THE VALLEY OF THE ARIÈGE
The entire valley of the Ariège, from the Val d'Andorre until it empties
into the Garonne at Toulouse, contains as many historic and romantic
reminders as that of any river of the same length in France.
Saverdun and Mazères, between Toulouse and Pamiers, and perhaps fifty
kilometres north of Foix, must be omitted from no historical trip in
these parts. Saverdun sits close beside one of the few remaining columns
which formerly marked the boundary between Languedoc and Gascogne, a
veritable historical guide-post. It was one of the former fortified
towns of the Comté de Foix. It is an unimportant and unattractive enough
place to-day, if a little country town of France can ever be called
unattractive, but it is the head centre of innumerable châteaux and
country houses of other days hidden away on the banks of the Ariège.
Mostly they are without a traceable history, but everything points to
the fact that they played an important part in the golden days of
chivalry, and such names as l'Avocat-Vieux, Frayras, Larlenque, Madron,
Pauliac and Le Vigne--the oldtime manor of the family of Mauvasin--will
suggest much to any who know well their mediæval history.
A diligence runs to-day from Saverdun to Mazères, the birthplace of the
gorgeous and gallant Gaston of Foix, the hero of Ravenna. Mazères is a
most ancient little town, built on the banks of a small river, the Hers,
and in the thirteenth century was surrounded by important
fortifications, now mostly gone to build up modern garden walls. Around
the old ramparts has been laid out a series of encircling boulevards,
which, as an expression of civic improvement, is far and away ahead of
the squares and circles of new western towns in America. The encircling
boulevard is one, if not the chief, charm of very many French towns.
The ruins of the ancient château where was born the celebrated Gaston
are still seen, but nothing habitable is left to suggest the luxury amid
which the youth was brought up. Near by are the châteaux of Nogarède and
Nassaure, each of them reminiscent of family names writ large in the
history of Foix.
Another dozen kilometres southward towards Foix is Pamiers. It is
extremely probable that provincial France has changed its manners
considerably since the Revolution, but one can hardly believe of
Pamiers, to-day a delightful little valley town, all green and red and
brown, that a traveller with a jaundiced eye once called it "an ugly,
stinking, ill-built hole with an inn--_of sorts_," This is not the
aspect of the city, nor does it describe the Hôtel Catala.
Pamiers owes its origin to the erection of a feudal château by Comte
Roger II on his return from the Holy Land, and which he called _Apamea_
or _Apamia_, in memory of his visit to _Apamée_ in Syria. Evolution has
readily transformed the name into Pamiers. Virtually, so far as its
lands went, the place belonged to a neighbouring abbey, but as the monks
were forced to call upon the Comtes de Foix to aid them in protecting
their property from the Comtes de Carcassonne, the title rights soon
passed to the ruling house of Foix. In 1628 Condé pillaged and sacked
the city, and not a vestige now remains of its once proud château, save
such portions as may have been built into and hidden in other
structures. The site of the old château is preserved in the memory only
by the name of Castellat, which has been given to a singularly
beautiful little park and promenade.
It was in the thirteenth century that a Bishop of Pamiers, the legate of
Pope Boniface VIII, insulted Philippe-le-Bel in full audience of his
parlément. The king, resentful, drove him from the council, and a Bull
of Pope Boniface delivered the bishop to an ecclesiastical tribunal. So
far, so good, but Boniface issued another Bull demanding that the king
of France submit to papal power in matters temporal as well as in
matters spiritual. Thus a pretty quarrel ensued, beginning with the
famous letter from the king, which opened thus: "Philippe, by the grace
of God, King of the French, to Boniface, the pretended Pope, has little
or no reason for homage...."
Pamiers itself is a dull little provincial cathedral town, lying low in
a circle of surrounding hills. Its churches are historically famous, and
architecturally varied and beautiful, and the octagonal belfry of its
cathedral (1512), in the style known as "_Gothic-Toulousain_," is
particularly admirable.
Mirepoix, a dozen kilometres east of Pamiers, is interesting. The
Seigneurie of Mirepoix became an appanage of Guy de Levis, maréchal in
the army of Simon de Montfort in the thirteenth century, but the
legislators of Revolutionary times, disregarding the usage of five
centuries, coupled the control of the affairs of the region with those
of Foix, from which it had indeed been separated long ages before.
Mirepoix has, nevertheless, an individuality and a history quite its
own. In 1317 it was made a bishopric, and was under the immediate
control of the Seneschalship of Carcassonne. It had, by parent right, a
certain attachment for Foix, but by the popular consent of its people
none at all; thus it lay practically under the sheltering wing of
Languedoc.
The descendants of Guy de Levis were distinguished in the army, in
diplomacy and held many public offices of trust at Paris. Under Louis XV
the last representative of the family was made a "Duc, Maréchal de
France et Gouverneur de Languedoc." It was his cousin, François de
Levis-Ajac (from whom Levis opposite Quebec got its name), who became
also Maréchal de France, and illustrious by reason of his defence of
Canada.
The Château de Montségur, in the valley of the Hers, was the scene of
the last stand of the Albigeois tracked to their death by the
inquisitors.
Just westward of Foix is La Bastide-de-Serou, founded in 1254, another
of those ancient bastides with which this part of the Midi was covered
in mediæval times. To-day it is a mere nothing on the map, and not much
more in reality, a dull, sad town, whose only liveliness comes from the
exploitations of a company whose business it is to dig phosphate and
bauxite from the hillsides round about.
Below La Bastide is the Château de Bourdette, charmingly set about with
vines in a genuine pastoral fashion. For a neighbour, not far away,
there is also the Château de Rodes, set in the midst of a forest of
mountain ash and quite isolated. Either, if they are ever put on the
market (for they are inhabitable to-day), would make a good retiring
spot for one who wanted to escape the strenuous cares and hurly-burly of
city life.
South of Foix is Tarascon-sur-Ariège, a name which has a familiar sound
to lovers of fiction and readers of Daudet. It was not at
Tarascon-sur-Ariège where lived Daudet's estimable bachelor, Tartarin,
but Tarascon-sur-Rhône in Provence. Daudet pulled the latter smug little
town from obscurity and oblivion--even though the inhabitants said that
he had slandered them--but nothing has happened that gives
distinction to the Tarascon of the Pyrenees since the days when its
seigneurs inhabited its château.
[Illustration: _Tarascon-sur-Ariège_]
Reminders of the town's mediæval importance are few indeed, and of its
château only a lone round tower remains. There are two fortified
gateways in the town still above ground, and two thirteenth-century
church towers which take rank as admirable mediæval monuments.
Tarascon was one of the four principal fortified towns of the Comté de
Foix, but suffered by fire, and for ever since has languished and dozed
its days away, so that not even a passing automobile will wake its
dwellers from their somnolence. Tarascon has a fine and picturesque
bridge over the Ariège which intrudes itself in the foreground from
almost every view-point. It is not old, however, but the work of the
last century.
Here nearly everything is of the mouldy past and rusty with age and
tradition, though there is a local iron industry something considerable
in extent.
The highroad from Foix into Andorra cuts the town directly in halves,
and on either side are narrow, climbing streets running up the hillside
from the river bank, but architectural or topographical changes have
been few since the olden times. Tarascon's population--though the place
is the market town of the commune--has, in a hundred years, fallen from
fifteen hundred to fourteen hundred and forty five, to give exact
statistical figures, which are supposed not to lie. Such observations in
France really prove nothing, not even that signs of progress are
wanting, nor that folk are less prosperous; they simply suggest that its
cities and towns are self-satisfied and content, and are not ambitious
to outdistance their neighbours in alleged civic improvements of
doubtful taste--always at the tax-payers' expense.
Tarascon of itself might well be omitted from a Pyrenean itinerary, but
when one includes the neighbouring church of Notre Dame de Sabart--a
place of pilgrimage for the faithful of the whole region of the Pyrenees
on the eighth and fifteenth of September--the case were different. It is
one of the sights and shrines of the region, as is that of Stes.
Maries-de-la-Mer in Provence, or Notre Dame de Laghat in the old Comté
de Nice.
The old abbey-fortress built here by Charlemagne has disappeared, but
the great Romanesque church, with its three great naves, is avowedly
built up from the remains of the former edifice. Most of Charlemagne's
handiwork has vanished throughout his kingdom, but the foundations
remain, here and there, and upon them has been built all that is best
and most enduring in Gaul.
In the environs it was planned to make a great centre of affairs, but
destiny and the Comtes de Foix ruled otherwise, though, curiously
enough, up to the Revolution the "_Prétres de Sabart_" ruled with an
iron-bound supremacy many of the affairs of neighbouring parishes which
were no business of theirs. It was church and state again in conflict,
but the Revolution finished that for the time being.
Like many of the _pardons_ of Brittany, or the fête of Les Saintes
Maries in Provence, the fête of Notre Dame de Sabart commences as a
religious function, but degenerates finally into a _Fête Profane_, with
dancing, bull-baiting, and eating and drinking to the full. It is
perhaps not a wholly immoral aspect that the fête takes on; certainly
the participants do not act in any manner outrageous; but by contrast
the thing is bound to be remarked by westerners, and probably misjudged
and set down as something worse than it is. Bull-baiting, for instance,
sounds bad, but when one learns that it consists only of trying to
snatch a ribbon rosette from between the bull's horns--for a prize of
three francs for a blue one, and five francs for a red one, the bull
carrying the red rosette being, supposedly, more vicious and savage than
the others--the whole thing resolves itself into a simple, harmless
amusement, far more dangerous for the amateur rosette picker than the
bull, who really seems to enjoy it.
Vic Dessos, just southwest of Tarascon, is a quaint little mountain
town, with the ruins of the Château de Montréal and a twelfth-century
church as attractions for the traveller. The savage surroundings of Vic,
the denuded mountain peaks, and the deep valleys, bring tempests and
thunderstorms in their train with astonishing violence and frequency.
The clouds roll down like a pall, suddenly, at any time of the year, and
as quickly pass away again. The phenomena have been remarked by many
travellers in times past, and one need not fear missing it if he stays
anything over three hours within a fifty-kilometre radius. If this
offers anything of a sensation to one, Vic Dessos should be visited. You
can arrive by diligence from Tarascon, and can get comfortably in out of
the rain at the excellent Hôtel Benazet.
From Tarascon to Ax-les-Thermes, still in the valley of the Ariège, is
twenty-five kilometres of superb roadway. All the way are strung out
groups of dainty villages surrounded with cultivated country. Here and
there is an isolated mass of rock, a round watch-tower, or a ruined
fortress, still possessing its crenelated walls to give an attitude of
picturesqueness. There are innumerable little villages, a whole battery
of them, linked together. At the end of this long peopled highway is an
unpretentious mediæval country house, of that class known as a
_gentilhommière_, of fawn-coloured stone, and still possessing its two
flanking sentinel towers preserved in all the romantic grimness of their
youth.
At the junction of the Ariège with the Ascou, the Oriège, the Lauze and
the Foins is Ax-les-Thermes--the ancient _Aquæ_ of the Romans, and now a
"thermal station" of the first rank. Primarily Ax is noted for its
sulphurous waters, but for the lover of romantic days and ways its
architectural and Historical monuments are of the first consideration.
The ruins of the Château des Maures, the ancient _Castel Maü_, are the
chief of these monuments, while a neighbouring peak of rock bears aloft
an enormous square tower surmounted by a statue of the Virgin.
There are sixty-one "sources" at Ax-les-Thermes giving a supply of
medicinal waters. In part they were known to the Romans, and in 1260
Saint Louis founded a hospital here for sick soldiers returning from the
Crusades.
Ax-les-Thermes is not a howlingly popular watering place, but it is far
more delightful than Luchon, Cauterets or Bigorre, if quaintness of
architecture, manners and customs, and modesty of hotel prices count for
anything.
The Porte et Pont d'Espagne at Ax is one of the most interesting
architectural reminders of the past that one will find throughout the
Pyrenees. The bridge itself is but a diminutive span carrying a narrow
roadway, which if not forbidden to automobile traffic should be, for the
negotiating of this bridge and road, and the low, arched gateway at the
end, will come very near to spelling disaster for any who undertakes it.
Throughout the neighbourhood one sees more than an occasional yawning
pit's mouth. All through the Comté de Foix were exploited, and are yet
to some extent, iron mines and forges, the latter known as _Forges
Catalans_. Roger-Bernard, Comte de Foix, in 1293 gave the first charter
to the mine-promotors of the neighbourhood, and the industry flourished
in many parts of the Comté until within a few generations, when,
apparently, the supply of mineral was becoming exhausted.
At Luzenac, on the line between Tarascon and Ax, one turns off the road
and in a couple of hours, if he is a good brisk walker, makes the
excursion to the _château-à-pic_ of Lourdat. There is a little village
of the same name at the base of the rocky peak which holds aloft the
château, but that doesn't count.
Without question this Château de Lourdat ranks as one of the most
spectacular of all the Pyrenean châteaux. Its rank in history, too, is
quite in keeping with its extraordinary situation, though nothing very
startling ever happened within its walls. It dates from the thirteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and outside that of the capital of Foix was the
most efficient stronghold the counts possessed. Louis XIII demolished
the edifice, in part, fearing its powers of resistance, and as a base
from which some new project might be launched against him. Accordingly,
it is a ruin to-day, but in spite of this there are still left four
pronounced lines of fortifications before one comes to the inner
precincts of the château. For this reason alone it ranks as one of the
most strongly defended of all contemporary feudal works. Even the old
_Cité de Carcassonne_ has but two encircling walls.
The square donjon rising in the middle is in the best style of that
magnificent royal builder, Gaston Phoebus, and is reminiscent of the
works of Foulques Nerra in mid-France. There is also a great
ogive-arched portal, or gateway, which made still another defence to be
scaled before one finally entered within.
In situation and general spectacular effect the Château de Lourdat takes
a very near rank to that rock-perched château at Le Puy--"the most
picturesque spot in the world."
[Illustration: _Château de Lourdat_]