarre took inconceivable pains
in this siege; he conducted the miners himself, after he had taken all
the necessary precautions to hinder supplies from entering without; the
bridges, avenues and all the roads that lead to the city were strictly
guarded, as likewise great part of the country.... The mining was so far
advanced that we could hear the voices of the soldiers who guarded the
parapets, within the lodgment of the miners. The King of Navarre was the
first who perceived this; he spoke and made himself known to the
besieged; who were so astonished at hearing him name himself from the
bottom of these subterraneous places that they demanded leave to
capitulate. The proposals were all made by this uncommon way; the
articles were drawn up or rather dictated by the King of Navarre, whose
word was known by the besieged to be so inviolable that they did not
require a writing. They had no cause to repent of this confidence; the
King of Navarre, charmed with a proceeding so noble, granted the
garrison military honors and preserved the city from pillage."
VIII.
The great satisfaction in contemplating the career of Henry is in the
fact that it succeeded. His ambitions, maturing in purpose, ended in
result. The King of Navarre found himself at last the King of France.
The path had not been of roses. He had captured two hundred towns and
fought in sixty battles on his way. He himself had strewed thorns for
others as well. His wars spread suffering throughout France. His
skirmishings, petty but many, add up to an appalling total of harm.
Henry as a model of renounced ambition is a failure. Read what his
Catholic enemies in Béarn said of him, in an address and appeal to the
Catholics of France; as now first translated out of its Old French, it
has an oddly Jeffersonian ring:
"Knowing long since, to our cost, the nature of the wolf who seeks to
deceive and then devour you, we have deemed it duty to warn you of the
character of the beast, (_le naturel de la beste,_) so that by our
putting you on your guard he shall not have means to endamage you.
Within twenty years he has summoned a round million of foreign
mercenaries to pillage and rend your kingdom. He has sacked and
demolished two thousand monasteries and twenty thousand (_sic!_)
churches; he has wrecked no less than nine hundred hospitals; he has
caused the death, by war and divers punishments, of nearly one million,
six hundred thousand men. In the face of his assurances to the nobility
in 1580 and of his reiterated protestations, he has put up our very
priests at auction and sold them off to the highest bidder, in order
that his Huguenots might have on whom to wreak at leisure their diabolic
hatred. He thinks himself King of France; it is a malady common to the
crack-brained to fancy themselves kings of the first realm they spy and
to fashion them seigniories in the air. Beware trusting your fowls to
this fox!"
Evidently the Béarnais hero had made some tolerably strong enemies in
pursuing his ambitions. No less truly his ambitions had made some
tolerably wide gaps in his ethics.
But the world pardons much to success. And this man had a certain
high-mindedness in him which compels admiration. When the battle of Ivry
was commencing, "he remembered," relates Perefix, an old historian,
"that the evening before the battle he had used some harsh expressions
to Colonel Theodoric Schomberg, who had asked him for money, and told
him in a passion that it was not acting like a man of honor to demand
money when he came to take orders for fighting. He afterward went to
him, when he was ranging his troops in order, and said: 'Colonel, we are
now upon the point; perhaps I shall never go from this place; it is not
just that I should deprive a brave gentleman as you are of your honor; I
come therefore to declare that I know you to be an honest man and
incapable of committing a base action.' Saying this, he embraced him
with great affection."[18]
[18] "The colonel," continues Perefix, "sensibly moved with this
behavior, replied with tears in his eyes: 'Ah, Sire! in restoring to me
my honor you take away my life; for after this I should be unworthy of
your favor if I did not sacrifice it to-day for your service. If I had a
thousand lives I would lay them all at your feet.' In fact he was killed
upon this occasion."
He besieged Paris, but would not storm it. "I am like the true mother
in the judgment of Solomon," was his famous declaration; "I would rather
not have Paris at all than see it torn to pieces." "The Duke of Nemours
sent all useless mouths out of Paris; the king's council opposed his
granting them passage; but the king, being informed of the dreadful
scarcity to which these miserable wretches were reduced, ordered that
they should be allowed to pass. 'I am not surprised,' said he, 'that the
Spaniards and the chiefs of the League have no compassion upon these
poor people; they are only tyrants; as for me, I am their father and
their king, and cannot hear the recital of their calamities without
being pierced to my inmost soul and ardently desiring to bring them
relief.'"
Take it good and bad, lion of ewe, the character of Jeanne's high son is
crystallized in one saying of his: "I would give a whole finger to have
a battle,--and two to have a general peace."
* * * * *
With delight Pau watched her merry monarch; backed his final claim to
the throne of St. Louis, made on the death of the last of the Medici
kings and traced back through nine generations; followed tensely his
long contest for that high prize, his rivalry with the League and with
Philip of Spain, his victories at Arques and Ivry, his coronation, and
his wise reign as Henry the Fourth of France. His fame was hers. The
hour he died,--stabbed while in his state-carriage at Paris by the
dagger of a fanatic,--"a tempest broke over the place of his birth, and
lightning shivered to pieces the royal arms suspended over the gateway
of the castle."
_"Rubente
Dextera sacras jaculatas arces,
Terruit urbem"_
IX.
A winter station such as Pau is a hub with many spokes. Excursions and
drives are in all directions. Idle fashion enjoys its outlets to the
air, and invalidism demands them. Each hamlet is a picnic resort. One
has choice of time and space, from an hour's ramble in the park, to a
day's long visit to the monster sight of the mountains, the Cirque of
Gavarnie. The park, as we pass, deserves its hour's ramble. Its wide
promenade, arched with great trees, is entered not far from the castle,
and leads along the torrent of the Gave, whose source we are later to
see in the snows around Gavarnie itself. It is the scene of the favorite
constitutional of Pau,--a neutral ground for all social factions.
Four drives in particular point us each to its own quarter of the
compass. One is long, with the watering places of Eaux Chaudes and Eaux
Bonnes for its double destination. The others, nearer in distance, lead
farther in event,--back through the centuries, ninety, fifty, thirty
decades, in turn.
The first of these is to Morlaäs, the earliest capital of Béarn. The
distance is seven miles. Though the road is flat and tame, the ride
affords superb prospects of the line of the Pyrenees, and these
culminate at the top of the hill just before descending to the village.
Here the panorama is even finer than from Pau. Easterly ranges have come
into the field. The sweep of the mountain barrier in sight is a full
hundred miles, and the waste of intervening plains, no longer hidden by
coteaux, increases the impression of distance without lessening that of
height. The greater peaks rise now into better proportion. Mont Perdu
and the Vignemale loom above their neighbors, and best of all is seen
far away the crown at least of the great Maladetta.
You must enjoy Morlaäs wholly for its past. You cannot enjoy it for its
present. It is a poor, dejected, straggling street, noticeable only for
mud and stones and dun-coated hovels. It does not, like Fuenterrabia,
retain the picturesqueness of its antiquity. There, it is the old town's
to-day that carries us delightfully back into its yesterday. But at
Morlaäs there is neither to-day nor yesterday.
For the prime of this place antedates old Fuenterrabia by many a hundred
years. The latter may come to the former's estate as many centuries
hence. Orthez is but in middle life, Pau a summer stripling, in the
presence of this wreck of time. Poor Morlaäs! Thou hast seen thy long
successor rise and reign and fall, succeeded in its turn by the
brilliant capital that now sends hither its subjects to scoff at thy
driveling old age.
To share the mood of this grey spot you must travel far back, down its
dim retrospect. You must retrace long, successive eras, sensitive to the
spirit of each as you pass. You must cross the sixteenth century,
brightening into humanity yet still un-human,--the vivid, reckless King
of Navarre its type. You must penetrate beyond the twilight where Count
Gaston's armor flashes across from the brutal towers of Orthez, lawless
and splendid; you must grope back farther into the gloom, four hundred
years still, before you see the shadowy Morlaäs in its full stature,
proud, powerful, rude, rich,--the capital of old Béarn.
Nine hundred years ago. Mohammed's name and power were still new.
Charles Martel had just saved Europe from the Saracens. England had not
been recreated by a Norman Conqueror. The Crusades were still undreamed
of. Art, science, letters, were in custody in the East. These armed
children ran riot,--passionate, intense, uncontrolled, loving fight and
finery as the Trojans, or the Norse heroes of the Sagas.
A single fine portal of the original sanctuary is still to be seen. But
of the old castle not a trace remains; only its name survives,--_la
Hourquie_,--with its significant etymological story: _Horcæ,--furcæ,---
fourches patibulaires_,--the gibbet. For these viscounts of Morlaäs had
recourse to a savage expedient to control the lawlessness of their day.
They kept a gallows-tree erect before the castle gateway, a speaking
symbol of vengeance, and there the blackened corpse, might hang until
replaced, swinging in the winter wind. There was a mint here also, which
stamped the metal of the little realm, and on the coins too appeared the
device of the gibbet. There is a tradition that the executions took
place only on market-days, and in the Pyrenees to this day the
market-gathering is known as the _Hourquie_.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Eleven miles west leads us four centuries forward again from Morlaäs.
This is Lescar; with its ancient cathedral, the St. Denis of Béarn, the
burial-place of generations of its rulers. Morlaäs has been deposed,
and Orthez reigns in its stead,--with Lescar as primate. The gleam and
glory of chivalry have grown with the years. Here was the seat of the
church militant in its strongest manifestation. "The bishops of Lescar,"
writes Johnson, satirically, "are said to have been well suited to the
times in which they lived; fighting when they could, and cursing when
they could not. In the early history of the province, they are found
lustily taking a part in the battles of the frontier country; and when
peaceful times came, getting up a comfortable trade with the intrusive
infidels they had so lately belabored. The reputation for wealth
acquired by this astute community seems to have brought its troubles
upon the enterprising diocesans, for tradition has it that in the
eleventh century Viscount Dax laid sacrilegious hands upon their
property. Whether he was too strong for the carnal weapon or spiritual
manifestations were deemed more appropriate to his particular case,
history does not record, but certain it is that the rebellious noble,
being deaf to expostulation, was excommunicated, and resenting that, was
seized with a leprosy, of which he died. His successor, adopting the
same line of policy as the deceased, was treated in the same way and
with the same result. So that between the thunders of the church and the
arms of the flesh, the Episcopality of Lescar waxed mightily, and its
bishops took the position of premier barons in the province, sitting
next to royalty in council and therein keeping to order all grumblers
against their rights and privileges. If two of the venerable prelates
themselves happened to disagree and logic failed them, then,--it being
scarcely orthodox for the reverend men to fight the matter out
personally,--they employed a couple of lusty varlets to settle the
business for them, and upon the weakest shoulders fell all the
consequent disadvantages; thus instituting a simple and expeditious
method of cutting short disputes by which the ecclesiastical courts of
the present day do not appear to have benefited."
Lescar was called the _ville septénaire_; for it had, it is said, seven
churches, seven fountains, seven mills, seven woods, seven vineyards,
seven gates, and seven towers on the ramparts. It is another senile
hamlet now, and imagination must do all the work. Even the cathedral has
been altered, and in its large, rather plain interior are few relics of
its earlier state, few marks to tell of the after-despoiled tombs of
Henri Quatre's ancestry. There is a satisfying legend about this
sanctuary. One of the feudal rulers had a violent hatred for some
neighboring seignior, and finally secured his assassination. His hatred
was thereupon followed by a remorse equally violent,--these men were
violent in good as in bad, which redeems much; and in atonement he
rebuilt magnificently this cathedral, which was even then an old one,
and added to it a monastery as well. And to complete the story of poetic
expiation, the assassin he had employed became a penitent himself; was
later appointed one of the monks by his penitent patron; and ended by
rising to the reverend office of abbot itself.
Southeast from Pau lies our third landmark of the past,--Coarraze. It is
a longer road and a dusty one, but a village will tell off each mile,
the Gave de Pau brings encouraging messages along the way, and the far
Pic du Midi de Bigorre keeps inspiringly in sight. Besides the commoner
trees to be met in this and other directions from Pau, are occasional
orange-trees, Spanish chestnuts, aloes, acacias, and here and there a
magnolia; but this region is north of much tropical verdure, even now in
July, and plain beech and oak play the principal parts. Coarraze can be
reached by rail also, and preferably so when haste is an object, for it
is thirteen miles by the highway, while the train covers the distance
within the half-hour.
This spot too had its castle and its feudal barons, subject to the court
at Orthez. A tower of the castle still remains. It is of Raymond, one of
these barons, that Froissart tells the legend of the familiar spirit.
This obliging bogey was wont to visit his host as he lay asleep, waking
him to tell him what had happened during the day in distant countries.
His mode of rousing his patron was unceremonious, not to say boisterous.
In his first visit, he made a terrific tumult throughout the castle,
pounded the doors and casements, broke the plates in the kitchen,
appalled the sleeping servants, "knocking about everything he met with
in the castle, as if determined to destroy all within it.... On the
following night the noises and rioting were renewed, but much louder
than before; and there were such blows struck against the door and
windows of the chamber of the knight that it seemed they would break
them down."
The baron could no longer desist from leaping out of his bed, and
proceeding to investigate matters; and in the end the bogey and he
became fast friends. In fact, the former "took such an affection to the
Lord de Corasse that he came often to see him in the night-time; and
when he found him sleeping, he pulled his pillow from under his head or
made great noises at the door or windows; so that when the knight was
awakened, he said, 'let me sleep.'
"'I will not,' replied he, 'until I have told thee some news.'
"The knight's lady was so much frightened, the hairs of her head stood
on end and she hid herself under the bed-clothes.
"'Well,' said the knight, 'and what news hast thou brought me?'
"The spirit replied, 'I am come from England, Hungary or some other
place, which I left yesterday, and such and such things have happened.'
"Thus did the Lord de Corasse know by means of this messenger all things
that were passing in the different parts of the world;" and for years
this invisible mediæval sprite kept his patron comfortably posted on all
current events, in a ghostly adumbration of the modern newspaper press.
But Coarraze and its castle carry us on later than Froissart's days.
Here young Prince Henry ran about in his hardy youth, and romped and
played pranks on his future subjects. Nothing delighted him more in
after life than to come back here and hunt up his old peasant
playfellows, bashful and reluctant, and bewilder and charm them with his
state and his _bonhomie_. Most of the old castle is gone now, destroyed
by a storm and since replaced by a newer structure. The old baron's
spirit-messenger or the "white lady" of the House of Navarre have only
the single tower remaining, for their ghostly visits,--finding change
over all save the far line of the Pyrenees glittering unearthly in the
moonlight.