II.
We abandon Eaux Bonnes, almost reluctantly, to its summer's festivities, and drive down the broad street and around the end of the park and so out through the curtain of rock into the road of the main valley. The slow ascent begins almost at once. We rise gradually along a wooded hill, stopping once to enjoy a cataract which, like a happy child, is noisy for its size and entirely lovable nevertheless. A long reach of valley is then entered, bottomed by the Gave, the road well up on the side. In an hour or more, we finally turn to cross the valley, and commence the serious ascent of the opposite side. Facing us now from the side we have left is the mass of the Ger, very near, very high, and uncompromisingly precipitous. All the morning this Pic looms stonily above us; the sunshine brightens its snows but cannot soften the stern rock-features. Steadily, though with frequent rests, the horses toil higher, and the Pic seems to rise as we ascend. Often we are walking, by the side of the carriages. Other peaks are now coming up into view; the road mounts in long zigzags, shaded plentifully at times and always astir with a trace of breeze. Our admiration at its skillful construction increases hourly. Patiently surmounting all obstacles, it moves surely upward, unvexed by resistance, broad and smooth and firm, and protected by parapets wherever the paternal solicitude of the Department could possibly conjecture a need for them. The trees become scanter as we near the top. Road-makers are at work cutting stones or repairing here and there; they doff their faded berrets in greeting. They have frank, hardy faces, marked with belief that life is worth living:
"Les tailleurs de pierre
Sont de bons enfants;
Ils ne mangent guère
Mais ils solvent longtemps!"
By eleven o'clock the top is gained. We are on the Col d'Aubisque, 5600 feet above tide-water. The horses pause for a well merited breathing-spell, and we step to the ground for a survey. Across the valley towers the Ger, still apparently as high above us as at the start. Farther to the right, the Gourzy, though still in the near distance, has dwindled to a moderate hill, and Eaux Bonnes has throughout been niched from the field of view. To the left, other peaks, several heretofore unseen, stand silently out; their rocks and snow "of Arctic and African desolation," as Count Russell has observed of another scene, "since they are both burnt and frozen." The Pic du Midi d'Ossau, which should lie to the southwest, is not in sight, being hidden by intervening heights.
We turn for a view to the east. Here barren pastures sprawl over the hills, dotted in places with herds of cattle or flocks of mountain sheep. But the Valley of Lavedan, which we expected now to overlook, is not yet in sight. After a long descent before us, there is another though lower col to surmount before we can point out the villages of the new valley.
We seat ourselves by a snowbank, and enjoy the pleasures of rest for a season. Enter to us, a peasant upon the scene,—a woman, crossing the col from the Lavedan side. The large bundle magically balanced upon her head-cloth wavers never a trace as she steps lithely up the last acclivities and comes upon us. From a stick held over her shoulder depends another bundle, and over all she is carrying a war-worn and ludicrous umbrella. The interest is mutual. Promptly I spring up and pull off my cap in introduction. Her round face, simple and good-tempered, a comely type of her neighborhood, opens gradually from a stare into a smile, as the ladies add their greetings. She seems rather glad of the excuse to rest and lay aside her bundles, and in a few moments has grown quite communicative. She has come, this morning, she tells us, from Arrens, a small village on the way down toward the Lavedan valley and to be our destined halting-place, we recollect, for luncheon. She is taking to Eaux Bonnes a few woolen goods, stockings and hoods and shawls, knit by herself and her old mother during the long winter. They are not for fine people; oh, no, but the guides and the hotel maids like them.
"And your husband," we ask,—"what is he?" "A charcoal-burner, monsieur; he has his pits in the forests of the Balaïtous; it is a hard life."
"It is hardest in winter, is it not?"
"It is hard always, monsieur,"—this very simply; "but we have enough, though not more.—On the left of the road, madame,—our home,—as you walk out from the inn at Arrens toward the monastery."
Again the conception of discontent is a stranger; the idea puzzles her; her life has always been thus; she did not expect anything otherwise. It is a genuine forest-nature, mute yet never inglorious, reciting uncomplainingly its lesson of passiveness and endurance.
Her dress, coarse in texture, well worn but well cared for, appears to differ little in detail from the costume of the Ossau valley we have now quitted, but is more strictly, so she tells us, that of the peasantry of the Lavedan district next to be met with. The pleasant face is framed in by the ever-favorite hood or head-mantle. This is sometimes, as here, a kerchief, of conspicuous colors, peculiarly coifed,—the precise twist varying according to the mode of each locality. Often, as with the women of Goust, the kerchief is of plain white, tied below the chin, and set off with a short outside cape, black or colored, over the crown. At times the cape alone is worn without the kerchief, and on occasion the larger capulet of red supersedes them both.
Artfully we lead the conversation into a philosophical discussion, while the camera is secretly made ready,—when, from the side we have come, enter also another peasant, an old man this time, quite as good-humored and quite as characteristic as the first comer. He has dispensed with jacket or blouse, and displays the loose, baggy-sleeved cotton shirt often worn in substitution, an outlawed pair of ouvrier's trousers, and the local berret and spadrilles. His features have the true Gascon cast of shrewdness and tolerance. We formally introduce the two to each other, and the camera is trained upon the pair. But now the woman, discovering the plot, evinces that bashful disinclination, common among women the world over, to pose for immortality when without her best finery; though the old man, I am pleased to record, does not appear in the least sensitive about his. Silver, however, is a great persuader; now it proves a worthy adjutant of its nitrate; the drivers, who are greatly absorbed in the situation, add their encouragements to the reluctant one, and finally agreeing and ably supported by her new acquaintance as leading man, accoutred as she is, she plunges in; conscious attitudes are unconsciously taken,—as taken they always are for photography, be it in Paris or the Pyrenees, by all humankind; and the two wights, humbly and happily serving their separate lives, valued items in Nature's wide summation, stand forth together in the dignity of humanity to mark this trifling meeting in permanent remembrance.
There they talk together on the road, as we finally drive down the hill, their figures silhouetted against the sky. They have been on the whole pleased and awakened by their adventure; they will discuss and compare their emotions, finger their silver, wonder and speculate, and go their separate ways, convinced anew that the ways of the world and its worldlings are verily strange and inscrutable.