I.
The beeches push high upon the declivities, even beyond three thousand
feet. Their huge pillars strike down into the hollows where earth is
gathered. Their roots enter into the clefts of the rock, lift it, and
come creeping to the surface like a family of snakes. Their skin, white
and tender in the plains, is changed into a grayish and solid bark;
their tenacious leaves shine with a vigorous green, beneath the sun
which cannot penetrate them. They live isolated, because they need
space, and range themselves at intervals one above another like lines of
towers. From afar, between the dull heather, their mound rises splendid
with light, and sounds with its hundred thousand leaves as with so many
little bells of horn. {368}
II.
But the real inhabitants of the mountains are the pines, geometrical
trees, akin to the ferruginous blocks hewn by the primitive eruptions.
The vegetation of the plains unfolds itself in undulating forms with
all the graceful caprices of liberty and wealth. The pines, on the other
hand, seem scarcely alive; their shaft rises in a perpendicular line
along the rocks; their horizontal branches part from the trunk at right
angles, equal as the radii of a circle, and the entire tree is a cone
terminated by a naked spike. The dull little blades that answer for
leaves have a melancholy hue, without transparency or lustre; they seem
hostile to the light; they neither reflect it, nor allow it to pass,
they extinguish it; hardly does the noonday sun fringe them with a
bluish reflection. Ten paces away, beneath such an aureole, the black
pyramid cuts the horizon like an opaque mass. They crowd together
in files under their funereal mantles. Their forests are silent as
solitudes; the whistle of the wind makes there no noise; it glides over
the stiff beard of the leaves without stirring or rubbing them together.
One hears no sound save the whispering of the tops and the shrivelling
of the little yellowish lamels which fall in showers as soon as you
touch a branch. {369}
[Illustration: 395]
{370}
{371}The turf is dead, the soil naked; you walk in the shade beneath an
inanimate verdure, among pale shafts which rise like tapers. A strong
odor fills the air, resembling the perfume of aromatics. The impression
is that made by a deserted cathedral, while, after a ceremony, the smell
of incense still floats under the arches, and the declining day outlines
far away in the obscurity the forest of pillars.
They live in families and expel the other trees from their domain.
Often, in a wasted gorge, they may be seen like a mourning drapery
descending among the white glaciers. They love the cold, and in winter
remain clothed in snow. Spring does not renew them; you see only a few
green lines run through the foliage; they soon grow dark like the rest.
But when the tree springs from a spot of deep earth, and rises to a
height of a hundred feet, smooth and straight as the mast of a ship,
the mind with buoyancy follows to the very summit the flight of its
inflexible form, and the vegetable column seems as grand as the mountain
which nurtures it.
III.
Higher up, on the barren steeps, the yellowish box twists its knotty
feet beneath the stones. It is a melancholy and tenacious creature,
stunted {372}and thrust back upon itself; overborne amidst the rocks,
it dares not shoot upward nor spread. Its small thick leaves follow each
other in monotonous rows, clumsily oval and of a formal regularity. Its
stem, short and grayish, is rough to the touch; the round fruit encloses
black capsules, hard as ebony, that must be broken open for the seed.
Everything in the plant is calculated with a view to utility: it thinks
only of lasting and resisting; it has neither ornaments, elegance, nor
richness; it expends its sap only in solid tissues, in dull colors, in
durable fibres. It is an economical and active housewife, the only thing
capable of vegetating in the quagmires that it fills.
If you continue to ascend, the trees begin to fail. The brush-fir creeps
in a carpet of turf. The rhododendrons grow in tufts and crown the
mountain with rosy clusters. The heather crowds its white bunches,
small, open, vase-shaped flowers, from which springs a crown of garnet
stamens. In the sheltered hollows, the blue campanulas swing their
pretty bells; the least wind lays them low; they live for all that, and
smile, trembling and graceful.
But, among all these flowers nourished with light and pure air, the
most precious is the thornless rose. Never did petals form a frailer and
lovelier corolla; never did a vermilion so vivid color a more delicate
tissue. {373}
[Illustration: 399]
{374}
IV.
{375}At the summit grow the mosses. Battered by the wind, dried by
the sun, they lose the fresh green tint they wear in the valleys and on
the brink of the springs. They are reddened with tawny hues, and their
smooth filaments have the reflexes of a wolf’s fur. Others, yellowed and
pale, cover with their sickly colors the bleeding crevices. Then there
are gray ones, almost white, which grow like remnants of hair upon the
bald rocks. Far away, upon the back of the mountain, all these tints are
mingled, and the shaded fur emits a wild gleam.
The last growths are reddish crusts, stuck to the walls of rock, seeming
to form part of the stone, and which you might take, not for a
plant, but for a scurf. Cold, dryness, and the height have by degrees
transformed or killed vegetation.
V.
The climate shapes and produces animals as well as plants.
The bear is a serious beast, a thorough mountaineer, curious to behold
in his great-coat of felted hair, yellowish or grayish in color. It
seems formed {376}for its domicile and its domicile for it. Its heavy
fur is an excellent mantle against the snow. The mountaineers think
it so good, that they borrow it from him as often as they can, and he
thinks it so good that he defends it against them to the best of his
ability. He likes to live alone, and the gorges of the heights are as
solitary as he wishes.
[Illustration: 402]
The hollow trees afford him a ready-made house; as these are for the
most part beeches and oaks, he finds in them at once food and shelter.
For the rest, brave, prudent, and robust, he is an estimable animal; his
only faults are that he eats his little ones, when he runs across them,
and that he is a poor dancer. {377}
[Illustration: 403]
In hunting him, they go into ambush and fire on him as he passes.
Lately, in a battue, a superb female was tracked. When the foremost
hunters, who were novices, saw the glitter of the little fierce eyes,
and perceived the black mass descending with great strides, beating the
underbrush, they forgot all of a sudden that they had guns, and kept
whist behind their oak. A hundred paces further on, a brave fellow
fired. The bear, which was not hit, came up on a gallop. The man,
dropping his gun, slipped into a pit. Reaching the bottom, he felt of
his limbs, and by some miracle found himself whole, when he saw the
animal hesitating above {378}his head, busy in examining the slope, and
pressing her foot upon the stones to see if they were firm. She sniffed
here and there, and looked at the man with the evident intention of
paying him a visit. The pit was a well; if she reached the bottom, he
must resign himself to a tête-à-tête. While the man reflected on this,
and thought of the animal’s teeth, the bear began to descend with
infinite precaution and address, managing her precious person with
great care, hanging on to the roots, slowly, but without ever stumbling.
She was drawing near, when the hunters came up and shot her dead.
[Illustration: 404]
The isard dwells above the bear, upon the naked tops, in the region
of the glaciers. He needs space for his leaps and gambols. He is
too lively and gay to shut himself, like the heavy misanthrope, in the
gorges and forests. No animal is more agile; he leaps from rock to rock,
clears precipices, and keeps {379}his place upon points where there is
just room for his four feet You sometimes hear a hollow bleating on the
heights: it is a band of isards cropping the herbage amidst the snow;
their tawny dress and their little horns stand out in the blue of the
heavens; one of them gives the alarm and all disappear in a moment.
VI.
[Illustration: 405]
You often hear for a half-hour a tinkling of bells behind the mountain;
these are the herds of goats changing their pasture. Sometimes there are
more than a thousand of them. You find yourself stopped in crossing the
bridges until the whole caravan has filed over. They have long hanging
hairs which form their coat; with their black mantle and great beard,
you would say that they were {380}dressed for a masquerade. Their yellow
eyes stare vaguely, with an expression of curiosity and gentleness. They
seem to wonder at their walking in such orderly fashion on level ground.
Only to look at that dry leg and horny foot, you feel that they are
framed to wander at random and leap about on the rocks. From time to
time the less disciplined ones stop, set their fore feet against the
mountain, and crop a bramble or a blossom of lavender. The others come
and push them on; they start off again with a mouthful of herbage, and
eat as they walk. All their physiognomies are intelligent, resigned and
melancholy, with flashes of caprice and originality. You see the forest
of horns waving above the black mass, and their smooth hair shining
in the sun. Enormous dogs, with woolly coat, spotted with white, walk
gravely along the sides, growling when you draw near. The herdsman
comes behind in his brown cloak, with an eye fixed, glittering, void of
thought, like that of the animals; and the whole band disappears in a
cloud of dust, out of which comes a sound of shrill bleating.
VII.
Why should not I speak of the happiest animal in creation? A great
painter, Karel du Jardin, has taken a liking for it: he has drawn it
in all its attitudes, and has shown all its pleasures and all its
tastes.{381}
[Illustration: 407]
{382}
{383} The rights of prose are indeed equal to those of painting, and
I promise that travellers will take pleasure in considering the hogs.
There, the word is out. Now mind that in the Pyrenees they are not
covered with tainting filth, as on our farms; they are rosy or black,
well washed, and live upon the dry gravel, alongside the running waters.
[Illustration: 409]
They make holes in the heated sand, and sleep there in groups of five
or six, close set in lines, in admirable order. When any one draws
near, the whole mass moves; the corkscrew tails frisk fantastically;
two crafty, philosophic eyes open beneath the pendent ears; the mocking
noses stretch forth and snuff; they all grunt in concert; after which,
becoming accustomed to the intrusion, they are quieted, they lie down
again, the eyes close {384}in sanctimonious fashion, the tails retire
into place, and the blessed rogues return to their digestion and
enjoyment of the sun. All these expressive snouts seem to cry shame
upon prejudices, and invoke enjoyment; there is something reckless
and derisive about them; the whole countenance is directed towards the
snout, and the end of the entire head is in the mouth. Their lengthened
nose seems to sniff and take in from the air all agreeable sensations.
They spread themselves so complacently on the ground, they wag their
ears with such voluptuous little movements, they utter such penetrating
ejaculations of pleasure, that you get out of patience with them. Oh
genuine epicureans, if sometimes in your sleep you deign to reflect, you
ought to think, like the goose of Montaigne, that the world was made for
you, that man is your servant, and that you are the privileged creatures
of nature. There is but one moment of trouble in their whole life, that
is when they are killed. Still they pass quickly away and do not foresee
this moment.
VIII.
Myriads of lizards nestle in the chinks of slate and in the walls of
rounded pebbles. On the approach of a passer-by, they run like a streak
across {385}the road. If you stand quiet for a moment, you see their
little restless, sly heads peep out between two stones; the rest of the
body shows itself, the tail wriggles, and, with an abrupt movement, they
climb zigzag upon the gravelly ledges. There they have as much sun as
they please, sun to roast alive in; at noon, the rock burns the hand.
This powerful sun heats their cold blood, and gives spring and action
to their limbs. They are capricious, passionate, violent, and fight like
men. Sometimes you may see two of them rolling the whole length of a
rock, one over the other, in the dust, get up again dimmed and dirty,
and run briskly away, like cowardly and insubordinate schoolboys taken
in a misdeed. Some of them lose their tails in these adventures, so that
they look as if they wore a coat that is too short for them; they hide,
ashamed of being so ill dressed. Others in their gray justi-coats have
slight, graceful motions, an air at once so coquettish and timid that
it takes away all desire to harm them. When they are asleep on a slab
of stone, you can see their whitish throat and their small, intelligent
mouth; but they scarcely, ever sleep, they are always on the lookout;
they scamper off at the least sound, and, when nothing troubles them,
they trot, frolic, climb up and down, make a hundred turns for pleasure.
They love company, and live near or with one another. No animal is
{386}prettier or has more innocent ways; with the charming white and
yellow sedum, it enlivens the long walls of stone, and both live on
dryness, as other things on moisture.
The sun, the light, the vegetation, animals, man, are so many books
wherein Nature has, in different characters, written the same thought.
If the hogs have a clean and rosy skin, it is because the boiling
granite and the sea swarming with fish have during millions of years
accumulated and uplifted ten thousand feet of rock.
[Illustration: 412]
BOOK IV. BAGNE RES AND LUCHON.
[Illustration: 415]
{389}
CHAPTER I. FROM LUZ TO BAGNERES-DE-BIGORRE.
I.
Here one must submit to long, stifling ascents; the horses trudge on
at a foot-pace or pant; the travellers sleep or sweat; the conductor
grumbles or drinks; the dust whirls, and, if you go out, your throat is
parched or your eyes smart. There is only one way of passing the evil
hour: it is to tell over some old story of the country, as, for example,
the following:--
Bos de Bénac was a good knight, a great friend of the king Saint Louis;
he went on a crusade into the land of Egypt, and killed many Saracens
for {390}the salvation of his soul. But finally the French were beaten
in a great battle, and Bos de Bénac left for dead. He was taken away
prisoner along the river, towards the south, into a country where the
skin of the men was quite burned by the heat, and there he remained
ten years. They made him herdsman of their flocks, and often beat him
because he was a Frank and a Christian.
[Illustration: 416]
One day when he was afflicted and lamenting his lot in a solitary place,
he saw appear before him a little black man, who had two horns to his
forehead, a goat’s foot, and a more wicked air than {391}the most wicked
of Saracens. Bos was so used to seeing black men, that he did not make
the sign of the cross. It was the devil, who said, sneering, to him:
“Bos, what good has it done thee to fight for thy God? He leaves thee
the servant of my servants of Nubia; the dogs of thy castle are better
treated than thou. Thou art thought dead and tomorrow thy wife will be
married. Go then to milk thy flock, thou good knight.”
Bos uttered a loud cry and wept, for he loved his wife; the devil
pretended to have pity on him, and said to him: “I am not so bad as thy
priests tell. Thou hast fought well; I like brave men; I will do for
thee more than thy friend, the crucified one. This night shalt thou be
in thy beautiful land of Bigorre. Give me in exchange a plate of nuts
from thy table: what, there thou art embarrassed as a theologian! Dost
thou think that nuts have souls? Come, decide.”
Bos forgot that it is a mortal sin to give anything to the devil, and
stretched out to him his hand. Immediately he was borne away as in a
whirlwind; he saw beneath him a great yellow river, the Nile, which
stretched out, like a snake, between two bands of sand; a moment
afterward, a city spread on the strand like a cuirass; then innumerable
waves ranged from one end of the horizon to the other, and on them black
vessels {392}like unto swallows; further on, a triple-coasted island,
with a hollow mountain full of fire and a plume of tawny smoke; then
again the sea. Night fell, when a range of mountains lifted itself into
the red bands of the sunset. Bos recognized the serrate tops of the
Pyrenees and was filled with joy.
The devil said to him: “Bos, come first to my servants of the mountain.
In all conscience, since you return to the country, you owe them a
visit. They are more beautiful than thy angels, and will love thee,
since thou art my friend.”
The good knight was horrified to think that he was the friend of the
devil, and followed him reluctantly. The hand of the devil was as a
vice; he went swifter than the wind. Bos traversed at a bound the valley
of Pierrefitte and found himself at the foot of the Bergonz, before a
door of stone which he had never seen. The door opened of itself with a
sound softer than a bird’s song, and they entered a hall a thousand
feet high, all of crystal, flaming as if the sun were inside it. Bos saw
three little women as large as one’s hand, on seats of agate; they
had eyes clear as the green waters of the Gave; their cheeks had the
vermilion of the thornless rose; their snowy robe was as light as the
airy mist of the cascades; their scarf was of the hues of the rainbow.
Bos believed he had seen it formerly floating on the brink of the
{393}precipices, when the morning fog evaporated with the sun’s first
rays. They were spinning, and their wheels turned so fast that they were
invisible. They rose all together, and sang with their little silvery
voices: “Bos is returned; Bos is the friend of our master; Bos, we will
spin thee a cloak of silk in exchange for thy crusader’s mantle.”
A moment later he was before another mountain, which he recognized
by the light of the stars. It was that of Campana, which rings when
misfortune comes upon the country. Bos found himself inside without
knowing how it happened, and saw that it was hollow to the very summit.
An enormous bell of burnished silver descended from the uppermost vault;
a troop of black goats was attached to the clapper. Bos perceived that
these goats were devils; their short tails wriggled convulsively; their
eyes were like burning coals; their hair trembled and shrivelled like
green branches on live coals; their horns were pointed and crooked like
Syrian swords. When they saw Bos and the demon they came leaping around
them with such abrupt bounds and such strange eyes that the good knight
felt his heart fail within him. Those eyes formed cabalistic figures,
and danced after the manner of the will-o’-the-wisp in the grave-yard;
then they ranged themselves in single file and ran forward; the steel
clapper flew against the sounding {394}wall, an immense voice came
rolling forth from the vibrant silver. Bos seemed to hear it in the
depths of his brain; the palpitations of the sound ran through his whole
body; he shuddered with anguish like a man in delirium, and distinctly
heard the bell chanting: “Bos has returned; Bos is the friend of our
master; Bos, it is not the bell of the church, it is I who ring thy
return.”
He felt himself once more lifted into the air; the trees rooted in the
rock bent before his companion and himself as beneath a storm; the bears
howled mournfully; troops of wolves fled shivering over the snow. Great
reddish clouds flew across the sky, jagged and quivering like the wings
of bats. The evil spirits of the valley rose up and eddied through the
night. The heads of the rocks seemed alive; the army of the mountains
appeared to shake themselves and follow him. They traversed a wall of
clouds and stopped upon the peak of Anie. At that very moment, a flash
cleft the vapory mass. Bos saw a phantom tall as a huge pine, the face
burning like a furnace, enveloped in red clouds. Violet aureoles flamed
upon his head; the lightning crept at his feet in dazzling trains;
his whole body shone with white flashes. The thunder burst forth, the
neighboring summit fell, the upturned rocks smoked, and Bos heard
a mighty voice saying: “Bos has returned; Bos is the friend of our
{395}master; Bos, I illumine the valley for thy return better than the
tapers of thy church.”
[Illustration: 421]
The poor Bos, bathed in a cold sweat, was suddenly borne to the foot of
the chateau of Bénac, and the devil said to him: “Good knight, go now,
find again thy wife!” Then he began to laugh with a noise like the
cracking of a tree, and disappeared, leaving behind a smell of sulphur.
{396}
[Illustration: 422]
Morning dawned, the air was cold, the earth damp, and Bos shivered under
his tatters, when he saw a superb cavalcade draw near. Ladies in robes
of brocade seamed with silver and pearls; lords in armor of polished
steel, with chains of gold; noble palfreys beneath scarlet housings,
conducted by pages in doublets of black velvet; then an escort of
men-at-arms, whose cuirasses glittered {397}in the sun. It was the Sire
d’Angles coming to marry the lady of Bénac. They filed slowly along the
ascent and were buried beneath the darkness of the porch.
Bos ran to the gate; but they repelled him, saying: “Come back at noon,
my good man, thou shalt have alms like the rest.”
Bos sat down upon a rock, tormented with grief and rage. Inside the
castle he heard the flourish of trumpets and the sounds of rejoicing.
Another was going to take his wife and his goods; he clenched his fists
and revolved thoughts of murder; but he had no weapons; he determined to
be patient, as he had so often been among the Saracens, and waited.
All the poor of the neighborhood were gathered together, and Bos placed
himself among them. He was not humble as the good king Saint Louis, who
washed the feet of the beggars; he was heartily ashamed of walking among
these pouch-bearers, these maimed and halt, with crooked legs and
bent backs, ill clad in poor, torn and patched cloaks, and in rags and
tatters; but he was still more ashamed when, in passing over the moat
filled with clear water, he saw his burnt face, his locks bristling like
the hair of a wild beast, his haggard eyes, his whole body wasted
and bruised; then he remembered that his only garment was a torn sack
{398}and the skin of a great goat, and that he was more hideous than the
most hideous beggar. These cried aloud the praises of the wedded ones,
while Bos ground his teeth with rage.
[Illustration: 424]
They followed the lofty corridor, and Bos saw through the door the old
banqueting hall. His arms still hung there; he recognized the antlers
of stags that he had shot with his bow, the heads of bears that he had
slain with his bear-spear. The hall was full; the joy of the banquet
rose high beneath the vault; the wine of Languedoc flowed generously in
the cups, the guests were drinking the health of the betrothed. The lord
of Angles was talking very low to the beautiful lady, who smiled and
turned towards him her gentle eyes. {399}
[Illustration: 426]
{400}
{401}When Bos saw those rosy lips smiling and the black eyes beaming
beneath the scarlet capulet, he felt his heart gnawed with jealousy,
bounded into the hall and cried out with a terrible voice: “Out of this,
ye traitors! I am master here, Bos de Bénac.”
“Beggar and liar!” said the lord of Angles. “We saw Bos fall dead on the
banks of the Egyptian stream, Who art thou, old leper? Thy face is black
like those of the damned Saracens. You are all in league with the devil;
it is the evil spirit who has led thee hither. Drive him out, and loose
the dogs upon him.”
But the tender-hearted lady begged them to have mercy on the unhappy
madman. Bos, pricked by his conscience, believing that everybody knew
his sin, fled with his face in his hands, in horror of himself, and
stayed not until he had reached a solitary bog. Night came, and the bell
of Mount Campana began to toll. He heard the wheels of the faeries of
the Bergonz humming. The giant clad in fire appeared on the peak of
Anie. Strange images, like the dreams of a sick man, rose in his brain.
The breath of the demon was on him. A legion of fantastic visages
galloped through his head to the rustle of infernal wings, and the
ravishing smile of the lovely lady pricked him to the heart like the
point of a poniard. The little {402}black man appeared near him, and
said to him: “How, Bos, art thou not invited to the wedding of thy wife?
The lord of Angles espouses her at this very hour. Friend Bos, he is not
courteous!”
“Accursed of God, what art thou here to do?”
“Thou art scarcely grateful; I have led thee out of Egypt, as Moses did
his loafing Israelites, and I have transported thee, not in forty years
but in a day, into the promised land. Poor fool, whose amusement is
tears! Dost thou wish thy wife? Give me thy faith, nothing more. Indeed,
thou art right; to-morrow, if thou art not frozen, and if thou pleadest
humbly with the lord of Angles, he will make thee keeper of his kennels;
it is a fine situation. To-night, sleep on the snow, good knight.
Yonder, where the lights are, the lord of Angles embraces thy wife.”
Bos was stifling, and thought he was going to die. “Oh Lord my God,”
said he, falling on his knees, “deliver me from the tempter!” And he
burst into tears.
The devil fled, driven by this ardent prayer; the hands of Bos clasped
over his breast touched his marriage ring which he carried in his
scapulary. He trembled with joy! “Thanks, O Lord, and bring me there in
time.”
He ran as if he had wings, crossed the threshold at a bound, and hid
himself behind a pillar {403}of the gallery. The procession advanced
with torches. When the lady was near him, Bos rose, took her hand and
showed her the ring. She recognized it and threw herself into his arms.
He turned towards those who were present and said: “I have suffered
like our Saviour, and like Him been denied. Men of Bigorre, who have
maltreated and denied me, I pray that you will be my friends as of old.”
On the morrow Bos went to pour a dish of nuts into a black gulf, where
often was heard the voice of the devil; after that he left to confess
himself to the pope. On his return he became a hermit in a cavern of the
mountain, and his wife a nun in a convent at Tarbes. Both piously did
penance, and were worthy after their death to behold God.
[Illustration: 429]
{404}
II.
[Illustration: 430]
A little beyond Lourdes begins the plain, and the sky opens out over
an immense space: the azure dome grows pale toward the edges, and its
tender blue, graded down by insensible shades, loses itself on the
horizon in an exquisite whiteness. {405}These colors, so pure, so rich,
so sweetly blended, are like a great concert where one finds himself
enveloped in harmony; the light comes from all sides; the air is
penetrated with it, the blue vault sparkles from the dome to the very
horizon. Other objects are forgotten; you are absorbed in a single
sensation; you cannot help enjoying this unchangeable serenity, this
profusion of brightness, this overflowing of golden, gushing light
playing in limitless space. This sky of the south corresponds to but one
state of the soul, joy; it has but one thought, one beauty, but it gives
rise to the conception of full and durable happiness; it sets in the
heart a spring of gayety ever ready to flow; man in this country ought
to wear life lightly. Our northern skies have a deeper and more varied
expression; the metallic reflections of their changing clouds accord
with the troubled souls; their broken light and strange shadings express
the sad joy of melancholy passions they touch the heart more deeply and
with a keener stroke. But blue and white are such lovely hues! From here
the north seems an exile; you would never have thought that two colors
could give so much pleasure. They vanish into each other, like pleasant
sounds that grow into harmony and are blended together. The distant
white softens the garish light and imprisons it in a haze of thickened
{406}air. The azure of the dome deadens the rays under its dark tint,
reflects them, breaks them, and seems strewn with spangles of gold.
This glitter in the sky, these horizons drowned in a misty zone, this
transparence of the infinite air, this depth of a heaven without clouds,
is worth as much as the sight of the mountains.
III.
[Illustration: 432]
Tarbes is a good-sized city that looks like a market town, paved with
small stones, mediocre in appearance. You alight in a place where great
dusty elms make a shade. At noon the streets are empty; it is evident
that you are near the sun of {407}Spain. A few women merely, with red
foulards on the head, were selling peaches at the corners. A little
further on some cavalry soldiers stretched their great awkward legs
in the narrow shadow of their wall. You run across a square of four
buildings, in the midst of which rises a bell-tower flaring at the base.
It is the church; it has but a single aisle, very high, very broad,
very cool, painted in dark colors, which contrast with the stifling heat
outside and the glare of the white walls; above the altar, six columns
of mottled marble, surmounted with a baldachin, make a pretty effect.
The pictures are like those everywhere else: A Christ, mingled fresh
butter and pale rose in hue, a passion in colored engravings at six sous
each. A few, hung very high in dark corners, seem better because you
can make nothing out of them. A little further on they have just built
a court-house, clean and new as a judge’s robe; the ashler work is well
dressed, and the walls perfectly scraped. The front is adorned with two
statues: Justice, who looks like a fool, and Force, who looks like a
girl. Force has on low boots and the skin of an animal. Instead of fine
statues we have ugly riddles. Since they had a fancy for symbols, could
they not have dressed Force as a policeman? To compensate ourselves for
the statues, we went to visit the horses. In this place, the homely city
becomes an elegant city. {408}The buildings of the stud are simple
and in good taste. Turf, rosebushes, stairways filled with flowers, a
beautiful meadow of high grass; in the distance are poplars ranged as
a screen to the limpid horizon. The habitation of the horses is a
pleasure-house. There are fifty beasts in a long stable that might serve
at need for a ball-room; they are superb creatures with shining coats,
firm croup, gentle eye, calm front: they feed peaceably in their stalls,
having a double mat under their litter; everything is brushed, wiped,
rubbed. Grooms in red vests come and go incessantly to clean them and
see that nothing is wanting. Man in the earthly paradise was less happy.
IV.
Poor mankind has no city which is not full of lamentable memories. The
Protestants took this one in 1570 and butchered all the inhabitants. One
of them had taken refuge in a tower whose only ascent was by a narrow
staircase; they sent one of his friends, who called to him under pretext
of a parley; no sooner had he put his head at the window than he was
killed by an arquebusade. The peasants who came to give burial to
the dead interred two thousand of them in the {409}ditches. Five years
after, the country was almost a desert.
Patience! the Catholics were no gentler than the Protestants; witness
that siege of Rabastens, twelve miles distant from Tarbes.
“Suddenly,” says Montluc, “I saw that others besides our foot soldiers
should have a hand here, and said to the nobility: ‘Gentlemen, my
friends, follow boldly, and give, and be not wonder-struck; for we could
not choose a more honorable death.’ And so we all marched with as good a
will as ever I saw in my life to the assault, and I twice looked back;
I saw that all were closed up so as to touch one another. I had caused
three or four ladders to be carried to the brink of the moat, and as
I turned backward to order them to bring up two ladders, a volley was
given me in the face from the corner of a barricade which adjoined the
tower. I was suddenly covered with blood, for I bled from the mouth,
nose and eyes. Then almost all the soldiers, and nearly all the nobles
too, began to be affrighted and would retreat. But I cried out to them,
although I could scarcely speak for the quantity of blood which gushed
from my mouth and nose: ‘Where will you go? Will you be frightened on
my account? Do not stir, and do not abandon the fight.’ And said to the
nobles, ‘I am going to get my wounds dressed: let no one follow {410}me,
and avenge me as you love me.’ I took a nobleman by the hand, and so
was led to my lodging, where I found a surgeon of M. de Goas’ regiment,
named Maître Simon, who dressed my wound and pulled out the bones from
both cheeks with his two fingers, so large were the holes, and cut off
much flesh from my face, which was covered with wounds.
“Here now is M. de Madaillan, my lieutenant, who was at my side when I
went to the charge, and M. de Goas on the other, who was come to see if
I were dead, and said to me: ‘Rejoice, monsieur, take courage, we
are inside. There are the soldiers with hands that kill everybody; be
assured then that we will avenge your wound.’ Then I said to him: ‘I
praise God, because I see that victory is ours before I die. At present
I feel no concern at dying. I beg you will go back, and show me all
the affection you have borne me, _and take care that no one escapes
unkilled._
“And immediately he went away, and even my servants all went; so that
there remained along with me only two pages, and the advocate de Las
and the surgeon. They wanted to save the minister and the captain of the
garrison, named Ladous, so as to have them hung before my quarters. But
the soldiers had nearly killed them themselves, and took them away
from those who held them and tore {411}them into a thousand pieces. The
soldiers made fifty or sixty who had withdrawn into the great tower,
leap from the top into the moat, and these were drowned. It turns out
that two who had hidden themselves were saved. There was a certain
prisoner who wanted to give four thousand crowns. But never a man would
hear of any ransom, and most of the women were killed.”
With such fits of madness how has the human race managed to endure? “In
vain you drain it,” says Mephistopheles, “the fresh spring of living
blood forever reappears.”
[Illustration: 437]
{412}
[Illustration: 438]
CHAPTER II.
BAGNÈRES-DE-BIGORRE.
I.
You set out for Bagnères at five o’clock in the afternoon, in the dust
and amidst a train of _coucous_ laden with people. The road is blocked,
like the roads in the suburbs of Paris on a Saturday evening. The
diligence, in passing, takes up as many peasants as it meets; they are
put in heaps under the tilt, among the trunks, alongside the dogs; they
seem proud and pleased with their lofty place. Legs, arms and heads,
dispose themselves as best they can; they sing, and the coach appears
like a music-box. It is in this triumphal equipage that you reach
Bagnères, after sunset. You dine in haste, are taken to the _Promenade
des Coustous_, and find, to your utter surprise, the Boulevard de Gand
among the Pyrenees. {413}Four rows of dusty trees; regular benches at
equal intervals; on both sides, hotels of modern aspect, one of which
is occupied by M. de Rothschild; rows of illuminated shops, of cafés
chantants surrounded by crowds; terraces filled with seated spectators;
upon the roadway, a black throng streaming under the lights. Such is the
spectacle beneath your eyes. The groups form, dissolve, close up; you
follow the crowd; you learn again the art of getting on without stepping
on the feet of those you meet, of grazing everybody without elbowing
anybody; of not getting crushed and of not crushing others; in short,
all the talents taught by civilization and the asphaltum. You meet again
with the rustle of dresses, the confused hum of conversations and steps,
the offensive splendor of artificial lights, the obsequious and
wearied faces of traffic, the skilful display of the shops, and all the
sensations you wanted to leave behind. Bagnères-de-Bigorre and Luchon
are in the Pyrenees the capitals of polite life, the meeting place of
the pleasures of the world and of fashion--Paris, six hundred miles away
from Paris.
The next morning, in the sunlight, the aspect of the city is charming.
Great alleys of old trees cross it in every direction. Little gardens
bloom upon the terraces. The Adour rolls along by the houses. Two
streets are islands connected with {414}the highway by bridges laden
with oleanders, and their green windows are mirrored in the clear wave.
Streamlets of limpid water run from all the open places and all the
streets; they cross, dive under ground, reappear, and the city is filled
with their murmurs, their coolness, and their gayety. A little girl,
seated upon a slab of slate, bathes her feet in the current; the cold
water reddens them, and the poor little thing tucks up her worn gown
with great care, for fear of wetting it. A woman on her knees is
washing linen at her door; another bends over and draws water for her
saucepan. The two black and shining trenches hedge in the white road,
like two bands of jet. In the inner court or in the vestibule of
each house the assembled women sew and spin, some on the steps of the
stairway, others at the feet of a ville; they are in the shade, but on
the crest of the wall the beautiful green leaves are traversed by a ray
of sunlight.
In the neighboring place, some men ranged in two lines were threshing
wheat with long poles and heaping up masses of golden grain. Under its
borrowed luxury the city preserves some rustic customs; but the rich
light blends the contrasts, and the threshing of the wheat has the
splendor of a ball. Further on are some buildings where the stream works
the marbles. Slabs, blocks, piles of chips, shapeless material, fill
the court for a length {415}of three hundred paces, among clusters of
rosebushes, flowery borders, statues, and kiosks. In the workshops,
heavy gearings, troughs of muddy water, rusty saws, huge wheels--these
are the workmen. In the storerooms, columns, capitals of an admirable
polish, white chimney-pieces bordered with leaves in relief, carved
vases, sculptured basins, trinkets of agate--that is the work. The
quarries of the Pyrenees have, all of them, given a specimen to panel
the walls; it is a library of marbles. There are white ones like
alabaster, rosy like living flesh, brown speckled like a guinea fowl’s
breast--the Griotte is of a blood-red. The black Baudéan, veined with
white threads, emits a greenish reflection. The Ronce de Bise furrows
its fawn-colored dress with dark bands. The grayish Sarrancolin has
a peculiar glitter, is marked all over with scales, striped with pale
tints, and stained with a broad blood-red spot. Nature is the greatest
of painters; her infiltrations and subterranean fires could alone have
invented this profusion of shades and patterns: it needed the audacious
originality of chance and the slow toil of the mineral forces, to turn
lines so capricious and assort tints so complex.
A stream of swift water rolls beneath the workshops; another glides in
front of the house, in a lovely meadow, under a screen of poplars. In
the {416}pale distance you see the mountains. It is a fortunate spot
considering that it is a sawer of stone.
II.
The bathing-house is a beautiful white building, vast and regular;
the long front, quite unornamented, is of a very simple form. This
architecture, akin to the antique, is more beautiful in the south than
in the north; like the sky, it leaves in the mind an impression of
serenity and grandeur.
A half of the river washes the façade, and precipitates under the
entrance bridge its black sheet bristling with sparkling waves. You
enter into a great vestibule, follow a huge staircase with double
balustrade, then corridors ending in noble porticos and commanding the
terraces. Bathing rooms panelled with marble, a verdant garden, fine
points of view everywhere, high vaults, coolness, simple forms, soft
hues that rest the eye and contrast with the crude, dazzling light,
that out of doors falls on the dusty place and the white houses; all
attracts, and it is a pleasure to be ill here.
The Romans, a people as civilized and as bored as we, did as we do,
and came to Bagnères. The inhabitants of the country, good courtiers,
constructed, on the public place, a temple in honor of Augustus. The
temple became a church that was {417}dedicated to St. Martin, but
retained the pagan inscription. In 1641, they removed the inscription to
above the fountain of the southern entrance, where it still is.
In 1823, they discovered on the site of the bathhouse, columns,
capitals, four piscinæ cased with marbles and adorned with mouldings,
and a large number of medals with effigies of the first Roman emperors.
These remains, found after a lapse of eighteen centuries, leave a deep
impression, like that one experiences in measuring the great limestone
beds, antediluvian sepulchres of buried races. Our cities are founded
upon the ruins of extinct civilizations, and our fields on the remains
of subverted creations.
Rome has left its trace everywhere at Bagnères. The most agreeable of
these souvenirs of antiquity are the monuments which those who had been
healed erected in honor of the Nymphs, and whose inscriptions still
remain. Lying in the _baignoires_ of marble, they felt the virtue of
the beneficent goddess penetrating their limbs; with eyes half-closed,
dozing in the soft embrace of the tepid water, they heard the mysterious
spring dripping, dripping with a song, from the recesses of the rock,
its mother; the outpoured sheet shone about them with dim, greenish
reflexes, and before them passed like a vision the strange eye and magic
voice of the {418}unknown divinity, who came to the light in order to
bring health to hapless mortals.
Behind the bath-house is a high hill, covered with admirable trees,
where wind sequestered walks. Thence you see under your feet the city,
whose slated roofs reflect the powerful light of the burning sky and
stand out in the limpid air with a tawny and leaden hue. A line of
poplars marks on the great green plain the course of the river; towards
Tarbes it strikes endlessly into the vaporous distance, amidst tender
hues. Opposite, wooded and cultivated hills rise, round-topped, to
the very horizon. On the right, the mountains, like so many pyramids,
descend in long regular quoins. These hills and mountains cut out
a sinuous line on the radiant border of the sky. From the white and
smiling horizon, the eye mounts by insensible shades to the deep
burning blue of the dome. This whiteness imparts a tender and delicious
sensation, mingling of revery and pleasure; it touches, troubles and
delights, like the song of Cherubino in Mozart. A fresh wind comes from
the valley; the body is as comfortable as the mind; one finds in his
nature a harmony hitherto unknown; he no longer bears the weight of
his thought or of his mechanism; he does nothing but feel; he becomes
thoroughly animal, that is to say, perfectly happy.
In the evening we walk in the plain. There are {419}in the fields of
maize retired paths where one is alone. The tops, seven feet high, form,
as it were, a copse of trees. The great sheaf of green leaves ends in
slender little columns of rosy grains, and the slanting sun slips its
arrows of gold among the stalks. You find meadows cut by streams which
the peasants dam up, and which, for several hours, overflow to refresh
the fields. The day declines, the huge shadow of the mountains darkens
the verdure; clouds of insects hum in the heavy air. The whisper of an
expiring breeze makes the leaves to shiver for a moment. Meanwhile the
carriages and the cavalcades return on all the roads, and the courts are
illuminated for the evening promenade.
[Illustration: 445]
{420}
[Illustration: 446]
CHAPTER III. THE PEOPLE.
I.
Everybody agrees that life at watering-places is very poetic, abounding
in adventures of every sort, especially adventures of the heart. Read
the novels _L’Anneau d’Argent_ of Charles de Bernard, George Sand’s
_Lavinia_, etc.
If watering-place life is a romance, it is in the books that it is so.
To see great men in these places, you must carry them bound in calf in
your trunk.
It is equally agreed that conversation at watering-places is extremely
brilliant, that you meet only artists, superior men, people of the great
world; that ideas, grace and elegance are lavished there, and that the
flower of all pleasures and all thought there comes into bloom. {421}The
truth is that you use up a great many hats, eat a great many peaches,
say a great many words, and, in the matter of men and of ideas, you find
very much what you find elsewhere.
Here is the catalogue of a _salon_ better made up than many another:
An old nobleman, somewhat resembling Balzac’s M. de Mortsauf, an officer
previous to 1830, very brave, and capable of reasoning exactly, when he
was hard pushed. He had a great long cartilaginous neck, that turned all
together and with difficulty, like a rusty machine; his feet shook about
in his square-toed shoes; the skirts of his frock-coat hung like
flags about his legs. His body and his clothes were stiff, awkward,
old-fashioned and scant, like his opinions; a dotard, moreover,
fastidious, peevish, busy all day long in sifting over nothings and
complaining about trifles; he pestered his servant a whole hour about a
grain of dust overlooked on the skirt of his coat, explaining the method
of removing dust, the danger of leaving dust, the defects of a negligent
spirit, the merits of a diligent spirit, with so much monotony and
tenacity and so slowly, that at last one stopped up one’s ears or
went to sleep. He took snuff, rested his chin on his cane, and looked
straight ahead with the torpid, dull expression of a mummy. Rustic life,
the want of conversation and action, the fixedness {422}of mechanical
habits, had extinguished him.
[Illustration: 448]
Beside him sat an English girl and her mother. The young woman had
not succeeded in extinguishing herself, she was frozen at her birth;
however, she was motionless as he. She carried a jeweller’s shop on her
arms, bracelets, chains, of every form and all metals, which hung and
jingled like little bells. The mother was one of those hooked stalks of
asparagus, knobby, stuck into a swelling gown, such as can flourish
and come to seed only amidst the fogs of London. They took tea and only
talked with each other.
In the third place one remarked a very noble young man, dressed to
perfection, curled every day, with soft hands, forever washed, brushed,
adorned and beautified, and handsome as a doll. His was a formal and
serious self-conceit. His least actions were of an admirable correctness
and {423}gravity. He weighed every word when he asked for soup. He put
on his gloves with the air of a Roman emperor. He never laughed; in his
calm gestures you recognized a man penetrated with self-respect, who
raises conventionalities into principles. His complexion, his hands,
his beard, and his mind, had been so scoured, rubbed, and perfumed by
etiquette, that they seemed artificial.
[Illustration: 449]
Ordinarily he gave the cues to a Moldavian lady, who kept the
conversation alive. This lady had travelled all over Europe, and related
her travels in such a piercing and metallic voice, that you wondered if
she had not a clarion somewhere in her body. She held forth unassisted,
sometimes for a quarter of an hour together, principally about rice
and the degree of civilization among the Turks, on the barbarism of the
Russian generals, and on the baths of Constantinople. Her well-filled
memory only overflowed in tirades: it was almost as amusing as a
gazetteer.
Near her was a pale, slender, meagre Spaniard, with a face like a
knife-blade. We knew, by some {424}words he let fall, that he was rich
and a republican. He spent his life with a newspaper in his hand,--he
read twelve or fifteen of them in a day, with little dry, jerking
movements, and nervous contractions that passed over his face like
a shiver. He sat habitually in a corner, and you saw gleaming in his
countenance feeble desires of proclamations and professions of faith.
In the very same moment his glance died away like a too sudden fire that
blazes up and falls again. He only spoke in monosyllables, and to ask
for tea. His wife knew no French, and sat all the evening motionless in
her arm-chair.
[Illustration: 450]
Must we speak of an old lady from Saumur, a frequenter of the baths,
watchful of the heat, the cold, the currents of air, the seasoning,
determined not to enrich her heirs any sooner than it was necessary,
who trotted about all day, and played with her dog in the evening? Of an
abbé and his pupil, who dined apart, to escape the contagion of worldly
conversation? etc. The truth is that there is nothing to paint, and that
in the next restaurant you will see the same people.
Now, in good faith, what can be the conversation in such a society? As
the answer is important, I {425}beg the reader to run over the subjoined
classification of interesting conversations; he will judge for himself
as to the likelihood of meeting at a watering-place with anything
similar.
First sort: Circumlocutions, oratorical argumentation, exordiums full of
insinuation, smiles and bows, which may be translated by the following
phrase: “Monsieur, help me to make a thousand francs.” Second sort:
Periphrases, metaphysical disquisitions, the voice of the soul, gestures
and genuflexions, ending in this phrase: “Madame, allow me to be your
very humble servant.”
Third sort: Two persons who have need of each other are together;
abstract of their conversation: “You are a great man.”
“And so are you.” Fourth sort: You are seated at the fireside with an
old friend; you stir up the embers and talk of--no matter what, for
instance: “Would you like some tea? My cigar is out.” Or, what is
better, you say nothing at all, and listen to the singing of the
tea-kettle; all actions, which mean: “You are a good fellow, and would
do me a service in case of need.”
Fifth sort: New general ideas and freely expressed; sort lost sight
of these hundred years. It was known in the salons of the eighteenth
century; genus to-day fossil.
Sixth, and last sort: Discharges of wit, fireworks {426}of brilliant
speeches, images struck out, colors displayed, profusion of animation,
originality and gayety. A sort infinitely rare and diminished every
day, by the fear of compromising one’s self, by the important air, by
the affectation of morality.
These six sorts wanting--and they are evidently wanting--what remains?
Conversation such as Henri Monnier paints, and M. Prudhomme makes. Only
the manners here are better; for instance, we know that we ought to help
ourselves last to soup, and first to salad; we are provided with certain
proper phrases which we exchange for other proper phrases; we answer to
an anticipated motion by an anticipated motion, after the fashion of the
Chinese; we come to yawn inwardly and smile outwardly, in company and in
state. This comedy of affectations and the commerce of _ennui_ form the
conversation at the springs and elsewhere.
Accordingly many people go to take the air in the streets.
II.
The street is full of downcast faces; lawyers, bankers, people tired
with office work, or bored with having too much fortune and too little
trouble. In the evening, they go to Frascati or watch the loungers who
elbow each other among the shops {427}on the course. During the day
they drink and bathe a little, ride and smoke a good deal. The bloated
patients, stretched on arm-chairs, digest their food; the lean study the
newspapers; the young men talk with the ladies about the weather; the
ladies are busy in rounding their petticoats aright: the old, who are
critics and philosophers, take snuff, or look at the mountains with
glasses, to ascertain if the engravings are exact. It is not worth the
trouble of having so much money, merely to have so little pleasure.
This _ennui_ proves that life resembles the opera; to be happy there,
you must have money for your ticket, but, also, the sentiment of music.
If the money is wanting, you remain outside in the rain among the
boot-blacks; if you have no taste for music, you sleep sullenly in your
superb box. I conclude that we must try to earn the four francs for the
parterre, but above all to make ourselves acquainted with music.
The promenades are too neat and recall the Bois de Boulogne; here and
there a tired broom leans against a tree its slanting silhouette. From
the depths of a thicket the _sergents de ville_ cast on you their eagle
glance, and the dung decorates the alleys with its poetic heaps.
An invalid always brings with him one or more {428}companions. Where is
the being so disinherited by heaven as not to have a relation or friend
who is bored? And where is the friend or relation so thankless as to
refuse a service which is a pleasure party? The invalid drinks and
bathes; the friend wears gaiters or rides, hence the species of
tourists.
[Illustration: 454]
This species comprises several varieties, which are distinguished by the
song, the plumage, and the gait. These are the principal:
FIRST.
The first has long legs, lean body, head bent {429}forward, large and
powerful feet, vigorous hands, excellent at grasping and holding on. It
is provided with canes, ferruled sticks, umbrellas, cloaks, india-rubber
top-coats. It despises dress, shows itself but little in society, knows
thoroughly guides and hotels. It strides over the ground in an admirable
manner, rides with saddle, without saddle, in every way and all possible
beasts. It walks for the sake of walking, and to have the right of
repeating several fine, ready-made phrases.
I found, and picked up, at Eaux-Chaudes, the journal of one of these
walking tourists. It is entitled: _My Impressions_.
“15th July.--Ascent of Vignemale. Set out at midnight, came back at ten
o’clock in the evening. Appetite on the summit; excellent dinner, pate,
fowls, trout, claret, kirsch. My horse stumbled eleven times. Feet
galled. Rondo, good guide. Total: sixty-seven francs.
“20th July.--Ascent of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. Fifteen hours. Sanio,
fair guide; knows neither songs nor stories. Good sleep for an hour
at the top. Two bottles broken, which rather spoiled the provisions.
Thirty-eight francs.
“21st July.--Excursion to the Valley of Héas. Too many stones in the
road. Twenty-one miles. Must exercise every day. To-morrow will
walk twenty-four. {430}“24th July.--Excursion to the Valley of Aspe.
Twenty-seven miles.
“1st August.--Lake of Oo. Good water, very cold; the bottles were well
cooled.
“2d August.--Valley of the Arboust. Met three caravans; two of donkeys,
one of horses. Thirty miles. Throat raw. Corns on the feet.
“3d August.--Ascent of the Maladetta. Three days. Sleep at the Rencluse
de la Maladetta. My large double cloak with the fur collar keeps me
from being frozen. In the morning I make the omelette myself. Punch with
snow. Second night in the Vale of Malibierne. Passage of the Glacier. My
right shoe gets torn. Arrival at the summit. View of three bottles
left by the preceding tourists. For amusement, I read a number of the
_Journal des Chasseurs_. On my return, I am entertained by the guides.
Bagpipes in the evening at my door; great bouquet with a ribbon. Total:
one hundred and sixty-eight francs.
“15th August.--Leave the Pyrenees. Three hundred and ninety-one leagues
in a month, on foot as well as on horse and in carriage. Eleven ascents,
eighteen excursions. I have used up two ferruled sticks, a top-coat,
three pairs of trousers, five pairs of shoes. Good year.
“P.S.--Sublime country. My spirit bows beneath these great emotions.”
{431}
[Illustration: 457]
{432}
{433}SECOND.
The second variety comprises thoughtful methodical people, generally
wearing spectacles, endowed with a passionate confidence in the printed
letter. You know them by the guide-book, which they always carry in
their hand. This book is to them the law and the prophets. They eat
trout at the place named in the book, make all the stops advised by the
book, dispute with the innkeeper when he asks more than is marked in the
book. You see them at the remarkable points with their eyes fixed on the
book, filling themselves with the description, and informing themselves
exactly of the sort of emotion which it is proper to feel. On the eve
of an excursion, they study the book and learn in advance the order and
connection of the sensations they ought to experience: first, surprise;
a little further on a tender impression; three miles beyond, chilled
with horror; finally a calm sensibility. They do and feel nothing but
with documents in hand and on good authority. On reaching a hotel, their
first care is to ask their neighbor at the table if there is any place
of reunion; at what hour people meet there; how the different hours of
the day are filled up; what walk is taken in the afternoon; what other
in the evening. The next {434}day they follow all these directions
conscientiously. They are clad in watering-place fashion; they change
their dress as many times as the custom of the places deems proper; they
make all the excursions they ought to make at the necessary hour, in the
proper equipage. Have they any taste? It is impossible to say; the book
and public opinion have thought and decided for them. They have the
consolation of thinking that they have walked in the broad road and are
imitators of the human kind. These are the _docile tourists._
THIRD.
[Illustration: 460]
The third variety walks in troops and makes its excursions by families.
You see from afar a great {435}peaceable cavalcade; father, mother, two
daughters, two tall cousins, one or two friends and sometimes donkeys
for the little boys.
[Illustration: 461]
They beat the donkeys, which are restive; they advise the fiery youths
to be prudent; a glance retains the young ladies about the green veil of
the mother. The distinctive traits of this variety are the green veil,
the bourgeois spirit, the love of siestas and meals on the grass; an
unfailing sign is the taste for little social games. This variety is
rare at Eaux-Bonnes, more common at Bagnères de Bigorre and at Bagnères
de Luchon. It is remarkable for its prudence, its culinary instincts,
its economical habits. The individuals making the excursion stop at a
spot selected the day before; they unload pâtés and bottles.
If they have brought nothing, they go and knock at the nearest hut for
milk; they are astonished at having to pay three sous a glass for it:
they find that it strongly resembles goat’s milk, and they say to
each other, after they have drunken, that the wooden spoon was
not over-clean. They {436}look curiously at the dark stable, half
underground, where the cows ruminate on beds of heather; after which,
the great fat men seat themselves or lie down. The artist of the family
draws out his album and copies a bridge, a mill, and other album views.
The young girls run and laugh, and let themselves drop out of breath
upon the grass; the young men run after them. This variety, indigenous
in the great cities, in Paris above all, wishes to revive among the
Pyrenees the pleasure parties of Meudon or Montmorency.
FOURTH.
[Illustration: 462]
Fourth kind: dining tourists. At Louvie, a family from Carcassonne,
father, mother, son, daughter and servant, alighted from the interior.
For the first time in their life they were undertaking a {437}pleasure
trip. The father was one of those florid bourgeois, pot-bellied,
important, dogmatic, well-clad in fine cloth, carefully preserved, who
educate their cooks, arrange their house _en bonbonnière_, and establish
themselves in their comfort, like an oyster in its shell. They entered
stupefied into a dark dining-room, where the half-empty bottles strayed
among the cooling dishes. The cloth was soiled, the napkins of a
doubtful white. The father, indignant, asked for a cup of tea, and began
walking up and down with a tragic air. The rest looked at each other
mournfully and sat down. The dishes came helter-skelter, all of them
failures. Our Carcassonne friends helped themselves, turned the meat
over on their plates, looked at it, and did not eat. They ordered tea a
second time; the tea did not appear; the travellers were called for the
coach, and the landlord demanded twelve francs. Without saying a word,
with a gesture of concentrated horror, the head of the family paid.
Then, approaching his wife, he said to her: “It was your wish, madam!” A
quarter of an hour later the storm burst forth: he poured his complaint
into the bosom of the conductor. He declared that the company would fail
if it changed horses at such a poisoner’s; he trusted that disease would
soon carry off such dirty people. They told him that everybody in the
country was so, and that they lived {438}happily for eighty years.
He raised his eyes to heaven, repressed his grief, and directed his
thoughts toward Carcassonne.
FIFTH.
Fifth variety; rare: learned tourists.
[Illustration: 464]
One day, at the foot of a damp rock, I saw a little lean man coming
toward me, with a nose like an eagle’s beak; a hatchet face, green eyes,
grizzling locks, nervous, jerky movements, and something quaint and
earnest in his countenance. He had on huge gaiters, an old black,
rain-beaten cap, trousers spattered to the knee with mud, a botanical
case full of dents on his back, and in his {439}hand a small spade.
Unfortunately I was looking at a plant with long, straight, green stalk,
and white, delicate corolla, which grew near some hidden springs. He
took me for a raw fellow-botanist. “Ah, here you are, gathering plants!
What, by the stalk, clumsy? What will it do in your herbarium without
roots? Where is your case? your weeder?”
“But, sir--”
“Common plant, frequent in the environs of Paris, _Parnassia palustris_:
stem simple, erect, a foot in height, glabrous, radical leaves petiolate
(sheathing caulis, sessile), cordiform, entirely glabrous; simple
flower, white, terminal, the calix with lanceolate leaves, petals
rounded, marked with hollow lines, nectaries ciliate and furnished
with yellow globules at the extremity of the cilia resembling pistils;
helleboraceous. Those nectaries are curious; good study, plant well
chosen. Courage! you’ll get on.”
“But I am no botanist!”
“Very good, you are modest. However, since you are in the Pyrenees,
you must study the flora of the country; you will not find another such
opportunity. There are rare-plants here which you should absolutely
carry away. I gathered near Oleth, the Menziesra Daboeci, an inestimable
godsend. I will show you at the house the _Ramondia_ {440}_Pyrenaica,_
solanaceous with the aspect of the primrose. I scaled Mont Perdu to find
the _Ranunculus parnassifolius_ mentioned by Ramond, and which grows at
a height of 2,700 mètres. Hah! what is that! the _Aquilcgia Pyrenaica!_”
And my little man started off like an isard, clambered up a slope,
carefully dug the soil about the flower, took it up, without cutting
a single root, and returned with sparkling eyes, triumphant air, and
holding it aloft like a banner.
“Plant peculiar to the Pyrenees. I have long wanted it; the specimen is
excellent. Come, my young friend, a slight examination: you don’t know
the species, but you recognize the family?”
“Alas! I don’t know a word of botany.”
He looked at me stupefied. “And why do you gather plants?”
“To see them, because they are pretty.”
He put his flower into his case, adjusted his cap, and went off without
adding another word.
SIXTH.
Sixth variety; very numerous: _sedentary tourists._ They gaze on the
mountains from their windows; their excursions consist in going from
their room to the English garden, from the English garden to the
promenade. They take a siesta upon the heath, {441}and read the journal
stretched on a chair; after which they have seen the Pyrenees.
SEVENTH.
There was a grand ball yesterday. Paul presented there a young creole
from Venezuela in America; the young man has as yet seen nothing; he has
just left ship at Bordeaux, whence he comes here; a very fine fellow,
however, of a fine, olive complexion; great hunter, and better fitted
for frequenting mountains than drawing-rooms. He comes to France to form
himself, as they say; Paul pretends that it is to be deformed.
We have taken our place in a corner; and the young man has asked Paul to
define to him a ball.
“A great funereal and penitential ceremony.”
“Pshaw!”
“No doubt of it, and the custom goes back a long way.”
“Indeed?”
“Back to Henry III. who instituted assemblies of flagellants. The men of
the court bared their backs, and met together to lash one another over
the shoulders. Nowadays there is no longer any whipping, but the sadness
is the same. All the men who are here come to expiate great sins or
have just lost their relations.” {442}“That is the reason why they are
dressed in black.”
“Precisely.”
“But the ladies are in magnificent dresses.”
“They mortify themselves only the better for that. Each one has hung
around the loins a sort of haircloth, that horrible load of petticoats
which hurts them and finally makes them ill. This is after the example
of the saints, the better to work out salvation.”
“But all the men are smiling.”
“That is the finest thing about it; cramped as they are, shut up in
their winding-sheet of black cloth. They impose restraint on themselves,
and give proof of virtue. Go forward six steps, you will see.”
The young man advanced; not yet used to the movements of a drawing-room,
he stepped on the feet of a dancer and smashed the hat of a melancholy
gentleman. He returned, covered with confusion, to hide himself beside
us.
“What did your two poor devils say to you?”
“I don’t at all understand. The first, after an involuntary wry face,
looked at me amiably. The other put his hat under his other arm and
bowed.”
“Humility, resignation, a wish to suffer in order to enhance their
merits. Under Henry III. they thanked him who had strapped them the
best. I {443}will make a musician talk; listen. Monsieur Steuben, what
quadrille are you playing there?”
“_L’Enfer_, a fantastic quadrille. It is the legend of a young girl
carried off alive in the clutches of the devil.”
“It is, indeed?”
“Very expressive. The finale expresses her cries of grief and the
howling of the demons. The young girl makes the air, the demons the
bass.
“And you play after that?”
“Some contra-dances on _di tanti palpiti._”
“Won’t you please give me the idea of that air.”
“It is at the return of Tancred. The point is to paint the most touching
sadness.”
“Excellent choice. And no mazurkas, no waltzes?”
“Presently; here is a great book of Chopin, he is our favorite. What a
master! What fever! what cries, sorrowful, uncertain, broken! All these
mazurkas make one want to weep.
“That is why they are danced; you see, my dear child, only afflicted
people could select such music. By the way, how do they dance in your
country?”
“With us? we jump and stir about, we laugh out, shout, perhaps.”
“What comical folks! and why?”
“Because they are happy and want to stir their limbs.“{444}
“Here, four steps forward, as many back, a turn cramped by the conflict
of neighboring dresses, two or three geometric inclinations. The
cotton-spinners in the prison at Poissy make precisely the same
motions.”
“But these people talk.”
“Go forward and listen; there is nothing inconsiderate about it, I
assure you.”
He returns after a minute.