Chapter XV: Section XIII: Pau to St. Gaudens, 61½ Miles

(99 KILOMETRES)

DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE

Kil. Miles. =Pau= to Tarbes =38= 23½ [=Pau= to Lourdes via St. Pé-de-Bigorre =39= 24¼] [=Lourdes= to Tarbes =19= 11¾] =Tarbes= to Tournay =18= 11¼ =Tournay= to Lannemezan =17= 10½ =Lannemezan= to Montrejeau =16= 10 =Montrejeau= to St. Gaudens =10= 6¼

NOTES FOR DRIVERS

=Casabieille= (19 kilometres from Pau).--A sharp ascent.

=Ibos.=--The winding descent to near this village in the plain of
Tarbes is dangerous.

=Pau to Lourdes.=--The shortest route is along the road to Tarbes as
far as Soumoulou, and then through Pontacq. The longer way
mentioned above is more beautiful.

=Tarbes to Montrejeau.=--A steep climb out of the plain of Tarbes;
then several ascents and descents from one valley to another.

=Montrejeau to St. Gaudens.=--Level after the steep descent on
leaving Montrejeau.

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

=Pau.=--A large modernized health resort, with splendid views of the
Pyrenees; numerous first-class hotels, winter garden, and places of
amusement; interesting château, built by Gaston Phœbus between 1373
and 1380, and altered by Henri d’Albret.

=Lourdes.=--Pilgrimage town, visited annually by thousands of Roman
Catholics since 1858, when a child said she had seen the Virgin in
a grotto; medieval castle, modernized; fine mountain scenery.

=Tarbes.=--A rather uninteresting town, famous for horse-breeding;
modern streets of small houses; public gardens of 30 acres, more
worth seeing than the ungainly cathedral.

=Tournay.=--A small town; is without any particular interest.

=Lannemezan.=--A small town, with a church partly Romanesque.

=Montrejeau.=--Picturesque little town; castle keep now the church
tower; quaint market-hall on pillars; arcaded houses.

PAU

In its situation Pau is most fortunate, for, being raised high above the rushing Gave, the views of the splendid chain of white mountain peaks are uninterrupted, and most of the modern hotels have their balconies commanding the great panorama of the Pyrenees, with the Pic du Midi d’Ossau in the centre. The impressive scenery, coupled with a mild and genial climate and much winter sunshine, has lifted Pau from the obscurity into which history had allowed it to fall into one of the most popular inland resorts in France.

It is a clean and healthy town, having had much attention paid to its sanitation, the authorities knowing that the English and American visitor has a strong antipathy to a tainted atmosphere. The town even has a supply of pure drinking-water, and besides the indoor attractions of a modern Winter Palace, there are golf, tennis, polo, and a pack of foxhounds.

There is a season all through the year, for tourists follow the winter visitors; then there are the crowds of the ‘faithful’ on their way to Lourdes, and those who come to immerse themselves in the thermal waters for which the Pyrenean range is famous.

In its history Pau is chiefly interesting during the sixteenth century. Before that there was a fortress rebuilt between 1373 and 1380 by Gaston Phœbus, the keep of which can be seen to-day; but Pau only rose to importance when it became the capital and the residence of the Sovereigns of Béarn.

In 1527 Marguerite de Valois, the charming young sister of François I., was married to Henri d’Albret of Béarn. She not only obtained architects from Italy to remodel the castle on the Renaissance style, and made what was then considered the most beautiful garden in Europe, but attracted to her Court the leading artists, poets, and savants, as well as the best of the nobility of her time. Further than this, Marguerite encouraged the Reformation movement so warmly that Calvin and Clément Marot, whose psalms were sung by the Huguenots, found a refuge with her at Pau. Marguerite’s daughter was the famous Jeanne d’Albret, who became the mother of Henry of Navarre, the great Protestant champion who eventually became Henri IV. of France. Jeanne’s husband, Antoine de Bourbon, died in 1562, leaving her the ruler of Béarn and Navarre; and being free to act as she chose, Jeanne made a public declaration of her belief in Protestantism, and then made the mistake of endeavouring to force her people to take the same step. It therefore became necessary for Charles IX. to send an army against Béarn; but Jeanne d’Albret, assisted by the Prince of Condé and the English, raised a strong force, commanded by Montgomery, and defeated the Catholics. These victories, as already mentioned in connection with Orthez, were marred by the savage treatment of the Catholics, including a massacre at a feast held on August 24, 1569, of ten lords whose lives Montgomery had promised to spare. The apartment of the château in which this bloody deed was carried out is hung with tapestry, and is called the _Grand Salon de Réception de Henri II. (of Navarre)_.

Under Louis XIII. Navarre and Béarn were made into a province, and Pau, no longer possessing a royal Court, soon dropped into an obscurity in which it remained until English visitors began, in 1850, to draw attention to the attractions of the climate and scenery.

The Château (_open every day between 10 and 5 from April 1 to September 30, and between 11 and 4 from October 1 to the end of March_). The fourteenth-century keep of red brick, built by Gaston Phœbus, as already mentioned, stands to the left on entering the courtyard through the open arches of the east side. On the left--that is, overlooking the river--is the beautiful façade restored by Henri d’Albret (Henri II. of Navarre). It contains the _grand salon_ where the massacre mentioned above took place, and also the _Chambre de Henri IV._, where the Protestant king was born on December 13, 1553. His cradle, in the shape of a large tortoiseshell, is still preserved in the room.

An interesting story concerning the birth of the child is told by Miss Sichel in her work on Catherine de Medici.

‘His birth was the occasion ... of Jeanne’s [his mother’s] winning
of a bet by a song.... Henri II. [Jeanne d’Albret’s father] knew
full well that Jeanne felt great curiosity about his will. Suddenly
he rose and opened a coffer, from which he took a long neck-chain
fastened to a small gold box. “_Ma fille_,” he said, “you see this
box? Well, it shall be your own, with my last will, which it
contains, provided that, when your child is about to enter the
world, you will sing me a Gascon or a Béarnais song. I do not want
a peevish girl or a drivelling boy.” Jeanne was charmed, and her
father ordered his faithful servant Cotin to sleep in her
dressing-room, and to fetch him at the eventful moment. When it
came, between two and three on a bleak winter morning, she
remembered to keep her promise, and despatched Cotin to her father.
Not long after she heard King Henri’s step upon the stair, and in a
strong sweet voice she began to sing the ballad of the
country-side, “Notre Dame du bout du pont, aidez moi à cette
heure”--an invocation to the miraculous image of the Virgin, the
patron-saint of matrons, which stood in the chapel at the end of
the Bridge of Pau. Henri was in time to receive the baby into his
arms. With great circumspection he wrapped it in the skirts of his
robe, and then conscientiously placed the gold box in his
daughter’s hand. “There! that is thine, my girl,” he said, as he
did so; “but this”--pointing to the child--“is mine.” With these
words he carried it away to his own apartments, where the nurse
awaited him. But before he gave it to her he fulfilled the old
custom of Béarn, and first rubbed its little lips with clove of
garlic; next offered the new-comer wine in a golden cup. Legend
says that the precocious Prince smelled the wine, and raised his
head joyously with other “signs of satisfaction”--that he swallowed
the rich red drops which his grandfather put upon his tongue. “Va,
tu seras un vrai Béarnais!” exclaimed the delighted Henri.’

It is a pity that the château has been so much restored. The work was chiefly carried out, with poor taste, under Louis Philippe.

In No. 5, Rue Bernadotte, which is marked with an inscription, Bernadotte, King of Sweden, was born on January 26, 1764.[H] He was a lawyer’s son, who entered the army, and, at the early age of thirty years, had become General of Brigade. When the heir to the throne of Sweden died, Bernadotte was chosen, in 1810, as his successor, Napoleon thinking that his late General would submit to his wishes. Bernadotte, having no friendly feeling towards Napoleon, acted with complete independence, and in the fatal Battle of Leipsic the Swedish troops under him had a large share in Napoleon’s defeat. The lawyer’s son became Charles XIV. of Sweden in 1818.

THE ROAD TO TARBES

goes as straight as an arrow, except where it ascends and descends from the high ground that encloses the plain of Tarbes. The chief features are the huge views of the Pyrenees and the roadside houses, which very often have curiously thatched roofs.

At Soumoulou a turning to the right goes, through Pontacq, to the Roman Catholic Mecca of Lourdes.

Before 1858 this famous pilgrimage centre was a village of no importance at all. It can now be

reached by a railway and by good roads, and there are large hotels for the thousands of Catholics who flock there every year. Unlike Rocamadour, there is no architectural charm, nor is there any peculiarity of situation, about Lourdes. It stands in one of the many picturesque valleys that open out from the main Pyrenean chain, and its medieval castle, mentioned in the previous chapter, has been much modernized. No, Lourdes became famous because a little village girl, fourteen years of age, named Bernadette Soubirous, who minded pigs, stated that she had seen and conversed with the Virgin on several occasions. Roman Catholic apologists admit that Bernadette was a diseased, asthmatic, and underfed child, and also that ‘she was not particularly intelligent.’ On the first occasion when the girl claimed to have seen the Virgin she was accompanied by her sister Marie and another companion, but neither of them saw any vision, nor did they hear the sound of wind which Bernadette thought she heard. The crowds who watched her during the numerous other occasions in the same month (February, 1858), when she went to the grotto by the Gave to see the Virgin, are said to have been impressed with the change which came over the child’s features, but she alone claimed to see anything appear in the grotto. Zola’s book pointing out the absurdity of the belief in the miraculous visions was scarcely needed; but, like Joan of Arc, the girl seems to have believed implicitly in the hallucinations which had come to her, and no doubt her consistent attitude gave the superstitious people of the neighbourhood the confidence which caused them to regard the vision as a genuine fact.

After delaying any action for some months, the Bishop of Tarbes appointed a commission to inquire into the affair which was causing so much stir and excitement in Lourdes, and finally gave out his opinion in favour of Bernadette’s visions! Pope Pius IX. endorsed the Bishop’s credulity with a Bull. In 1876 a church was built above the grotto, and year after year thousands of pilgrims travel great distances to see the holy place, and to have all kinds of infirmities cured. A sacred spring, which flowed from the grotto when Bernadette, at the Virgin’s request, made a hole in the wet sand, has such remarkable effects that the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, and the nearly dead are restored to health with the application of a little of the water!

The hotel-keepers of Lourdes have no complaints to make--in fact, they probably feel some gratitude to Pius IX. and to the good Bishop of Tarbes.

* * * * *

An excellent and easily followed road leads from Lourdes to Tarbes.

The main road from Pau to Tarbes direct makes a great zigzag descent into the green plain, giving as it does so some most remarkable views, the level ground below being contrasted with the jagged line of mountains to the south.

Ibos, just to the right of the road, is a small village, with an aggressive church of the fourteenth century. It is narrow and lofty, with enormous buttresses and two towers.

TARBES

does not make appeals to the passing tourist. It is the centre of the great horse-breeding industry carried on in the fertile plain, which grows tobacco, vines and maize, and is a loosely built, unpicturesque town, having been half destroyed in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. In 1569 Montgomery, the Huguenot leader, captured Tarbes, drove out the inhabitants, and burnt the churches and monasteries. Scarcely had the people returned when the Huguenots again took the town, this time levelling the walls and leaving the place in ruins.

Mr. Baring-Gould calls the cathedral the ‘most cumbrous, ungainly minster in all France.’ There are three windows of the twelfth century in the apse, and a thirteenth-century rose-window in the north transept. The fourteenth-century Church of St. Jean is not very interesting, and that of Ste. Thérèse is a modernized building of the fifteenth century.

On the door of the Lycée a Latin inscription, dated 1699, says: ‘May this building endure, until the ant has drunk the waters of the ocean and the tortoise made the tour of the globe.’

The Jardin Massey was given to the public by the manager of the gardens at Versailles in the time of Louis Philippe. Massey was a native of Tarbes, who began life as a working gardener.

On the western side of the town is the Haras, or breeding-station, where the English and Arab stallions are kept.

Barère, the regicide, whom Macaulay regarded as approaching ‘nearer than any person mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of consummate and universal depravity,’ was born at Tarbes in 1755.

The road becomes exceedingly hilly as soon as the plain of Tarbes is left behind near Barbazan-Debat, and new views of steep-sided valleys, wooded ridges, and the snowy Pyrenees, appear every few minutes.

After passing the railway viaduct at Lhez, the road goes south-westwards to Tournay, a small town renamed after Tournai in Hainault, but of no particular interest.

The road ascends for several miles in a beautiful wooded valley, and after passing under a bridge one goes to the left across the railway, turning at once to the right parallel with it and nearly due east.

The long climb has brought one up to a lofty heathery moorland, commanding grand views in all directions. On this high plateau, where the River Gers has its source, is the little town of Lannemezan. The church dates back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and has a fine Romanesque doorway.

Pinas, a small slate-roofed village, has picturesque gateways to its farmhouses, and before reaching Montrejeau (pronounced Mont Rejeau), one sees on the left M. le Baron de Lassus’ huge modern Château de Valmirande, built between 1892 and 1898. It commands a magnificent view into a valley leading up to the main mountain chain.

MONTREJEAU

is a small and picturesque town, with red roofs, brightly painted shutters, arcaded streets in the Italian style, and a sixteenth-century Hôtel de Ville, supported on pillars, with the market beneath. The Church of St. Jean has a great octagonal belfry, originally built as the castle keep. The situation of the town on a hill above the beautiful Garonne is delightful. Montrejeau was one of the _bastide_ cities founded in 1272 by the Sénéchal de Toulouse, and was built on a regular plan, as one may see to-day.

A straight and level road by the Garonne leads to St. Gaudens, which is described in the next section.