A Tour Through the Pyrenees

by Hippolyte Taine

I.

You set out for Bagnères at five o’clock in the afternoon, in the dust and amidst a train of coucous laden with people. The road is blocked, like the roads in the suburbs of Paris on a Saturday evening. The diligence, in passing, takes up as many peasants as it meets; they are put in heaps under the tilt, among the trunks, alongside the dogs; they seem proud and pleased with their lofty place. Legs, arms and heads, dispose themselves as best they can; they sing, and the coach appears like a music-box. It is in this triumphal equipage that you reach Bagnères, after sunset. You dine in haste, are taken to the Promenade des Coustous, and find, to your utter surprise, the Boulevard de Gand among the Pyrenees. Four rows of dusty trees; regular benches at equal intervals; on both sides, hotels of modern aspect, one of which is occupied by M. de Rothschild; rows of illuminated shops, of cafés chantants surrounded by crowds; terraces filled with seated spectators; upon the roadway, a black throng streaming under the lights. Such is the spectacle beneath your eyes. The groups form, dissolve, close up; you follow the crowd; you learn again the art of getting on without stepping on the feet of those you meet, of grazing everybody without elbowing anybody; of not getting crushed and of not crushing others; in short, all the talents taught by civilization and the asphaltum. You meet again with the rustle of dresses, the confused hum of conversations and steps, the offensive splendor of artificial lights, the obsequious and wearied faces of traffic, the skilful display of the shops, and all the sensations you wanted to leave behind. Bagnères-de-Bigorre and Luchon are in the Pyrenees the capitals of polite life, the meeting place of the pleasures of the world and of fashion—Paris, six hundred miles away from Paris.

The next morning, in the sunlight, the aspect of the city is charming. Great alleys of old trees cross it in every direction. Little gardens bloom upon the terraces. The Adour rolls along by the houses. Two streets are islands connected with the highway by bridges laden with oleanders, and their green windows are mirrored in the clear wave. Streamlets of limpid water run from all the open places and all the streets; they cross, dive under ground, reappear, and the city is filled with their murmurs, their coolness, and their gayety. A little girl, seated upon a slab of slate, bathes her feet in the current; the cold water reddens them, and the poor little thing tucks up her worn gown with great care, for fear of wetting it. A woman on her knees is washing linen at her door; another bends over and draws water for her saucepan. The two black and shining trenches hedge in the white road, like two bands of jet. In the inner court or in the vestibule of each house the assembled women sew and spin, some on the steps of the stairway, others at the feet of a ville; they are in the shade, but on the crest of the wall the beautiful green leaves are traversed by a ray of sunlight.

In the neighboring place, some men ranged in two lines were threshing wheat with long poles and heaping up masses of golden grain. Under its borrowed luxury the city preserves some rustic customs; but the rich light blends the contrasts, and the threshing of the wheat has the splendor of a ball. Further on are some buildings where the stream works the marbles. Slabs, blocks, piles of chips, shapeless material, fill the court for a length of three hundred paces, among clusters of rosebushes, flowery borders, statues, and kiosks. In the workshops, heavy gearings, troughs of muddy water, rusty saws, huge wheels—these are the workmen. In the storerooms, columns, capitals of an admirable polish, white chimney-pieces bordered with leaves in relief, carved vases, sculptured basins, trinkets of agate—that is the work. The quarries of the Pyrenees have, all of them, given a specimen to panel the walls; it is a library of marbles. There are white ones like alabaster, rosy like living flesh, brown speckled like a guinea fowl’s breast—the Griotte is of a blood-red. The black Baudéan, veined with white threads, emits a greenish reflection. The Ronce de Bise furrows its fawn-colored dress with dark bands. The grayish Sarrancolin has a peculiar glitter, is marked all over with scales, striped with pale tints, and stained with a broad blood-red spot. Nature is the greatest of painters; her infiltrations and subterranean fires could alone have invented this profusion of shades and patterns: it needed the audacious originality of chance and the slow toil of the mineral forces, to turn lines so capricious and assort tints so complex.

A stream of swift water rolls beneath the workshops; another glides in front of the house, in a lovely meadow, under a screen of poplars. In the pale distance you see the mountains. It is a fortunate spot considering that it is a sawer of stone.