A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees Part 24

A day or two pa.s.s uneventfully over us as we linger under the trees at Luchon, and then we shake off the spell, to look for its mountain neighbors. One of the peaks from which the panorama of the Maladetta chain can be best seen is the _Pic d'Entecade_, a noted point for an object-lesson of the mountains' relief. Some of us accordingly resolve to ascend it. We have at last begun to recognize the truth of a truism,--that of early rising among the mountains. Always given in all "Advice to Pedestrians," in all "Physicians' Holidays," in all hand-books and guides, it had worn off into a commonplace, founded chiefly, it seemed, on _a priori_ health-saws and on repet.i.tion. But there is reason, we find, in this worthy acquaintance, and a reason quite apart from health-saws, for it is a weather reason. The great proportion of these Pyrenean days, barring the rainy ones, run a uniform career: gold in the morning, silver at noon, gold again at night. The early mornings are brilliantly cloudless; by nine or ten o'clock the horizon whitens,--it is the dreaded _brouillard_; faint cloud-b.a.l.l.s are taking shape; they roll lightly in, bounding like soap-bubbles along the peaks, finally clinging softly about them; and by noon, though the zenith holds still its rich southern blue, the circle of the hills is broken, the higher summits thickly hung with misty gauze. In the late afternoon, the breeze dislodges the intruders, and softly polishes the rock and ice of the peaks until at dusk they are free again from even a shred of vapor.

Thus, even on fine days, a fine view is rare unless it is an early one.

We deplore this unhappy trait of the weather and deeply resent its arbitrariness. But resentment is fruitless under a despotism. And there is after all a certain glow of superciliousness in being up early; the feat once accomplished, it brings its own reward; one feels a comforting disdain for the napping thousands who are losing the crisp, unbreathed freshness in the air and on the mountains; one speedily ceases regretting the missing forty winks, as he opens eyes and lungs and heart to the spirit of the morning.

We accordingly arrange for an early start, not precisely resigned, but resolved nevertheless. The guide, as instructed, knocks at our doors in the morning, just before six o'clock. We hear the fatal words: "It makes fine weather, monsieur;" we awake, imprecating but still resolved; we call out a response of a.s.sent, still imprecating; nerve ourselves to rise,--struggle mentally to do so,--struggle more faintly,--yield imperceptibly,--forget for an instant to struggle at all,--and in another instant we are restfully back beyond recall in the land of dreams.

Our resentment was stronger than we knew.

When the carriage finally carries us out from the town, it is the fifth hour at least after sunrise and more than three after our time for starting. We should have had half of the Entecade beneath us, and are but just quitting Luchon. The inevitable thin lines of mist are already cobwebbing the horizons; but there is a good breeze abroad to-day and the clouds are not resting so quietly in the niches as usual. So we comfort us greatly, and the horses urge forward up the valley, themselves seemingly full of hope that the day is not lost.

The base of the Entecade is six miles from Luchon. For some distance the road runs up the Vallee du Lys, whose continuance merits a separate excursion. Then we turn off, under the old border-tower of Castel Vieil, and soon the carriage is dodging up a cliffy hill, the road hooded with beeches and pines and playing majestic hide-and-seek with the sharp mountains ahead. It is only an hour and a half, and we are at the Hospice de France. Here the road ends. The horses stop before the plain stone structure, low, heavily built, and not surpa.s.singly commodious, and we alight to prepare for the climb. The building is owned by the Commune of Luchon, which rents it out under conditions to an innkeeper; and its object, like that of the St. Bernard, is to serve as a refuge for those crossing the pa.s.s near which it lies. There are no monks in it, however; it is simply a rough mountain _posada_, offering a few poor beds in emergencies, and finding its chiefer lifework in purveying to the Luchon tourists.

The hospice is situated in a deep basin of mountains open only on the Luchon side. Directly in front of it, high above us, is located the pa.s.s referred to,--the _Port de Venasque_: the notch in the chain from which the Maladetta is so strikingly revealed. It is itself another noted excursion from Luchon. A great sweep of rocky ridges rises to it, not perpendicular but sharply inclined. There is a savage black pinnacle shooting up on the left, remarkable for its uncompromising cone of rock, its rejection of all the refinements of turf and arbor and even of snow.

This is the _Pic de la Pique_. On the right starts up another summit, sharp also, though less precipitous; and the short ridge between the two has in it the notch, itself not to be seen from below, which const.i.tutes this pa.s.s, the gateway into Spain,--the Port de Venasque.

This is one of the most used of all these mountain portals; hundreds of persons cross it annually, herdsmen, mule-drivers, merchants with their small caravans of horses, Spanish visitors coming to Luchon, French tourists seeking the view of the Maladetta,--and most often of all, despite surveillance, the shadowy contrabandista, whose vigilance is greater than the vigilance of the law and the custom-house. We can plainly trace the path as it zigzags upward over the snow and debris, and can outline its general course until it vanishes into the break in the ridge. The line of the ridge itself is just now cut out clearly against the sky, but soft puffs and ponpons of cloud are loitering near it with evident intentions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIC DE LA PIQUE, AND PATH TO THE PORT DE VeNASQUE.]

But our present quest is the Entecade. This mountain stands farther to the left in the circle of the basin; its own flanks hide its summit from the hollow, so we go forth not knowing whether into the blue or the grey. Impedimenta are abandoned, sticks are grasped, and the guide leads to the a.s.sault.

The path turns to the rear of the hospice and crawls up a green slope, commanding finely the black sugar-loaf of the Pic de la Pique opposite.

As we advance, the mist has finally closed in upon the crest of the Venasque pa.s.s at its right; the ridge is completely hidden, and we turn and look ahead, somewhat solicitous for our own prospects. Before us, up the mountain, long streamers of hostile vapors are swinging over the downs, trailing to the ground and at times brushing down to our own level; but the wind keeps hunting them off, and so far their tenure is hopefully precarious. There is scarcely a tree above the hospice; we have left the line even of pines.

An hour pa.s.ses. We come to a table-land stretching lengthily forward, covered with the greenish yellow of pastures, and alive with cattle browsing on a spa.r.s.e turf. The way winds on among the herds; we form in close marching order, with the guide in front and spiked staffs ready for use; for these neighbors are a trifle wild and not used to strangers. They feed on unconcernedly, jangling their bells, but one or two of the bulls cast inquiring glances upon us, and we prudently retire to our pockets the bright red sashes bought in Cauterets until we have pa.s.sed the zone of porterhouse.

In this plateau is a boundary-stone, and we pa.s.s anew into Spain,--stopping to cross and recross the frontier several times, with grave ceremony, and to the unconcealed mystification of the guide. The path slopes up again, pa.s.ses a dejected little mountain tarn, and another half hour brings us to the final cone, the summit just overhead. The mists are still whirling down, but as often lift again; the Pic de la Pique has disappeared under a berret of cloud, but other and greater peaks beyond it are still cloudless; so, as we push on up the last slope of rock and scramble upon the summit, we see that the panorama is not gone after all and that the climb will have its reward.

For the view is a wide one from the Pic d'Entecade. The summit, 7300 feet above the sea, is an island in a circle of valleys. The hospice basin has dwindled into insignificance. Behind is the trough of the Luchon depression, its floor invisible but the main contour traceable for miles. The Valley of Aran, which opens out below us on the east, shows the fullest reach in the view; its entire course lies under the eye, and the lines of rivers and roads are marked as on a map, while we count no less than fourteen villages spotting its bottom and sides.

Beyond and about roll the mountains, in swells and billows of green, roughening into grey and the finishing white.

But it is their culminating summit at the right that at once absorbs attention; it is the monarch of the Pyrenees; we are looking at last upon the Maladetta. It stands in clear view before us, well defined though distant. It is rather a ma.s.s than a mountain; it shows no accented, unified form; the wide crests rise irregularly from its wider shoulders of granite and glacier, and fairly blaze for the moment in the break of sunlight.

At nearer quarters, as from the Port de Venasque, the true dimensions of the Maladetta are better realized. There one sees it from across a single ravine, as the Jungfrau is seen from the Wengern Alp. But here from the Entecade also, we can seize well its proportions,--

"In bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, t.i.tanian or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove."

The highest point of the Maladetta, the Pic de Nethou, is 11,165 feet above the sea. The mountain has always been regarded superst.i.tiously; the name itself,--_Maladetta, Maudit_, the Accursed,--tells of the traditions of the mountaineers. For long, no one dared the ascent.

Ramond finally attempted it in 1787, but failed to gain the highest point. In 1824, a party renewed the attempt, and were worse than unsuccessful, for one of the guides, Barreau by name, was lost,--precipitated into a creva.s.se almost before the eyes of his son,--and the body was never recovered. This added to the evil repute of the mountain; years pa.s.sed before the cragsmen would have anything further to do with it. It was not until 1842 that M. de Franqueville, a French gentleman, accompanied by M. Tchihatcheff, a Russian naturalist, and by three determined guides, successfully gained the summit,--taking four days and three nights for the enterprise. Since then the ascent has a number of times been made.

This mountain is said to give forth at times a low murmuring sound distinctly audible.

"There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petal from blown roses on the gra.s.s, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pa.s.s."

"One of the most impressive features of the scene on the ridge of Venasque on this memorable morning," so relates one E.S., a traveler of sixty years ago, "was the peculiar, solemn noise emitted from the mountain. The only sound which broke upon our silence while we stood before it without exchanging a word, was an uninterrupted, melancholy mourning, a sort of aeolian, aerial tone, attributable to no visible or ostensible cause.[28] The tradition of the Egyptian statue responding to the first rays of the morning sun came forcibly to my recollection. In her voice, this queen of the Pyrenees 'Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,' and superst.i.tion if not philosophy might have persuaded some that this sudden glare of brightness and warmth, glistening with increasing intenseness on every ridge and eastern surface, might call forth some corresponding vibrations, and therefore that the plaintive tones we heard were in fact a sort of sympathetic music,--the Maladetta's morning hymn."

[28] "_Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_, No. XVI; _The Peculiar Noises Heard in Mountains_."

Far to the west, over other ranges, the guide points out the glaciers of Mont Perdu and the Vignemale. We are looking off also from this point upon the beginnings of Aragon and of Catalonia; there is nothing smiling about Spain as seen from the Entecade; sterile hills solely heap themselves to the horizon.

We linger on the small knoll, a few feet only in width, which caps the mountain beneath us. Clouds scud over the summits and pa.s.s on, and turn by turn we have seen the full view. Finally they come streaming in more resolutely, and eventually defeat the breeze; then we turn downward at last, at a brisk pace, race down the slopes and re-enter France; and warily recrossing the long pasture of the corniculates, hasten on until the hospice appears in sight once more below.

It is far past mid-day now, and we are more than ready for suggestions of alimentation. There is a sheltered table with benches just out of doors before the hospice, and here we seat ourselves, flanked by with two ma.s.sive dogs, and soon are discussing a nondescript repast which is too late for lunch and too early for dinner but which is remarkably appetizing in either view. An hour later, we are again in Luchon, greeted by the deferential head-waiter of the Richelieu, whose starchy bosom expands with hourly welcome for each who comes or who returns.

VIII.

There are divers other trips near Luchon which should be taken by the time-wealthy. It is a centre of more excursions than any of the other resorts; to count those which are _tres recommandees_ alone needs all the fingers. There is the much praised drive into the Vallee du Lys, with its white cascades, its "Gulf of h.e.l.l," its fine view of the ice-wastes of the Crabioules. There is the ascent to Superbagneres, an easy monticule overshading Luchon, whose view is ranked with that from the Bergonz. There is the day's ride through the Valley of Aran, which opened out below us from the Entecade,--a truly Spanish valley, though in France; its natives, its customs, its inns, all Hispanian, and unwontedly unconventional. There is the ride and climb to the Lac d'Oo, a mate of the trip from Cauterets to the Lac de Gaube. And for a longer jaunt, one can remount to the Port de Venasque and pierce down upon the Spanish side to the village of Venasque itself, returning next day by another port and the Frozen Lakes. Or this trip can be prolonged by making the tour of the Maladetta, pa.s.sing on from Venasque entirely around that mountain system and returning within the week by still another route to Luchon. The views on this last tour are described as remarkable, though it is a trip seldom made; the accommodation is doubtless uncomforting, but the tour, in outline at least, strongly resembles the tour of Mont Blanc, which ranks with the finest excursions in the Alps.

In short, there is a bewilderment of alternatives, each of the first rank in interest and heavily endorsed. Luchon is as easily the belle of the spas in location as in beauty; and one might strongly suspect that the charms of its climbs cure quite as many ills as its springs. Good as the waters may be, one does not become well by drinking merely, and sitting in wait for health; it needs precisely the invigoration of these tempting outings to quicken languid pulses and inspire sluggish systems.

Even in winter, many of these Pyrenees mountain-trips are entirely practicable. The Cirque of Gavarnie is reputed a double marvel under a winter robe, when its cascades are stiffened into ice and the eye is lost in the sweep of the snow-fields. Cauterets is hospitable throughout the winter, and so are both of the Eaux. Even the Vignemale has been ascended of a February, and the more ordinary excursions can be undertaken in all seasons. One cannot help thinking that the invalid of Pau's winter colony could better tell over the benefits of this Pyrenees climate if he would but test it,--if he would seek its pure, sharp, aromatic stimulus in in-roads upon the mountains themselves, in place of his mild promenadings along the Terrace in view of them with a heavy fur coat on his back and another on his tongue.

The mountains are nearer him, besides, than they formerly were. They have been opened to approach. Once there was no Route Thermale over the cols; no facile pa.s.s to Venasque or the Lac de Gaube; no iron bars in the difficult spots en the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. That day is gone by.

Parts at least of the wild mountains are tamed; danger has been driven back, hardly the daunt of difficulty remains. D'etigny and Napoleon and the Midi Railroad have smoothed all the ways; there is no longer reason to dread the lumbering diligence, the rough char-roads, the pioneer cuttings through the pine-brakes. The buoyant mountain trips we have touched upon, and more, are within almost instant call of every dispirited Pau valetudinary, and of farther travelers as well. They have but to go forth and meet them.

That this is becoming known is shown by the yearly increasing tide of visitors. The cultured modern world enjoys reading the book of nature,--especially so, provided some one has cut the leaves.

IX.

In the evening, we repeat the stroll down the Allee d'etigny. The lights twinkle brightly down upon the street; the shops are open, the hotels lit up, the cafes most animated of all. Here on the sidewalks, around the little iron tables, sits Luchon, sipping its liqueurs and tasting its ices. It is the cafe-life of Paris in miniature,--as characteristically French as in the capital. To "_Paris, c'est la France_," one might almost add, "_le cafe, c'est Paris_." France would not be France without it. It is its hearthstone, its debating-club, the matrix of all its national sentiments.

There is an "etiquette" of Continental drinks. By the initiate, the code is rigorously observed; each cla.s.s of beverages has its hour and reason, and your true Frenchman would not dream of calling for one out of place and time. In the cafe-gardens of the large hotels you will see the waiters' trays bearing one set of labeled bottles before dinner and another after; one at mid-day, another in the evening. There is also a ritual of mixing; syrups and liqueurs all have their chosen mates and are never mismated.

From, an intelligent waiter in Lyons, a double fee extracted for me on one occasion some curious if unprofitable lore on the subject, since expanded by further queryings. The potations in-demand divide themselves, it appears, into two main cla.s.ses: _aperitifs_ and _digestifs_. The former are simply appetizers, usually of the bitters cla.s.s, and are taken before meals. The latter, as their name shows, come after the repast, for some supposed effect in aiding digestion. These liquors are often, exceedingly strong, but it is to be remembered that the quant.i.ties taken are minute; when brought not mixed with water or syrups, a unit portion might hardly fill a walnut sh.e.l.l.

The favorite _aperitifs_ are:

Price in centimes.[29]

Absinthe, mixed with Orgeat and seltzer-water, 50 Bitter, " " Curacao " " " 50 Vermouth, " " Ca.s.sis " " " 40 " " " Curacao " " " 40 " " " Bitter " " " 40 " " " Gomme " " " 40 Amer Picon, " " Curacao " " " 50 " " " " Grenadine" " " 60 " " " " Sirop ordinaire " 50 Madeira, Malaga, Frontignan, Byrrh, Quina or Ratafia, unmixed 60

[29] A centime is one-fifth of a cent.

After meal-time come the _digestifs_:

Price.

Curacao Fokyn, unmixed, 60 Maraschino, " 60 k.u.mmel, " 30 Kirschwa.s.ser, " 50 Chartreuse, " (yellow or green,) 60 or 80 Anisette, with seltzer, 80 Menthe, (Peppermint,) unmixed, or with seltzer, 50 Mazagran, or goblet of black coffee, with water, 40 Cafe noir, or small cup of black coffee, 35 " " with Cognac, 50 Limonade gazeuse, 40 Biere, bock or ordinaire, 30

Later in the evening, the ices come into play; returning from concert or promenade, one can choose from the following to recruit the wasted frame:

Price.

Sorbet au Kirsch, 80 " " Rhum, 80 " " Maraschino, 80 Bavaroise au lait, 60 " a la vanille, 70 " au chocolat, 70 Glace vanille or other flavors, 50 and 75 Cafe glace, 50 Grock or Punsch, 60