TARBES--BAGNERRE DE BIGORRE--PIGEON-CATCHING--FRENCH COMMIS
VOYAGEURS--THE KING OF THE PYRENEAN DOGS--THE LEGEND OF ORTHON,
WHO HAUNTED THE BARON OF CORASSE.
The next day by noon--still raining--I was at Pau; and having bidden
adieu to M. Martin, started for Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great
centre of Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient
English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old County of
Bigorre, which was given up to England as portion of the ransom of King
John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with a gallant train, the Black
Prince, to visit the Count of Argmanac--the celebrated Gaston Phoebus,
Count of Foix--leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be present at the
solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes now consist of the scores of
small cross-country diligences, which start in every direction from it
as a common centre. The main feature of the town is a huge square,
nine-tenths of the houses being glaring white-washed hotels, with
_messageries_ on the groundfloors. Diligences by the score lie
scattered around; and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses who
draw them go stalking solemnly across the square beneath the stunted
lime-trees. There is an adult population of conductors, with silver
ear-rings, and their hands in their pockets, always lounging about; and
a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who swarm out upon you, and take
your legs by storm. Tarbes is the best place--excepting, perhaps,
Arles--for getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you were a
centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons, they would all be shining
like mirrors in a trice. How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless,
indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes mutually, and keep
continually paying each other. Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant;
and a mountain of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage as
freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not much under four hours;
and I repaired--it was dusk, and, of course, raining--to the Hotel de
France--one of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places. A buxom
lass opened the wicket in the Porte Cochere.
"I can have a room?"
"Oh, plenty!"
And we stepped into the open court-yard. The great hotel rose on two
sides, and a small _corps de logis_ on the two others.
"Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key."
And off she tripped. The key! Was the house shut up? Even so. I was to
have a place as big as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was
darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had been gone a fortnight.
Our footsteps echoed like Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign
edition, uncarpeted and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange." I was
ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms--of a decidedly grander
nature than I ever occupied before, or ever occupied since.
"The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom. Monsieur may choose
whatever room he pleases; and the _table-d'hôte_ bell rings at six."
This, at all events, was reassuring. Then my conductress retreated; the
doors banged behind her, and I felt like a man shut up in St. Peter's.
The silence in the house was dreadful. I was fool enough to go and
listen at the door: dead, solemn silence--a vault could not be stiller.
I would have given something handsome for a cat, or even a mouse; a
parrot would have been invaluable--it would have shouted and screamed.
But no; the hush of the place was like the Egyptian darkness--it was a
thick silence, which could be felt. At length the _table-d'hôte_ bell
rang. The _salle à manger_ was in the building across the yard. Thither
I repaired, and found a room, or rather a long corridor, big enough to
dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, with a miraculously long
table, tapering away into the distance. Upon a few square feet of this
table was a patch of white cloth; and upon the patch of cloth one plate,
one knife and fork, and one glass. This was the _table-d'hôte_, and,
like Handel, "I was de kombany."
Next day the weather was no better; but I was desperate, and sallied
out in utter defiance of the rain; but such a dreary little city as
Bagnerre, in that wintry day, was never witnessed. I never was at Herne
Bay in November, nor have I ever passed a Christmas at Margate; but
Bagnerre gave me a lively notion of the probable delights of the dead
season at either of these favourite watering-places. The town seemed
defunct, and lying there passively to be rained on. Half the houses are
lodging-places and hotels; and they were all shut up--ponderous green
outside shutters dotting the dirty white of the walls. Hardly a soul was
stirring; but ducks quacked manfully in the kennels, and two or three
wretched donkeys--dreary relics of the season--stood with their heads
together under the lime-trees in the Place. I retreated into a _café_.
If there were nobody in France but the last man, you would find him in a
_café_, making his own coffee, and playing billiards with himself. Here
the room was tolerably crowded; and I got into conversation with a group
of townspeople round the white Fayence stove. I abused the
weather--never had seen such weather--might live a century in England,
and not have such a dreary spell of rain--and so forth. The anxiety of
the good people to defend the reputation of their climate was excessive.
They were positively frightened at the prospect of a word being breathed
in England against the skies of the Pyrenees in general, and those of
Bagnerre in particular. The oldest inhabitant was appealed to, as never
having remembered such weather at Bagnerre. As for the summer, it had
been more than heavenly. All the springs were delightful; the autumns
were invariably charming; and the winters, if possible, the best of the
four. The present rain was extraordinary--exceptional--a sort of
phenomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads. One of these
worthies, understanding that however strong my objections were to fog
and drizzle, I was not by any means afraid of being melted, recommended
me to make my way to the Palombiere, and see them catch wild pigeons,
after a fashion only practised there and at one other place in the
Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of a three-mile pull
up-hill, I made my way through the narrow suburban streets, and across
the foaming Adour, here a glorious mountain-stream, but already made
useful to turn numerous flour-mills, and to drive the saws and knives by
which the beautiful marble of the Pyrenees is cut and polished.
Hereabouts, in the straggling suburbs, the whole female and juvenile
population were clustered, just within the shelter of the open doors,
knitting those woollen jackets, scarfs, and so forth, which are so much
in vogue amongst the visitors in the season. There was one graceful
group of pretty girls, the eldest not more than four years of age,
pursuing the work in a shed open to the street, seated round a loom, at
which a good-natured-looking fellow was operating.
"That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl next me; "how much will
they give you for making it?"
The weaver paused in his work at this question. "Tell the gentleman, my
dear, how much Messieurs So-and-so give for knitting that scarf."
"Two liards," said the little girl.
Two liards, or half a solitary sous! This was worse than the
shirt-makers at home.
"It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. "She is a child; but the best
hands can't make more than big sous where they once made francs; but all
the trades of the poor are going to the devil. I don't think there will
be any poor left in twenty years--they will be all starved before then."
This led to a long talk with my new friend, who was a poor, mild, meek
sort of man--a thinker, after his fashion, totally uninstructed--he
could neither read nor write--and a curious specimen of the odd twists
which unregulated and unintelligent ponderings sometimes give a man's
mind. His grand notion seemed to be, that whatever might be the isolated
crimes and horrors now and then committed upon the earth, the most
terrible and malignant species of perverted human ingenuity was--the
employment of running streams to work looms.
"Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked. "Did the power that formed
the Adour intend its streams to be made use of to deprive an honest man
of his daily bread? He would uncommonly like to find the orator who
would make that clear to his mind. It was terrible to see how men
perverted the gifts of Nature! How could I, or any one else, prove to
him that the water beside us was intended to take the place of men's
arms and fingers, and to be used, as if it were vital blood, to
manufacture the garments of those who lived upon its banks?"
I ventured to hint, that running water might occasionally be put to
analogous, yet by no means so objectionable uses; and I instanced the
flour and maize mill, which was working merrily within a score of paces
of us. For a moment, but for a moment only, my antagonist was staggered.
Then recovering himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant to say
that the process of grinding corn was like the process of weaving cloth?
It was curious to observe the confusion in the man's mind between
_analogy_ and _resemblance_. As I could not but admit that the two
operations were conducted quite in a different fashion, my gratified
opponent, not to be too hard upon me, warily changed the immediate
subject of conversation. I was not a native of this part of France? Not
a native of France at all? Then I came from some place far away? Perhaps
from across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed, there was an
English lady married, about five miles off--Madame----. Of course I knew
her? No? Well, that was odd. He would have thought that, coming from the
same place, I ought to know her. However--were there many handloom
weavers like himself in England? No, very few indeed. What! did they
weave by water-power there, too? were the folks as bad as some of the
people in his country? I explained that, not being so much favoured in
the way of water-privilege, the people of England had resorted to steam.
The poor weaver was quite overcome at this crowning proof of human
malignity. It was more horrible even than the water-atrocities of the
Pyrenees.
"Steam!"--he repeated the word a dozen times over, shaking his head
mournfully at each iteration,--"Steam! Ah, well, what is this poor
unhappy world coming to?"
Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle rattling backwards and
forwards through the web, he added heartily: "After all, their moving
iron and wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing cloth
woven by honest, industrious flesh and blood."
Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political economy in such a
case? I left the good man busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting
over the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of boiling water.
Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the bed of a muddy torrent,
I was rewarded by a sudden watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began
to blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before it. From a high
ridge, with vast green slopes, all dotted with sheep, spreading away
beneath until they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre
appeared, the great white hotels peeping from the trees, and the whole
town lying as it were at the bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot
in summer, when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre, and the
high hills about, deaden every breeze. At present, however, the wind was
rising to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the Pyrenees.
Attaining a still greater height, the scene was very grand. On one side
was a confused sea of mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated
masses of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before the
northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged in the mist, to
re-appear again in a moment. Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista
of valley, which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity. The
mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and above me. Sometimes I would
be enveloped as in a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee
away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me, and wrapping
trees, and rocks, and pastures in its shroud. All this time the wind
blew a gale, and roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the sun
looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the rolling masses of the fog,
with some partial patch of landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the
constant movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape appearing and
disappearing, the glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the distant plain
of Gascony, sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours, sometimes
golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,--all this was very
striking and fine. At length, however, I reached the Palombiere,
situated upon the ridge of the hill--which cost a good hour and a half's
climb. Here grow a long row of fine old trees, and on the northern side
rise two or three very high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as
to allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a monkey to climb to the
top, and ensconce himself in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest"
which whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out. I found the
fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of a tree; they said the wind
was too high for the pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs
they offered to make believe that a flock was coming, and shew me the
process of catching. The bargain made, away went one of the urchins up
the bending pole, into the crow's-nest--a feat which I have a great
notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's navy would have shirked,
considering that there were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on
by. Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen of net rose from
tree to tree, so that all passage through the row was blocked.
"Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds at this season come
flying from the north to go to Spain, and they keep near the tops of the
hills. Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the trees, and will
fly over them--if it wasn't for the _pigeonier_."
"The _pigeonier_! what is that?"
"We're going to show you." And he shouted to the boy in the crow's nest,
"Now Jacques!"
Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like a possessed
person--waving his arms, and at length launching into the air a missile
which made an odd series of eccentric flights, like a bird in a fit.
"That is the pigeonier," said the fowler; "it breaks the flight of the
birds, and they swoop down and dash between the trees--so."
He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately the wall of nets, which
was balanced with great stones, fell in a mass to the ground.
"Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that the birds are struggling
and fluttering in the meshes."
[Illustration: MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE.]
At Bagnerre there is a marble work--that of M. Géruset--which I
recommend every body to visit, not to see marble cut, although that is
interesting, but to pay their respects to, I believe, the grandest dog
in all the world--a giant even among the canine giants of the Pyrenees.
I have seen many a calf smaller than that magnificent fellow, who, as
you enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, like a king from his
throne, and, walking up to you with a solemn magnificence of step which
is perfect, will wag his huge tail, and lead you--you cannot
misunderstand the invitation--to the counting-house door. For vastness
of brow and jaw--enormous breadth and depth of chest, and girth of limb,
I never saw this creature equalled. The biggest St. Bernard I ever came
across was almost a puppy to him. A tall man may lay his hand on the
dog's back without the least degree of stoop; and the animal could not
certainly stand erect under an ordinary table.
"I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed me the works, "you have had
many offers for that dog?"
"My employer," he replied, "has refused one hundred pounds for him. But,
even if we wished, we could not dispose of him: he is fond of the place
and the people here; so that, though we might sell him, he wouldn't go
with his new master; and I would like to see any four men in Bagnerre
try to force him."
That evening I fortunately did not include the whole company at the
_table-d'hôte_. There was a young gentleman very much jewelled, and an
elderly lady also very strongly got up in the way of brooches and
bracelets, to whom the young gentleman was paying very assiduous but
very forced attention. The lady was sulky, and sent _plat_ after _plat_
untasted away; and when her companion, as I thought, whispered a
remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style; at which he bit his lip,
turned all manner of colours, and then got moodily silent. I suspected
that the young gentleman had married the old lady for her money, and was
leading just as comfortable a life as he deserved. But, besides them, we
had a couple of the gentlemen who are to be more or less found in every
hotel in France--_commis voyageurs_, or commercial travellers. By the
way, the aristocratic Murray lays his hand, or rather his "Hand-book,"
heavily about the ears of these gentlemen--castigating them a good deal
in the Croker style, and with more ferocity than justice: "A more
selfish, depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal set, does not exist;"
"English gentlemen will take good care to keep at a distance from
them," and "English ladies will be cautious of presenting themselves at
a French _table-d'hôte_, except"--in certain cases specified. Now, I
agree with Mr. Murray, that commercial travellers, French and English,
are not distinguished by much polish of manner, or elegance of address;
on the contrary, the style of their proceedings at table is frequently
slovenly and coarse, and their talk is almost invariably "shop." In a
word, they are not educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come to
such expressions as "selfish, brutal, and depraved," I think most
English travellers in France will agree with me, that the aristocratic
hand-book maker is going more than a little too far. I have met scores
of clever and intelligent _commis voyageurs_--hundreds of affable,
good-humoured ones--thousands of decent, inoffensive ones. In company
with a lady, I have dined at every species of _table-d'hôte_, in every
species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, and the Bay of
Biscay to the Alps, and I cannot call to mind one instance of rudeness,
or voluntary want of civility, from one end of our journey to the other;
while scores and scores of instances of attention and kindness--more
particularly when it was ascertained that my companion was in weak
health--come thronging on me. I know that the French _commis voyageur_
looks after his own interest at table pretty sharply, and also that he
is quite deficient in all the elegant little courtesies of society; but
to say that he is brutal or depraved, because he is not a _petit maître_
and an _elegant_, is neither true nor courteous. If there be any set of
Frenchmen to whose conduct at _table-d'hôtes_ strong expressions may be
fairly applied, it is French officers, who sprung from a rank often
inferior to that of the bagman, and, with all the coarseness of the
barracks clinging to them, frequently cluster together in groups of
half-a-dozen--scramble for all that is good upon the table--eat with
their caps on, which the _commis voyageur_ only does in winter, when the
bare and empty _salle_ is miserably cold--and in general behave with a
coarse rudeness, and a tumultuous vulgarity, which I never saw private
soldiers guilty of, either here or in France.
But I must hurry my Pyrenean sketches to an end. The true South--I mean
the Mediterranean-washed provinces--still lie before me; and I must
perforce leap almost at a bound over a long and interesting journey
through the little-known towns of the eastern Pyrenees--quiet, sluggish,
tumble-down places, as St. Gaudens, St. Girons, and St. Foix, possessed
neither of pump-rooms, nor warm-springs, but vegetating on, lazily and
dreamily, in their glorious climate--for, after all, it does sometimes
stop raining, and that for a few blazing months at a time, too. I would
like to sketch St. Gaudens, with its broad-eaved, booth-like shops, and
the snug town-hall, with pictures of old prefects and wigged _fermiers
generaux_, into which they introduced me, and where they set all their
municipal documents before me, when I applied for some information as to
the landholding of the district. I would like to sketch at length a
curious walled village on the head waters of the Garonne--a
dead-and-gone sort of place, of which I asked an old man the name. "A
poor place, sir," he said; "a poor place. Not worth your while looking
at. All poor people here, sir--poor people; not worth your while
speaking to. And the name--oh, a poor name, sir--not worth your while
knowing; but, if you insist--why, then, it's Valentine." I would like to
sketch the merry population in the hills round that dead-and-gone
village--half farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth peasants, in
Yorkshire--a jolly set--all sporting men, too, who give up their looms,
and go into the woods after bears as boldly as Sir Peter de Bearne. And
I would like, too, to try to bring before my reader's eye the viney
valley of the Ariege, and the deep ravines through which the stream goes
foaming, spanned by narrow bridges, each with a tower in the centre,
where the warder kept his guard, and opened and shut the huge,
iron-bound doors, and dropped and raised the portcullis at pleasure. And
these old feudal memorials bring me to the castles and ruined towers so
thickly peopling the land where lived the bands of adventurers, as
Froissart calls them, by whom the fat citizens of the towns were wont to
be "_guerroyés et harriés_," and most of which have still their legends
of desperate sieges, and, too often, of foul murders done within their
dreary walls. Pass, as I perforce must, however, and gain
Provence--there is yet one legendary tale I cannot help telling. It is
one of the best things in Froissart, and a little twisting would give it
a famous satiric significance against a class of bores of our own day
and generation. It relates to the lord of a castle not far from Tarbes,
and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a corner of the chapel of
Orthez," during the visit paid by the canon to Gaston Phoebus, Count
of Foix--who, I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly
exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks of the most noble
chivalry, in return for splendid entertainment bestowed; whereas, in
fact, Gaston Phoebus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither
faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay sometimes descended
into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining, and "coloured" the cases just
as a bribed police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman gets
into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death, in a dungeon; and the
bold Froissart has actually the coolness to assert that the death of the
heir took place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he would not
eat the dainties placed before him, struck him with his clenched fist,
holding therein a knife with which he had been picking his nails, but
the blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded a "groat's
breadth" from his fingers,--the result being that the steel
unfortunately happened to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The
simple truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his son's
being a favourite of the boy's mother, from whom he (the count) was
separated--that he dreaded lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged
by her brother, the King of Navarre--and that he determined to starve
the boy in a dungeon; but the child not dying so soon as was expected,
his father went very coolly in to him, and cut his throat.
"To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the Count de Foix was
perfect in body and mind, and no contemporary prince could be compared
to him for sense, honour, and liberality."
"To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart," I reply, "you have
written a charming and chivalrous chronicle; but you could take a bribe
with any man of your time, and having done so, you could attempt to
deceive posterity, and write down what you knew to be a lie, with as
gallant a grace and easy swagger as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild
himself."
However, there are black spots in the sun--to the legend which I
promised. The Lord of Corasse--a castle, by the way, in which Henri
Quatre passed some portion of his boyish days--the Lord of Corasse had a
quarrel touching tithes with a neighbouring priest, who being unable to
obtain his dues by ordinary legal or illegal remedies, sent a spirit to
haunt the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded to perform his
mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all night long, and breaking the
crockery--so that very soon the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine
without platters. At length, however, the Baron managed to come to
speaking terms with the demon, who was invisible, and found out that his
name was Orthon, and that the priest had sent him.
"But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord of Corasse, "this priest
is a poor devil, and will never be able to pay you handsomely. Throw him
overboard at once, therefore, and come and take service with me."
Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the devils, for he not only
acceded to the proposition with astonishing readiness, but took such an
affection to his new lord, that he could not be got out of his bedroom
at night, to the sore discomfiture of the baroness, "who was so much
frightened that the hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid
herself under the bed-clothes;" while the too familiar demon, never
seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping his friend, the baron,
chatting all night. But the charms of Orthon's conversation at length
palled, particularly as they kept the baron night after night from his
natural rest; so he took to despatching the demon all over Europe,
collecting information for him of all that was going on in the courts
and councils of princes, and at the scene of war where there happened to
be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast as a message by electric
telegraph, the baron found him nearly as troublesome as ever. He was
eternally coming in with intelligence which he insisted upon telling,
until the Lord of Corasse's head was fairly turned by the amount of news
he was obliged to listen to. Never had there been so indefatigable an
agent. He would have been invaluable to a newspaper--but he was boring
the Lord of Corasse to death.
A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The baron would groan, for he
knew well who was the claimant for admission. "Let me in, Let me in. I
have news for thee from Hungary or England," as the case might be; and
the baron, groaning in soul and body, would get up and let the demon in;
while the latter would immediately commence his recitation:
"Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's sake!" the victim would
exclaim.
"I have not told thee half the news," would be Orthon's reply; "I will
not let thee sleep until I have told thee the news;" and he would go on
with his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared him, and
left the baron and the baronness to broken and unrefreshing slumbers.
Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented to appear in a
visible form to the baron; that he took the shape of a lean sow, upon
which the Lord of Corasse ordered the dogs to be let loose upon the
animal, which straightway disappeared, and Orthon was never seen after.
I suspect, however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this respect. He clearly
did not see the fun of the story, which is very capable of being
resolved into an allegory--the fact being that the demon was some
gentleman of the priest's acquaintance, with supernatural powers of
boring whom he let loose upon the recalcitrant tithe-payer, until the
arrears were at length paid up. The sow which disappeared was clearly no
other than a tithe-pig.