The bastides,—the country houses, often fortified châteaux with dependencies,—originally a Béarnais institution, often remained stagnant hamlets or villages instead of developing into prosperous towns as they did elsewhere in the Midi of France, particularly in Gascogne and Languedoc. Many a time their sites had been chosen fortunately, but instead of a bourg growing up around them they remained isolated and backward for no apparent reason whatever.
This has been the fate of Labastide-Ville-franche in Béarn. One traces readily enough the outlines of the original bastide, but more than all else marvels at the great, four-storied donjon tower, planned by the father of the illustrious Gaston Phœbus of Foix. This sentinel tower stood at the juncture of the principalities of Béarn, Bidache and Navarre. Gaston Phœbus finished this great donjon with the same generous hand with which he endowed everything he touched, and it ranks among the best of its era wherever found. The bastide and its dependencies grew up around the foot of this tower, but there is nothing else to give the little town—or more properly village—any distinction whatever; it still remains merely a delightful old-world spot, endowed with a charming situation. It calls itself a rendezvous commercial, but beyond being a cattle-market of some importance, thanks to its being the centre of a spider’s web of roads, not many outside the immediate neighbourhood have ever heard its name mentioned, or seen it in print.
In this same connection it is to be noted that all of Béarn and the Basque provinces are celebrated for their cattle. What Arabia is to the horse, the Pyrenean province of Béarn, more especially the gracious valley of Barétous, called the “Jardin de Béarn,” is to the bovine race.
Another delightful, romantic corner of Béarn is the valley of the Aspe. Urdos is its principal town, and here one sees ancient customs as quaint as one is likely to find hereabouts. Urdos is but a long-drawn-out, one-street village along the banks of the Gave d’Aspe, but it is lively and animated with all the gaiety of the Latin life. On a fête day omnibuses, country carts, donkeys, mules and even oxen bring a very respectable crowd to town, and there is much merry-making of a kind which knows not modern amusements in the least degree. Continuous dancing,—all day and all night—interspersed with eating and drinking suffices. Something of the sort was going on, the author and artist thought, when they arrived at five on a delightful June day; but no, it was nothing but the marriage feast of a local official, and though all the rooms of the one establishment which was dignified by the name of a hotel were taken, shelter was found at an humble inn kept by a worthy widow. She certainly was worthy, for she charged for dinner, lodging, and coffee in the morning, for two persons, but the small sum of six francs and didn’t think the automobile, which was lodged in the shed with the sheep and goats and cows, was an excuse for sticking on a single sou. She was more than worthy; she was gentle and kind, for when a fellow traveller, a French Alpinist, would find a guide to show him the way across the mountain on the morrow, and so on down into the Val d’Ossau, she expostulated and told him that the witless peasant he had engaged to show him the road had never been, to her knowledge, out of his own commune. Her interrogation of the unhappy, self-named “guide” was as sharp a bit of cross-questioning as one sees out of court. “No, he knew not the route, but all one had to do was to go up the mountain first and then down the other side.” All very well, but which other side? There were many ramifications. He was sure of being able to find his way, he said, but the Frenchman became suspicious, and the bustling landlady found another who did know, and would work by some other system than the rule of thumb, which is a very bad one for mountain climbing. This time the intrepid tourist found a real guide and not a mere “cultivateur,” as the mistress of the inn contemptuously called the first.
CHAPTER XVI
OF THE HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF BÉARN
THE old Vicomté de Béarn lay snug within the embrace of the Pyrenees between Foix, Comminges and Basse Navarre. It was further divided into various small districts whose entities were later swallowed by the parent state, and still later by the royal domain under the rule of Henry IV.
There is one of these divisions, which not every traveller through the smiling valleys of the Pyrenees knows either by name or history. It is the Pays de Bidache, formerly the principality of Bidache, a tiny kingdom whose sovereign belonged to the house of Grammont. This little principality was analogous to that of Liechtenstein, lying between Switzerland and Austria. Nothing remains but the title, and the Grammonts, who figure in the noblesse of France to-day, are still by right Princes de Bidache, the eldest of the family being also Duc de Guiche. The château of the Grammonts at Bidache, which is a town of eight or nine hundred inhabitants, sits high on the hill overlooking the town. It is in ruins, but, nevertheless, there are some very considerable vestiges remaining of the glories that it possessed in the times of Henri IV when the house of Grammont was at its greatest height.
In the little village church are the tombs of the Sires de Grammont, notably that of the Maréchal Antoine III, who died in 1678.
Bidache was made a duché-pairie for the family De Grammont, who, by virtue of their letters patent, were absolute sovereigns. The Princes de Bidache, up to the Revolution, exercised all the rights of a chief of state, a curious latter day survival of feudal powers.
Tradition plays no small part even to-day in the affairs of the De Grammonts, and the old walls of the family château could tell much that outsiders would hardly suspect. One fact has leaked out and is on public record. The sons born in the family are usually named Agenor, and the daughters Corisande, names illustrious in the golden days of Béarnais history.