Part 12 (1/2)

A single fine portal of the original sanctuary is still to be seen. But of the old castle not a trace remains; only its name survives,--_la Hourquie_,--with its significant etymological story: _Horcae,--furcae,--- fourches patibulaires_,--the gibbet. For these viscounts of Morlaas had recourse to a savage expedient to control the lawlessness of their day.

They kept a gallows-tree erect before the castle gateway, a speaking symbol of vengeance, and there the blackened corpse, might hang until replaced, swinging in the winter wind. There was a mint here also, which stamped the metal of the little realm, and on the coins too appeared the device of the gibbet. There is a tradition that the executions took place only on market-days, and in the Pyrenees to this day the market-gathering is known as the _Hourquie_.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Eleven miles west leads us four centuries forward again from Morlaas.

This is Lescar; with its ancient cathedral, the St. Denis of Bearn, the burial-place of generations of its rulers. Morlaas has been deposed, and Orthez reigns in its stead,--with Lescar as primate. The gleam and glory of chivalry have grown with the years. Here was the seat of the church militant in its strongest manifestation. ”The bishops of Lescar,”

writes Johnson, satirically, ”are said to have been well suited to the times in which they lived; fighting when they could, and cursing when they could not. In the early history of the province, they are found l.u.s.tily taking a part in the battles of the frontier country; and when peaceful times came, getting up a comfortable trade with the intrusive infidels they had so lately belabored. The reputation for wealth acquired by this astute community seems to have brought its troubles upon the enterprising diocesans, for tradition has it that in the eleventh century Viscount Dax laid sacrilegious hands upon their property. Whether he was too strong for the carnal weapon or spiritual manifestations were deemed more appropriate to his particular case, history does not record, but certain it is that the rebellious n.o.ble, being deaf to expostulation, was excommunicated, and resenting that, was seized with a leprosy, of which he died. His successor, adopting the same line of policy as the deceased, was treated in the same way and with the same result. So that between the thunders of the church and the arms of the flesh, the Episcopality of Lescar waxed mightily, and its bishops took the position of premier barons in the province, sitting next to royalty in council and therein keeping to order all grumblers against their rights and privileges. If two of the venerable prelates themselves happened to disagree and logic failed them, then,--it being scarcely orthodox for the reverend men to fight the matter out personally,--they employed a couple of l.u.s.ty varlets to settle the business for them, and upon the weakest shoulders fell all the consequent disadvantages; thus inst.i.tuting a simple and expeditious method of cutting short disputes by which the ecclesiastical courts of the present day do not appear to have benefited.”

Lescar was called the _ville septenaire_; for it had, it is said, seven churches, seven fountains, seven mills, seven woods, seven vineyards, seven gates, and seven towers on the ramparts. It is another senile hamlet now, and imagination must do all the work. Even the cathedral has been altered, and in its large, rather plain interior are few relics of its earlier state, few marks to tell of the after-despoiled tombs of Henri Quatre's ancestry. There is a satisfying legend about this sanctuary. One of the feudal rulers had a violent hatred for some neighboring seignior, and finally secured his a.s.sa.s.sination. His hatred was thereupon followed by a remorse equally violent,--these men were violent in good as in bad, which redeems much; and in atonement he rebuilt magnificently this cathedral, which was even then an old one, and added to it a monastery as well. And to complete the story of poetic expiation, the a.s.sa.s.sin he had employed became a penitent himself; was later appointed one of the monks by his penitent patron; and ended by rising to the reverend office of abbot itself.

Southeast from Pau lies our third landmark of the past,--Coarraze. It is a longer road and a dusty one, but a village will tell off each mile, the Gave de Pau brings encouraging messages along the way, and the far Pic du Midi de Bigorre keeps inspiringly in sight. Besides the commoner trees to be met in this and other directions from Pau, are occasional orange-trees, Spanish chestnuts, aloes, acacias, and here and there a magnolia; but this region is north of much tropical verdure, even now in July, and plain beech and oak play the princ.i.p.al parts. Coarraze can be reached by rail also, and preferably so when haste is an object, for it is thirteen miles by the highway, while the train covers the distance within the half-hour.

This spot too had its castle and its feudal barons, subject to the court at Orthez. A tower of the castle still remains. It is of Raymond, one of these barons, that Froissart tells the legend of the familiar spirit.

This obliging bogey was wont to visit his host as he lay asleep, waking him to tell him what had happened during the day in distant countries.

His mode of rousing his patron was unceremonious, not to say boisterous.

In his first visit, he made a terrific tumult throughout the castle, pounded the doors and cas.e.m.e.nts, broke the plates in the kitchen, appalled the sleeping servants, ”knocking about everything he met with in the castle, as if determined to destroy all within it.... On the following night the noises and rioting were renewed, but much louder than before; and there were such blows struck against the door and windows of the chamber of the knight that it seemed they would break them down.”

The baron could no longer desist from leaping out of his bed, and proceeding to investigate matters; and in the end the bogey and he became fast friends. In fact, the former ”took such an affection to the Lord de Cora.s.se that he came often to see him in the night-time; and when he found him sleeping, he pulled his pillow from under his head or made great noises at the door or windows; so that when the knight was awakened, he said, 'let me sleep.'

”'I will not,' replied he, 'until I have told thee some news.'

”The knight's lady was so much frightened, the hairs of her head stood on end and she hid herself under the bed-clothes.

”'Well,' said the knight, 'and what news hast thou brought me?'

”The spirit replied, 'I am come from England, Hungary or some other place, which I left yesterday, and such and such things have happened.'

”Thus did the Lord de Cora.s.se know by means of this messenger all things that were pa.s.sing in the different parts of the world;” and for years this invisible mediaeval sprite kept his patron comfortably posted on all current events, in a ghostly adumbration of the modern newspaper press.

But Coarraze and its castle carry us on later than Froissart's days.

Here young Prince Henry ran about in his hardy youth, and romped and played pranks on his future subjects. Nothing delighted him more in after life than to come back here and hunt up his old peasant playfellows, bashful and reluctant, and bewilder and charm them with his state and his _bonhomie_. Most of the old castle is gone now, destroyed by a storm and since replaced by a newer structure. The old baron's spirit-messenger or the ”white lady” of the House of Navarre have only the single tower remaining, for their ghostly visits,--finding change over all save the far line of the Pyrenees glittering unearthly in the moonlight.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WARM WATERS AND THE PEAK OF THE SOUTH.

”And we who love this land call it a _paradis terrestre_, because life is fair in its happy suns.h.i.+ne,--it is beautiful, it is plentiful, it is at peace.”--_The Sun Maid._

It is a nineteenth-century sun that wakes us, after all, each morning, through the Ga.s.sion's broad windows. We can reconjure foregoing eras, but we do not have to live in them. The hat has outlawed the helmet; the clear call of the locomotive is unmistakably modern. Throughout Pau, in its life, its people, its social rubrics; in its streets, shops, hotels,--the thought is for the present age exclusively. The past is appraised chiefly at what it can do for the present. Business and society pursuits are not perceptibly saddened by memories of the bear-hunt at Rion or the dagger of Ravaillac.

And thus we come into the instant year once more, as we take the mid-morning train from Pau. We point straight for the mountains. We are on the way to Eaux Chaudes and Eaux Bonnes, before mentioned as a fourth excursion from Pau; but we go not as an excursion merely, for they lie directly in our farther route. These resorts, the repute of whose springs we hear in advance, are south from Pau about twenty-eight miles; twenty-five are now covered by the new railway, and the remaining three are done by the diligence or by breack,--for the latter of which, we telegraph.

It is a brief journey by the rail. The longer post-road no longer controls the travel. The train hastens on, by the coteaux, past maize-fields and meadows, through odds and ends of villages, into valleys more irregular, and among hills higher and steeper. Of Bielle, a village where it halts for a moment, there is a well-turned story told against Henry IV. It is one of the few cases where he was at a loss for a retort. He admired the four marble columns in the church, and asked for them; a kingly asking is usually equivalent to a command. But the inhabitants made reply both dexterous and firm, and it proved unanswerable. ”Our hearts and our possessions are yours,” they said; ”do with them as you will. But as to the columns, those belong to G.o.d; we are bound for their custody, and you will have to arrange that with Him!”