I.
The little town of Lourdes is situated in the department of the Upper Pyrenees, at the entrance to the seven vales of Lavedan, and between the low hills that sink into the plain of Tarbes and the steeper ranges which grow into the Grande Montagne. Its houses, built irregularly on a natural terrace, are grouped, in almost absolute disorder, around the base of a rocky spur, on the summit of which the formidable castle sits like an eyrie. Along the base of the cliff, on the side opposite the town, the Gave dashes boisterously through groves of alder, ash, and poplar, and, pausing at numerous dykes, turns the equally sonorous machinery of several mills. The hum of the driving-wheels and the jar of the rattling stones mingle with the music of the winds and the splash of the rushing water.
The Gave is formed by several torrents from the upper valleys, which spring from the glaciers, whose spotless snow covers the barren sides of the Haute Montagne. The principal tributary comes from the cascade of Gavarnie, which falls from one of those peaks never scaled by man. Leaving on its right the town, the castle, and, with one exception, all the mills of Lourdes, the Gave hastens toward Pau, which it passes with all speed, to throw itself into the Adour, and thence into the sea.
In the neighborhood of Lourdes, the country which skirts the Gave is by turns wild and savage, and fair and smiling. Blooming meadows, cultivated fields, woodland, and barren cliffs are alternately presented to the gaze. Here are fertile plains and smiling landscapes, the highway of Pau, never without its wagons, horsemen, and pedestrian travellers; yonder, the giant mountains and their awful solitudes.
The castle of Lourdes, almost impregnable before the invention of artillery, was formerly the key of the Pyrenees. Tradition says that Charlemagne, warring with the infidels, was unable to carry this stronghold. Scarcely had he determined to raise the siege, when an eagle seated itself on the highest tower of the citadel, and let fall a large fish which it had caught up from some neighboring lake. Either because it happened on the day when the holy church prescribes abstinence from flesh-meat, or because the fish was at that time the popular symbol of Christianity, the infidel commander, Mirat, saw in this fact a prodigy, and, demanding instruction, was converted to the true faith. This conversion was all that was necessary to bring his castle into the hands of Christendom. Nevertheless, the Saracen stipulated, as says the chronicler, "that in becoming the knight of Our Lady, the Mother of God, his lands, both for himself and his descendants, should be free from every worldly fief, and should belong to her alone."
The arms of the town still bear, in testimony of this extraordinary fact, the eagle and the fish. Lourdes carries, on a red field, three golden towers, pointed with sable, on a silver rock; the middle tower is higher than the others, and is surmounted by a black spread eagle, limbed with gold, holding in his beak a silver trout.
During the middle ages, the castle of Lourdes was an object of terror to the surrounding country. At one time in the name of the English, at another in that of the Counts of Bigorre, it was occupied by robber chieftains, who cared for little besides themselves, and who plundered the inhabitants of the plain for forty or fifty leagues around. They even had the audacity, it is said, to seize goods and men at the very gates of Montpellier, and then to retreat, like birds of prey, to their inaccessible abode.
In the eighteenth century, the castle of Lourdes became a state-prison. It was the Bastille of the Pyrenees. The revolution opened the gates of this prison to three or four persons, confined there by the arbitrary command of despotism, and in return peopled it with several hundred criminals of quite another description. A contemporary writer has copied from the jailer's record the offences for which the prisoners had been immured. Besides the name of each prisoner, the specifications of the crime are thus formulated: "Unpatriotic.—Refusing to give the kiss of peace to citizen N—— before the altar of our country.—Busybody.—Drunkard.—Indifferent about the revolution.—Hypocritical character, reserved in his opinions.—Lying character.—A peace-loving miser.—Indifferent toward the revolution," etc., etc.[287]
We may thus see what reason the revolution had to complain of the arbitrary conduct of kings, and also how it changed the frightful despotism of the monarchy into a reign of peace, toleration, and perfect liberty.
The empire still retained the fortress of Lourdes as a state-prison, and this character it kept until the return of the Bourbons. After the restoration, the terrible castle of the middle ages naturally became a place of less importance, garrisoned by a company of infantry.