After several leagues the mountains became wooded, and a bend of the river, along which we kept, brought us into the delightful basin of Argelés, one of the valleys of the Lavedan. This is the Eden of the Pyrenees. On the mountain slopes grow the walnut and the oak. The roads are shaded with long lines of ash-trees. The meadows were covered with rich harvests. The thickets were blooming with roses. The houses were almost buried among fruit-trees of all kinds. Every now and then we came to a tall cross with the insignia of the Passion, or some wayside niche with its Virgin and fresh flowers before her. We passed the square tower of Vidalos on a height, and farther on came to the ancient castle of Vieuzac, once a military post that kept alive the signal-fires in troubled times. On every hand were quaint-looking villages with pretty chapels half-hidden in the folds of the mountains, each with some old monument, or older tradition, to which it fondly clings. From Agos to Pierrefitte, only about six miles, there are ten charming villages set in a framework of mountains no poet could describe. They close around this happy valley, as if to shield it from all outward influences. During the Huguenot ascendency in the neighboring province of Béarn it is said no taint of the new religion ever found its way into this valley. At the north is Mount Balandraü, easily ascended, that affords a fine view of the country, which is full of wonderful contrasts. The Gave winds swiftly through the most beautiful of valleys; on every hand are the mountains, sometimes like a vast rampart of verdure, sometimes swelling up, one after the other, like great waves, with a high peak occasionally, jagged as a saw, and in the distance the eternal glaciers glittering in the sun and feeding the numerous cascades and torrents that lash the mountain sides.
To this peaceful valley came St. Orens from his native Spain, in the fourth century, before whom, according to the Spanish legend, a supernatural light burned and a mysterious hand pointed the way. And it was yonder umbrageous mountain that, when he sought to escape from the fame of his sanctity, opened at his approach and hid him in its bosom.
Here, too, four centuries after, came St. Savin, son of the Count of Barcelona, when he forsook the grandeurs of the world for a cell in the wilderness. A few years since there were vestiges of his cell at Pouey Aspé, after a thousand years; and tradition points out the fountain that sprang up from a blow of his staff when the stream that flowed past his cell dried up in the summer. His tomb is still honored in the abbey church of St. Savin, which is one of the most conspicuous objects in the landscape, with its queer steeple, shaped like an extinguisher.
No tourist fails to visit St. Savin: the archæologist on account of its old Romanesque church of the tenth century; the artist for its picturesque site; the pious to honor one of the most popular saints of the seven valleys; and the political economist because, in the middle ages, this abbey was the nucleus of a little republic of eight villages, called the Pascal of St. Savin, the inhabitants of which had from time immemorial the right of universal suffrage, and where even the women, without the advantages of modern progress, were admitted to vote!
The abbey of St. Savin—that is what remains of it—stands on the side of a mountain amid dense groves of chestnut-trees. According to the old cartularies, it was founded by Charlemagne on the site of the Palatium Æmilianum erected by the Romans after the conquest to keep the country in subjection, but ruined by the Saracens. Roland himself is said to have received hospitality from the monks. Pulci, in his Rotta di Roncisvalle, relates how he delivered them from the giants Alabastre and Passamonte, and their brother Morgante only escaped being cleft in two by submitting to be baptized in the church. This monastery, renowned in legend and song, was burned to the ground by the fierce Normans, and it was more than a century before it rose from its ashes. It was restored by Raymond I., Count of Bigorre, about the middle of the tenth century. He gave the house to the monks of St. Benedict, and bestowed on them the valley of Cauterets, on condition that they would build a church there in honor of St. Martin, and provide accommodations for those who should frequent the springs. He also made over to them his rights to the game in the pascal valleys, as well as certain claims on the produce of the dairy. The abbey became likewise an object of bounty to other neighboring lords, who confided in St. Savin when alive, and in death wished to lie near his hallowed shrine. Cornelia de Barbazan, grandmother of a Vicomtesse de Lavedan, had great devotion to St. Savin, and gave the monastery one-half the abbey of Agos. The other half belonged to Arnaud de Tors, a lord who only had two children, and they were deaf mutes. He offered them both to God and St. Savin, and subsequently his wife, himself, and all he possessed. Cornelia’s husband outlived her, and on his death-bed asked the monks of St. Savin for the monastic habit, and gave them also all he owned at Agos. The kings of Navarre, the vicomtes of Béarn, and Henry IV. himself proved themselves the zealous patrons of this monastery.
The abbey of St. Savin became the intellectual as well as moral centre of the valleys around. Several of the abbots were noted for their sanctity, and most of them were from good families. They figured among the great lords of the province, and when they visited the little states of their republic the people came out to meet them with young maidens bearing flowers in a basket. They had certain feudal rights over the eight villages, but bound themselves, on taking possession of their office, to respect the customs and privileges of the inhabitants, believed to have been handed down from the beginning of time. The people were none of them serfs, but all free citizens who had the right of deciding by majority of votes every question that affected the interests of the republic. Each village was a little state by itself, and sent its representatives to the general assembly, which was held in the cloister of St. Savin. The women themselves, as we have said, had a voice in public affairs. An old record of 1316 says that when the people of Cauterets came together in the porch of the church to decide whether they should yield to the abbot’s proposition to change the site of the town and baths, they all consented, except one strong-minded woman, named Gaillardine de Fréchou, who stoutly held out against the lord abbot. Women seem to have been regarded in these valleys as something sacred. In the old statutes of the country, drawn up by the abbot of St. Savin and other dignitaries of the province, one of the articles declared that if a criminal took refuge under a woman’s protection, his person was safe, on condition of his repairing the damage. She gave him asylum, as if a temple, or had something of the nature of a divinity! This code also forbade the creditors seizing the oxen and agricultural implements of the laborer. The people elected seven judges to try all criminal cases, but the abbot exercised the higher prerogatives of justice. He never stained his hands with blood, however; it was the Count of Bigorre alone who could impose the sentence of death. The abbot had special rights, also, which he jealously guarded as a means of revenue. The pastors of the eight villages could say Low Mass for their flocks and administer the Holy Communion, but High Mass had to be attended at St. Savin, where the children were also brought to be baptized and the dead for burial, unless in exceptional cases. The obligation of baptism and burial at St. Savin was not confined to the Pascal, but extended to the sixty villages of the valleys of Argelés and Azun. The people had the privilege of hunting in the forests and fishing in the streams—and the game and trout are not to be despised in these days—but the abbot had a right to the skins and a shoulder of certain animals, and an annual tribute of fish.
The monks of St. Savin were noted for their hospitality, and they often received visits from those who frequented the baths of Cauterets. In the sixteenth century they welcomed Catharine of Navarre in spite of her Contes and taste for the doctrines of Calvin; and in the seventeenth the poet Bertin, who, in his light, scoffing way, has celebrated “the long dinner and short Mass of the good abbot of St. Savin,” though he does not seem to have attended the latter, brief as it might have been.
Margaret of Navarre had been staying at Cauterets, where she is said to have composed the Heptaméron. She set out thence for Tarbes, but the bridges had all been carried away by rains, which she says were “so marvellous and great that it seemed as if God had forgotten his promise to Noe not to destroy the earth again by water.” The preface to her work says: “After riding all day she and her suite towards evening espied a belfry, where, as well as they could, but not without great trouble and difficulty, they succeeded in arriving, and were kindly received by the abbot and monks of the abbey, called St. Savin. The abbot, who was of an excellent family, lodged them very honorably, and, as he conducted them to their rooms, made inquiries as to the dangers they had undergone. After listening to their account he told them they were not alone in their misfortunes, for there were two young ladies in another apartment who had escaped great danger. These poor ladies, at half a league from Pierrefitte, had met a bear descending from the mountain, from which they fled at such speed that their horses fell dead on arriving at their place of refuge.”
When the princess left St. Savin the abbot furnished her party with “the best horses in Lavedan, thick Béarn cloaks, substantial provisions, and excellent guides across the mountains, which they were obliged to traverse partly on foot, in spite of the horses, and, after great sweat and labor, arrived at Notre Dame de Sarrance.”
The sceptical poet Bertin, too, thought his visit worthy of recording: “We chose that day to pay our brief devotions at the Abbey of St. Savin; that is to say, to dine there at the expense of St. Benedict. The steeple of the Abbey comes in sight between Pierrefitte and Argelés. The road ascends amid the trees, a little rough, but cool, impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and watered by an infinite number of living streams that come down from the mountains. It may be well to say that some of us were in a carriage and others on horseback, but the greater part were perched, well or ill, as the case might be, on donkeys. Our arrival was triumphant. The ladies were received by the prior to the sound of the organ, the only instrument he could strike up, thanks to the talent of his cook. He likewise presented them a bouquet of flowers and made them a compliment.... The house is well built, spacious, and in the finest position in the world. From the upper terrace of the garden the eye wanders over the magnificent plain of Argelés, which bears comparison, to say the least, with the famous valley of Campan. The day was spent very agreeably, but almost wholly at table. We returned a little late in the evening, without any other accident but the loss of one of our donkeys, which took it into its head to die on the way, under the pretext that he had been overworked in the morning and could go no farther. We celebrated in couplets, half sad, half merry, to which every one contributed: