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“For fifteen days now have I taken my carabine every evening, and have posted myself along the highway to see if no one would pass. Never a man goes by; but I give you my word I’ll go back there until I have scraped together the ducats I owe you.”
Add to this custom of thieving an extreme bravery! I believe the country is the cause of one as well as the other; extreme poverty removes timidity as well as scruples; they are leeches on the body of others, but then they are equally prodigal of their own; they can resist as well as take an advantage; if they willingly take another’s goods, they guard their own yet more willingly. Liberty has thriven here from the earliest times, crabbed and savage, home-born and tough like a stem of their own boxwood. Hear the tone of the primitive charter: "These are the tribunals of Bearn, in which mention is made of the fact that, in old times, in Beam they had no lord, and in those days they heard the praises of a certain knight. They sought him out, and made him their lord during one year; and after that, he was unwilling to maintain among them their tribunals and customs. And the court of Bearn then came together at Pau, and they required of him to maintain among them their tribunals and customs. And he would not, and thereupon they killed him in full court.”
In like manner the land of Ossau preserved its privileges, even against its viscount. Every robber who brought his booty into the valley was safe there, and might the next day present himself before the viscount with impunity: it was only when the latter, or his wife in his absence, came into the valley to dispense justice that he was judged. This scarcely ever happened, and the land of Ossau was “the retreat of all the evil livers and marauders” of the country round.
V.
These rude manners, filled with chances and dangers, produced as many heroes as brigands. First comes the Count Gaston, one of the leaders of the first crusade; he was, like all the great men of this country, an enterprising and a ready-minded man, a man of experience and one of the vanguard. At Jerusalem he went ahead to reconnoitre, and constructed the machines for the siege; he was held to be one of the wisest in counsel, and was the first to plant upon the walls the cows of Bearn. No one struck a heavier blow or calculated more exactly, and no one was fonder of calculating and striking. On his return, he fought against his neighbors, twice besieged Saragossa, and once Bayonne, and, along with king Alphonso, won two great battles against the Moors. Ah, what a time was that, for minds and muscles framed for adventure! No need then to seek for war; it was found everywhere, and profit along with it.
