Another very business-like sign may be seen at Eaux-Bonnes,—that of a transatlantic steamship company. They gather traffic, the steamship agents, even here in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees, and Amerique du Sud especially is still depopulating southern France.
Eaux-Chaudes is another neighbouring thermal station. As its name implies, it is a source of hot water, and was already famous in the reign of Henri IV. The little community points out with pride that the archives record the fact that this monarch “took the waters here with much benefit.”
The little Pyrenean village of Gabas lies high up the valley under the shelter of the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. It is not greatly known to fame; it is what the French call a hamlet with but a few chimneys. A late census gave it twenty-three inhabitants, but probably the most of these have departed in the last year or so to become femmes de chambre and garçons de café in the big towns.
The place is, however, very ancient, and was the outgrowth of a little settlement which surrounded a chapel built as early as 1121, and a sort of resting-house or hospital for pilgrims who passed this way in mediæval times. This establishment was known as Santa-Christina, and was consecrated to the pilgrims going and coming from Saint Jacques de Compostelle.
Plastered up recently on the wall of the mayor’s office in the little village was a placard addressed to the “Messieurs d’Ossau,” by the Conseiller d’Arrondissement. This singular form of address is a survival of the ancient constitution of this little village, which, in times past, when everything else round about was feudal or monarchial, was sort of demi-republican. The “Messieurs d’Ossau” recognized no superior save the Prince of Béarn, and considered him only as a sort of a titular dignitary with no powers over them worth speaking of.
Here in the communes of Laruns and Arudy the peasants have certain rights of free pasture for their flocks and herds, a legacy which came originally through the generosity of Henri IV, and which no later rule of monarchy or republic has ever been able to assail. The “Messieurs d’Ossau” also had the ancient right of gathering about the same council table with the Vicomtes of Béarn when any discussion of the lands included in the territorial limits of Béarn was concerned.
CHAPTER XX
TARBES, BIGORRE AND LUCHON
THERE is a clean-cut, commercial-looking air to Tarbes, little in keeping with what one imagines the capital of the Hautes-Pyrénées to be. Local colour has mostly succumbed to twentieth-century innovations in the train of great hotels, tourists and clubs. In spite of this, the surrounding panorama is superb; the setting of Tarbes is delightful; and at times—but not for long at a time—it is really a charming town of the Midi. Tarbes possessed a château of rank long years ago; not of so high a rank as that of Pau, for that was royal, but still a grand and dignified château, worthy of the seigneurs who inhabited it. Raymond I fortified the place in the tenth century, and all through the following five hundred years life here was carried on with a certain courtly splendour. To-day the château, or what is left of it, serves as a prison.
The unlovely cathedral at Tarbes was once a citadel, or at least served as such. It must have been more successful as a warlike accessory than as a religious shrine, for it is about the most ungracious, unchurchly thing to be seen in the entire round of the Pyrenees.
The chief architectural curiosity of Tarbes is the Lycée, on whose portal (dated 1669) one reads: “May this building endure until the ant has drunk the waters of the ocean, and the tortoise made the tour of the globe.” It seems a good enough dedication for any building.