Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces

The child Henri continued his precocious career from the day when he first became a bon vivant and a connoisseur of wine. By the age of eleven he had translated the first five books of Cæsar’s Commentary, and to the very end kept his literary tastes. He planned to write his mémoires to place beside those of his minister, Sully, and the work was actually begun, but his untimely death lost it to the world.

Another dramatic scene of history identified with the Pau château of the D’Albrets was when Henri IV took his first armour. As he was out-growing the early years of his youth, the queen of Navarre commanded the appearance at the palace of all the governors of the allied provinces.

The investiture was a romantic and imposing ceremony. The boy prince was given a suit of coat armour, a shield and a sword. A day on horseback, clad in full warrior fashion, was to be the beginning of his military education.

All the world made holiday on this occasion; for three days little was done by the retainers save to sing praises and shout huzzas for their king to be. For the seigneurs and their ladies there were comedies and dances, and for all the people of Gascogne who chose to come there were great fêtes, cavalcades and open-air amusements on the plain of Pau below the castle.

The culmination of the fête was on the evening of the third day. The young prince of Navarre, dressed as a simple Béarnais, with only a gold fleur-de-lis on his béret, as a mark of distinction, came out and mingled with his people. As a finishing ceremony the prince took again his sword, and, amid the shouts and acclamations of the populace, plunged it to the hilt in a tall broc, or jug, of wine, and raised it – as if in benediction – first towards the people, then towards the army, then towards the ladies of the court – as a sign of an unwritten pact that he would ever be devoted to them all.

The sun fell behind the crests of the Pyrenees just as this ceremony was finished, and the youth, saluting the smiling king and queen, – his father and mother – left with his “gens d’armes pour faire le tour de sa Gascogne.”

The memory of Henri Quatre remains wondrous vivid in the minds of all the Béarnais, even those of the present day, and peasant and bourgeois alike still talk of “notre Henri,” when recounting an anecdote or explaining the significance of some historic spot.

Well, why not! Henri lived in a day when men made their mark with a firmer, surer hand, than in these days of high politics and socialistics. The Béarnais never forget that Henri, Prince de Béarn – the rough mountaineer, as he was called at Paris – was a joyous compatriot, a lover and a poet, and that he knew the joys of passion and the sorrows of suffering as well as any man of his time. The following old chanson, sung to-day in many a peasant farmhouse of Béarn proves this: —

 
“Le cœur blessé, les yeux en larmes,
Ce cœur ne songe qu’à vos charmes,
Vous êtes mon unique amour;
Près de vous je soupire,
Si vous m’aimez à votre tour,
J’aurai tout ce que je désire…”
 

Under the reign of Louis XIV the inhabitants of Pau would have erected a statue in honour of the memory of the greatest of all the Béarnais – of course Henri IV – but the insistent Louis would have none of it, and told them to erect a statue to the reigning monarch or none at all.

Nothing daunted the Béarnais set to work at once and an effigy of Louis XIV rose in place of Henri the mountaineer, but on the pedestal was graven these words: “A ciou qu’ils l’arrahil de nouste grand Enric.” “To him who is the grandson of our great Henri.”

One of the great names of Pau is that of Jean de Gassion, Maréchal de France. He was born at Pau in 1609. At Rocroi the Grand Condé embraced him after the true French fashion, and vowed that it was to him that victory was due. He was full of wise saws and convictions, and proved himself one of France’s great warriors. The following epigrams are worthy of ranking as high as any ever uttered: —

“In war not any obstacle is insurmountable.”

“I have in my head and by my side all that is necessary to lead to victory.”

“I have much respect, but little love for the fair sex.” (He died a célibataire.) “My destiny is to die a soldier.”

“I get not enough out of life to divide with any one.”

This last expression was gallant or ungallant, selfish or unselfish, according as one is able to fathom it.

At any rate de Gassion was a great soldier and served in the Calvinist army of the Duc de Rohan. The following “mot” describes his character: “Will you be able to follow us?” asked de Rohan at the Battle of the Pont de Camerety in Gascogne. “What is to hinder?” demanded the future Maréchal of France, “you never go too fast for us, except in retreat.”

He recruited a company of French for the aid of Gustavus Adolphus in his campaign in Upper Saxony, and presented himself before that monarch on the battle field with the following words: “Sire, I come with my Frenchmen; the mention of your name has induced them to leave their homes in the Pyrenees and offer you their services…” At the battle of Leipzig (1631) Gassion and his men charged three times and covered themselves with glory.

The “Histoire de Maréchal de Gassion,” by the Abbé de Pure, and another by his almoner Duprat, an “Eloge de Gassion” (appearing in the eighteenth century), are most interesting reading. De Gassion it would seem was one of the chief anecdotal characters of French history.

Another of the shining lights of Pau (though he was born at Gan in the suburbs) was Pierre de Marca, an antiquarian whose researches on the treasures of Béarn have made possible the writings of hundreds of his followers. He was born in Pau a few years before Henri IV, and died an Archbishop of Paris in 1689.

His epitaph is a literary curiosity.

 
“Ci-git Monseigneur de Marca,
Que le Roi sagement marqua
Pour le Prelate de son Eglise,
Mais la mort qui le remarqua
Et qui se plait à la surprise
Tout aussitôt le demarqua.”
 

CHAPTER XVIII
LESCAR, THE SEPULCHRE OF THE BÉARNAIS

THE antique city of Beneharnum is lost in modern Lescar, though, indeed, Lescar is far from modern, for it is unprogressive with regard to many of those up-to-date innovations which city dwellers think necessary to their existence. Lescar was the religious capital of Béarn, and its bishops were, by inheritance, presidents of the Parliament and Seigneurs of their diocesan city.

Lescar is by turns gay and sad; it is gay enough on a Sunday or a fête day, and sad and diffident at all other times, save what animation may be found in its market-place. Architecture rises to no great height here, and, beyond the picturesque riot of moss-grown roof-tops and tottering walls, there is not much that is really remarkable of either Gothic or Renaissance days. The ancient cathedral, with a weird triangular façade, belongs to no school, not even a local one, and is unspeakably ugly as a whole, though here and there are gems of architectural decoration which give it a certain fantastic distinction.

Lescar is but a league distant from Pau, but not many of those who winter in that delightful city ever come here. “The Normans razed it in 856, when it was rebuilt on the side of a hill in the midst of a wood.” This was the old chronicler’s description, and it holds good to-day. Usually travellers find the big cities like Pau or Tarbes so irresistible that they have no eye for the charm of the small town. The country-side they like, and the cities, and yet the dull, little, sleepy old-world towns whose names are never mentioned in the newspapers, and often nowhere but on the road maps of the automobilist, are possessed of many pleasing attributes for which one may look in vain in more populous places. Lescar has some of these, one of them being its Hôtel Uglas.

Lescar is a good brisk hour and a half’s stroll from Pau, the classic constitutional recommended by the doctors to the semi-invalids who are so frequently met with at Pau, and is a humble, dull bourgade even to-day, sleepy, rustic, and unprogressive, and accordingly a delightful contrast to its ostentatious neighbour. Poor Lescar, its fall has been profound since the days when it was the Beneharnum of the Romans. Its bishopric has been shredded into nonentity, and its ancient cathedral disfigured by interpolated banalities until one can hardly realize to-day that it was once a metropolitan church.

St. Denis, as the old cathedral of Lescar is named, was once the royal burial-place of Béarn, as was its namesake just outside of Paris the sepulchre of the kings of France. Here the Béarnais royalties who were kings and queens of Navarre came to their last long slumbers. Side by side lie the Centulles and the D’Albrets.

The cathedral sits upon a terrace formed of the ancient ramparts of the old city, and right here is the chief attraction and charm of Lascarris, “la ville morte.” Lascarris, as it was known before it became simply Lescar, was built up anew after the primitive city had been destroyed by the Saracens in 841.

This rampart terrace has one great architectural monument, formerly a part of the ancient fortress, a simple, severe tower in outline, but of most complicated construction, built up of bands of brick and stone in a regular building-block fashion, a caprice of some local builder. Through this tower one gains access to the cathedral, which shows plainly how the affairs of church and state, and war and peace, were closely bound together in times past. This little brick and stone tower is the only remaining fragment of the fourteenth-century fortress-château known as the Fort de l’Esquirette.

Within the cathedral were formerly buried Jeanne d’Albret, Catherine de Navarre, Marguerite de Valois, and other Béarnais sovereigns, but no monuments to be seen there to-day antedate the seventeenth century, those of the Béarnais royalties having been destroyed either by the Calvinists or later revolutionists. Catherine of Béarn was buried here in the cathedral of Lescar in spite of her wish that she should be entombed at Pamplona beside the kings of Navarre.

The ceremony of the funeral of Marguerite de Navarre is described in detail in a document preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. It recounts that among those present were the kings of Navarre and France, the Duchesse d’Estonteville, the Duc de Montpensier, M. le Prince, the Duc de Nevers, the Duc d’Aumale, the Duc d’Étampes, the Marquis du Mayne, M. de Rohan and the Duc de Vendomois, with the Vicomte de Lavedan as the master of ceremony. As is still the custom in many places in the Pyrenees, there was a great feasting on the day of the interment, the chief mourners eating apart from the rest.

Charles de Sainte-Marthe wrote the funeral eulogy, in Latin and French, and Ronsard, the prince of poets, wrote an ode entitled “Hymne Triomphale.” Three nieces of Jane Seymour, wife of Henry VIII of England, composed four distiques, in Latin, Greek, Italian, and French, entitled “Tombeau de Marguerite de Valois, Reine de Navarre.” Valentine d’Arsinois gave publicity to this work in the following words: “Musarum decima, et charitum quarta, inclyta regum et soror et conjux Margaris illa jacet.”

This in French has been phrased thus:

 
“Sœur et femme de roys, la reine Marguerite
Des Muses la dixième et leur plus cher souci
Et la quatrième Charité
La reine du savoir gît sous ce marbre-ci.”
 

Throughout the valley of the Gave d’Ossau, and from Lescar all the way to Lourdes on the Gave de Pau, the chief background peak in plain view is always the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. This the peasant of the neighbourhood knows by no other name than “la montagne.” “What mountain?” you ask, but his reply is simply “Je ne sais pas – la montagne.” It should not be confounded with the Pic du Midi de Bigorre.

Between Pau and Lescar, lying just northward of the Gave, is the last vestige of an incipient desert region called to-day La Lande de Pont-Long. It now blossoms with more or less of the profusion which one identifies with a land of roses, but was formerly only a pasture ground for the herders of the Val d’Ossau, who, by a certain venturesome spirit, crossed the Gave de Pau at some period well anterior to the foundation of the city of Pau and thus established certain rights. It was these sheep and cattle raisers who ceded the site of the new city of Pau to the Vicomtes de Béarn.

Henri II de Navarre, grandfather of Henri IV, would have fenced off these Ossalois, but every time he made a tentative effort to build a wall around them they rose up in their might and tore it down again. In vain the Béarnais of the valley tried to preëmpt the rights of the montagnards, and willingly or not they perforce were obliged to have them for neighbours. This gave saying to the local diction “En despicit deus de Pau, lou Pounloung ser sera d’Aussau.”

Intrigue, feudal warfare and oppression could do nothing towards recovering this preempted land, and only a process of law, as late as 1837, finally adjudicated the matter, when the Ossalois were bound by judgment to give certain reciprocal rights in their high valleys to any of the lowland population who wanted to pasture their flocks in the mountains for a change of diet. It is a patent fact that the sheep of all the Midi of France thrive best in the lowlands in winter and in the mountains in summer. It is so in the Pyrenees and it is so in the Basses-Alpes, which in summer furnish pasturage for the sheep of the Crau and the Camargue, even though they have to march three hundred or more kilometres to arrive at it.

Closely allied with Lescar is the ancient capital of Béarn, Morlaas. After the destruction of Lescar by the Normans Morlaas became the residence of the Vicomtes de Béarn. Its history is as ancient and almost as important as that of its neighbour. The Romans here had a mint and stamped money out of the copper they took from the neighbouring hills. The Visigoths, the Franks, the Ducs de Gascogne and the Vicomtes de Béarn all held sway here for a time, and the last built a pretentious sort of an establishment, the first which the town had had which could be dignified with the name of a palace. This palace was called La Fourquie and has since given its name to a hill outside the proper limits of the present town, still known as Vieille Fourquie.

Morlaas is a mere nonentity to-day, though it was the capital of Béarn from the time of the destruction of Lescar by the Saracens until the thirteenth century, when the vicomtes removed the seat of the government to Pau.

The town is practically one long, straight grand rue, with only short tributary arteries running in and from the sides. The Église Sainte Foy at Morlaas is a real antiquity, and was founded by Centulle, the fourth vicomte, in 1089.

There are still vestiges of the ancient ramparts of the city to be seen, and the great market held every fifteen days, on the Place de la Fourquie, is famous throughout Béarn. Altogether Morlaas should not be omitted from any neighbouring itinerary, and the local colour to be found on a market day at Morlaas’ snug little Hôtel des Voyageurs will be a marvel to those who know only the life of the cities. Morlaas is one of the good things one occasionally stumbles upon off the beaten track; and it is not far off either; just a dozen kilometres or so northwest of Pau. Morlaas’ importance of old is further enhanced when one learns that the measure of Morlaas was the basis for the measure used in the wine trade of all Gascony, and the same is true of the livre morlan, and the sou morlan, which were the monetary units of Gascony and a part of Languedoc.

CHAPTER XIX
THE GAVE D’OSSAU

ON ascending the Gave d’Ossau, all the way to Laruns and beyond, one is impressed by the beauty of the snow-crested peaks before them, unless by chance an exceptionally warm spell of weather has melted the snow, which is quite unlikely.

You can name every one of the peaks of the Pyrenees with the maps and plans of Joanne’s Guide, but you will glean little specific information from the peasants en route, especially the women.

“Attendez, monsieur, je vais demander à mon mari,” said a buxom, lively-looking peasant woman when questioned at Laruns. Her “mari” came to the rescue as well as he was able. “Ma foi, je ne sais pas trop,” he replied, “mais peut être…;” there was no use going any further; all he knew was that the mountains were the Pyrenees, and were the peaks high or low, to him they were always “les Pyrénées” or “la montagne.”

Not far from Pau, on mounting the Gave d’Ossau, is Gan, one of the thirteen ancient cities of Béarn. In a modest castle flanked by a tiny pepper-box tower Pierre de Marca, the historian of Béarn, first saw the light, some years after the birth of Henri IV.

A little further on, but hemmed in among the high mountains between the valley of the Ossau and the Pau, is a tiny bourg bearing the incongruous name of Bruges.

It is not a simple coincidence in name, with the well-known Belgium port, because the records show that this old feudal bastide was originally peopled by exiled Flemings, who gave to it the name of one of their most glorious cities. The details of this foreign implantation are not very precise. The little bourg enjoyed some special privileges, in the way of being immune from certain taxes, up to the Revolution. There are no architectural monuments of splendour to remark at Bruges, and its sole industries are the manufacture of espadrilles, or rope-soled shoes, and chapelets, the construction of these latter “objects of piety” being wholly in the hands of the women-folk.

Like many a little town of the Pyrenees, Laruns, in the Val d’Ossau, is a reminder of similar towns in the Savoian Alps-Barcelonnette, for instance. They all have a certain grace and beauty, and are yet possessed of a hardy character which gives that distinction to a mountain town which one lying in the lowlands entirely lacks. Here the houses are trim and well-kept, even dainty, and the church spire and all the dependencies of the simple life of the inhabitants speak volumes for their health and freedom from the annoyances and cares of the big towns.

Laruns merits all this, and is moreover more gay and active than one might at first suppose of a little town of scarce fifteen hundred inhabitants. This is because it is a centre for the tourist traffic of Eaux-Bonnes and Eaux-Chaudes, not greatly higher up in the valley.

There are many quaint old Gothic houses with arched windows and doorways, and occasionally a curious old buttress, but all is so admirably kept and preserved that the whole looks like a newly furbished stage-setting. For a contrast there are some Renaissance house fronts of a later period, with here and there a statue-filled niche in the walls, and a lamp bracket which would be worth appropriating if that were the right thing to do.

There is a picturesqueness of costume among the women-folk of Laruns, too. They wear a sort of white cap or bonnet, covered with a black embroidered fichu, and a coloured shawl and apron which gives them a holiday air every day in the week. When it comes Sunday or a fête-day they do the thing in a still more startling fashion. The coiffes and costumes of France are fast disappearing, but in the Pyrenees, and in Brittany, and in just a few places along some parts of the coast line bordering upon the Bay of Biscay, they may still be found in all their pristine quaintness.

The Fête Dieu procession (the Thursday after Trinity) at Laruns is an exceedingly picturesque and imposing celebration. Here in the pious cortège one sees more frequent exhibitions of the local costumes of the country than at any other time or place. The tiny girls and the older unmarried girls have all the picturesque colouring that brilliant neckerchiefs, fichus and foulards can give, with long braided tresses like those of Marguerite, except that here they are never golden, but always sable. The matrons are not far behind, but are more sedately clothed. The men have, to a large extent, abandoned the ancient costume of their forefathers, save the béret and a high-cut pantaloon, which replaces the vest. But for these two details one finds among the men a certain family resemblance to a carpenter or a boiler maker of Paris out at Courbevoie for a happy Sunday.

The procession at the Fête Dieu at Laruns is very calm and dignified, but once it is dispersed, all thoughts of religion and devoutness are gone to the winds. Then commences the invariable dance, and they don’t wait for night to begin. Most likely this is the first Bal d’Été, though usually this comes with Easter in France. The dance is the passion of the people of the Pays d’Ossau, but this occasion is purely a town affair, and you will not see a peasant or a herder from the countryside among all the throng of dancers. Their great day in town comes at quite another season of the year, in the autumn, in the summer of Saint Martin, which in America we know as the Indian summer.

On the highroad, not far from Laruns, is a great oak known locally as the “Arbre de l’Ours” because on more than one occasion in the past a bear or a whole family of them has treed many an unfortunate peasant travelling by this route. This may have been a danger once, but the bears have now all retreated further into the mountains. They are not by any means impossible to find, and not long since one read in the local journal that three were killed, practically on the same spot, not far above Laruns, and that a sporting Russian prince had killed two within a week.

In the high valley of the Ossau the bear is still the national quadruped, and the arms of the district represent a cow struggling with a bear and the motto Viva la Tacha, which in French means simply Vive la Vache.

Near Laruns is the little village of Louvie-Soubiron which takes its name from an ancient seigneurie of the neighbourhood. It has no artistic embellishments worthy of remark, but on this spot was quarried the stone from which were carved the symbolical statues of the great cities of France surrounding the Place de la Concorde at Paris.

The ancient capital of Ossau was Bielle, and up to the Revolution the assemblies of the ancient government were held here. It hardly looks its part to-day. The population is but seven hundred, and it is not even of the rank of a market-town. Traditions still persist, however, and delegates from all over the Pays d’Ossau meet here at least once a year to discuss such common interests as the safeguarding of forests and pastures. In a small chamber attached to the little parish church is preserved the ancient coffer, or strong box, of the old Republic of Ossau. It is still fastened by three locks, the keys being in the possession of the mayors of Bielle, of Laruns, and of Saint Colome.

Ten kilometres from Laruns is Eaux-Bonnes. Their virtues have been known for ages. The Béarnais who so well played their parts at the ill-fated battle of Pavia were transported thither that they might benefit from these “waters of the arquebusade,” as the generic name is known. A further development came under the leadership of a certain Comte de Castellane, préfet of the department under the great Napoleon. He indeed was the real exploiter, applying some of the ideas which had been put into practice in the German spas. He set to with a will and beautified the little town, laid out broad tree-lined avenues, and made a veritable little paradise of this rocky gorge. The little bourg is therefore to-day what the French describe as “amiable,” and nothing else describes it better. The town itself is dainty and charming enough, but mostly its architectural characteristics are of the villa order. The church is modern and everybody is “on the make.”

It is not that the population are swindlers, – far from it; but they have discovered that by exploiting tourists and “malades imaginaires” for three months in the year they can make as ample a living as by working at old-fashioned occupations for a twelvemonth. A sign on one house front tells you that a “Guide-Chasseur” lives there, and that he will take you on a bear hunt —prix à forfait; which means that if you don’t get your bear you pay nothing to your guide; but you have given him a fine ten-days’ excursion in the mountains, at your expense for his food and lodging nevertheless, beside which he has had the spending of your money for the camp equipment and supplies. He really would make a very good thing, even if you did not have to pay him a bonus for every bear sighted, not shot, mind you, for all the guide undertakes to do is to point out the bear, if he can.

Another very business-like sign may be seen at Eaux-Bonnes, – that of a transatlantic steamship company. They gather traffic, the steamship agents, even here in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees, and Amerique du Sud especially is still depopulating southern France.

Eaux-Chaudes is another neighbouring thermal station. As its name implies, it is a source of hot water, and was already famous in the reign of Henri IV. The little community points out with pride that the archives record the fact that this monarch “took the waters here with much benefit.”

The little Pyrenean village of Gabas lies high up the valley under the shelter of the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. It is not greatly known to fame; it is what the French call a hamlet with but a few chimneys. A late census gave it twenty-three inhabitants, but probably the most of these have departed in the last year or so to become femmes de chambre and garçons de café in the big towns.

The place is, however, very ancient, and was the outgrowth of a little settlement which surrounded a chapel built as early as 1121, and a sort of resting-house or hospital for pilgrims who passed this way in mediæval times. This establishment was known as Santa-Christina, and was consecrated to the pilgrims going and coming from Saint Jacques de Compostelle.

Plastered up recently on the wall of the mayor’s office in the little village was a placard addressed to the “Messieurs d’Ossau,” by the Conseiller d’Arrondissement. This singular form of address is a survival of the ancient constitution of this little village, which, in times past, when everything else round about was feudal or monarchial, was sort of demi-republican. The “Messieurs d’Ossau” recognized no superior save the Prince of Béarn, and considered him only as a sort of a titular dignitary with no powers over them worth speaking of.

Here in the communes of Laruns and Arudy the peasants have certain rights of free pasture for their flocks and herds, a legacy which came originally through the generosity of Henri IV, and which no later rule of monarchy or republic has ever been able to assail. The “Messieurs d’Ossau” also had the ancient right of gathering about the same council table with the Vicomtes of Béarn when any discussion of the lands included in the territorial limits of Béarn was concerned.