Did a burgher sicken and die, witchcraft was charged to the Cagot; did a reckless mob seek to vent its spite, it fell upon the Cagot. Despite popular report, most of them had the appearance of ordinary humanity, though rarely its spirit; a few even held their own intellectually; but very many, bred in by constant intermarriage of kin, seem to have become as the Swiss cretins,—deformed, idiotic, repulsive.

The Cagots were cursed "on four separate heads and on four separate and opposing propositions: for being lepers, for being Jews, for being Egyptians, and for being Moors or Saracens;" and they were persecuted "as though the objectionable points of all four races were centred in them." As lepers, they were reputed to be descendants of the cursed Gehazi; as Egyptians, they were ascribed the jettatura or evil eye; as Saracens, they were held unclean and descended from infidels; and as Jews, their enforced pursuit of the carpenter's trade was considered as proving that their ancestors were the builders of the Cross!

Few of the race are to be found in these happier days; the old laws were softened during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and the Revolution did away with them altogether. The Cagots as a separate tribe have gradually disappeared or been absorbed. Yet the antipathy to the name and the tribe even to-day in some of these regions, though now chiefly a tradition, is still alive and implacable. M. Ramond, the Saussure of the Pyrenees, carefully studied these outcasts over seventy-five years ago, and made this touching statement concerning them:

"I have seen," he wrote, "some families of these unfortunate creatures. They are gradually approaching the villages from which prejudice has banished them. The side-doors by which they were formerly obliged to enter the churches are useless, and some degree of pity mingles at length with the contempt and aversion which they formerly inspired; yet I have been in some of their retreats where they still fear the insults of prejudice and await the visits of the compassionate. I have found among them the poorest beings perhaps that exist upon the face of the earth. I have met with brothers who loved each other with that tenderness which is the most pressing want of isolated men. I have seen among them women whose affection had a somewhat in it of that submission and devotion which are inspired by feebleness and misfortune. And never, in this half-annihilation of those beings of my species, could I recognize without shuddering the extent of the power which we may exercise over the existence of our fellow,—the narrow circle of knowledge and of enjoyment within which we may confine him,—the smallness of the sphere to which we may reduce his usefulness.".

V.

Coming out again upon the street, we stray down into one of the shops,—a shop local and naive, a veritable French country-store. We have noticed the hemp-soled sandals worn by many of the mountaineers, and incline to test them for the approaching excursion to Gavarnie. The dark-eyed little proprietor and his wife spring to greet us; foreign customers, especially English or American, are with them a rare sight,—St. Sauveur, a mile away, being a more usual stopping-place for travelers than Luz; and soon the floor is littered with canvas-topped footwear, solicitously searched over for the needed sizes. A running fire of conversation accompanies the fitting. They show the usual French interest in ourselves and our country; we enlarge their views considerably on the latter score, though heroically refraining from romancing. They make a fair livelihood from their store, they inform us; many farmers and peasants outside of the village come to buy at Luz. In fact, the small shopkeepers such as these are generally the prosperous class in a place like Luz, though the standard of prosperity might not coincide with that of the cities. But as compared with that of their customers among the peasantry of the district, it seems to include not only necessity but comfort.

For notwithstanding the luxuriance of these valleys, little of their luxury, even to-day, goes to the tillers of their soil. The Pyrenean farmer or mountaineer has to support his family now, as in past ages, in poverty. Little beyond the most meagre of diet can he commonly provide them, and it is the joint anxiety of ensuring even this, that wears and disfeatures him and them, as much doubtless as its meagreness. Bread, of barley or wheat or rye, is the great staple, supplemented by what milk can be spared from the town's demands. Eggs and butter go oftener to the market. Vegetables, such as lentils and beans, are also important, a few potatoes, occasional fruits and berries, and above all the powerful and omnipresent onion or garlic stew, signaling its brewing for rods around. In the summer, if he moves with his family to the higher pasture-lands to better pasture the herds, his daily menu expands in some directions and contracts in others. Fete-days and Sundays and trips to the town are usually the occasions of some indulgence, and a thin wine and perhaps macaroni or a pullet or a cut of beef or pork make the event memorable. But the chief fact is that he is fairly contented under all. His life has work and poverty and care, but it has its freedom in addition; he accepts it as it is, fully and without envy; it is not his class who are first to swell the numbers of the sans-culottes. When Henry IV pressed his old peasant playfellows to ask some gift or favor at his hands, their modest ambition stopped at a simple permission to "pay their tithe in grain without the straw."

Often there is even a little fund put by, or anxiously invested; France is noted for the number of abstemious husbandmen who add their mite of savings to her financial enterprises, and the distress and discouragement caused when one of these fails is easily conceivable. On the whole, the French small proprietor or peasant is thrifty and uncomplaining to a rather surprising degree, considering the national trait of restiveness. The revolutions of France are bred in her great cities, not in the provinces.

"But pastoral occupations form only a small part of the business of the Pyrenees," observes a recent writer in Blackwood's, in a summary so compact and accurate as to merit quoting. "There are large, various and constantly increasing industries, all special to the country. As water power is to be found everywhere, there are flour-mills and saw-mills in many of the villages. In certain valleys,—round Luz, for instance,—almost every peasant has rough little grinding stones and converts his own barley, buckwheat and maize into flour. Handlooms are numerous, and coarse woollen stuffs for the peasants' clothes are largely made. At Nay, near Pau, are factories where blue berrets for the Pyrenees and red fezzes for Constantinople are woven side by side. The scarlet sashes that the men wear round their waists are produced at Oloron. The manufacture of rough shoes in jute or hemp (espadrillas) is a growing element of local trade. Marble and slate works are plentiful, mainly concentrated round Lourdes and at Bagneres de Bigorre.... Persons who are insensible to marble can turn to the knitted woollen fabrics of which such quantities are made at Bagneres; many of them are as fine as the best Shetland work, with the additional merit of being as soft as eider-down. The barley-sugar which everybody eats at Cauterets must also be counted; for it rises there to a position which it possesses nowhere else in the world,—it is regarded as a necessity of life; the commerce in it attains such proportions that 10,000 sticks are sold each day during the season. The little objects in boxwood which are hawked about by peddlers must be included too; and the list of special Pyrenean industries may be closed by bird-catching, which is carried on in the autumn months, especially round St. Pe and Bagneres de Bigorre.

"There remains one trade more, however,—the greatest of all,—the traffic in hot water. Numerous as are the natural beauties of the district,—varied as are its attractions and its products,—it owes its success, its prosperity and its wealth to its mineral springs. Some two millions of gallons are supplied each day by them. Fifty-three towns and villages exist already round the sources, and others are being invented each year. The inhabitants of the valleys are making money out of them in every form; for though the harvest is limited to the warm months, it is so various, so widespread, and so productive while it lasts, that everybody has a share in it, from the land-owner who sees his grass converted into building ground, to the half naked boy who cries the Paris newspapers when the post comes in.

"That hot water should become a civilizer and should mount in that way to the level of religion, education, monogamy, wealth and the fine arts, is a new view of hot water; but it is a true one in this case, for nothing else could have evolved the Pyrenees so widely or so fast. Neither commerce nor conquest has ever changed a region as hot water has transformed these valleys."

VI.

"There are corners here and there," remarks the same writer in another connection, describing this valley of Luz, "which have about them such an atmosphere of purity and innocence that people have been known in their enthusiasm to proclaim that they felt inclined to repent of all their favorite sins and to exist thenceforth in total virtue. They produce on nearly every one a softening effect; indeed they almost make you better. The vale of Luz is certainly the most winning of these retreats. Its soothing calm, its welcoming tenderness, its look of friendship and of wise counsel, wind themselves around you; and the beauty of its grassy shades, of its leafy brakes and color-changing hills, delights and wins you. Its babbling, laughing streams fill the whole air with life and melody; every chink of the old dry walls is choked with maiden-hair; from the damp rocks amid the dripping streams hang strange, fantastic mosses,—orange, grey and russet,—and with them grow wild flowers, white and purple, and emerald ferns with brilliant deep-notched leaves that glisten in the wet; and mixed with all stretch out the tangled rootlets of the beeches, bathing their bright red, yellow-tipped fibres in the splashing drops. The meadows are so intense in color, they are so supremely, so saturatedly, so bottomlessly green, that you recognize you never knew green until you saw it there; and while you gaze, you feel instinctively that you have reached a promised land."

VII.

The most noted excursion in the Pyrenees,—its coup de theatre,—is now before us. It is to Gavarnie, whose giant semicircle of precipices has been called "the end of the world." Luz and St. Sauveur constitute the most available headquarters for this trip, which is taken by every traveler to these mountains. "In the popular [French] imagination," writes a lively essayist, "the Pyrenees are composed of carriages-and-four, of capulets and berrets, of mineral waters, rocky gorges, Luchon, admirable roads, bright green valleys, two hundred and thirty hotels, and the Cirque of Gavarnie."

The cliffs of Gavarnie form the Spanish frontier. A village of the same name lies near their feet on this French side, thirteen miles up the defile leading south from the valley of Luz. There is now a carriage-road for almost the entire distance, and if fame is true, never did a destination better merit a road. We count on a memorable day, as the landau and the victoria carry us away from Luz,—where voluntary promise of a super-excellent table-d'hote on our return has just been given by Madame Puyotte and thus every care removed.

The road crosses the valley, under the sentinel poplars, leaves on the right the road by which we came in from Pierrefitte, and shortly comes to the opening of the defile to Gavarnie. At the immediate entrance across the ravine stands the white street of hotels and lodging-houses which constitutes the Baths of St. Sauveur. We shall cross to it on our return, and now scan it only from the distance as we pass. It joins itself to our highway by a superb bridge, over two hundred feet above the chasm,—a single astonishing arch, one of the longest in existence, its span being 153 feet across, and its total length 218. It is of marble, a gift of Louis Napoleon and Eugenie to commemorate their stay at St. Sauveur; its cost was upward of sixty thousand dollars.

From this on, the scenery becomes again increasingly wild. The gorge now opens and now narrows, the mountains above us here approach over the road, there draw back in a long, sweeping glacis of wood or pasture. The ledge of the road is at times four hundred feet above the frothy watercourse, which in some spots disappears entirely from sight in the chasm. Tiny mills are seen standing tremulously near its fierce supply, and there is room for a hamlet here and there, sheltered in a clump of ash or sycamore, on the mountain or at a widening of the valley. When the road nears the cliffs of Gavarnie, it will expire, from the simple impossibility of proceeding farther; so it is scarcely a thoroughfare, and we meet only infrequent bucolics or a few wood-carts coming down toward Luz. One fair-sized rustic village is passed through; and, two hours after the start, a second one, Gedre, our more-than-half-way house, is finally seen ahead.

The mountain wall we are approaching begins now to show its battlements, far ahead. The snowy Tours de Marbore overtop it, and at their right can be plainly seen two small, rectangular nicks, embrasures in this mammoth parapet. Small they seem, as we sight them from this distance, but these notches are 9000 feet above the sea, and the greater of the two is a colossal gateway into Spain, no less than 300 feet in width and 350 feet deep. This is the famous Breche de Roland, familiar to all lovers of Gavarnie. When Charlemagne made his invasion into Spain,—the invasion from which he was afterward to withdraw by Roncesvalles,—he sought to enter it, tradition says, by this defile to Gavarnie. Finding all progress blocked by the walls of the Cirque, he ordered Roland to open a way; and that lusty paladin with one blow of his good sword Durandal opened this breach for the passage of the army. There is another version of the making, which links it with the throes of Roland's defeat and death at Roncesvalles, at the end instead of at the beginning of the invasion; but even under unbounded poetic license, the mind refuses to admit that the wounded hero, bleeding and gasping for breath, could have made his way a hundred miles over the mountains from Roncesvalles, to shiver his sword against the cliffs of the Cirque and end his death-struggles at Gavarnie.

At Gedre the horses pause for a rest and a drink, and travelers can do likewise. From this village, the main defile cuts on to Gavarnie, and another opens off to the left toward another cirque,—the Cirque of Troumouse. Thus each branch ends in a similar formation, peculiar to the Pyrenees, a semicircle of cliffs, sudden and blank and impassable. The Cirque of Troumouse is larger around than that of Gavarnie, but its walls are not so high and its effect is reported to be less imposing. To reach it from Gedre requires perhaps three hours, the drivers tell us, by a good bridle-path. We feel tempted to revisit this point from Luz, another day, and explore the route toward Troumouse.

To-day, however, this is not to be; Gavarnie beckons, and we gird us anew and press from Gedre on. The carriages twist their way up an unusual incline, and it is ten of the clock as we stop to face a long cascade which is jumping down from a cut across the chasm and not too busy with its own affairs to give us an answering halloo. The great Cirque is now coming more and more distinctly into view, though still some miles ahead. The two breaches are no longer seen, but snow-walls are becoming visible on all sides, and the distant precipices are constantly crowding into line and assuming shape and form. Even Louis the Magnificent's haughty proclamation, "il n'y a plus de Pyrenees," could not erase this impassable barrier. It was made for a wall of nations.

Already our destination sends out to welcome us. We have hardly left Gedre, with several miles still to drive, before we are assaulted by peasants on horseback, advance-agents from Gavarnie. The carriage-road will end at the village, and the Cirque itself is three miles beyond; it is reached on foot or on horseback, and these peasants lie in wait along the road for visitors, to forestall their rivals in the letting of saddle-horses, and each to offer his or her particular animal for the way. In vain we assure them that we shall make no choice until we come to the inn at Gavarnie. They turn and ride by the side of the carriages, urging their claims in incessant clamor, pressing about us, intercepting the views, good-tempered enough but decidedly an annoyance. We speak them fair, and request, then direct, them to abandon the chase. It has no effect whatever. They continue their pestering tactics, now falling behind, then ranging again alongside, hindering conversation, interrupting constantly with their jargon. Plainly it is a time for firm measures. We call a halt, and, standing up in the carriage, I tell them once for all and finally that we will have nothing to do with them either now or hereafter, either here or at the village; and order them shortly and decisively to "get out." Even when translated into French, there is a peculiar tang to this emphatic American expression that is impolite but unmistakable; it takes effect even here in the Gedre solitudes, and we ride on without escort.



The road now passes into a remarkable region,—a famed part of this famed route. This is the Chaos, so-called and justly. The side of the mountain overhead appears to have broken off bodily and fallen into the valley, and its ruins almost choke the bottom. Huge masses of granite and gneiss are scattered everywhere in savage confusion, and the road barely twines a painful way through the labyrinth. Scarcely a blade of grass, a tint of green, is to be seen about us; the tract is given over to utter desolation.

"Confounded Chaos roar'd And felt ten-fold confusion in their fall Through his wild anarchy; so huge a rout Incumbered him with ruin."

Some of these fragments, it is said, contain a hundred thousand cubic feet, and the blocks lie in all directions, uncounted tons of them, grotesque and menacing, piled often one upon two, bulging out over the diminished carriages or entirely disconcerting the hurrying torrent.

"That block bigger than the church of Luz," points out Johnson, writing of this spot, "has been split in twain by the other monster that has followed in its track and cracked it as a schoolboy might do his playfellow's marble. We cease to estimate them by their weight in tons, as is the manner of hand-books, but liken, them to great castles encased in solid stonework; or calculate that half-a-dozen or so would have made up St. Paul's; or speculate upon the length of ladder we would want to reach the purple auricula that is flowering in the crevice half way up."

Beyond this, as we draw near the end of our course, there is an opening in the mountains on the right. A peak and a long bed of ice and snow are seen high beyond, and the drivers tell us that we are looking at a side glacier of the Vignemale, whose face we saw from the Lac de Gaube when we climbed up the parallel defile from Cauterets.

But here is the village of Gavarnie. We are in the courtyard before the inn, bristling with an abatis of mules and horses in waiting row.

VIII.

Negotiations for transport now begin. The black walls of the Cirque rise beyond the village, closing the valley, seemingly just before us; but it is a full league from the inn to the stalls of that august proscenium. The ladies recall their unrestful saddle-ride to the lake, and decide this time for sedan-chairs. The entire village is put in commotion by the order; for three men, one as relief, are required for each chair, (four on steeper routes,) and it takes but a very few times three to foot up a quick and difficult total, where the call is sudden and the supply small. The chairs themselves are promptly produced; they have short legs, a dangling foot-rest, and long poles for the bearers, as in Switzerland, but are ornamented besides with a hood or cover which shuts back like a miniature buggy-top. Soon the additional men are brought in, called from different vocations for the emergency; all of them broad-shouldered and sturdy and with a willing twinkle in their eyes. The ladies seat themselves, the first relays take their places before and behind the chairs, pass the straps from the poles up over the shoulders, bend their knees, grasp the handles, and with a simultaneous "huh!" lift the litters and their fair freight from the ground. This automatic performance is always interesting and always executed with military precision. They pass down the village road with rhythmic, measured tread, the substitutes carrying the wraps; the petit garcon of the party journeys forth on a donkey; and the rest of us, duly disencumbered and shod with hemp, resist the importunities of the youth at the inn to order a lunch for the return, and follow after on foot.

The sole interest of the walk is this stupendous curve of cliffs ahead, roofed with snow and glistening with rime and moisture. It fascinates, yet we try not to look, reserving a climax for our halting-place. The pathway is well marked though somewhat stony and irregular; the valley-bottom is wider here and we are close by the side of the Gave. The hemp sandals prove surprisingly useful. Their half-inch soles of rope utterly deaden the inequalities of the ground, and the pebbly, hummocky path is as a carpet beneath the feet. The bearers tramp steadily onward, the chairs sinking and rising in easy vertical motion, much more grateful than the horizontal "joggle" of the Pyrenean saddle-horse. We are an hour in approaching the Cirque, which looms higher at every step. The halting-place is reached at last. It is a small plateau almost in the heart of the arena, and here there is a restaurant,—the last house in France,—and the inevitable group of idlers to ruin the effect of solitude.

IX.

They cannot ruin the effect of sublimity, however. That term, not freely perhaps to be used in all terrestrial scenes, is beyond question applicable here.

The Amphitheatre of Gavarnie, in which we stand, surpasses easy description. It is a blank, continuous wall of precipices, bending around us in the form of a horseshoe, a mile in diameter, and starting abruptly from the floor of the valley,—perhaps the most magnificent face of naked rock to be seen in Europe. Its cliffs rise first a sheer fourteen hundred feet without a break; there is a narrow shelf of snow, and above this ledge they rise to another, and then climb in stages upward still, perpendicular and black, in a waste of escarpments and buttresses, terraced with widening snow-fields tier on tier, until their brows and cornices are nodding overhead almost a mile above the arena. Higher yet, the separate summits stand like towers in the white glaciers on the top; the Cylindre, at 10,900 feet above the sea, is partly hidden at the left by its own projecting flanges, and nearer the centre of the arc the Marbore, with its Casque and Turret, is but as an outwork concealing the greater Mont Perdu, the highest mountain in the French Pyrenees and next to the Maladetta the highest of the range.

A dozen slender waterfalls, unnoticed Staubbachs, are showering from the heights; over a ledge under the Mont Perdu streams the loftiest, known too as the loftiest fall on the Continent. It comes over slowly, "like a dropping cloud, or the unfolding of a muslin veil," falling steadily and with scarcely an interruption a quarter of a mile in vertical height, before it is finally whirled into spray against the rocks at the base. And the Gave which these cascades unite to form, and which we have been following thus toward its source this morning, is no other than the Gave de Pau, which will hurry on and down through the valleys till it is flowing below the old chateau of the kings of Navarre, and later joining the Adour will pass on through Bayonne to the sea.

It is a silencing scene. The effect it gives of simple largeness,—a largeness uncomprehended before,—may be fairly called overpowering. There is something almost of the terrific in it, something even oppressive. We are as a fact at the end of the world. The eye does not seem to be deceived here, as it often is in great magnitudes; it belittles nothing; it realizes to the full this strange impression of simple, hopeless bulk, immovable and pitiless as the reign of law.

The floor of the Cirque, far from being level, is blocked with snow and the debris of falling rock. Our halting-place is near the left curve of the arc; and a half hour's toilsome scramble across its chord to the opposite side would take us to the foot of a darker streak in the wall which seems from here like a possible groove or gully and in fact is such. Unscalable as it seems, that is the magic stairway which leads up out of this rocky Inferno to the higher ledges and finally over glacier-fields to the Breche de Roland, (which is invisible from the Cirque itself,) and through this gateway on into Spain. Mountaineers and smugglers make the trip with unconcern, and it is entirely practicable for tourists, though needing a sure foot and a stout pulmonary apparatus. The Mont Perdu is also ascended from this direction; first climbed in 1802 by the intrepid Ramond, who seems to have been as true a mountaineer as a savant, it has been occasionally ascended since; its ledges are notably treacherous and difficult, and the trip demands proper implements and practiced guides. It is a striking fact that its upper rocks have been found to be marine calcareous beds. That proud eminence has not stood thus in the clouds for all time; it was once buried fathoms deep under the Tertiary ocean.

An interesting anecdote attaches to this mountain. It was assaulted some years ago by a French lady, a Mme. L., who vowed that she should be the first woman to stand upon the summit. She was accompanied by four guides, pledged to carry her body to the top alive or dead. No carrying was needed, however; the lady climbed with the coolness and hardihood of a born mountaineer; they camped for the night on the way, 7500 feet above the sea, at the base of the main peak, and in the morning she triumphantly gained the top. But now the fair climber undid all the glory of the exploit: a bottle had long been left in a niche of rock at the top, opened by each rare new-comer in turn to add his name and a sentiment or some expression of his admiration; our heroine opened this, scattered the precious contents to the winds, and inserted her card in their place, declaring that there should be but one name found on the crest of the Mont Perdu, and that her own.

Great was the indignation in the valley when this ungenerous act became known. A young stranger was staying at St. Sauveur at the time; no sooner had he heard of the occurrence than he started up the mountain himself. It was but a few days after Mme. L.'s ascent; the despoiled bottle was there, with its single slip of pasteboard; and a day or two later, the lady, then in Paris, received a polite note enclosing the card that she had left on the summit of the Mont Perdu, 10,999 feet above the sea!

X.

The restaurant, no less than the idlers, ruins the effect of solitude, but we find that we bear this with more equanimity. We are glad we resisted the village inn's importunities and can remain here for lunch instead. While we are at the table, our jovial porters, grouped near the path outside, while away the time in stentorian songs. We walk out afterward some space farther toward the base of the cliffs; but the foot of the fall is still two furlongs away, along the left wall,—a distance equal to its height; and over the broken boulders of the bottom it seems useless toil to clamber. So we sit and gaze again at the scene, seeking to crowd this sensation of immensity even more deeply into the mind. We cast about for some comparison to the scene. The sweep of the Gemmi precipices rising around the village of Leukerbad in Switzerland is like it in kind; but almost another Gemmi, mortared with ice and glacier, would need to be reared upon the first, to overtop the snows of the Gavarnie Cirque.

We turn back to the porters at last, and the cavalcade of chairs forms again. The men are earning three francs each by this noon holiday, and they are in good spirits. They do not think the sum too little and we certainly do not deem it too much. When we regain the inn at the village, they wait about unobtrusively for their pay, and after arming ourselves with coin for the division we come out among them. At once we become the centre of a large and respectful assemblage, all other loungers drawing near to witness the coming ceremony. Our informal words of appreciation become rather a speech when delivered before so many. The leader now approaches, and we publicly entrust him with the division of the fund, adding, as we state aloud, our good-will and a pourboire for each. Instantly, and with, almost startling simultaneousness, every, cap in view comes off in unison; the movement is so general, so, immediate, and so gravely uniform, as to be somewhat astonishing; and a satisfied and metronomic chorus of "Merci, Monsieur, merci bien!" rises like a measured paean around us.

This little performance over, the carriages come to the fore, and we retrace the road in the pleasant afternoon, under the Pimene, through the Chaos, by Gedre and the opening of the Troumouse gorge, and on down the ravine out to the Bridge of Napoleon which leads us over to St. Sauveur.

The long, trim street of St. Sauveur backed against the mountain is a resort much in favor. It is not large enough to be noisily stylish, but in a quiet way it is select and severe. It is patronized by ladies more than by the sterner sex. Its springs are mild, helpful for cases of hysteria and atonic dyspepsia; and the nervous, middle-aged females who frequent it find a grateful sedative in the air and surroundings as well as in the springs. The hotels have the garb of prosperity, and the location, commanding both the Gavarnie gorge and the valley of Luz,-could not have been better chosen; in fact, headquarters for the trip to the Cirque might be and usually are fixed here quite as comfortably as at Luz.

We spend a half hour about the hotels and shops as the twilight comes on, while the carriages wait, down the road. In an unpretending shop an old lady has just trimmed and lighted her lamp; she peers up through her glasses as we enter, and readily shuffles across the room for her asked-for stock of Pyrenean pressed-flowers. The dim little store proves a treasury of these articles, and part of our half hour and part of our hoard of francs are spent over the albums spread open by her fumbling fingers. Then we drive off again into the dusk, join the main road, and run restfully across the valley to end the day's ride before the lighted windows of our chalet-hotel at Luz.

* * * * *

The trip to Gavarnie can thus be readily made during a day, and it is indisputably one of the finest mountain sights in Europe. As Lord Bute, (quoted in the Tour Through the Pyrenees,) cried when there, many years ago, in old-time hyperbole, "If I were now at the extremity of India, and suspected the existence of what I see at this moment, I should immediately leave, in order to enjoy and admire it." Perhaps this sentiment should merit consideration from, other seekers of noble scenery; it was founded upon a justly sincere enthusiasm.

To-morrow, the Pic de Bergonz shall be our goal.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

"Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Dass ich so traurig bin"

—The Lorelei

But the Pic de Bergonz does not so elect.

During the night the weather has another revulsion of feeling. In the morning it is hysterical, laughing and crying by turns. We come down-stairs booted and spurred for the ascent, and make directly for the barometer in the doorway. Alas, it tells but a quavering and uncertain tale, itself evidently undecided, and holding out to others neither discouragement nor hope. An hour brings no change. The guide looks sagely toward the clouds, as who should know all weather lore, and candidly admits the doubtful state of the case,—which is frank, since for him a lost excursion is lost riches. The sun streaks down fitfully upon the road, and then after a minute the mist sifts over the spot; the mountain-tops appear and disappear among low-lying clouds. We haunt alternately the roadway and the writing-room, restless and inquisitive; but as the morning wears on, it becomes slowly certain that the Pic de Bergonz has taken the veil irrevocably.

The Monne at Cauterets was within our grasp; we sacrificed its certainty to the uncertainty of the more accessible peak. In the mountains, as we are thus again shown, carpe diem is a wise blazon. Still, choosing the Monne would have postponed Gavarnie until to-day and thus have forfeited the clear skies of yesterday's memorable trip to the Cirque. It is always feasible to count your consolations rather than your regrets.

It does not rain, so we ramble off about the streets again. There is an eminence near the village on which stand the remains of the old castle of Ste. Marie, and which we are told gives a wide survey over the valley; but we are out with all eminences and refuse to patronize it. We drift again into our little shop of the hempen shoes, with soap for a pretext; the proprietor and his wife are affable and unclouded as ever; and we while off a half hour in another talk with them and some trifling purchases. One learns many lessons in civility in Continental shopping; more usually it is a woman alone who presides, some genuinely winsome old lady often, with white cap and grandmotherly smile. The lifting of the hat as we enter ensures invariably the politest of treatment, and when we depart, it is with the feeling that we have gained another friend for life.

The village stretches itself lengthily about, as many Continental towns do; its limbs, like Satan's,

"Extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood,"

and two of us later signalize a stroll by becoming lost,—lost in Luz. We look helplessly down along the lanes and neat streets for the familiar little porch over the Gave and the open space in front and the overhanging eaves of our hotel. Gone the church, gone the store of the shoes and soap, gone the carriage-shed, the Hotel de l'Univers,—all landmarks gone. It is not until we are driven to the humiliation of actually asking our way, that the alleys are unraveled and show us safely home, into the scoffs and contumely of the unregenerate.

After lunch, the weather is still gloomy, but there is no rain, and we leave Luz for Bareges toward the last of the afternoon, if not in sunshine, at least over a dry road. Some of us are on foot, so but one carriage is needed for the others, and the Widow Puyotte stands smiling at the door as we move away, wishing us fine weather for the morrow's ride on from Bareges over the Col du Tourmalet,—since any further wishes for to-day's weather would be manifestly inoperative.

The Baths of Bareges are on the continuing girdle of the Route Thermale as it extends its way onward from Luz toward Bigorre; they lie about four miles up a short, desolate, east-and-west valley which opens from the hollow of Luz and closes beyond them in a col over which goes the road. These baths are much higher than Luz, and the way is a steady incline throughout. The valley soon shows itself in marked change from the fertile basin we have quitted; it grows bleak and less cultivated; rubbly slopes of shale and slate cover the hills; the vegetation becomes scanter. We are nearing now the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, the summit seen so plainly from Pau, far eastward of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. It is not as yet in sight from this valley, however, though we are approaching it nearly and though it closely overtops the col which rises beyond Bareges. The road continues desolate, and the dull grey-green pastures hardly serve to relieve its deserted and forlorn squalor. The clouds brood on the hills, the air grows chilly as we ascend, and more than once we sigh half dubiously for the bright parlor left behind at Luz. We move leisurely, almost reluctantly, on, not in haste to reach the climax of this unhospitable avenue; but the four miles shorten themselves unexpectedly, and it seems but a short walk before we are in sight of the Baths of Bareges.

Murray and Madame the Widow had each spoken dishearteningly of Bareges. With their verdict concurred also the few other accounts we had heard of it. Murray stigmatizes it as "cheerless and forbidding," "a perfect hospital," and remarks that "nothing but the hope of recovering health would render it endurable beyond an hour or two." Another marks it curtly as "a desolate village tucked into the mountain side, with avalanches above and torrents below; in summer the refuge of cripples; in winter the residence of bears." No one at Luz was found to say a good word for Bareges, except as to the undoubted cures its waters effect; and on the whole the outlook summed itself up as very far from promising.

In view of this abuse we have been predisposing our minds to extenuate the shortcomings of the place and to extol rather than dispraise it. One does not like to maltreat even a resort when it is down. But as we draw up the hill and see the black surroundings and enter the frowsy, dismal street, the desire to extol vanishes and even the possibility of extenuating becomes doubtful. The carriage pauses, while two of us who have hurried ahead examine the two hotels reputed best; each is equally uninspiring, and the one we finally choose we thereupon immediately regret choosing and regretfully choose the other. Meanwhile the carriage is being circummured by an increasing hedge of idlers and invalids, staring with great and open-minded interest at the arrival of visitors who seemed actually healthy and were coming here uncompelled; and the visitors themselves are glad to vanish from the public wonder into the stone passageway of the hotel.

Within is a large, cobble-paved court around which the hotel is built, and out upon the upstairs veranda overlooking this we are led and assigned to rooms. The rooms are clean, but unadorned and bare, and so seems the hotel throughout. It is not the lack of adornment, however, that dispirits us; Madame Baudot's at Eaux Chaudes was unadorned likewise, and yet was an ideal of inviting comfort. Here, there seems to be something more,—an inexplicable taint of depression over the hotel, which strangely affects us. We struggle hysterically against it, trying to laugh it off, speculating vainly over the dreary, disconsolate weight which each has felt from the moment of entering the village; and at length conclude to investigate the mystery by a survey out-of-doors.

II.

It takes little time to convince us that Bareges deserves all the abuse it has received. We came unprejudiced and in a sympathetic mood, willing to defend the much-reviled; but we admit to each other that the revilers have only erred on the side of timidity. The pall of the place is unmistakable and wraps us in completely; even a genial party and determined high spirits are slowly forced to succumb. There seems something gruesome about it; the curious burden is not to be shaken off, try as we may.

The village is sorrowfully set, to begin with; the valley here is high and more gloomy even than below; the narrowing hills, grey-black or a sickly green, stand and mourn over their own sterility. Though it is daylight still, the sun has long passed behind them, and the air is chilled and mouldy. The village is merely one long, shaky street crouching in along the side of the mountain; it is lamentably near the torrent, for the rough Gave de Bastan just below is one of the scourges of the Pyrenees, and each spring it tears by and even through the street, and scours down the valley, swollen and resentful, causing discouraging damage along its track. Many of the houses are taken down each fall and re-erected in the summer; and as we walk on through the street, these quavering shanties of pine combine with the jail-like appearance of the heavier stone buildings and the harsh hills and clouds around, all in a strange effect of utter repellence.

But it is the people we meet who intensify the impression. No one visits Bareges for pleasure; its extraordinary springs are the sole reason of its existence, and only those who must, come to seek health in them. Sad-faced invalids, who have tried other baths in vain and have been ordered hither as a last resort; wounded or broken-down soldiers; cripples, who stump their crutches past us down the earthen road,—these are the ones who haunt Bareges, anxious and self-centred and unhopeful. Style and fashion are things apart; there is not a landau to be had in the place, and scarcely a smaller vehicle. In cold or storm, the sick hurry from boarding-house or hotel to the bath-establishment in close-shut sedan-chairs; on fairer days, they limp their own way thither. Talk turns on diseases; there is no fresh news, Bareges is a long ride from the news bearing railway; the discussions begin with this or that spring or symptom and end in a disconsolate game at ecarte.

Truly disease is a hideous visitant to the fairness of life,—a hard interruption to its store of joys.

Beyond all this, however, there is a something further about Bareges,—this incubus of depressingness, seemingly the very soul of the spot. Sickness and dreary location will account for it in part; but many have felt that certain subtle spirit pervading a region or even a single house, which in part defies analysis; it is in the air; it overhangs; it may be light and joyous and animating, or forbidding. And Bareges is a striking instance; morbid, abhorrent, funereal, there seems here some influence at work which is not entirely to be accounted for, yet to which it is impossible not to yield.

At the upper end of the street is the long, grim bath-establishment, and we enter its stone corridors and are led about by a noiseless and mournful attendant. Here are rows of waiting sedan-chairs; an office for presentation of tickets; long lines of stone cells, each with its tub or douche or vapor-box; and underground, public tanks of larger size. "I inconsiderately tasted the spring," records a traveler of years ago, "and, if you are anxious to know what it is like, you may be satisfied without going to Bareges, by tasting a mixture of rotten eggs and the rinsings of a foul gun-barrel." Our spirits fall lower and lower in this damp impluvium; never before have we felt so grateful over our limitless good health; we dodge out with relief into the darkening air, and, under the beginnings of a rain-storm, thankfully slip back to the refuge of the hotel.

Certain it seems that if cheerful surroundings are essential to a cure, the waters of Bareges must fail of their full mission.

They accomplish remarkable things, notwithstanding; they are among the strongest of the Pyrenean baths, and are particularly noted for their power in scrofulas and grave skin-disorders, wounds, ulcers and serious rheumatic affections. So healing for wounds are they, that the government sustains here a military hospital for maimed and disabled soldiers. In winter the scene is desolation. The cold is rigorous. Avalanches pour down from the mountains on both sides and often leave little for the spring freshets to do. Modern engineering grapples even with avalanches; wide platforms have been cut in the rocks above the town, on the slopes most exposed, and immense bars of iron set in them and attached with chains. These outworks have proved themselves surprisingly effective in breaking the force of the snowslides; but the scent of danger is always in the air; the ledge of the town is for months deep in drifts; the frailer houses are taken up, the rest closed and stoutly barred; the inhabitants are gone, leaving behind a few old care-takers to hold their lonely revels in the solitudes.

III.

We sit about in the evening in the dim little parlor, and agree once more that Bareges has not been exaggerated. We are united in will to leave this detestable spot to its ghosts of ruin and disease, and to leave it as quickly as we can. Our Luz driver, whom we have judiciously retained to remain with his landau over night, appears respectfully at the door, and is instantly instructed to be ready early in the morning for farther progress; he looks dubious, and warns us of continuing rain; it is nothing; we leave to-morrow in any weather.

"Have you found us a second carriage?" I ask him.

"Monsieur, there is but a petite voiture, a small wagonette, up the street, which one could hire; it is small; if monsieur will have the goodness to come out with me to see it?"

So two of us sally forth into the drizzle with the driver, and a few rods up the street turn off into an alley-way, where the wagonette is found under a shed. It is small,—deplorably small; the seat will ungraciously hold two persons, and a stool can be crowded in in front for a driver. There is no top nor hood of any sort, and the hotel barometer is still falling steadily.

But we are resolved to leave Bareges.

"Is this the best that one can obtain?" I ask ruefully.

"There is one other, monsieur, close by; but it is yet smaller."

This clinches the matter, and we conclude a bargain with the proprietor for an early departure and hurry back to the dim joys of the hotel reception-room.

IV.

The clouds themselves descend with the drizzle during the night, and we are greeted when we wake by a white opacity of mist and fog filling the hotel courtyard and leaking moisture at every pore. We think shiveringly of the wagonette, but more shiveringly still of Bareges; and resolutely array ourselves for a long and watery day among the clouds.

Our route will continue by the Thermal Road on to Bagneres de Bigorre. There is again a col in the way which we must cross,—the Col du Tourmalet, a shoulder of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, separating this Valley of Bastan from the greater lateral Valley of Campan. It is a long ride with the ascent and descent,—twenty-five miles at the least; but it can be easily made in the day, and there is a midway halting-place beyond the col for lunch.

Our Luz landau appears promptly on the scene, comfortably enclosed and inviting; and the ridiculous wagonette creeps up behind it, in apologetic and shamefaced comparison. The driver of the wagonette, however, a tough, grizzled old guide, is not shamefaced in the least, but grins broadly and contentedly as he sits there wrapped in his tarpaulin, wet and shiny under the steady rain. The landau soon hospitably receives the favored majority, and disappears into the mist up the street; and the remaining two of us turn to the wagonette,—and turning, involuntarily catch the infection of the old guide's grin. After all, there is a certain zest in discomfort; we clamber in and draw the rough robe around us, unfurl our complicated Cauterets umbrella, and agree that the truest policy is to make little of discomfort and much of its zest.

Old Membielle gathers the tarpaulin about his stool before us, chirrups toward the damp steam which symbolizes a horse, and we move off up the long, soppy street, past its houses and jails and grey bathing-penitentiary,—and out at last from Bareges. Out from Bareges, though into the vast unknown; and our spirits rise higher as the baleful spell of the spot is lifted and left behind.

V.

Bareges is the most convenient point for the ascent of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. The baths lie almost at the foot of this mountain, and one can make the ascent in about four hours, and descending by another side rejoin the road to Bigorre at the village of Grip, beyond the col before us. We resign the ascent, of course, under stress of barometer; but this climb is assuredly one of the best worth making in the Pyrenees. The Pic is prominently seen from distant points everywhere through the region: it is visible from Pau, from the Maladetta, from the plain of Toulouse. Consequently these points must lie within its own ken. Its huge, shapely dome rises 9400 feet into the air, and standing as it does solitary and apart at the edge of the plain and not buried among rival summits, the view from the top has been solely criticised as too vast for detail and too high for exactness, and commands, it is said, a fifth of all France. The ascent is easy, there being little snow upon the path in the summer; there is a bridle-trail throughout, a small inn higher than half way, and an observatory now erected upon the summit.

We are only intellectually cognizant of this Pic du Midi, however, as we jog on up toward the pass; for the driving fog curtains all the peaks, at times lifting so far as to show the nearer slopes and perhaps the hills ahead, but for the most part enfolding even the road and ourselves in its maudlin affection. We pull steadily on through the morning, over a good road and up through a still dreary region of moist, sparse turf and shaly slopes of slate and rock and profitless debris. The occupants of the landau, as they look down toward us at times from the turn next above, wave dry and encouraging greetings, through the open windows; and we wave back damper but equally encouraging greetings in return, having found that good spirits had fallen to us with unexpected and gratifying ease.

Altogether it has not been in the least a long morning, when we finally reach the crest of the Col du Tourmalet, 7100 feet in elevation, from which begins the descent toward the Campan Valley and Bigorre. This col is not loved by mountaineers during the winter; it is exposed to the full sweep of storms, and is one of the wild passes on which, as the local saying goes, "when the hurricane reigns the son does not tarry for the father nor the father for the son." Before the Route Thermale pushed its way over, it was but a foot-pass, wearisomely traversed in saddle or litter by infrequent travelers or by invalids sentenced to Bareges.

Just at the summit of the col, for a supreme minute, the clouds part at the rear, right and left, and roll away beneath, and we catch for once the long stretch of the desolate Valley of Bastan, with the windings of the road reaching backward and downward along the hills. It is over while we look; the fog writhes and twists down and all is greyness again.

The carriages slip rapidly down the other side, with all brakes set and forty hairbreadth margins recorded for the outer wheels; and, an hour from the col, we are safely at the hamlet of Grip, where the horses and we are doomed to a two hours' halt and a lunch. The first inn, irrationally placed in a patch of field apart from the main road, does not look attractive from the distance, and we drive on to the second. This one, while carefully non-committal in appearance, is at least on close terms with the road, and as there is no third, we cheer us with reminders of Laruns and descend.

It is a creaky little inn, facing a wet, cobbly yard and having the air of being retiring in disposition and somewhat surprised at the advent of visitors. The landlady is away, it appears, and we are received by her spouse, a mild-mannered old man who is not used to being a host in himself but resignedly assumes the burden. The lunch is promised for the near future. The horses are led off, the carriages covered to remain in the road, and the driver and the jovial guide turn to and help with the fire and stabling arrangements in a way which shows that they are entirely at home in the locality.



We stand for a while on the decrepit, covered balcony overlooking the yard, exchanging humorous reminiscences of the ride, and idly commiserating the three fowls and a wet pig which appear below. We are absorbed too in a wooden-saboted farmhand of gigantic proportions who clicks across the cobbles at irregular intervals and exchanges repartee with a milk-maid in the doorway. He has a huge, knobby frame, bulging calves, a colored kerchief turbaning his head, a rough costume throughout, and a fascinating though belying air of desperate and unscrupulous villainy.

But the weather has still its tinge of rawness, and two or three of us go down stairs again and invade the den of the kitchen, where the fire is now under way and the inevitable omelet just in contemplation. The old man acts as extemporary cook. He finds a black and somewhat oily frying-pan, suspends it over the fire to heat, and throws in a handful of salt to draw out the grease. He now looks thoughtfully about for a rag to scour it withal; there is a rag of sooty environment and inferentially sooty antecedents hanging beside a box of charcoals next to the chimney-place; he horrifies some among us by promptly catching it up; gives the pan a vigorous rubbing-out with this carboniferous relic; and certain appetites for omelet fade swiftly away. Their losers speak for a substitution of coffee and bread and fresh milk in lieu of all remaining courses, and beat a hasty retreat from the scene.

The omelet duly appears upon the lunch-table presently set for us in the little room upstairs, and serves at least as a centre-piece, over which to tell the story of its birth; and the coffee, excellent bread, and a huge pitcher of new, creamy milk amply reconcile all abstainers, and fortify us in a feeling of good-tempered toleration even for Grip.

VI.

Bagneres de Bigorre is placed at the opening-out of the broad Campan Valley, some distance out from the higher ranges and about twelve miles on from Grip. The fog passes off as we start again, though it is lightly raining still. In an hour or more we have finished the descent to the floor of the valley, and for the rest of the short afternoon the road runs uneventfully to the northward, for the most part level, and beaded with occasional villages and lesser clumps of houses. Finally, as the light begins to fail behind the clouds, an increased bustle on the road and more frequent houses passed announce the nearness of our destination, and the horses are soon trotting into Bigorre and up the welcome promenade of the main street to the Hotel Beau Sejour.

Past discomforts quickly recede in the warm haze of present satisfactions. We absorb to the full the pleasant glow of the hotel drawing-room, after we have comfortably repaired the ravages of the day. Bareges is a grotesque phantom, and we can hardly admit that to-night there are people still in that shuddering, shivering, banshee-haunted line of hospitals, high in its weird valley, in the cold and in the falling rain. Rayless and despairing their mood must be; escape would seem immeasurably more to be prized than cure. Even the old man of Grip and his rag brighten by comparison, and we agree in viewing our present surroundings as a climax of utter content.



CHAPTER XV.

THE VALLEY OF THE SUN.

"Baigneres, la beaute, l'honneur, le paradis. De ces monts sourcilleux" —DU BARTAS.

"I hear from Bigorre you are there." —Lucile.

An agreeable little city we find about us, the next day. Bigorre is one of the most well-known of the Pyrenean resorts, and has a steady though not accelerating popularity. The tide of ultra summer fashion, has tended latterly toward Eaux Bonnes, Cauterets and Luchon in preference; still, Bigorre, conservative and with it's own assured circle of friends, looks on without malice at its sister spas who have come to wear finer raiment than itself. A number of the English,—some even in winter and spring,—frequent Bigorre almost alone of these Pyrenean resorts, and their liking for it has made it known, beyond the others, in their own country. The streets are shady and well lined; the houses, frequently standing apart in their own small gardens, give a pleasant impression of space and airiness. There are numberless shops, where we can later replenish various needs. The pavements seem to have been built and leveled, by MacAdam himself, as an enthusiast puts it; and everywhere along the side of the walks bound rivulets of mountain water, so dear to these Pyrenean towns.

The mineral springs here are not powerful, but are useful in mild digestive disorders and the like, and afford at least a pretext for an idle summering, as springs will do, the world over. The Establishment is large and well arranged, but getting well is no such stern and serious affair at Bagneres de Bigorre as at Bareges, and here the visitors wisely mingle their saline prescriptions in abundant infusions of pleasure. There are drives and promenades in all directions. The Casino offers concerts and occasional plays and operettas, and a band in the main promenade entertains regularly the listening evening saunterers. Rightly does the town aim still to merit the praise given by Montaigne, who paid it a marked tribute in his writings:

"He who does not bring along with him," observes that great French essayist, "so much cheerfulness as to enjoy the pleasure of the company he will there meet, [at bath-resorts,] and of the walks and exercises to which the beauty of the places in which baths for the most part are situated invites us, will doubtless lose the best and surest part of their effect. For this reason, I have hitherto chosen to go to those of the most pleasant situation, where there was the most convenience of lodging, provision and company,—as the Baths of Banieres in France."

The cheery town is large enough to take on something quite akin to a city-like air; it has a population of about 10,000, and in summer the number has its half added upon it by increase of visitors and boarders. The hotels are praiseworthy, though making little display; and a marked attraction of the town is this wide promenade of the main street, termed the Coustous,—so called, it is alleged, because anciently the guardians, custodes, of Bigorre used here to pace their nightly patrol. The Coustous is doubly lined with arching trees, and has seats and a wide path along the centre; the carriage-ways enclose this, and shops and cafes line the outer walks. A few squares away, another similar promenade broadens out, likewise vivified with trees and shops and booths. Facing this is the bath-establishment before mentioned, and beyond, in grounds of its own, the Kursaal or Casino. Cropping up among the houses, stout buildings older than the rest tell of the days when Bagneres was a "goodly inclosed town," the inhabitants of which had a hard time of it against the depredations of Lourdes and Mauvoisin and its other robber neighbors.

For we are among old times again at Bigorre, and many spots in the vicinity are rife with Middle-Age incidents of robbing and righting. This region was the plague-spot of the country for its freebooting fortresses,—Lourdes, Mauvoisin, Trigalet, with their adventurers always ready for a fracas,—the strongholds, as has been said, of those logicians who

"kept to the good old plan That those should take who have the power, And those should keep who can,"

and the provinces about them lived in constant worriment. This valley especially suffered from their armed bands; now they raided some exposed hamlet, now made prisoners of merchants or travelers on the highway, anon swooped down here upon Bagneres and made off with money and live stock in gratifying plenty.

And centuries yet preceding this, the valley saw wars on a larger scale, when Caesar and his Romans, ploughing victoriously through Gaul, came to the Aquitani and crushed them down into the furrows with the rest, after repeated and furious resistance. The Romans knew too of these springs, and there are still remains of the city,—Vicus Aquensis,—which they built on this site. In the Museum are Roman relics found while excavating, among them votive tablets recording the donors' gratitude to the nymphs of the springs for cures effected. Clearly, Bigorre is of no mushroom growth, but has been toughened and seasoned by age and warfare into the just reward of its nowaday repose and popularity.

II.

It is Sunday, and there is service in the English chapel, a brief walk away. It is conducted by the nervous, genial chaplain staying at the hotel, who afterwards greets us cordially at the noon luncheon-hour, and justifies our pleasure at finding a tongue which can return English for English and with fluency. He officiates at Pau during the winter, he tells us, and here at Bigorre during the summer; and so, in a sense, we find, does the hotel proprietor himself, who, with his expansive wife, owns a hotel in Pau as well as here, and conducts the former during the winter months, when the season at Bigorre is ended.

The day is evidently that of some special saint; the population is out in its brightest hues. Saints are in great authority with these people; their recurrent "days" fill the calendar; their ascribed specialties are as various as were those of the minor Greek or Egyptian deities. All is in reverence, be it added; canonization is a very sacred thing with the Catholic peasant. The power even of working ill seems to be, in curious ignorance, at times attributed to certain of these saints; "I have seen with my own eyes," relates a native Gascon writer, M. de Lagreze, "a woman who, wishing to disembarrass herself of her husband, demanded of a venerable priest, as the most natural thing in the world, that he should say a mass for her to St. Secaire; she was convinced that, this saint, unknown to martyrology, had the power of withering up (secher) and killing troublesome individuals, to accommodate those who invoked his aid."[27]

[27] "This woman," naively adds the writer, "irritated at the refusal of the priest, showed that she could dispense with saintly help in the matter altogether: she killed her husband herself, with a gun."

We take another walk in the afternoon through the streets of the town, and afterward compare international notes once more with our cordial English clergyman. It is renewedly grateful to hear again the mother tongue spoken understandingly by a stranger. The utter and unaccountable absence of our own countrymen's faces and voices from these Pyrenean resorts gives one constantly a touch of regret. One longs occasionally for the crisp American greeting,—the quick lighting-up, the national hand-shake, a comparison of adventures. Saving by two compatriots met in Biarritz, we have found our nation entirely unrepresented in or near the summer Pyrenees.

III.

Bagneres is too far to the northward to be in touch with true mountain expeditions. Its only "star" in this line is the majestic Pic du Midi de Bigorre, which, being itself an outlying peak, is much nearer us than the main range and is often ascended from Bigorre,—a conveyance being taken to Grip and the start on foot or horseback made from that point. There are, besides, a number of lesser mountains about, and drives and longer excursions unnumbered. A rifle perhaps most recommendable, though not always mentioned in the hand-books, is one that will bring us back again for a day to the times of our rascally acquaintance, Count Gaston Phoebus, and his contemporaries. This is to the castle of Mauvoisin before mentioned,—"Mauvais voisin,"—"bad neighbor," as it abundantly proved itself to Bigorre. It lies but ten miles away, in a northeast direction; it is reached best by the carriage-road, and the trip can readily be made in a half-day. This was one of the Aquitaine fortresses which with Lourdes, it will be remembered, fell into the hands of the English, about the middle of the fourteenth century, as part of the ransom of King John of France. Raymond of the Sword was appointed its governor, and a right loyal sword did he prove himself to own. But Mauvoisin could not resist siege as Lourdes could. The Duke of Anjou was soon at it, determined to recapture it for the French, and after a stiff course of starving and thirsting, the garrison surrendered and Mauvoisin came back to the French flag.

It was near this spot that a peculiarly savage and yet ludicrous fight once occurred. It was during the same robberesque period,—about the middle of the fourteenth century; and Froissart gives us an animated account of it; he was on the way to Orthez through this very region, and his traveling companion tells him of the event as they pass:

A party of reckless men-at-arms, bent on mischief and plunder, had sallied out from Lourdes, it seems, on a long foray. They were a hundred and twenty lances in all, and they had two dashing leaders, Ernauton de Sainte Colombe and Le Mengeant de Sainte Basile,—the latter well called the Robin Hood of the Pyrenees. They were all men whose very breath of life was in thieving and combat. The band had "lifted" an abundance of booty; they had exploited the country as far even as Toulouse, "finding in the meadows great quantities of cattle, pigs and sheep, which they seized, as well as some substantial men from the flat countries, and drove them all before them."

The Governor of Tarbes and other knights and squires of Bigorre heard of this mischief and determined to attack the marauders. They assembled at Tournay, a town not far from Bigorre and close by Mauvoisin, and counted up two hundred men. Among them was our athletic celebrity, the Bourg d'Espaign, the same who carried the ass and wood upstairs, that Christmas Day at Orthez. He was a regiment in himself, "being well formed, of a large size, strongly made and not too much loaded with flesh; you will not find his equal in all Gascony for vigor of body." At Tournay they prepared to lie in wait and spring on the thieving band as it returned.

The Lourdes roughs had wind of the ambush on their homeward way. They were quite as ready for a fight as a foray, but prudently divided their numbers: one detachment was to drive the booty around by the bridge half-way between Tournay and Mauvoisin and thence on through by-roads; while the main band was to march in order of battle on the high ground and so draw the attack. Both sections were later to meet at a point beyond, from whence they would soon be safely at Lourdes. "On this they departed; and there remained with the principal division Ernauton de Sainte Colombe, Le Mengeant de Sainte Basile, and full eighty companions, all men-at-arms; there were not ten varlets among them. They tightened their armor, fixed their helmets, and, grasping their lances, marched in close order, as if they were instantly to engage; they indeed expected nothing else, for they knew their enemies were in the field."

The Bourg and his friends scented the stratagem in turn, and promptly divided themselves likewise. He himself with one division guarded the river passage, which they suspected the cattle and prisoners would be sent around to cross. The other division, under the Governor of Tarbes, took the high ground.

At the Pass of Marteras, not far from the castle, the governor's division met the main body of the enemy. "They instantly dismounted, and leaving their horses to pasture, with pointed lances advanced, for a combat was unavoidable, shouting their cries: 'St. George for Lourde!' 'Our Lady for Bigorre!'"

Now it is to be remembered that fighters in those days were often cased in armor from crown to sole,—a preposterous armor, burdensome and unwieldy, but almost utterly invulnerable. Sword-blows might dint it for hours without doing damage; the danger in battle lay chiefly in simple over-exertion. This gives the ludicrous point to the demure narration made to Froissart by his companion:

"They charged each other, thrusting their spears with all their strength, and, to add greater force, urged them forward with their breasts. The combat was very equal; and for some time none was struck down, as I heard from those present. When they had sufficiently used their spears, they threw them down, and with battle-axes began to deal out terrible blows on both sides. This action lasted for three hours, and it was marvelous to see how well they fought and defended themselves. When any were so worsted or out of breath that they could not longer support the fight, they seated themselves near a large ditch full of water in the middle of the plain, when, having taken off their helmets, they refreshed themselves; this done, they replaced their helmets and returned to the combat, I do not believe there ever was so well fought or so severe a battle as this of Marteras in Bigorre, since the famous combat of thirty English against thirty French knights in Brittany.

"They fought hand to hand, and Ernauton de Sainte Colombe was on the point of being killed by a squire of the country called Guillonet de Salenges, who had pushed him so hard that he was quite out of breath, when I will tell you what happened: Ernauton had a servant who was a spectator of the battle, neither attacking nor attacked by any one; but seeing his master thus distressed, he ran to him and wresting the battle-axe from his hand, said: 'Ernauton, go and sit down! recover yourself! you cannot longer continue the battle.' With this battle-axe, he advanced upon the squire and gave him such a blow on the helmet as made him stagger and almost fall down. Guillonet, smarting from the blow, was very wroth, and made for the servant to strike him with his axe on the head; but the varlet avoided it, and grappling with the squire, who was much fatigued, turned him round and flung him to the ground under him, when he said: 'I will put you to death if you do not surrender yourself to my master.'

"'And who is thy master?'

"'Ernauton de Sainte Colombe, with whom you have been so long engaged.'

"The squire, finding he had not the advantage, being under the servant, who had his dagger ready to strike, surrendered, on condition to deliver himself prisoner within fifteen days at the castle of Lourde, whether rescued or not.

"Of such service was this servant to his master; and I must say, Sir John, that there was a superabundance of feats of arms that day performed, and many companions were sworn to surrender themselves at Tarbes and at Lourde. The Governor of Tarbes and Le Mengeant de Sainte Basile fought hand to hand, without sparing themselves, and performed many gallant deeds, while all the others were fully employed; however, they fought so vigorously that they exhausted their strength, and both were slain on the spot.

"Upon this, the combat ceased by mutual consent, for they were so worn down that they could not longer wield their axes; some disarmed themselves, to recruit their strength, and left there their arms. Those of Lourde carried home with them the dead body of Le Mengeant; as the French did that of Ernauton to Tarbes; and in order that the memory of this battle should be preserved, they erected a cross of stone on the place where these two knights had fought and died."

At the bridge, a few miles away, the other sections met, and belabored each other as vigorously as did those at the pass. The Bourg d'Espaign performed wonders: "he wielded a battle-axe, and never hit a man with it but he struck him to the ground. He took with his own hand the two captains, Cornillac and Perot Palatin de Bearn. A squire of Navarre was there slain, called Ferdinand de Miranda, an expert man-at-arms. Some who were present say the Bourg d'Espaign killed him; others, that he was stifled through the heat of his armor.

"In short, the pillage was rescued and all who conducted it slain or made prisoners; for not three escaped, excepting varlets, who ran away and crossed the river by swimming. Thus ended this business, and the garrison of Lourde never had such a loss as it suffered that day. The prisoners were courteously ransomed or mutually exchanged; for those who had been engaged in this combat had made several prisoners on each side, so that it behooved them to treat each other handsomely."

* * * * *

"Such," laughs Johnson, "was a fight of men-at-arms in the Middle Ages,—derived from the graphic description of Froissart, in whose narrative there always runs an undercurrent of sly humor when portraying the military extravagances of the age. And it is impossible to avoid the contagion; for who can picture in any more serious style a hurly-burly of huge, iron-clad, suffocating, perspiring warriors, half blinded with helmet and visor and scarce able to stir beneath the metallic pots encompassing them around; belaboring and hustling each other about with weapons quite unequal to reach the flesh and blood within, till, out of breath and blown with fatigue, they sate down as coolly as they could and refreshed themselves; then getting up again, again drove all the breath out of their bodies,—and all without doing the least mortal harm, unless somebody died of the heat or was smothered to death in his own armorial devices."

IV.

This Le Mengeant, the worthy killed in his armor, as above recorded, at the Pass of Marteras, had been the hero of more than one bedeviling exploit during his career thus untimely cut off. One I cannot forbear giving, told in these Chronicles and retold with charming gusto by the writer above mentioned. Le Mangeant, it would seem, had evidently "a strong notion of the humorous in his composition. One time, he set out, accompanied by four others, all with shaven crowns and otherwise disguised as an abbot and attendants going from upper Gascony to Paris on business. Having reached the Sign of the Angel at Montpelier, a suitable hostelry for such holy men, they soon gained much credit for their saintly deportment and conversation; insomuch that a rich man of the city, Sir Beranger, was fain to avail himself of their company and ghostly comfort by the way. We say nothing of the generosity which prompted the holy father to offer Sir Beranger an escort free of all expense, so much was he captivated by that gentleman's charming society. One can imagine the sly winks and contortions interchanged by this pious party as the victim fell into the trap. But no amount of imagination can ever do justice to the features of Sir Beranger, when, three leagues from the city, the right reverend prelate and his apostolic brethren threw off the mask with peals of un-canonical laughter, led the wretched cit off to Lourdes through crooked by-roads, and there extracted from his disconsolate relatives five thousand francs of ransom,—which they, holy men, doubtless devoted to the purposes of their order. There is a story for a rhymer Sherwood forest could not beat!

"It is but proper to set society right as to those gallant days of chivalry, when knights fought for the love of ladies' eyes and glory that lived for ever. More practical men are hardly to be found in business to-day, for they never lost sight of that grand maxim, to 'get money.' 'Quaerenda pecunia primum, virtus post nummos' was a motto each knight might have much more truly borne upon his shield than the charming bits of brag and sentiment cunningly designed for that purpose by accommodating heraldry. Money they got, honestly if they could, but they got it; and to do them justice they spent it right jovially, as all such gallant spirits do when they are disbursing what does not belong to them. After all, time only alters the characters in the Drama,—the plot is pretty much the same; and with a suburban villa for a chateau, a face of brass for a coat of iron, and a steel pen for a steel sword, your gallant knight of to-day storms his bank or plunders his neighbors from an entrenched joint-stock fortress or leads on his band to surprise the public pocket from some tangled thicket of swindling,—just upon the same principles as our old Pyrenean friends."



CHAPTER XVI.

THE INTERLAKEN OF THE PYRENEES.

"Perle enchassee au sein des Pyrenees Par l'ouvrier qu'on nomme l'Eternel, Je te predis de belles destinees; L'humanite te doit plus d'un autel. Car l'etranger dans ta charmante enceinte Trouve toujours, suivant son rang, son nom, Le bon accueil, l'hospitalite sainte, Que sait offrir l'habitant de Luchon."

—Local Ode.

We now prepare for the last and longest drive on the Route Thermale,—that from Bigorre to Luchon. The distance is forty-four miles; the journey can be made in one long day, but owing to the amount of work for the horses "against collar," it is wiser to break it into two. This can be done at the village of Arreau, the only practicable resting-place between. There are two severe cols to cross on this trip, one on this side of Arreau, the other beyond; the first is the most noted of all the Pyrenean cols for the immense and striking view it commands. This pass, the Col d'Aspin, is but a morning's drive from Bigorre, and is often made an excursion even by those not going to Luchon. Another mode of reaching Luchon from Bigorre is by rail, both places being at the end of branches from the main line. But the charm of mountain travel is in these magnificent roads, and few loving this charm would wisely sacrifice it to a mere gain in time.

Allotting, then, two days for the journey, we are not impelled to drive off from Bigorre at any unseasonably early hour. In fact it is verging upon noon when the start is made. Our Tourmalet conveyances have long since gone back, and we have a fresh landau and victoria duly chartered, with two strong and capable-looking drivers. For the first half hour or more the road retraces its steps down the valley toward the foot of the Tourmalet, only breaking off at the village of Ste. Marie. Through this we had passed in the late afternoon rain of the drive from Bareges, and here our present road strikes away from the Bareges route and directs its way toward the Col d'Aspin.

The Vale of Campan, in which we are running, has long had its praises appreciatively sung. It is fertile and smiling, but we decide that it does not vie with the Eden of Argeles. The remembrance of that happy valley under the full afternoon sun, as we saw it in driving to Cauterets, diverse in its sweet fields and silenced fortresses, will long hold off all rival landscapes. The road twines on between pastures and rye-fields, as we approach again nearer and nearer the mountains, and after an easy two-hour trot, we are drawn up before the little inn of Paillole, the last lunching-station before crossing the col. Here is found the tidy air of nearly all these little hostelries, and our confidence in them, born at Laruns and nowhere as yet injured save by the demon kettle-rag of Grip, finds nothing here to further cripple it in any way. There is an old man at hand to greet us, as at Grip, but his wife is by, as well, and her alert, trim manner is alien to all sooty napery. It is always unfair to carry over a suspicious spirit from past causes of suspicion; and we prudently refrain from tampering, by reminiscence, with present good impressions.

Pending the preparation of the repast, we wander out about the grounds. The Campan Gave is sufficiently wide to be called a river, and flows at the rear of the hotel kitchen-garden in a broad, rock-broken bed. It is pleasant to stand by its cool, firm rush, and grow alive to the sound of it and to the pushing of the wind and to the white and blue of clouds and sky framing the sunshine. Cities and city life fall so suddenly out of sight, as an unreal thing, in the presence of these rustlings of Nature's garments.

From this winning little olitory plot here at the side of the house by the river, we can see under an arbored porch the kitchen itself, open to the world. The old woman is at work within, as we can also see, at the needful culinary incantations; and assisting her with single-minded but safely-controlled zeal is her husband the landlord, aproned for the occasion.

But nearer by, close to the stream, our host has a flooded trout-box, and he presently comes stumbling out to it along some rough boards thrown down for a path. He unlocks the padlock, opens the lid, and we group around to witness the sacrifice,—innocent speckle-sides butchered to make a Pyrenean holiday. There is no fly-casting, no adroit play of rod and reel; the old gentleman plunges in his bare arm, there is a splashing and a struggle, and his hand has closed over a victim and brings it up to the light,—a glistening trout, alive, breathless, and highly surprised and annoyed. He takes the upper jaw in his other thumb and forefinger and bends it sharply backward; something breaks at the base of the skull and the fish lies instantly dead. This painless mode of taking off is new to us, and we concur in approving its suddenness and certainty. And so he proceeds, until the baker's dozen of trout lie on the boards at his feet. Then he closes and locks the box, bows to the spectators, and retires with the spoils; while we go back to our communings with the river and the garden.

II.

It is a trifle later than it should be when we finally start afresh; and newly-come clouds are moping about the mountains and banking up unwelcomely near the hills of the col ahead. The ascent begins at once in long, gradual sweeps, and for an hour as we ride and walk progressively higher, the view of the valley behind lessens in the haze, and the clouds in front become thicker and thicker. There is then a straight incline toward the last, of a mile or more; the notch of the col is sharp-cut against the sky just ahead, and we hurry on to gain a shred at least of the vanishing view before it is too late. In vain; we are standing upon the Col d'Aspin,—a herd of cloud-fleeces wholly filling the new valley ahead and now whitening also the Campan Vale behind us.

This is not such an irremediable disappointment as might appear. We resolve now and here to outgeneral circumstances. The view from the Col d'Aspin is unquestionably too fine to be lost, and we decide to return from Luchon to Bigorre by this same route, instead of leaving by rail. Thus we shall recross this col; and vengeful care shall be taken to await a flawless day for the crossing.

So we get into the carriages again and speed off down the long slopes which lead into the Arreau basin, grimly regarding the clouds and promising ourselves recoupment to the full. By the road, it is five miles before the carriages will be on level ground again, and three miles thence to Arreau. The drivers point out a short-cut down the mountain, and some of us are quickly on foot, crossing the road's great arcs with steep descent, stepping lower and lower over pastures and ploughed ground and through reappearing copses and thickets, until we are at last upon the road again in the floor of the valley. Here at a stone bridge the party finds us, and soon after, all are bowling into Arreau and traversing its one long street to the low door of the Hotel d'Angleterre.

There is naught of the pretentious about the Hotel d'Angleterre. It is listless and antique and not worldly wise, but we very soon find that it is in good order and quite able to entertain Americans unawares. There is a stone hallway with a large, square staircase in the centre; upstairs, the rooms, though low-ceiled, are commodious and airy; and we find a tolerable reception-room below, near the entrance. In the rear is a charming garden of terraces and rose-beds and flat-topped trees and odd nooks for cafe-tables; and later in the evening a neat service of tea and tartines brightens our pathway to the wider gardens of sleep.

III.

Arreau, as we find it in the morning, has little more to show than the long street through which we drove on arrival. Age-rusted eaves overhang the white-washed walls of the houses; there are queer, primitive little shops and local cabarets or taverns, the latter sheltering their outside benches and deal tables behind tall box-plants set put in stationary green tubs upon the pavement. Midway down the street is a venerable market-shelter, a roomy structure consisting simply of a roof and countless stone pillars. Its parallels may not infrequently be seen elsewhere in Europe,—as at Lucerne and Annecy and Canterbury; there is no side-wall, no enclosure; all is public and out of doors, a habit of many years back, and on market-days it is the centre of interest for the entire district. There is little to tempt, in the stores; beyond dry tablets of Bayonne chocolate and some time-hardened confectionery sold in a musty little shop below the church, we find nothing to buy combining the interest and lastingness of a proper memento. Arreau is in short an old-fashioned town in all particulars, unawakened even by the thoroughfaring of the Route Thermale.



The church, with its sculptured arms and round chancel, is another work of the Templars,—one of several in this valley, for the territory was once assigned by a Count of Bigorre to their order, and one town in the district, Borderes by name, was even erected by them into a commandery. On the destruction of the order in 1312, nearly all the Templars throughout the county of Bigorre, with their commander, Bernard de Montagu, were seized, and were executed at Auch and their possessions confiscated. Afterward, the valley passed to the Counts of Armagnac, whose wickedness and family pride were intense enough to have prompted that most transcendent of boasts, "In hell, we are a great house!" and who waged more than one stiff feud with Bearn and the Counts of Foix.

We drive off toward Luchon after the survey, not leaving a final farewell, since we shall pass through once more in returning to cross again the Col d'Aspin. The col before us now, cutting off the Arreau valley from that of Luchon, is the Col de Peyresourde, the last of the throes of the Route Thermale; and up the sides of the mountain the carriages unceasingly climb during the forenoon until the crest is reached. From this the road lowers itself again by the usual complicated zigzags. The dauntless Highway of the Hot Springs here completes its work and allows itself a last well-earned rest along the smoother valley, until by two o'clock we see it find its final end in the broad avenue leading into Luchon.

IV.

Luchon is easily the queen of all these beautiful Pyrenean resorts. We very soon concur in this. I have called it the Pyrenees Interlaken, and this perhaps describes it more tersely, than description. It is in fact surprisingly like Interlaken; its broad, arbored highways or hoehewegs, its rich hotels, its general enamel of opulence and leisure, suggest the charm of that Swiss paradise at every turn. Only the great glow of the Jungfrau is missing; but one need not go far, as we shall later see, to view almost its full equal.

"It is not possible to be silent about Luchon," declares the enthusiastic essayist who described so appreciatively the fair valley of Luz, "Luchon is a capital. No other place in the world represents beauty and pleasure in the same degree; no other town is so thoroughly typical of the district over which it presides. One can no more imagine the Pyrenees without Luchon than Luchon without the Pyrenees; neither of them is conceivable without the other; together, they form a picture and its frame. A region of loveliness, amusement and hot water needed a metropolis possessing the same three features in the highest degree; in Luchon they are concentrated with a completeness of which no example is to be found elsewhere. No valley is so delicious; nowhere is there such an accumulation of diversions; nowhere are there so many or such varied mineral springs. If it be true that a perfect capital should present a summary of the characteristics and aspects of its country, then Luchon is certainly the most admirable central city that men have built, for no other represents the land around it so faithfully as Luchon does. Neither Mexico nor Merv, nor Timbuctoo nor Lassa, nor Winnipeg nor Naples, attain its symbolic exactness."

We find super-luxurious quarters at the Richelieu, one of the handsomest of the handsome hotels, and groan at the narrowing limitations of the calendar. Before us is a wide, leafy park, with rustic pavilions, and an artificial lake enlivened with swans; these grounds are a constant pleasure; you stroll under the trees and listen to the music and see all humanity unroll itself along the paths about you. Here stands the Establishment, a low, many-columned building, whose effect from without is unusual and pleasing. Within, the noticeable feature is the great entrance stairway and hall, the latter with the proportions, of a Roman church and adorned with wall-paintings in large panels. Beyond, still in the park, is a graceful rustic kiosque, where other than sulphureous drinks are dealt out and where many people contrive to linger in passing. Here, in the mellow afternoon, Luchon is unfurling itself, as we saunter along; the broad space abutting on the Establishment is the focus of the throng, silk-sashed children are playing, boy's selling bonbons or the illustrated papers, fashionable French messieurs and mesdames and mesdemoiselles taking the air and portraying the modes.

We turn to the right, and emerge from the park, into the main promenade of the town. This is the Allee d'Etigny. It sets the type of these noted Luchon streets,—unusually broad, overhung with a fourfold row of immense lime-trees, and bordered with hotels and with enticing and polychromatic shops and booths quite equal to those of Interlaken. These wide Allees give to the village one of its individual charms. There are several of them,—among others, the Allee de la Pique and the Allee de Pique, starting one from each end of the Allee d'Etigny; these meet in an irregular figure, edged by villas and pensions, and everywhere green and shaded. Others lead out along the streams. This plenitude of shade is another of the place's attractions; foliage is nowhere more abundant; trees stock the park, the streets, all the avenues of approach,—their cool canopy gratefully filtering the July sun.

The D'Etigny is clearly the chief of the Allees, and we make slow progress past its tempting booths and flower-stalls and solider emporiums. Promenaders are out in force; carriages are rolling forth from the town for a late afternoon drive or returning from an earlier; the omnibuses come clattering up from the arriving train; we have scarcely found such a joyous stir south of the boulevards of Paris.

It is of its own kind, this midsummer fashion, and, whether in its beach or mountain homes, as worthy to be absorbed and appropriated in its turn as the antiquity of Morlaaes or the silence of the Cirque. We enjoy it unresistingly, as we idle down the bright street, eyes and ears alert to its beauties and its harmonies.

But there is the seamy side to Luchon, as to many things on earth: you go but a few paces from these opulent Allees and you find poverty. Frowsy women stare at us from rickety houses in the old part of the town; children, no longer silk-sashed but dirt-stained and ignorant, play in the mud-heaps; patient old tinkers and cobblers are seen in the dim shops at work. The very poor rarely gain by the growth of their neighbors. These in Luchon seem not to feel envy, but they have no part nor heart in the pride of civic progress around them. They keep on along their stolid, uncomplaining ways, having long ago faced the fact that they were immovably at the bottom of Fortune's wheel, and having forgotten since even to repine over it.

Turning off into the second Allee of the triangle, we find ourselves presently in view of the Casino, which stands back in a park of its own, set in trees, and possessing a theatre and concert-room, drawing-room or conversation-hall, and the usual cafe and reading-apartments. There is opera every second night and a small daily entrance-charge to the building, which may be compounded by purchasing a ticket for the month or the season.

The remaining avenue crosses back to the beginning of the first, ending with a long building given up to a species of universal bazaar, whose divisions and stands, festooned with crimson cambric, display confectionery, worsted goods, paper-weights of Pyrenean marbles, and nick-nacks of high and low degree. Opposite is a large store comfortingly called "Old England"; it augurs the presence and patronage of at least a few of the British race at Luchon, and offers a homelike stock of Anglo-Saxon goods. The walk has brought us out once more at the corner facing our hotel, and the hour for table-d'hote strikes elfinly on the ear.

V.

Luchon owes much to one man. This was a certain Intendant of the province and of Bigorre arid Bearn, who lived about the middle of the last century and was the most practical and enterprising governor the region ever had. The Luchonnais honor the name of the Baron d'Etigny. He believed in his Pyrenees; he believed in their future, and set himself to speeding it with all his heart. He not only expended his salary but his private fortune; he wrought extraordinary changes in facilities both for trade and travel, and, curiously enough, made an extraordinary number of enemies in doing so. Towns and districts were spurred up to their duty; tree-nurseries established, agriculture stimulated, sheep and merinos and blooded horses imported for breeding; lawlessness found itself, suddenly under ban; and in especial, paths and roads were cut through the country in all directions, two hundred leagues of them, opening up to trade and fashion spot after spot only half accessible before. Thus Eaux Chaudes, Cauterets, St. Sauveur, Bareges, Luchon, previously gained only by footways, were by D'Etigny made accessible for wheeled vehicles; uncertain trails were made over into good bridle-paths; and routes also over some of the cols were begun which have been since gathered up into the sweep of the Route Thermale.

On Luchon particularly, D'Etigny's kind offices fell; and Luchon resented them the most acridly. But the fostering hand was quite able to close into a fist. D'Etigny pushed his plans firmly, despite opposition. Pending the construction of a road from Montrejeau opening full access to the valley, the town itself was taken in hand. The main street, now the Allee d'Etigny, was projected; the springs,—from which the town was then some little, distance away,—were rehabilitated; and to replace the rough path leading to them he proceeded to level the ground between and open three additional avenues, each planted with quadruple ranges of trees. But this last innovation wrought trouble; it focused the growing opposition; every chair-carrier and pony-hirer in Luchon, together with every owner of the lands condemned, spitefully resented the opening of the new routes. Combining with the neighboring mountaineers, they rose one night and utterly demolished all three of the avenues, uprooting the young trees, leaving the ways strewed with debris and wholly impassable.

D'Etigny calmly built them up anew, and with increased care.

They were demolished again.

Even the Intendant's patience failed then. He built the roads the third time, but in addition to trees he studded them with troops.

They were not molested after that. Their enemies found they had a man against them who meant what he said and was prepared to stand by it. Eventually they veered around even into respect; Luchon in the end grew to rejoice in her Allees unreservedly; they stand to this day, and D'Etigny's name is all but canonized under the lindens which once heard him vigorously cursed.