Of the château of the feudal epoch nothing remains save two covered ways, the donjon, a sixteenth-century gate and a drawbridge, this latter probably restored out of all semblance to its former outlines. One of these covered ways gave access to the upper stages with so ample a sweep that it became practically a horse stairway upon which cavaliers and lords and ladies reined their chargers.
CHÂTEAU DE LOURDES
The donjon is manifestly a near relation to that of Gaston Phœbus at Foix, though that prince had no connection with the château. Transformation has changed all but its outlines, its fosse has become a mere sub-cellar, and its windows have lost their original proportions.
The Château de Lourdes was undoubtedly a good defence in its day in spite of its present attenuated appearance. In 1373 it resisted the troops of Charles V, commanded by the Duc d’Anjou. Under the ancient French monarchy its career was most momentous, though indeed merely as a prison of state, or a house of detention for political suspects. Many were the “lettres de cachet” that brought an unwilling prisoner to be caged here in the shadow of the Pyrenees, as if imbedded in the granite of the mountains themselves.
The rock which supports the château rises a hundred metres or so above the Gave. A great square mass—the donjon—forms the principal attribute, and was formerly the house of the governor. This donjon with a chapel and a barracks has practically made up the ensemble in later years.
Here, on one of the counterforts of the Pyrenees, just beyond the grim old château, and directly before the celebrated Pic du Ger, now desecrated by a cog-railway, where the seven plains of Lavedan blend into the first slopes of the mountains, were laid the first stones of the Basilique de Lourdes in 1857.