But there is the seamy side to Luchon, as to many things on earth: you go but a few paces from these opulent Allées and you find poverty. Frowsy women stare at us from rickety houses in the old part of the town; children, no longer silk-sashed but dirt-stained and ignorant, play in the mud-heaps; patient old tinkers and cobblers are seen in the dim shops at work. The very poor rarely gain by the growth of their neighbors. These in Luchon seem not to feel envy, but they have no part nor heart in the pride of civic progress around them. They keep on along their stolid, uncomplaining ways, having long ago faced the fact that they were immovably at the bottom of Fortune's wheel, and having forgotten since even to repine over it.
Turning off into the second Allée of the triangle, we find ourselves presently in view of the Casino, which stands back in a park of its own, set in trees, and possessing a theatre and concert-room, drawing-room or conversation-hall, and the usual café and reading-apartments. There is opera every second night and a small daily entrance-charge to the building, which may be compounded by purchasing a ticket for the month or the season.
The remaining avenue crosses back to the beginning of the first, ending with a long building given up to a species of universal bazaar, whose divisions and stands, festooned with crimson cambric, display confectionery, worsted goods, paper-weights of Pyrenean marbles, and nick-nacks of high and low degree. Opposite is a large store comfortingly called "Old England"; it augurs the presence and patronage of at least a few of the British race at Luchon, and offers a homelike stock of Anglo-Saxon goods. The walk has brought us out once more at the corner facing our hotel, and the hour for table-d'hôte strikes elfinly on the ear.
V.
Luchon owes much to one man. This was a certain Intendant of the province and of Bigorre arid Béarn, who lived about the middle of the last century and was the most practical and enterprising governor the region ever had. The Luchonnais honor the name of the Baron d'Étigny. He believed in his Pyrenees; he believed in their future, and set himself to speeding it with all his heart. He not only expended his salary but his private fortune; he wrought extraordinary changes in facilities both for trade and travel, and, curiously enough, made an extraordinary number of enemies in doing so. Towns and districts were spurred up to their duty; tree-nurseries established, agriculture stimulated, sheep and merinos and blooded horses imported for breeding; lawlessness found itself, suddenly under ban; and in especial, paths and roads were cut through the country in all directions, two hundred leagues of them, opening up to trade and fashion spot after spot only half accessible before. Thus Eaux Chaudes, Cauterets, St. Sauveur, Barèges, Luchon, previously gained only by footways, were by D'Étigny made accessible for wheeled vehicles; uncertain trails were made over into good bridle-paths; and routes also over some of the cols were begun which have been since gathered up into the sweep of the Route Thermale.
On Luchon particularly, D'Étigny's kind offices fell; and Luchon resented them the most acridly. But the fostering hand was quite able to close into a fist. D'Étigny pushed his plans firmly, despite opposition. Pending the construction of a road from Montréjeau opening full access to the valley, the town itself was taken in hand. The main street, now the Allée d'Étigny, was projected; the springs,—from which the town was then some little, distance away,—were rehabilitated; and to replace the rough path leading to them he proceeded to level the ground between and open three additional avenues, each planted with quadruple ranges of trees. But this last innovation wrought trouble; it focused the growing opposition; every chair-carrier and pony-hirer in Luchon, together with every owner of the lands condemned, spitefully resented the opening of the new routes. Combining with the neighboring mountaineers, they rose one night and utterly demolished all three of the avenues, uprooting the young trees, leaving the ways strewed with débris and wholly impassable.
D'Étigny calmly built them up anew, and with increased care.
They were demolished again.
Even the Intendant's patience failed then. He built the roads the third time, but in addition to trees he studded them with troops.
They were not molested after that. Their enemies found they had a man against them who meant what he said and was prepared to stand by it. Eventually they veered around even into respect; Luchon in the end grew to rejoice in her Allées unreservedly; they stand to this day, and D'Étigny's name is all but canonized under the lindens which once heard him vigorously cursed.