THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
"Ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten
Daß ich so traurig bin"
—The Lorelei
But the Pic de Bergonz does not so elect.
During the night the weather has another revulsion of feeling. In the morning it is hysterical, laughing and crying by turns. We come down-stairs booted and spurred for the ascent, and make directly for the barometer in the doorway. Alas, it tells but a quavering and uncertain tale, itself evidently undecided, and holding out to others neither discouragement nor hope. An hour brings no change. The guide looks sagely toward the clouds, as who should know all weather lore, and candidly admits the doubtful state of the case,—which is frank, since for him a lost excursion is lost riches. The sun streaks down fitfully upon the road, and then after a minute the mist sifts over the spot; the mountain-tops appear and disappear among low-lying clouds. We haunt alternately the roadway and the writing-room, restless and inquisitive; but as the morning wears on, it becomes slowly certain that the Pic de Bergonz has taken the veil irrevocably.
The Monné at Cauterets was within our grasp; we sacrificed its certainty to the uncertainty of the more accessible peak. In the mountains, as we are thus again shown, carpe diem is a wise blazon. Still, choosing the Monné would have postponed Gavarnie until to-day and thus have forfeited the clear skies of yesterday's memorable trip to the Cirque. It is always feasible to count your consolations rather than your regrets.
It does not rain, so we ramble off about the streets again. There is an eminence near the village on which stand the remains of the old castle of Ste. Marie, and which we are told gives a wide survey over the valley; but we are out with all eminences and refuse to patronize it. We drift again into our little shop of the hempen shoes, with soap for a pretext; the proprietor and his wife are affable and unclouded as ever; and we while off a half hour in another talk with them and some trifling purchases. One learns many lessons in civility in Continental shopping; more usually it is a woman alone who presides, some genuinely winsome old lady often, with white cap and grandmotherly smile. The lifting of the hat as we enter ensures invariably the politest of treatment, and when we depart, it is with the feeling that we have gained another friend for life.
The village stretches itself lengthily about, as many Continental towns do; its limbs, like Satan's,
"Extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood,"
and two of us later signalize a stroll by becoming lost,—lost in Luz. We look helplessly down along the lanes and neat streets for the familiar little porch over the Gave and the open space in front and the overhanging eaves of our hotel. Gone the church, gone the store of the shoes and soap, gone the carriage-shed, the Hotel de l'Univers,—all landmarks gone. It is not until we are driven to the humiliation of actually asking our way, that the alleys are unraveled and show us safely home, into the scoffs and contumely of the unregenerate.
After lunch, the weather is still gloomy, but there is no rain, and we leave Luz for Barèges toward the last of the afternoon, if not in sunshine, at least over a dry road. Some of us are on foot, so but one carriage is needed for the others, and the Widow Puyotte stands smiling at the door as we move away, wishing us fine weather for the morrow's ride on from Barèges over the Col du Tourmalet,—since any further wishes for to-day's weather would be manifestly inoperative.
The Baths of Barèges are on the continuing girdle of the Route Thermale as it extends its way onward from Luz toward Bigorre; they lie about four miles up a short, desolate, east-and-west valley which opens from the hollow of Luz and closes beyond them in a col over which goes the road. These baths are much higher than Luz, and the way is a steady incline throughout. The valley soon shows itself in marked change from the fertile basin we have quitted; it grows bleak and less cultivated; rubbly slopes of shale and slate cover the hills; the vegetation becomes scanter. We are nearing now the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, the summit seen so plainly from Pau, far eastward of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. It is not as yet in sight from this valley, however, though we are approaching it nearly and though it closely overtops the col which rises beyond Barèges. The road continues desolate, and the dull grey-green pastures hardly serve to relieve its deserted and forlorn squalor. The clouds brood on the hills, the air grows chilly as we ascend, and more than once we sigh half dubiously for the bright parlor left behind at Luz. We move leisurely, almost reluctantly, on, not in haste to reach the climax of this unhospitable avenue; but the four miles shorten themselves unexpectedly, and it seems but a short walk before we are in sight of the Baths of Barèges.
Murray and Madame the Widow had each spoken dishearteningly of Barèges. With their verdict concurred also the few other accounts we had heard of it. Murray stigmatizes it as "cheerless and forbidding," "a perfect hospital," and remarks that "nothing but the hope of recovering health would render it endurable beyond an hour or two." Another marks it curtly as "a desolate village tucked into the mountain side, with avalanches above and torrents below; in summer the refuge of cripples; in winter the residence of bears." No one at Luz was found to say a good word for Barèges, except as to the undoubted cures its waters effect; and on the whole the outlook summed itself up as very far from promising.
In view of this abuse we have been predisposing our minds to extenuate the shortcomings of the place and to extol rather than dispraise it. One does not like to maltreat even a resort when it is down. But as we draw up the hill and see the black surroundings and enter the frowsy, dismal street, the desire to extol vanishes and even the possibility of extenuating becomes doubtful. The carriage pauses, while two of us who have hurried ahead examine the two hotels reputed best; each is equally uninspiring, and the one we finally choose we thereupon immediately regret choosing and regretfully choose the other. Meanwhile the carriage is being circummured by an increasing hedge of idlers and invalids, staring with great and open-minded interest at the arrival of visitors who seemed actually healthy and were coming here uncompelled; and the visitors themselves are glad to vanish from the public wonder into the stone passageway of the hotel.
Within is a large, cobble-paved court around which the hotel is built, and out upon the upstairs veranda overlooking this we are led and assigned to rooms. The rooms are clean, but unadorned and bare, and so seems the hotel throughout. It is not the lack of adornment, however, that dispirits us; Madame Baudot's at Eaux Chaudes was unadorned likewise, and yet was an ideal of inviting comfort. Here, there seems to be something more,—an inexplicable taint of depression over the hotel, which strangely affects us. We struggle hysterically against it, trying to laugh it off, speculating vainly over the dreary, disconsolate weight which each has felt from the moment of entering the village; and at length conclude to investigate the mystery by a survey out-of-doors.