The fame of Lourdes dates back to 1858, when a little village girl, fourteen years old, named Bernadette Soubirons, said that she had seen and talked with the Virgin. This happened several times. Each time the Virgin is said to have commanded the child to tell others, and to have a church built above the spring, since its waters were to have miraculous powers of healing. Crowds went with her to the grotto, but she was the only one who saw anything. The Bishop of Tarbes believed in her visions. The fact that the child was "diseased, asthmatic, and underfed," and also that "she was not particularly intelligent," did not make any difference. Pope Pius X issued a Bull of endorsement. A basilica was built above the grotto, and from that time the thousands kept coming in increasing numbers every year.
We noticed that not all of the visitors to Lourdes had come on a pilgrimage of faith. Everywhere one sees signs with large letters warning against pickpockets. The evidence of business enterprise was also unmistakable. There were large hotels; one long street was devoted to bazaars for selling pious mementos; the windows of many shops contained tin cans of all sizes for sale, these to be filled with Lourdes water. The many advertisements of Lourdes lozenges, made from Lourdes water, and the women dressed in black, sitting at the gates of the garden and selling wax candles, all helped to give the place an atmosphere of commercial enterprise.
[CHAPTER VIII]
TARBES TO BIARRITZ
From Tarbes the road climbed a high hill above the city and then flung its marvelous coils through the mountains to Pau, that fashionable English resort where the Pyrenees can be seen marshaling their peaks in such grandeur. The country around Pau looked very English. There were neat villages with high-pitched roofs, spreading trees, and a feeling of repose in the scenery very characteristic of the large English estate. With almost fantastic suddenness, the landscape changed. Peasant houses showed traces of Spanish influence. We saw no horses; plows and country carts were drawn by bullocks. Such fine looking cattle of the Pyrenees, hundreds of them! It seemed at least every few minutes that a new drove crowded in confusion down the road or across it, and made it very difficult for us to get through. There were many bulls. One hears so many exciting tales about the savage bulls of the Pyrenees that we were prepared for an attack at almost any time.
If any one would like to make sure of having an eventful experience, we suggest that he motor through the Pyrenees in a red car. Other motor cars kept the dust clouds flying. At one railway crossing we counted ten automobiles waiting for the bar to be lifted.
A score of hungry motorists were lunching in the village inn of Orthez when we arrived. One of them, a Frenchman, told us by all means to see the curious fortified bridge that crosses the Gave in this village. "C'est très curieux. C'est quelque chose à voir!" The ruin, with the high stone tower in the middle of the bridge, is a thrilling relic of the religious wars. One can see the tower window through which the unfortunate priests and friars were forced by the Protestants to leap into the rapid stream. Those who breasted the strong current were killed as they climbed out on the banks.
Bayonne was calling us. Our speedometer registered the kilometers so quickly that there were fully two hours of daylight to spare when we crossed the long bridge over the Adour in search of the Grand Hôtel. One street led us astray, and then another, until we were in the suburbs before discovering our mistake. It was a fortunate mistake, for we were here favored with a view of the fortifications of Bayonne and the ivy-covered ruin of Marrac, the château where Napoleon met the Spanish king Ferdinand and compelled him to renounce the throne in favor of his brother Joseph. It is one of the strange turnings of history that the same city where Joseph was proclaimed King of Spain should have witnessed, six years later, the downfall of his hopes.