A Book of the Pyrenees

by S. Baring-Gould

Upon the tower, which bears the arms of Béarn, may be seen the device, “J’ay belle dame.” It was a fancy of the boy Gaston, son of Gaston Phœbus, when he was affianced to Beatrix d’Armagnac, to whom Mauvezin was given as a dower by her father, Count John II. But Gaston was murdered by his father, as already told, before the marriage was consummated, and Beatrix was afterwards married to a viscount of Milan.

Near Mauvezin are the remains of the once famous Abbey of Escaldieu. The church was destroyed by the Huguenots, and rebuilt in the seventeenth century. It is devoid of interest, and is now converted into a coach-house. Only the chapter-house remains of the original abbey, a structure of the fourteenth century, the vaulting sustained by marble pillars.

The great mass of Lannemezan, lying across the threshold of the Val d’Aure, diverts the Neste from flowing north, and turns it to the east, just as the heap of the lande of Pontacq acts at the mouth of the Lavedan, but there deflects the Gave to the west. It falls into the Garonne at the confines of the department, which also for the same reason takes an easterly course for some way, then struggles to the north-east, and only after passing Toulouse turns to take its direction so as to empty itself into the Atlantic. The Neste is a river of very great importance. It rises in two main branches under crests clothed in eternal snows, discharging glaciers into a series of upland lakes. These natural reservoirs have been artificially raised, and their waters conducted into a canal that is carried high above the bed of the river, so as to convey its fertilizing streams over the plateau of Lannemezan. The lake of Caillaouas, under the Pic de Batchinale, and the glacier cirque of the Gours Blancs has been captured at the head of Neste de Luron, and the lakes of Aumar, Aubert, Caplong, and Orredon, that feed the other Neste of Aure have also been utilized for the same purpose, at an enormous expense and by remarkably daring works of engineering. This has had a subsidiary advantage, that the superb scenery at the sources of these streams is now accessible by good roads, whereas formerly it could be reached only by difficult and dangerous mule-paths.

At La Barthe the Neste debouches from the mountains through a deep valley, the canal passing above it on the left bank; and although the river has been thus tapped, it still continues to bring down a considerable amount of water, the overflow from its reservoirs far away in the laps of the high mountain ridge.

The Val d’Aure constituted a viscounty, and of the viscounts there were several branches: one that of the Viscounts of Larbouste, another that of the viscounts of Asté, one of whom, as already mentioned, married the heiress of Grammont. The whole of Aure was under the overlordship of the counts of Armagnac.

La Barthe, commanded by a castle of the end of the eleventh century, will not long detain a visitor. But a short way above it is the village of Lortet, where are caverns in the face of the limestone cliff that have been occupied and fortified, it is thought, originally by the Saracens and the Visigoths; but the structures that remain, notably the tower, were the work of the Templars, to whom were confided the defence of most of the passes of the Pyrenees. At Hèches is a picturesque, ivy-clad tower occupying the summit by a rock. Here are quarries of marble, rose-coloured, grey, and white, spotted with black; as also of black marble veined with white. But the principal marble quarries are farther up, at Sarrancolin on the left bank, others are on the right. Those on the former are famous. The finest are red, veined with grey, or flesh tint with yellow veins; other marbles are green, blue, violet. Versailles was adorned with columns of Sarrancolin. Thence comes the marble now employed in the Louvre for most of the pedestals.

The church of Sarrancolin was originally strongly fortified, and served as the key to the valley; it is early of the twelfth century, with Romanesque windows. There are no aisles, it is a cross church. The choir grating is of the fifteenth century. In the church is the shrine of a Spanish bishop, S. Ebbo, and is the sole specimen in the district of Limoges work, and is of the thirteenth century. To the north of the church is the chapter-house in ruins. Fragments of the town walls remain, as does a gateway and tower of the fifteenth century. The houses are all built of the marble of which the hill is formed on which the place stands, and they are crowded about the church, in the constrained area within the old walls. The place recommends itself to the painter and to the archæologist.

The canal takes its waters from the Neste above the little town, and the river accordingly has in the upper portion of the valley a freer and fuller flow.

But before we have mounted so far up the Neste, a diversion may well be made to the valley of the Arros, which rises in the mountains between the Val de Campan and that of Aure. We might have supposed that it would speedily throw itself into the Adour or the Neste. But not so. It holds on its independent course far away to the north, and does not condescend to unite with the Adour till it enters the department of Gers.

In this narrow valley, high up in the mountains, stand near each other the two castles of Lomné and Espêche, concerning which the following legend is told. I will give it in the words of Mr. Inglis:—