Part 25 (1/2)

And last, the inevitable

Eau sucree, with orange-flower, 35

The above sketchy division may perhaps add to the visitor's alien interest in Continental cafe-life, showing something of its system and rationale. These elaborate and varied concoctions, noxious and innoxious, are not, it must be understood, tossed off in the frenzied instantaneity of the American mode; before a tiny gla.s.sful of Curacao or sugar and water, the Gallic ”knight of the round table” will sit for hours in utter content, reading the papers, talking, smoking, or clicking the inoffensive domino. Intoxication is almost unknown in the better cafes; their patrons may sear their oesophagi with hot Chartreuse, derange the nerves with Absinthe, stimulate themselves hourly with their little cups of black coffee and brandy; but they never get drunk. Frenchmen are temperate, even in their intemperance. An English gin-mill and probably an American bar causes more besotment than a dozen French cafes.

CHAPTER XVII.

OUT TOWARD THE PLAIN.

”How the golden light On those mountain-tops makes them strangely bright.”

--_The Pyrenees Herdsman_.

We revolve an unhappy fact, as we ramble on along the brilliant Allee, this clear summer evening. We are no longer among the time-wealthy. With Barcelona and the Mediterranean in prospect, we cannot draw further in Luchon upon our reserve of days. The evening is flawless; the stars blaze overhead like the burst, of a rocket; the promise of the morrow is beyond doubt, and the Col d'Aspin is yet to be reconquered. We come back across the park to our pleasant rooms in the Richelieu; and a conclave ends in a summons to a livery-man and the order for carriages for a to-morrow's return to Bigorre.

Early rising is therefore enforced, without regard to resentment, the next morning, for we are to drive through within the day, not making a night's break as before at Arreau. There are thus the two hard cols to cross, one in the forenoon, the other in the afternoon; and the horses must have a long mid-day rest to accomplish the task. So the Allee-d'etigny is just taking down, the shutters, as we prepare to drive away from the hotel; the dew is still dampening the walks; domestics are scouring entrance-ways and windows, a few early guides and drivers look wistfully at the departing possibilities. We are unfeignedly sorry to leave Luchon. But we exult in compensation over an unclouded day for the Col d'Aspin.

By the usual mysterious Continental system of telegraphy, the fact has spread that we are going, and even at this unseasonable hour the entire working force of the Richelieu, portier, waiter, head-waiter, maids, b.u.t.tons, boots and bagsman line up to do us reverence. We pa.s.s from hall to carriages through a double row of expectants. It is a veritable running of the gauntlet, save that in running it we give rather than receive. Unlike recipients in most other parts of Europe, however, the servants here have the air of expecting rather than of demanding, and take what is given more as a gift than as a right. So we depart in the comfortable glow of benefaction, rather than in the calmer consciousness of indebtedness baldly paid.

We reach the foot of the first col, the Peyresourde, with views at the left of the distant glaciers above the Lac d'Oo, wind up to the crest as the morning wears on, and by noon have scudded down by the other side and are again at Arreau. It is a fete-day throughout France, and as we drive into the town we find the plain little street transformed into a bloom of flags and flowers and tri-colored bunting. On every side, as we stroll out later from the inn, the shops and houses are fluttering the red, the white and the blue, colors as dear to the American eye as to the French. Boughs and garlands festoon the archways; the neighborhood has flocked to the town in holiday finery, the _cabarets_ or taverns are driven with custom, the nun-like town is become a masquerader. The scene is so different from that of the cold, grey morning on which we left for Luchon, that we vividly see how impressions of place as of person may change with the change of garb and mood.

The air is warm, even sultry, but not oppressive. In fact, the thermometer has not throughout the tour given any markedly choleric displays of temper. The Pyrenees, lying as they do so far toward the south, had held for us vague intimations of southern heat: linked closely in lat.i.tude with the Riviera and with mid-Italy, we had half feared to find them linked as well with Mediterranean and Italian temperatures, and so far ill adapted for summer traveling. But the fear was uncalled for. The weather has, on infrequent days, been undeniably warm, but no warmer than the summer heat of the valleys of the Alps or the Adirondacks. In fact, as a matter of geography, the Pyrenees lie in the same northerly lat.i.tude as the Adirondacks themselves. In point of elevation above the sea, the belt, even in its lowlands, is everywhere higher than the neighboring parallels of Nice or Florence; the air is fresher, shade and breeze are more abundant, as always among mountains; our trip, aiding, to verify this, convinces us that apprehensions as to excess of heat will here find gratifyingly little fulfilment.

II.

We beguile the three hours' wait with a lunch, a walk, and an idiot beggar with an imposing wen or goitre. This creature crouches persistently by the carriages while the horses are reharnessed and we are taking our places. The form is misshapen, the face distorted and scarcely human; we can get no answer from the mumbling lips save a sputter of grat.i.tude for our sous; it is cretinism, hideous, hopeless, a horror among these beautiful valleys, yet as in the Alps pitifully common.

In the presence of this frightful disease, destroying every semblance of fair humanity, one can see some reason also for the belief in witchcraft and diabolism once so intense in the Pyrenees. If the body and mind of an ”innocent” can thus come to part with the last vestige of its holy lineage, the soul of a ”wicked” might with good reason seem to be capable of growing into full fellows.h.i.+p with the devil himself. So late as 1824, not far from this spot, they nearly burned an old woman for alleged sorcery; and in 1862, one was actually so burned, in the town of Tarbes, a few leagues away. This superst.i.tion of witchcraft has here been strong in all eras, but it is at last becoming extinct; cretinism, as anachronous and as horrible,--a fact, not a superst.i.tion,--remains unaccounted for and unlessened.

III.

By four o'clock, we are at the base of the Col d'Aspin and commence on the long curves that lead to its top. The valley behind extends as we rise; new breaks and depressions appear, branching off right and left on all sides. After a half hour, peaks begin to peep over the hills at our rear; they come up one by one into sight, each whiter and sharper than the last, until the southern line is a serrate row of them, gradually lifted wholly above the nearer hills. The promised panorama is truly taking shape. We near at length the crest of the col. The Pic du Midi de Bigorre will loom up beyond it, unclouded to-day, the drivers a.s.sure us, and we watch for a glimpse at last of that mythical peak, which we have skirted in cloud from Bareges to Bigorre and never yet once seen. We are just below the top of the col; twenty feet farther will place the carriages on the summit, when lo a huge rounded dome begins to rise slowly up beyond the edge, and as we advance lifts itself into the full form of the long sought Pic,--ten miles away to the west, yet looming out as clearly as if but across the valley. It stands alone against the horizon; there is no summit near to rival it; the sides are dark and steep and almost snowless; the summit is looking down upon Gavarnie,--upon Pau,--upon the wide march of the plains of France,--as upon us on the Col d'Aspin, eying us with its stony Pyrenean stare.