ST. LIZIER AND THE COUSERANS
Le Pays de Couserans lies in the valley of the Salat, in the
mid-Pyrenees, hemmed in by Foix, Comminges and Spain. Its name is
derived from the Euskarans, an Iberian tribe who were here on the spot
in the dark ages.
The history of the Couserans is not known to anything like the extent of
its neighbouring states, and is, accordingly, very little travelled by
strangers from afar, save long-bearded antiquarians who come to study
St. Lizier, and regret that they were not obliged to come on donkey-back
as of old, instead of by rail or automobile. The trouble with
antiquarianism, as a profession, or a passion, is that it leads one to
fall into a sleepy unprogressiveness which comports little with the
modern means at hand for doing things. A photographic plate of a curious
Roman inscription is far more truthful and convincing than the most
painstaking Ruskinese pencil drawing ever limned, and a good
"process-cut" of the broad strokes of some facile modern artist's brush
is more typical of the characteristics of a landscape than the finest
wood or steel engraving our grandfathers ever knew.
If you like grand mountains, here in Couserans is Mont Vallier, a superb
giant of the central chain of the Pyrenees. If it is sweet sloping
valleys that you prefer, here they are in all their unspoiled wildness,
for the railway actually does stop at St. Girons. If an ice-cold
mountain stream would please your fancy, there is the Salat and its
tributaries, flowing down by St. Girons and St. Lizier into the Garonne.
And, finally, if you wish to roll back the curtain of time you will see
in old St. Lizier a stage set with the accessories the reminiscent
splendours of which will be scarcely equalled by any other feudal bourg
of France.
There is no region in the Pyrenees of which less is known historically
than the Valley of the Salat. A vicomte reigned here in the sixteenth
century, but the seigneury was divided among different branches of the
family soon after; and, if they had an archivist among them, he failed
to preserve his documents along with the written history of the greater
affairs of Toulouse and Foix. Soon religious and civil troubles began to
press and much of Couserans gave allegiance to neighbouring
feudalities, with the result that from the times of Henri IV to those of
the Revolution, not an historical event of note has been chronicled.
As one approaches St. Girons, the metropolis of the Couserans, by road
from Foix, he passes through the Grotto of the Mas d'Azil, a great
underground cave, through which runs a splendid carriage road. It is a
work unique among the masterpieces of the road builders of France. This
subterranean roadway has, perhaps, a length of half a kilometre and a
width of from ten to thirty metres. It is not a stupendous work nor an
artistic one, but a most curious one. This Grotte de Mas d'Azil with its
great domed gallery can only be likened to a Byzantine cupola. This much
is natural; but a roadway beneath this noble roof and a parapet
alongside are the work of man.
It gave shelter to two thousand persons under its damp vault during the
wars of religion, in 1625, when the neighbouring Calvinists here
defended themselves successfully against the Catholic army of invaders.
The cavern was practically a fortress, then, and an old atlas of the
time shows its precise position as being directly behind a little
fortified or walled town, the same which exists to-day. The roadway on
this old map was marked, as now on the maps of the État-Major, as
running directly through the "Roch du Mas," and an engraved footnote to
the plate states that the "_rivière passe dessoubs ceste montagne_."
When Richelieu triumphed against the Protestants he razed the
fortifications of Mas d'Azil, as he did others elsewhere. The little
town is really delightfully disposed to-day, and has a quaint, old domed
church and a fine shaded promenade which would make an admirable
stage-setting for a mediæval costume play.
At Montjoie, on the road to Foix, is a curious relic of the past. In the
fourteenth century it was a famous walled town of considerable
pretensions; but, to-day, a population of a hundred find it hard work to
earn a livelihood. The square, battlemented walls of the little bourg
are still in evidence, flanked with four tourelles at the corners and
pierced with two gates. Architecturally it is a mélange of Romanesque
and Gothic.
Castelnau-Durban lies midway between St. Girons and Foix, and possesses
still, with some semblance to its former magnificence though it be a
ruin, an old thirteenth-century château. At Rimont, near by, is an
ancient _bastide royale_, a sort of kingly rest-house or hunting lodge
of olden days. The _bastide_ and the _cabanon_ are varieties of small
country-houses, one or the other of which may be found scattered
everywhere through the south of France, from the Pyrenees to the Alps.
They are low-built, square, red-tiled, little houses, a sort of
abbreviated Italian villa, though their architecture is more Spanish
than Italian. They are the punctuating notes of every southern French
landscape.
One cannot improve on an unknown French poet's description of the
_bastide_:--
"Monuments fastueux d'orgueil ou de puissance,
Hôtels, palais, châteaux, votre magnificence
N'éblouit pas mes yeux, n'inspire pas mes chants.
Je ne veux célébrer que la maison des champs,
La riante bastide...."
St. Girons has a particularly advantageous and attractive site at the
junction of two rivers, the Lez and the Salat, and of four great
transversal roadways. The traffic with the Spanish Pyrenean provinces
has always been very great, particularly in cattle, as St. Girons is the
nearest large town in France to the Spanish frontier.
A century ago a traveller described St. Girons as a "dull crumbling
town," but he died too soon, this none too acute observer. It was
near-by St. Lizier that had begun to crumble, while St. Girons itself
was already prospering anew. To-day it has arrived. Its definitive
position has been established. Its affairs augment continually; and it
is one of the few towns in these parts which has added fifty per cent.
to its population in the last fifty years.
St. Girons is without any remarkably interesting monuments, though the
town is delightfully situated and laid out and there is real character
and picturesqueness in its tree-lined promenade along the banks of the
Salat. Originally St. Girons was known as Bourg-sous-Ville, being but a
dependency of St. Lizier. To-day the state of things is exactly
reversed. In the twelfth century it came to have a name of its own,
after that of the Apostle Geronius. In the Quartier Villefranche, at St.
Girons, on the left bank of the Salat, is the Palais de Justice, once
the old château of the seigneurs, which architecturally ranks second to
the old Église de St. Vallier with its great Romanesque doorway and its
crenelated tower like that of a donjon.
St. Lizier, just out of St. Girons on the St. Gauden's road, is one of
the mediæval glories which exist to-day only in their historic past.
[Illustration: _St. Lizier_]
Its château, its cathedral and its old stone bridge are unfortunately so
weather-worn as to be all but crumbled away; but they still point
plainly to the magnificent record that once was theirs. Once St. Lizier
was the principal city of Couserans, a region which included all that
country lying between the basins of the Ariège and the Garonne. In Roman
days it was an important strategic point and bore the imposing name of
_Lugdunum Consoranorum_. Later it became a bishopric and preserved all
its prerogatives up to the Revolution.
The cloister of the twelfth and fourteenth-century cathedral has been
classed as one of those _Monuments Historiques_ over which the French
Minister of Beaux Arts has a loving care. The château of other days was
used also as an episcopal palace, but has undergone to-day the
desecration of serving as a madhouse.
At each step, as one strolls through St. Lizier, he comes upon relics of
the past, posterior even to the coming of Christianity. On the height of
the hill were four pagan temples, one each to the honour of Minerva,
Mars, Jupiter and Janus. Only a simple souvenir of the latter remains to
complete the story of their former existence as set forth in the
chronicles. There is a two-visaged "Janus-head," discovered in 1771,
which is now in the old cathedral.
To the north of St. Lizier, a dozen kilometres or so, is the Château de
Noailhan, dating from the fifteenth century, which is admirable from an
architectural point of view.
Above St. Girons, in the valley of the Salat, is the quaint little city
of Seix. It is delightful because it has not been exploited; and if you
do not mind a twenty-kilometre diligence ride from St. Girons, if
travelling by rail, it will give you a practical demonstration of a
"rest-cure." The ruins of the Châteaux de Mirabel and La Garde, close to
the Pont de la Saule, recall the fact that Charlemagne confided the
guarding of these upper valleys of the Couserans to the inhabitants of
Seix, and gave it the dignity of being called a "_Ville Royale_."
In the Vallée d'Ustou one may see a real novelty in industry which the
mountaineers have developed, and a monopoly at that. Think of that, ye
who talk of the uncommercialism of effete Europe!
[Illustration: _Trained Bears of the Vallée d'Ustou_]
It is the trade in dancing bears which the _montagnards_ of Ustou
control. Not great, overbearing, ugly, unwholesome-looking animals like
grizzlies, nor sleek pale polar bears, but spicy-looking,
cinnamon-coloured little bears, as gentle apparently as a shaggy
Newfoundland, and frequently not much bigger. When one does grow out of
his class, and rises head and shoulders above his fellows as he stands
on his hind legs, he is a moth-eaten, crotchety specimen whose only
usefulness is as a "come-on," or a preceptor, for the younger ones.
There's nothing difficult about teaching a bear to dance. At least one
so judges from watching the process here; but one needs patience, a
will, and must not know fear, for even a dancing bear has wicked teeth
and claws; and, his strength, if dormant, is dangerous if he once
suspects he is master and not slave. Above all the teeth are a great and
valuable asset to a dancing bear. A bear who simply struts around and
holds his muzzle in air is put in the very rear row of the chorus and
called a _sal cochon_, but one who grins and shows his teeth has
possibilities in his profession that the other will never dream of. The
bears of the country fairs of France are all descended from the best
families of Ustou; and, whatever their lack of grace may be in the
dance, certainly "_personne est plus amoureux dans la société_."
All through Couserans, particularly along the river valleys, are
piquant little villages and smiling peasant folk, ever willing to pass
the time of day with the stranger, or discuss the good old days before
the railroad came to St. Girons, and when St. Lizier was looked upon as
being a possible religious capital of the world.
In the high valleys, above St. Girons, in Bethmale in particular, one
finds still a reminiscence of the past in the picturesque costumes of
the peasants not yet fallen before the advance of Paris modes. The men
wear short red or blue breeches, embroidered with arabesques down the
sides, and, on fête-days, a big broad-brimmed hat, and a vest of
embroidered velours, with great turned-up sabots, something like those
of the Ariège.
The women have a sort of red bonnet coiffe, held tight around the head
by a kind of diadem of ribbon, and a great white-winged cap tumbling to
the shoulders. The skirt is short with very many pleats, and there is
also the traditional sabot. This is the best description the author, a
mere man, can give.
High up in this same valley is the little village of Biert, once the
civil capital of the region, as was St. Lizier the religious capital.
To-day there are between three and four thousand people here. Just above
is the Col de Port, 1,249 metres high, leading into the watershed of the
Ariège and the Comté de Foix.