Shortly after this embassy, St. Oren felt his end approaching, and armed himself with the holy sacraments for the last earthly combat. His soul passed away, with a sweet odor, on the first of May, and his body was enshrined in the church of St. John, which subsequently took his name. He has always been greatly venerated in this country, and is invoked in all diseases of the mind. Count John I. of Armagnac gave a magnificent silver bust as a reliquary for the skull of St. Oren. His feast is still religiously celebrated, and is a great holiday among the common people, who assemble after vespers to dance their rondeaux in the open air.
The church of St. John, where reposed a long line of holy apostles and prelates, was, with the two cities, destroyed by the Saracens, in the eighth century. But in the year of grace 956, as I have said, Bernard le Louche, inspired by God, built on the same spot a magnificent church with three naves, to which he joined a Benedictine abbey. They were built of the stones of the city walls, which, two centuries before, had been levelled to the dust by the Moors. A hundred years later, this abbey was reduced to a priory by St. Hugo, and affiliated to his abbey at Cluny. The names of a long succession of abbots and priors are recorded in the chronicles of St. Oren's Priory, most of whom belonged to the noblest families of the country. During the French Revolution of 1793, the abbatial church and a part of the monastery were, alas! destroyed; but there is a quadrangular tower—a part of the original abbey—still standing, and a fine Gothic chapel, which dates from the fourteenth century, besides a more modern, and still large, edifice, with long dim corridors leading away to austere cells, or to spacious sunny salons. These were taken possession of by a venerable community of Ursuline nuns, who had been dispersed during the Reign of Terror, but who, as soon as permitted, hastened like doves to find a new ark.
A steep spiral staircase, of hewn stone, lighted only by long narrow chinks left purposely in the thick walls, leads to the top of the old tower, which commands a delightful view of the valley of the Algersius. At the foot, toward the south, lies the convent garden, with its wells, its almond-trees, acacias, vines, and rose-bushes—loved haunts of the nightingales, which I heard there for the first time in my life. On the east passes the route impériale, beneath the very convent walls, and beyond, parallel with it, flows the river which gives its name to the département. Centuries ago, when the country was more thickly wooded, it is said to have been a navigable river, and merited to be sung by Fortunatus, who was a poet as well as bishop. The eastern bank is shaded by a long grove of noble trees—a public promenade—where, at due hours, may be seen all the fashion, valor, and sanctity of the city. Through the trees may be caught a glimpse of an old Franciscan monastery, now an asylum for the insane, where once stood a temple of Bacchus, whose memory is still perpetuated in this land of vineyards. There, in the fourteenth century, was buried Reine, niece of Pope Clement V., and wife of John I., the thirteenth Comte d'Armagnac. Near by is the airy tower of St. Pierre, first built by St. Saturnin, in the third century, and rebuilt several times since—the last time, after its destruction by the Huguenots in the civil and religious disturbances of the sixteenth century. The music of its carillon floats through the valley at an early hour every morning, summoning the devout to mass.
Cradling the valley toward the west is the quaint old city. Its houses of cream-colored stone with red tiled roofs rise one behind the other on terraces, and, crowning all, are the towers of one of the finest cathedrals of France.
Due east from the tower, in the background, rises a high hill, called in the time of the Romans Mount Nerveva, but which now glories in the more Christian appellation of Mount St. Cric. There our glorious St. Oren battered down a temple of Apollo, but its summit is still lit up by that god at each return of hallowed morn.
Away to the south stretch the Pyrenees, hiding Catholic and chivalric Spain, and gleaming in the sun like the very walls of the celestial city. Even Maldetta, with its name of ill omen, looks pure and holy.
This old tower is for me a loved haunt on a bright sunny day. I often betake myself to its top to enjoy all the reveries inspired by the scene before me. Its venerable, almost crumbling walls, its curious recesses and carvings, speak loudly of the monks of old. There I seem nearer to heaven; I breathe a purer, a more refined atmosphere, which exalts the heart and quickens its vibrations.
There is a large sunny apartment in the tower in which I witnessed a most affecting event—the death of a nun. So impressed was I by this flight of an angelic soul to the everlasting embraces of the Spouse of virgins, that I cannot refrain from giving you a sketch of its closing scenes.