In spite of this exceptional case, the poires d’Auch (their right name, by the way) that grow within the limits of the city are generally without seeds. The superabundant pulp seems to stifle them. They are still the pride of the place, and it was only a year or two ago a number were sent to his Holiness Pius IX.
Père Aubéry, whom I have quoted, was connected with the college at Auch, formerly under the direction of the Jesuits. S. Francis Regis was also for some time one of its professors. Among the eminent men educated here may be mentioned Cardinal d’Ossat, who, when chargé d’affaires at Rome, succeeded in obtaining the absolution of Henry IV. from the Holy See. He was a poor country lad, whose condition, exciting the pity of the canons of Trie, they made him a choirboy, and sent him to school. He became successively a charity scholar of the Jesuits at Auch, the protégé of Cardinal de Foix and his secretary of embassy at Rome, and, finally, chargé d’affaires at the Papal court and Cardinal-bishop of Bayeux. He died at Rome in 1604, bequeathing the little he possessed to the poor and his two secretaries. This celebrated diplomatist was an honor to his country and the church that developed his talents.
The famous Nostradamus was another pupil of this college.
Bernard du Poey, a disciple of Buchanan, and a poet of some note, was professor here when the college was under the direction of laymen. We give one of his epigrams, written while connected with this institution:
“Lucis amore simul fœdam protrudimus omnem
Barbariem: tenebris nec patet ista domus.”
“The love of light makes us cast away every vestige of barbarism: this house opens not to darkness.”
“Barbarism”—“light”—“darkness”—a jargon often heard in our day also, and it still finds its dupes. The would-be metaphysicians and theologians who use it should meditate on this sentence of Berkeley’s: “We first raise a dust, and then complain we cannot see!”
Once more on the way. It is not till we approach Rabastens we see an opening in the outer range of the Pyrenees, and behold Mt. Maladetta raising heavenward its glittering diadem of glaciers. Behind is Spain, religious Spain, “land of an eternal crusade” and wondrous saints. Rabastens is one of the most ancient towns in Bigorre, and celebrated in the religious wars: It was here Blaise de Monluc received the frightful wound in his face which obliged him to wear a mask the rest of his life, and gave him the leisure to write his Commentaries, which Henry IV. called the Soldier’s Bible. This old warrior, deprived of nearly all his limbs, coolly relates a thousand incidents of incredible bravery in the boasting manner of a true Gascon, that does not ill become a book written for the defenders of Gascony.