VII.
The most noted excursion in the Pyrenees,—its coup de théatre,—is now before us. It is to Gavarnie, whose giant semicircle of precipices has been called "the end of the world." Luz and St. Sauveur constitute the most available headquarters for this trip, which is taken by every traveler to these mountains. "In the popular [French] imagination," writes a lively essayist, "the Pyrenees are composed of carriages-and-four, of capulets and berrets, of mineral waters, rocky gorges, Luchon, admirable roads, bright green valleys, two hundred and thirty hotels, and the Cirque of Gavarnie."
The cliffs of Gavarnie form the Spanish frontier. A village of the same name lies near their feet on this French side, thirteen miles up the defile leading south from the valley of Luz. There is now a carriage-road for almost the entire distance, and if fame is true, never did a destination better merit a road. We count on a memorable day, as the landau and the victoria carry us away from Luz,—where voluntary promise of a super-excellent table-d'hôte on our return has just been given by Madame Puyotte and thus every care removed.
The road crosses the valley, under the sentinel poplars, leaves on the right the road by which we came in from Pierrefitte, and shortly comes to the opening of the defile to Gavarnie. At the immediate entrance across the ravine stands the white street of hotels and lodging-houses which constitutes the Baths of St. Sauveur. We shall cross to it on our return, and now scan it only from the distance as we pass. It joins itself to our highway by a superb bridge, over two hundred feet above the chasm,—a single astonishing arch, one of the longest in existence, its span being 153 feet across, and its total length 218. It is of marble, a gift of Louis Napoleon and Eugénie to commemorate their stay at St. Sauveur; its cost was upward of sixty thousand dollars.
From this on, the scenery becomes again increasingly wild. The gorge now opens and now narrows, the mountains above us here approach over the road, there draw back in a long, sweeping glacis of wood or pasture. The ledge of the road is at times four hundred feet above the frothy watercourse, which in some spots disappears entirely from sight in the chasm. Tiny mills are seen standing tremulously near its fierce supply, and there is room for a hamlet here and there, sheltered in a clump of ash or sycamore, on the mountain or at a widening of the valley. When the road nears the cliffs of Gavarnie, it will expire, from the simple impossibility of proceeding farther; so it is scarcely a thoroughfare, and we meet only infrequent bucolics or a few wood-carts coming down toward Luz. One fair-sized rustic village is passed through; and, two hours after the start, a second one, Gèdre, our more-than-half-way house, is finally seen ahead.
The mountain wall we are approaching begins now to show its battlements, far ahead. The snowy Tours de Marboré overtop it, and at their right can be plainly seen two small, rectangular nicks, embrasures in this mammoth parapet. Small they seem, as we sight them from this distance, but these notches are 9000 feet above the sea, and the greater of the two is a colossal gateway into Spain, no less than 300 feet in width and 350 feet deep. This is the famous Brèche de Roland, familiar to all lovers of Gavarnie. When Charlemagne made his invasion into Spain,—the invasion from which he was afterward to withdraw by Roncesvalles,—he sought to enter it, tradition says, by this defile to Gavarnie. Finding all progress blocked by the walls of the Cirque, he ordered Roland to open a way; and that lusty paladin with one blow of his good sword Durandal opened this breach for the passage of the army. There is another version of the making, which links it with the throes of Roland's defeat and death at Roncesvalles, at the end instead of at the beginning of the invasion; but even under unbounded poetic license, the mind refuses to admit that the wounded hero, bleeding and gasping for breath, could have made his way a hundred miles over the mountains from Roncesvalles, to shiver his sword against the cliffs of the Cirque and end his death-struggles at Gavarnie.
At Gèdre the horses pause for a rest and a drink, and travelers can do likewise. From this village, the main defile cuts on to Gavarnie, and another opens off to the left toward another cirque,—the Cirque of Troumouse. Thus each branch ends in a similar formation, peculiar to the Pyrenees, a semicircle of cliffs, sudden and blank and impassable. The Cirque of Troumouse is larger around than that of Gavarnie, but its walls are not so high and its effect is reported to be less imposing. To reach it from Gèdre requires perhaps three hours, the drivers tell us, by a good bridle-path. We feel tempted to revisit this point from Luz, another day, and explore the route toward Troumouse.
To-day, however, this is not to be; Gavarnie beckons, and we gird us anew and press from Gèdre on. The carriages twist their way up an unusual incline, and it is ten of the clock as we stop to face a long cascade which is jumping down from a cut across the chasm and not too busy with its own affairs to give us an answering halloo. The great Cirque is now coming more and more distinctly into view, though still some miles ahead. The two breaches are no longer seen, but snow-walls are becoming visible on all sides, and the distant precipices are constantly crowding into line and assuming shape and form. Even Louis the Magnificent's haughty proclamation, "il n'y a plus de Pyrénées," could not erase this impassable barrier. It was made for a wall of nations.
Already our destination sends out to welcome us. We have hardly left Gèdre, with several miles still to drive, before we are assaulted by peasants on horseback, advance-agents from Gavarnie. The carriage-road will end at the village, and the Cirque itself is three miles beyond; it is reached on foot or on horseback, and these peasants lie in wait along the road for visitors, to forestall their rivals in the letting of saddle-horses, and each to offer his or her particular animal for the way. In vain we assure them that we shall make no choice until we come to the inn at Gavarnie. They turn and ride by the side of the carriages, urging their claims in incessant clamor, pressing about us, intercepting the views, good-tempered enough but decidedly an annoyance. We speak them fair, and request, then direct, them to abandon the chase. It has no effect whatever. They continue their pestering tactics, now falling behind, then ranging again alongside, hindering conversation, interrupting constantly with their jargon. Plainly it is a time for firm measures. We call a halt, and, standing up in the carriage, I tell them once for all and finally that we will have nothing to do with them either now or hereafter, either here or at the village; and order them shortly and decisively to "get out." Even when translated into French, there is a peculiar tang to this emphatic American expression that is impolite but unmistakable; it takes effect even here in the Gèdre solitudes, and we ride on without escort.
The road now passes into a remarkable region,—a famed part of this famed route. This is the Chaos, so-called and justly. The side of the mountain overhead appears to have broken off bodily and fallen into the valley, and its ruins almost choke the bottom. Huge masses of granite and gneiss are scattered everywhere in savage confusion, and the road barely twines a painful way through the labyrinth. Scarcely a blade of grass, a tint of green, is to be seen about us; the tract is given over to utter desolation.
"Confounded Chaos roar'd
And felt ten-fold confusion in their fall
Through his wild anarchy; so huge a rout
Incumbered him with ruin."
Some of these fragments, it is said, contain a hundred thousand cubic feet, and the blocks lie in all directions, uncounted tons of them, grotesque and menacing, piled often one upon two, bulging out over the diminished carriages or entirely disconcerting the hurrying torrent.
"That block bigger than the church of Luz," points out Johnson, writing of this spot, "has been split in twain by the other monster that has followed in its track and cracked it as a schoolboy might do his playfellow's marble. We cease to estimate them by their weight in tons, as is the manner of hand-books, but liken, them to great castles encased in solid stonework; or calculate that half-a-dozen or so would have made up St. Paul's; or speculate upon the length of ladder we would want to reach the purple auricula that is flowering in the crevice half way up."
Beyond this, as we draw near the end of our course, there is an opening in the mountains on the right. A peak and a long bed of ice and snow are seen high beyond, and the drivers tell us that we are looking at a side glacier of the Vignemale, whose face we saw from the Lac de Gaube when we climbed up the parallel defile from Cauterets.
But here is the village of Gavarnie. We are in the courtyard before the inn, bristling with an abatis of mules and horses in waiting row.