A TOUR THROUGH THE PYRENEES

BOOK I.—THE COAST.
CHAPTER I.—BORDEAUX.—ROY AN...................[003]
“ II.—LES LANDES.—BAYONNE..............[012]
“ III.—BIARRITZ.—SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ.....[035]
BOOK II.—THE VALLEY OF OSSAU.
CHAPTER I. —DAX.—OR THEZ.....................[057]
“ II.—PAU.............................[085]
“ III.—EAUX-BONNES...................[117]
“ IV.—LANDSCAPES.....................[138]
“ V.—EAUX-CHAUDES...................[169]
“ VI.—THE INHABITANTS.................[186]
BOOK III.—THE VALLEY OF LUZ.
CHAPTER I.—ON THE WAY TO LUZ.................[225]
“ II.—LUZ..............................[250]
“ III.—SAINT-SAUVEUR.—BAREGES.........[266]
“ IV.—CAUTERE..........................[290]
“ V.—SAINT-SATIN.......................[315]
“ VI.—GAVARNIE.........................[326]
“ VII.—THE BERGONZ.—THE PIC DU MIDI...[352]
“ VIII.—PLANTS AND ANIMALS.............[367]
BOOK. IV.—BAGNÈRES AND LUCHON.
CHAPTER I.—FROM LUZ TO BAGNÈRES-DE-BIGORRE...[389]
“ II.—BAGNÈRES-DE-BIGORRE..............[412]
“ III.—THE PEOPLE......................[420]
“ IV—THE ROAD TO BAGNÈRES-DE-LUCHON....[468]
“ V—LUCHON.............................[485]
“ VI.—TOULOUSE.........................[509]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE PINES.....................................[003]
THE RIVER AFTER A STORM.......................[004]
THE PINES NEAR ROYAN..........................[007]
THE BROAD RIVER...............................[009]
BORDEAUX......................................[010]
TAIL-PIECE....................................[011]
LES LANDES....................................[012]
LES LANDES (SECOND VIEW)......................[014]
TAIL-PIECE....................................[016]
A STREET IN BAYONNE...........................[018]
BAYONNE HARBOR................................[019]
PÉ DE PUYANE..................................[022]
THE BURNING CASTLE............................[025]
HEAD-PIECE....................................[035]
THE PIERCED ROCK..............................[036]
TAIL-PIECE....................................[039]
THE VILLA EUGENIE.............................[040]
CLIFFS NEAR SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ.................[042]
COAST NEAR SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ..................[045]
TAIL-PIECE....................................[046]
LOUIS XIV. AND ANNE OF AUSTRIA................[047]
THE POLITENESS OF TO-DAY......................[048]
THE POLITENESS OF OTHER DAYS..................[049]
“JE VOUS LE RENDS.”...........................[053]
A SPLENDID CREATION...........................[054]
DAX...........................................[057]
CASTLE OF ORTHEZ..............................[061]
FROISSART.....................................[062]
“THAT STOUT CORNIFIC DOCTOR”..................[066]
COUNT DE FOIX AT SUPPER.......................[068]
THE COUNT DE FOIX’S HOSPITALITY...............[071]
A FRENCH “CONDUCTOR”..........................[072]
“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE DO NOT KILL GASTON”........[074]
GASTON IN THE TOWER OF ORTHEZ.................[076]
COUNT DE FOIX.................................[077]
TAILPIECE.....................................[078]
CHAPTER-HEADING...............................[079]
THE VALLEY OF OSSAU...........................[082]
A DESTRUCTION OF SENTIMENT....................[084]
AVENUE OF THE CHATEAU AT PAU..................[085]
ARMS OF HENRY IV..............................[087]
COURT OF THE CHATEAU AT PAU...................[088]
PAU...........................................[090]
JEANNE D’ALBRET...............................[092]
A MORNING’S SPORT.............................[094]
IN THE STREETS Of EAUSE.......................[097]
SULLY.........................................[100]
MARGUERITE OK NAVARRE.........................[104]
ENTERTAINING THE LADIES.......................[106]
THE PARK AT PAU...............................[108]
PROTRACTING A REVERIE.........................[109]
PIC DU MIDI OSSAU.............................[111]
AN EXHORTATION................................[113]
NEAR GAN......................................[114]
THE VALLEY OK OSSAU...........................[115]
ROAD TO EAUX BONNES...........................[116]
THE PROMENADE.................................[117]
NEAR EAUX BONNES..............................[118]
A RAINY DAY AT EAUX BONNES....................[119]
TAKING THE WATERS.............................[121]
TAKING THE WATERS (SECOND VIEW)...............[122]
“MUSIC HAITI CHARMS”..........................[123]
A NATIVE GENIUS...............................[125]
DOLCE FAR NIENTE.............................[126]
OUR AMATEURS..................................[127]
THE BEECHES...................................[128]
THE SUMMIT OF THE GER.........................[131]
TAIL-PIECE....................................[133]
THE ART OK PLEASURE...........................[134]
THE “JEU DU CANARD”...........................[135]
PLEASURE WITHOUT THE ART......................[137]
“A LANDSCAPE”.................................[138]
EXCELSIOR.....................................[139]
THE VALENTIN FALLS AT DISCOO..................[140]
CASCADE OF THE VALENTIN.......................[142]
PATH TO THE GORGE OF THE SERPENT..............[144]
THE GAVE......................................[146]
A DISTANT TALE................................[148]
SOLITUDE......................................[150]
A WATER POWER.................................[152]
THE MIGHTY STREAM.............................[155]
'PAPI’........................................[157]
A TOO DISTANT LANDSCAPE.......................[159]
A VANTAGE-POINT...............................[161]
THE PEAKS.....................................[163]
ABOVE GABAS...................................[166]
“TO HIM WHO, IN LOVE OF NATURE”...............[168]
AMONG THE CLOUDS..............................[169]
ROUTE TO EAUX CHAUDES.........................[170]
ON THE ROAD TO EAUX CHAUDES...................[171]
“A WILD AND SUNNY NEST”.......................[174]
“COLD AND SAD”................................[175]
NEAR EAUX CHAUDES.............................[177]
“EGYPT BEFORE THE COMING OF WARRIORS”.........[182]
SOMEBODY’S JOVE...............................[185]
THE INHABITANTS...............................[186]
FIDDLERS THREE................................[187]
“A SORT OF ROUNDELAY”.........................[189]
“THEY CLUMSILY BENT THE KNEE”.................[192]
“FIVE OR SIX OLD WOMEN”.......................[194]
THE PEAK OF THE GER...........................[196]
MEETING A LADY................................[200]
A STOCK-DEALER................................[200]
YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT.........................[201]
DISINTERESTED HOSPITALITY.....................[201]
AN AMATEUR SKETCH.............................[203]
THE DEATH OF ROLAND...........................[206]
“A WELL-TO-DO PEASANT”........................[207]
CHIVALRIC WAR.................................[209]
SCIENTIFIC WAR................................[209]
THE BATTLE OF RONCEVAUX.......................[212]
“WHEN FIGHTING IS TO BE DONE”.................[214]
HENRY OF BEARN................................[215]
“AT THE HEAD OF THE ARMY”.....................[217]
“VERY DARING”.................................[219]
MLLE. DE SÉGUR................................[220]
GASSION’S BOB-TAIL............................[222]
ON THE WAY TO LUZ.............................[225]
A SMILING COUNTRY.............................[226]
“WHAT WE ALL HEARD THIS NIGHT”.-..............[228]
ORTHON’S TRANSFORMATION.......................[234]
LETTING THE DOGS LOOSE........................[235]
“THE RACE OF FAMILIARS AND FAIRIES”...........[237]
A BROODING SUPERSTITION,......................[238]
CHAPEL OF LESTELLE............................[240]
NEAR LOURDES..................................[242]
GORGE OF PIERREFITTE..........................[243]
“HEAVY CLOUDS ROSE IN THE SKY”................[248]
OLD HOUSE OF THE TEMPLARS AT LUZ..............[250]
RUIN OF A CHATEAU NEAR LUZ....................[253]
MAX GETS FROM THE DESERT AS MUCH AS HE CAN....[257]
THE VALLEY OF LUZ.............................[259]
PROGRESS......................................[261]
SAINT-PIERRE..................................[263]
“THIS HEIGHT IS A DESERT”.....................[264]
“NO ONE COMES”................................[265]
SAINT-SAUVEUR.................................[267]
THE GAVE AT SUNSET............................[272]
RUNNING WATERS................................[274]
“THE POPLARS RISE ONE ABOVE ANOTHER”..........[275]
BAREGES.......................................[277]
THE MILITARY HOSPITAL.........................[278]
TAIL-PIECE....................................[279]
THE FIRS......................................[283]
“OUT FROM THE CIVIL WARS”.....................[287]
“THESE OLD WASTED MOUNTAINS”..................[288]
MADAME DE MAINTENON...........................[289]
A FEW BLANDISHMENTS...........................[290]
THE PATIENTS OF THE OLDEN TIME................[291]
THE LAKE OF GAUBE.............................[293]
DIANA.........................................[295]
NEAR PONT D’ESPAGNE...........................[299]
STORM AT CAUTERETS............................[302]
VALLEY OF THE GAVE IN A STORM.................[304]
NEAR THE LAKE OF GAUISE.......................[307]
CAUTERET’S....................................[311]
THE FOAMING GAVE..............................[313]
HENRY IV AND FRANCIS I........................[314]
A FRESHETT IN THE MOUNTAINS..................[315]
“A HORRIBLE WORLD”............................[316]
ABBEY OF SAINT-SAVIN..........................[318]
CASCADE OF CERLSEY, NEAR PONT D’ESPAGNE.......[320]
PRAYER........................................[325]
ENJOYING HIE SCENERY..........................[326]
A MOUNTAIN FUNERAL............................[328]
BRIDGE AT SCIA................................[330]
VILLAGE OF GEDRES.............................[333]
CHAOS.........................................[337]
“THE TUMBLED ROCKS”...........................[339]
SIECHEUR......................................[342]
THE MOUNTAIN SIDE.............................[343]
THE FRECHE DE ROLAND..........................[344]
THE AMPHITHEATRE NEAR GAVARNIE................[346]
“THE THIRTEENTH CASCADE ON THE LEFT”..........[347]
THE CASCADE AS SEEN FROM THE INN..............[349]
RECIPROCITY...................................[351]
THE APPRECIATIVE..............................[352]
ASCENT OF THE BERGONZ.........................[354]
THE EAGLES....................................[355]
MONT PERDU....................................[359]
AN EARLY INHABITANT...........................[362]
SCENERY DURING AN ASCENT......................[365]
“ALLEZ DOUCEMENT; ALLEZ TOUJOURS”.............[366]
A STIMULATING DREAM...........................[367]
THE PINES.....................................[369]
A SHOWER IN A FOREST OF BRUSH-FIRS............[373]
CONTEMPLATION.................................[376]
A POOR DANCER.................................[377]
“THE ISARD DWELLS ABOVE THE BEAR”.............[378]
AN ARGUMENT...................................[379]
A HERD OF GOATS...............................[381]
“THE HAPPIEST ANIMAL IN CREATION”.............[383]
DISTINGUISHED NATIVES.........................[386]
IN MOUNT CAMPANA..............................[389]
DE BÉNAC IN EGYPT.............................[390]
“THEY TRAVERSED A WALL OF CLOUDS”.............[395]
“MORNING DAWNED”..............................[396]
“THE HALL WAS FULL”...........................[398]
“STRANGE IMAGES ROSE IN HIS BRAIN”............[399]
BÉNAC A HERMIT................................[403]
BEYOND LOURDES................................[404]
CITY OF TORBES................................[406]
MEPHISTOPHELES................................[411]
BAGNÈRES DE-BIGORRE...........................[412]
ONE OF THE FIRST PATRONS......................[419]
SOCIETY.......................................[420]
AN OLD CAMPAIGNER.............................[422]
A YOUNG CAMPAIGNER............................[422]
A MAN OF PEACE................................[422]
A MODEL MAN...................................[423]
IN DANGER.............................:.......[424]
VARIOUS TOURISTS..............................[428]
THE LAC D’OO..................................[431]
TOURISTS COMME IL FAUT........................[434]
FAMILY TOURISTS...............................[435]
DINING TOURISTS...............................[436]
LEARNED TOURISTS..............................[438]
A MAN OF ESPRIT...............................[444]
CONNOISSEURS..................................[446]
BEETHOVEN.....................................[447]
A SERENADER...................................[454]
A HISTORIAN...................................[456]
A PROFESSIONAL CHARACTER......................[458]
THE PLEASURES OF WINTER.......................[461]
A DISCUSSION WITHIN BOUNDS....................[463]
HEAVEN........................................[464]
THE SOURCE OF THINGS..........................[466]
GRACE AT MEAT.................................[467]
THE REST OF THE WEARY.........................[468]
AT THE HOTEL OF THE GREAT SUN.................[470]
NEAR LUCHON...................................[473]
CHAPELLE AND LACHAUMONT.......................[476]
VALLEY OF LUCHON..............................[481]
URBS IN REVRE.................................[484]
HEAD-PIECE....................................[485]
A TALENTED FAMILY.............................[487]
LUCHON........................................[491]
BAGNERES......................................[493]
“ALL WAS IN HARMONY”..........................[495]
NEAR CASTEL-VIEIL.............................[497]
RUINS OF CASTEL-VIEIL.........................[499]
THE MALADETTA.................................[503]
“THESE MOUNTAIN SKELETONS”....................[505]
“A CLEFT IN THE ETERNAL ROCK”.................[507]
TAIL-PIECE....................................[508]
HEAD-PIECE....................................[509]
ST. BERTRAND DE COMINGES......................[510]
TOULOUSE......................................[512]
SAINT SERININE AT TOULOUSE....................[515]
CHURCH OF ST. ETIENNE, TOULOUSE...............[519]
THE MUSEUM AT TOULOUSE........................[521]

TO MARCELIN.

(EMILE PLANAT.)

This, my dear Marcelin, is a trip to the Pyrenees; I have been there, and that is a praiseworthy circumstance; many writers, including some of the longest-winded, have described these scenes without leaving home.

And yet I have serious shortcomings to confess, and am deeply humbled thereat. I have not been the first to scale any inaccessible mountain; I have broken neither leg nor arm; I have not been eaten by the bears; I have neither saved any English heiress from being swept away by the Gave, nor yet have I married one; I have not been present at a single duel; my experiences include no tragic encounter with brigands or smugglers. I have walked much, and talked a little, and now I recount the pleasures of my eyes and ears. What sort of a man can he be who comes home from a long absence bringing all his limbs with him, is not the least in the world a hero, and yet does not blush to confess it? In this book I have talked as if with thee. There is a Marcelin whom the public knows, a shrewd critic, a caustic wit, the lover and delineator of every worldly elegance; there is another Marcelin, known to but three or four, a learned and thoughtful man. If there are any good ideas in this work, half of them belong to him; to him, then, I restore them.

H. TAINE.

BOOK I. THE COAST.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CHAPTER I. BORDEAUX.—ROYAN.

I.

The river is so fine, that before going to Bayonne I have come down as far as Royan. Ships heavy with white sails ascend slowly on both sides of the boat. At each gust of wind they incline like idle birds, lifting their long wing and showing their black belly. They run slantwise, then come back; one would say that they felt the better for being in this great fresh-water harbor; they loiter in it and enjoy its peace after leaving the wrath and inclemency of the ocean. The banks, fringed with pale verdure, glide right and left, far away to the verge of heaven; the river is broad like a sea; at this distance you might think you saw two hedges; the trees dimly lift their delicate shapes in a robe of bluish gauze; here and there great pines raise their umbrellas on the vapory horizon, where all is confused and vanishing; there is an inexpressible sweetness in these first hues of the timid day, softened still by the fog which exhales from the deep river. As for the river itself, its waters stretch out joyous and splendid; the rising sun pours upon its breast a long streamlet of gold; the breeze covers it with scales; its eddies stretch themselves, and tremble like an awaking serpent, and, when the billow heaves them, you seem to see the striped flanks, the taw-ney cuirass of a leviathan.

Indeed, at such moments it seems that the water must live and feel; it has a strange look, when it comes, transparent and sombre, to stretch itself upon a beach of pebbles; it turns about them as if uneasy and irritated; it beats them with its wavelets; it covers them, then retires, then comes back again with a sort of languid writhing and mysterious lovingness; its snaky eddies, its little crests suddenly beaten down or broken, its wave, sloping, shining, then all at once blackened, resembles the flashes of passion in an impatient mother, who hovers incessantly and anxiously about her children, and covers them, not knowing what she wants and what fears. Presently a cloud has covered the heavens, and the wind has risen. In a moment the river has assumed the aspect of a crafty and savage animal. It hollowed itself, and showed its livid belly; it came against the keel with convulsive starts, hugged it, and dashed against it, as if to try its force; as far as one could see, its waves lifted themselves and crowded together, like the muscles upon a chest; over the flank of the waves passed flashes with sinister smiles; the mast groaned, and the trees bent shivering, like a nerveless crowd before the wrath of a fearful beast.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Then all was hushed; the sun has burst forth, the waves were smoothed, you now saw only a laughing expanse; spun out over this polished back a thousand greenish tresses sported wantonly; the light rested on it, like a diaphanous mantle; it followed the supple movements and the twisting of those liquid arms; it folded around them, behind them, its radiant, azure robe; it took their caprices and their mobile colors; the river meanwhile, slumbrous in its great, peaceful bed, was stretched out at the feet of the hills, which looked down upon it, like it immovable and eternal.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

II.

The boat is made fast to a boom, under a pile of white houses: it is Royan.

Here already are the sea and the dunes; the right of the village is buried under a mass of sand; there are crumbling hills, little dreary valleys, where you are lost as if in the desert; no sound, no movement, no life; scanty, leafless vegetation dots the moving soil, and its filaments fall like sickly hairs; small shells, white and empty, cling to these in chaplets, and, wherever the foot is set, they crack with a sound like a cricket’s chirp; this place is the ossuary of some wretched maritime tribe. One tree alone can live here, the pine, a wild creature, inhabitant of the forests and sterile coasts; there is a whole colony of them here; they crowd together fraternally, and cover the sand with their brown lamels; the monotonous breeze which sifts through them forever awakes their murmur; thus they chant in a plaintive fashion, but with a far softer and more harmonious voice
than the other trees; this voice resembles the grating of the cicadæ when in August they sing with all their heart among the stalks of the ripened wheat.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

At the left of the village, a footpath winds to the summit of a wasted bank, among billows of standing grasses. The river is so broad that the other shore is not distinguishable. The sea, its neighbor, imparts its refluence; its long undulations come one after another against the coast, and pour their little cascades of foam upon the sand; then the water retires, running down the slope until it meets a new wave coming up which covers it; these billows are never wearied, and their come and go remind one of the regular breathing of a slumbering child. For night has fallen, the tints of purple grow brown and fade away. The river goes to rest in the soft, vague shadow; scarcely, at long intervals, a remnant glimmer is reflected from a slanting wave; obscurity drowns everything in its vapory dust; the drowsy eye vainly searches in this mist some visible point, and distinguishes at last, like a dim star, the lighthouse of Cordouan.

III.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The next evening, a fresh sea-breeze has brought us to Bordeaux. The enormous city heaps its monumental houses along the river like bastions; the red sky is embattled by their coping. They on one hand, the bridge on the other, protect, with a double line, the port where the vessels are crowded together like a flock of gulls; those graceful hulls, those tapering masts, those sails swollen or floating, weave the labyrinth of their movements and forms upon the magnificent purple of the sunset. The sun sinks down into the midst of the river and sets it all ablaze; the black rigging, the round hulls, stand out against its conflagration, and look like jewels of jet set in gold.

CHAPTER II. LES LANDES.—BAYONNE.

Around Bordeaux are smiling hills, varied horizons, fresh valleys, a river peopled by incessant navigation, a succession of cities and villages harmoniously planted upon the declivities or in the plains, everywhere the richest verdure, the luxury of nature and civilization, the earth and man vying with each other to enrich and decorate the happiest valley of France. Below Bordeaux a flat soil, marshes, sand; a land which goes on growing poorer, villages continually, less frequent, ere long the desert. I like the desert as well.

Pine woods pass to the right and to the left, silent and wan.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Each tree bears on its side the scar of wounds where the woodmen have set flowing the resinous blood which chokes it; the powerful liquor still ascends into its limbs with the sap, exhales by its slimy shoots and by its cleft skin; a sharp aromatic odor fills the air.

Beyond, the monotonous plain of the ferns, bathed in light, stretches away as far as the eye can reach. Their green fans expand beneath the sun which colors, but does not cause them to fade. Upon the horizon a few scattered trees lift their slender columns. You see now and then the silhouette of a herdsman on his stilts, inert and standing like a sick heron. Wild horses are grazing half hid in the herbage. As the train passes, they abruptly lift their great startled eyes and stand motionless, uneasy at the noise that has troubled their solitude. Man does not fare well here,—he dies or degenerates; but it is the country of animals, and especially of plants. They abound in this desert, free, certain of living. Our pretty, cutup valleys are but poor things alongside of these immense spaces, leagues upon leagues of marshy or dry vegetation, a level country, where nature, elsewhere troubled and tortured by men, still vegetates as in primeval days with a calm equal to its grandeur. The sun needs these savannas in order properly to spread out its light; from the rising exhalation, you feel that the whole plain is fermenting under its force; and the eyes filled by the limitless horizon divine the secret labor by which this ocean of rank verdure renews and nourishes itself.

Night without a moon has come on. The peaceful stars shine like points of flame; the whole air is filled with a blue and tender light, which seems to sleep in the network of vapor wherein it lies. The eye penetrates it without apprehending anything. At long intervals, in this twilight, a wood confusedly marks its spot, like a rock at the bottom of a lake; everywhere around are vague depths, veiled and floating forms, indistinct and fantastic creatures melting into each other, fields that look like a billowy sea, clumps of trees that you might take for summer clouds,—the whole graceful chaos of commingled phantoms, of things of the night. The mind floats here as on a fleeting stream, and nothing seems to it real, in this dream, but the pools which reflect the stars and make on earth a second heaven.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Bayonne is a gay city, original and half Spanish. On all sides are men in velvet vest and small-clothes; you hear the sharp, sonorous music of the tongue spoken beyond the mountains. Squatty arcades border the principal streets; there is need of shade under such a sun.

A pretty episcopal palace, in its modern elegance, makes the ugly cathedral still uglier. The poor, abortive monument piteously lifts its belfry, that for three centuries has remained but a stump. Booths are stuck in its hollows, after the manner of warts; here and there they have laid on a rude plaster of stone. The old invalid is a sad spectacle alongside of the new houses and busy shops which crowd around its grimy flanks. I was quite troubled at this decrepitude, and when once I had entered, I became still more melancholy. Darkness fell from the vault like a winding-sheet; I could make out nothing but o o worm-eaten pillars, smoke-darkened pictures, expanses of greenish wall. Two fresh toilettes that I met increased the contrast; nothing could shock one more in this place than rose-colored ribbons.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

I was looking upon the spectre of the middle ages; how opposed to it are the security and abundance of modern life! Those sombre vaults, those slender columns, those rose windows, blood-dyed, called up dreams and emotions which are now impossible for us. You should feel here what men felt six hundred years ago, when they swarmed forth from their hovels, from their unpaved, six-feet-wide streets, sinks of uncleanness, and reeking with fever and leprosy; when their unclad bodies, undermined by famine, sent a thin blood to their brutish brains; when wars, atrocious laws, and legends of sorcery filled their dreams with vivid and melancholy images; when over the bedizened draperies, over the riddles of painted glass, the rose windows, like a conflagration or an aureole, poured their transfigured rays.

These are the remembrances of fever and ecstasy: to get rid of them I have come out to the port; it is a long alley of old trees at the side of the Adour. Here all is gay and picturesque. Serious oxen, with lowered heads, drag the beams that are being unloaded. Rope-makers, girt with a wisp of hemp, walk backward tightening their threads, and twining their ever-growing cable. The ships in file are made fast at the quay; the slender cordage outlines its labyrinth against the sky, and the sailors hang in it hooked on like spiders in their web. Great casks, bales, pieces of wood are strewn pell-mell over the flags.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

You are pleased to feel that man is working and prosperous. And here nature too is as happy as man. The broad silver river unrolls itself under the radiance of the morning. Slender clouds throw out on the azure their band of mother-of-pearl. The sky is like an arch of lapis-lazuli. Its vault rests on the confines of the flood which advances waveless and effortless, under the glitter of its peaceful undulations, between two ranges of declivity, away to a hill where pine-woods of a tender green slope down to meet it, as graceful as itself. The tide meanwhile rises, and the leaves on the oaks begin to shine, and to whisper under the feeble wind off the sea.

III.

It rains: the inn is insupportable. It is stifling under the arcades; I am bored at the café, and am acquainted with nobody. The sole resource is to go to the library. That is closed.

Fortunately the librarian takes pity on me, and opens for me. Better yet, he brings me all sorts of charters and old books; he is both very learned and very amiable, explains everything to me, guides, informs and installs me. Here I am then in a corner, alone at a table, with the documents of a fine and thoroughly enjoyable history; it is a pastoral of the middle ages. I have nothing better to do than to tell it over for my own benefit.

Pé de Puyane was a brave man and a skilful sailor, who in his day was Mayor of Bayonne and admiral; but he was harsh with his men, like all who have managed vessels, and would any day rather fell a man than take off his cap. He had long waged war against the seamen of Normandy, and on one occasion he hung seventy of them to his yards, cheek by jowl with some dogs. He hoisted on his galleys red flags signifying death and no quarter, and led to the battle of Ecluse the great Genoese ship Christophle, and managed his hands so well that no Frenchman escaped; for they were all drowned or killed, and the two admirals, Quieret and Bahuchet, having surrendered themselves, Bahuchet had a cord tightened around his neck, while Quieret had his throat cut. That was good management; for the more one kills of his enemies, the less he has of them. For this reason, the people of Bayonne, on his return, entertained him with such a noise, such a clatter of horns, of cornets, of drums and all sorts of instruments, that it would have been impossible on that day to hear even the thunder of God.

It happened that the Basques would no longer pay the tax upon cider, which was brewed at Bayonne for sale in their country. Pe de Puyane said that the merchants of the city should carry them no more, and that, if any one carried them any, he should have his hand cut off. Pierre Cambo, indeed, a poor man, having carted two hogsheads of it by night, was led out upon the market-place, before Notre Dame de Saint-Léon, which was then building, and had his hand amputated, and the veins afterwards stopped with red-hot irons; after that he was driven in a tumbrel throughout the city, which was an excellent example; for the smaller folk should always do the bidding of men in high position.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Afterwards, Pé de Puyane having assembled the hundred peers in the town-house, showed them that the Basques being traitors, rebels toward the seigniory of Bayonne, should no longer keep the franchises which had been granted them; that the seigniory of Bayonne, possessing the sovereignty of the sea, might with justice impose a tax in all the places to which the sea rose, as if they were in its port, and that accordingly the Basques should henceforth pay for passing to Villefranche, to the bridge of the Nive, the limit of high tide. All cried out that that was but just, and Pé de Puyane declared the toll to the Basques; but they all fell to laughing, saying they were not dogs of sailors like the mayor’s subjects. Then having come in force, they beat the bridgemen, and left three of them for dead.

Pé said nothing, for he was no great talker; but he clinched his teeth, and looked so terribly around him, that none dared ask him what he would do, nor urge him on, nor indeed breathe a word. From the first Saturday in April to the middle of August, several men were beaten, as well Bayonnais as Basques, but still war was not declared, and, when they talked of it to the mayor, he turned his back.

The twenty-fourth day of August, many noblemen among the Basques, and several young people, good leapers and dancers, came to the castle of Miot for the festival of Saint Bartholomew. They feasted and showed off the whole day, and the young people who jumped the pole, with their red sashes and white breeches, appeared adroit and handsome. That night came a man who talked low to the mayor, and he, who ordinarily wore a grave and judicial air, suddenly had eyes as bright as those of a youth who sees the coming of his bride. He went down his staircase with four bounds, led out a band of old sailors who were come one by one, covertly, into the lower hall, and set out by dark night with several of the wardens, having closed the gates of the city for fear that some traitor, such as there are everywhere, should go before them.

Having arrived at the castle they found the drawbridge down and the postern open, so confident and unsuspecting were the Basques, and entered, cutlasses drawn and pikes forward, into the great hall. There were killed seven young men who had barricaded themselves behind tables, and would there make sport with their dirks; but the good halberds, well pointed and sharp as they were, soon silenced them. The others, having closed the gates from within, thought that they would have power to defend themselves or time to flee; but the Bayonne marines, with their great axes, hewed down the planks, and split the first brains which happened to be near. The mayor, seeing that the Basques were tightly girt with their red sashes, went about saying (for he was usually facetious on days of battle): “Lard these fine gallants for me; forward the spit into their flesh justicoats;” and in fact the spits went forward, so that all were perforated and opened, some through and through, so that you might have seen daylight through them, and that the hall half an hour after was full of pale and red bodies, several bent over benches, others in a pile in the corners, some with their noses glued to the table like drunkards, so that a Bayonnais, looking at them, said: “This is the veal market.” Many, pricked from behind, had leaped through the windows, and were found next morning, with cleft head or broken spine, in the ditches.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

There remained only five men alive, noblemen, two named d’Urtubie, two de Saint-Pé, and one, de Lahet, whom the mayor had set aside as a precious commodity; then, having sent some one to open the gates of Bayonne and command the people to come, he ordered them to set fire to the castle. It was a fine sight, for the castle burned from midnight until morning; as each turret, wall or floor fell, the people, delighted, raised a great shout. There were volleys of sparks in the smoke and flames that stopped short, then began again suddenly, as at public rejoicings; so that the warden, an honorable advocate, and a great literary man, uttered this saying: “Fine festival for Bayonne folk; for the Basques great barbecue of hogs.”

The castle being burned, the mayor said to the five noblemen that he wished to deal with them with all friendliness, and that they should themselves be judges, if the tide came as far as the bridge; then he had them fastened two by two to the arches until the tide should rise, assuring them that they were in a good place for seeing. The people were all on the bridge and along the banks, watching the swelling of the flood. Little by little it mounted to their breasts, then to their necks, and they threw back their heads so as to lift their mouths a little higher. The people laughed aloud, calling out to them that the time for drinking had come, as with the monks at matins, and that they would have enough for the rest of their days. Then the water entered the mouth and nose of the three who were lowest; their throats gurgled as when bottles are filled, and the people applauded, saying that the drunkards swallowed too fast, and were going to strangle themselves out of pure greediness. There remained only the two men, d’Urtubie, bound to the principal arch, father and son, the son a little lower down. When the father saw his child choking, he stretched out his arms with such force that a cord broke: but that was all, and the hemp cut into his flesh without his being able to get any further. Those above, seeing that the youth’s eyes were rolling, while the veins on his forehead were purple and swollen, and that the water bubbled around him with his hiccough, called him baby, and asked why he had sucked so hard, and if nurse was not coming soon to put him to bed. At this the father cried out like a wolf, spat into the air at them, and called them butchers and cowards. That offended them so that they began throwing stones at him with such sure aim that his white head was soon reddened and his right eye gushed out; it was small loss to him, for shortly after, the mounting wave shut up the other. When the water was gone down, the mayor commanded that the five bodies, which hung with necks twisted and limp, should be left a testimony to the Basques that the water of Bayonne did come up to the bridge, and that the toll was justly due from them. He then returned home amidst the acclamations of his people, who were delighted that they had so good a mayor, a sensible man, a great lover of justice, quick in wise enterprises, and who rendered to every man his due. .

As he was setting out, he had put sixty men at the entrance of the bridge, in the toll-tower, ordering them to look out well for themselves, and warning them that the Basques would not be slow in seeking to avenge themselves. But they flattered themselves that they still had at least one good night, and they busied their throats mightily with emptying flagons. Towards the middle of the night, there being no moon, came up about two hundred Basques; for they are alert as the antelope,* and their runners had awakened that morning more than twenty villages in the Soule with the story of fire and drowning. The younger men, with several older heads, had set out forthwith by crooked circuitous paths, barefoot, that they might make no noise, well armed with cutlasses, crampoons and several slender rope-ladders; and, adroit as foxes, they had stolen to the base of the tower, to a place on the eastern side where it plunges straight down to the bed of the river, a real quagmire, so that here there was no guard, and the rolling of the water on the pebbles might drown their slight noise, should they make any. They fixed their crampoons in the crannies of the stones, and, little by little, Jean Amacho, a man from Béhobie, a noted hunter ofmountain beasts, climbed upon the battlements of the first wall, then, having steadied a pole against a window of the tower, he entered and hooked on two ladders; the others mounted in their turn, until there were about fifty of them; and new men were constantly coming, as many as the ladders would bear, noiselessly striding over the window-sill.

* Alertes comme des izards—The isard, or y’sard, is the
chamois-antelope of the Pyrenees, often called a chamois.—
Translator.

They were in a little, low ante-room, and from thence, in the great hall of the first floor, six steps below them, they beheld the Bayonnais, of whom there were but three in this place, two asleep, and a third who had just waked up and was rubbing his eyes, with his back turned to the small door of the ante-room. Jean Amacho gave a sign to the two men who had mounted immediately after him, and all jumped together with a single leap, and so nicely that, at the same moment, their three knives pierced the throats of the Bayonnais, who, bowing their limbs, sank without a cry to the ground. The other Basques then came in, and waited at the verge of the great balustraded staircase leading into the lower hall where were the Bayonnais, some in a heap sleeping near the fireplace, others calling out and sharpset at feasting.

One of these feeling that his hair was moist, lifted his head, saw some little red streams running from between the joists of the ceiling, and began to laugh, saying that the greedy fellows up there could no longer hold their cups, and were wasting good wine, which was very wrong of them. But finding that this wine was quite warm, he took some on his finger, then touched his tongue, and saw, by the insipid taste, that it was blood. He proclaimed this aloud, and the Bayonnais starting up grasped their pikes and ran for the staircase. Thereupon the Basques who had waited, not being sufficiently numerous, wished to recover the moment and rushed forth; but the first comers felt the point of the pikes, and were lifted, just as bundles of hay are spitted on the forks to be thrown into a loft; then the Bayonnais, holding themselves close together, and bristling in front with pikes, began to mount.

Just then a valiant Basque, Antoine Chaho, and two others with him, dropped down along the wall, lizard fashion, making a cover of dead bodies; and gliding between the great legs of the sailors of Bayonne, began work with their knives upon their hamstrings; so that the Bayonnais, wedged in the stairway, and embarrassed by the men and the pikes that were falling crosswise, could neither get on nor wield their spits with such nicety. At this moment, Jean Amacho and several young Basques, having espied their moment, leaped more than twenty feet clear into the middle of the hall, to a place where no halberds were ready, and began cutting throats with great promptness, then, thrown upon their knees, fell to ripping open bellies; they killed far more than they lost, because they had deft hands, while many were well padded with wool and wore leather shirts, and besides, the handles to their knives were wound with cord and did not slip. Moreover the Basques from above, who now numbered more than a hundred, rolled down the staircase like a torrent of goats; new ones came up every moment, and in every corner of the hall, man to man, they began to run each other through.

There died Jean Amacho in a sad enough fashion, and from no fault of his own; for after he had cut the throat of a Bayonnais,—his ordinary mode of killing, and, indeed, the best of all,—he held his head too near, and the jet from the two great veins of the neck spirted into his face like the froth from a jar of perry as it is uncorked, and suddenly shut up both his eyes; accordingly he was unable to avoid a Bayonnais who was at his left; the fellow planted his dagger in Jean’s back, who spit out blood, and died a minute after.

But the Bayonnais, who were less numerous and less adroit, could make no stand, and at the end of half an hour there remained only a dozen of them, driven into a corner near a little cellar where were kept the jugs and bottles. In order the sooner to reduce these, the Basques gathered together the pikes, and began driving through this heap of men; and the Bayonnais, as anybody will on feeling an iron point prick through his skin, stepped back and rolled together into the cellar. Just at this moment the torches went out, and the Basques, in order not to wound each other, dressed the whole armful of pikes, and harpooned at random forward into the cellar during more than a quarter of an hour, so as to make sure that no Bayonnais remained alive; and thus, when all was become tranquil, and the torches were relighted, and they looked in, they saw that the cellar resembled a pork-butcher’s chopping-block, the bodies being cut in twenty places, and separated from their heads, and the limbs being confusedly thrown together, till only salt was wanting to make a salting-tub of the place.

But the younger of the Basques, although there was nothing more to kill, rolled their eyes all around the hall, grinding their teeth like hounds after the quarry; they cried aloud continually, trembling in their limbs and clenching their fingers after the handles of their daggers; several, wounded and whitelipped, no longer felt their wounds or their loss of blood, remained crouching beside the man they had last killed, and then involuntarily leaped to their feet. One or two laughed with the fixity of madmen, and varied this with a hoarse roar; and there was in the room such a mist of carnage that any one seeing them reeling or howling thus, might have believed them drunk with wine.

At sunrise, when they had loosed the five drowned men from the arches, they cast all the Bayonnais upon the current of the stream, and said that they might go down thus to their sea, and that this cartful of dead flesh was such toll as the Basques would pay. The congealed wounds were opened again by the coldness of the water; it was a fine sight: by means of the blood that flowed, the river blushed red as a morning sky.

After this the Basques and the men of Bayonne fought several years more, man against man, band against band; and many brave men died on both sides. At the end, the two parties agreed to submit to the arbitration of Bernard Ezi, Sire d’Albret. The lord of Albret said that the men of Bayonne, since they had made the first attack, were in fault; he ordained that in future the Basques should pay no toll, that, on the contrary, the city of Bayonne should pay them fifteen hundred new golden crowns and should establish ten priestly prebendaryships, which should cost four thousand old crowns of the first coinage of France, of good gold and loyal weight, for the repose of the souls of the five gentlemen drowned without confession, which, perchance, were in purgatory, and had need of many masses in order to get out. But the Basques were unwilling that Pê de Puyane, the mayor, should be included in this peace, either he or his sons, and they reserved the right to pursue them until they had taken vengeance on his flesh and his race. The mayor retired to Bordeaux, to the house of the Prince of Wales, of whom he was a great friend and good servant, and during two o o years did not go outside of the city, excepting three or four times, well steeled, and attended by men-at-arms. But one day, when he had gone to see a vineyard he had bought, he withdrew a little from his troop to lift a great black vine-stock which was falling into the ditch; a moment after, his men heard a little sharp cry, like that of a thrush caught in a snare; when they had run up they saw Pé de Puyane dead, with a knife a fathom long which had entered by the armpit where he was unprotected by his cuirass. His elder son, Sebastian, who had fled to Toulouse, was killed by Augustin de Lahet, nephew of the man who was drowned; the other, Hugues, survived and founded a family, since, having gone by sea to England, he remained there, and received from King Edward a knight’s fief. But neither he nor his children ever returned into Gascony; they did wisely, for they would have found their grave-diggers there.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CHAPTER III. BIARRITZ.—SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ.

I.

Half a league off, at the turning of a road, may be seen a hill of a singular blue: it is the sea. Then you descend, by a winding route, to the village.

A melancholy village, with the taint of hotels, white and regular, cafés and signs, ranged by stages upon the arid coast; for grass, patches of poor starveling turf; for trees, frail tamarisks which cling shivering to the earth; for harbor, a beach and two empty creeks. The smaller conceals in its sandy recess two barks without masts, without sails, to all appearance abandoned.

The waters consume the coast; great pieces of earth and stone, hardened by their shock, fifty feet away from the shore, lift their brown and yellow spine, worn, raked, gnawed, jagged, scooped out by the wave, resembling a troop of stranded whales. The billow barks or bellows in their hollow bowels, in their deep yawning jaws; then, after they have engulfed it, they vomit it forth in jets and foam against the lofty shining waves that forever return to the assault. Shells and polished pebbles are incrusted upon their head. Here furzes have rooted their patient stems and the confusion of their thorns; this hairy mantle is the only one capable of clinging to their flanks, and of standing out against the spray of the sea.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

To the left, a train of ploughed and emaciated rocks stretches out in a promontory as far as an arcade of hardened beach, which the high tides have opened, and whence on three sides the eye looks down upon the ocean. Under the whistling north wind it bristles with violet waves; the passing clouds marble it with still more sombre spots; as far as the eye can reach is a sickly agitation of wan waves, chopping and disjointed, a sort of moving skin that trembles, wrenched by an inward fever; occasionally a streak of foam crossing them marks a more violent shock. Here and there, between the intervals of the clouds, the light cuts out a few sea-green fields upon the uniform plain; their tawny lustre, their unhealthy color, add to the strangeness and to the limits of the horizon. These sinister changing lights, these tin-like reflections upon a leaden swell, these white scoriæ clinging to the rocks, this slimy aspect of the waves suggest a gigantic crucible in which the metal bubbles and gleams.

But toward evening the air clears up and the wind falls. The Spanish coast is visible, and its chain of mountains softened by distance. The long dentation undulates away out of sight, and its misty pyramids at the last vanish in the west, between the sky and the ocean. The sea smiles in its blue robe, fringed with silver, wrinkled by the last puff of the breeze; it trembles still, but with pleasure, and spreads out its lustrous, many-hued silk, with voluptuous caprices beneath the sun that warms it. Meanwhile a few serene clouds poise above it their down of snow; the transparency of the air bathes them in angelic glory, and their motionless flight suggests the souls in Dante stayed in ecstasy at the entrance of paradise.

It is night; I have come up to a solitary esplanade where is a cross, and whence is visible the sea and the coast. The coast, black, sprinkled with lights, sinks and rises in indistinct hillocks. The sea mutters and rolls with hollow voice. Occasionally, in the midst of this threatening breathing comes a hoarse hiccough, as if the slumbering wild beast were waking up; you cannot make it out, but from a nameless something that is sombre and moving, you divine a monstrous, palpitating back; in its presence man is like a child before the lair of a leviathan. Who assures us that it will continue to tolerate us to-morrow? On land we feel ourselves master; there our hand finds everywhere its traces; it has transformed everything and put everything to its service; the soil now-a-days is a kitchen-garden, the forests a grove, the rivers trenches, Nature is a nurse and a servant. But here still exists something ferocious and untamable. The ocean has preserved its liberty and its omnipotence; one of its billows would drown our hive; over there in America its bed lifts itself; it will crush us without a thought; it has done it and will do it again; just now it slumbers, and we live clinging to its flank without dreaming that it sometimes wants to turn itself about.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

II.

There is a light-house to the north of the village, an esplanade of beach and prickly plants. Vegetation here is as rough as the ocean.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Do not look to the left; the pickets of soldiers, the huts of the bathers, the ennuyés, the children, the invalids, the drying linen, it is all as melancholy as a caserne and a hospital. But at the foot of the light-house the beautiful green waves hollow themselves and scale the rocks, scattering upon the wind their plume of foam; the billows come up to the assault and mount one upon another, as agile and hardy as charging horsemen; the caverns rumble; the breeze whispers with a happy sound; it enters the breast and expands the muscles; you fill your lungs with the invigorating saltness of the sea. Farther on, ascending towards the north, are paths creeping along the cliffs. At the bottom of the last, solitude opens out; everything human has disappeared; neither houses, nor culture, nor verdure. It is here as in the first ages, at a time when man had not yet appeared, and when the water, the stone, and the sand were the sole inhabitants of the universe. The coast stretches into the vapor its long strip of polished sand; the gilded beach undulates softly and opens its hollows to the ripples of the sea. Each ripple comes up foamy at first, then insensibly smooths itself, leaves behind it the flocks of its white fleece, and goes to sleep upon the shore it has kissed. Meanwhile another approaches, and beyond that again a new one, then a whole troop, striping the bluish water with embroidery of silver. They whisper low, and you scarcely hear them under the outcry of the distant billows; nowhere is the beach so sweet, so smiling—the land softens its embrace the better to receive and caress those darling creatures, which are, as it were, the little children of the sea.

III.

It has rained all night; but this morning a brisk wind has dried the earth; and I have come along the coast to Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Everywhere the wasted cliffs drop perpendicularly down; dreary hillocks, crumbling sand; miserable grasses that strike their filaments into the moving soil; streamlets that vainly wind and are choked, pushed back by the sea; tortured inlets, and naked strands. The ocean tears and depopulates its beach. Everything suffers from the neighborhood of the old tyrant. As you contemplate here its aspect and its work, the antique superstitions seem true. It is a melancholy and hostile god, forever thundering, sinister, sudden in caprice, whom nothing appeases, nothing subdues, who chafes at being kept back from the land, embraces it impatiently, feels it and shakes it, and to-morrow may recapture it or break it in pieces. Its violent waves start convulsively and twist themselves, clashing like the heads of a great troop of wild horses; a sort of grizzling mane streams on the edge of the black horizon; the gulls scream; they are seen darting down into the valley that is scooped out between two surges, then reappearing; they turn and look strangely at you with their pale eyes. One would say that they are delighted with this tumult and are awaiting a prey.

A little farther on, a poor hut hides itself in a bay. Three children ragged, with naked legs, were playing there in a stream that was overflown. A great moth, clogged by the rain, had fallen into a hole. They conducted the water to it with their feet, and dabbled in the cold mud; the rain fell in showers on the poor creature, which vainly beat its wings; they laughed boisterously, stumbling about and holding on to each other with their red hands. At that age and amidst such privation nothing more was wanting to make them happy.

The road ascends and descends, winding on high hills which denote the neighborhood of the Pyrenees. The sea reappears at each turn, and it is a singular spectacle, this suddenly lowered horizon, and that greenish triangle broadening toward heaven. Two or three villages stretch along the route, their houses dropping down the heights like flights of stairs. From the white houses the women come out in black gown and veil to go to mass. The sombre color announces Spain. The men, in velvet vests, crowd to the public house and drink coffee in silence. Poor houses, a poor country; under a shed I have seen them cooking, in the guise of bread, cakes of maize and barley. This destitution is always touching. What is it that a day-laborer has gained by our thirty centuries of civilization? Yet he has gained, and when we accuse ourselves, it is because we forget history. He no longer has the small-pox, or the leprosy; he no longer dies of hunger, as in the sixteenth century, under Montluc; he is no longer burned as a witch, as happened indeed under Henry IV. here in this very place; he can, if he is a soldier, learn to read, become an officer; he has coffee, sugar, linen. Our descendants will say that that is but little; our fathers would have said that it is a good deal.

St. Jean-de-Luz is a little old city with narrow streets, to-day silent and decaying; its mariners once fought the Normans for the king of England; thirty or forty ships went out every year for the whale-fishery. Now-a-days the harbor is empty; this terrible Biscayan sea has thrice broken down its dike. Against this roaring surge, heaped up all the way from America, no work of man holds out. The water was engulfed in the channel and came like a race-horse high as the quays, lashing the bridges, shaking its crests, grooving its wave; then it thundered heavily into the basins, sometimes with leaps so abrupt that it fell over the parapets like a mill-dam, and flooded the lower part of the houses. One poor boat danced in a corner at the end of a rope; no seamen, no rigging, no cordage; such is this celebrated harbor. They say, however, that half a league away, there are five or six barks in a creek.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

From the dike the tumult of the high tide was visible. A massive wall of black clouds girt the horizon; the sun blazed through a crevice like a fire through the mouth of a furnace, and overflowed upon the billow its conflagration of ferruginous flames. The sea leaped like a maniac at the entrance of the harbor, smitten by a band of invisible rocks, and joined with its white line the two horns of the coast. The waves came up fifteen feet high against the beach, then, undermined by the falling water, fell head foremost, desperate, with frightful howling; they returned however to the assault, and mounted each minute higher, leaving on the beach their carpet of snowy foam, and fleeing with the slight shivering of a swarm of ants foraging among dry leaves. Finally one of them came wetting the feet of the men who were watching from the top of the dike. Happily, it was the last; the city is twenty feet below, and would be only a mass of ruins if some great tide were urged on by a hurricane.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

IV.

A noble hotel, with broad halls, and grand antique apartments, displays itself at the corner of the first basin facing the sea. Anne of Austria lodged there in 1660, at the time of the marriage of Louis XIV.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Above a chimney is still to be seen the portrait of a princess in the garb of a goddess. Were they not goddesses? A tapestried bridge went from this house to the little church, sombre and splendid, traversed by balconies of black oak, and loaded with glittering reliquaries. The married pair passed through it between two hedges of Swiss and bedizened guards, the king all embroidered with gold, with a hat ornamented with diamonds; the queen in a mantle of violet velvet sprinkled with fleur-de-lis, and, underneath, a habit of white brocade studded with precious stones, a crown upon her head.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

There was nothing but processions, entries, pomps and parades. Who of us now-a-days would wish to be a grand seigneur on condition of performing at this rate? The weariness of rank would do away with the pleasures of rank; one would lose all patience at being an embroidered manikin, always exposed to public view and on exhibition. Then, that was the whole of life. When M. de Créqui was going to carry to the infanta the presents of the king, “he had sixty persons in livery in his suite, with a great number of noblemen and many friends.”

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The eyes took delight in this splendor. Pride was more akin to vanity, enjoyments were more on the surface. They needed to display their power in order to feel it. The courtly life had applied the mind to ceremonies. They learned to dance, as now-a-days to reflect; they passed whole years at the academy; they studied with extreme seriousness and attention the art of bowing, of advancing the foot, of holding themselves erect, of playing with the sword, of setting the cane properly; the obligation of living in public constrained them to it; it was the sign of their rank and education; they proved in this way their alliances, their world, their place with the king, their title. Better yet, it was the poetry of the time. A fine manner of bowing is a fine thing; it recalled a thousand souvenirs of authority and of ease, just as in Greece an attitude recalled a thousand souvenirs of war and the gymnasium; a slight inclination of the neck, a limb nobly extended, a smile complaisant and calm, an ample trailing petticoat with majestic folds, filled the soul with lofty and courtly thoughts, and these great lords were the first to enjoy the spectacle they afforded. “I went to carry my offering,” said Mlle. de Montpensier, “and performed my révérences as did no one else of the company; I found myself suitable enough for ceremonial days; my person held its place there as my name in the world.” These words explain the infinite attention that was given to questions of precedence and to ceremonies; Mademoiselle is inexhaustible on this point; she talks like an upholsterer and a chamberlain; she is uneasy to know at what precise moment the Spanish grandees take off their hats; if the king of Spain will kiss the queen-mother or will only embrace her: these important interests trouble her. In fact, at that time they were important interests. Rank did not depend, as in a democracy, upon proved worth, on acquired glory, on power exercised or riches displayed, but upon visible prerogatives transmitted by inheritance or granted by the king: so that they fought for a tabouret or a mantle, as now-a-days for a place or for a million. Among other treacheries they plotted to lodge Mademoiselle’s sisters with the queen. “The proposition displeased me; they would have eaten with her always, which I did not. That roused my pride. I was desperate at that moment.” The warfare was yet greater when it came to the marriage. “It occurred to somebody that it was necessary to carry an offering to the queen, so I could not bear her train, and it must be my sisters who would carry it with Mme. de Carignan. As soon as there was talk of bearing trains, the Duke de Roquelaure had offered to carry mine. They sought for dukes to carry those of my sisters, and, as not one was willing to do it, Mme. de Saugeon cried aloud that Madame would be in despair at this distinction.” What happiness to walk first upon the tapestried bridge, the train held up by a duke, while, the others go shamefully behind, with a train, but without a duke! But suddenly others put in a claim. Mme. d’Uzès comes running up in a fright: it is question of an atrocious usurpation. “The princess palatine will have a train; will you not put a stop to that?” They get together; they go to the king; they represent to him the enormity of the deed: the king forbids this new train as usurping and criminal, and the princess, who weeps and storms, declares that she will not be present at the marriage if they deprive her of her appendix. Alas! all human prosperity has its reverses; Mademoiselle, so happy in the matter of trains, could not get to kiss the queen, and, at this interdict, she remained all day plunged in the deepest grief. But, you see, the pursuits of rank had been, from infancy, her sole concern; she had wanted to marry all the princes in the world, and ever in vain; the person mattered little to her. First the cardinal infante, the reverse of an Amadis; at the age of dreams, on the threshold of youth, among the vague visions and first enchantments of love, she chose this old churl in a ruff to enthrone herself with him, in a fine arm-chair, in the government of the Low Countries. Then Philip IV. of Spain; the emperor Ferdinand, the arch-duke: negotiating with them herself, exposing her envoy to the risk of hanging. Then the king of Hungary, the future king of England, Louis XIV., Monsieur, the king of Portugal.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

Who could count them? At a pinch, she went to work in advance: the princess of Condé being ill, then in the family way, this romantic head fancied that the prince was going to become a widower, and wanted to retain him for a husband. No one took this hand that she had stretched to all Europe. In vain she fired cannon in the Fronde; she remained to the end an adventuress, a state puppet, a weathercock, occasionally exiled, twenty times a widow, but always before the wedding, carrying over the whole of France the weariness and imaginations of her involuntary celibacy. At last Lauzun appeared; to marry her, and secretly at that, cost him the half of his wealth; the king drew the dowry of his bastard from the misalliance of his cousin. It was an exemplary household: she scratched him: he beat her.—We laugh at these pretensions and bickerings, at these mischances and aristocratic quarrels; our turn will come, rest assured of that; our democracy too affords matter of laughter: our black coat is, like their embroidered coat, laced with the ridiculous; we have envy, melancholy, the want of moderation and of politeness, the heroes of George Sand, of Victor Hugo and of Balzac. In fact, what does it matter?

“Sifflez-moi librement; je vous le rends, mes frères.” So talked Voltaire, who gave to all the world at once the charter of equality and gayety.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

BOOK II. THE VALLEY OF OSSA

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CHAPTER I. DAX.—ORTHEZ.

I.

I saw Dax in passing, and I recall only two rows of white walls of staring brightness, into which low doorways here and there sank their black arches with a strange relief. An old and thoroughly forbidding cathedral bristled its bell-turrets and dentations in the midst of the pomp of nature and the joyousness of the light, as if the soil, burst open, had once put forth out of its lava a heap of crystallized sulphur.

The postilion, a good fellow, takes up a poor woman on the way, and sets her beside him on his seat. What gay people! They sing in patois,—there, they are singing now. The conductor joins in, then one of the people in the impériale. They laugh with their whole heart; their eyes sparkle. How far we are from the north! In all these southern folk there is verve; occasionally poverty, fatigue, anxiety crush it; at the least opening, it Gushes forth like living water in full sunlight.

This poor woman amuses me. She is fifty years old, without shoes, garments in shreds, and not a sou in her pocket. She talks familiarly with a stout, well-dressed gentleman, who is behind her. No humility; she believes herself the equal of the whole world. Gayety is like a spring rendering the soul elastic; the people bend but rise again. An Englishman would be scandalized. Several of them have said to me that the French nation have no sentiment of respect. That is why we no longer have an aristocracy.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The chain of the mountains undulates to the left, bluish and like a long stratum of clouds. The rich valley resembles a great basin full to overflowing of fruit-trees and maize. White clouds hover slowly in the depths of heaven, like a flock of tranquil swans. The eye rests on the down of their sides, and turns with pleasure upon the roundness of their noble forms. They sail in a troop, carried on by the south wind, with an even flight, like a family of blissful gods, and from up above they seem to look with tenderness upon the beautiful earth which they protect and are going to nourish.

II.

Orthez, in the fourteenth century, was a capital; of this grandeur there remains but the wreck: ruined walls and the high tower of the castle hung with ivy. The counts of Foix had there a little state, almost independent, proudly planted between the realms of France, England and Spain. The people have gained in something, I know; they no longer hate their neighbors, and they live at peace; they receive from Paris inventions and news; peace, trade and well-being are increased. They have, however, lost in something; instead of thirty active thinking capitals, there are thirty provincial cities, torpid and docile. The women long for a hat, the men go to smoke at a café; that is their life; they scrape together a few empty old ideas from imbecile newspapers. In old times they had thoughts on politics and courts of love.

III.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The good Froissart came here in the year 1388, having ridden and chatted about arms all along the route with the chevalier Messire Espaing de Lyon; he lodged in the inn of the Beautiful Hostess, which was then called the hotel of the Moon. The count Gaston Phoebus sent in all haste to seek him: “for he was the lord who of all the world the most gladly entertained the stranger in order to hear the news.” Froissart passed twelve weeks in his hotel: “for they made him good cheer and fed well his horses, and in all things also ordered well.”

Froissart is a child, and sometimes an old child. At that time thought was expanding, as in Greece in the time of Herodotus. But, while we feel that in Greece it is going on to unfold itself to the very end, we discover here that an obstacle checks it: there is a knot in the tree; the arrested sap can mount no higher. This knot is scholasticism.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

For, during three centuries already they had written in verse, and for two centuries in prose; after this long culture, see what a historian is Froissart. One morning he mounts on horseback with several valets, under a beautiful sun, and gallops onward; a lord meets him whom he accosts: “Sir, what is this castle?” The other tells him about the sieges, and what grand sword-thrusts were there exchanged. “Holy Mary,” cried Froissart, “but your words please me and do me a deal of good, while you tell them off to me! And you shall not lose them, for all shall be set in remembrance and chronicled in the history which I am pursuing.” Then he has explained to himself the kindred of the seigneur, his alliances, how his friends and enemies have lived and are dead, and the whole skein of the adventures interwoven during two centuries and in three countries. “And as soon as I had alighted at the hotels, on the road that we were following together, I wrote them down, were it evening or morning, for the better memory of them in times to come; for there is no such exact retentive as writing.” All is found here, the pell-mell and the hundred shifts of the conversations, the reflections, the little accidents of the journey. An old squire recounts to him mountain legends, how Pierre de Beam, having once killed an enormous bear, could no longer sleep in peace, but thenceforward he awaked each night, “making such a noise and such clatter that it seemed that all the devils in hell should have carried away everything and were inside with him.” Froissart judges that this bear was perhaps a knight turned into a beast for some misdeed; cites in support the story of Actæon, an “accomplished and pretty knight who was changed into a stag.” Thus goes his life and thus his history is composed; it resembles a tapestry of the period, brilliant and varied, full of hunting, of tournaments, battles and processions. He gives himself and his hearers the pleasure of imagining ceremonies and adventures; no other idea, or rather no idea. Of criticism, general considerations, reasoning upon man or society, counsels or forecast, there is no trace; it is a herald at arms who seeks to please curious eyes, the warlike spirit and the empty minds of robust knights, great eaters, lovers of thumps and pomps. Is it not strange, this barrenness of reason! In Greece, at the end of an hundred years, Thucydides, Plato and Xenophon, philosophy and science had appeared. By way of climax, read the verses of Froissart, those ballads, roundelays and virelays that he recited of evenings to the Count de Foix, “who took great solace in hearing them indeed,” the old rubbish of decadence, worn, affected allegories, the garrulousness of a broken-down pedant who amuses himself in composing wearisome turns of address. And the rest are all alike. Charles d’Orleans has a sort of faded grace and nothing-more, Christine de Pisan but an official solemnity.

Such feeble spirits want the force to give birth to general ideas; they are bowed down under the weight of those which have been hooked on to them.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The cause is not far to seek; think of that stout cornific * doctor with leaden eyes, a confrère of Froissart, if you like, but how different! He holds in his hand his manual of canon-law, Peter the Lombard, a treatise on the syllogism. For ten hours a day he disputes in Baralipton on the hicaeity.

* Cornificien, a name given by Jean of Sarisberg to those
who disfigured dialectics by their extravagant, cornus
arguments.—Translator.

As soon as he became hoarse, he dipped his nose again into his yellow folio; his syllogisms and quiddities ended by making him stupid; he knew nothing about things or dared not consider them; he only wielded words, shook formulas together, bruised his own head, lost all common sense, and reasoned like a machine for Latin verses.* What a master for the sons of noblemen, and for keen poetic minds, and what an education was this labyrinth of dry logic and extravagant scholasticism. Tired, disgusted, irritated, stupefied, they forgot the ugly dream as soon as possible, ran in the open air, and thought only of the chase, of war and the ladies; they were not so foolish as to turn their eyes a second time towards their crabbed litany; if they did come back to it, that was out of vanity; they wanted to set some Latin fable in their songs, or some learned abstraction, without comprehending a word of it, donning it for fashion’s sake, as the ermine of learning. With us of today, general ideas spring up in every mind,—living and flourishing ones; among the laity of that time their root was cut off, and among the clergy there remained of them but a fagot of dead wood. And so mankind was only the better fitted for the life of the body and more capable of violent passions; with regard to this the style of Froissart, artless as it is, deceives us. We think we are listening to the pretty garrulousness of a child at play; beneath this prattle we must distinguish the rude voice of the combatants, bear-hunters and hunters of men too, and the broad, coarse hospitality of feudal manners.

* See the discourse of Jean Petit on the assassination of
the Duke of Orleans.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

At midnight the Count of Foix came to supper in the great hall. “Before him went twelve lighted torches, borne by twelve valets: and the same twelve torches were held before his table and gave much light unto the hall, which was full of knights and squires; and always there were plenty of tables laid out for any person who chose to sup.” It must have been an astonishing sight, to see those furrowed faces and powerful frames, with their furred robes and their justicoats streaked under the wavering flashes of the torches. One Christmas day, going into his gallery, he saw that there was but a small fire, and spoke of it aloud. Thereupon a knight, Ernauton d’Espagne, having looked out of the window, saw in the court a number of asses with “billets of wood for the use of the house. He seized the largest of these asses with his load, threw him over his shoulders and carried him up stairs” (there were twenty-four steps), “pushing through the crowd of knights and squires who were round the chimney, and flung ass and load, with his feet upward, on the dogs of the hearth, to the delight of the count, and the astonishment of all.” Here are the laughter and the amusement of barbaric giants. They wanted noise, and songs proportioned to it. Froissart tells of a banquet when bishops, counts, abbés, knights, nearly one hundred in number, were seated at table. “There were very many minstrels in the hall, as well those belonging to the count as to the strangers, who, at their leisure, played away their minstrelsy. Those of the duke de Touraine played so loud and so well that the count clothed them ‘with cloth of gold trimmed with ermine.’”

“This count,” says Froissart, “reigned prudently; in all things he was so perfect that one could not praise him too much. No great contemporary prince could compare with him in sense, honor and wisdom.” In that case the great princes of the day were not worth much. With justice and humanity, the good Froissart scarcely troubles himself; he finds murder perfectly natural; indeed, it was the custom; they were no more astonished at it, than at a snap of the jaws in a wolf. Man then resembled a beast of prey, and when a beast of prey has eaten up a sheep nobody is scandalized thereby. This excellent Count de Foix was an assassin, not once only, but ten times. For example, he coveted the castle of Lourdes, and so sent for the captain, Pierre Ernault, who had received it in trust for the prince of Wales. Pierre Ernault “became very thoughtful and doubtful whether to go or not.” At last he went, and the count demanded from him the castle of Lourdes. The knight thought awhile what answer to make. However, having well considered, he said: “My lord, in truth I owe you faith and homage, for I am a poor knight of your blood and country; but as for the castle of Lourdes, I will never surrender it to you. You have sent for me, and you may therefore do with me as you please. I hold the castle of Lourdes from the king of England, who has placed me there; and to no other person but to him will I ever surrender it.” The Count de Foix, on hearing this answer, was exceedingly wroth, and said, as he drew his dagger, “Ho, ho, dost thou then say so? By this head, thou hast not said it for nothing.” And, as he uttered these words, he struck him foully with the dagger, so that he wounded him severely in five places, and none of the barons or knights dared to interfere.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The knight replied, “Ha, ha, my lord, this is not gentle treatment; you sent for me here, and are murdering me.” Having received these five strokes from the dagger, the count ordered him to be cast into the dungeon, which was done; and there he died, for he was ill-cured of his wounds. This dominance of sudden passion, this violence of first impulse, this flesh and blood emotion, and abrupt appeal to physical force, are cropping out continually in the people. At the slightest insult their eyes kindle and blows fall like hail.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

As we were leaving Dax, a diligence passed ours, grazing one of the horses. The conductor leaped down from his seat, a stake in his hand, and was going to fell his confrèr. Those lords lived and felt something like our conductors, and the Count de Foix was such an one.

I beg pardon of the conductors; I wrong them grievously. The count, not having the fear of the police before his eyes, came at once not to fisticuffs, but to stabs. His son Gaston, while on a visit to the king of Navarre, received a black powder which, according to the king, must forever reconcile the count and his wife; the youth took the powder in a little bag and concealed it in his breast; one day his bastard brother, Yvain, saw the bag while playing with him, wanted to have it, and afterward denounced him to the count. At this the count “began to have suspicions, for he was full of fancies,” and remained so until dinner-time, very thoughtful, haunted and harassed by sombre imaginings. Those stormy brains, filled by warfare and danger with dismal images, hastened to tumult and tempest. The youth came, and began to serve the dishes, tasting the meats, as was usual when the notion of poison was not far from any mind. The count cast his eyes upon him and saw the strings of the bag; the sight fired his veins and made his blood boil; he seized the youth, undid his pourpoint, cut the strings of the bag, and strewed some of the powder over a slice of bread, while the poor youth turned pale with fear, and began to tremble exceedingly. Then he called one of his dogs to him, and gave it him to eat. “The instant the dog had eaten a morsel his eyes rolled round in his head, and he died.” The count said nothing, but rose suddenly, and seizing his knife, threw himself upon his son. But the knights rushed in between them: “For God’s sake, my lord, do not be too hasty, but make further inquiries before you do any ill to your son.”

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The count heaped malediction and insult upon the youth, then suddenly leaped over the table, knife in hand, and fell upon him like a wild beast. But the knights and the squires fell upon their knees before him weeping, and saying: “Ah, ah! my lord, for Heaven’s sake do not kill Gaston; you have no other child.” With great difficulty he restrained himself, doubtless thinking that it was prudent to see if no one else had a part in the matter, and put the youth into the tower at Orthez.

He investigated then, but in a singular fashion, as if he were a famished wolf, wedded to a single idea, bruising himself against it mechanically and brutally, through murder and outcry, killing blindly and without reflecting that his killing is of no use to him. He had many of those who served his son arrested, and “put to death not less than fifteen after they had suffered the torture; and the reason he gave was, that it was impossible but they must have been acquainted with the secrets of his son, and they ought to have informed him by saying, ‘My lord, Gaston wears constantly on his breast a bag of such and such a form.’ This they did not do and suffered a terrible death for it; which was a pity, for there were not in all Gascony such handsome or well-appointed squires.”

When this search had proved useless he fell back upon his son; he sent for the nobles, the prelates and all the principal persons of his country, related the affair to them, and told them that it was his intention to put the youth to death. But they would not agree to this, and said that the country had need of an heir for its better preservation and defence; “and would not quit Orthez until the count had assured them that Gaston should not be put to death, so great was their affection for him.” Still the youth remained in the tower of Orthez, “where was little light,” always lying alone, unwilling to eat, “cursing the hour that ever he was born or begotten, that he should come to such an end.” On the tenth day the jailer saw all the meats that had been served in a corner, and went and told it to the count. The count was again enraged, like a beast of prey who encounters a remnant of resistance after it has once been satiated; “without saying a word,” he came to the prison, holding by the point a small knife with which he was cleaning his nails. Then striking his fist upon his son’s throat, he pushed him rudely as he said: “Ha, traitor, why dost thou not eat?” and went away without saying more. His knife had touched an artery; the youth frightened and wan, turned without a word to the other side of the bed, shed his blood and died.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

The count was grieved beyond measure when he heard this, for those violent natures felt only with excess and by contrasts; he had himself shaven and clothed in black. “The body of the youth was borne, with tears and lamentations, to the church of the Augustine Friars at Orthez, where it was buried.” * But such murders left an ill-healed wound in the heart; the dull pain remained, and from time to time some dark shadow crossed the tumult of the banquets. This is why the count never again felt such perfect joy as before.

* The passages from Froissart are from the version of Thomas
Johnes. New York: J. Winchester, New World Press.

A Tour Through the Pyrenees

A TOUR THROUGH THE PYRENEES

By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine

Translated by J. Safford Fiske

With Illustrations byGUSTAVE DORÈ

New York Henry Holt And Company 1875

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CONTENTS.

TO MARCELIN.

(EMILE PLANAT.)

H. TAINE.

BOOK I. THE COAST.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CHAPTER I. BORDEAUX.—ROYAN.

I.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

II.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

III.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CHAPTER II. LES LANDES.—BAYONNE.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

III.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CHAPTER III. BIARRITZ.—SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ.

I.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

II.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

III.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

IV.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

BOOK II. THE VALLEY OF OSSA

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

CHAPTER I. DAX.—ORTHEZ.

I.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

II.

III.

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]

With Illustrations by
GUSTAVE DORÈ