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 höhewegs, 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 Allée d'Étigny. 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 Allées give to the village one of its individual charms. There are several of them,—among others, the Allée de la Pique and the Allée de Piqué, starting one from each end of the Allée d'Étigny; 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'Étigny is clearly the chief of the Allées, 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 Morlaäs 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 Allées 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 Allée 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 café 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'hôte strikes elfinly on the ear.