It was dark when, footsore and tired, we gained the principal street; and we failed to discover our hotel. "Would you direct us to the Hôtel de St. Jean?" I asked a decent-looking man who was passing.
"How, monsieur?" he replied, after so long a pause that I feared he did not understand me; "the Hôtel de St. Jean no longer exists. It has been closed a year and more."
We looked at each other in silent disgust; and he looked at us. We were fairly tired out. "Would you have the kindness, then, to tell us which is the best hotel?" I said with resignation.
"I will conduct you to the Hôtel de St. – ," he answered, quickly. "It is an hotel of the first class."
But when I saw the Hôtel de St. – , we knew him for a swindler. It was a miserable place, and we would have none of it. We courteously said that we did not like it. He insisted. We broke away from him, and in a few minutes came upon the Hôtel de St. Jean, its doors open to welcome us, and the light pouring ruddily from its windows. The story is trivial: I tell it because it was my ill-luck more than once to fall into the hands of this kind of tout, and be deceived by the tale that the house to which I had been advised to go was shut. On one occasion, at Guelmah, in Algeria, I was lured while inquiring for the Hôtel d'Orient into the Hôtel Auriol, a miserable place. In the morning I looked out of my window, and to my astonishment saw the name of the hotel in which I believed myself to be staring me in the face, painted up in large letters over the door of a house on the farther side of the square. I rubbed my eyes and wondered, and it was not until I stood in the open, and read the name of one and the other, that I recognized with a hearty laugh how I had been taken in.
From Agen, on a fine, sunny morning, we went by rail to Moissac. Here, attached to the church, is the most delightful cloister in the world, a cloister rich in arches and capitals of delicate tracery poised on slender shafts, and half hidden by luxuriant creepers, through which the light falls soft and green-tinged, as in some sea-grotto. It is a place for rest and reflection, perfectly adapted to a hot climate; whereas, he who has only seen the dull, dank portico enclosing danker grave-stones, the play-ground of cats-which in England we call a cloister-does not know what the thing is. This church boasted also a quaint doorway enriched with the more or less coarse designs in which the monks of yore took pleasure: a doorway reputed to be one of the most curious in France.
From Moissac we went on foot to Castel Sarrasin, sometimes by the Tarn, but for the most part by the side of the great canal; and always, whether by the latter or the river, moving in a soft symphony of various greens, green streams, green poplars-and oh! such vistas of them! – green willows, green banks-all mingled together and fading into one another, and harmoniously blending as the evening fell with the pale pea-green of the eastern sky. It was a peaceful and silent walk through a world of restful hues.
From Castel Sarrasin, once no doubt a stronghold of the Moors, to Montauban we went by train. Montauban, on the Tarn, is a busy place, but a picturesque one also. Standing on a rough, steep hill, the town is seamed and cleft by strange, deep valleys with precipitous sides. Crazy houses with roofs of tiles, so time-stained that they have the precise appearance of strips of bark, fill these ravines and lean against their walls. Gardens cling to the ledges of the rocks. Shrubs and flowers clothe the crannies. Wooden balconies hang everywhere-and clothes-lines. We were there on market-day, and watched with amusement the teams of oxen-all fawn-colored-coming in for sale, or dragging into town the lumbering carts (much like timber-wagons, with boxes about the middle) in which Madame sat with her produce about her. Monsieur walked before the oxen, his goad on his shoulder, and a white nightcap on his head. Oxen push, they do not pull. They shove inwards against one another, the near legs of the near ox and the off legs of the off ox being protruded at a considerable angle to get a good purchase. Very frequently only the feet so used are shod. The driver always goes before them, and as they follow with lowered heads, they are perfect images of patient resignation.
An old farmer, stout and jolly-looking, presently met us loitering on the bridge, and after a long period of staring, spoke to us. "Are you Germans?" he asked.
"No," I replied with courteous determination, "we are English." He still eyed us with some suspicion, and after a pause fell to questioning us about our country. Had we bread, and what kind of bread? had we any railways?
"Yes," I answered proudly to this last, "we have trains that travel at the rate of a hundred kilomètres an hour!" A trifling exaggeration it may be, but human and pardonable.
He gravely nodded his head, however, as if he believed it, and meant to pose his wife and neighbors with it when he reached home. "You have grapes and wine?" he continued.
"We grow grapes under glass," I explained, "in glass houses. In the open air it is generally too cold for them."
"What!" he exclaimed, his jovial face clouding over as it occurred to him that I was not in earnest. "Will you kindly say that again?"
I did as he wished. But when I had made the matter as clear as I could, he answered stoutly, "No! It is impossible! Either I do not understand you, or you do not understand me!" And he went on his way in a passion. He could believe in the Irish Mail; but the cultivation of vines under glass was a thing outside his ideas of the world's economy.
From the place at Montauban, an open space pleasantly laid out on the brow of the hill, it is said that the Pyrenees can be seen on a fine day. We had a fine day, but we saw no sign of the mountains-our land at Beulah-though we looked long and lingeringly.
Attracted by a name which seemed familiar to us, and had a ring about it as of feudal and knightly times, we made a diversion from here to Cahors on the Lot, an old city standing in a fertile basin, among bare, brown hills. We were disappointed in the first appearance of the town. The river still runs round three sides of it, but the ramparts have been turned into gardens where they have not been levelled; only one tower of the castle survives; and though there are some picturesque houses, the town is for the most part modern, and devoted to Gambetta who was born in it. The cathedral, surmounted by one heavy tower, backed by three domes in a row, is imposing in its bulky ugliness. Its floor is much lower than the marketplace without: so that on entering through the west door you find a flight of steps before you, and the congregation at your feet immersed in candlelit gloom. These steps at the Sunday morning service were crowded by kneeling hucksters and market-women with their baskets, who had quietly entered as a matter of course from the market, which was in full swing without, and were devoutly telling their beads, or listening to a sermon preached by a bishop-a Count-Bishop, too, whose pastoral ring was still a prominent feature in the scene, so skilfully did he wave and display it. At Cahors we were much pleased with one of the bridges, from which rise three Flemish-looking towers. They form as many gateways, and from every point of view are singularly picturesque. This bridge may have stood there in its present state when Henry of Navarre did at Cahors his most famous deed. A strong garrison was at the time holding the city for the Catholic party, but Henry, smarting under the loss of La Réole, which had been betrayed by its governor, determined to seize Cahors. Accordingly he came to it with fourteen hundred men, and leaving one half of this force outside to cover his night attack, blew in a gate with a petard and entered with the rest, being himself the seventh to pass in. A furious battle in the streets ensued, but when day broke, the Huguenots had mastered a small part of the city only, and reinforcements for the enemy arriving, Henry's followers begged him to retire. "No!" he answered, fighting on with his back to a shop, "I will not retire! My only retreat from this town shall be the retreat of my soul from my body!" He kept his word. Street by street and house by house, he reduced the town, neither side asking or giving quarter. But it was not until the fifth night after his entrance that he completely mastered the place, a feat which is generally allowed to stand highest among his warlike exploits.
At Cahors it was that we first came under the influence of his name; but thereafter it grew and grew, a bigger factor in the past, a more prominent object in our thoughts in the present, the farther south we travelled; until at Pau, his birthplace and capital, the son of Jeanne d'Albret, the Béarnais, the Navarrese, the Protector of the Religion, Henri Quatre, Henry the Great, seemed to fill all past history, and dwarf all other figures. We have in English story no royal personage, no prominent life even, at once so picturesque, so rich in surprises, so lovable, and so blameworthy. Hot-blooded and cool-headed, daring to rashness, astute to meanness, a professor and a profligate, merciful, affectionate, yet letting nothing intervene between him and his aims-who that is man shall judge him? Surely the wine which Henry's father raised to his new-born lips, the cold water which was dashed in his hour-old face, the national song his mother sang at his birth, did really reproduce themselves in his life.
Leaving Cahors in the evening, we slept at a small village called Lelbenque, and were on foot before eight next day, and on our way across the hills to Caylus. The country through which we passed in the fresh morning air, a range of bleak lime-stone heights sparsely covered with oak trees, seemed thinly peopled, and little tilled. Here and there in the wooded depths of a valley, we came upon a sparkling brook and a few comfortable farm-houses nestling among fruit trees, and protected by abrupt limestone walls from the cold winds which swept across the uplands. The distance to Caylus was sixteen miles. There were no inns, and as we had breakfasted rather meagrely on coffee and bread, we were driven to beg something at one of the farm-houses. There were only women at home, and these were with reason astonished to see foreign tramps in that out-of-the-way district. They seemed even a little afraid of us, but we got what we wanted notwithstanding the growling of the dogs; and our offer of payment was declined with suspicious abruptness. I fancy that they suspected us of wanting change.
About mid-day we passed over the last ridge of the uplands, and saw below us a narrow fertile valley squeezed in between mountain-walls. Halfway through this gorge and in the middle of it, a hill or rock rose abruptly almost to the height of a thousand feet. On this, lording it over the road, stood Caylus, its houses and gardens descending terrace by terrace from the castle-nucleus on the crest almost to the road. Very old was the church, about the porch of which are carved green animals in the act of nibbling one another's tails under the superintendence of St. Michael. We took it for St. Michael. Old, too, seemed the great stone house opposite, known as the Maison du Loup, and bearing uncouth masks and figures of wolves in high relief on its front. Older still we judged the market-place to be, which built of wood rests on stone pillars; and the heavy Arcade or "Row" which stands in the same tiny square with it, and the beetle-browed wynds that lead to it-all old, gray, heavy, time-stained, but still solid. In the market hall we noticed three ancient corn-measures; hollows scooped out in stones that formed part of the fabric of the hall, with to each a horizontal outlet or spout at the side, through which the grain when measured might escape into bag or basket. Even while we were examining these we remarked women sitting outside the doors about us, removing the grain from stalks of maize, and plaiting various articles with the straw.
The weather-beaten castle belongs to Madame St. Cyr, but was occupied when we visited it by Mr. Wilton, an Englishman, who was not at home. His housekeeper, however, kindly allowed us to go over the building, and we found the view from the leads of the keep-used, I suspect, as a smoking-room-very charming. Caylus, to sum up, is difficult of access and is not even named in "Murray," but I can highly recommend it as a quaint example of a mediæval town, such as cannot now be found in England without much searching.
From it we passed by means of a top-heavy, jingling country coach to St. Anthonin, and so by rail to Albi on the Tarn, Albi of the Albigenses, the unhappy sect whose fate confutes the saying that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. About Albi, from which place they took their name, they grew and flourished in the latter half of the twelfth century. But seventy years later, notwithstanding the attempt which their feudal lord, Raymond of Toulouse, made to protect them, they were virtually extinct. Save that they dissented from the Romish Church, their very doctrines are now unknown or to be found only in the writings of their enemies, and their story and fortunes are too often confounded with those of the Waldenses. Simon de Montfort, the father of our Simon de Montfort, took a conspicuous part in the cruel deeds which attended their suppression. At the fall of Beziers, heretic and churchman were put to the sword together. "Slay all-God will know His own," said the gentle Abbot Arnold. And in a sense wisely: for it is only the man of half measures who fails as a persecutor. To be perfectly ruthless, perfectly thorough in the work, is to be successful also. At any rate at Albi, which, like Cahors, stands among hills, there are no traces of the Albigenses left; not even such a story as rings about the name of Beziers with fire. Rather the great cathedral proclaims Rome's victory. Built externally of bricks, it is a huge blind oblong with an apsidal end. A swelling base and rounded buttresses add to its heavy appearance. Yet it is very lofty. The monstrous red tower hung about with giddy balconies rises nearly to the height of three hundred feet, while the church itself, the lower part of which has no openings or windows, seems half that height. In a word, the whole is as much a fortress as a cathedral. Lofty flights of steps lead to a raised porch, formed by three arches decorated with carvings lately and successfully restored. Entering the church through this we find the interior a striking sight. In shape it is a vast hall surrounded by chapels in two stories, and with a choir screened off at one end. The interior still remains in the state to which our Puritans objected, the state probably characterized more churches than we now imagine. It is covered from ceiling to floor with frescoes and paintings and scrollwork, some gaudy, some subdued, some good, some bad. The very statues are painted and gilded, and although here and there the effect is garish and unpleasing, I do not agree that the appearance of the whole, as the vast mass of color presents itself to the eyes, broken by the exquisite carvings of the stone screen or a bevy of tinted marbles, is absolutely unharmonious. I found it more pleasing than I expected. And then what would have been the effect of these plain walls in their naked monotony?
The paintings are mainly of the date of Francis I., say about 1520. Two frescoes of Hell and the Passions, done by Italian artists, cover the west end-cover acres of it as it seems; and in a chapel, among other anachronisms is a notable picture of Christ, in which He is figured in a hat and feather and the dress of a courtier of the time in the midst of Roman soldiers who are kicking Him along. A great store of information as to the dresses and customs of the early part of the sixteenth century is laid up here, to be ransacked by any one who will take the trouble to closely inspect this huge interior. The groups painted upon the walls, groups of people fighting, tourneying, feasting, dancing, dying-ay, and doing many things scarcely adapted to church decoration-are to be counted by thousands; as are the gold stars that stud the bright blue ceiling. There is something suggestive in the portrayal of these things in this place; they seem to tell of a faith which, with all its scandals, abuses, and laxity, was bound up intimately with the life of the people, with their joys as well as their griefs; and so smacked of One who did not consider the price of sparrows as beneath knowledge.
At any rate we were pleased with these things. The interior of Albi Cathedral may not be in the best taste. It may be meretricious, it may be gilt rather than of gold. But it is curious; it is almost unique; it is a museum in itself; and to an Englishman accustomed to the cold if correct lines of a Gothic church, its warmth and color afford a not unwelcome change.
At Auch we arrived at night, and found it to be an old-fashioned archiepiscopal city on the summit and southern slope of a precipitous hill. Here we came upon the first traces-a Spanish pedler, a Navarrese bonnet-of that strange borderland between Spain and Western France in which three languages and a dozen patois, French, Spanish, Basque, the Langue d'Oc, the Langue d'Or, and Gascon and Provençal and the tongue of Andorra, and I know not what others, are fighting for the mastery: where two great nations now peaceably march, dividing between them the wild country where the kingdom of Navarre once sat enthroned on hills with the free Basque communities about her. It is a country rich in memories of independence, of strife; of brigandage, of romance; of the free life of the hunter; a land of snow-clad peaks and deep valleys, and rolling, wooded hills full of creatures elsewhere extinct, bears, and izards, and, shall I add, Basques. Here are Roncesvalles and the Bidassoa, Fontarabia and Orthez, San Sebastian and the Isle of Peacocks. Moor and Paladin, Scot and Spaniard, Charlemagne and Wellington, have all passed this way and left deep foot-prints.
And Auch stands on the verge of this strange country; an old city, but full of energy and with no trace of decay. From the river, flights of wide steps with spacious landings, gay with flowers and fountains, climb the southern face of the hill, which the best road-maker would find impracticable. At the head of these steps and commanding extensive prospects stands the cathedral, a beacon to all the country between it and the skirts of the mountains. The building is fine, but its pride lies in the wood carvings of the unrivalled choir. My guide, an ex-soldier, also pointed out with pride some cymbals presented to the cathedral by the first Napoleon: trophies, so he told me, of the Egyptian campaign.
We wandered out in the afternoon to the brow of a ridge of hills lying on the far side of the river, and throwing ourselves down upon some heather and bracken-it was a warm and sunny but not very clear day-began to cast speculative glances towards Spain. But while we thought that we were looking southwards our eyes were really turned too much to the east. And presently we discovered this in a strange way. For glancing by chance towards the skyline on our right, we saw, first, a brown autumnal landscape of woods and hills, and beyond this a long, gray cloud, the horizon, as we thought; and above that-ah! what was it we saw above that? A line of silvery peaks, gleaming in a gray, sheeny atmosphere of their own, so pure, so soft, so far above this world of ours, that as the words "The Pyrenees!" broke the first moments of astonished silence, we felt that for once the thing long looked for had passed our expectations! Our hearts fastened upon the distance. The pleasant landscape spread out before us lost its charms. It was homely, it was flat, it was commonplace, it was of the earth earthy, beside the serene beauty of the snowy crests and untrodden wastes that shone and sparkled in that far distance, and anon grew cold and dim as the veil of cloud was drawn before them even while we watched.
When they were gone, we felt that nothing save the mountains would now satisfy us. We had a craving for them, such as I have sometimes felt for the sea. A sudden conviction that we were wasting our time in a world of small things, while the wonders of the hills lay close at hand, overwhelmed us. We hurried homewards, talking of peaks, and glaciers, and passes, of Cauteret and Gavarnie, Mont Perdu and the Pic du Midi; and packed in the same state of pleasant excitement. The next morning saw us passing through the same country, rich in autumn tints, in leafy bottoms, and rippling streams, which we had seen stretched out before us. And the evening saw us stand on the famous Place Royale, hard by the castle where Henry of Navarre was born, feasting our eyes on the cold, bright tints of the great mountains, seen sharp and clear above the Jurance hills, and listening to the rushing waters of the Gave. Our Garonne pilgrimage was over.