PAU.
American tourists make a great mistake in not generally including the Pyrenees in their route of European travel. Unless ordered there by a physician to repair a wasted or broken-down constitution, they scarcely think of visiting the most beautiful country perhaps in the world. Paris is France, and, as the route from Paris to Spain lies direct, they pass through the Pyrenees, admire them casually, but rarely pause to examine their beauties and the curiosities of the quaint old towns embedded in their hills. Since chances of this nature alone led me to discover what since has remained in my memory an exquisite picture to be revivified at any moment, I cannot blame others for following the usual guide-book routes of Europe, and spending their money freely on places far less worthy their attention. After a severe typhoid fever of ten weeks in Paris, and still so feeble that I had to be almost carried to the depot, I set out on the 5th of January, 1869, accompanied by my nurse, to make the journey to the Pyrenees, if possible, in a day and a half. We left Paris at 10.45 A.M., by the Chemin de Fer d'Orléans. Resting for a few minutes at the historical old towns of Orléans, Tours, Poitiers, Angoulême, and Livourne, we arrived at Bordeaux at eleven P.M., where we remained for the night. The next morning at eight we pursued our journey, passing Dax, so celebrated for its warm mud-baths, said to be a remedy for rheumatic complaints, and a little after one P.M. I found my friends awaiting me at Pau. Entering one of the queer little half-omnibuses that hold six people and their luggage, I was carried through the oddest of small white streets to my lodging in the Jurançon, near the villa of my friend.
Never shall I forget my impressions while entering the room prepared for me, and leaning on the arm of the dear girl who with her mother and sister had done everything for my comfort. It was the Epiphany, the day of light; and it seemed as if the soft sunlight that shone in that pretty room and rested on the fragrant flowers was to me the foreshadowing of a renewed life and happy future. The air was balmy as a June day, and from my window rose the glorious Pyrenees. Covered with their everlasting mantles of snow, they rose proudly to heaven, as if they defied the clouds above them. A second lower range, with its varied shades of green and the tropical luxuriance at its base, completed the picture. Exhausted with my journey, my eyes filled with tears of joy at all my sweet surroundings, I could have begged my God there and then to let me sleep for ever.
Day after day I walked my few steps in my balcony and took in this lovely picture. As yet I had not seen the town; my strength was insufficient, and I simply rested and recuperated. The climate seemed to me a strange one for invalids—a queer mixture, as I thought it, of flannels and sun-umbrellas. The mornings and evenings were cold and chilly with the air that blew down from the mountains, and the middle of the day, from eleven until three o'clock, so intensely hot that it was necessary to be well protected against sun-stroke. Still, it is the great resort of consumptives, and at almost every turn one encounters the muffled-up pale countenance of the poor invalid. But for this one sad feature, the exquisite scenery, the tropical foliage, the picturesque villas, and the town itself, of white limestone, rising around its great chateau to the very heavens, with the merry hum of voices, that greets you on every side, might well make you imagine you had at last found the fairy dreamland—a country that realized the fairy ideal of childhood.
This, too, is the land of the troubadour, and the quaint wild music chanted by the peasantry has a something about it irresistibly attractive, something one hears nowhere else; now dreamy, now bright, almost monotonous at times, then suddenly bursting into strains of sadness in which the whole depths of a life are portrayed. Then there is the ringing mountaineer song, too, with its clear and measured cadence, and a certain bravery in its tones which could easily foretell the difficult mastering of such a people, should it ever again be required.
The mixture of Spanish merchants and wanderers among the population gives to their parks and squares a pretty effect. They cross the Pyrenees with their showy wares, their strings of perfumed beads, bracelets, necklaces, rosaries, all made of the wood that grows at the foot of their mountains. Dressed in their own picturesque costumes, and carrying their merchandise of every imaginable color—red and bright yellow predominating—they accost you with a grace which renders them irresistible, and you find yourself rather poorer for the encounter.
I improved so rapidly in this climate, getting wholly rid of my cough and gaining twenty-five pounds in little over four weeks, that I concluded I was well enough to return to Paris, and thence, after another rest in England, home. I resolved, therefore, to see all that Pau offered to the sight-seer.
I drove with my kind friends several times to and around the varied and pretty villas: the primroses peeped at us from under the hedges, and here and there the rarest tropical trees and plants riveted our attention—and this in February, when the most of the world was ice-bound. The snow-capped mountains, however, rising around us on every side, would not permit us to entirely forget winter. The town itself, of twenty-one thousand inhabitants, is almost a miniature Paris, some squares duplicating those of the great city, and the bridges separating Pau and the Jurançon, though crossing a much prettier river than the Seine, heightening the resemblance.
The churches are costly and beautiful; one built by the Society of Jesus, entirely of white marble, and lined with exquisite pictures and gifts of the wealthy strangers who pass the season at the different hotels, is a perfect gem in its way.
The hotels, the Place Royale with its music every Thursday—weather permitting, as say our friends of the Central Park—where crowds walk up and down and listen to but little, I imagine, are all attractions for the health or pleasure seeker.
Very odd old houses with gabled roofs, and reminding you of Dutch pictures, start out occasionally from among the more modern and fashionable ones, and seem to tell the story of change and decay.
Not unfrequently a merry peasant wedding party, in a whole line of carriages trumpeting vigorously and raising the dust, pass you with shouts, and compel your curiosity to recognize and salute the bride. It is said the strangers with their wealth and fashionable follies are gradually obliterating these good old Béarnais customs, through the spirit of emulation they excite in a hitherto perfectly happy peasantry. Women, however, still walk the streets with their distaffs, and men knit as they guide the plough. Something of primeval innocence still remains. Certainly no country was ever more paradisiacally formed to retain it.
My time was limited, however; I could not stay and study these people and their customs as I would have wished. I could not visit the great summer resort, the famed Eaux Bonnes, so beautifully nestled, they told me, among the higher Pyrenees, but must exert all the strength I had to see before I left the great monument of Pau, the grand old