A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees Part 17

[22] "_Nous jugeons que l'immaculee Marie, mere de Dieu, a reellement apparu a Bernadette Soubirous, le 11 Fevrier, 1838, et jours suivants, au nombre de dix-huit fois, dans la grotte de Ma.s.sabielle, pres la ville de Lourdes; que cette apparition revet tous les caracteres de la verite et que les fideles sont fondes a la croire certaine_."

The castle still stands, on a pointed hill above the town. Its founding goes back far beyond the days of its thieving English garrison; the Saracens once swarmed into it long before, flying before Charles the Hammer; and there is another story about it in this connection, as related by Inglis, which ends more happily than that of its murdered governor. Charlemagne, some years after the Saracens captured it, laid siege to recover it; surrender grew inevitable; but its Moorish commander, Mirat, though an infidel, was, for his n.o.bility of character, in special favor with the Virgin,--Notre Dame de Puy.[23] In this extremity, she sent to him an eagle bearing in its beak a live fish; and Mirat promptly sent it to Charlemagne, to show his heavenly succor. The king, knowing that there was no possible fishing on the castle hill, perceived that it was a miracle; and lessening his rigor in the face of this sign, proposed less hard terms: the Moors were allowed to depart in safety, Mirat on his part agreed to be converted and become a good Catholic, and the castle was formally surrendered not to Charlemagne but to Notre Dame de Puy.

[23] Puy--St. Pe--is a shrine near Lourdes.

VIII.

But meanwhile we are moving toward Cauterets, not toward Lourdes. This part of the Lavedan valley is known as the "Eden of Argeles." It expands about us in long, delicious levels; occasional eminences wrinkle its even lines; and the hills roll up from each side, rounded and gentle and often cultivated to their tops. Squares of yellow maize-fields chequer them, alternating with darker patches of pasture or orchard, while along the wide centre run the rails and the high-road, and the new Gave, fresh from Gavarnie and the Lac de Gaube,--new, yet an old friend, for it flows forth by way of Lourdes on to the Chateau of Pau. Walnut, lime and fig trees, twisted with vines, stand near its borders or about the chalets and hamlets on the slopes. Women and men are at work over in the fields, and often pause to look at our distant carriages and bow a response to our wavings of greeting; while on the road itself, here much traveled, we meet teams and ox-carts and a carriage or two with travelers coming from Cauterets.

Up on a bluff at the right is an old building: it is the abbey of Saint Savin, some of whose stones also could tell us of Charlemagne and perhaps of young Cra.s.sus. Farther on, we see, on an opposite slope across the valley, other ruins: a castle; an old tower; and higher still an ancient chapel of the Virgin, cared for to this day, it is said, as in the time of earlier travelers, by the trio of aged women voluntarily pledged to its guardianship and to solitude. Their number remains always the same; upon the death of one, the remaining two make choice of a third to fill her place. It has been thus from unknown periods. Thither repair the women of the valley, on days consecrated to the Virgin, to pay their devotions at this lonely shrine.

Thus together, peace and war, holiness and crime, have dominated this fair region; and with these shivered fortalices and ancient cloisters actually before us, their past seems nearer to possibility. Their relics, attesting the days of feudalism, seem to mourn its departure; the old order has indeed changed and yielded place to new. "It was sweet here to be a monk!" writes Taine, in his warm sympathy with the spirit of this valley; "it is in such places that the _Imitation_ should be read; in such places was it written. For a sensitive and n.o.ble nature, a convent was then the sole refuge; all around wounded and repelled it.

"Around, what a horrible world! Brigand lords who plunder travelers and butcher each other; artisans and soldiers who stuff themselves with meat and yoke themselves together like brutes; peasants whose huts they burn,... who out of despair and hunger slip away to tumult. No remembrance of good, nor hope of better. How sweet it is to renounce action, company, speech, to hide one's self, forget outside things, and to listen in security and solitude to the divine voices that, like collected springs, murmur peacefully in the depths of the heart!"

Farther on still, on another eyrie, is a ruined monastery, St. Orens.

This saint came to the Pyrenees from Spain at an early age, and founded this retreat, loving solitude and meditation and austere living. His piety made him widely revered. He long refused the offered archbishopric of Auch; till, doubting his duty in this, he prayed to G.o.d for a sign.

He was directed to plant a sapling in the earth, and it instantly bloomed into leaves and blossoms; whereupon the hermit wisely inferred that life was designed to bear fruit, not to wither itself away.

Montgomery, Queen Jeanne's ruffian Protestant general, tore through this Catholic valley in 1569, with his devastating mercenaries. It recovered heart, flowered afresh, and was swept again by enemies from a neighboring province. Often a winter storm will expose bedrock throughout precious roods of sloping harvest-land, and the farmer must carry up from the valley many painful baskets of soil to replace the loss. So that, though it smiles so happily in this afternoon warmth, there have been serpents in this Eden,--serpents of want and of suffering; and judging by the faces of the people, all have not yet been scotched.

But we are at Pierrefitte. It is five o'clock in the afternoon, and the innkeeper is rejoiced to find that we are thirsty.

IX.

Pierrefitte ends the branch railway from Lourdes, as Laruns ended that from Pau. In fact, it is all strikingly like Laruns. A similarly uncompromising mountain, the _Viscos_, 7000 feet high, walls up the valley behind it, and here again the carriage-roads divide, one going up the gorge on the right to Cauterets, the other up that on the left to Luz and Gavarnie. The broad Argeles vale has been fittingly described as but the vestibule to the wild dwelling of the clouds, and Pierrefitte as the beginning-point for the narrow stair-flights which lead up to the interior.

As at Laruns, we are now to take the road to the right, at a later day returning to take the other. The Route Thermale goes on up the latter, pa.s.sing through southeast to Luz, and then stretching eastward again to Bareges and over successive cols to Bigorre and Luchon. This we are progressively to follow in its entirety.

The train has come in, here at Pierrefitte, and the diligence for Cauterets is just leaving, attended by a wagonload of trunks. Horses and travelers refreshed, we soon move after it, and rising from the valley by half an hour's steep zigzags upward and forward, we pa.s.s the great yellow vehicle as it is entering the defile. Looking back, we have one brilliant view of the wide Eden of Argeles, and pa.s.s from light into twilight.

The road to Cauterets is a duplicate of that to Eaux Chaudes. Possibly the scenery is a trifle more impressive. We have the straight-cliffed gorge, with the torrent at its bottom and the road b.u.t.tressed out or cut into the ledge; the turns in the ravine as we pull steadily higher, the bare slate and limestone precipices, the higher peaks. At times there is only width for the road and the torrent beneath, and the torrent seems uncomfortably crowded at that. The road does not allow itself to be crowded. It is hard and wide as always, and lavishly decorated with kilometre-stones. The stream is crossed, back and forth; the air has grown quickly cooler, and sunshades need no longer shut off the full view. "Upon nearing Cauterets, the carriage-way would seem as though it had grown phrensied from the mountainous opposition, for it curls and writhes and overcomes the difficulties only by the most desperate exertions; and at one spot, in its effort to compa.s.s a barrier of rock, it actually recoils within half-a-dozen yards of its former path."

Throughout, however, the same easy, imperturbable gradient is preserved.

The old road was greatly rougher and steeper; four horses and three pairs of oxen, it is said, were once required to drag up each carriage.

Finally the valley widens slightly, and rather suddenly opens out upon an incline. At its farther end is a white-crested mountain, and below nestles the mountain resort of Cauterets, six miles in from Pierrefitte.

It is seven o'clock, as our wheels strike the stones of the pavement. We drive into the main street, pa.s.s through a neat, irregular little plaza, and, some distance beyond, turn to the right from a larger square, toward the Hotel Continental. The town is waiting for the diligence, and shopkeepers are at their doors, guides and touters and loungers and visitors in the streets, all expectant for the daily gust of arrival.

The lamps are just twinkling out, against the dusk, and the general impression,--often a long determinant of like or dislike,--is of an animated and welcoming scene. The hotel proves to be nearly on the scale of the Ga.s.sion, and other equally pretentious ones have been pa.s.sed in approaching it. We drive under the high entrance-way and into its great court, with the flourishes dear to the drivers' hearts; and the long and varying tableau of the day's ride is over.

CHAPTER XII.

MIRRORS AND MOUNTAINS.

"All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night."

--TENNYSON'S _Cauterets_.

Cauterets confirms its first good impressions. The next day proves cloudy and foggy, and we spend it lazily, re-reading and answering letters, or wandering about the town, absorbing its streets and shops.

The season is fairly afloat, and all sail is set. At the angle of two thoroughfares, a stretch of ground has been brushed together for a park or promenade, and this, sprinkled with low, flat-topped trees and a band-stand, naturally attracts us first. Booths and cafes and nicknack stalls reach around its sides, and across from us stands a fine official-looking structure of marble, which we learn is the Thermal Establishment. We stroll toward this, through the groups of promenaders, run the gauntlet of the booths, inspecting hopelessly their catchpenny wares and games, and find ourselves before it. It is well placed, and architecturally effective. To judge from the goodly patronage, it is pathologically effective as well. Within, the large, tiled hall conducts right and left to wings containing rows of white-tiled bath-apartments and two full-sized swimming-rooms. An imposing marble stairway leads upward to reading, billiard and gaming apartments, cafe and restaurant and a theatre-hall. Evidently the Thermal Establishment is the pivot of Cauterets. The serious use of these waters is carried to a science.

You can be steamed, suffused, sprayed, sponged, showered, submerged or soaked. You can seek health from a teaspoon or a tub. Make choice, and buy a season ticket. Rather, the attendant physicians make the choice, for all is by rule here and no one moistens lip or finger without due prescription.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE TOWN IS WAITING FOR THE DILIGENCE."]

These springs are celebrated among French doctors. The systems of treatment are kept abreast of all modern theories. The waters are sulphureous, very hot, and abundant. They serve in throat and stomach troubles and for a wide range of ailments "where there is indicated a powerfully alterative and stimulating treatment."

We ramble back across the esplanade and out into the streets. The stores, always friendly in their hostile designs, conspire to be especially attractive in Cauterets. We waste much time--from a masculine standpoint--in an enticing lace store, where really fine Spanish nettings are purchased at tempting prices. They sell too, in Cauterets, the woolly stuffs called Bareges c.r.a.pe, marvelously delicate in texture, woven in various tints for m.u.f.flers and capes and shoulder-wraps.

Farther up the street, we are allured during the forenoon into buying a woollen berret or two, and scarlet sashes, the badge of the country, for to-morrow's mountain excursion; and yield in the plaza to the fascination of barley-sugar candy and toothsome cakes of Spanish chocolate. But all entreaties to buy young Pyrenean dogs warranted bred in the region, are manfully resisted.

We invest too in a strange variety of umbrella, which can be folded into wondrously small compa.s.s and put into the pocket or the traveling-bag,--invest in it after a long struggle of rates, wherein each side gains the satisfaction of victory by a compromise. The eagerness of the Frenchy vendor,--his dramatic acting-out of the umbrella's workings,--his voluble deprecation of a possible lower price, and his gradual sliding down from his end of the scale as we rise in it from ours,--these accessories fully double the zest of the transaction for both. One must be wary and alert to properly enjoy European shopping; but if one is thus prepared, it can be made to furnish very solid enjoyment indeed. "As a rule," as the genial author of _Sketches in the South of France_ observes, "the British purchaser must offer one half the price asked. Everybody does it, and it is in no way offensive, because the sum has been pre-arranged accordingly. The British costume springs the market at least ten per cent, bad French ten more, and an apparent ignorance of both market and language cannot be let off at less than thirty or forty. Expostulation is useless, even when convenient; the torrent of '_impossible_', '_incroyable_,' '_que c'est gentil_,'

'_ravissant_,' '_beau_' would drown any opposition. The only chance is to be deaf to argument, dumb to solicitations, to place the sum proposed before the merchant, and if it be not accepted, retire in dignified silence. Ten to one you will be followed and a fresh a.s.sault commenced; be resolute, and the same odds you get your bargain."

Variety marks the stores not only, but the streets and saunterers. All these Pyrenean resorts put on the motley. There is of course the substratum of plainly-garbed humanity; but as at Eaux Bonnes, it is set off with scarlet-coated guides, Spaniards in deep-colored mantles, peasant women with red capulets or bright-hued shoulder-wear, and the satin finish of fashion in its pa.s.sing carriages. Hucksters are pleading their varied wares in the plaza, and here and there a shovel-hatted priest is given reverential right of way. We meet scarcely an English face, however, and of our own travel-loving countrymen none at all. At noon the band plays in the music pavilion, and by degrees the idle world drifts in that direction. The round cafe-tables under the trees gradually sort out their little coteries, and white-ap.r.o.ned gentry skate about with liqueur-bottles, clinking gla.s.s beer-mugs, baskets of rolls, and the inevitable long-handled tin coffee-pots. The outdoor scene tempts us more than a hotel luncheon; we cast in our lot with an alert-eyed waiter, and the syrups and chocolate he brings are doubly sweetened with the strains of _Martha_.

II.

Here is an old letter concerning these waters, which brings the dead back in flesh and blood. It leaves its writer before us in vivid presence, a womanly reality. It is Marguerite of Angouleme[24] who writes it,--the thoughtful, high-souled queen of Bearn-Navarre, whose daughter was afterward mother of Henry IV. She is at Pau, and is sending word about her husband's health to her brother, Francis I of France.

[24] Marguerite of Angouleme is often, even by historians, designated as Marguerite of Valois. It is better to preserve the distinction in the names. Marguerite of Angouleme was the wife of Henry II of Navarre; the name Marguerite of Valois more properly designates the wife (known also as Margot) of Henry IV, their grandson.

"Though this mild spring air," she tells him, "ought to benefit the King of Navarre, he still feels the effects of the fall he met with. The doctors have ordered him to spend the month of May at the Baths of Caulderets, where wonderful things are happening every day.

"I am thinking of going with him," she adds,--how domestic and personal these little royal plannings seem,--"after the quiet of Lent, so as to keep him amused and look after him and help him with his affairs; for when one is away for his health at the baths, he ought to live like a child, without a care."[25]

[25] "_Encores que l'air chault de ce pays devoit ayder au roy de Navarre, il ne laisse pas de se ressentir de la cheute qu'il prist; par le conseil des medecins a ce moys de may s'en va mettre aux Baings de Caulderets, ou il se foit tous les jours des choses merveilleuses. Je me deslibere, apres m'estre repousee ce caresme, d'aller avecques luy, pour le garder d'ennuy et foire pour luy ses affaires; car tant que l'on est aux baings, il fault vivre comme ung enfant, sans nul soucy_."

Hither they came accordingly, and the court with them. How royalty put up with the then primitive accommodations is not recorded; standards of comfort, if not of lavishness, were lower then. Here, surrounded by her maids of honor, Marguerite pa.s.sed the pleasant days of the king's convalescence and wrote many of her _Contes_ in the long summer afternoons upon the hillsides.

Rabelais used to come to Cauterets, and one of the springs is said to be named from a visit of Caesar's. Eaux Chaudes and Eaux Bonnes have had eclipses of popularity, but Cauterets has always been in vogue. It was not always luxurious, however. Invalids were brought here by rough litters or on the backs of guides or horses. A monk and a physician lived near the bath-enclosure, and narrow cabins or huts, roofed with slate, were let out to the sick and their attendants. How greatly the dignified Marguerite and her war-bred husband would marvel, if they could walk with us to-day from the Thermal Establishment, across the park and through the streets and squares,--to pause from their astonishment in the polished and gilt-mirrored drawing-room of the Hotel Continental!

III.

There are walks and promenades and mountain nooks in all directions from the town, but the afternoon grows misty and we do not explore them. The Gave running noisily on, hard by, has its stiller moments, up the valley, and the trout-fishing is reputed rather remarkable. In fact, one ardent angler who came here is said to have complained of two drawbacks: first, that the fish were so provokingly numerous as to ensure a nibble at every cast; and second, that they were so simple-minded and untactical that every nibble proved a take.

Besides affording these milder joys, Cauterets is a centre for larger excursions. There are three especially noted. The first and finest is the trip to the _Lac de Gaube_, a high mountain tarn at the very foot of the Vignemale. This we plan in prospect for to-morrow. It is four hours away by a bridle-path, pa.s.sing on the way several much-admired mountain cataracts. The second excursion is by the foot-pa.s.s over a shoulder of the Viscos to Luz, a counterpart of the path over the Gourzy from Eaux Chaudes to Eaux Bonnes. As we purpose going to Luz by carriage, pa.s.sing down to Pierrefitte and so up the other side of the V, we strike the Viscos from the list of necessaries. The third is the ascent of the Monne, the mountain overhanging Cauterets and 9000 feet above the sea; reported as long but not difficult and as giving a repaying view. But there is a mountain near Luz, the _Bergonz_, from which the view is held equally fine, and it is, we learn, simpler of ascent; there is even a bridle-path to the summit. Since we are to go to Luz, we decide for the Bergonz, and so cancel the Monne.