Speaking of the church Taine says: “Cette église est une boïte ronde, en pierre et plâtre, faite pour cinquante personnes, ou l’on en met deux cents.” This box of stone and plaster has disappeared to make room for one of more suitable dimensions in what is caricature of Romanesque.
There is a good carriage road from Eaux Bonnes over a fine pass into the Val d’Aruns and to Argelez. The chief excursion is to the Pic de Gers, 8570 feet high.
The Eaux Bonnes springs have been known for centuries. The Béarnais soldiers wounded in the battle of Pavia in 1525, were sent here to be healed; and for some time after that the springs went by the name of les Eaux d’arquebusades. But they owe their modern renown to the works of Théophile Bordeu. There are seven sources of sulphurated waters, which are good for throat disorders, wounds, sores, and morbid maladies.
The Eaux Bonnes was the scene of a sad accident in 1883, that happened to the Rev. Merton Smith, vicar of Plympton S. Mary, in Devonshire. He had gone to the Pyrenees for his month’s holiday, and visited this watering-place. On 8 August he left his hotel at 3 p.m., in his usual spirits, to walk to Eaux Chaudes, and never returned. He had intended to return the same evening.
Nothing could be heard of him. Inquiries were made in all directions, search parties were organized; he could nowhere be found. Months passed, and his disappearance remained unexplained. The Bishop of Exeter was in perplexity what to do. He could not institute to the living without certain knowledge that Mr. Merton Smith was dead, and this knowledge could not be obtained.
Uncharitable tongues wagged. Some said that he had fallen a victim to the fascinations of a Pyrenean shepherdess, and that he was picking edelweiss and playing a flute on some high Alp to the delectation of the damsel. Some said that he had been captured by Roman Catholics and interned in a monastery. Some said that he had been murdered by Ossau mountaineers for the sake of his money.
Not till eighteen months after his disappearance was the mystery cleared up. His body was found on the mountainside, buried among thick bushes of box that had concealed it. He had apparently been stooping to pick a flower and had fallen over a precipice and been killed instantaneously. His watch and purse were intact. It was by chance only that a woodcutter discovered the remains whilst clearing the boxwood.