A Book of the Pyrenees

As king, Henry said that his ambition was that every one of his subjects, every peasant in Béarn, should be able every Sunday in the year to put la poule au pot! A couple of centuries later an epigram was written thereon.

“Enfin, la poule au pot sera donc bientôt mise;On doit du moins le présumer;Car, depuis deux cent ans qu’on nous l’avait promise,On n’a cessé de la plumer.”

He did not forget the good things he had eaten in his native land when far away in Paris, and he wrote to Pau to have sent to him “some good melons, muscat grapes, figs, and peaches”; and again, “a dozen geese of Béarn, the fattest that can be found, such as will do honour to my country.”

The old cathedral church of Lescar occupies a very ancient site – a Roman town, Beneharnum, on the great Roman road that ran from Narbonne to Dax. The church deserves a visit. Although not large it is fine, dating from the twelfth century. It was erected apparently on the site of some Roman building, for the mosaic that surrounds the high altar, and marks where stood the original apse of the first church, is Roman work, and represents a tiger hunt. It was formerly covered by the floor of the stalls; but these have been removed, and the mosaic, that was much injured, has been restored carefully.

The whole of the low country, and the bottoms of the mountain valleys, were occupied by Romans. Gallic nobles had their villas that studded the land. At Bielle, already mentioned, is a mosaic pavement, and an evidence of the luxury of the period is seen in this villa having had pillars of marble brought from Italy. Other mosaic pavements have been found at Biellan, near Lescar, and at Taron-Sadirac, in the garden of the presbytère and in an adjoining field. The high altar of the church there is entirely formed of slabs taken thence. In 1847, when I was a boy, I heard peasants romance about a “Palais des Fées,” that lay underground in a field by the Lyss, in the commune of Jurançon. I visited the spot and found numerous cubes of mosaic of diverse colours in a ditch. I then saw the peasant proprietor and asked him whether he had discovered anything when ploughing. “Mais oui!” he said; “five years ago I uncovered a picture that represented men sitting about a table drinking and playing cards.” I knew how to make allowance for a Gascon’s imagination, so I bargained with the man to allow me to institute a search. We cut a trench parallel to the stream and crossed walls and mosaic pavements through a length of 150 feet. I then came to terms with the owner of the field. He was to allow me to dig, and he was to charge two sous at the gate for admission.

In a fortnight we had cleared out several rooms, and then, as my pocket-money was exhausted, the English of Pau raised a subscription to pay for the prosecution of the work. In the end we uncovered eleven chambers with well-preserved mosaic floors, and two more of which the floors had broken in upon the heating apparatus underneath, but which had been very richly patterned. The villa consisted of a suite of winter rooms and another for summer residence. In the former all the floors and walls were warmed by a hypocaust. The villa was, moreover, well furnished with baths.

In the middle, between the winter and the summer quarters, was the atrium, a court with a tank, in the midst, of pure water, conducted into it by a lead pipe from a well in the hill above. The bottom of the tank was paved with mosaic, representing marine animals, fish, crabs, etc., and the two containing walls were cased in slabs of coloured marbles. Opening out of the atrium was the tablinum, the reception room of the house; the walls skirted with alabaster, above which they were painted. The most remarkable of the representations on the floors was in the hall next the entrance porch; it showed a cross in mosaic, with a monstrous bust of Neptune at the intersection of the arms, surrounded by fish and lobsters.

When the villa was almost wholly excavated, the municipality of Pau purchased the field, and built a shed over the foundations, but, penny wise and pound foolish, neglected to cut a drain around the remains. The consequence was that each room became full of water in the winter, and, frost ensuing, split up the mosaics. When I revisited Pau two years later most of the pavements were ruined. Now, shed and every trace of the villa are gone; the whole is ploughed over, and the only token that there was anything of interest in the field is a notice-board set up to forbid trespassers invading it. On the farther side of the stream is another villa, which I began to dig out, but found the pavements nearer the surface and not so well preserved. Moreover, the proprietor got it into his head that I had discovered and appropriated a pot of gold coins, and he peremptorily forbade further research.

The bridge over the river, some quarter of a mile down, is called le Pont d’Auly (pons aulæ), and on the height of Guindalos above are the earthworks of a Roman camp.

Pau has produced several eminent men. Hardly had Henri Quatre closed his eyes before the town gave birth to Gassion, born in 1609. His father purposed making of him a lawyer; but, as a lad of sixteen, rather than be chained to a desk, he started barefoot from Pau, with his shoes slung to a stick over his back, and with twenty sous in his pocket. He entered the army, and his life was spent in warfare, beyond the Alps, on the Elbe, on the shores of the Baltic. He was wounded seventeen times, and fell on the field of battle at the age of thirty-six, a marshal of France and the greatest captain of his age.

More fortunate than he was Bernadotte, also a soldier risen from the ranks, who became King of Sweden and Norway. He was born in the little house, No. 6 Rue de Trau, and was the son of a needy scrivener. His name in full was John Baptist Julius Bernadotte, and he was born on 26 January, 1764. He became a drummer-boy in the marines at the age of seventeen.

He came to the front at an opportune time. The Revolution had turned France topsy-turvy. The officers had fled the country to escape the guillotine, and the corporals and serjeants stepped into their places. The regiments elected their captains, and the history of the Republican wars shows that the soldiers exercised their electoral rights with discretion. In 1792 Bernadotte was a colonel.

The Directory appointed him ambassador at Vienna. The choice was not happy; he had not the breeding of a gentleman, and behaved with insolence in the most punctilious of courts. On the day upon which the volunteers were enrolled for the defence of their country, Bernadotte ostentatiously hoisted the tricolour, which the mob tore down. The ambassador in vain demanded satisfaction. He quitted Vienna, but the Directory disavowed him. Soon after his return to France he married Eugènie, the daughter of the soap-boiler, Clary, of Marseilles, and sister of the wife of Joseph Bonaparte. He lived for a while in retirement, but was summoned by the Government to Paris and was given the command of the army of observation in Germany.

After the revolution of the 30th Prairial, in the year VII (18 June, 1799), Bernadotte was appointed Minister of War; but the astute Siéyès was meditating a coup d’état, and mistrusting Bernadotte, deprived him of his portfolio. He accepted the title of Councillor of State from the First Consul, and the command of the army of the West.

In 1804 Napoleon raised him to the dignity of Marshal of the Empire, and gave him the command of the army in Hanover. In June, 1806, he created him Prince of Pontecorvo, and employed him in the war that broke out with Prussia. It is unnecessary here to follow his career in the wars of Napoleon. The Emperor never liked him, and even thought of depriving him of the title he had conferred upon him. He dispatched him in disgrace to Rome; but before he reached it a deputation from Sweden arrived (September, 1810) with the tidings that King Charles XII had named him Crown Prince, and that the Estates of Sweden had unanimously ratified the appointment, with the condition that he should resign his French citizenship and adopt the Lutheran religion. To this he consented, and landed at Helsingborg on 20 October, 1810, and on 5 November was recognized as Crown Prince, and adopted the name of Charles John. By arrangement with Russia Norway was detached from Denmark and annexed to Sweden, much to the dislike of the Norwegians.

In 1813 Sweden declared war against France, and Bernadotte led 20,000 Swedes to join the allies; but his dilatoriness caused him to be too late to take part in the Battle of the Nations at Liepzig. He was naturally reluctant to cross swords with his old master.

In 1814 he marched in the same leisurely manner into France, and arrived in Paris after it had been occupied by the allies. On 5 February, 1818, he succeeded his adoptive father, and was crowned King of Sweden and Norway at both Stockholm and Drontheim. He was succeeded by his only son, Oscar, in 1844.

It is a curious fact that both the two kings born at Pau abjured their religions to obtain a crown. Henry IV abandoned Calvinism to become a Catholic and receive the crown of France; John Baptist Julius Bernadotte threw overboard such Catholicism as he had – a light cargo – and accepted Protestantism to obtain the crown of Sweden and Norway.

Morlaas, six miles to the north-east of Pau, reached by a light railway, was the ancient capital of Béarn. It has dwindled to a poor village, but retains portions of its old fortifications and an interesting church, founded in 1089, that has a Romanesque crypt and west front. The church had fallen into decay and the portal was much mutilated, but it has been restored. A side chapel contains one of the very few specimens of church furniture spared by the Huguenots, because overlooked – an altar-piece of the sixteenth century.

The Pont-long I have already mentioned, an elevated moor to the north of Pau, beyond the racecourse, that belongs to the peasantry of the Val d’Ossau. On it may be seen the shepherds pasturing their flocks in winter, when the mountain herbage is buried under snow. These men formerly wore their characteristic costume – a dark blue or brown beret, like a tam-o’-shanter cap, a jacket of brown or scarlet, a waistcoat of white wool, brown knee-breeches, and a bright-coloured sash about the waist. They wore their hair long in curls flowing over their shoulders. Now compulsory military service has deprived them of their flowing locks, and the blouse is gradually displacing the handsome traditional costume.

These men spend their time in knitting stockings whilst watching their flocks. The sheep are horned, and have pronounced Roman noses. A curious usage is for the dog to precede the sheep instead of driving them.

There are numerous tumuli on the Pont-long. I opened two in 1847, and found that they pertained to the Iron Age, and were undoubtedly Gaulish. The floor was formed of rolled stones, and on this were placed urns, some of great size, containing burnt bones; they were red outside, black within, and the clay was coarse; but with them was one beautifully moulded little black vessel of the finest paste. Beside two of the cinerary urns were hones of grit, rounded on one side and flat on the other, with a groove running down the middle.

The peasants had a legend anent the larger of the two that I opened. Three men resolved on digging into it, and chose for the purpose a stormy day when no one was likely to be abroad and observe them.

They had not dug far before Pierre observed, “But we shall surely find plenty of sous.”

“Des écus,” said Jacques.

“Des napoléons,” suggested Baptiste.

After some hours’ work they came on a flat slab, on raising which a treasure of gold pieces was revealed. The men plunged their arms in and could not reach the bottom of the store. Gold, gold, ever more gold.

It was decided that a cart must be procured to remove the treasure, and lots were cast as to who was to remain on the tumulus, whilst the other two returned to Pau for a cart. The lot fell on Pierre, and the others departed.

Evening had settled down when they returned with a vehicle drawn by two oxen. Jacques and Baptiste discerned a dark figure on the mound, which they assumed to be that of their companion left to guard the treasure.

Then, mounting the tumulus, they asked whether any one had been there during their absence. The dark figure said, “Look up!” The men turned, the figure threw back his cloak, and they knew it was the devil, horns and hoof complete. Before they could recover from their astonishment and terror, with a switch of his tail he had whisked them into the cart. He mounted himself, and instantly the oxen – their own oxen – rose in the air with the vehicle, wheeled thrice about the mound, and then suddenly descended, carrying cart, men, and Satan into the pit. The earth closed over them and they were seen no more. Only Pierre lived to tell the tale. At the first appearance of the Evil One he had crossed himself. He was flung from the tumulus, and lay sprawling and blessing himself till after his comrades had vanished.

Nay may easily be visited, as it is on the main road to Tarbes. It has a church of the fifteenth century, and the frontage of a Renaissance house in which Jeanne d’Albret delighted to reside.

Farther on is Coarraze, where are the remains of the château in which Henri Quatre spent his early boyhood. Only the tower and the portal are of the sixteenth century, the rest is a structure raised in the eighteenth century. Over the doorway may be read the Spanish inscription: “Lo que ha de ser no puede fallar.”

The church is early and fortified. The terrace in front of the castle commands a beautiful and extensive prospect of the Pyrenees in their ever-changing tints and lights and shades.

At the extreme limits of the department is Betharam. The name has been supposed to be derived from the Arabic Beit-Haram, the Holy House, and the place to have been a sacred spot during the Saracen occupation of the land. If so, then they bequeathed their veneration for the locality to the Christians, who drove them from it, for Betharam has been esteemed a holy house for centuries, owing to the possession by it of a miraculous statue of the Virgin, about which one of the usual childish tales is told that have such a family likeness, and show such lack of variety. A shepherd saw a blaze of light at the foot of a rock, and discovered that it proceeded from an image. When the figure was removed to the farther side of the Gave, with a leap into the air like a field cricket it recrossed the river and returned to its station under the rock. Then it was transferred to the high altar of the parish church of Lestelle and locked in. But bolts and bars could not restrain it; out it came through the key-hole and made for its rock shelter again.

A church and convent were erected under the rock. In 1569, by order of Jeanne d’Albret, both were burnt; but were rebuilt in 1614. The church is a barbaric structure, immediately below a hill, surmounted by a Calvary. Here formerly dwelt a hermit, who maintained himself by selling tooth-combs of boxwood that he had made. But he is gone, and has left no successor. The bridge at Betharam is greatly admired, wreathed as it is with ivy, which falls in long tresses and almost touches the Gave.

I have spoken of the view from the park at Pau. Finer views may be had from the heights on the farther side of the Gave, from Guindalos and Gelos; and in early spring, when strolling among these hills, one may gather handfulls of cyclamen, anemones, violets, and the white spires of the asphodel.

On market-days at Pau may be purchased clumps of the beautiful little scarlet anemone that formerly grew wild in the vineyards, but has been so much in request that it has disappeared, except under garden cultivation. And finally, we must taste the wine of Jurençon and S. Faust, not in the hotels at Pau, but in the village cabarets. It is much in request, and is largely bought up by the Bordeaux wine merchants, who mix it with thinner wines to give them richness and body. It is of an amber colour, is strong, heady, and delicious.

CHAPTER VII

OLORON

Iluro – Road over the port – The beret– Three parts to the town – How the bishop got a cathedral – The porch – Ste. Croix – Bishop Roussel – Frightened to death – Escot – Independent Republic – Emigration – Sarrance – The Heptameron– Accous – Story of Loustaunau – Osse – Urdos, the French Gibraltar – Mauleon – Espadrillos.

Oloron is the ancient Iluro, in Gallo-Roman times one of the twelve cities of Novempopulania, and of importance as the key to the passage of the Pyrenees by the Val d’Aspe over the Somport.

The Roman road branched off from the Via Aurelia at Lescar, crossed the Gave de Pau, and struck direct for Oloron, where, doubtless, soldiers and merchants and travellers in general rested before undertaking the passage of the mountains. The Roman road, after crossing the chain, descended to the plains, and ran straight as a bird-line for Saragossa. At Escot a Latin inscription remains, cut in the rock by the wayside, commemorating the remaking of the road under the direction of one, Valerius Vernus.

Oloron is a busy town, carrying on the manufacture of the beret, the tam-o’-shanter, wherewith every Basque and Béarnais covers his head.

The town is prettily situated at the junction of the Gave d’Aspe and the Gave d’Ossau, which divide it into three parts. One, Ste. Marie, was for long the communal centre and the residence of the bishops of Oloron. The old feudal city is staged up a hill between the two rivers. In it is the church of Ste. Croix, built in 1080 by the Viscount Centule IV. Centule had married a distant cousin, Gisela. But he coveted the fair lands of Bigorre, to which Beatrix, daughter of Count Bernard II, was the heiress.

Amatus, Bishop of Oloron and the papal legate, was in want of a cathedral; so they put their heads together, and Amatus undertook to obtain the annulling of the marriage with Gisela by Pope Gregory VII. The Pope wanted money, Centule wanted Bigorre, and Amatus a cathedral. Gregory made no difficulties, so Gisela was repudiated, and sent to end her days in a convent, as though she were the guilty party. Amatus was paid for his help in this scandalous job by being given a cathedral, and Centule, in the exuberance of his delight at becoming possessed of the rich heiress, built as well the church of Ste. Croix.

It was easy for any man with means in those days to wriggle out of an union that was inconvenient. The Popes had drawn up a catalogue of relationships within which degrees marriage was prohibited, unless a dispensation had been procured argent comptant. Kinship to the seventh degree, affinity as well as consanguinity, could be pleaded. Spiritual relationship through sponsorship at the font also served. Right or wrong in the matter was not considered. It was a contrivance of the Papacy for extortion of money.

The church of Ste. Marie is the ancient cathedral. The most ancient portions belong to the eleventh century. Externally it is not a striking edifice; nevertheless it is one of the most curious in the South, and has just one splendid feature – the sculptured porch, which is the basement of an enormous and massive tower, pierced by arches. Beneath this is a beautiful portal, round-headed, containing a double entrance, the doorways parted by a pillar. The sculpture of tympanum and archivolt are excellent for their period. A man once caught, plucked, and cooked a nightingale. With such a voice it ought to be excellent eating, he argued. But when he set his teeth in it, his judgment on the nightingale was, “Vox et præterea nihil.” So, with such a throat one might reckon on a magnificent interior, but within the church responds not at all to the conceptions raised by the portal, and answers little to the idea formed of a cathedral.

But the diocese of Oloron was one of the poorest in all France, and was just half the value of that of Lescar.

The quarter of Ste. Croix has narrow streets, with old houses, some Romanesque, some Gothic, and others Renaissance. It had been cramped within its walls, and could expand upwards only. Now the fortifications have been demolished, and but a single flanking tower remains.

The church is remarkable only for its Byzantine cupola. In many points it recalls the Romanesque structures of Auvergne. Anciently the only access to the nave was through a richly ornamented door at the side. The western entrance is a modern addition.

The third quarter of Oloron is modern, bright, and cheerful, but uninteresting. In this quarter some houses bear the escutcheons of foreign powers, for three states speaking Spanish have their vice-consuls here – Spain, that entertains active relations with the valleys of Ossau and Aspe; and the Argentine and Uruguay republics, that are draining Béarn of so many of its natives for settlers. Moreover, Oloron is the principal centre for the making of the beret, as already said, also of bright-coloured handkerchiefs much affected by Spanish women in the New as in the Old World.

Oloron was a bishopric as early as 506. Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, appointed to it Roussel, the reformer, who began as a disciple of Calvin, and finished by entering into unseemly wrangling with him over some petty question in theology in a series of acrimonious letters. Marguerite had to interfere, and entreat both to cease their scurrility as an offence to religion. Roussel, as bishop, did his utmost to detach the people from their ancient faith, which he had sworn to maintain when consecrated, but which at the very moment when he took oath he had resolved on overthrowing.

He was preaching one day at Mauleon, assailing Catholic doctrine with vehemence. A gentleman named Matye was present, and unable to endure this without a protest, and being armed with an axe, struck at the slim pedestal of the pulpit with the butt-end, and with such force as to send Roussel a bound into the air. When he came down, again descended the axe, sending the bishop another leap, like a pea on a drum. Roussel’s nerves were so shaken that he fled the church, and galloped off to a Pyrenean watering-place, there to recover the shock. But instead of recovering he died, 1549. A suit was brought against Matye in the Parliament at Bordeaux, for having frightened the bishop into his grave; but nothing came of it.

Under Jeanne d’Albret the bishopric was suppressed; however, a bishop was appointed in 1599. Oloron ceased to be an episcopal seat at the Revolution.

The Val d’Aspe begins at Escot. At the foot of the mountain of Narpayt stands up a rocky needle, named after S. Nicolas, separated from the road by a belt of tillage. From this point the valley narrows; a bridge crosses the river, over which runs the road to the Val d’Ossau. Pinnacles of rock and bare precipices pierced with caves border the Gave, that flows between the green lips of rich pastures. A fine peak, the Trône-du-Roi, stands up on the left bank. For the most part the mountain slopes are bare, growing nothing but box shrubs, and yet at one time hence came the tall pines that furnished the navy of France with masts. They were improvidently hewn down, and floated in rafts to Bayonne, and no thought was given to replanting, so that they were completely exhausted in 1780.

At Sarrance the valley expands. The village borders a sweep of the Gave, under the Signal de Sarrance, rising to the height of 4210 feet, cleft by a ravine well wooded, and with sweet green pastures. To the south is another peak, clothed in forest, rising to 4380 feet.

The Val d’Aspe formed one of those independent commonwealths of which in the Middle Ages there were so many in the Pyrenees. It was under the suzerainty of the viscounts of Béarn, but enjoyed complete self-government. In 1477 the Procureur-Général of Béarn claimed the forests as the property of the viscount, but the inhabitants protested that the Val d’Aspe existed before the viscounty had been constituted. The case was tried in the court at Pau, and judgment was given in favour of the little republic. The Aspois always were proud and independent. But unhappily a fever for emigration to South America has set in and has depopulated the valley seriously. In 1862 the inhabitants numbered 11,368, but in 1901 they had fallen to 7977. And this is not due to poverty, for there is not a beggar to be found in the valley.