The ever useful Froissart furnishes a reference to Tarbes and its inns which is most apropos. Travellers even in those days, unless they were noble courtiers, repaired to an inn as now.
The Messire Espaing de Lyon, and the Maître Jehan Froissart made many journeys together. It was here under the shelter of the Pyrenees that the maître said to his companion:
“Et nous vînmes à Tarbes, et nous fûmes tout aises à l’hostel de l’Etoile.... C’est une ville trop bien aisée pour séjourner chevaux: de bons foins, de bons avoines et de belles rivières.”
Tarbes is something of an approach to this, but not altogether. The missing link is the Hostel de l’Étoile, and apparently nothing exists which takes the place of it. From the fourteenth century to the twentieth century is a long time to wait for hotel improvements, particularly if they have not yet arrived.
The great Marché de Tarbes is, and has been for ages, one of its chief sights, indeed it is the rather commonplace modern city’s principal picturesque accessory, if one excepts its grandly scenic background. Every fifteen days throughout the year the market draws throngs of buyers and sellers from the whole region of the western Pyrenees.
In the very midst of the most populous and wealthy valleys and plains of the Pyrenees, one sees here the complete gamut of picturesque peoples and costumes in which the country abounds. Here are the Béarnais, agile and gay, and possessed of the very spirit associated with Henri IV. They seat themselves among their wares, composed of woollen stuffs and threads, pickled meats, truffles, potatoes, cheeses of all sorts, agricultural implements—mostly primitive, but with here and there a gaudy South Bend or Milwaukee plough—porcelain, coppers, cattle, goats, sheep and donkeys, and a greater variety of things than one’s imagination can suggest. It is almost the liveliest and most populous market to be seen in France to-day. The gaudy umbrellas and tents cover the square like great mushrooms. There are much picturesqueness and colour, and lively comings and goings too. This is ever a contradiction to the reproach of laziness usually applied to the care-free folk of the Midi.
In olden times the market of Tarbes was the resort of many Spanish merchants, and they still may be distinguished as donkey-dealers and mule traders, but the chief occupants of the stalls and little squares of ground are the dwellers of the countryside, who think nothing of coming in and out a matter of four or five leagues to trade a side of bacon—which they call simply salé—for a sheep or a goat, or a sheep or a goat for a nickel clock, made in Connecticut. It’s as hard for the peasant to draw the line between necessities and superfluities as it is for the rest of us, and he is often apt to put caprice before need.
Neighbouring close upon Tarbes is the ancient feudal bourg of Ossun, which most of the fox-hunters of Pau, or the pilgrims of Lourdes, know not even by name. It’s only the traveller by road—the omnipresent automobilist of to-day—who really stands a chance of “discovering” anything. The art of travel degenerated sadly with the advent of the railway and the “personally conducted pilgrimage,” but the automobile is bringing it all back again. The bicycle stood a chance of participating in the same honour at one time, but folk weren’t really willing to take the trouble of becoming a vagabond on wheels.
Ossun was the site of a Roman camp before it became a feudal stronghold, and with the coming of the château and its seigneurs, in the fifteenth century, it came to a prominence and distinction which made of it nearly a metropolis. To-day it is a dull little town of less than two thousand souls, but with a most excellent hotel, the Galbar, which is far and away better (to some of us) than the popular hotels of Pau, Tarbes or Luchon.
The château of Ossun, or so much of it as remains, was practically a fortress. What it lacks in luxury it makes up for in its intimation of strength and power, and from this it is not difficult to estimate its feudal importance.