LOURDES.
Dim grottos, gleaming lakes, and fountains clear.
I believe it to be all the same, after all, whether a man travels or not; he's a stupid, cross-grained, drudging animal, not half so good as the horse that drags him on his road. Blest with reason, it serves him less than the instinct of the brute; with experience constantly flogging him for his errors, he never corrects them; half of his time he forgets what is right, and when he remembers it he never puts it in practice.
Such were my reflections on finding--what? that John had forgotten that most indispensable requisite to an Englishman's comfort, the tea-kettle, at the instant we were leaving Pau. He had done so at every place where he had stopped on the road, and now he had to bring it down stairs, to tie it on the carriage, to cover it with the oil-skin, and, in short, to detain the whole party, postilion, and horses, and all, for at least five minutes.
Now, being very well aware that when I begin to moralize on trifles I am never in the best humour in the world, and judging by this infallible sign that I was in an ill temper, from having got up at four o'clock in the morning, I placed myself deep in the corner of the carriage, and pretended to fall asleep, for fear I should quarrel with my companion, which, Heaven knows, would have been no easy matter. However, as the carriage drove out of Pau, and began rolling along, in a dull gray morning, over smooth ground, it became no longer a pretence, and I began seriously to make reparation for my morning's idleness--I mean for not having slept; as I consider, not to sleep at the moments properly appropriated for it, just as great a piece of idleness as any other misuse that man makes of his time.
I finished my nap as we crossed a bridge over the Gave not very far from Lastelle. My friend who, it appears, had occupied himself much like myself, woke up at the same time, and looking back to Pau, which we saw diminishing afar, I am sure we both, thought of the friends we left there, of the kindness they had shown to wandering strangers, and the peaceful hours we had known in their society. I may never more see them again; if so, God bless them, for I am sure they deserve it.
It was scarcely past midday when we arrived at Lourdes. The approach is not unlike some of Mrs. Radcliffe's descriptions; the hills beginning to rise high and craggy on each side, with a wild torrent rushing in a valley below; and beyond, the Castle of Lourdes, starting up on a high rock in the midst, sometimes seen and sometimes hidden, as the road winds along the side of the mountain. It was market-day at Lourdes, and a curious scene, the whole place being impassable for the crowd of the Bearnais, with their Calmuck countenances and broad berrets, and the Bearnaises, each covered with a red or white triangular hood, edged with a black border, hiding the greater part of the head, and falling low down on the shoulders.
I have before mentioned the sightseeing propensities of my companion and myself; and though I had abjured grottos, as the most unsatisfactory of all things, the first of our movements was towards the "Spelunque (or cavern,) du Loup." It lies some way on the other side of the river, and, on arriving, we found the entrance so low that we were obliged to go in, not upon our hands and knees, but upon our faces. The guide went first, and then my friend, who is six feet three, so that I thought he would never have done--there was such a quantity of him.
The cave widens rapidly after the entrance, elevating itself to a great height, and resembling in many places the niches and aisles of a Gothic cathedral. In the end it is terminated by a deep well, into which the guide threw some pieces of stone, which continued echoing, as they fell, for several minutes. But the most curious thing we observed was the soil near the mouth of the grotto, which appeared entirely formed from the fragments of insects. We examined several portions of this black sort of earth and uniformly found it composed of parts of the legs, wings, and corslets, of what had apparently been small beetles.
After the cavern, we went, in a different direction, to visit a lake said to occupy the spot where a mountain once stood, which suddenly disappeared at the time of an earthquake. The only beauty of the place was the reflection of the hills around in the deep smooth water, and one might almost fancy they saw the ghost of the vanished mountain haunting its old abode and looking up from the bottom of the lake.
The whole of the country round is strewed with old towers and castles, which have been erected at different periods; some to check the descent of the mountaineers, who used here, as well as in Scotland, to exact a kind of black mail from the inhabitants of the low lands; some to guard against the Moors, who, during their residence in Spain, used frequently to invade and ravage the country; and some are even attributed to the Romans, but I should think, from their appearance, with little foundation for the supposition.
However, like all mountaineers, the people are full of old legends; and ancient superstitions, driven from the more civilized globe, seem to have refuged themselves in the obscurity of these unfrequented hills.
They tell a droll story of the lord of one of the old castles of which I have just spoken, not at all unlike "Alonzo the Brave and the fair Imogine," but still more like the story of the noble Morringer.