I.
Luz is a little city, thoroughly rustic and agreeable. Streams of water
run down the narrow, flinty streets; the gray houses press together
for the sake of gaining a little shade. The morning sees the arrival of
flocks of sheep, of asses laden with wood, of grunting and undisciplined
hogs, and bare-footed peasant girls, knitting as they walk alongside of
their carts. Luz is in a spot where four valleys come together. Men and
beasts disappear on the market-place; red umbrellas are fixed in the
ground. The women seat themselves alongside their wares; around them
their red-cheeked brats are nibbling their bread, and frisking like
so {251}many mice; provisions are sold, stuffs are bought. At noon the
streets are deserted; here and there in the shadow of a doorway may be
discerned the figure of an old woman sitting, but no sound is heard save
the gentle murmur of the streams along their stony bed.
The faces here are pretty: the children are a pleasure to look upon,
before toil and the sun have spoiled their features. They amble merrily
through the dust, and turn toward the passer their bright round faces,
their speaking eyes, with slight and abrupt movements. When the girls,
with their red petticoats tucked up, and in capulets of thick red stuff,
approach to ask alms of you, you see under the crude color the pure
oval of a clear-cut, proud countenance, a soft, almost pale hue, and the
sweet look of two great tranquil eyes.
II.
The church is cool and solitary; it once belonged to the Templars. These
monk-soldiers obtained a foothold in the most out-of-the-way corners
of Europe. The tower is square as a fortress; the enclosing wall has
battlements like a fortified city. The dark old door-way would be easily
defended. Upon its arch, which is very low, may be distinguished a
half-obliterated Christ, and two fantastic, {252}rudely colored birds.
As you enter, a small uncovered tomb serves as font, and you are shown
a low door through which passed the accursed race of the _bigots._ * Its
first aspect is singular, but has nothing unpleasant about it. A
good woman in a red capulet, knitting in hand, was praying near a
confessional of badly planed boards, under an old brown gallery of
turned wood. Poverty and antiquity are never ugly, and this expression
of religious care seemed to suit well with the ruins and souvenirs of
the middle ages scattered about us.
* Name applied among the Pyrenees to a people afflicted
with Cretinism.--Translator.
But deeply rooted in the people is a certain indefinable love of the
ridiculous and absurd which succeeds in spoiling everything; in this
poor church, tracery, from which the gilding is worn away, crosses a
vault of scoured azure with tarnished stars, flames, roses and little
cherubs with wings for cravats. A brownish pink angel, suspended by one
foot, flies forward, bearing in its hand a golden crown. In the opposite
aisle may be seen the face of the sun, with puffy cheeks, semicircular
eyebrows, and looking as sapient as in an almanac. The altar is loaded
with a profusion of tarnished gilding, sallow angels, with simple and
piteous faces like those of children who have eaten too much dinner. All
this shows that their huts are very dreary, naked and dull.{253}
[Illustration: 278]
{254}
{255}A people that has just emerged from the dirt is apt to love
gilding. The most insipid sweetmeat is delicious to one who has long
eaten nothing but roots and dry bread.
III.
Luz was formerly the capital of these valleys, which formed together
a sort of republic; each commune deliberated upon its own private
interests; four or five villages formed a _vic_ and the deputies from
every four vics assembled at Luz.
The list of the assessments was, from time immemorial, made upon bits of
wood called _totchoux,_ that is to say, sticks. Each community had its
_totchoti,_ upon which the secretary cut with his knife Roman ciphers,
the value of which was known only to himself. In 1784 the intendant
of Auch, who knew nothing of this custom, ordered of the government
officials to bring to him the ancient registers; the official came,
followed by two cartloads of totchoux.
Poor country, free country. The estates of Bigorre were composed of
three chambers which deliberated separately; that of the clergy, that
of the nobility, and the third estate, made up of consuls or principal
officers of the communes, and deputies {256}from the valleys. In these
assemblies the taxes were apportioned, and all important matters were
discussed. A valley is a natural fortified city, defended against the
outside world and stimulating association. The enemy could be arrested
on his way, and crushed beneath the rocks; in winter, the torrents and
the snow shut him off from all entrance. Could knights in armor pursue
the herdsman into his bogs? What could they have taken as prisoners,
except a few half-starved goats? The daring climbers, hunters of the
bear and wolf, would willingly have played at this game, sure of winning
at it warm clothes, arms and horses. It is thus that independence has
lasted in Switzerland.
Free country, poor country. I have already remarked that in the valley
of Ossau. The plains are mere defiles between the feet of two chains.
Cultivation climbs the slope, wherever it is not too steep. If a morsel
of earth exists between two rocks, it is put to seed. Man gets from
the desert as much as he can wrest from it: so terraces of fields and
harvests mottle the declivity with green strips and yellow squares.
Barns and stables sprinkle it with white patches; it is streaked by a
long grayish footpath. But this robe, torn by jutting rocks as it is,
stops short half-way up, and the summit is clothed only with barren
moss.
The harvest is gathered in July, without horses, {257}of course, or
carts. On these slopes, man alone can perform the service of a horse:
the sheaves are enclosed in great pieces of cloth and fastened with
cords; the reaper takes the enormous bundle upon his head, and ascends
with naked feet among the sharp-pointed stalks and stones, without ever
making a false step.
[Illustration: 282]
You find here ordinances reducing by half the number of men-at-arms
required of the country, founded upon the proportion of harvests
destroyed each year by hail and frost. Several times, during the
religious wars, the country became a desert. In 1575, Montluc declares
“that it is now so poor that the dwellers hereabouts are forced to quit
their houses and take to begging.” In 1592, the {258}people of Comminge
having devastated the country, “the peasants of Bigorre abandoned the
culture of the land for want of cattle, and the greater part of them
took the road into Spain.” It is not a hundred years since that, in all
the country, there, were known to exist but three hats and two pairs of
shoes. To this very day, the mountaineers are forced to renew with every
year their sloping fields, wasted by the rains of winter. “They burn,
for light, bits of resinous pine, and scarcely ever taste meat.”
What misery is contained in those few words! Yet how deep must be the
wretchedness that can break the tie that binds man to his native soil!
A threadbare text from history, a phrase of passionless statistics,
contain within their limits years of suffering, myriads of deaths,
flight, separations, degradation. Of a truth, there is too much ill in
the world. With every century, man removes a bramble and a stone
that had helped to obstruct the way over which he advances; but what
signifies a bramble or a stone? There remain, and always will remain,
more than enough to lacerate and kill him. Besides, new flints are
falling into the way, new thorns are springing up. Prosperity increases
his sensibility: an equal pain is inflicted by a less evil; the body may
be better shielded, but the soul is more disordered. {259}
[Illustration: 284]
{260}
{261}The benefits of the Revolution, the progress of industry, the
discoveries of science, have given us equality, the comforts of life,
liberty of thought, but at the same time a malevolent envy, the rage for
success, impatience of the present, necessity of luxury, instability of
government, and all the sufferings of doubt and over-refinement.
[Illustration: 286]
Is a citizen of the year 1872 any happier than one of the year
1672? Less oppressed, better informed; furnished with more comforts,
all that is certain; but I do not know if he is more cheerful. One thing
alone increases--experience, and with it science, industry, power. In
all else, we lose as much as we gain, and the surest progress lies in
resignation. {262}
IV.
This valley is everywhere refreshed and made, fertile by running water.
On the road to Pierrefitte two swift streams prattle under the shade of
the flowering hedges: no travelling companion could be gayer. On
both sides, from every meadow, flow streamlets that cross each other,
separate, come together, and finally together spring into the Gave. In
this way the peasants water all their crops; a field has five or six
lines of streams which run hemmed in by beds of slate. The bounding
troop tosses itself in the sunlight, like a madcap band of boys just
let loose from school. The turf that they nourish is of an incomparable
freshness and vigor; the herbage grows thick along the brink, bathes its
feet in the water, or lies under the rush of the little waves, and its
ribbons tremble in a pearly reflection under the ripples of silver. You
cannot walk ten steps without stumbling upon a waterfall; swollen and
boiling cascades pour down upon great blocks of stone; transparent
sheets stretch themselves over the rocky shelves; threadlike streaks of
foam wind from the verge to the very valley; springs ooze out alongside
the hanging grasses and fall drop by drop; on the right rolls the Gave,
and drowns all these murmurs with {263}its great monotonous voice. The
beautiful blue iris thrives along the marshy slopes; woods and Crops
climb very high among the rocks. The valley smiles, encircled with
verdure; but on the horizon the embattled peaks, the serrate crests
and black escarpments of the notched mountains rise into the blue sky,
beneath their mantle of snow.
[Illustration: 288]
Back of Luz is a bare, rounded eminence, called Saint-Pierre, crowned by
a fragment of gray ruin, and commanding a view of the whole valley.
When the sky has been overcast, I have spent here entire hours without
a moment of weariness: beneath its cloudy Curtain the air is moderately
warm. Sudden patches of sunlight stripe the Gave, or illumine the
harvests hung midway on the mountain slope. The swallows, with shrill
cries, wheel high in the creeping vapors; the {264}sound of the Gave
comes up, softened by distance into a harmony that is almost aerial. The
wind breathes, and dies away; a troop of little flowers flutters at the
passage of its wing; the buttercups are drawn up in line; frail little
pinks bury in the herbage their rosy-purple stars; slender-stemmed
grasses nod over the broad slaty patches; the air is filled with the
fragrance of thyme. Are they not happy, these solitary plants, watered
by the dew, fanned by the breezes?
[Illustration: 289]
This height is a desert; no one comes to tread them down; they grow
after their own sweet will, in clefts of the rock, by families, useless
and free, flooded by the loveliest sunlight. And man, the slave
of necessity, begs and calculates under penalty of his life! Three
children, all in rags, came {265}upon the scene: “What are you looking
for here?”
“Butterflies.”
“What for?”
“To sell.”
The youngest had a sort of tumor on his forehead. “Please, sir, a sou
for the little one who is ill.”
[Illustration: 290]
{266}