IV.
The shady patch of garden at the side of the inn is an unqualified blessing. Roses overhang the paths, and green branches bend over its plot of grass. We have found the little dining-room dark and rather stuffy, have thrown open the windows and shutters, have confidently spoken for an artistic meal, and can now ruminate approvingly upon rest and refreshment, the sweet restorers of life. How should one tolerate its zigzaggings without the gentle recurrence of these its aids?
The kitchen opens invitingly from the hallway, and presently some of us drift indoors and group around its entrance. There is a hospitable stir of preparation within; a blazing and clattering that charm both eye and ear. The landlady and her daughter are busy with a fiery fury. We grow bolder. We crave permission to enter and watch operations. The old woman pauses and looks up as she cracks an egg on the edge of a plate, and then assents, willingly enough, but with unmistakable astonishment. She is used to predatory raids of visitors but evidently not to this inquiring spirit. Yet purposeful travel, we might tell her, is hundred-eyed and has glances for just such matters as this. It seeks out cities and scenery and history; but it seeks out life no less. We are gaining impressions which cannot be drawn from books, as we come close to these homely ways and habits, questioning, appreciating the people we meet, understanding their capacities and objects and limitations. One sees the breaking of an egg; he can see, besides, a thousand accompaniments to the event,—a biography summed up in an act.
At present, we note the breaking with rather more concern than the biography. Egg after egg is being deftly chipped, and its lucent content dropped first upon a plate,—a thrifty half-way station for possible unsoundness,—and then slid off into a clean-looking oval saucepan. The pan is then hung from an unfamiliar variety of crane close over the fire, and the contents wheedled and teased by a skillful spoon and bribed with salt and butter and a sprinkle of parsley. And even as we watch, the golden mass melts together; sighs and quivers, and thickens into wrinkles; bodies itself slowly into form and shape, under crafty oscillation; and is at last dexterously rolled out, a burnished ingot, upon the long platter, with a flourish that bespeaks practice and confidence. The stiff face of the old woman involuntarily relaxes with honest pride; she looks up half unconsciously for approval, and we all applaud galore.
Manifestly, externals vary, fundamentals persist. Barring details of place and process, the culinary art follows much the same laws and works out much the same results in this remote Department of the French Republic as in the Middle States of the American.
The kitchen itself is roomy and neat; the floor is of large, flat stones, the square embrasures of the windows are relieved with earthen pots of flowers. Full panoply of tins and trenchers and other implements of cheer hang in order against the walls or line the worn wooden shelves,—many of them strange in shape and of unconjectured use. Over all, there is that deft, subtle knowledge of place displayed by its busy inmate, a lifelong wontedness to surroundings, indefinable and unconscious, which fascinates us, and which reminds us that the same scene may be to one habituated to it the most iterated of commonplace and to new-comers often alive with novelty and interest.
At the window, meanwhile, other tragedies are enacted. The daughter is not idle. Here is a low, tiled shelf, with three square, sunken hollows, each lined with tiling and bottomed by an iron grating. Into these have been thrown small embers from the fire; the draught fans them into a flame, and above, three flat pans make their toothsome holdings to sizzle and sputter with infinite zest. This arrangement serves to the full every purpose of an oven, and does away with the range and all its cumbrous accompaniments. One is impressed with its obvious but effective simplicity.
In very brief time an appetizing déjeûner of seven courses is being ceremoniously served in the now airy dining-room,—interrupted throughout, to the good woman's unlessened wonder and our own enjoyment, by the journeys of some of us across to the kitchen at the end of each course to watch the preparation of the next.
The dame thaws out momently under our evident good-will, and as she brings in the cherries and cakelets, she ventures in turn to stand near the door, and is even pleased when we renew the conversation. Her husband, we learn, used to have charge of a little customs-station near the frontier; now they have this inn; it is pleasanter for him; one offends so many in a customs-post. They put by something each year; it is not much; many pause here during the summer, coming from Eaux Bonnes or Cauterets. Some seasons there are diligences running, which is better; for without them many go around by the railroad.
"But you, madame," I ask,—"you have traveled too by the railroad?"
"Yes, monsieur, a little; we have been several times to Pau; once we were at Bayonne."
"And do you prefer the cities?"
"We like better the mountains, monsieur; one can breathe here, and is not dependent."
The charge for the luncheon would be three francs each; she is glad that her visitors have been pleased; and our extra gratuity is the more appreciated because it seems wholly unexpected.
There is a monastery just out from the town. It is but a short walk, we are told, so while the horses are brought around, two of us explore. We follow a shaded avenue, triply garnished at the left with a brook, a foot-path and a long-row of small cottages; and soon mount a short hill, pass through an open gateway, and are before the churchly pile. Not a soul is about the place, and we have to look into the building entirely unciceroned. An apartment opening wide from the main hall is evidently some priest's oratory. We venture to peer tentatively in through the doorway. The room is plain, containing beside other furniture a small crucifix, a shrine, and a praying-chair,—and nearer us a recent number of Figaro open on the table. Thus it goes: the secular blending harmoniously with the spiritual.
The place is known as Poey le Houn or Hill of the Fountain; its site commands an extensive view, but otherwise there appears little about it that is distinctively interesting,—save as it is one of the fortunate Catholic institutions of the Lavedan spared from Montgomery's Huguenot raids. The chapel, entered from without by another portal, is sombre and rather large. We feel lonesome and intrusive without some guide, and do not examine it very carefully. A few towels are bleaching in the sun, on the paved court before the chapel,—the only sign of recent human presence. It is the home of brotherly deeds, and we piously turn the towels to bleach on the other side.