The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877

by Various

THE SEVEN VALLEYS OF THE LAVEDAN.

On the 4th of July, 1876—the day after the coronation of Notre Dame de Lourdes, la plus noble dame qui fut jamais, to use the expression of an old chronicler—we set out for the springs of Cauterets. South of Lourdes the mountains seem to stand apart to afford a passage to the headlong Gave. Here begins the Lavedan, the old Pagus Lavitanensis, which comprises seven valleys that extend to the very frontier of Spain. This was the ancient country of the Sotiates, who were famous for their horsemanship, as Lavedan has always been for its horses. In the middle ages it became a vicomté, which dated from the early Carlovingians and flourished for more than seven centuries. The vicomtes of Lavedan figured in all the great wars of their time, particularly against the Moors in Spain, and became so powerful as to defy the Count of Bigorre, their own liege lord. They displayed great valor, too, against the English, who for sixty years held the citadel of Lourdes that commanded the entrance to their valleys, as well as several fastnesses among the mountains. We find members of their race among the bishops, abbots, and Knights-Templars of the province, as if able in every path of life to assert their capacity. The last of the old lords fought with Dunois the brave under the banner of Joan of Arc at Orleans. His only grandchild married Charles de Bourbon, a favorite of Henry IV.’s. The glory of this family, however, is mostly confined to the Pyrenees, and might never have come down to modern times had it not been for the faithful chroniclers of the Lavedan monasteries. It is, in fact, first mentioned in 945 in a cartulary of the abbey of St. Savin, of which it was a benefactor.

Hardly had we entered the valley of the Lavedan before we saw, on an isolated mount at the left, the dismantled tower of Hieou, one of the signal-towers that, in times of border warfare, used to transmit messages from the Spanish frontier to the heart of France. The shores of the Gave were deliciously fresh, but the mountains on both sides are at first treeless and uninteresting. Nothing grows on them but the purple heather, and patches of odorous shrubs that perfume the valley. Here and there on their sides are great heaps of black slate from the numerous quarries. But these mountains have a certain austere charm of their own, not unbefitting sentinels that guard the approaches to the grotto of the Virgin. We passed group after group of pilgrims returning from the recent celebration, with red crosses fastened to their breasts, or blue-and-white badges of the Immaculate Conception, saying their rosaries or singing a hymn. They invariably saluted us politely as we drove past, and two bronzed mountaineers whom we stopped for information sped us on our way with the pious wish: “May God accompany you!”

After several leagues the mountains became wooded, and a bend of the river, along which we kept, brought us into the delightful basin of Argelés, one of the valleys of the Lavedan. This is the Eden of the Pyrenees. On the mountain slopes grow the walnut and the oak. The roads are shaded with long lines of ash-trees. The meadows were covered with rich harvests. The thickets were blooming with roses. The houses were almost buried among fruit-trees of all kinds. Every now and then we came to a tall cross with the insignia of the Passion, or some wayside niche with its Virgin and fresh flowers before her. We passed the square tower of Vidalos on a height, and farther on came to the ancient castle of Vieuzac, once a military post that kept alive the signal-fires in troubled times. On every hand were quaint-looking villages with pretty chapels half-hidden in the folds of the mountains, each with some old monument, or older tradition, to which it fondly clings. From Agos to Pierrefitte, only about six miles, there are ten charming villages set in a framework of mountains no poet could describe. They close around this happy valley, as if to shield it from all outward influences. During the Huguenot ascendency in the neighboring province of Béarn it is said no taint of the new religion ever found its way into this valley. At the north is Mount Balandraü, easily ascended, that affords a fine view of the country, which is full of wonderful contrasts. The Gave winds swiftly through the most beautiful of valleys; on every hand are the mountains, sometimes like a vast rampart of verdure, sometimes swelling up, one after the other, like great waves, with a high peak occasionally, jagged as a saw, and in the distance the eternal glaciers glittering in the sun and feeding the numerous cascades and torrents that lash the mountain sides.

To this peaceful valley came St. Orens from his native Spain, in the fourth century, before whom, according to the Spanish legend, a supernatural light burned and a mysterious hand pointed the way. And it was yonder umbrageous mountain that, when he sought to escape from the fame of his sanctity, opened at his approach and hid him in its bosom.

Here, too, four centuries after, came St. Savin, son of the Count of Barcelona, when he forsook the grandeurs of the world for a cell in the wilderness. A few years since there were vestiges of his cell at Pouey Aspé, after a thousand years; and tradition points out the fountain that sprang up from a blow of his staff when the stream that flowed past his cell dried up in the summer. His tomb is still honored in the abbey church of St. Savin, which is one of the most conspicuous objects in the landscape, with its queer steeple, shaped like an extinguisher.

No tourist fails to visit St. Savin: the archæologist on account of its old Romanesque church of the tenth century; the artist for its picturesque site; the pious to honor one of the most popular saints of the seven valleys; and the political economist because, in the middle ages, this abbey was the nucleus of a little republic of eight villages, called the Pascal of St. Savin, the inhabitants of which had from time immemorial the right of universal suffrage, and where even the women, without the advantages of modern progress, were admitted to vote!

The abbey of St. Savin—that is what remains of it—stands on the side of a mountain amid dense groves of chestnut-trees. According to the old cartularies, it was founded by Charlemagne on the site of the Palatium Æmilianum erected by the Romans after the conquest to keep the country in subjection, but ruined by the Saracens. Roland himself is said to have received hospitality from the monks. Pulci, in his Rotta di Roncisvalle, relates how he delivered them from the giants Alabastre and Passamonte, and their brother Morgante only escaped being cleft in two by submitting to be baptized in the church. This monastery, renowned in legend and song, was burned to the ground by the fierce Normans, and it was more than a century before it rose from its ashes. It was restored by Raymond I., Count of Bigorre, about the middle of the tenth century. He gave the house to the monks of St. Benedict, and bestowed on them the valley of Cauterets, on condition that they would build a church there in honor of St. Martin, and provide accommodations for those who should frequent the springs. He also made over to them his rights to the game in the pascal valleys, as well as certain claims on the produce of the dairy. The abbey became likewise an object of bounty to other neighboring lords, who confided in St. Savin when alive, and in death wished to lie near his hallowed shrine. Cornelia de Barbazan, grandmother of a Vicomtesse de Lavedan, had great devotion to St. Savin, and gave the monastery one-half the abbey of Agos. The other half belonged to Arnaud de Tors, a lord who only had two children, and they were deaf mutes. He offered them both to God and St. Savin, and subsequently his wife, himself, and all he possessed. Cornelia’s husband outlived her, and on his death-bed asked the monks of St. Savin for the monastic habit, and gave them also all he owned at Agos. The kings of Navarre, the vicomtes of Béarn, and Henry IV. himself proved themselves the zealous patrons of this monastery.

The abbey of St. Savin became the intellectual as well as moral centre of the valleys around. Several of the abbots were noted for their sanctity, and most of them were from good families. They figured among the great lords of the province, and when they visited the little states of their republic the people came out to meet them with young maidens bearing flowers in a basket. They had certain feudal rights over the eight villages, but bound themselves, on taking possession of their office, to respect the customs and privileges of the inhabitants, believed to have been handed down from the beginning of time. The people were none of them serfs, but all free citizens who had the right of deciding by majority of votes every question that affected the interests of the republic. Each village was a little state by itself, and sent its representatives to the general assembly, which was held in the cloister of St. Savin. The women themselves, as we have said, had a voice in public affairs. An old record of 1316 says that when the people of Cauterets came together in the porch of the church to decide whether they should yield to the abbot’s proposition to change the site of the town and baths, they all consented, except one strong-minded woman, named Gaillardine de Fréchou, who stoutly held out against the lord abbot. Women seem to have been regarded in these valleys as something sacred. In the old statutes of the country, drawn up by the abbot of St. Savin and other dignitaries of the province, one of the articles declared that if a criminal took refuge under a woman’s protection, his person was safe, on condition of his repairing the damage. She gave him asylum, as if a temple, or had something of the nature of a divinity! This code also forbade the creditors seizing the oxen and agricultural implements of the laborer. The people elected seven judges to try all criminal cases, but the abbot exercised the higher prerogatives of justice. He never stained his hands with blood, however; it was the Count of Bigorre alone who could impose the sentence of death. The abbot had special rights, also, which he jealously guarded as a means of revenue. The pastors of the eight villages could say Low Mass for their flocks and administer the Holy Communion, but High Mass had to be attended at St. Savin, where the children were also brought to be baptized and the dead for burial, unless in exceptional cases. The obligation of baptism and burial at St. Savin was not confined to the Pascal, but extended to the sixty villages of the valleys of Argelés and Azun. The people had the privilege of hunting in the forests and fishing in the streams—and the game and trout are not to be despised in these days—but the abbot had a right to the skins and a shoulder of certain animals, and an annual tribute of fish.

The monks of St. Savin were noted for their hospitality, and they often received visits from those who frequented the baths of Cauterets. In the sixteenth century they welcomed Catharine of Navarre in spite of her Contes and taste for the doctrines of Calvin; and in the seventeenth the poet Bertin, who, in his light, scoffing way, has celebrated “the long dinner and short Mass of the good abbot of St. Savin,” though he does not seem to have attended the latter, brief as it might have been.

Margaret of Navarre had been staying at Cauterets, where she is said to have composed the Heptaméron. She set out thence for Tarbes, but the bridges had all been carried away by rains, which she says were “so marvellous and great that it seemed as if God had forgotten his promise to Noe not to destroy the earth again by water.” The preface to her work says: “After riding all day she and her suite towards evening espied a belfry, where, as well as they could, but not without great trouble and difficulty, they succeeded in arriving, and were kindly received by the abbot and monks of the abbey, called St. Savin. The abbot, who was of an excellent family, lodged them very honorably, and, as he conducted them to their rooms, made inquiries as to the dangers they had undergone. After listening to their account he told them they were not alone in their misfortunes, for there were two young ladies in another apartment who had escaped great danger. These poor ladies, at half a league from Pierrefitte, had met a bear descending from the mountain, from which they fled at such speed that their horses fell dead on arriving at their place of refuge.”

When the princess left St. Savin the abbot furnished her party with “the best horses in Lavedan, thick Béarn cloaks, substantial provisions, and excellent guides across the mountains, which they were obliged to traverse partly on foot, in spite of the horses, and, after great sweat and labor, arrived at Notre Dame de Sarrance.”

The sceptical poet Bertin, too, thought his visit worthy of recording: “We chose that day to pay our brief devotions at the Abbey of St. Savin; that is to say, to dine there at the expense of St. Benedict. The steeple of the Abbey comes in sight between Pierrefitte and Argelés. The road ascends amid the trees, a little rough, but cool, impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and watered by an infinite number of living streams that come down from the mountains. It may be well to say that some of us were in a carriage and others on horseback, but the greater part were perched, well or ill, as the case might be, on donkeys. Our arrival was triumphant. The ladies were received by the prior to the sound of the organ, the only instrument he could strike up, thanks to the talent of his cook. He likewise presented them a bouquet of flowers and made them a compliment.... The house is well built, spacious, and in the finest position in the world. From the upper terrace of the garden the eye wanders over the magnificent plain of Argelés, which bears comparison, to say the least, with the famous valley of Campan. The day was spent very agreeably, but almost wholly at table. We returned a little late in the evening, without any other accident but the loss of one of our donkeys, which took it into its head to die on the way, under the pretext that he had been overworked in the morning and could go no farther. We celebrated in couplets, half sad, half merry, to which every one contributed:

“'Le trépas de la veielle ânesse,

Qu’on magnétisa, mais en vain

(Trop sotte était la sotte espèce);

Le long dîner, la courte messe,

La chère fine, et le bon vin,

L’enjoûment et la politesse

Du bon prieur de St. Savin.’”

None of the local traditions or documents contain anything to the disparagement of the monks of St. Savin, and their memory is still dear to the inhabitants of the valley. Madame de Motteville, lady of honor to Anne of Austria, when she came to the Pyrenees on the occasion of Louis XIV.’s marriage, visited St. Savin, and thus speaks of it: “There is an abbey here of great importance and renown. It is well built and the monks lead an exemplary life.”

The abbatial church escaped at the Revolution, and the tomb of St. Savin was respected. But it became the property of the government, and it was not till 1874 that it was purchased by the Bishop of Tarbes. The greater part of the abbey has disappeared. The old chapter-hall, however, is still standing. It is of the twelfth century, and has six low arches supported by two central pillars, cylindrical in form. This hall opened into the cloister, which has been totally destroyed. The fine Romanesque church is in good preservation. Around the deep embrasures of the entrance are symbolic animals of evil import somewhat coarsely sculptured, such as the scaly dragon of adverse influence, a bear devouring a sinless child, and the screech-owl, symbol of Jews, traitors, and the foul fiend:

“En cest oisel sunt figuré

Li felon Jeve maleur”

—by this bird is figured the felon Jew malign. And, in fact, the Jews closed their eyes, like the owl, to the light, not to recognize the Messias.

We descended by several steps into the church, into which the sun was streaming from the rose window at the west. The tomb of St. Savin is at the apsis, beneath a gilded canopy of rich design. It is of schist, about six feet long and three broad, and rests on double columns of marble, which have carved capitals. It was long used as an altar, according to the custom of the early church. Above is an ancient statue of the Virgin, said to have been brought from the East by the Crusaders, and in another part of the church is a revered crucifix of great antiquity. One of the most interesting ornaments is a painting in eighteen compartments that presents a complete epitome of St. Savin’s life, and is curious for its details of costume and architecture. Here we are told how St. Savin was sent by his mother, the Countess of Barcelona, to complete his education at the brilliant court of her brother, the Count of Poitiers, who received him with great favor and entrusted his son to his care. St. Savin, for whom, young as he was, life had no illusions, inspired his cousin to lead a simple, unostentatious life in the midst of worldly luxuries, and the latter, not satisfied with this taste of self-renunciation, soon betook himself to the convent of Ligugé, near Poitiers. His mother, in despair, threw herself at St. Savin’s feet, crying: “Give me back my child! It is you who have robbed me of him. You have a mother; think of her grief should you abandon her for ever.” Alas! this was the very thing the saint was thinking of, but he could not resist a higher will. He soon followed his cousin’s example, and they took the monastic habit together. St. Savin’s heart, however, yearned for a more profound solitude, and a celestial inspiration directed his steps toward the Pyrenees. Coming to the valley of the Gave, he followed its windings till he reached a spot overshadowed by three lofty mountains that were covered with snow nearly all the year round—cold, stern, wrapped in gray mists, and infested with wild beasts. Here he looked down on the lonely valley once inhabited by his countryman, the great St. Orens, and resolved to build his cell in a place so favorable to meditation and prayer, and give himself up to a life of austerity. He trod the rough mountain paths with bare feet—he who had been brought up in the court of princes. His only garment lasted him thirteen years. He dug a grave seven feet long and five deep, and there he slept, or lay buried in divine contemplation. Chromasse, a neighboring lord, angry to see a stranger on his lands, sent a servant to drive him away, but the latter only rendered St. Savin incapable of obeying by the blows he inflicted on him. Both master and servant were punished for their cruelty. The former was struck blind, and the latter became possessed by the devil. The moral condition of the servant particularly excited the compassion of the saint, who obtained his deliverance by the power of prayer.

An old legend says that when St. Savin wished to have a light in his cell he used to hold a torch to his breast, and in that furnace of divine love it was at once lighted. This torch used to burn all night long without being consumed, and only grew pale when the morning light came to surprise the saint lost in prayer.

St. Savin, in his last illness, was attended by Sylvian and Flavian, two monks from the neighboring abbey. When he felt his end was drawing near he requested to see Abbot Forminius, who, detained by important business, sent word that he would come on the following day. The dying hermit replied that the morrow would be too late, for then a higher occupation would engross him. As soon as his condition became known a great number of priests and monks hastened to his cell. He received the Body of the Lord, and, with his arms stretched towards heaven and a face radiant with joy, he fell asleep in the midst of a prayer which he finished in heaven.

All the people of the neighboring valleys followed St. Savin’s body to the grave. The repentant Chromasse himself joined the procession, and, pressing close to the bier, he touched with trembling hands the body of the saint, and his eyes, so long closed to the light, instantly recovered their sight.

Such is the legend of St. Savin, who became of so much repute in these mountains that it is not surprising his name should be given to the abbey where he was buried.

From a terrace before the church is a superb view of the vale of Argelés, around which rises mountain above mountain; the lowest rich with vegetation, the upper peaks bare and covered with eternal frosts. Not far off are the remains of the old feudal castle of Baucens, formerly inhabited by the Vicomtes de Lavedan, lords of the Seven Valleys. Madame de Motteville, who stopped here, compares it in her Mémoires to the palace of the fairy Urgande.

Just below St. Savin is the village of Adast with the château de Miramon, the heiress of which married Despourrins, the bucolic poet of the Pyrenees, who composed here, in the idiom of the valley, pastoral songs full of grace and feeling, which have made his name popular in the mountains, where they are still sung by the herdsmen. Béarn and Bigorre contend for the honor of being his birthplace, as the Greek cities of old for that of Homer. Here Boieldieu, struck by the beauty of the country and its poetic associations, wished to found an academy of artists. His plan was, as he wrote his friend Berton in 1832, “to buy an old château in the beautiful valley of Argelés, as finely situated as that of the poet Despourrins. The sight of so glorious a landscape would rouse the torpid imagination, and perhaps awaken in the exhausted brain fresh inspirations that might rival the vagaries of certain artists of the new school. The sky of the Pyrenees ought to be as propitious as that of Italy. The Pic du Midi is not a volcano, but it is covered with flowers. And Marboré, the Brèche de Roland, and the Cirque de Gavarnie, with its cascade that falls down twelve hundred feet, are monuments capable of electrifying the imagination as well as St. Peter’s, the Coliseum, and the Pantheon at Rome.”

On a promontory near Miramon is the votive chapel of Piétad, with its Romanesque lucarnes and low arches, that dates from the ninth century. It was saved at the Revolution by the mountaineers, among whom, as in Spain, Our Lady of Sorrow (or of Pitié, as she is called here) is especially popular. There is, too, the chapel of Soulon, with its crenellated tower, and near by the hermitage of St. Aoulari, with its Roman apsis—a rural oratory, once supported by the offerings of pilgrims and a field that yielded three sacks of wheat, but where services are now held only on certain festivals of the Virgin.

On the other side of the Vale of Argelés stood the hermitage of St. Orens between two cliffs, where, in the tenth century, the Countess Faquilie of Bigorre built a monastery, that this great saint might come to her aid on the dread day of judgment; but only a few picturesque ruins now remain on the edge of a frightful abyss. An old charter enumerates the gifts of the countess for the support of this abbey, called St. Orens of Lavedan: fields, vineyards, books, vestments, and sacred vessels. Nay, more: twenty cows with their calves, six horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and a donkey. The neighboring lords verified the boundaries of the land she gave, and swore thereto by six saints popular in the mountains: St. Saturnin, St. Paul, St. Andrew, St. Martin, and St. Orens.

St. Orens rivals St. Savin in popularity in southwestern France, where many churches and convents still bear his name. Nor is his fame confined to this region. St. Hugo consecrated a chapel to his memory in the magnificent church of Cluny. In Spain there is a church bearing his name at Huesca, which claims to be his native place. In it is the tomb of St. Patience, his mother. And we remember seeing a marble statue of St. Orens beside the shrine of St. Isidro in one of the finest churches of Madrid. The Spanish say St. Orens was the brother of the great St. Lawrence, so honored by the church universal; but the traditions of France only speak of him as the son of the Duke of Urgel, who crossed the Pyrenees to bury himself in the solitude of the mountains. Here he found a cave in a melancholy valley—the Val Caprasie—where the only noise to break the everlasting silence was the torrent that escaped from Lake Isaby. No place could have been better suited to the poetic soul of St. Orens; for a poet he was. His hymns and other writings are still admired in our day, and his Latin poem, entitled Commonitorium, has recently been translated into French. Fortunatus mentions it:

“Paucaque perstrinxit florente Orientius ore.”

This is a treatise of Christian morality in elegiac measure. It is pleasant to read it in the place where it was written and among people whose ancestors probably first read it. We quote one passage, worthy of being written over the doors of the hospitable monasteries that bear his name, in one of which we have so often found shelter: “Fail not to receive under thy hospitable roof the traveller overtaken by darkness. When thou art naked, thou desirest a garment to cover thee; thirsty, a cup to refresh thee. Let similar wants, therefore, excite thy compassion. Share thy mantle, thy loaf with the unfortunate.”

It is said that this saint, so benevolent to others, exercised such severity towards himself as to gird his body with an iron chain and recite the Psalter daily standing in the icy waters of Lake Isaby. He may be cited as an early example of the benefit of hydropathy, for he lived to a good old age in spite, or in consequence, of the rigors of penance. He erected a flour-mill on the borders of the lake for the use of the people around, which tradition says lasted most miraculously seven centuries without ever needing the slightest repair. The remains of it are still pointed out with respect by the herdsmen of the valley. And the stone on which the saint used to kneel in his cave has been carefully preserved; for nothing can exceed the tenacity with which these mountaineers cling to their ancient traditions and memorials. It is worn by the knees of generation after generation who have knelt to pray where St. Orens prayed fourteen hundred years ago.

St. Orens became noted throughout the province for his sanctity and eminent abilities, and the inhabitants of Auch, after three days of fasting and prayer, chose him as their bishop. The messengers they despatched to the mountains found him cultivating the earth. “Deign, O Lord!” cried he, planting his spade in the ground, “deign, I beseech of thee, to manifest thy will in an unmistakable manner.” And in an instant the handle became a bush, which put forth branches and was covered with foliage. The saint no longer hesitated, but departed with the messengers. When he entered the city of Auch all the sick are said to have been instantly healed. He found his diocese partly under the influence of paganism, and showed his zeal in demolishing the altars of the false gods. He saved it also from the ravages of the Vandals at the beginning of the fifth century, and was deputed by the king of the Visigoths to avert the danger that threatened Toulouse, on which the Romans were marching. He is believed to have saved that city by his prayers, and his statue was afterwards placed over one of its gates out of gratitude. A portion of his relics is likewise borne through the streets in the magnificent annual processions for which Toulouse is famous.

St. Orens is said to have regretted the solitude of this peaceful mountain valley, and once, when overwhelmed with the responsibility of his office, he secretly escaped and fled to his cave. His people, however, went in pursuit of him and succeeded in bringing him back. But the time of release came. On his death-bed he had a wondrous vision of Christ surrounded by a multitude of angels, and while in mystic converse with them his soul took flight for heaven. He was buried in the church of St. Jean de l’Aubépine at Auch, and his tomb became famous for miracles, particularly in cases of epilepsy and diabolical possession.

A Benedictine monastery was built here in the tenth century and called St. Orens’ Priory. Its third prior, Bernard de Sédirac, afterwards Archbishop of Toledo, had the remains of St. Orens exhumed and placed in a coffer covered with silver bas-reliefs relating to the saint’s life. This châsse was suspended on the wall of a chapel behind the high altar, and could only be reached by means of a ladder. Notwithstanding, it was robbed of its silver covering some time after by two soldiers, one of whom exclaimed in the true modern spirit: “What! workest thou miracles at this late hour?” But he speedily expiated his sacrilege. He was seized inwardly with a terrible fire that soon consumed him. After this the pavement beneath was covered with bristling iron spikes to prevent another profanation. But the relics of St. Orens, that had escaped the Moor and the Norman, and were even spared by the iconoclasts of the sixteenth century, were less fortunate at the Revolution, when the church of which they were the glory, with its tombs of the early bishops, and the mausoleum of Sancho Mitarra, the scourge of the Moors, from whom sprang the great family of the Armagnacs, so celebrated for their power and their misfortunes, was mostly destroyed, together with a part of St. Orens’ Priory.

The last prior of this monastery was a member of the illustrious house of Montesquieu, one of the most ancient in the province. His brother, a writer of some merit, when the family name and arms were claimed by the sires of Boulbène, instituted a lawsuit against them, and wrote a work to prove his descent from Clovis, which led the Count de Maurepas to exclaim with affected alarm after M. de Montesquieu had gained his suit: “Now, we really hope you are not going to claim the throne of France!” And among the epigrams that rained on him when he was made a member of the French Academy was the following:

“Montesquiou-Fezensac est de l’Académie.

Quel ouvrage a-t-il fait? Sa Genéalogie!”

The prior was one of the deputies of the Etats-Généraux, and made himself conspicuous for his mild, persuasive eloquence. One day Mirabeau, perceiving the effect of his discourse, cried out: Méfiez-vous de ce petit serpent: il vous séduira! After being in exile twice he was, at the Restoration, made a duke and peer of France.

How dear St. Orens’ memory still is in the diocese he once governed we well know who have spent several years of our life there. How joyous is the 1st of May, on which his festival falls! His relics are exposed at the priory, a procession, with lights and music, gathers around the place where his shrine once stood, and at night bonfires are lit on the other side of the Gers and the people dance in the open air.

But to return to the pastoral valleys of the Lavedan. Out of Argelés you pass into the valley of Azun, one of the least known, but one of the most picturesque in the Pyrenees. It is high up among the mountains and divided by the deep and turbulent Gave.[^[132]] The entrance was once defended by the castle of Vieuzac, the ruins of which remain, associated with the memory of the too famous Barère. The valley is inhabited by people of primitive manners with few artificial distinctions. Here every year, at Carnival time, is to be seen the peculiar dance of the country called the Ballade, performed by the young men, who often assemble from different villages in short vests gaily adorned with ribbons, with the most efficient balladeur at their head, playing on the fife and tambourine and waving their flags. The tambourine of the Pyrenees is a primitive instrument of pine wood, as simple as the lyre of Apollo, and with the same number of strings, which the performer beats with a little rod. These dancers are escorted to the edge of their villages by young girls, who welcome them at their return and lavish praises on those who have distinguished themselves. They are presented with eggs, ham, and butter in all the villages they pass through, on which they feast the following day.

Among the curious old usages of this valley, before 1793, was the tribute of butter to the shrine of St. Bertrand of Comminges, a popular saint in the Pyrenees, where he labored in the eleventh century. The people of Azun were then almost out of the bounds of civilization, and for what religious instruction they had they were chiefly indebted to the holy hermits of the neighboring mountains. It is said that when St. Bertrand came to preach among these rough mountaineers, he was treated with so much indignity that the tail of his mule was cut off, for which the land was cursed with sterility for several years. Touched by the repentance and sad condition of the inhabitants, the saint, by his prayers, obtained the cessation of their punishment, and they, in their gratitude, promised to give him henceforth all the butter made the week before Whitsuntide. This vow was kept for nearly seven centuries. A canon and two prebends from St. Bertrand’s came every year to the valley in acknowledgment of this tribute, bringing with them water that had been passed through the saint’s pastoral staff while chanting some orison in his honor. This they gave to the people as a remedy for disease among cattle. These deputies never failed to pass before the house, which is still standing, where St. Bertrand had been so disrespectfully treated. The master stood in the door and humbly prayed them to enter and partake of the refreshments he had prepared, which they did with emotion, like angels of peace and reconciliation.

At the farther end of the valley of Azun, not far from the Spanish frontier, rise the dome and square tower of Notre Dame de Pouey-la-Hun, that stands on an isolated peak overlooking the village of Arrens, between the two roads that lead to Spain and the province of Béarn. The present edifice is comparatively modern, but its foundation is so remote as to be lost in obscurity. You enter by a fine porch supported by four marble pillars, and are at once surprised at the richness of the interior. The walls are brown and gold, and the pillars, carvings, statues, and the very mouldings of the blue arches are all gilded, producing a most brilliant effect. Around the nave are two galleries, one above the other, for the men, who are generally separated from the women in the churches of Bigorre; at least, in the villages. The pavement is the unhewn granite cliff, which is worn quite smooth by the feet of so many generations of worshippers. It descends like an amphitheatre, enabling every one to see the altar distinctly. Across it is a groove, worn by a mountain stream at certain seasons of the year. All the joys and sorrows of the valley are brought to the feet of Notre Dame de Pouey-la-Hun, and numerous pilgrimages are made here at certain seasons of the year.

In 1793 orders came to destroy this venerated chapel, but when the emissaries entered it they were saluted by mysterious voices among the arches, as if reproaching them for their blasphemies and imprecations, and, terrified by the unearthly sounds, they at once made their escape. There was nothing supernatural in this, however. It was a mere stratagem on the part of the peasants to save their beloved chapel, and they boast of it to this day.

During the troubles with Spain this chapel was used as a military post, and consequently much injured. As soon as it was no longer needed for this purpose the government again decided to demolish it and sell the materials. The people became excited, and the women assailed with stones the agents sent to examine the building, who fled for their lives. Then a pious widow, to save it from further profanation, bought it for about fifteen thousand francs, which was nearly all she had, and, when she died, bequeathed it to her nephew, a priest, till better days should arrive. Time and neglect were beginning to leave their traces on the chapel when Queen Hortense came to the Pyrenees. She had just lost her son, the Prince Royal of Holland, and the wild, melancholy grandeur of these mountain valleys harmonized with her sadness. She was particularly pleased with the quaint village of Arrens and its picturesque chapel, and made a sketch of the landscape herself. The devotion of the people to the Virgin of Pouey-la-Hun touched her, and she sympathized in their wish it should be reopened for public worship. She went there to offer her vows, and founded an anniversary Mass for her son, which was to be celebrated with all possible solemnity, as recorded by the authorities of the place. This was shortly before the birth of Louis Napoleon. She never forgot her visit to Pouey-la-Hun. She alludes to it in her travels, and excited the interest of the government in its neglected condition. In 1836 it was made over to the Bishop of Tarbes, who founded a seminary here under the care of missionaries from Garaison, who have rendered it one of the most popular chapels in the Pyrenees.

But to return to the basin of Argelés. The valley of Cauterets begins at Pierrefitte. A carriage-road has been hewn along the steep mountain side on the very edge of a precipice, three or four hundred feet deep, at the bottom of which rushes a fierce torrent that breaks into foam over the sharp rocks that encumber its bed. On each side of this gulf rise steep cliffs almost perpendicularly, down which dash here and there miniature cascades, all in a foam. A bend in the river enables you to look back through the gorge over the wild Gave, the waters of which are of the color of beryl. Nothing could be more delicate than the tint of the foam. Beyond the bold arch of the bridge at Pierrefitte can be seen the fair vale of Argelés, forming a lovely picture framed by the lofty palisades of this wild pass. We left the carriage and wandered on afoot, gathering the eglantine and other wild flowers, inhaling the delicious mountain air, and drinking the cool waters of its numerous streams. By moonlight the scene is particularly sublime. The gloom of this narrow gorge shut in by the lofty mountains, the deep shades of the forests that cover them, and the abyss below, with the ceaseless rush of the mad stream, produce a profound impression on the mind. We remember driving through it on one occasion at midnight. The full moon hung over the mountains of Gavarnie, its light streaming down here and there into the gorge with mysterious, enchanting effect. Before us was the peak of Péguère, like an enormous pyramid with one tremulous star above, its summit bathed in the soft radiance, while its furrowed sides and unfathomable gulfs were veiled with a thousand shadows. As you wind up the Côte du Limaçon, the whole Gave is beaten into spray among the huge rocks. Here the lateral mountains recede somewhat, and you shortly come to the triangular valley of Cauterets, completely shut in among majestic mountains. Its springs were well known to the Romans, and some pretend that Cæsar himself visited them. It is more certain that the kings of Aragon and Navarre did, as well as the ancient lords of Bigorre and Béarn. The little town is more sumptuous now than when under the rule of the abbot of St. Savin. Wooden cabins have been replaced by marble edifices, and the artificial appliances of modern times substituted for the primitive observances of St. Orens. But one gives a sigh now and then for the good old simple days when the lord abbot, to prevent all imposition on the stranger and the poor, forbade the sale of provisions except on the public square. The wine, too, which had to be of good quality, could only be sold a liard more on a pint than at St. Savin, and if false measure was given a fine of ten crowns was imposed on the vender, one-half of which went to the poor and the rest to the abbot.

Cauterets is a very agreeable residence in the season. Here you meet strangers from all parts of the world, and there is a certain charm in the unrestrained intercourse. At certain hours, of course, every one goes to partake of the waters and to bathe. There are pleasant walks along the banks of the Gave, and fatiguing ones up the steep mountain sides. At table you have trout from the river and game from the forests, fowl and vegetables from Argelés, apples and plums from St. Savin’s, peaches from Béarn, and berries of rare flavor from the mountains. Buried in this quiet valley, away from all human agitations, in daily communication with nature, that puts on here its fairest aspect, the invalid returns to a simple, inartificial life which produces more effect than the waters. Rousseau thought no violent agitation whatever, no vapors of the mind, could long resist such a place of residence, and he was astonished that the salutary air of the mountains was not numbered among the chief remedies of medical and moral science.

The valleys of Barèges and Gavarnie also belong to the Lavedan. Another gorge near Pierrefitte leads to them, which is even gloomier and more savage than that of Cauterets. A little more than a century ago it was inaccessible to carriages, but since, by a miracle of engineering, a road has been constructed along the edge of the precipice, and when it cannot find room on one side it springs boldly across the abyss to the other by means of a bridge from which you look down a terrific depth at the Gave, that roars and struggles along with scarcely room enough in its bed. The road thus crosses and recrosses the river seven times. It was completed in 1746, when a carriage was for the first time seen in the gorge. Anything more wild and melancholy than this defile cannot be conceived. The mountains rise perpendicularly up on both sides, with nothing growing on them but a few wretched pines twisted by the winds. The height of these grim walls, the depth of the abyss over which you hang, the gloom, the silence only broken by the roar of the torrent, appall. From time to time you see an isolated house, and at length the village of Viscos, hanging like an eagle’s nest on the rocks. There are two ferruginous springs in the gorge, but they cannot be utilized on account of their position.

Just as you are beginning to yield to the horrors of this wild pass, it opens, and you soon come to the sweet, fresh valley of Luz, one of the most beautiful in the Pyrenees. It is three thousand feet higher than the Vale of Argelés. Here the Gave is a peaceful, well-behaved stream. Its shores are planted with long lines of decorous poplars. The meadow is dotted with trees and covered with harvests. Lofty mountains keep guard around, the lower ones wooded and crowned with the ruins of some old castle, the upper covered with glaciers. In the depths of this valley is the town of Luz, with narrow, tortuous streets, and at the right, on the side of the mountain, is the fashionable watering-place of St. Sauveur. The church of Luz, built by the Knights-Templars in the twelfth century, looks like a fortress with its battlements and great square tower. As in many churches of this region, there is a low, narrow door, now walled up, by which the Cagots—those unhappy pariahs of the Pyrenees—were once obliged to enter. This proscribed race is known to have existed in the time of the early French monarchy. It is said that they descended from the Goths or some vanquished nation, which made them an object of contempt. They were denied citizenship and obliged to live apart and wear a red badge on their breasts, shaped somewhat like a duck’s foot. The church endeavored to triumph over this prejudice by reminding the people that all men are brethren. She would not allow the Cagots, though they were deemed infectious, to be banished from the churches, but gave them a separate place till they should be regarded with more favorable dispositions. They had their own stoup, and it was a defilement to pass through their door. In one church of the diocese of Tarbes the archdeacon with the other clergy, to do away with this odious distinction, passed through their door at some public procession, and the people were obliged to follow. From that time they passed indifferently through either door. The race is nearly extinct now, or has gradually become almost identified with the other inhabitants.

Ascending one of the church towers to the battlements, you find broken lances, stirrups, and other accoutrements—perhaps left behind by the old Knights. There are also four cannons placed here by the Leaguers to defend the edifice against the Huguenots, who always made churches the principal object of attack.

East of Luz, on a high mount, are the picturesque ruins of the Castle of Sainte Marie, which once defended the valley, likewise attributed to the Templars. This was one of the last holds of the English in Bigorre. It is also associated with Burke of the “Sublime and Beautiful,” who surely found both in this incomparable valley. Was it in France that he found reason to prefer “the furniture of ancient tyranny, even in rags,” to the torrent of liberty that swept it violently away?

St. Sauveur is built in a curve of the mountain side, and its houses on the cliffs and terraces produce a charming effect. It is only ten minutes’ walk from Luz, through a long avenue of Lombardy poplars, across a marble bridge over the Gave, and then up a spiral rampe which affords a new and more extensive view at every step. You see the verdant meadow, pretty hamlets on the mountain slopes, foaming cascades, on every hand a landscape varied, brilliant, and imposing.

The first to discover the virtues of the thermal springs of St. Sauveur was a bishop of Tarbes who took refuge here when his diocese was ravaged by the Huguenots of Béarn in the sixteenth century. Surely he had need to drink of their soothing waters! After experiencing their virtues he placed the following inscription over the principal spring: Vos haurietis aquas de fonte Salvatoris, whence the name of St. Sauveur. But the place did not become a fashionable resort till the present century. At the Restoration the French aristocracy, diplomatic highnesses, and military officers flocked hither to enjoy the scenery and allay the fever of their uncertain political life by drinking of the sulphurous waters.

Not far from Luz, on a verdant hill, are the ruins of a hermitage where from time immemorial lived a succession of hermits down to the end of the eighteenth century. Beside it was the chapel of St. Pierre, held in great veneration by the mountaineers, who, on solemn occasions, went there to pray for some special blessing or be delivered from some evil. The statutes of Luz forbade under severe penalty any person over twelve years of age to ring the bells of this chapel without orders. They required, moreover, a general procession to be made here on St. Mark’s day in order to “obtain a blessing on the fruits of the earth, peace with the neighboring valleys, power to resist the devil and all wickedness, and strength to perform those works agreeable to God by means of which is attained the glory of Paradise—Amen.” When the bells rang out on the 25th of April, the master and mistress of every house in the valley were to present themselves, as well dressed as possible, in the church of Luz, and thence proceed, reciting a prescribed number of Paters and Aves, to the hermitage, where the Mass of St. Mark was said and a portion of the four Gospels read. Those who failed to take part in the procession of “Monsieur Saint Marc,” without a legitimate excuse, were obliged to pay a fine of two quarts of wine and half a pound of wax.

St. Peter’s chapel was latterly restored by Napoleon III. under the name of St. Pierre de Solferino. The last hermit who lived here was a Capuchin named Father Ambrose, who consecrated himself to God at the age of sixteen and was all his life a model of holiness. When he took possession of his cell he exclaimed: “I wish to live here as in a tomb—to be counted as nothing—to live unknown, a simple, prayerful, abject life, in utter ignorance of all that is passing in the world.” How complete his renunciation of the world was, how profound the peace he found here, may be seen by two works he left behind, which breathe the deep piety of his nature. They are entitled: Traité de la Paix Intérieure and Traité de la Voie de l’Ame. In the latter he says: “It is in the silence of the passions, interior calmness, exemption from unruly desires, and the government of one’s self that true happiness consists.” This work acquired great renown. The Queen of France accepted the dedication, and nine or ten editions were published during the author’s life without disturbing his profound humility or love of solitude. He died here in the odor of sanctity, in 1778, at the advanced age of seventy.

One of the excursions generally made from Luz is to the hermitage of St. Justin, the first bishop of Tarbes, who fled from persecution to the summit of this lofty mountain, where he and his companions built three cells and gave themselves up to austerities and prayer. They were succeeded by other hermits for ages. The ruins of their cells are still to be seen. St. Justin, says the Martyrology, “rendered himself glorious by the multiplication of his talents.”

At the foot of the castle of Sainte Marie is the gorge to the valley of Barège along the river Bastan, which you follow a few miles, through the poplars and willows, till you come to the village at the head of the valley, which is here so narrow as to leave barely room for a single street. Nothing could be sterner and wilder, and the place would long ago have been abandoned to the bears and the elements but for the reputation of its mineral waters. It is, in fact, nearly abandoned in the winter, when a part of the village is generally carried away by the avalanches or the inundation of the most insubordinate of streams. It was Madame de Maintenon who came here with the Duc du Maine, that gave a reputation to the springs of Barèges. Louis XV. built a military hospital here, as the waters are efficacious in the healing of wounds.

The heiress of Barèges in the middle ages married a knight named D’Ossun, but the mountaineers, unable to tolerate the rule of a stranger, resolved to slay him. He was warned and took flight. All the mountain passes were guarded, but he had, says the legend, a wonderful horse, by means of which he leaped from cliff to cliff, and thus made his escape. This place is still called the Pas d’Ossun. The house of Ossun was famous for its warriors. Pierre, a member of this family in the sixteenth century, was a great captain and chiefly contributed to the victory at Dreux. Disheartened at one moment, he followed the example of his fellow-soldiers who were flying from the battle-field, but a feeling of honor brought him back and he covered himself with glory. He could not, however, forgive himself for a moment of weakness, and, in punishment, suffered himself to die of hunger.

There are numerous hollows among the Pyrenees called Oules (a word in patois signifying a large pot or kettle), around which the mountains rise almost perpendicularly. These basins are also called Cirques. The most famous, as well as most perfect, is that of Gavarnie, surrounded by the mighty walls of Marboré with its towers and embattled summit. The emotion that seizes one in this sublime spot is unparalleled. But its chaos of terrific aspect, its mountains with their glaciers, the famous Brèche de Roland, and the thread-like cascade that falls down so many hundred feet—the source of the Gave that flows past the grotto of Lourdes—have too often been depicted to need repetition. The scene is to be felt, not described. Here end the seven valleys of the Lavedan on the very boundaries of Spain.

JOB AND EGYPT.[^[133]]

There is perhaps no fact more important in the history of the human race, or which, in its striking corroboration of revealed truth, is worthy of higher consideration, than the accumulation of proof, resulting from the exhumation of past ages by modern research, that there are certain beliefs which are the inalienable inheritance of the great human family—beliefs which modern scepticism attacks by a process of false reasoning incomprehensible to any simple and upright nature.

For some years past the sacred texts have been put to the proof by tests of a character as severe as they were unexpected; and thus, from the moment that the key was obtained for deciphering the inscriptions of a far-remote antiquity, it was not without eager anxiety that the judgment was awaited which science was about to pronounce.

But on this occasion, as always when interests of this description are at stake, the first conclusions were too hastily arrived at, and precipitation led to mistakes.

After the vain attacks made on the one hand, and the groundless anxieties raised on the other, with regard to the question of the zodiacs, it was soon found that greater circumspection as well as more accurate criticism must be brought to the examination of evidence before it could be quoted in proof or disproof of any theory. Since that time the lapse of a century has witnessed a vast accession of documentary testimony, and it may be affirmed that up to this moment the whole concurs in establishing the veracity and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. As the inscriptions of the kings of Assyria bear witness to the fidelity of the Bible narrative, and the Babylonian tradition of the Creation, the Fall, the Tree of Life, the Tower of Babel, and the Deluge confirm the grander, more logical, and simpler account given in the Book of Genesis, so do the annals and theological teachings of ancient Egypt testify to the truth of those doctrines contained in the inspired writings of which they are the traditional echo—an echo mute for ages, and but now reawakened as if to add its protest against the miserable scepticism which is one of the signs of a degenerate and decaying world.

M. l’Abbé Ancessi, whose work on the sacerdotal vestments of Israel and Egypt we have already noticed,[^[134]] has lately published one of more extensive interest, the object of which is to establish from the most ancient documents in existence, outside the Holy Scriptures, that the dogmas necessary to the religious and moral life of man were, from the very origin of society, the heritage of our forefathers, and that, more than a thousand years before Moses, well-nigh all our doctrines and all our hopes existed in the most remote civilization in the universe; and from thence to draw the conclusion that these doctrines and principles would not have remained indestructible in the human mind, diversified and restless as it is, had they not been a part of itself, the foundation of its nature, and one final reason of its being.

The author proceeds to group the Egyptian belief with respect to God, a Redeemer, and the life to come around the well-known text in which Job, overwhelmed by the reproaches of his friends and the weight of his misfortunes, despairing of consolation in this world, declares his certainty of a life to come, where, after death, he will meet with a powerful Avenger, who will put his enemies to shame and make his cause triumph, end his trials, and recompense his virtues by the supreme blessedness of the Vision of God.

The argument of Baldad the Suhite, put briefly, is that The impious man is always unfortunate in this world, with its counterpart, Whoever is unfortunate is impious; but, in spite of this most imperturbable of theorists, Job is conscious of his own innocence, and after listening to a long outpouring of eloquent imagery, amid the desolate splendors of which there shines no ray of hope or comfort for him, he bursts forth like a tempest:

“How long, then, will you afflict my soul, and break me in pieces with your words?... Have pity, have pity upon me, at least you my friends, for the hand of the Lord hath touched me.... Who will grant me that my words may be written? who will grant me that they may be marked down in a book with an iron pen, and in a plate of lead; or be graven with an instrument in the rock? For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at last upon the dust. That these bones shall again be covered with their skin; that in my flesh I shall see God. I myself shall behold him; mine eyes shall behold him, and not another.”

This rapid incursion into the world beyond the tomb, with which the Semitic races were never familiar, and which they appeared in thought to avoid with a singular reserve, contains all the solution of the redoubtable problem; but though the question was settled, the arguments of the pitiless sages began again with renewed volubility, until the voice of God himself interposed, on behalf of his servant, to silence them.

The words quoted above contain evident allusions to traditions and dogmas which appear to have become obscure or been forgotten among the Semitic races. This profession of faith remains isolated, without a precedent which explains it; there is, in fact, nothing analogous to it in the most ancient texts of the Pentateuch, in the Songs of Israel, or the promises and teachings of the prophets.

In the family of Israel, with the Mosaic legislation, the primitive world closes and another begins. The doctrines and hopes freshly implanted by God develop like a plant from its seed, each part being necessary to the other parts; but amidst all the Hebraic literature the Book of Job and his profession of faith remain isolated, and on this account the value of both have been disputed by persons interested in lessening their importance. From this point of view, therefore, it is of moment to find an analogous doctrine in the outlying records of a remote antiquity, and to discover the edifice from which this fragment has been detached.

On the rolls of linen and papyrus preserved in the tombs of Thebes or of Serapeum we find not only the belief mentioned in the Book of Job, but the very expressions there made use of. On these rolls not only is this belief repeated in a multitude of forms, but a community of traditions in the two great families of Sem and Cham is also proved.

Long centuries had elapsed since their dispersion; they were separated not only by their intervening deserts, but by their difference of language, customs, laws, and worship; and yet, where the Semitic text is obscure, we have but to compare it with the writings left by the old Egyptians to make clear its meaning.

The opening words of the quotation above apparently allude to some contemporary usage well known to the patriarch and his friends, but still not in use among themselves: “Who shall grant that my words may be written ... and engraved in the flint-stone?” M. Ancessi asks if we have not here an allusion to the styles or small obelisks which then abounded in the temples and tombs of Egypt, and which, if not in use among the tribes of the land of Uz, had nevertheless been seen by these families of shepherds in their distant wanderings. Besides the great inscriptions commemorating the conquests of the Pharaos, there are, in or near the Egyptian temples, at the gates of the tombs, or within the sepulchral chambers, innumerable smaller monuments placed there by private individuals, and inscribed with their confession of faith. Of this we shall speak further on.

Numerous passages in the Book of Job seem to indicate that he had visited the land of Egypt,[^[135]] and, among these, allusion is made to the tombs of the “kings and counsellors of the earth,” with whom he would fain “be at rest,” and “with princes, who possess abundance of gold and fill their dwellings with silver”[^[136]] (alluding to the Egyptian custom of heaping precious objects in the tombs for the use of the departed at the resurrection). Like them, Job desired to leave his tablet, in which, after the manner of the commemorative obelisks of the valley of the Nile, he would declare the innocence of his life, his faith in a divine Avenger, in the resurrection of the body, and the vision of Him who recompenses the just and punishes the wicked.

The funereal inscriptions of ancient Egypt are of two kinds: those written on rolls of papyrus or linen bands, enveloping the body of the mummy or enclosed with it inside the sarcophagus; and the incised monuments of stone or granite, erected in the chambers or cut in the walls of the tombs and temples and at the entrance of the pyramids.

Almost all the texts[^[137]] found upon the mummies are extracts from a book which Champollion called the Ritual, but which is now styled the Todtenbuch, or Book of the Dead; the term “ritual” being confined to the liturgical manuals relating to the ceremonies of inhumation, etc., some curious copies of which may be seen in the Louvre.

The Todtenbuch is a collection of hymns, prayers, and theological instructions, divided into one hundred and sixty-five chapters, with their titles and rubrics. These rubrics, as in the Catholic missals and breviaries, consist of a few words in red ink to guide the celebrant. The titles of the chapters are also in red. The lines are usually vertical, and, in the richer copies, the upper margin of the roll is adorned, by the side of the title of each chapter, with an illustration or vignette representing the subject there treated. Finally, a whole page is taken up by a picture of the judgment of souls and the ingathering of the harvest in the blessed fields of Ker-Neter.

These texts were to be recited by the soul during its journey, as a safeguard from danger and to purify it at the moment of the solemn judgment which should decide its eternal destiny. The manuscript is intended to assist the memory of the departed. Under the twelfth dynasty these texts were often engraved on the sarcophagus itself.

Thoth, the God of Wisdom, was said to have dictated the Book of the Dead, the greater portion of which Bunsen does not hesitate to relegate to prehistoric times.[^[138]]

In support of this supposition, M. Deveria notices two very ancient annotations. The first of these, at the sixty-fourth chapter, states that this portion of the Book of the Dead was found at Hermopolis, written in blue, on a cube of Baakes, under the feet of the god, where the royal son Hardanouef found it in the time of King Menkera when making the inventory of the temple. The second annotation tells that chapter one hundred and thirty was found[^[139]] in the pylone of the great temple in the reign of King Housapti, who was the fifth monarch of the first dynasty, and Menkera built the third pyramid. Thus, at these periods, certain parts of the Todtenbuch were discovered as antiquities, the memory of which had been lost; and certainly we find on the wooden mummy-coffins of the eleventh dynasty long passages from it, proving, therefore, its composition to have been long anterior to the Shepherd Kings, and consequently long before Abraham.

The obelisks, or inscriptions in stone, have not, however, the impersonal and theological character of the writing on the rolls. On the obelisks the name of the departed is usually inscribed side by side with the names of his family, parents or children, and his titles and occupation are there given. At the head of the monument he is represented making an offering to Osiris, his judge, or his children are there depicted offering libations before the image of their father and reciting the liturgical hymns for his soul.

It is not rare to find the dead himself asking for prayers. The funereal obelisk of Neb-oua at Boulag ends thus: “To the living; to the ancients of the earth; to the priests; to the panegyrists; to the divine fathers; to all who see this obelisk: make for me your songs, beloved of Osiris, the Eternal King. Say: May the delicious breath of life breathe in the face of Neb-oua, the first prophet of Osiris, the acknowledged just one.”[^[140]]

Again, on the lid of a sarcophagus in the same museum (No. 978) we find a “Prayer to be said by every person who draws near to this tomb: May God give thee light,[^[141]] and may its beams shine into thine eyes; may he breathe into thy nostrils the breath which thou must breathe to live.”

The personal details, which vary upon every obelisk, are accompanied by formulæ taken from the Book of the Dead, which recall the faith of the departed in the resurrection of the body; the rewards and punishments of a future life; the judgment, presided over by Osiris, his redeemer; and the hope of an eternity of happiness flowing from the beatific vision.

Here we have, in fact, the profession of faith of the patriarch Job, a further examination of which will show us that the analogy is carried into the minutest details. In regard to it we will first consider briefly the Egyptian doctrine about God and the Redeemer.

Although nothing was originally more simple than the theology of Egypt, yet nothing could well be more confused and perplexing than it became as the commentaries of the schools and the mythological superfetations of each temple developed in the course of time. From its earliest to its latest days Egypt believed in one God, personal, uncreated, almighty, the author and watchful preserver of the universe. How, then, it may be asked, can its exuberant polytheism be reconciled with this doctrine? In traversing the galleries filled with long ranks of the Egyptian deities—Thoth with the head of an ibis and the hawk-headed Horus being conspicuous among them—we pass along the stony piles of these antique and impenetrable monstrosities as if under the influence of a nightmare, while the words of liberated Israel echo from distant ages in our ears: “Os habent et non loquentur; oculos habent et non videbunt; manus habent et non palpabunt; pedes habent et non ambulabunt; non clamabunt in gutture suo.” And we ask what there can be of just and true behind the strange forms of these old-world phantoms.

The answer is contained in the fact that the Egyptians attributed to God different names and forms, according to the aspects and attributes to which they wished to give prominence, while, under each of these names and forms, God, in his inalienable infinity, remained always the same; and, as if they had anticipated our perplexities at the sight of these battalions of divinities, they have taken exceeding pains to instruct us on this point. As the Eternal, God had one name; as Creator, he had another; as Providence or Preserver, another; and as Judge and Redeemer of souls, the name of Osiris. In each sanctuary the one God of the whole country, living in a Triad which, without division of substance, expressed the phases of his threefold existence, was worshipped under a particular form and name. He had a special worship, rites, chants, and ceremonial, unknown in the neighboring temples; but the hymns and inscriptions constantly dwell on the fact that each temple and each ritual was in honor of the only God, to whom belong all temples, and to whom all prayers are addressed.[^[142]]

The One who alone is: there is of him no second.

The Egyptians knew that the Deity is an unfathomable mystery and can have no name. “His name,” say the texts, “is mysterious as his being.” Considered from this point of view, he is called The Hidden One—Ammon, whose image is enveloped in an impenetrable veil. In his uncreated essence God is invisible, but he has revealed himself in his acts, expressive of his wisdom, power, and goodness, and each of these attributes presents an accessible side, by which the mind can take hold of the incomprehensible, see the invisible, and name the nameless One. Having in himself all powers and every form of greatness, his names and forms are without number, and the texts, as in the Hymn to Ammon, expressly designate him as The Many-Named—the Multitude by the Names.[^[143]]

The true name of God appears to have been, with the Egyptians as with the Hebrews, the greatest of mysteries. Probably it was not allowed to be written; in any case, as in the papyrus Harris, its utterance was forbidden. “I am He who makes trial of the warriors, he whose name is known to none. His name must be kept in silence on the borders of the river: whoso shall utter it, he shall be consumed. His name must be silent upon earth.”

We find this in the hymn to Ammon,[^[144]] and the remainder of this text leads us further into the doctrine of a Trinity which Egyptian theology had preserved amidst other primeval traditions.

“Creator of the pastures whereon the cattle feed, and of the plants which nourish man; he who provides for the fishes of the sea and the birds of heaven, who gives the breath of life to the germ yet hidden in the egg, who feeds the flying insect and the creeping thing, who provides the stores of the mouse in his retreat and of the birds in the forest[^[145]]—homage to thee, the author of all, who alone art, ... who watchest over men when they repose, and seekest the good of thy creatures; God, Ammon, the preserver of all; Tum and Armachis worship thee in their words, and say, Homage to thee, because of thy immanence in us; prostration before thy face, because thou producest us; ... the gods bow before thy majesty, and exalt the soul of him by whom they were produced, happy in the immanence of their generator,” etc.

It will be perceived that Tum and Armachis appear to form, with Ammon, a triad, of which the persons are distinct without being separate, each person being represented as reposing in one divine substance, of which each is an aspect, of which each expresses an attribute, and of whose indivisible essence each forms a part.[^[146]]

It is not to be supposed, however, that this lofty and abstract conception was appreciated by the multitude, with whom, on the contrary, the numerous names and forms of their deity degenerated into a monstrous polytheism, and who, in spite of the reiterated affirmations of the hymns and inscriptions, crowded their altars with fantastic idols.

But for the depositaries of the sacred doctrine there was but one God, living in the midst of the divine triads, uncreated, and the principle of life. He was also the principle of truth: “Hold nothing as truth but the Eternal and the Just.... Man is only the appearance; and the appearance is the supreme lie.... What is the First Truth? He who is one and alone, the Lord of Truth and Father of the gods.”

The explanation to this formula is to be found in the other text which supposes the Word to be the principle of the divine persons:

Giving utterance to the Word, exist the gods.

Hermes Trismegistes, commenting upon the above, says: “He who made the world made it not with his hands, but with his word.” And again:

“The luminous Word (Verbum), which emanates from the Intelligence, is the Son of God.... The Intelligence of life and light engendered, by the Word, another creative Intelligence, the god of fire and fluids, who in turn formed seven ministers, enveloping in their circles the sensible world, and governing it by what is called destiny. This spirit is necessary to all; he gives life to all, sustains all. He flows from the holy source, and unceasingly comes to the aid of the spirits and of all things living.”[^[147]]

This spirit, Tum, or Tum Cheper (creator), is described in the texts as “Master of understanding, ... giving to all things their motion: when he wrought in the abyss of the waters,[^[148]] then was produced the gladsomeness of the light. The gods rejoiced at its beauty.”

The Author of the universe is also worshipped as the principle of Goodness under the name of Oun Nofrè—the Good Being; and the inscriptions reiterate the appellation:

The good God; greatly beloved ... greatness of loves.

“His love is in the south: his graces in the north: all hearts are transported with his beauty.... When he traverses the heavens in his bark, and travels in peace through celestial space, his rowers are in gladness.”[^[149]]

Again, in the wisdom of his secret counsels, God is described as holding in reserve all that may happen in the future. “He is that which is, and that which is not,” says the Todtenbuch; “for that which is, is in my hand, and that which is not is in my heart.”

It has been necessary to dwell at some length on the Egyptian doctrines respecting the nature of God and his relation to the world before approaching another feature of exceeding interest in their theology—namely, the history and office of the Redeemer.

This mighty Liberator, the first hope of whom was given by God to our first parents, appears under various forms in the traditions of all the peoples of a distant antiquity, and among these traditions the most ancient and the most pure is certainly that of Osiris, whose noble and beneficent attributes raise him above all the divinities of other nations, represented as coming to bring succor to man. The Doctors of the church were themselves struck with admiration before this august figure, and did not hesitate to identify the name of Osiris with that of our Lord Jesus Christ,[^[150]] being convinced that the belief respecting him was but an echo of the primitive revelation. It would indeed be difficult to explain otherwise its correspondence to the Messianic prophecies given later to the chosen people, or the analogies of the Osirian teaching with the accomplishment, in the life of our Lord, of the hopes which, during long centuries, it kept alive in the countless generations of Egypt.

The special attribute of Osiris is goodness; it is he who is Oun-Nofre the Good Being par excellence; it is he who, with Tum (or Phtah) and Thoth, partakes of the divine essence, and is called, like Ammon, Neb-oua—the Lord alone.

In the papyrus 3292 in the Hall of Tombs in the Louvre is the following passage: “Hail to thee, Osiris, ... the great eldest Son of Ra, Father of fathers,... King of immeasurable time and lord of eternity.... None knows his name; innumerable are his names in the cities and the nomes.[^[151]]... Hail to thee, ... the one who didst rise from the dead. He is the lord of life, and we live by his creations; none can live without his will.” The second aspect of the life of Osiris is his sojourn upon earth in human form, his death, and passage into the land of the departed. Plutarch tells us that Osiris, lord of time, made himself man and reigned on earth, giving his people wise and holy laws; that he taught them agriculture and reverence to the gods, going through all the country to instruct his subjects, whose attention he won and whose manners he softened by the penetrating charm of his words and by music.[^[152]]

Even according to the myths, however, righteousness does not long prosper upon earth. The Principle of Evil, enraged against him, compassed his painful death when his life upon earth had attained twenty-eight years[^[153]]—often represented by twenty-eight lotus-flowers in the inscriptions, and fixed by the traditional age of the Apis.

But for Osiris, as for the true Saviour, the hour of death is the hour of victory. He rises again, and reigns henceforth, king of an eternal kingdom.

The priests and faithful of Osiris could not endure the attempts made by travellers and philosophers to find a resemblance between this pure and lofty divinity to any of their own disreputable gods, or to fix in the depths of the earth and the abode of the dead the dwelling-place of him who had “no kind of communication with substances subject to corruption and death.” No other god had in Egypt so many temples and worshippers as this the favorite deity of the country, since, besides its own local divinity, each of the nomes worshipped Osiris and Isis, and thus the “Protector of souls” was, from the Mediterranean to the cataracts, the god of all the Egyptians.

The anniversary of the death of Osiris[^[154]] was every year observed with lamentations throughout the land, until the hour of his resurrection, which was hailed with joy, festivities, and triumph; this people, always so anxious and interested about the future beyond the tomb, having for the “Lord of the life to come” the most deep and tender devotion. For, of all the phases of his worship, that which occupied the largest place and exercised the profoundest influence on the religious life of this great nation is connected with the office of Osiris in regard to each separate soul. All the funereal inscriptions dwell upon this. Osiris was not only their saviour but their judge. In the paintings and sculptures, and the vignettes of the ritual, he is usually represented enthroned in the Hall of the divine Justice, where, enveloped, all but the face and hands, in the shroud which had enfolded him in the tomb, and holding in his right hand the hyk, or pastoral staff (not unlike an episcopal crosier), and in the left a double-thonged scourge, he awaits the soul of the departed. At his feet are the divine balances, wherein will be weighed the heart of the dead. At the threshold of the hall Maat, the symbol of justice and truth, receives the soul and presents it to the Judge.

The soul’s first words on being brought into the presence of its God were: “I am the Osiris [such a one],” giving his earthly name.[^[155]]

This assimilation of the faithful worshipper with his divine type is one of the most elevated and touching characteristics of the Egyptian doctrine; nor does anything analogous to it exist in any other religion of antiquity—it is only in Christianity that we find it again. In the same way that the Christian is a living member of Christ, sharing in his life, rights, and merits, bearing his name, taking refuge behind the person of his Saviour, so does the worshipper of Osiris become a living member of his liberator, and another Osiris; and at the hour of death the soul calls for aid from him who had also passed its dark portal and come forth again victoriously.

Nothing is more touching than the prayers addressed by these suppliant souls to their protector; thus we read, in a papyrus of the Louvre: “Amensaouef the departed says to Osiris: Receive in peace this Osiris, Amensaouef justified.... Open to him thy gates, that I may enter there when my heart shall desire: may the guardians of thy pylones not fight against me, and may I not be thrust back by thy guards, that I may see God in his beauty; that I may serve him in the place where he dwells.”

To obtain a right to these favors, the soul, as in the litany already quoted from the Book of the Dead, recalled its innocent life; in the Book of the Breathings the dead continues his justification by enumerating his good works: “O gods who dwell in the lower hemisphere! listen to the voice of the Osiris [such a one]; he is come before you. There is in him no fault; no testimony arises against him.... He gave bread to the hungry and water to the thirsty; he gave clothes to the naked;[^[156]] he offered peace-offerings to the gods and oblations to the manes.”

According to the result declared by the unerring balances, judgment was given, and the name of the righteous written down by Thoth in the Book of Life. The just had right to enter into the “Mysterious Retreat,” the place of eternal bliss, to eat the fruit of the tree of life, Astu, and rest in its shadow; to drink the waters of the river of life, to sit down at the heavenly feast with Osiris, and to find the fulness of happiness in the contemplation of the face of God. The impious were driven to endless punishment in the fiery gulfs of Amma, while “intermediate souls” were purified, by an expiation proportioned to their faults, in the Lake of Fire.

The most curious document, after the Todtenbuch, which Egypt has bequeathed to us on the subject is the long MS. entitled The Book of that which takes place in the Lower Hemisphere.[^[157]] The author there describes, as if he himself had visited them, all the various localities of these regions of darkness. In it we advance, with Osiris and his dead, along the gloomy paths which frequently remind us of the wanderings of Dante. The way is divided into twelve “Hours” with their corresponding stations, and is peopled with mysterious phantoms and mythological forms, who sometimes stop the travellers and at others favor their progress. It is said at the seventh hour: “Who knows this, the panther devours him not.”[^[158]] The name of this hour is, “He who repulses the reptile, who wounds the serpent Ha-her.”[^[159]]

The most detailed description of the Egyptian hell is given in the third register of the eleventh hour. There we are shown seven goddesses standing, each armed with a sword;[^[160]] the flames which spring from their mouths fall into seven gulfs, wherein condemned souls, hieroglyphic symbols of spirits, heads cut off, etc., are confusedly mingled amidst the fire. Each gulf is designated in retrograde characters by the word Had, reminding one of the Greek Hades; and each goddess has a name which indicates her powers and functions. It was this hell that was called also the second death—an expression preserved by tradition to the days of Christianity, and repeated by St. John in the Apocalypse, in which we find almost all the ancient formulæ of the religious beliefs of primitive times.

We have now briefly to consider Osiris under the aspect of the Risen One. When, like the sun overcoming the shades of night, he rises from the dead, he is called Horus; and although the texts insist upon the absolute identity of the divine personality who manifests himself under these two aspects, Horus nevertheless, in the mythological form of the doctrine, is called his son—the Avenger of his father Osiris.

This formula, “I am Horus, the Avenger of his father,” occurs repeatedly throughout the Todtenbuch; the Avenger being the God himself awakening from the tomb under a new form, and taking possession of the second life that knows death no more; that which happened to Osiris being repeated in each departed soul, of whom he was the type and the Saviour.

Later on Egyptian mythology furnished Osiris with assistants for this combat with death. The Book of the Lower Hemisphere represents, at the tenth hour of the journey through the lands beyond the tomb, and at the moment when the trial is about to end, four gods, each bearing a bow and arrows, with the legend: “These with their bows and arrows, going before the great God, open to him the eastern horizon of heaven. This great God says: Choose out your arrows, draw your bows; wound for me mine enemies who are in darkness at the gate of the horizon.”[^[161]] This combat is renewed for each soul, and the avenging God invariably intervenes with his attendant spirits. M. Ancessi considers that we have here an unexpected and natural commentary upon the words of Job, “I know that my Avenger liveth,” and proceeds to examine the sense of the word goel, or avenger, of the Hebrew text.

In the social order of the wandering tribes a traditional law regulated that, in case of murder, it rested with the family of the victim to take vengeance on the murderer. It was for the son to avenge his father, or, in default of a son, the nearest relative, who thus became the goel of the slain. It is easy to imagine the terrible effects of this fatal law, which still prolongs itself through centuries, and sometimes does not end before a whole tribe has been cut off.

But besides the earthly avenger, there was another—God himself, who intervened at the hour of death to adjudge the punishment of the wicked and take in hand the cause of the departed. Such is, in fact, the character of the mysterious protector whose aid is claimed by Job when he exclaims, “I know that my Goel is living”; he can count upon him, as in his tribe he counts upon the never-failing avenger of the cause of the oppressed.[^[162]]

We need only allude to the frequency with which, in all poetical and imaginative nations, a metaphor becomes a myth, to perceive the facility with which the idea of the resurrection of Osiris became the birth of Horus in the cradle of his father’s tomb. Thus there was a violent death; there was a son; the next step naturally transforms Horus into the avenger.

How often is it the case that a word of apparent unimportance, having found its way into a dogmatic explanation, ends by entirely disfiguring its sense, like a graft left by an unknown hand in the bark of a tree, and which produces a complete change in its fruit![^[163]] Thus, as time goes on, we find grouped around Osiris, Horus the Avenger, who is called his son, Isis and Nephtys, who are his sisters, forty terrible assessors who surround his tribunal and aid him as judge, besides a multitude of details which compromise and disfigure the ancient doctrine; while the text of Job preserves the mysterious germ of the Osirian doctrine in its simplicity and grandeur, and then applies it in prophetic allusion to the death and resurrection of Messias the Redeemer.

An additional probability that the words of Job contain an allusion to this doctrine is to be found in the remarkable identity of the remaining portion of this text with the formula of the Egyptian papyri. After his affirmation of faith in a living Redeemer Job immediately adds, with the theologians of Egypt: “In my flesh I shall see God, whom I, I shall see for myself; mine eyes shall see him, and not [those of] another.”

The passages in the Todtenbuch and funereal inscriptions are numberless in which we find it said of the departed:

This glorious spirit, in his flesh, he himself, he sees (God).

Again: “I come to thee, Lord of gods and men; I come to contemplate thy beauties.” “I behold the great God in the interior of his tabernacle; in this day of the judgment of souls.”

The resemblance is so striking between the Hebrew and Egyptian texts that comment is needless; nevertheless, we would guard against the supposition that the ideas uttered by the patriarch were borrowed from Egyptian theology; for, besides that in the words of Job there is the absence of any myth or secondary personage whatever, it appears certain that these doctrines, preserved in greater purity in their primitive form among the Semitic races, may be traced back to the time of the separation of the families of Sem and Cham, whom they respectively accompanied into their distant wanderings as their most precious heritage; but whilst the scribes and doctors of Egypt gradually enveloped them in an exuberant mythology, the pastoral tribes of Sem preserved them in the simplicity of the first ages.

And yet all these doctrines, which are proved to be the heritage of humanity, would have been lost and buried with the Egyptian dead had it not been for the intervention of Christ. In vain for three centuries did the loftiest intelligences of Greece weary themselves in studies whose result was to prove that man was incapable of forming true notions of God, the soul, and our destinies from the chaos of systems which enveloped the original revelation when our Lord brought to the human race the realization of its venerable traditions and the faith of its earliest days.

Let it not be objected that the doctrines of the Redeemer were more ancient than his advent and known to man before he taught them upon earth; for man having always had the same duties to fulfil in regard to his future destiny, of necessity God did not leave him in ignorance of them from the time of his origin; and when, later on, they were forgotten, and the whole world lay in darkness, then arose the Light of which a faint reflection in the firmament had long heralded the approach, though clouded most before the dawn.