Those of the race we see in our transit impress one, on the whole, favorably. The men have, in the main, the lithe, firm port attributed to them, though there are Basque "trash," as there are Georgia "crackers," and average-lesseners everywhere. The women are often noticeably attractive; the younger ones have a ruddy face and full, clear eye, but the skin shrivels and wears with middle age, as does that of their French peasant sisters. The Basques about Biarritz and St. Jean appear to associate with the French element in entire amity; the race strives still to keep distinct, but habits and idioms and manners imperceptibly mingle; they speak French or patois quite as much as their own tongue, and in divers ways hint at the working of amalgamation and assimilation.

Mention of this bizarre tribe is perhaps not untimely; the leveling process progresses fast, over Basque-land as in all the world; steam and lightning are the genii of the age, but they destroy while they build. As a significant straw, the French government enforces here, in the public schools, the teaching and speaking of French to supersede the Basque. Similarly, Spanish is required in the schools over the border. In some of these, a child detected in a lapse into Basque must wear a certain ring, which he is allowed to pass on to the first companion he catches likewise tripping. The latter may pass it on in turn. At the end of the week comes the reckoning-day, and the unhappy individual then found with the ring is, punished for the collective sinners of the week. Few more ingenious, even if demoralizing, expedients could be devised to put the native tongue and sentiments under ban.

"It has been truthfully observed," says one,[8] "that, in ancient times, the Basques kept themselves outside of the Roman world; in the middle age they remained outside of feudal society; while to-day they would fain keep out of the modern world. The spectacle of this little confederacy, steadily maintaining its isolation for so many centuries, is most interesting, and, in some aspects, affecting; but the very stubbornness and the prolonged success of its resistance to all attempts to draw it into the current of modern life and thought only enhances the significance of its ultimate failure, and furnishes an expressive commentary upon the futility of a people's most determined efforts to hold itself aloof from the brotherhood of nations. Contact is God's manifest decree. The five Basques at Bayonne bridge, helpless against the incoming tide, present a truthful prophecy of the destiny of the whole race before the advancing and mounting wave of modern civilization."

[8] VINCENT: In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

V.

In this region, too, lies the famous pass of Ibaneta or Roncesvalles. It may be readily visited in a two days' excursion from St. Jean or from Biarritz. There is a carriage-road to Valcarlos, a small village on the way; beyond, a mule-path winds on up through the pass and down to the convent on the other side.

This convent was founded to commemorate the one greatest tradition of the pass,—the destruction of Charlemagne's rear-guard by the Basques in ambush and the death of the hero Roland.

"Oh for a blast of that dread horn On Fontarabian echoes borne That to King Charles did come; When Rowland brave and Olivier And every paladin and peer On Roncesvalles died!"

Of the few writers who have visited this region, all make airy mention of the battle of Roncesvalles; scarcely one, however, condescends to details. Yet it gave rise to a great epic poem,—the greatest epic of France, the delight of all her ancient minstrels. One often hears named the Song of Roland; one seldom hears more than the name. By many the charm of its story is all unknown.

"In truth and fact," observes a recent anonymous writer, "the chain can claim one single real legend. That one, however, is so great, so grand, so dominating,—it is so immense, so universal, so world-wide,—that it suffices all alone; it creates a doctrine by itself, it needs no aid, no support, no companions,—it is the mighty tale of Roland. The mountain is full of Roland. His hands, his feet, his horse, his sword, his voice, have left their puissant mark on almost every crest, in almost every glen. Above Gavarnie, amidst the eternal snow, gapes the slashed fissure hewn by Durandal, his sword; ten miles off in a gorge you see the indents of the hoofs of Bayard on a rock which served as his half-way touching-point when he sprang in two flying bounds from the Breach to the Peak of the Chevalier near St. Sauveur. At the Pass of Roland, above Cambo, the rock remains split open where the hero stamped and claimed a passage. The ponds of Vivier Lion, near Lourdes, were dug by the pressure of his foot and knee when Vaillantif, a charger which carried him in his last fight, but who was then unbroken, had the audacity to throw him. At St. Savin, where the monks had lodged him, he paid his bill by slaying the irreverent giants, Passamont and Alabaster, whose neighborhood, was unpleasant to the convent. And so on, all about. His tremendous figure is everywhere, all full of the superbest violence and of the most wondrous acrobatry. But it is at Roncesvalles that his great name is greatest. There, where he died, his memory lives in an unfading halo. In Spain, beneath the Peak of Altabiscar amongst the beech groves, on the 15th of August, 778, perished the astounding paladin. The Song of Roland tells how he fell, not quite exactly but very amazingly; the story is so intensely interesting that the reader is carried away by it and finds himself for a moment almost able to believe it. It does not matter that the defeat is attributed to the Saracens, not one of whom was present, (the whole thing having been got up and carried out by the Basques alone;) that error was indispensable to the tale, and gives it much of its strange charm."

There is an excellent reason why the poem might fail in sharp historical accuracy; it was not formally composed until between three and four hundred years after the battle. The event itself happened in 778; the first known MS. was made, by a scribe, about 1150. All during the long interval, ballad-singers and minstrels had been extolling France and Roland; the love of the heroic was as strong as before Homer; the hero's name had grown: with his fame into titanic proportions; the actual author, (conjectured to have been one Turoldus or Theurolde, a monk,) had but to take the poetic material ready at his hand and fashion it into the epic. Time had dimmed and enlarged the details; the Song of Roland deals in mass and massive heroes; in this it is like a book from the Iliad.

It is not a long poem; there are only about 3,500 lines in all, but the Old French in which it is written makes it difficult reading, at least to one not a Frenchman. The briefest citation will show this:

"Carles li Reis, nostre Emperere magnes, Sela anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne; Tresqu'en la mer, cunquist la tere altaigne. N'i ad castel ki devant lui remagnet."

("Charles le Roi, notre grand Empereur, Sept ans entiers est reste en Espagne; Jusqu' a la mer, il a conquis la haute terre. Pas de chateau qui tienne devant lui."

—GAUTIER.)



However, it has been transmuted into modern French, and latterly twice translated into English verse; and the English translations appear to have preserved remarkably both the power and sweetness of the original.

The poem centres almost wholly upon this deadly battle in the Pyrenees,—the last battle of Roland its hero. Charlemagne and the Franks had invaded Spain, and spent seven years warring with the Moors and conquering their cities. On their return, as the poem narrates it, the Moors, instigated by a traitor in Charlemagne's army, plotted an ambush in this pass of Roncesvalles. The army began its march. The main body defiled through in safety, and turned westward to await the rear-guard nearer the coast. But when that division, the flower of the Frankish forces,—commanded by Roland, his bosom friend Oliver, the warrior-archbishop Turpin, and the others of the twelve great paladins,—reached the pass, hostiles began to appear,—in front, above, behind. More and more they thickened around it,—fierce Basques or swarthy Moslems, "a hundred thousand heathen men;" and the three leaders soon realized their betrayal. Oliver exclaimed:

"'Ganelon[9] wrought this perfidy! It was he who doomed us to hold the rear.' 'Hush,' said Roland, 'O Olivier, No word be said of my step-sire here,'"

—a touch of magnanimity strange for that brutal age, yet only one of many in the poem. Roland rather exulted than shrank at the prospect of a battle, by whatever means brought about. Oliver was the cooler of the two, and he promptly urged Roland to sound his great horn, which might be heard for thirty leagues, and so summon Charlemagne to the rescue. He saw that the danger was real, for the odds were overwhelmingly against them. But Roland impetuously refused. Thrice, though not in cowardice, Oliver pleaded with him:

"'Roland, Roland, yet wind one blast! Karl will hear ere the gorge be past, And the Franks return on their path full fast.' 'I will not sound on mine ivory horn! It shall never be spoken of me in scorn That for heathen felons one blast I blew. I may not dishonor my lineage true.

* * * * *

"'Death were better than fame laid low. Our Emperor loveth a downright blow!'"

[9] Ganelon was the traitor and Roland's own step-father. The lines quoted are from the late version by JOHN O'HAGAN, outlined in an article in the Edinburgh Review to whose appreciative commentary much indebtedness is acknowledged.

The Moors at last swarmed to the attack. They were no cravens, the Moors; the fight grew rapidly desperate. The Franks performed wonders; they tingled with the Archbishop's glorious assoilment:

"In God's high name the host he blest, And for penance he gave them—to smite their best!"

The twelve paladins slew twelve renowned Paynims; the mailed phalanx hewed its way into the infidels, laying them low by thousands. But thousands more were behind,—the reserve was inexhaustible; the "hundred thousand" were cut to pieces, when the Moorish king, hastily summoned, came up with a fresh army of myriads more. It was too much; little by little the Franks were beaten down, not back, and melted unyielding away. The peers fell one by one, upon heaps of the Moslem dead; the day wore on; of the twenty thousand Frankish warriors, but sixty men at length remained. Too late Roland would wind his horn; it was Oliver's turn to disdain the now useless expedient. Roland sounded nevertheless:

"The mountain peaks soared high around; Thirty leagues was borne the sound. Karl hath heard it and all his band; 'Our men have battle,' he said, 'on hand!' Ganelon rose in front and cried; 'If another spake, I would say he lied!'"

Again the desperate sound was faintly heard:

"'It is Roland's horn,' said the Emperor, 'And save in battle he had not blown!' 'Battle,' said Ganelon, 'is there none. Old you have grown,—all white and hoar!

* * * * *

"'He would sound all day for a single hare.'"

The third time, Roland blew; his nostrils and mouth are filled with blood, his temples crack with the stress:

"Said Karl: 'That horn is full of breath!' Said Naimes: ''Tis Roland who travaileth,'"

—and the Emperor instantly gave the command to turn and rush to the rescue.

But the battle had gone too far. Again and again the little band of Franks clove its way into the enemy; the latter wavered, retreated, fell by hundreds, and came back in thousands. Roland's tears fell fast over his dead companions:

"'Land of France, thou art soothly fair! To-day thou liest bereaved and bare. It was all for me your lives ye gave, And I was helpless to shield or save.'"

The last Frankish man-at-arms at length fell; only the three foremost paladins remained of all the host. But the Saracens dared no longer to approach them; they hurled their lances from afar. Spent and faint and bleeding, the three still stood out, but the death-wound of Oliver finally came; his vision swam, he swayed blindly on his horse. There is no more touching and beautiful incident in the whole range of song than this of his death:

"His eyes from bleeding are dimmed and dark, Nor mortal near or far can mark; And when his comrade beside him pressed, Fiercely he smote on his golden crest; Down to the nasal the helm he shred,— But passed no further nor pierced his head. Roland marveled at such a blow, And thus bespake him, soft and low: 'Hast thou done it, my comrade, wittingly? Roland, who loves thee so dear, am I; Thou hast no quarrel with me to seek?' Oliver answered: 'I hear thee speak, But I see thee not. God seeth thee. Have I struck thee, brother? Forgive it me.' 'I am not hurt, O Olivier, And in sight of God I forgive thee here.' Then each to each his head hath laid, And in love like this was their parting made."

And now but Roland and the Archbishop were left,—the former on foot, his charger dead. Wounded and gasping, they rushed forward upon the enemy; the sword-arm of the Moorish king was cut from his side, his son fell dead before him. The Moors quailed; their lances fell in storms upon the heroes. Suddenly a long, far sound was heard; it was of the trumpets of Charlemagne's returning army rushing to the rescue but still miles and hours away. The Saracens turned at the very sound; a final lance-shower, and they fled; the two held the pass of Roncesvalles, unconquered,—but dying.

For it was too late.

The Archbishop had sunk to the ground, gasping,—lifeless. Roland, stricken himself, placed his companion gently on the grass:

"He took the fair white hands outspread, Crossed and clasped them upon his breast."

Then with his remaining strength, he sought one by one for the corpses of the other ten paladins; one by one he brought them to the feet of the dead prelate and laid them before the august body,—Oliver's corpse last and dearest of all. There he might leave them, the solemn assembly of the peers. It was his last task. His wound too was mortal; his time had come to join them.

"In vigor and pathos," justly observes the review before mentioned, "this poem rises to the end. There are few things in poetry more simply grand than the death of Roland. He moves feebly back to the adjoining limit-line of Spain,—the land which his well-loved master has conquered,—and a bow-shot beyond it, and then drops to the ground:"

"That death was on him he knew full well; Down from his head to his heart it fell. On the grass beneath a pine tree's shade, With face to earth, his form he laid; Beneath him placed he his horn and sword, And turned his face to the heathen horde Thus hath he done the sooth to show That Karl and his warriors all may know That the gentle Count a conqueror died. 'Mea culpa,' full oft he cried, And for all his sins, unto God above In sign of penance he raised his glove.

* * * * *

"He did his right-hand glove uplift; Saint Gabriel took from his hand the gift. —Then drooped his head upon his breast, And with clasped hands he went to rest."

There is indeed little in epic poetry to surpass the high simplicity of this loving portrayal of a hero's death.

It is the climax of the poem. The Emperor's army burst upon the scene, frantic with anxiety; but no eye was open to give them greeting. Roland was dead with his slaughtered rear-guard, and lying with his face to the foe. For three days the sun stayed its motion, at Charlemagne's frenzied petition, and the Moors were chased and cut to pieces, Saragossa taken,—a full and furious vengeance exacted. The whole army mourned for their companions; holy rites attended their stately burial; Ganelon was tried, condemned, torn to pieces by wild horses. But the joy of the Franks, their hero, their idol, was gone forever from them; retribution, even the bitterest, could count for little against the passing of that peerless spirit.

A pathetic meeting was afterward the old Emperor's with Alva, the affianced of Roland:

"'Where is my Roland, sire,' she cried, 'Who vowed to take me for his bride?'"

Brokenly at length he told her of the news. A moment she gazed at him unseeing:

"'God and his angels forbid, that I Should live on earth if Roland die!' Pale grew her cheek,—she sank amain Down at the feet of Charlemagne."

So let us leave this tender poem, tender unwontedly among its times; an epic which sincerely merits a vogue more near to its value.



CHAPTER V.

THE CITY OF THE ARROW-PIERCED SAINT;

We glide smoothly away from St. Jean de Luz and its legends, by the unlegendary railroad. The track curves southward, with frequent views of the coast, and it will be but a few minutes before we shall be in Spain. We instinctively feel for the reassuring rustle of our passports, duly vised at Bordeaux. The low mountain that overhangs Fuenterrabia, one of the nearest Spanish towns, comes closer, and soon the train whistles shrilly into the long station at Hendaye, the last French village, in great repute for its delicious cordial. It is on the edge of the Bidassoa, a placid, shallow river which here lazily acts as the international boundary. Irun, the first town of the peninsula, is across the bridge, and after a short delay the train crosses,—and we instantly feel a hundred miles nearer to the Escorial, a hundred years nearer to Philip and the auto-da-fe.

The change of nationality at these frontier towns is always distinct and surprising, and more so than elsewhere here in Irun. Within three minutes we have in every sense passed from France into Spain. Language not only, but the type of face and dress, have altered in a flash. We are not conscious, however, of any increased governmental surveillance; passports are not asked for at all, and the customs-official gives but a light inspection to trunk and satchels.

But he is in considerable perplexity over the camera. This he is scrutinizing very suspiciously. We assume that a true Greek compound should pass current everywhere, if given a proper local termination, and so confidently hazard, "photo-grafia."



I still believe that the word was skilfully and philologically evolved, but it seems to fail of its effect. We repeat it, with appropriate gestures; the official looks puzzled but not enlightened. He inspects the lens, the bellows, the slides. We fear for the negatives and the unexposed plates. Prompt action is needed, for already his hand is approaching them; and boldly withdrawing the closed plate-holders from the camera we defiantly pocket them before his eyes.

A short, clicking sound caused by the act of withdrawal gives the inspector an idea. He looks up hopefully.

"Telegrafo?" he asks.

We nod with vigor and even more hopefully, and are inspired to add:

"Si, senor, telegrafo! Americano; caramba!"

This has the desired effect. The mystery is explained. The government's hand is stayed, its doubt vanishes; the precious scroll of chalk is made, and the plates are saved to darkness and to good works.

It is necessary to change cars at Irun. Trains cannot possibly go through, owing to a difference in gauge,—a difference purposely devised by moody Spain, in order to impede hostile invasion. There is also a wait of an hour. The Spaniard does not assent to the equation between time and money. The lunch at the buffet in the station is ceremonious and calm; the successive courses are gravely served at its naperied tables with the same deliberation, the same care and attention to detail, as at a hotel. It is but a short journey to San Sebastian, and in half an hour after leaving Irun we are at our destination.

II.

San Sebastian is both a city unto itself, and a summer resort unto others. As to the latter, it is among the most popular watering-places in Spain, and is styled "the Brighton of Madrid." As to the former, it is a home for twenty thousand human beings of its own; it earns a sufficing competence, chiefly in exchanges with its surrounding province; and it has a monopoly of centralization over a wide region, for no other important Spanish city lies nearer than Pampeluna or Burgos. Burgos is not actually so very remote,—only a short hundred and fifty miles beyond; and we had spoken of a visit to its renowned cathedral. But we had not reckoned with Spanish railway speed; it was found that the time required solely to go and come would be nearly fifteen hours! Unvisited, we saw, must remain the cathedral within which the hot-headed Protestant missionary blew out the sacred light that had burned for three hundred years. Owing to the Hispanian misconception of horological values, Burgos is practically, if not actually, exceedingly remote from San Sebastian.

The latter, however, is so fortunately close to the edge of France that those who come as near as Biarritz or Pau should assuredly make this brief dip over the border.

San Sebastian is strictly new; its predecessors have been burned five times, one upon the other, the last being brought to ashes by the soldiers of Wellington; and it is liable to be burned again whenever France and Spain begin to fight again across it. It is an excellent model for that worthy fowl, the phoenix, for it has risen with undismayed cheerfulness from each holocaust. The present representative is in three segments. The city itself is composed of two, and the citadel makes a fairly important third. From a military point of view, the citadel was once counted first, and the city itself made an unimportant third,—with no second. But modern gunnery has changed that estimate.

Of the two parts of the city proper, one is national, the other international; they do not unite, but adjoin, welded by a central promenade, the Alameda. Each is distinct, and has little to do with the life of the other. The native population centres wholly in the west half; we drift first over to this, in our afternoon walk, and scan its appearance and people with inquisitive though decorous interest. This section, comprising much of what was the old town, has evidently aimed to reproduce it; it has been rebuilt with persistent regard to the former municipal type, and shows to-day a curious combination of bright, new and well constructed tenements, built on a dark, old and ill instructed plan. The streets are left narrow,—very narrow. The black doorways and halls, as we peer in, in passing, are cramped and forbidding; the projecting balconies approach each other overhead, and the oblong yellow buildings themselves rise to overshadowing height. Like soldiers on dress parade they stand, relentlessly regular and uniform, block after block, and their walled lanes, straight and similar and uncharacteristic, cross and weave themselves into a stiff, right-angled check, exasperating and profitless, unrelieved by a hint at variation of outline, by a picturesque eave or gable, or a single artistic "bit;"

The cathedral does indeed possess some interest, particularly its carved front of light-colored stone; and here and there about it are a few old houses, unsutteed relicts, that have not bowed to the new regime. The shops in this part of the town are less individual than one would expect, though we find them not devoid of a certain variety. The specialty of the place is the enameling of gold and silver upon iron. Jewelry and small articles are made of this ware in elaborate designs and with great daintiness and skill. Outside of this, San Sebastian does not seem to have invented any new wants for humanity, and its shops do not seek to supply any but the old.

The other half of the town I have called international. This is the section of the hotels, of wide streets and flagged walks, of massy squares of business buildings, of villas and a park and the bathing circle. The sea swings around the projecting cape of the citadel into a deeply notched bay, small and still, and on its edge which meets the town you find pavilions and beach-chairs and their usual accompaniment of idling humanity. The Casino stands boldly up, a little to the right, and in front of it, on the Alameda, the band will play in the coming summer evenings for all the elite of Madrid.

The fine Hotel de Londres is large and well kept, and, like all Spanish hotels, charges on the good American plan of so much per day. One gratefully appreciates this, after juggling every few days with disheartening lists of accumulated coffees and eggs and dinners and rooms and mineral waters and service and bougies, and the others. The infinitude of microscopic book-keeping made necessary by the Continental system is a thought to shudder at. For the rest, the hotel is only unsatisfying because it seems in nowise distinctively Spanish. We almost wish we had chosen a certain other hostelry equally well spoken of, which, instead of Hotel, had alluringly styled itself a Fonda. Probably we might have found as little there as here that was pure Castilian. Save in language and location, San Sebastian is not of Spain, Spanish. And as with Biarritz, it is not to be sought for its reminiscences of old age. It is trim and "kempt" and modern, and lives strictly in the present. We soon come to realize this, cease longing for the unattainable, and enjoy the place for what it is. Perhaps we shall recoup the vanished patina to-morrow, when we visit an older and far different town,—Fuenterrabia.

III.

The Sebastian season is coextensive with the summer season at Biarritz; perhaps rather tardier in its beginnings. Consequently we are still somewhat in advance of the tide. This is distinctly a disadvantage, as it was in part at Biarritz. There are places whose very reason for existence is society. Only in this costume are they rightly themselves; only in full dress, so to say, should they be called upon. In a true "sentimental journey," art and nature and history should take but equal turn with the life of the present. The ideal traveler courts solitude in a ruin and society in a resort. The spirit of each is differently divined.

And San Sebastian out of season is a casket without its jewels,—modern-made casket at that, costly but uncharacteristic, and with nothing of an heirloom's charm; a casket neither encased in time's antique leather nor encrusted with true Spanish enamel.

However, we are not wholly out of the season. We are in the van of it, but day breaks before the sun rises. San Sebastian is partially awake already and rubbing its eyes. The season's contingent is arriving in daily portions. The Queen Regent is coming soon, to spend the summer; this draws an additional number in advance, thus influenced to summer here themselves. The beach is already mildly popular, and the cabmen mildly independent. We drive out from the town around the bend of the little bay, and see opening villas and other marks of awakening life. But we sigh for music on the quiet plaza; hope in vain for a concert or ball in the Casino; and, above all, mourn and refuse to be comforted, for there is no bull-fight. After Wellington, whose way to Waterloo left here its fiery track, we exclaim: "O for August or Madrid!" In Madrid, they are holding bull-fights even now in June; in August, they will be holding them here.

IV.

As to the citadel, sight-seers are not solicitously catered to by the authorities. I stroll up there in the afternoon. The citadel hill is known as the Monte Orgullo. The spirals of the road lead out to and around the edge of the promontory to its ocean side, and curve steadily upward during a rise of four hundred feet. There are pleasant views of the sea,—the Spanish main in literal fact,—and of the hills across the little notch of water that turns in at the left toward the town. I near the summit, pass under an untended gateway, work upward still by a narrow lane shut in with high stone walls, and finally reach the foot of a long flight of stone steps and see the citadel looming above. It is Spain, and my passport is at the hotel. They are said to be very suspicious in Spain; to act first and investigate afterward. My whole vocabulary has already been employed at the custom-house, and consists of "Americano," "caramba," and "Si, Senor." It won the day at Irun. Will it win the day here?

Boldly I begin ascending the steps. They are many and wide, confined by the same high walls, and commanded from above by the battlements of the fort. There is commotion on the parapet at the unmuffled sound of the foreigner's foot-fall, and armed figures at once appear at the edge.

I pause half-way, and look expectantly upward.

"Caramba?" I inquire.

A soldier shakes, his head.

"Americano," I insinuate, sweetly.

Another shake, more decided.

I grieve for a somewhat fuller technical familiarity with the Spanish military idiom. Undismayed, however, I resort to the sign language, and make gestures to signify that I want to ascend.

Either the proposal is rejected or it is not comprehended, and I act it out again, with a cajoling "Si, Senor." Then, to make the idea clearer, I move on up the steps.

But now there is a vigorous negative. More armed figures, appear at the parapet, and, while I pause again, one of them explains his position in a few well-chosen and emphatic phrases, and illustrates his views by a pointed gesture toward his gun. The illustration at least is definite and unmistakable.

International complications are never to be recklessly brought on. But shall the assailing traveler quail before a gesture? My store of Spanish passwords is exhausted, but there is one solvent yet remaining,—the universal countersign. With undiminished cheerfulness, I select from my pocket a stamped silver disk of well-known design, hold it significantly a moment in full view, and then confidently proceed up the staircase.

The armed figures vanish from view. There is a foreboding silence as I near the heavy entrance-way at the top. But before I can pound for admittance, the great door swings deferentially open, a guard within salutes still more deferentially, I advance, friend, and proffer the countersign,—and the Monte Orgullo is won!

The view from this hill of Mars well merits the climb and any attendant risk to the home State Department. The air is warm and still. In front, the sea stretches to the horizon, smooth as the fair Glimmerglass loved by Deerslayer. To the right flows a clear, quiet river, the Urumea, to meet it,—a river on whose nearer bank below us lies buried many a brave English soldier, their graves marked by white headstones; and from the farther shore of which once flew leaden rain and iron hail from conquering English guns. Behind us lies the city, asleep in the warm afternoon haze, and in the distance are the forms of purplish Pyrenees hills; while farther around opens the bright little bay,—the Concha or Shell, happily so called,—with villas fringing it's curve, and an islet-pearl in its centre. A wistful touch of peace and sunshine is over all the scene, as one views it, in the irony of fact, from this storm-centre of war.

There are barracks within the walls, and monster guns and other usual martial furnishings, and the fortifications themselves have, to some extent, been put in touch with modern requirements. The garrison's life is not hard, and they live contentedly through drill and evolution, ration and routine, and stroll down to the Alameda and Casino in hours of leave. But theirs is a post of honor and danger, nevertheless. San Sebastian lies foremost in the route of possible invasion. It could not be ignored nor left untaken. And the very isolation of this fortress, once its strength, is now its weakness. It might serve to delay an onrushing army for a saving moment,—a dog thrown out to check the wolves. It could accomplish little more against the terrific artillery of to-day; and,—as with the dog,—the interval would prove a period of marked unrest to the fated garrison.

However, war is now at last, if never hitherto, extinct for all time, so trusts the world at peace. And barrack-life is dreamy and easy, and the stroll down to the Alameda very pleasant, these fair days of summer.

But the white headstones on the river slope come out into view again, for a time, as I wander back down the spiral road toward the town and think on these things; a cloud drifts across the sun and dims their brightness; then the light pours down as before.

V.

Wellington fought his way over this region in 1813, and took San Sebastian,—took it by storm and thunder-storm,—took it in fire and hail, at fearful cost, and over the dead bodies of a quarter of his stormers. The place blocked his northward way to meet the Man of Destiny. Destiny decreed its fall. For seven weeks, the siege, octopus-like, wound its long tentacles about its victim, sucking away the life. On the last day of summer, the assault was let loose. The attack seemed irresistible; the defence impregnable. All that furious morning, column after column of British troops swarmed up the river bank, pressed on into the breaches, or hurled themselves to the top of the walls. Column after column melted back, under the torrent of fire from the parapet and from the batteries in the citadel. "In vain," says Napier,[10] "the following multitude covered the ascent, seeking an entrance at every part; to advance was impossible, and the mass of assailants, slowly sinking downwards, remained stubborn and immovable on the lower part of the breach ...

[10] Peninsular War.

"The volunteers, who had been with difficulty restrained in the trenches, 'calling out to know why they had been brought there if they were not to lead the assault,' being now let loose, went like a whirlwind to the breaches, and again the crowded masses swarmed up the face of the ruins, but reaching the crest line they came down like a falling wall; crowd after crowd were seen to mount, to totter and to sink, the deadly French fire was unabated, the smoke floated away, and the crest of the breach bore no living man."

The British artillery, from a near elevation, now reinforced the attack with a raking fire, and new regiments plunged across the stream and rushed to join the attack. "The fighting now became fierce and obstinate again at all the breaches, but the French musketry still rolled with deadly effect, the heaps of slain increased, and once more the great mass of stormers sank to the foot of the ruins, unable to win; the living sheltered themselves as they could, but the dead and wounded lay so thickly that hardly could it be judged whether the hurt or unhurt were most numerous.

"It was now evident that the assault must fail unless some accident intervened, for the tide was rising, the reserves all engaged, and no greater effort could be expected from men whose courage had been already pushed to the verge of madness. In this crisis, fortune interfered. A number of powder-barrels, live shells, and combustible materials which the French had accumulated behind the traverses for their defence, caught fire, a bright, consuming flame wrapped the whole of the high curtain, a succession of loud explosions was heard, hundreds of the French grenadiers were destroyed, the rest were thrown into confusion, and while the ramparts were still involved with suffocating eddies of smoke, the British soldiers broke in at the first traverse. The defenders, bewildered by this terrible disaster, yielded for a moment, yet soon rallied, and a close, desperate struggle took place along the summit of the high curtain; but the fury of the stormers, whose numbers increased every moment, could not be stemmed. The French colors on the cavalier were torn away, by Lieutenant Gethin of the eleventh regiment. The hornwork and the land front below the curtain, and the loopholed wall behind the great breach, were all abandoned; the light-division soldiers, who had already established themselves in the ruins on the French left, immediately penetrated to the streets; and at the same moment the Portuguese at the small breach, mixed with the British who had wandered to that point seeking for an entrance, burst in on their side.

"Five hours the dreadful battle had lasted at the walls, and now the storm of war went pouring into the town. The undaunted governor still disputed the victory for a short time with the aid of his barricades, but several hundreds of his men being cut off and taken in the hornwork, his garrison was so reduced that even to effect a retreat behind the line of defences which separated the town from the Monte Orgullo was difficult; the commanders of battalions were embarrassed for want of orders, and a thunder-storm, which came down from the mountains with unbounded fury immediately after the place was carried, added to the confusion of the fight.

"Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well conducted; but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until the flames, following the steps of the plunderer, put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town."

* * * * *

It is beyond imagination, this sunny June afternoon, that the shining city about us has gasped in smoke and ruins, has been pierced with arrows unto death as was its patron saint of old; that this contentful droning of the shore and the street deepened once to the roar of war and rose to the shriek of suffering.



CHAPTER VI.

AN OLD SPANISH MINIATURE.

"When Charlemain with all his peerage fell, By Fontarabia."

—MILTON.

The next day an indolent morning train draws us back to the frontier. The landscape is rather shadeless; "a Spaniard hates a tree." It should be but a twenty-minute ride, and so, it being short at the longest, we do not have time to grudge the additional twenty consumed in "indolencing." The time-table allowed for that, and so prepared us. It is when larger times are involved,—when a four-hour ride is inflated to eight, and an eight-hour trip to fifteen, as in going to Burgos,—that the corporate deliberateness of the Spanish railways ceases to be a curiosity, and becomes a crime.

We are soon in Irun once more, and after change of cars, cross to Hendaye, and baggage is inspected for France. The train goes on its way north, but we stay in Hendaye, to lunch, and to make our projected excursion to Fuenterrabia.

In terms of logic, San Sebastian the modern has in Fuenterrabia the ancient its full "contradictory." The one, the resort, is affirmative and universal; the other, the old, strange town, is negative and individual. The one has told us little of old Spain; we turn hopefully to the other.

Fuenterrabia lies near the mouth of the Bidassoa, on the Spanish side of the stream, below Irun. It is but two miles, from Irun, and readily reached from that place by carriage; from Hendaye, on the French side, one reaches it by row-boat in about the same time, with the additional zest and boast of recrossing the river and of entering and leaving Spain once more.

II.

Luncheon past, we walk up the long, easy incline that leads from Hendaye station into its town; and with a turn to the left find our way through its streets down again to the river bank. Here are boats and boatmen, and we have to run the customary gauntlet of competition, as vociferous at Hendaye as at Killarney or the Crossmon. We elect two of the competitors as allies, and the rest become our sworn enemies forthwith.

The tide is low, the water still and shallow; and we are sculled smoothly out into the stream, restful in the soft sunshine, the full blue of the afternoon sky. The voices of our hundred enemies recede; the sounds from the town yield to the dripping oars; soon the stream stretches its silent width about us. Close-grouped on the opposite shore we see the dark walls of Fuenterrabia, domineered by the castle. The railway whistle begins to seem a memory of another existence, the bustle of travel a thing remote. The quiet of the river, unlike Lethe, turns us to the past, and clouds the present in a dreamy haze.

"In that sunny corner where the waves of the Bay of Biscay wash over a sandy barrier and mingle with the waters of the Bidassoa stream,"—thus runs the legend so charmingly recounted in The Sun-Maid,—"they tell the ancient story that a favored mortal won from the gods permission to ask three blessings for Spain.

"He asked that her daughters might be beautiful, that her sons might be brave, and that her government might be good.

"The first two requests were granted,—the beauty of a Spanish woman is of world-wide renown; and if the men are rash, passionate, and revengeful, at least they are brave; but the last request was refused.

"'Impossible!' was the answer; 'impossible! Already she is an earthly paradise, and were this last blessing hers, the very gods themselves would desert Elysium and come down to dwell in Spain.'"

Of this we think, winding among the shallows, as the Spanish bank comes nearer, and the boat at last grounds lightly on its soil. Before us is the old town we are seeking,—a type perhaps of the nation itself, in its courtly unthrift, its proud misgovernance.

III.

There is a little custom-house on the bank, but our impedimenta are safe in Hendaye. I think our passports are there as-well, so bold does one grow upon familiarity.

We have scarcely traversed a hundred yards before we come upon the middle centuries. There will be no caviling at the satisfying antiquity of Fuenterrabia. We have passed in between the lichened walls which still guard the city, and a few steps bring us into the town and to the foot of the main street. We pause to look, and the sight is certainly striking. Beyond a doubt Fuenterrabia is old. It has a true Spanish tint, and one dyed in the wool; one might probably travel far in Spain before meeting a truer. This street seems utterly unmodified by modern formulae. Wavering and narrow and sombre, it stretches upward on a gradual incline until it meets the cathedral stepping out from the line of the old houses and closing the vista. Even in the short perspective, the huge, blackened eaves of the opposite roofs seem almost to meet. Balconies, associated with moonlight and mandolins, serenades and senoritas, jut out from every window; dark bosses of escutcheons mark the fronts; and below, along the edging of sidewalk, are the dim little shops, curtained by yellow canvas, intensely and delightfully local, and wholly unknowing of outside demand or competition. One of these places does indeed cater to visitors with a humble supply of photographs and of clicking sets of varnished wooden castanets paired by colored worsteds; but the others of the store-keepers and the inhabitants in the streets are clearly unhardened to foreigners, and regard us solely with a deep and artless curiosity,—tempered, I hope, by admiration. As the town has been, so it is. It is an epitome of Spain and her past.

IV.

At the head of the street we enter the cool cathedral, and find, as always, wealth created by poverty. In places such as these one realizes the hold of the Romish system on mediaeval Europe. One realizes its power also. No matter what the size of a town, it boasts its costly church; oftener, as here, its cathedral. Villages, houses, people, may be poor, their church stands rich; they may be unlearned in art and in culture, their church stands a model of both. There was their shrine, their finality,—in religion not merely, but in art and wisdom and authority.

At least, the Catholic system held its followers firmly in leash. Condemn its errors and excesses, yet, these apart, it was marvelously adapted to its mission. As an engine of unification it was almost omnipotent. Through the ups and downs of restless migrations and invasions,—of feudalisms and governments and the soberer commercial spirit,—it has kept its hold unbroken upon the mass of European humanity. Its priests and popes might sink out of respect; the Church did not sink. In the fiercest civil feuds, its abbeys were held inviolate. To the most brutal, the Church had an odor of sanctity. Its threats terrified; its mandates were obeyed; it was the one persistent, binding principle; it held men in check from a relapse into tribalism.

And its hold is firm to-day. Go into a Romish church, you shall find worshipers at every hour. Worn housewives, seamed and aged market-women, a chance workingman, an awed and tiptoeing child,—they are there in their silence. They kneel, they pray, their eyes are fixed on the altar. Formalism or not, a sincerity underlies it,—a belief and obedience absorbed from centuries of environment; implicit and unquestioning, and making for good.

V.

Beyond the cathedral is the broad square or plaza, and the half-alive streets wandering from this are even more Fuenterrabian than the one just past, for they are less well-to-do. The poorer houses may reveal the traits and traditions of a town far more faithfully than the richer. The latter can draw their models from a wider field. The former copy only the local and long-followed pattern.

Here at our right stands the castle. It is stern in its decrepitude; its very aspect is historic. It was built by a king of Navarre, Sancho Abarca, known as the Strong, so long ago as the tenth century; the facade facing the square is somewhat later, and the other facade was rebuilt by Charles V. We pass through the entrance-way and across a murky, earthen-floored atrium, and stand in silence in the roofless central hall.

It is at this point that our nascent impressions are brusquely shocked. Fuenterrabia is not all steeped in dreams of the past. It has waked for once into the business present as well. Its proud reserve has been broken. There is a rift in the lute. Here by the mossy courtyard, enclosed by historic walls and the spirit of an unworldly past, we are met by a sign-board, with the following English inscription:



FOR SALE! THIS ROYAL PALACE AND CASTLE OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. appli for informations to PRIMO FERNANDEZ, FUENTERRABIA.

A preceding traveler saw this sign when here, and quotes it in part in a recent book.[11] It still hangs, as we see it now, two years after his visit, still pathetically but vainly invoking the spirit of a worldly present.

[11] FIELD: Old Spain and New Spain.

For the lover of day dreams, given to designing his chateaux en Espagne, I seriously recommend this purchase in Fuenterrabia. The castillo is a real one and the most accessible in Spain, and all its surroundings are gratefully in harmony. It is presumably a bargain, and one might either hold it for a rise, or turn grandee and live in it.



Within the court, the daylight comes in over the dismantled walls. The ivy green climbs along the grey stones. We trace the old hearth and the outline of the stone staircase scarred upon the wall. We conjure up the rest of the structure, but the Northern Wizard is not with us here, as at Kenilworth, to repeople it with life and merrymaking, and it strains the imagination to depart far from the dull, dead present of Fuenterrabia. Perchance of old there came hither knights and ladies, pricking o'er the plaine, perchance here was dancing and wassail. We close our eyes and would fain image the scene. We banish the ruined walls, the sunlight creeping among the ivy. We see the sheen of cloth of gold and the gleam of greaves and breastplates. We catch the tale of battle, the passing of the loving-cup, the stately treading of slow Spanish measures. We hear,—we hear,—what is it that we hear?—the melodious sound of woman's soft voice, gently whispering: "Five sous each for the party, monsieur."

And as we awake and pay and depart, we turn and see again the disillusionizing legend:



CHAPTER VII.

AN ERA IN TWILIGHT.

"Pour faire comprendre le caractere d'un peuple, je conterais trente anecdotes et je supprimerais toutes les theories philosophiques sur le sujet,"

—STENDHAL.

Returning to Hendaye, a train takes us again to Bayonne, connecting there for Orthez and Pau. The ride to Bayonne needs an hour or less, and from thence to Orthez calls for two. It is not many decades since much of this journey had to be made by the diligence. Railways and highways have pushed rapidly toward the Pyrenees. When in the approaching fortnight we shall come to traverse the Route Thermale, the great carriage-way along the chain, we shall see modern road-making in its perfection; and the rail will keep anxious watch, over the road, running parallel along the distant plain and reaching helpful arms up the valleys to uphold it.

Toward Pau especially, the railroads converge. That city, a social capital for centuries, is a social capital still, and its winter influx of invalids and pleasure-seekers stimulates every facility of approach. Then, too, it lies on the way crossing southern France from the Bidassoa to the Rhone, and no line linking these rivers could omit from its chain the Gave[12] de Pau.

[12] Gave is the generic name among the Pyrenees for a mountain stream or torrent.



From Bayonne, the train at first traverses an edge of a singular region. It is a part of the Landes. This great savanna, which flattens the entire space from Bordeaux to Bayonne, was crossed in coming southward from Bordeaux, and now as we strike eastward and inland we but briefly skirt its southerly portion. A sandy, marshy waste, infertile, unhealthful and poor, it lies in utter contrast with the fields and slopes of neighboring provinces. It is anomalous, incongruous,—

"A bare strand Of hillocks heaped with ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds."

Its inhabitants are meagre and stunted; it scants them both in food and drink. Its miserliness is deep-set: artesian wells sunk a thousand feet through its dull grey sands bring up only a brackish yellow water; a precarious rye and barley grow grudgingly.

The low stretches of furze and heath and fern are fringed only by mournful horizons of pines or broken by long files of gashed and wounded firs. This extensive tree-growth, however, which is comparatively recent, has at least lessened one terror of the Landes: sand-storms and snow-storms, which once swept across the wastes, have been shorn of their strength. Honor for this is due almost alone to one man, a M. Bremontier. Before his time, forest-making had here been deemed impossible; pine seeds planted in the lax hold of these sands had hitherto been unable even to take root, against the unbroken sweep of the winds. M. Bremontier, after many experiments, conceived the idea of planting with the pine seeds the seeds of the common broom, whose hardy tuft should protect the tiny sapling until it could stand by itself. The result surpassed hope; pine forests, protecting in their turn, have sprung up and endured throughout the Landes; they have broken forever the power of the wind-storms; and their pitch and timber are even a source of some riches to the Department.

Still it remains a region unsmiling and melancholy. A monochrome of sand, darkened everywhere by long blotches of sickly undergrowth or the dull reach of the pines; here and there are cork-trees and alders. The sheen of some slow lagoon is caught in the distance. There is a charm in the very charmlessness of the scene, as in some sombre-toned etching.

One striking specialty this district has, however; and from the train windows we watch closely for a specimen. This is the shepherd on stilts, the Xicanque, immortalized by Rosa Bonheur and mentioned by many travelers. He is peculiar to this region; perched on these wooden supports, at a perilous height above the ground, he stalks gravely over the landscape, enabled to behold a horizon of triple range and to outstride the fleetest of his vagrant flock. When so inclined, he is quite able, it is said, to skillfully execute a pas seul or even a jig,—with every appropriate flourish of his timber limbs and with surprising grace and abandon. His stilts are strapped to the thigh, not the knee, for greater freedom, and he mounts from his cabin-roof in the early morning and lives in the air throughout the day. A third stilt forms a seat, and makes of his silhouette a ludicrous and majestic tripod. This genius's chief amusement is startlingly domestic: it is knitting stockings; and engaged in this peaceful art he sits with dignity and whiles away the hours. How he manoeuvres when he accidentally drops a needle, I have not been able to learn.

A dignitary of Bordeaux arranged a fete and procession in these Landes on one occasion; triumphal arches were erected, hung with flowers and garlands; and the feature of the parade was a sedate platoon of these heron-like shepherds engaged for the occasion, dressed in skins, decked with white hoods and mantles, preceded by a band of music, and stalking by fours imposingly down the line of march.

II.

We are nearing the Pyrenees now, and entering the ancient and famous province of Bearn, once a noted centre of mediaeval chivalry. Beam did not become part of France until almost modern times.[13] For seven hundred years preceding, its successive rulers held their brilliant court unfettered and unpledged. "Ours," declared its barons and prelates in assembly, "is a free country, which owes neither homage nor servitude to any one." The life of the province was its own, separated entirely from that of the kingdom. It had its own succession, its own wars and feuds, its own love of country. It has a national history in miniature. "If I have excused myself from bearing arms upon either side," said one of its rulers, replying to the royal remonstrances, "I have, as I think, good reasons for it: the wars between England and France no way concern me, for I hold my country of Bearn from God, my sword and by inheritance. I have not therefore any cause to enter into the service or incur the hatred of either of these kings."

[13] In 1620.

There is a pleasant old legend which touches the true note of Bearn. Toward the year 1200, three of its rulers, in turn misgoverning, were in turn deposed by the barons. The heirs next in line were the infant twins of one William de Moncade. "It was agreed," as Miss Costello relates it; "that one of these should fill the vacant seat of sovereignty of Bearn, and two of the prudhommes were deputed to visit their father with the proposition. On their arrival at his castle, the sages found the children asleep, and observed with attention their infant demeanor. Both were beautiful, strong and healthy; and it was a difficult matter to make an election between two such attractive and innocent creatures. They were extremely alike, and neither could be pronounced superior to the other; the prudhommes were strangely puzzled, for they had been so often deceived that they felt it to be most important that they should not err this time. As they hung in admiration over the sleeping babes, one of them remarked a circumstance that at once decided their preference and put an end to their vacillation: one of the little heroes held his hand tightly closed; the tiny, mottled palm of the other was wide open as it lay upon his snowy breast. 'He will be a liberal and bold knight,' said one of the Bearnais, 'and will best suit us as a head.' This infant was accordingly chosen, given up by his parents to the wise men, and carried off in triumph to be educated among his future subjects. The event proved their sagacity, and the object of their choice lived to give them good laws and prosperity."

III.

The past of Bearn, like an ellipse, curves around two foci. One is the town of Orthez,[14] the other, the later city of Pau. The hero, the central figure, of one is Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix; that of the other, Henry of Navarre.

[14] Anciently written Ortayse, afterward Orthes.

These are the two great names of Bearn. Each lights up a distinctive epoch,—Gaston, the fourteenth century, Henry, the sixteenth.

* * * * *

In two hours after leaving Bayonne, the train has come to Orthez. There is little splendor in the old town as one views it to-day; yet in Gaston's time it was the capital of Bearn, successor of the yet older Morlaaes, and a centre for knights and squires and men-at-arms, a magnet for pilgrims and noble visitors from other countries, attracted by its fame. There were jousts, tourneys, hunts, banquets. The now broken walls of the old Castle of Moncade on the hill have sheltered more glittering merrymakings than those of Kenilworth or Fuenterrabia. But decay never surrenders an advantage once gained; the castle is dying now; dull modern commonplace has enfolded the once bright town below; and this Orthez is to-day at best but a lounging-place for the pessimist. We shall love better Pau, its rival and successor, still buoyant and prospering, rising not falling. "Good men study and wise men describe," avers Ruskin, in a more than half-truth, "only the growth and standing of things,—not their decay. Dissolution and putrescence are alike common and unclean ... in State or organism."

For all that, Orthez and its traditions are too significant to hasten by. Nowhere is the picture of mediaeval life more strongly illuminated; in no spot shall we more fitly pause to summon back the inner past of the Pyrenees we are approaching. But we would linger over it only as it was in its best days, and leave to others the drearier story of its decadence.

It is Froissart, the old historian and traveler, genial, story-loving Sir John, who tells us most about Orthez and Gaston. Orthez, as the capital of Bearn, was in his time, at its meridian, (it was afterward supplanted by Pau,) and Gaston Phoebus, known as the Count de Foix, was lord both of Beam and of the neighboring county of Foix. It was precisely five hundred years ago, come next St. Catherine's Day, that the old chronicler alighted from his horse here in Orthez. He was come on a visit to the count, well introduced, and seeking further material for his easy-going history of the times; knowing that foreign knights assembled in Orthez from all countries, and that there were few spots more alive to the sound of the world's doings or better informed in the varying gossip of wars and court-craft.

Froissart liked to write, "and it was very tiresome," he remarks, "to me to be idle, for I well know that when the time shall come when I shall be dead and rotten, this grand and noble history will be in much fashion and all noble and valiant persons will take pleasure in it and gain from it augmentation of profit." So, seeking fresh chapters, he had come to Orthez, where he was at once handsomely received by Count Gaston at this Castle of Moncade. Here he remained through the winter, affable and inquiring and observant, adding many pages to his history,—which, his host assured him, would in times to come be more sought after than any other; "'because,' added he, 'my fair sir, more gallant deeds of arms have been performed within these last fifty years, and more wonderful things have happened, than for three hundred years before. '"

"The style of Froissart," says Taine, who has so marvelously divined the inner spirit of those times, "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. 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." And one of Froissart's characteristic anecdotes is cited, which merits giving even more in full: "On Christmas Day, when the Count de Foix was celebrating the feast with numbers of knights and squires, as is customary, the weather was piercing cold, and the count had dined, with many lords, in the hall. After dinner he rose and went into a gallery, which has a large staircase of twenty-four steps: in this gallery is a chimney where there is a fire kept when the count inhabits it, otherwise not; and the fire is never great, for he does not like it: it is not for want of blocks of wood, for Bearn is covered with wood in plenty to warm him if he had chosen it, but he has accustomed himself to a small fire. When in the gallery, he thought the fire too small, for it was freezing and the weather very sharp, and said to the knights around him: 'Here is but a small fire for this weather.' The Bourg d'Espaign instantly ran down stairs; for from the windows of the gallery, which looked into the court, he had seen a number of asses laden with billets of wood for the use of the house; and seizing the largest of these asses with his load, threw him over his shoulders and carried him up stairs, pushing through the crowd of knights and squires who were around 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."

IV.

Gaston himself was a type of the time. He had its virtues and its vices, both magnified. Hence, hearing an eye-witness draw his character for us is to gain a direct if but partial insight into the character of his era. Froissart's moral perspective is often curiously blurred, and in the light of many of his anecdotes about the count his eulogium perhaps needs qualification: "Count Gaston Phoebus de Foix, of whom I am now speaking, was at that time fifty-nine years old; and I must say that although I have seen very many knights, kings, princes and others, I have never seen any so handsome, either in the form of his limbs and shape, or in countenance, which was fair and ruddy, with grey and amorous eyes that gave delight whenever he chose to express affection. He was so perfectly formed, one could not praise him too much. He loved earnestly the things he ought to love, and hated those which it was becoming him so to hate. He was a prudent knight, full of enterprise and wisdom. He had never any men of abandoned character with him, reigned prudently, and was constant in his devotions. There were regular nocturnals from the Psalter, prayers, from the rituals to the Virgin, to the Holy Ghost, and from the burial service. He had every day distributed as alms at his gate five florins in small coin to all comers. He was liberal and courteous in his gifts; and well knew how to take when it was proper and to give back where he had confidence."

There is an obverse to the medallion. "The Count de Foix was very cruel to any person who incurred his indignation, never sparing them, however high their rank, but ordering them to be thrown over the walls, or confined on bread and water during his pleasure; and such as ventured to speak for their deliverance ran risks of similar treatment. It is a well-known fact that he confined in a deep dungeon his cousin-german, the Viscount de Chateaubon, during eight days; and he would not give him his liberty until he had paid down forty thousand francs."

And then in the very chapter with his eulogy, Sir John goes on to relate the count's brutal killing of his own son in a fit of rage and suspicion, and torturing fifteen retainers as possible accomplices of the innocent lad; and elsewhere tells of his stabbing his half-brother and letting him die in a dungeon of the tower, for refusing the surrender of a fortress. This was the other side of Gaston's character, and a side quite as representative. It was all in line with the time. His reign was turbulent, magnificent, cruel, devout,—everything by extremes. The man is characteristic of the mode, and Orthez in this summarizes much of the life of the France of the Middle Ages.

V.

These old annalists scarcely pause to censure this spirit of crime, this hideous quickness to black deeds. They view it as a regrettable failing, perhaps, and glowingly point to the doer's lavish religiousness in return. Absolution covers a multitude of sins. To a generous son of the Church much might be forgiven. "Among the solemnities which the Count de Foix observes on high festivals," records his visitor, "he most magnificently keeps the feast of St. Nicholas, as I learnt from a squire of his household the third day after my arrival at Orthes. He holds this feast more splendidly than that of Easter, and has a most magnificent court, as I myself noticed, being present on that day. The whole clergy of the town of Orthes, with all its inhabitants, walk in procession to seek the count at the castle, who on foot returns with them to the church of St. Nicholas, where is sung the psalm Benedictus Dominus, Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad proelium et digitos meos ad bellum, from the Psalter of David, which, when finished, recommences, as is done in the chapels of the pope or king of France on Christmas or Easter Days; for there were plenty of choristers. The Bishop of Pamiers sang the mass for the day; and I there heard organs play as melodiously as I have ever heard in any place. To speak briefly and truly, the Count de Foix was perfect in person and in mind; and no contemporary prince could be compared with him for sense, honor or liberality."

VI.

As to liberality, these robber barons were able to afford it. Mention is incidentally made in conversation of Count Gaston's store of florins in his Castle of Moncade at Orthez. Froissart instantly pricks up his ears:

"'Sir,' said I to the knight, 'has he a great quantity of them?'

"'By my faith,' replied he, 'the Count de Foix has at this moment a hundred thousand, thirty times told; and there is not a year but he gives away sixty thousand; for a more liberal lord in making presents does not exist.'"

We can see the good Sir John's eyes glistening:

"'Ha, ha, holy Mary!' cried I, 'to what purpose does he keep so large a sum? Where does it come from? Are his revenues so great to supply him with it? To whom does he make these gifts? I should like to know this if you please.'

"He answered: 'To strangers, to knights and squires who travel through his country, to heralds, minstrels, to all who converse with him; none leave him without a present, for he would be angered should any one refuse it.'"

With such sums at disposal, Gaston might well indulge his passion for the chase and keep sixteen hundred hounds. His hospitality too was unbounded. When the Duke of Bourbon made a three-days' visit to Orthez, he was "magnificently entertained with dinners and suppers. The Count de Foix showed him good part of his state, which would recommend him to such a person as the Duke of Bourbon. On the fourth day, he took his leave and departed. The count made many presents to the knights and squires attached to the duke, and to such an extent that I was told this visit of the Duke of Bourbon cost him ten thousand francs.... Such knights and squires as returned through Foix and waited on the count were well received by him and received magnificent presents. I was told that this expedition, including the going to Castile and return, cost the Count de Foix, by his liberalities, upwards of forty thousand francs."

The King of France was entertained by Gaston at a dazzling banquet where no less than two hundred and fifty dishes covered the tables. But a succeeding Gaston outdid this in a lavish dinner, likewise to visiting royalty, of which a faithful record has come down to us from old documents. There were twelve wide tables, each seven yards long. At the first, the count presiding, were seated the king and queen and the princes of the blood, at the others foreign knights and lords according to their rank and dignity. There were served seven elaborate courses, each course requiring one hundred and forty plates of silver. There were seven sorts of soup, then patties of capon, and the ham of the wild boar; then partridge, pheasant, peacock, bittern, heron, bustard, gosling, woodcock and swan. This was the third course, concluding with antelope and wild horse. An entremet or spectacle followed, and then a course of small birds and game, this served on gold instead of silver. Next appeared tarts and cakes and intricate pastries, and later, after another spectacle, comfits and great moulds of conserves in fanciful and curious forms,—the whole liberally helped down with varied wines, and joyously protracted with music, dancing and tableaux.

VII.

Gaston Phoebus died suddenly as he had lived violently. He was hunting near Orthez, three years after Froissart's visit, and to ward evening stopped at a country inn at Rion to sup. Within, the room was "strewed with rushes and green leaves; the walls were hung with boughs newly cut for perfume and coolness, as the weather was marvelously hot even for the month of August. He had no sooner entered this room than he said: 'These greens are very agreeable to me, for the day has been desperately hot.' When seated, he conversed with Sir Espaign du Lyon on the dogs that had best hunted; during which conversation his son Sir Evan and Sir Peter Cabestan entered the apartment, as the table had been there spread." He called for water to wash, and two squires advanced; a knight, the Bourg d'Espaign, (the hero of the Christmas Day exploit,) took the silver basin and another knight the napkin. "The count rose from his seat and stretched out his hands to wash; but no sooner had his fingers, which were handsome and long, touched the cold water, than he changed color, from an oppression at his heart, and his legs failing him, fell back on his seat, exclaiming, 'I am a dead man: Lord God, have mercy on me!'"

It is a significant comment on the period, that amid the commotion at the inn the first thought was of foul play. "The two squires who had brought water to wash in the basin said, to free themselves from any charge of having poisoned him: 'Here is the water; we have already drank of it, and will now again in your presence,' which they did, to the satisfaction of all. They put into his mouth bread and water and spices, with other comforting things, but to no purpose, for in less than half an hour he was dead, having surrendered his soul very quietly. God, out of his grace, was merciful to him."

He was entombed before the altar in the little church at Orthez, with imposing obsequies. No epitaph remains, but this of a preceding Gaston, buried in the same church, deserves note for its curious, jingling Latin rhyme:

"Continet haec fossa Gastonis principis ossa, Nobilis ac humilis aliis, pulvis sibi vilis, Subjectis parcens, hastes pro viribus arcens. Da veniam, Christe, flos militiae fuit isle, Et virtute precum, confer sibi gaudia tecum, Gastonis nomen gratum fert auribus omen, Mulcet prolatum, dulcescis saepe relatum,"

Two hundred years afterward, in the tumult of Protestant iconoclasm, Gaston Phoebus's tomb was broken open, its debris sold, piece by piece, and Montgomery's Huguenots derisively kicked the august skull about the streets of Orthez and used it for a bowling-ball:

"They hopped among the weeds and stones, And played at skittles with his bones."

VIII.

There are a few gleams of humor among these grim recounts. It was always tinged with the sardonic. Pitard, moralist and pedant, staying at the Bearnais court, fell into a dispute with a poet, Theophile:

"''T is a pity,' sneered Pitard, finally, 'that, having so much spirit, you know so little!'

"''T is a pity,' retorted Theophile, 'that, knowing so much, you have so little spirit!'"

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

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

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

"As you pass, pray God for his soul, that having assisted in the music of this world, he may be received forever among the blessed to assist in the celestial music. Amen."

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



CHAPTER VIII.

"THE LITTLE PARIS OF THE SOUTH."

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

From Orthez, it is less than two hours by rail, and we are at last in Pau. The Midi line is accurately on time. These French railroads are operated by the State; they are not afflicted with parallel lines and bitter competition; they have no occasion, as our roads have, to advertise a faster schedule than can possibly be carried out. Consequently their time-tables aim to state the exact truth, and the roads can and do live up to it.

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

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

Our estimates of the standards of comfort in the Pyrenees are perceptibly heightened by the evening's impressions alone, as we discuss our surroundings and the Apollinaris. With Pau thus rivaling Lucerne, we grow more confident for Eaux-Bonnes and Cauterets, Luchon and Bigorre. And as, from the balcony, we look in vain across the murky night to see the snow-peaks which we know are facing us, we agree that here at the good Hotel Gassion we could luxuriously outstay the lengthiest storm to view them.

II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This prospect from the terrace at Pau is a celebrated one. Icy peaks are not all that is seen. In front of them the ranges rise, still high from the plain, but smoothed and softened with the green of pines and turf. Between these and the Pau valley spread hidden leagues of rolling plains, swelling as they approach us into minor ravelins of foothills known as the coteaux; and little poplar-edged streams, "creaming over the shallows," winding their way toward the valley just below us, are coming from the long slopes to join the hurrying Gave de Pau. Houses and hamlets are here and there, and the even streak of the railway; and over toward the coteaux we see the village of Jurancon, famed for its wines.

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

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

III.

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

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

IV.

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



Few of the streets in the town are well paved, and few of the villas seen in driving in the suburbs aid to raise the architectural average. Except for its palace-hotels, Pau seems to show little of artistic building enterprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

The clouds are closing in, after granting us that glittering panorama, and the morning grows dull and dark. We explore the book-stores, and finally find the old Library in the upper story of the market-building. Here two of us at least pass a long and contentful forenoon.

V.

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

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

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

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

VI.

And so, on the following morning, we pass into the courtyard of his castle here at Pau with the feeling that in some sense we are evoking the shade of the era, not of the man. The feeling dies hard; but the robustious, business-like guide that herds us together with other comers, and shepherds us all briskly through the official round, goes very far toward killing it. There is little that one needs to remember of the successive rooms and halls; it is a confusion of polished floors, and vases, and tapestry, and porphyry tables, and the rest,—adorned and illumined by a voluble Gallic description. Later French kings have restored the old building, and stocked it with Paris furniture, and made it modern and comfortable. One is always divided in spirit over these restorations. The castle needed help painfully; it had been badly used by the Revolution; and it had been debased to a barrack by Napoleon's troops, who "stabled their steeds in the courts and made their drunken revelry resound in the chambers of Marguerite of Angouleme." Dismantled, half-roofless, its great halls, unsheltered and unsheltering, it was wasting fast under the elements into picturesque but irreparable ruin. And I suppose the pleasure of kings and the peace of utilitarians ought fairly to outweigh the disappointments of the touring impression-seeker.

In one apartment, however, we make a stand. The herd and its shepherd can pass along. This, he has told us, is the birthplace of Henry IV. The floor is polished like the rest, and the furniture has been in part renewed, but the room is the same which that alert baby first laughed upon. In the corner at the right is an antique bed of carved walnut, with four posts and a rich canopy. Around its side are cut in the wood an elaborate series of medallions, each a foot square, representing the heads of the kings of France. Across the apartment swings still a great tortoise-shell, which served the royal infant for a cradle,—saved afterward from the furies of the Revolution by the substitution of a false shell in its place.[15]

[15] The genuineness of the present shell has frequently been questioned; but the testimony of LAGREZE has now fairly established the story of its preservation.

In this room, Jeanne d'Albret sang a Bearnais song as the hero of Ivry was born, and so won the wager with her martial old father, the King of Navarre; and the boy came into the world smiling and unafraid. And writers tell us how delighted the old king was, and how he took the infant into his arms, and rubbed its lips with a garlic clove, and tilted into its little mouth from a golden goblet some drops of the manly wine of Jurancon. When Queen Jeanne herself was born in this very castle, twenty-five years before, the Spaniards had sneered: "A miracle! the cow (of the arms of Bearn) has given birth to a ewe!" "My ewe," exclaimed the happy old father now, "has brought forth a lion! Tu seras un vray Bearnais!"