A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees Part 10

Often the jests take a religious turn. The chaplain of one of the counts of Orthez, defending his own unpriestly fondness for hunting, a.s.serted that the ten horns of the stag (_cerf_) stood for the Decalogue; and that the stag was to be as ardently followed as the sovereign pontiff, the latter being himself _le cerf des cerfs,--servus servorum_.

If a husband were seriously rasped by his wife, or their tempers could not agree, he was wont to retire her to a convent. "He did not send her to the devil," remarks a sly annalist, "but he gave her to the Lord."

And read this whimsical epitaph on an organist of the cathedral at Lescar, a bishopric near Orthez. He died in the fifteenth century:

"As you pa.s.s, pray G.o.d for his soul, that having a.s.sisted in the music of this world, he may be received forever among the blessed to a.s.sist in the celestial music. Amen."

Orthez is known to our century as the scene of a spiteful battle between Wellington and Soult, engaging eighty thousand men, and ending in the victory of the former and the rout of the French. But the town is so deeply sunk in the past that its kinship with modern events seems almost cause for resentment; and we will leave it as it is, with its older glories and memories thickly crusted upon it.

CHAPTER VIII.

"THE LITTLE PARIS OF THE SOUTH."

When the Count of Foix made a hunting trip to his _chateau mignon_ on the present site of Pau, he found it a goodly journey. There were quagmires and waste land to pa.s.s, and the visit and return were not to be made in a sun's shining. More greatly than avenging spirits from his dungeons the spirit of steam would affright him to-day, as it goes roaring over the levels in a hundred minutes to the same destination.

From Orthez, it is less than two hours by rail, and we are at last in Pau. The _Midi_ line is accurately on time. These French railroads are operated by the State; they are not afflicted with parallel lines and bitter compet.i.tion; they have no occasion, as our roads have, to advertise a faster schedule than can possibly be carried out.

Consequently their time-tables aim to state the exact truth, and the roads can and do live up to it.

It is late in the evening when we arrive, and we seek no impressions. A comfortable omnibus winds us up an infinity of turns, through an apparent infinity of streets, and we are at the Hotel Ga.s.sion.

It is impossible to be entirely impressionless, even for travelers at ten at night. It is the hotel itself which makes the dent. Our vague misgivings as to the "dismal roadside inns" awaiting our tour have already been arrested at Biarritz and San Sebastian. They are sent into exile from Pau. The Hotel Ga.s.sion, whose name honors a stout old Bearnais warrior, is fitly a palace. It cost four hundred thousand dollars. A cushioned elevator lifts us smoothly upward to our rooms, which prove high-ceiled and unusually large and have dressing-rooms attached. The dark walls accord with a deep mossy carpet. The furnishings are ma.s.sive in mahogany, polished and carved: a wardrobe, dressing-cases, a writing-desk; a sofa-couch, made inaccessible, as everywhere in Europe, by the barrier of a huge round table; padded arm-chairs, upholstered in silk damask; and, acme of prevision, a praying-chair. The beds seem beds of state, covered and canopied with some satiny material; and both silk and lace curtains part before the windows, showing separate balconies in the night outside. The dining-hall and the parlors, which we do not seek until the morning, prove to be on an equally expensive scale; paintings of the Pyrenees hang in the wide halls; and there is a conservatory and winter-garden opening on the terrace. The building is of grey stone, with corner towers and turrets and an imposing elevation, and has less the look of a hotel than of a royal _Residenz_.

Our estimates of the standards of comfort in the Pyrenees are perceptibly heightened by the evening's impressions alone, as we discuss our surroundings and the Apollinaris. With Pau thus rivaling Lucerne, we grow more confident for Eaux-Bonnes and Cauterets, Luchon and Bigorre.

And as, from the balcony, we look in vain across the murky night to see the snow-peaks which we know are facing us, we agree that here at the good Hotel Ga.s.sion we could luxuriously outstay the lengthiest storm to view them.

II.

We are glad when daylight comes, as boys are on Christmas morning. The present we are eager for is the sight of the Pyrenees snow-peaks. The sun is shining, the sky clear. Even coffee and rolls seem time-wasters, and we hasten out to the terrace.

Yes, the Pyrenees are before us. There stretches the range, its relief walling the southern horizon from west to the farthest east, the line of snow-tusks sharp and white in the sunshine. They are distant yet, but they stand as giants, parting two kingdoms. Austere and still, they face us, as they have faced this spot since that stormy Eocene morning when they sprang like the dragon's white teeth from the earth.

The view is a far-reaching one. The eye sweeps the broadside of the entire west-central chain,--a full seventy miles from right to left. The view might recall, as the greater recalls the less, the winter summits of the Adirondacks, seen from the St. Regis mountain. It has been more equally paired with the line of the distant Alps seen from the platform at Berne. I may parallel it, too, again in Switzerland, with the view of the Valais peaks which bursts on one when, winding upward past the Daubensee and its desolation, he comes out suddenly upon the brink of the great wall of the Gemmi. But here there is a warmth in the view beyond that of Switzerland. Some one has said that "snow is regarded as the type of purity not because it is cold but because it is spotless."

This distant snow-line is spotless, but to the eye at least it is not cold.

Here as there, the separate peaks have their separate personality. It is not a blur of nameless tips. Two especially arrest attention, south and southeast, for they rise head and shoulders above their neighbors. Each bears the name of the _Pic du Midi_. That opposite us, dominating the valley of Ossau, is the _Pic du Midi d'Ossau_. It is ice-capped and jagged,--

"A rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle,"--

the Matterhorn of the Pyrenees. That on the left is the noted _Pic du Midi de Bigorre_, famed for the view from its top. Other prominent peaks are also pointed out. _Mont Perdu_ and the _Vignemale_, two of the princes of the chain, are partly hidden by other summits, and are too distant to rule as they ought. The monarch _Maladetta_, the highest summit of the Pyrenees, is farther eastward still and cannot be seen from Pau.

It is a repaying prospect; a majestic salutation, preceding the nearer acquaintance to come. One thing we know instantly. There will be no lack of n.o.ble scenery in these mountains. We shall find wild views among their rocks and ice,--views, it must be, which shall dispute with many in the Alps.

This prospect from the terrace at Pau is a celebrated one. Icy peaks are not all that is seen. In front of them the ranges rise, still high from the plain, but smoothed and softened with the green of pines and turf.

Between these and the Pau valley spread hidden leagues of rolling plains, swelling as they approach us into minor ravelins of foothills known as the _coteaux_; and little poplar-edged streams, "creaming over the shallows," winding their way toward the valley just below us, are coming from the long slopes to join the hurrying Gave de Pau. Houses and hamlets are here and there, and the even streak of the railway; and over toward the coteaux we see the village of Jurancon, famed for its wines.

The terrace falls sheer away, a fifty-foot wall from where we stand, and at its base, as we lean over the parapet, we see houses and alleys and just beneath us a school-yard of shouting, frolicking children. We brighten their play with a few friendly sous, as one enlivens the Bernese bear-pit with carrots.

Behind us, the Hotel Ga.s.sion rises to cut off the streets beyond it; to the right, along the terrace a few hundred yards, stands a stout old building, square and firm, which we know at once for the castle of Henry of Navarre.

III.

"In most points of view," as Johnson observes, in his _Sketches in the South of France_, "we look down the valley and see on either side its mountain walls; or we are placed upon culminating points overtopping all the rest of the prospect; but here the view is across the depression and against the vast panorama, which opposes the eye at all quarters, and comprehends within it the whole of the picture. High up in the snow the very pebbles seem to lie so distinctly that, but for the s.p.a.ce between, a boy might pick them up; lower down, from among the brown heather thin blue streaks stream aloft from some cottage chimney, winding along the brae-side till melted into air. We half expect to see some human figure traverse those white fields and mark the footprints he leaves behind, some shepherd with his dog crossing from valley to valley. Alas! it is twenty miles away, the pebbles are huge ma.s.ses of projecting rock, precipices on which the snow cannot rest; yonder smoke is from the charcoal-burner's fire, which would take in a cottage for a mouthful of fuel, and a dozen men piled on each other's shoulders might at this moment be swallowed up in these snow-beds and we never the wiser.

"With the warm sunlight upon it, and the pure, clear blue above, into which these great shapes are wedged like a divine mosaic, the scene looks so spotless and holy in its union with the heavens that one might fancy it a link between this earthliness and the purity above, 'the heaven-kissing hill' on which angels' feet alight. The great vision of marvelous John Bunyan seemed there realized, and we had found the Immanuel's Land and these were the Delectable Mountains. 'For,' said he, 'when the morning was up they bid him look South; so he did, and behold, at a great distance he saw a most pleasant mountainous country beautified with woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts, flowers also; with springs and fountains very delectable to behold.... It was common, too, for all the pilgrims, and from thence they might see the gates of the Celestial City.'"

IV.

At the other side of the hotel we are in Pau. There is not very much that is impressive in its general appearance. We go by a patch of park and through a mediocre street, and find ourselves in the public square,--the Carfax of the city. From this run east and south its two chief streets. All of the buildings are low and most of them dingy. We expected newer, higher, more Parisian effects. At the right of the square is the long, flat market-building, vocal, in and out, this early morning, with bustling hucksters superintending their stalls. The square itself is bright with the colors of overflowing flowers and fabrics and other idols of the market-place. Neat little heaps of fruit, apexed into "ball-piled pyramids," are guarded by characterful old women, alert and intent, whose heads, coifed with striped kerchiefs, nod a reward to the purchaser with a hearty "_Merci, monsieur_!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Few of the streets in the town are well paved, and few of the villas seen in driving in the suburbs aid to raise the architectural average.

Except for its palace-hotels, Pau seems to show little of artistic building enterprise.

This city, so popular with the English, is rarely spoken of in America.

There, in fact, it is singularly little known. This is no truer of Pau than of the Pyrenees themselves; but even to Englishmen who may know as little as we of the latter, the former is familiar ground. Four thousand Britons winter here annually, besides French and other visitors, and Pau runs well in the hibernal race, even against Mentone and Nice. Its hotels alone would evidence this. Up to these, there are all grades of good accommodation,--the _pensions_, of good or better cla.s.s; furnished apartments, or a flat to be rented by the season; whole villas to be leased or purchased, as the intending comer may prefer.

One can leave Paris or Ma.r.s.eilles by the evening express and be in Pau the next afternoon,--about the same length of time as required to reach St. Augustine from New York. This is certainly far from a formidable journey, and it is matter for surprise that the adventurous American does not oftener take it.

The favor of the spot, it owes to its climate. Something there is,--some meteorological idiosyncrasy in its location,--which guards its still, mild air, the winter through. Storms rage impotently down from the mountains or across the Landes; they cannot pa.s.s the charmed barrier of the coteaux. Winds are rare in Pau. Rain is not rare; but the atmosphere, even when damp, is not chilling, and the lines of rain fall soft and never aslant. There is a tradition of an old sea-captain who once made a brief stay here and who, as he took his daily walks, was noticed as constantly and restlessly whistling. He finally left in disgust, with the remark that there was not a capful of wind to be had in the place.

The winter colony takes full possession of the town. It pa.s.ses thirty thousand inhabitants under the yoke, as Rome pa.s.sed their forefathers the Aquitani. Pau in the season is a British oligarchy. Society fairly spins. There are t.i.tles, and there is money; there are drives, calls, card-parties; dances and dinners; clubs,--with front windows; theatres, a Casino, English schools, churches; tennis, polo, cricket; racing, coaching,--and, _Anglicissime_, a tri-weekly fox-hunt! For some years, too, the position of master of the hounds, a post of much social distinction in Pau, was held by a well-known American, so we are told,--a fact certainly hitherto unheralded to many of his countrymen.

Socially, there is a wide range of entertainment at Pau. What Johnson wrote of it thirty years ago is not materially inapplicable to-day: "One set, whom you may call the banqueteers, give solemn, stately dinners immediately before going to bed; another perform a hybrid entertainment, between the English tea-party, and the Continental soiree, where you may enjoy your Bohea and Souchong, play long small whist, and occasionally listen to ponderous harmonies solemnly performed. A third are the formal rout-givers, the white-kid-and-slipper, orchestra-and-programme, dance-and-sit-down-to-supper folks; so like home that it only requires Gunter's men to fancy oneself in Baker Street of olden times. Another is the delightful soiree _pur sang_, where everybody comes as a matter of course, and where everybody who does not sing, dances or plays, or is a phenomenon in charades, or writes charming impromptus, or talks like the last book, or can play at any known game from loto to chess, or knows all the gossip of the last six hours; and where everybody chats and laughs, and sends everybody else comfortably home in the best of humors just about the time that the great people are expecting the _coiffeur_ to arrive."

Thus there is a stir in the Pyrenees the year around. In the winter, at Pau; in summer, at the twenty cures and centres among the mountains. The proprietor of a winter hotel here will own also his summer hostelry at Bigorre or Cauterets. In the summer, it is the French and Spanish to whom he caters, for they have so far been the ones most appreciative both of the springs and the scenery of these mountains. And so, with the rise and dip of the seasons, the European element waxes as the English wanes, in a kind of solst.i.tial see-saw. And the smiling landlord stands upon the pivot.

The clouds are closing in, after granting us that glittering panorama, and the morning grows dull and dark. We explore the book-stores, and finally find the old Library in the upper story of the market-building.

Here two of us at least pa.s.s a long and contentful forenoon.

V.

In fierce Count Gaston's time, Bearn centred in Orthez, and Pau was but his hunting-box. Two hundred years later, Pau had become the focus, and Bearn and Foix not only, but French Navarre as well, were its united kingdom. Gaston's Castle of Moncade had aged into history,--

"Outworn, far and strange, A transitory shame of long ago,"

and the hunting-box had grown in its turn to castle's stature.

The world had brightened during the two centuries. Constantinople had fallen and the Renaissance came. Luther had posted his theses on the Wittemberg church door and the Reformation took root. Men were older than when Froissart lived and wrote. And this active province of Bearn kept pace; it opened quickly to the new influences, was alive to the changing _zeitgeist_. There remained the chivalric still,--and a trace of the barbaric,--as with the outer world; in short, in its faults and fervor's, in its codes and standards, the sixteenth century is aptly summed up in Bearn-Navarre,--and Navarre in its famous Henry.