"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray; Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre."
—Solemn organ music floating through cathedral aisles must introduce the next scene. The child who was dedicated to the cause of Protestantism kneels before a mitred priest. "Who are you?" is the question put. "I am the king." "And what is your request?" "To be admitted into the pale of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church."—Again a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny, Duke de Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations, and despatches, to elevate and make prosperous the great kingdom of France. "I would," said the king, "that every subject of mine might have a fat fowl in his pot every Sunday."—Take another: a gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of courtiers surround a plain ferryman, who, in answer to the laughing questions of the monarch, whom the boatman does not know, admits that "the king is a good sort of fellow enough, but that he has a jade of a mistress, who is continually wanting fine gowns and trumpery trinkets, which the people have to pay for;—not, indeed, that it would signify so much if she were but constant to her lover; but they did say that——." Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and flashing eyes, exclaims: "Sire, that fellow must be hanged forthwith!" "Sire!"—the boatman gazes in astonishment on his questioner. "Tut, tut," is the reply; "the poor fellow shall no longer pay corvée or gabelle, and so will he sing for the rest of his days, Vive Henri—Vive Gabrielle!"—Another scene: in the library and working room of the great king, and his great minister. The monarch shews a paper, signed with his name, to his counsellor. It is a promise of marriage to Henriette d'Entragues. Sully looks for a moment at his master, then tears up the instrument, and flings the fragments on the earth. "Are you mad, duke?" shouts Henri. "If I am," was the reply, "I should not be the only madman in France." The king takes his hand, and does him justice.—Yet one last closing sketch. In a huge gilded coach in the midst of a group of splendidly dressed courtiers, sits the king. There is an obstruction in the street. The cortège stops; the lackeys leave it to clear the way; when a moody-browed fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all on end, bounds into the carriage—a poniard gleaming above his head—and in a moment the Good King, stabbed with three mortal wounds, has gone home to his fathers. All is over: Henri Quatre is historical!
[CHAPTER VIII.]
The Val d'Ossau—The Vin de Jurancon—The old Bearne Costume—The Devil and the Basque Language—Pyrenean Scenery—The Wolf—The Bear—A Pyrenean Auberge—The Fountain of Laruns, and the Evening Song.
The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied of the clefts running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some thirty miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both forming cul de sacs for all, save active pedestrians and bold muleteers, the bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating as to my best course for seeing some of the mountain scenery, as I hung over the parapet of the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure, foaming waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky bed beneath, when a little man, with a merry red face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English sporting costume—in an old cut-away coat, and what is properly called a bird's-eye choker—the effect of which, however, was greatly taken off by sabots—addressed me, half in French, half in what he called English:—Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere else in the hills? The diligences had stopped running for the season; but what of that? he had plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for the fox-hounds, if I wished. Oh, he was well known to, and highly respected by, Messieurs les Anglais; and it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to have fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation was, that he engaged to drive me up the glen with his own worshipful hands, business being slack at the time, and that he was to be as communicative as he might touching the country, the people, their customs, and all about them. The little man was delighted with this last stipulation, and observed it so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue never lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little fellow enough, and thoroughly good-natured, I did not in the least repent my bargain. Off we went, then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn by a raw-boned white horse, who, however, went through his work like a Trojan. My driver's name was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was to pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau.
"Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded ridge to the right; "there are the Jurancon vineyards—the best in the Pyrenees; and here we shall have a coup-d'étrier of genuine old Jurancon wine."
Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I had no objection. The wine, which is white, tastes a good deal like a rough chablis, and is very deceptive, and very heady: I would advise new-comers to the Pyrenees to use it but gingerly. The garrison of Pau was changed while I was there, and the new soldiers were going rolling about the streets—some of them madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily intoxicating, yet mildly tasting wine. Our road lay along the Gave—a flashing, sparkling mountain-stream, running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood, and small fields of yellow Indian corn. Many were the cottages and clusters of huts, half-hidden amid the vines, which are trailed in screens and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree; and, on each side of the way, hedges of box-wood, growing in luxuriant thickets, which would delight the heart of an English gardener—gave note of one of the characteristic natural harvests of the Pyrenees. The soil and the climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, in more northern mountain regions, would be occupied by furze and heather, is hereabouts taken up by perfect thickets and jungles of thriving box-wood; while the laurel and rhododendron grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however, as is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first aspect of the cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost invariably together. In German Switzerland, the cottages are miserable; and every body knows what an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy. So of the Pyrenean cottages: many of them—mere hovels of wood and clay, so rickety-looking, that one wonders that the first squall from the hills does not carry them bodily away—are composed of one large, irregular room, having an earthen floor, with black, smoky beams stretching across beneath the thatch. Two or three beds are made up in the darkest corners; festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of garlic are suspended from the rafters; and opposite the huge open fireplace is generally placed the principal piece of furniture of the apartment—a lumbering pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the household. In a very great proportion of cases, the windows of these dwellings are utterly unglazed; and when the rough, unpainted outside shutters are closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people, however, seem better fed and better clothed than the German Switzers. In the vicinity of Pau, the women wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on their heads, are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons, and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun stuff, so short as to display a fair modicum of thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The men, except that they wear a blue bonnet—flat, like that called Tam O'Shanter in Scotland—are decently clad in the ordinary blouse. It is as you leave behind the influence of the town, that you come upon the ancient dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has its distinguishing peculiarities of costume; but cross its boundary to the eastward, and you relapse at once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of France—clumsy, home-cut coats only being occasionally substituted for the blouse.
The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque; and as we made our way up into the hills, we soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed man, or a black-eyed and stately stepping woman. The peasantry of Ossau are indeed remarkable, notwithstanding their hard work and frequent privations, for personal beauty. They have little or no real French blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the stock to be Spanish, just as the beauties of Arles, out of all sight the finest women in France, are in their origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women of Ossau are as swarthy as Moors, and have the true eastern dignity of motion, owing it, indeed, to the same cause as the Orientals—the habit of carrying water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general clearly and classically cut—the nose thin and aquiline—the eye magnificently black, lustrous, and slightly almond-shaped—another eastern characteristic. The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the colours thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black jacket is worn over a red vest, more or less gaudily ornamented with rough embroidery, and fastening by small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of capote or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of the jacket and petticoat, is arranged. In good weather, and when a heavy burden is to be carried, this hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the head, forming a protection also from the heat of the sun. In cold and rainy days, it is allowed to fall down over the shoulders, mingling with the folds of the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear peculiarly shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over the edges of the sabot, into which the naked foot is thrust. The dress of the men is of a correspondingly quaint character. On their heads they invariably wear the flat, brown bonnet, called the beret, and from beneath it the hair flows in long, straight locks, soft and silky, and floating over their shoulders. A round jacket, something like that worn by the women, knee-breeches of blue velvet—upon high days and holidays—and, like the rest of the costume, of coarse home-spun woollen upon ordinary occasions, complete the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough weather. In the glens more to the westward, low sandals of untanned leather are frequently used, the sole of the foot only being protected. Sandals have certain classic associations connected with them, and look very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable in reality. I saw half-a-dozen peasants tramping in this species of chaussure through the wet streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations could no where be witnessed.
As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the facetious M. Martin had a joke to crack with every man, woman, and child we encountered; and the black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces grinned in high delight, at the witticisms.