A ruined fortress rises on a neighbouring hill-top which gives a note of feudal times, but the general aspect of Luz, and its neighbouring pretty suburb of St. Sauveur, each of them possessed of thermal establishments, are resorts pure and simple, which, indeed, both these places were bound to become, being on the direct route between Pau and Tarbes and Gavarnie, and neighbours of Cauterets and Barèges.
Barèges lies just eastward of Luz on a good carriage road. Like Bagnères-de-Bigorre, it is an oddly named town which depends chiefly upon the fact that it is a celebrated thermal station for its fame. It sits thirteen hundred metres above the sea, and while bright and smiling and gracious in summer, in winter it is as stern-visaged as a harpy, and about as unrelenting towards one’s comfort. Only this last winter the mountain winds and snows caved in Barèges’ Casino and a score of houses, killing several persons. There is no such a storm-centre in the Pyrenees. Barèges has got a record no one will envy, though the efficacy of its waters makes them worthy rivals of those of Bigorre and Cauterets.
The fame of Barèges’ waters goes back to the days of the young Duc du Maine, who came here with Madame de Maintenon, in 1667, on the orders of the doctor of the king. In 1760 a military hospital was founded here to receive the wounded of the Seven Years War.
Barèges is one of the best centres for mountain excursions in the Pyrenees. The town itself is hideous, but the surroundings are magnificent.
Above Saint Sauveur, Luz and Cauterets, in the valley of the Gaube, rises the majestic Vignemale, whose extreme point, the Pic Longue, reaches a height of three thousand, two hundred and ninety-eight metres, which is the greatest height of the French Pyrenees. In the year 1808, on the occasion of the coming of the Queen of Holland, spouse of Louis Bonaparte, to the Bains de Saint Sauveur, an unknown muse of poesy sang the praise of this great mountain as follows:—
“Roi des Monts: Despote intraitable.
Toi qui domine dans les airs,
Toi dont le trône inabordable
Appelle et fixe les éclairs!
Fier Vignemale, en vain ta cime
S’entoure d’un affreux abime
De niège et de débris pierreux;
Une nouvelle Bérénice
Ose, à côte du précipice,
Gravir sur ton front sourcilleux!”
Each of the thermal stations in these parts possesses its own special peak of the Pyrenees. Luchon has the Nethou; Bigorre the Pic du Midi de Bagnères; Eaux-Bonnes the Balaitous; Eaux-Chaudes the Pic du Midi d’Ossau; Vernet the Canigou and Saint Sauveur and Cauterets the Vignemale.
The Vignemale, composed of four peaks, each of them overreaching three thousand, two hundred metres, encloses a veritable river of ice. Its profound crevasses and its Mer de Glace remind one of the Alps more than do the accessories of any other peak of the Pyrenees.
The ascension of the Vignemale, from Cauterets or Luz, is the classic mountain climb of the Pyrenees. No peak is more easy of access, and none gives so complete an idea of the ample ranges of the Pyrenees, from east to west, or north to south.