Li felon Jeve maleur”
—by this bird is figured the felon Jew malign. And, in fact, the Jews closed their eyes, like the owl, to the light, not to recognize the Messias.
We descended by several steps into the church, into which the sun was streaming from the rose window at the west. The tomb of St. Savin is at the apsis, beneath a gilded canopy of rich design. It is of schist, about six feet long and three broad, and rests on double columns of marble, which have carved capitals. It was long used as an altar, according to the custom of the early church. Above is an ancient statue of the Virgin, said to have been brought from the East by the Crusaders, and in another part of the church is a revered crucifix of great antiquity. One of the most interesting ornaments is a painting in eighteen compartments that presents a complete epitome of St. Savin’s life, and is curious for its details of costume and architecture. Here we are told how St. Savin was sent by his mother, the Countess of Barcelona, to complete his education at the brilliant court of her brother, the Count of Poitiers, who received him with great favor and entrusted his son to his care. St. Savin, for whom, young as he was, life had no illusions, inspired his cousin to lead a simple, unostentatious life in the midst of worldly luxuries, and the latter, not satisfied with this taste of self-renunciation, soon betook himself to the convent of Ligugé, near Poitiers. His mother, in despair, threw herself at St. Savin’s feet, crying: “Give me back my child! It is you who have robbed me of him. You have a mother; think of her grief should you abandon her for ever.” Alas! this was the very thing the saint was thinking of, but he could not resist a higher will. He soon followed his cousin’s example, and they took the monastic habit together. St. Savin’s heart, however, yearned for a more profound solitude, and a celestial inspiration directed his steps toward the Pyrenees. Coming to the valley of the Gave, he followed its windings till he reached a spot overshadowed by three lofty mountains that were covered with snow nearly all the year round—cold, stern, wrapped in gray mists, and infested with wild beasts. Here he looked down on the lonely valley once inhabited by his countryman, the great St. Orens, and resolved to build his cell in a place so favorable to meditation and prayer, and give himself up to a life of austerity. He trod the rough mountain paths with bare feet—he who had been brought up in the court of princes. His only garment lasted him thirteen years. He dug a grave seven feet long and five deep, and there he slept, or lay buried in divine contemplation. Chromasse, a neighboring lord, angry to see a stranger on his lands, sent a servant to drive him away, but the latter only rendered St. Savin incapable of obeying by the blows he inflicted on him. Both master and servant were punished for their cruelty. The former was struck blind, and the latter became possessed by the devil. The moral condition of the servant particularly excited the compassion of the saint, who obtained his deliverance by the power of prayer.
An old legend says that when St. Savin wished to have a light in his cell he used to hold a torch to his breast, and in that furnace of divine love it was at once lighted. This torch used to burn all night long without being consumed, and only grew pale when the morning light came to surprise the saint lost in prayer.
St. Savin, in his last illness, was attended by Sylvian and Flavian, two monks from the neighboring abbey. When he felt his end was drawing near he requested to see Abbot Forminius, who, detained by important business, sent word that he would come on the following day. The dying hermit replied that the morrow would be too late, for then a higher occupation would engross him. As soon as his condition became known a great number of priests and monks hastened to his cell. He received the Body of the Lord, and, with his arms stretched towards heaven and a face radiant with joy, he fell asleep in the midst of a prayer which he finished in heaven.
All the people of the neighboring valleys followed St. Savin’s body to the grave. The repentant Chromasse himself joined the procession, and, pressing close to the bier, he touched with trembling hands the body of the saint, and his eyes, so long closed to the light, instantly recovered their sight.
Such is the legend of St. Savin, who became of so much repute in these mountains that it is not surprising his name should be given to the abbey where he was buried.
From a terrace before the church is a superb view of the vale of Argelés, around which rises mountain above mountain; the lowest rich with vegetation, the upper peaks bare and covered with eternal frosts. Not far off are the remains of the old feudal castle of Baucens, formerly inhabited by the Vicomtes de Lavedan, lords of the Seven Valleys. Madame de Motteville, who stopped here, compares it in her Mémoires to the palace of the fairy Urgande.
Just below St. Savin is the village of Adast with the château de Miramon, the heiress of which married Despourrins, the bucolic poet of the Pyrenees, who composed here, in the idiom of the valley, pastoral songs full of grace and feeling, which have made his name popular in the mountains, where they are still sung by the herdsmen. Béarn and Bigorre contend for the honor of being his birthplace, as the Greek cities of old for that of Homer. Here Boieldieu, struck by the beauty of the country and its poetic associations, wished to found an academy of artists. His plan was, as he wrote his friend Berton in 1832, “to buy an old château in the beautiful valley of Argelés, as finely situated as that of the poet Despourrins. The sight of so glorious a landscape would rouse the torpid imagination, and perhaps awaken in the exhausted brain fresh inspirations that might rival the vagaries of certain artists of the new school. The sky of the Pyrenees ought to be as propitious as that of Italy. The Pic du Midi is not a volcano, but it is covered with flowers. And Marboré, the Brèche de Roland, and the Cirque de Gavarnie, with its cascade that falls down twelve hundred feet, are monuments capable of electrifying the imagination as well as St. Peter’s, the Coliseum, and the Pantheon at Rome.”
On a promontory near Miramon is the votive chapel of Piétad, with its Romanesque lucarnes and low arches, that dates from the ninth century. It was saved at the Revolution by the mountaineers, among whom, as in Spain, Our Lady of Sorrow (or of Pitié, as she is called here) is especially popular. There is, too, the chapel of Soulon, with its crenellated tower, and near by the hermitage of St. Aoulari, with its Roman apsis—a rural oratory, once supported by the offerings of pilgrims and a field that yielded three sacks of wheat, but where services are now held only on certain festivals of the Virgin.