OVER THE HIGHWAY OF THE HOT SPRINGS.
"Like a silver zone,
Flung about carelessly, it shines afar;
* * * * *
"Yet through its fairy course, go where it will,
The torrent stops it not, the rugged rock
Opens and lets it in; and on it runs,
Winning its easy way from clime to clime."
--ROGERS' _Italy_.
It is Monday morning at Eaux Bonnes. The dome of the sky is of unspecked
blue. The departing diligence for Laruns has just rolled away down the
road, and now a landau with four horses, and a victoria with two, stand
before the Hotel des Princes. A formal contract, wisely yet ludicrously
minute in detail, bristling with discomforting provisos for
contingencies, and copied out in the usual painstaking French
handwriting, has been discussed and gravely signed. We are to be
conveyed to Cauterets as the first day's stage, and thereafter to have
the carriages at command, for an agreed price per day, if we wish to
retain them. Thus we can journey on to Luz, Gavarnie, Barèges, Bigorre
and even Luchon. The memorandum is handed us; it provides for delays and
breakdowns, disputes, damages, sickness; it stipulates for return prices
from the place of dismissal. The average price for two such conveyances
in this region, "keep" included but not _pourboire_, will be found to
hold within from seventy-five to ninety francs a day,--thirty-five to
forty-five francs for each carriage; I record it as matter of
information for possible comers. The carriages, the horses and the
drivers are all strong and all well-cushioned, and the drivers are
resplendently tinseled besides.
We are now to enter oft the _Route Thermale_. This carriage-road is one
of the marvels of modern engineering. The chief resorts in the French
Pyrenees are imbedded each at the head of a north-and-south valley
running up from the plain against the crest of the range. Between them,
the huge mountain ridges, like ribs from a Typhon's spine, stretch down
in irregular parallels from the backbone of the chain. Before this road
was built, these resorts could only be visited successively by a tedious
double journey in and out of each separate valley, or by high foot-paths
over the ridges between. Thus the traveling from one to another had its
serious drawbacks. The railroad came, skirting the plain, though not yet
provided with the offshoots which now run partway up into the valleys;
but even by rail the détours needed would be circuitous and wasting, and
they missed utterly the out-of-door fascinations of true mountain
travel. Something yet was called for.
The Route Thermale was the result; it is another of the wonders of Louis
Napoleon's régime. It has revolutionized the comforts of Pyrenean summer
travel; the ridges need no longer be skirted, for they can be
luxuriously crossed,--and by one of the best carriage-roads in Europe.
Beginning at Eaux Bonnes, and running in the main parallel with the
central crest, it rears itself serpent-like over four of these great
intervening barriers, attaining and crossing in turn the broad valleys
between them, connecting northward with the stations, southward with
the springs. This immense band, sinuous and unbroken, uplifting itself
to the snow, plunging again from snow to the maize-fields, stretches
along the central Pyrenees a full hundred miles. Four days' journey away
lies its distant end at Luchon. The hostile mountains shower it with
earth and stones. Winter buries it in ice, spring assaults it with
freshets; it is rarely passable before June, and mountain storms even in
summer measure their strength against it. But Napoleon III inspired this
road, and it emerges, quickly rejuvenated, from tempest and torrent, to
laugh unconquered. Of the undertakings of the Bonaparte family, only two
were ever baffled by opposing forces.
Such an enterprise as this gives a new light, for the stranger, upon the
popularity of the Pyrenees. This costly road-building could only have
arisen from a demand great enough to require and sustain it,--from an
amount of summer traffic, a multitude of summer visitors, commensurate
in part at least with the outlay. Evidently, figments of lonely
settlements and dark paths belong in limbo with those of dismal inns.
The next great synclinal, adjoining the Valley of Ossau, is the Valley
of Lavedan, and at its head in the mountains lies Cauterets, our next
point of attack. The notch of the road in each intervening ridge is
called a _col_, that which is in the ridge that now bars us from
Cauterets being the Col d'Aubisque. Over the Col d'Aubisque,
accordingly, opposite the Pic de Ger, our way to-day lies.
II.
We abandon Eaux Bonnes, almost reluctantly, to its summer's festivities,
and drive down the broad street and around the end of the park and so
out through the curtain of rock into the road of the main valley. The
slow ascent begins almost at once. We rise gradually along a wooded
hill, stopping once to enjoy a cataract which, like a happy child, is
noisy for its size and entirely lovable nevertheless. A long reach of
valley is then entered, bottomed by the Gave, the road well up on the
side. In an hour or more, we finally turn to cross the valley, and
commence the serious ascent of the opposite side. Facing us now from the
side we have left is the mass of the Ger, very near, very high, and
uncompromisingly precipitous. All the morning this Pic looms stonily
above us; the sunshine brightens its snows but cannot soften the stern
rock-features. Steadily, though with frequent rests, the horses toil
higher, and the Pic seems to rise as we ascend. Often we are walking, by
the side of the carriages. Other peaks are now coming up into view; the
road mounts in long zigzags, shaded plentifully at times and always
astir with a trace of breeze. Our admiration at its skillful
construction increases hourly. Patiently surmounting all obstacles, it
moves surely upward, unvexed by resistance, broad and smooth and firm,
and protected by parapets wherever the paternal solicitude of the
Department could possibly conjecture a need for them. The trees become
scanter as we near the top. Road-makers are at work cutting stones or
repairing here and there; they doff their faded berrets in greeting.
They have frank, hardy faces, marked with belief that life is worth
living:
"_Les tailleurs de pierre
Sont de bons enfants;
Ils ne mangent guère
Mais ils solvent longtemps_!"
[Illustration]
By eleven o'clock the top is gained. We are on the Col d'Aubisque, 5600
feet above tide-water. The horses pause for a well merited
breathing-spell, and we step to the ground for a survey. Across the
valley towers the Ger, still apparently as high above us as at the
start. Farther to the right, the Gourzy, though still in the near
distance, has dwindled to a moderate hill, and Eaux Bonnes has
throughout been niched from the field of view. To the left, other peaks,
several heretofore unseen, stand silently out; their rocks and snow "of
Arctic and African desolation," as Count Russell has observed of another
scene, "since they are both burnt and frozen." The Pic du Midi d'Ossau,
which should lie to the southwest, is not in sight, being hidden by
intervening heights.
We turn for a view to the east. Here barren pastures sprawl over the
hills, dotted in places with herds of cattle or flocks of mountain
sheep. But the Valley of Lavedan, which we expected now to overlook, is
not yet in sight. After a long descent before us, there is another
though lower col to surmount before we can point out the villages of the
new valley.
We seat ourselves by a snowbank, and enjoy the pleasures of rest for a
season. Enter to us, a peasant upon the scene,--a woman, crossing the
col from the Lavedan side. The large bundle magically balanced upon her
head-cloth wavers never a trace as she steps lithely up the last
acclivities and comes upon us. From a stick held over her shoulder
depends another bundle, and over all she is carrying a war-worn and
ludicrous umbrella. The interest is mutual. Promptly I spring up and
pull off my cap in introduction. Her round face, simple and
good-tempered, a comely type of her neighborhood, opens gradually from a
stare into a smile, as the ladies add their greetings. She seems rather
glad of the excuse to rest and lay aside her bundles, and in a few
moments has grown quite communicative. She has come, this morning, she
tells us, from Arrens, a small village on the way down toward the
Lavedan valley and to be our destined halting-place, we recollect, for
luncheon. She is taking to Eaux Bonnes a few woolen goods, stockings and
hoods and shawls, knit by herself and her old mother during the long
winter. They are not for fine people; oh, no, but the guides and the
hotel maids like them.
"And your husband," we ask,--"what is he?" "A charcoal-burner, monsieur;
he has his pits in the forests of the Balaïtous; it is a hard life."
"It is hardest in winter, is it not?"
"It is hard always, monsieur,"--this very simply; "but we have enough,
though not more.--On the left of the road, madame,--our home,--as you
walk out from the inn at Arrens toward the monastery."
Again the conception of discontent is a stranger; the idea puzzles her;
her life has always been thus; she did not expect anything otherwise. It
is a genuine forest-nature, mute yet never inglorious, reciting
uncomplainingly its lesson of passiveness and endurance.
Her dress, coarse in texture, well worn but well cared for, appears to
differ little in detail from the costume of the Ossau valley we have now
quitted, but is more strictly, so she tells us, that of the peasantry of
the Lavedan district next to be met with. The pleasant face is framed
in by the ever-favorite hood or head-mantle. This is sometimes, as here,
a kerchief, of conspicuous colors, peculiarly coifed,--the precise twist
varying according to the mode of each locality. Often, as with the women
of Goust, the kerchief is of plain white, tied below the chin, and set
off with a short outside cape, black or colored, over the crown. At
times the cape alone is worn without the kerchief, and on occasion the
larger capulet of red supersedes them both.
Artfully we lead the conversation into a philosophical discussion, while
the camera is secretly made ready,--when, from the side we have come,
enter also another peasant, an old man this time, quite as good-humored
and quite as characteristic as the first comer. He has dispensed with
jacket or blouse, and displays the loose, baggy-sleeved cotton shirt
often worn in substitution, an outlawed pair of _ouvrier's_ trousers,
and the local berret and _spadrilles._ His features have the true Gascon
cast of shrewdness and tolerance. We formally introduce the two to each
other, and the camera is trained upon the pair. But now the woman,
discovering the plot, evinces that bashful disinclination, common among
women the world over, to pose for immortality when without her best
finery; though the old man, I am pleased to record, does not appear in
the least sensitive about his. Silver, however, is a great persuader;
now it proves a worthy adjutant of its nitrate; the drivers, who are
greatly absorbed in the situation, add their encouragements to the
reluctant one, and finally agreeing and ably supported by her new
acquaintance as leading man, accoutred as she is, she plunges in;
conscious attitudes are unconsciously taken,--as taken they always
are for photography, be it in Paris or the Pyrenees, by all humankind;
and the two wights, humbly and happily serving their separate lives,
valued items in Nature's wide summation, stand forth together in the
dignity of humanity to mark this trifling meeting in permanent
remembrance.
[Illustration: "ACCOUTRED AS SHE IS, SHE PLUNGES IN."]
There they talk together on the road, as we finally drive down the hill,
their figures silhouetted against the sky. They have been on the whole
pleased and awakened by their adventure; they will discuss and compare
their emotions, finger their silver, wonder and speculate, and go their
separate ways, convinced anew that the ways of the world and its
worldlings are verily strange and inscrutable.
III.
The noonday heat has now become noticeable, and seems greater on this
easterly shoulder of the ridge. We are grateful for the rapid downhill
trot, which makes two breezes blow where one breeze blew before. Even
that one is less marked on this side of the col, and as we descend, turn
by turn, beyond the limits of snow patches and into the zone of
undergrowth and then of greener vegetation, the air grows perceptibly
oppressive. The view has wholly changed since leaving the crest. The Ger
and its associates have fallen from sight; their valley is gone, and we
face a scene entirely new. We climb again, to surmount the secondary
col; and then commence the final descent.
It is now that the Route Thermale shows its mettle. This section of the
road was among the most difficult portions encountered by the engineers.
Nature stood off and refused all aid. "Beyond is the valley," she
curtly told them; "between are the ravines; make what you can of them!"
A hopeless task it seemed. But Nature reckoned without Louis Napoleon.
The road is here, serene and self-sufficient. It literally carved its
way down to the valley. Slopes often greater than forty-five degrees
have been cut into intrepidly; arches and viaducts thrown over gaping
clefts, bridges over unbridgeable chasms. The road turns on itself; it
doubles and twists and dodges; it crawls midway along the ledges, gouges
a path into the hill around a landslide's groove, looks over
uncomfortable brinks with easy unconcern, and in short outplays Nature
at every point. And all the while it continues wide and firm, and we
trot ceaselessly downward with not one pause. The parapets are less
frequent than nearer Eaux Bonnes; often there is but a low line of
heaped-up earth between us and the verge, and sometimes even this is
wanting; but nowhere is the way too narrow for teams to pass, nowhere is
there danger, save from a drunken driver or a thunderbolt.
We look back from the moving carriages, and the camera is pointed toward
the ledge of road we have just traversed. The picture proves an eloquent
witness to all that can be said of the Route Thermale.[19]
[19] See Frontispiece.
Far below and in front, a patch of grey and brown has come into view;
the drivers point out its clustering houses: it is Arrens. Many
kilometres are traversed before that patch grows larger,--more still,
before we have curved and dropped at last down to its level and are
speeding along on a straight line toward the village. We find a ragged
little street, and attract the usual waiting audience of Arcadians, and
drawing up before the door of the inn are glad to escape for a time
from the outside heat and glare.
IV.
The shady patch of garden at the side of the inn is an unqualified
blessing. Roses overhang the paths, and green branches bend over its
plot of grass. We have found the little dining-room dark and rather
stuffy, have thrown open the windows and shutters, have confidently
spoken for an artistic meal, and can now ruminate approvingly upon rest
and refreshment, the sweet restorers of life. How should one tolerate
its zigzaggings without the gentle recurrence of these its aids?
The kitchen opens invitingly from the hallway, and presently some of us
drift indoors and group around its entrance. There is a hospitable stir
of preparation within; a blazing and clattering that charm both eye and
ear. The landlady and her daughter are busy with a fiery fury. We grow
bolder. We crave permission to enter and watch operations. The old woman
pauses and looks up as she cracks an egg on the edge of a plate, and
then assents, willingly enough, but with unmistakable astonishment. She
is used to predatory raids of visitors but evidently not to this
inquiring spirit. Yet purposeful travel, we might tell her, is
hundred-eyed and has glances for just such matters as this. It seeks out
cities and scenery and history; but it seeks out life no less. We are
gaining impressions which cannot be drawn from books, as we come close
to these homely ways and habits, questioning, appreciating the people we
meet, understanding their capacities and objects and limitations. One
sees the breaking of an egg; he can see, besides, a thousand
accompaniments to the event,--a biography summed up in an act.
At present, we note the breaking with rather more concern than the
biography. Egg after egg is being deftly chipped, and its lucent content
dropped first upon a plate,--a thrifty half-way station for possible
unsoundness,--and then slid off into a clean-looking oval saucepan. The
pan is then hung from an unfamiliar variety of crane close over the
fire, and the contents wheedled and teased by a skillful spoon and
bribed with salt and butter and a sprinkle of parsley. And even as we
watch, the golden mass melts together; sighs and quivers, and thickens
into wrinkles; bodies itself slowly into form and shape, under crafty
oscillation; and is at last dexterously rolled out, a burnished ingot,
upon the long platter, with a flourish that bespeaks practice and
confidence. The stiff face of the old woman involuntarily relaxes with
honest pride; she looks up half unconsciously for approval, and we all
applaud galore.
Manifestly, externals vary, fundamentals persist. Barring details of
place and process, the culinary art follows much the same laws and works
out much the same results in this remote Department of the French
Republic as in the Middle States of the American.
The kitchen itself is roomy and neat; the floor is of large, flat
stones, the square embrasures of the windows are relieved with earthen
pots of flowers. Full panoply of tins and trenchers and other implements
of cheer hang in order against the walls or line the worn wooden
shelves,--many of them strange in shape and of unconjectured use. Over
all, there is that deft, subtle knowledge of place displayed by its busy
inmate, a lifelong wontedness to surroundings, indefinable and
unconscious, which fascinates us, and which reminds us that the same
scene may be to one habituated to it the most iterated of commonplace
and to new-comers often alive with novelty and interest.
At the window, meanwhile, other tragedies are enacted. The daughter is
not idle. Here is a low, tiled shelf, with three square, sunken hollows,
each lined with tiling and bottomed by an iron grating. Into these have
been thrown small embers from the fire; the draught fans them into a
flame, and above, three flat pans make their toothsome holdings to
sizzle and sputter with infinite zest. This arrangement serves to the
full every purpose of an oven, and does away with the range and all its
cumbrous accompaniments. One is impressed with its obvious but effective
simplicity.
In very brief time an appetizing déjeûner of seven courses is being
ceremoniously served in the now airy dining-room,--interrupted
throughout, to the good woman's unlessened wonder and our own enjoyment,
by the journeys of some of us across to the kitchen at the end of each
course to watch the preparation of the next.
The dame thaws out momently under our evident good-will, and as she
brings in the cherries and cakelets, she ventures in turn to stand near
the door, and is even pleased when we renew the conversation. Her
husband, we learn, used to have charge of a little customs-station near
the frontier; now they have this inn; it is pleasanter for him; one
offends so many in a customs-post. They put by something each year; it
is not much; many pause here during the summer, coming from Eaux Bonnes
or Cauterets. Some seasons there are diligences running, which is
better; for without them many go around by the railroad.
"But you, madame," I ask,--"you have traveled too by the railroad?"
"Yes, monsieur, a little; we have been several times to Pau; once we
were at Bayonne."
"And do you prefer the cities?"
"We like better the mountains, monsieur; one can breathe here, and is
not dependent."
The charge for the luncheon would be three francs each; she is glad that
her visitors have been pleased; and our extra gratuity is the more
appreciated because it seems wholly unexpected.
* * * * *
There is a monastery just out from the town. It is but a short walk, we
are told, so while the horses are brought around, two of us explore. We
follow a shaded avenue, triply garnished at the left with a brook, a
foot-path and a long-row of small cottages; and soon mount a short hill,
pass through an open gateway, and are before the churchly pile. Not a
soul is about the place, and we have to look into the building entirely
unciceroned. An apartment opening wide from the main hall is evidently
some priest's oratory. We venture to peer tentatively in through the
doorway. The room is plain, containing beside other furniture a small
crucifix, a shrine, and a praying-chair,--and nearer us a recent number
of _Figaro_ open on the table. Thus it goes: the secular blending
harmoniously with the spiritual.
The place is known as _Poey le Houn_ or Hill of the Fountain; its site
commands an extensive view, but otherwise there appears little about it
that is distinctively interesting,--save as it is one of the fortunate
Catholic institutions of the Lavedan spared from Montgomery's Huguenot
raids. The chapel, entered from without by another portal, is sombre
and rather large. We feel lonesome and intrusive without some guide, and
do not examine it very carefully. A few towels are bleaching in the sun,
on the paved court before the chapel,--the only sign of recent human
presence. It is the home of brotherly deeds, and we piously turn the
towels to bleach on the other side.
V.
We start again on the afternoon's drive with renewed zest. The hostess
allows herself the luxury of several friendly smiles as the carriages
move, and we give her farewell and good wishes in return. Umbrellas and
parasols quickly go up to screen from the sun, and we lean restfully
back, in contented anticipation of the remaining half of the day's ride.
At our right, for a while, at the far end of a valley, we have a
mountain in view, whiter than common with excess of snow. This is the
_Balaïtous_, craggy, irregular and weird, too far off to be imposing,
yet one of the highest of the range. It is not an easily accessible
mountain, nor is it often climbed. There is deemed to be something
uncanny about it. Its ascent is very dangerous, they say. Accidents have
occurred there; a strange ill omen, it is believed, invests those
ghostly snows; the death-clutch of the Balaïtous holds many a brave
mountaineer. As seen from here, it has an indefinably spectral,
repellent look; there seems something almost hideous in its white and
wrinkled cerements.
The road has now an easy course before it. We are but eight miles from
the town of Argelès, where we shall be on the floor of the Lavedan
valley; and the downward slant is slight. From Argelès, it will be but
ten miles more to Cauterets. The scenery has softened greatly; cliffs
and peaks are out of view, and we have rounded hills and easy, green,
swelling curves and here and there a basking village.
Argelès is reached sooner than we expected. There is nothing to detain
us here; it is a bright town, tidy and rather attractive, and we see it
and all its inhabitants as we drive through. Here the journey from Eaux
Bonnes to Cauterets over the road we have come, twenty-seven miles in
all, is often broken for the night; many travelers and all the drivers
advise a day and a half for the transit. We had seen that it could be as
readily made within the day, the additional ten miles counting but
little in mid-afternoon; and the horses after their long rest at Arrens
now trot on, fresh and willing as in the morning.
At Argelès we meet the railroad once more. It is the Lavedan branch; it
has left the main line at Lourdes, and runs southward up the valley,
passing through Argelès and penetrating as far on the road to Cauterets
as the town of Pierrefitte. The arrangement is a counterpart of the
branch from Pau to Laruns. Our road now turns south also, going likewise
to Pierrefitte, and running mainly parallel with the tracks though at
some distance away. One could take the train from Argelès to
Pierrefitte, and there connect with the diligence; but very little would
of course be gained.
VI.
We are now out of Béarn, and have entered the ancient province of
Bigorre. In modern terms, we have passed from the Department of the Low
Pyrenees to that of the High Pyrenees. One watering-place in this
Department,--Bagnères de Bigorre,--which we shall visit in its turn,
still preserves the old name of the province.
This county was not a principality like Béarn; though it had its own
governors and government, it belonged to France and was held from the
king. Béarn would not have tolerated a like state of dependence. When
our old friend Gaston, Count of Foix, was living, the French king,
grateful to him for previous aid in arms, offered him the control of
Bigorre. The king "sent Sir Roger d'Espaign and a president of the
Parliament of Paris, with fair letters patent engrossed and sealed, of
the king's declaration that he gave him the county of Bigorre during his
life, but that it was necessary he should become liege man and hold it
of the crown of France." But the high-spirited Count of Foix declined.
He was "very thankful to the king for this mark of his affection, and
for the gift of Bigorre, which was unsolicited on his part; but for
anything Sir Roger d'Espaign could say or do, he would never accept it.
He only retained the castle of Mauvoisin [on its extreme confines]
because it was free land and the castle and its dependencies held of
none but God."
As France and Béarn seldom quarreled, Bigorre should have been a
peaceful neighbor. But its northerly portion was held for a long time by
an English garrison for the Black Prince, and this kept the county in
constant disturbance. The strong post of the English was the town of
Lourdes, (anciently Lourde,) eight miles north of us. "Garrisoned," says
one, "by soldiers of fortune in the English pay, part of whose duty and
all of whose inclination it was to harass the adjoining French
possessions, Lourdes became the wasps' nest of the Pyrenees; whose
fierce occupants were constantly buzzing about the rich hives of the
plains for thirty leagues around, and leaving ugly stings behind."
"These captains,"--hear Froissart, who traveled through Bigorre on his
way to Béarn,--"made many excursions into Bigorre, the Toulousain, the
Carcassonois and on the Albigeois; for the moment they left Lourde they
were on enemy's ground, which they overran to a great extent, sometimes
thirty leagues from their castle. In their march they touched nothing,
but on their return all things were seized, and sometimes they brought
with them so many prisoners and such quantities of cattle, they knew not
how to dispose of nor lodge them." Thus, "these companions in Lourde had
the satisfaction of overrunning the whole country wherever they pleased.
Tarbes, which is situated hard by, was kept in great fear and was
obliged to enter into a composition with them. On the other side of the
river Lisse is a goodly enclosed town called Bagnères,[20] the
inhabitants of which had a hard time of it. In short, they laid under
contribution the whole country,--except the territory of the Count de
Foix; but there they dared not take a fowl without paying for it, nor
hurt any man belonging to the count or even any who had his passport;
for it would have enraged him so much that they must have been ruined."
[20] Now the frequented watering-place, Bagnères de Bigorre.
The count showed less respect for Lourde than Lourde for him; and he
even aided the French on one occasion by a scheme to capture the place
and oust the intruders. This--it is a cruel story--was when he summoned
its governor, his own half-brother, Sir Pierre Arnaut, to Orthez, under
pretense of desiring a visit. Sir Pierre was holding Lourde stoutly in
fief for the English prince, and was in considerable doubt about going,
for he knew his man and had suspicions; however, "all thynges consydred,
he sayd he wolde go, bycause in no wyse he wolde displease the erle." He
left the castle with his brother Jean under strict injunctions, and
proceeded to Orthez, where he was handsomely received by the count, "who
with great ioye receyued hym, and made hym syt at his borde, and shewed
hym as great semblant of love as he coude."
For the sequel, let us go back for once to an earlier translation[21] of
the Chronicles than the one best known. The cruel story gains in effect
of cruelty from the quaint, childlike telling.
[21] The translation made in 1523 by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, at
the request of Henry VIII. The one I have elsewhere quoted from is that
of Thomas Johnes.
"The thirde daye after, the Erle (Count) of Foiz sayd aloude, yt euery
man might here hym:
"'Cosyn Pierre, I sende for you and ye be come; wherefore I comaunde
you, as ye wyll eschewe my displeasure, and by the faith and lignage
that ye owe to me, that ye yelde vp the garyson of Lourde into my
handes.'
"Whan the knyght herde these wordes, he was sore abasshed, and studyed a
lytell, remembringe what aunswere he might make, for he sawe well the
erle spake in good faithe; howebeit, all thynges consydred, he sayd:
"'Sir, true it is, I owne to you faythe and homage, for I am a poore
knyght of your blode and of your countrey; but as for the castell of
Lourde, I wyll nat delyuer it to you; ye have sent for me to do with me
as ye lyst; I holde it of the Kyng of Englande; he sette me there; and
to none other lyueng wyll I delyuer it.'
"When the Erie of Foiz herde that answere, his blode chafed for yre,
and sayd, drawyng out his daggar:
"'A treator! sayest thou nay? By my heed, thou hast nat sayd that for
nought,'--and so therwith strake the knight that he wounded hym in fyue
(five) places, and there was no knyght nor barone yt durst steppe
bytwene them.
"Than the knyght sayd:
"'Ah, sir, ye do me no gentylnesse to sende for me and slee me!'
"And yet, for all the strokes that he had with the daggar, therle (the
earl) comauded to cast him in prison, downe into a depe dyke; and so he
was, and ther dyed, for his woundes were but yuell (ill) loked vnto."
* * * * *
It is a satisfaction to record that Gaston gained nothing by his
dastardly act. Pierre's brother, Sir Jean, stood to his post in Lourde
as stoutly as Pierre had done; and the count did not obtain the
fortress. In fact he does not seem even to have pursued his attempt upon
it farther. He doubtless thought he had done enough to clinch Lourde's
respect for his pugnacity.
It was in return for this well-meant assistance that the French king
offered Gaston the whole of Bigorre, Lourde and all, which he so
politely declined. He was shrewd as well as high-spirited; he was not
covetous for the garden if the wasps' nest remained undemolished. So Sir
Jean and his robber band buzzed merrily on in their castle.
Our chronicler naturally asks his informant:
"'Dyde this Jean neuer after go to se the Erie of Foiz?'
"He answered and sayd: 'Sithe the dethe of his brother, he neuer came
there; but other of his company hath been often with the erle,--as
Peter Danchyn, Ernalton of Restue, Ernalton of Saynt Colome, and other.'
"'Sir,' quod I, 'hath the Erie of Foiz made any amendes for the dethe of
that knight or sorie for his dethe?'
"'Yes, truely, sir,' quod he, 'he was right sorie for his dethe; but as
for amendes, I knowe of none, without it be by secrete penauce, masses
or prayers; he hathe with hym the same knighte's sonne, called Johan of
Byerne, a gracyous squyer, and the erle loueth hym right well.'"
VII.
Lourdes itself can be shortly reached by rail, here from Argelès, or
from Pau. It would undoubtedly deserve the visit. Besides its robber
reminiscences, it has developed another and contrasting specialty: it
has become one of the most famous places of religious pilgrimage in
Europe. Thirty years ago it was made the scene of a noted "miracle." At
a grotto near the town, the Virgin appeared several times in person to
an ardent peasant-girl; caused a healing spring to burst from the rock,
and stipulated for a church. The girl published the miracle; its repute
instantly spread far and wide, and the bishop of Tarbes, after
examination, publicly declared it authentic.[22] Since that time,
devotees throng the town annually; Murray states that one hundred and
fifty thousand persons visited the scene in the six months following the
apparition. The character of the place has been transformed; a tide of
enthusiastic pilgrimage has swept over it like a whirlwind; everything
in and about the city has taken the garb of this religious fervor. The
grotto is lined with crutches cast away by the cured; the church is
built, and is rich with votive offerings; every house lodges the
shifting comers, a thousand booths sell souvenirs of piety; and,--last
impressive mingling of mercantile and miraculous,--the waters are
regularly bottled and shipped for sale to all parts of the world!
[22] "_Nous jugeons que l'immaculée Marie, mère de Dieu, a réellement
apparu à Bernadette Soubirous, le 11 Février, 1838, et jours suivants,
au nombre de dix-huit fois, dans la grotte de Massabielle, près la ville
de Lourdes; que cette apparition revêt tous les caractères de la vérité
et que les fidèles sont fondés à la croire certaine_."
The castle still stands, on a pointed hill above the town. Its founding
goes back far beyond the days of its thieving English garrison; the
Saracens once swarmed into it long before, flying before Charles the
Hammer; and there is another story about it in this connection, as
related by Inglis, which ends more happily than that of its murdered
governor. Charlemagne, some years after the Saracens captured it, laid
siege to recover it; surrender grew inevitable; but its Moorish
commander, Mirat, though an infidel, was, for his nobility of character,
in special favor with the Virgin,--Notre Dame de Puy.[23] In this
extremity, she sent to him an eagle bearing in its beak a live fish; and
Mirat promptly sent it to Charlemagne, to show his heavenly succor. The
king, knowing that there was no possible fishing on the castle hill,
perceived that it was a miracle; and lessening his rigor in the face of
this sign, proposed less hard terms: the Moors were allowed to depart in
safety, Mirat on his part agreed to be converted and become a good
Catholic, and the castle was formally surrendered not to Charlemagne but
to Notre Dame de Puy.
[23] Puy--St. Pé--is a shrine near Lourdes.
VIII.
But meanwhile we are moving toward Cauterets, not toward Lourdes. This
part of the Lavedan valley is known as the "Eden of Argelès." It expands
about us in long, delicious levels; occasional eminences wrinkle its
even lines; and the hills roll up from each side, rounded and gentle and
often cultivated to their tops. Squares of yellow maize-fields chequer
them, alternating with darker patches of pasture or orchard, while along
the wide centre run the rails and the high-road, and the new Gave, fresh
from Gavarnie and the Lac de Gaube,--new, yet an old friend, for it
flows forth by way of Lourdes on to the Château of Pau. Walnut, lime and
fig trees, twisted with vines, stand near its borders or about the
chalets and hamlets on the slopes. Women and men are at work over in the
fields, and often pause to look at our distant carriages and bow a
response to our wavings of greeting; while on the road itself, here much
traveled, we meet teams and ox-carts and a carriage or two with
travelers coming from Cauterets.
Up on a bluff at the right is an old building: it is the abbey of Saint
Savin, some of whose stones also could tell us of Charlemagne and
perhaps of young Crassus. Farther on, we see, on an opposite slope
across the valley, other ruins: a castle; an old tower; and higher still
an ancient chapel of the Virgin, cared for to this day, it is said, as
in the time of earlier travelers, by the trio of aged women voluntarily
pledged to its guardianship and to solitude. Their number remains always
the same; upon the death of one, the remaining two make choice of a
third to fill her place. It has been thus from unknown periods. Thither
repair the women of the valley, on days consecrated to the Virgin, to
pay their devotions at this lonely shrine.
Thus together, peace and war, holiness and crime, have dominated this
fair region; and with these shivered fortalices and ancient cloisters
actually before us, their past seems nearer to possibility. Their
relics, attesting the days of feudalism, seem to mourn its departure;
the old order has indeed changed and yielded place to new. "It was sweet
here to be a monk!" writes Taine, in his warm sympathy with the spirit
of this valley; "it is in such places that the _Imitation_ should be
read; in such places was it written. For a sensitive and noble nature, a
convent was then the sole refuge; all around wounded and repelled it.
"Around, what a horrible world! Brigand lords who plunder travelers and
butcher each other; artisans and soldiers who stuff themselves with meat
and yoke themselves together like brutes; peasants whose huts they
burn,... who out of despair and hunger slip away to tumult. No
remembrance of good, nor hope of better. How sweet it is to renounce
action, company, speech, to hide one's self, forget outside things, and
to listen in security and solitude to the divine voices that, like
collected springs, murmur peacefully in the depths of the heart!"
Farther on still, on another eyrie, is a ruined monastery, St. Orens.
This saint came to the Pyrenees from Spain at an early age, and founded
this retreat, loving solitude and meditation and austere living. His
piety made him widely revered. He long refused the offered archbishopric
of Auch; till, doubting his duty in this, he prayed to God for a sign.
He was directed to plant a sapling in the earth, and it instantly
bloomed into leaves and blossoms; whereupon the hermit wisely inferred
that life was designed to bear fruit, not to wither itself away.
Montgomery, Queen Jeanne's ruffian Protestant general, tore through this
Catholic valley in 1569, with his devastating mercenaries. It recovered
heart, flowered afresh, and was swept again by enemies from a
neighboring province. Often a winter storm will expose bedrock
throughout precious roods of sloping harvest-land, and the farmer must
carry up from the valley many painful baskets of soil to replace the
loss. So that, though it smiles so happily in this afternoon warmth,
there have been serpents in this Eden,--serpents of want and of
suffering; and judging by the faces of the people, all have not yet been
scotched.
But we are at Pierrefitte. It is five o'clock in the afternoon, and the
innkeeper is rejoiced to find that we are thirsty.
IX.
Pierrefitte ends the branch railway from Lourdes, as Laruns ended that
from Pau. In fact, it is all strikingly like Laruns. A similarly
uncompromising mountain, the _Viscos_, 7000 feet high, walls up the
valley behind it, and here again the carriage-roads divide, one going up
the gorge on the right to Cauterets, the other up that on the left to
Luz and Gavarnie. The broad Argelès vale has been fittingly described as
but the vestibule to the wild dwelling of the clouds, and Pierrefitte as
the beginning-point for the narrow stair-flights which lead up to the
interior.
As at Laruns, we are now to take the road to the right, at a later day
returning to take the other. The Route Thermale goes on up the latter,
passing through southeast to Luz, and then stretching eastward again to
Barèges and over successive cols to Bigorre and Luchon. This we are
progressively to follow in its entirety.
The train has come in, here at Pierrefitte, and the diligence for
Cauterets is just leaving, attended by a wagonload of trunks. Horses and
travelers refreshed, we soon move after it, and rising from the valley
by half an hour's steep zigzags upward and forward, we pass the great
yellow vehicle as it is entering the defile. Looking back, we have one
brilliant view of the wide Eden of Argelès, and pass from light into
twilight.
The road to Cauterets is a duplicate of that to Eaux Chaudes. Possibly
the scenery is a trifle more impressive. We have the straight-cliffed
gorge, with the torrent at its bottom and the road buttressed out or cut
into the ledge; the turns in the ravine as we pull steadily higher, the
bare slate and limestone precipices, the higher peaks. At times there is
only width for the road and the torrent beneath, and the torrent seems
uncomfortably crowded at that. The road does not allow itself to be
crowded. It is hard and wide as always, and lavishly decorated with
kilometre-stones. The stream is crossed, back and forth; the air has
grown quickly cooler, and sunshades need no longer shut off the full
view. "Upon nearing Cauterets, the carriage-way would seem as though it
had grown phrensied from the mountainous opposition, for it curls and
writhes and overcomes the difficulties only by the most desperate
exertions; and at one spot, in its effort to compass a barrier of rock,
it actually recoils within half-a-dozen yards of its former path."
Throughout, however, the same easy, imperturbable gradient is preserved.
The old road was greatly rougher and steeper; four horses and three
pairs of oxen, it is said, were once required to drag up each carriage.
Finally the valley widens slightly, and rather suddenly opens out upon
an incline. At its farther end is a white-crested mountain, and below
nestles the mountain resort of Cauterets, six miles in from Pierrefitte.
* * * * *
It is seven o'clock, as our wheels strike the stones of the pavement. We
drive into the main street, pass through a neat, irregular little plaza,
and, some distance beyond, turn to the right from a larger square,
toward the Hotel Continental. The town is waiting for the diligence, and
shopkeepers are at their doors, guides and touters and loungers and
visitors in the streets, all expectant for the daily gust of arrival.
The lamps are just twinkling out, against the dusk, and the general
impression,--often a long determinant of like or dislike,--is of an
animated and welcoming scene. The hotel proves to be nearly on the scale
of the Gassion, and other equally pretentious ones have been passed in
approaching it. We drive under the high entrance-way and into its great
court, with the flourishes dear to the drivers' hearts; and the long and
varying tableau of the day's ride is over.