most affecting appeals that can be made to the human heart. For the long, sad procession of mourners who go weeping and groaning through this valley of tears—gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle—constitutes the greater part of the human race. The widow, the orphan, the friendless, the infirm, the needy, and the laborer with little or no joy in life, when they turn towards Mary, love to find her at the foot of the cross in mute sorrow over the inanimate form of her Son, or with the wheel of swords in her bleeding heart, or some other attribute of human infirmity. Hence the names given to these mountain chapels by the sorrowful as a mark of their trust in this sweet type of grief: Notre Dame des Larmes, Notre Dame des Souffrances, de la Consolation, de l’Espérance—names which have balm in their very sound. Above all is the title which seems to include all other sorrows—Notre Dame de Pitié—the most common among the perils of the mountain streams and on the broad moors of the Landes. There are innumerable Pietàs, or Pitiés, all through this region—on the sands of the seashore below Bayonne, where the sailors go to pray before embarking on the perfidious waves of the Bay of Biscay; in dangerous mountain passes, as in the oratory of Pène-Taillade beyond Arreau; among country groves, as in the lone sanctuary near Lannemezan to which the husbandman resorts to be spared the ravages of hail among his vines and wheat-fields; in the valleys of Bigorre; on the Calvary of Betharam; on the heights near Pau; and at Goudosse, where the poor goîtreux of the mountains go to pray. Yes, the shadow of this great type of sorrow extends over all the land.
There are several chapels of Notre Dame de Pitié in the ecclesiastical province of Auch that are particularly renowned. One of these is the beautiful chapel of Notre Dame de Garaison, in the Diocese of Tarbes, dear to every Catholic heart in the land, embosomed among the hills of the Hautes Pyrénées like a lily in the green valley, whose Madonna was solemnly crowned in 1865, by the authorization of Pope Pius IX., in the presence of forty thousand people. At the very entrance is a Pietà, melting the heart with the sight of the pale, inanimate Christ and Mary’s incomparable woe.
“Ay filh, tan mortal dolor!”
Within are dim Gothic arches, large gilt statues of the twelve apostles, and the holy image of the Mère des Douleurs, before which we went to pray amid devout pilgrims. At one side is the fountain of healing waters; behind is a garden of roses; and on the other side are cloisters shaded with acacias, in the centre of which is the white Madonna standing serene and holy in the peaceful solitude with outstretched arms, as if calling on all:
“Dites, dites une oraison
A la Vierge de Garaison
Vous qui en ces lieux amène la souffrance,
Bon pèlerins,
Accablés de chagrins,
Pour que vos cœurs s’ouvrent à l’espérance.