CORRESPONDENCE.
A PYRENEAN HOLIDAY.—III. TO LOURDES.
[TO TER EDITOR OF TEM " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—During our stay at San Sebastian, Henry appeared to be much excited on the subject of Fontarabia, and kept chanting to himself, with a rather irritating iteration,— ." Oh ! for a blast on that dread horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, That to King Charles did come, When Roland brave and Olivier; And every paladin and peer, On Roncesvalles died."
I never could quite understand to what dread horn it was that
Sir Walter here referred. I suppose he was under the impres- sion that Charlemagne's rearguard could have made their blast of distress heard from Roncevaux as far as Fontarabia, a dis- tance of at least forty miles as the crow flies, and a distance certainly not provided with effective reflectors of sound at fixed intervals for the whole way. But whether Charlemagne really heard the horn of the heroic Roland all the way from Ronce- vaux to Fontarabia or not, Henry had that horn's blast on his brain, and I frequently heard him referring to it in the watches of the night. He was terribly annoyed at missing Fontarabia on the way to San Sebastian ; we had paid extra to go round by the old place, but the post-boy shammed unconscious- ness of the engagement, and availing himself of our ignorance of the right turn, took ns straight to San Sebastian, replying to our remarks and remonstrances,—" Est-ce-que nous allons par ici ii Fontarabia ?"—" Nous avons paye dix francs d'avautage pour alley par Fontarabia," with a lofty wave of the hand, and a " Parfaitement, Monsieur," or a pretended indication of where Fontarabia was situated. Of course, this was only the way to make a fixed idea more haunting, and the deception practised made Henry, I am sorry to say, suspicions of a general con- spiracy among the Basques to hide Fontarabia from English eyes. He imagined, I believe, that they would fall upon our rear as they did on Charlemagne's, and cut us off before we got
to Fontarabia, so anxiously did he peer out behind the carriage, as well as before, as we drove along ; but nothing 'worse than a heavy shower of rain followed us, glooming heavily over the summit of Jaizquivel, the mountain which looks down upon Foutarabia, as we arrived. And we were indeed "beaucoup
frappgs" with Fontarabia. The medimval little town stands massed together on a steep conical hill by the mouth of the Bidassoa,—palace, castle, cathedral, all blended into a frowning group of sullen, formidable grandeur ; the little town beneath it huddles close• under those mighty walls, while the broad sands, and a great sea, broken by a few bare, pointed rocks, and a lovely Pyrenean view, are commanded from Charles V.'s palace-roof. The lower town is given up to fishermen, who are the only active population of Fontarabia now. Charles V.'s palace and castle are for sale,—and any one who would buy them would certainly have a most dismal and picturesque abode, with walls three yards thick, spacious dungeons for rooms, and a glorious terrace-roof to make up for the darkness under- neath. I could not help thinking of Shelley's cheerful antici-
pation of the ruin of Venice, the one in which he dwells so pleasantly on the coming time,— "When the sea-mew Flies as once before he flew O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace-gate Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly."
Fontarabia could hardly be. better described. Its vast, ballet- riddled walls are mouldering away, and when the fishermen have drawn up their fleet of boats on the shore, as they had when we were there, the sea-mew flies over deserted islands and great gloomy houses, from which the carved arms and iron bal- conies are slowly dropping away, and over tides which, on that lowering day at least, certainly changed most sullenly. There was no guide to do the honours of the place. A company of little boys, with but a few words of French to share among them as their only stock-in-trade, did the honours for us of the cathedral and the great castle. An older boy opened the spacious sacristy of the cathedral, a great room opening on the sea, crowded with old pictures and carved apostles, and mighty chests of drawers, in which gorgeous chasubles that Mr. Dale's congregation
would see with envy, were carefully hid away ; and finally, a man appeared to charge us for our ascent into the castle. But the only blast of any horn .that we had the satisfaction of hearing " on Fontarabian echoes borne " was the penny trumpet of a Spanish infant, in those grim defiles which pass for streets. I suppose it was the excitement of having at last seen Fonta- rabia which had wound up my husband's nerves, for all that afternoon he was at a singularly high tension. We missed our train at Hendaye, owing partly to the difference of French and Spanish railway time, and partly to the useless researches -of the French Custom-house officers in our baggage, and had the mournful vision of the train steaming away before us as we drove up to the station. The luggage had been left all in con- fusion, and Henry's beloved bag, from which he is never willingly separated, fell out of the carriage unperceived by the driver; whereupon, to my horror, I heard these emphatic words thundered from a mouth at my side,—" Le sac noir, damn!" 'The Spanish driver started as if he had been shot,—be -understood as well as if Babel had never been,—pulled up, and Henry descended to pick his beloved bag out of the French mud. If it had been Spanish or at least Fontarabian mud, I believe he would have regarded it as precious. But the penny trumpet at Fontarabia had certainly unstrung We were really approaching the main range of the mountains -when we reached Pau, which is to the Pyrenees what Berne is to the Alps, the land of promise from which you 'survey in all its beauty the great northern chain. Was it Richelieu or was it Guizot who said, after concluding a Franco-Spanish marriage contract, " Il n'y a pas de Tyr6nees " P Whoever it was, the mot rang in our ears through- -out our journey, suggesting repeated contrasts between the magnificent self-will of French statesmanship, and the great natural facts which it is so much easier to think away than to :get rid of. But Pau is the last place where one would wish to -think away the Pyrenees. The terrace at Pau may well vie in -charm even with the terrace at Berne, though it cannot rival it in grandeur. One usually forgets that Pau is rather south -than north of Florence, so that the view of the Pyrenees from Pan is the view, not of a range like the Alps, dividing the North of Europe from the South, but of a range planted in the fairest region of Europe, where the sun gives to everything a .glow and a splendour and a mellowness of which Switzerland knows nothing. Berne, picturesque as it is, lies huddled -together, as if the houses needed to keep each other warm in the long winter. Pan is bright and spacious, and has all that air of basking gladly in the warm light, which --constitutes to our anxious Northern temperaments half -the fascination of the South. The ripening fields of Indian -corn dye the wide landscape with the richest colours; just • opposite the great terrace, the undulating vineyards of the green Jurancon hills make a beautiful foreground ; while the wide stretch of deep blue mountains from the cloven peak of the Tic du Midi d'Ossau on the west to the square ridge of the . Tic du Midi de Bigorre on the east, fills you with longing to reach that enchanted-looking horizon of amethyst and sapphire-coloured air. Chestnuts and poplars not only anarking the course of the Gave de Pau below you, but, grouped all over the rich landscape, give it every variety of shade; and the stately castle of Henry IV., towering behind you an the right, with its steep lawn and mass of blazing salvias, gave a fine finish to the bright landscape, and reminded us that we were in the old kingdom of Navarre, long a debatable land between Franee and Spain. Talking of Henry IV., it was a great pleasure to Henry, who was brought -up on Mrs. Markham's histories, to see the tortoise-shell which served for that able king's cradle. Richard Markham, —the same who is stated to have come to his mother, "with tears in his eyes," to ask her to tell him something of English history,—an unnatural request, of which no right-minded boy would have been guilty,—asks what it was that was so curious -about Henry IV.'s cradle, on which the historical lady replies,
• " It was nothing more than the shell of a tortoise, and was long preserved, perhaps is preserved still, in the castle of Pau, which was Henry's birthplace." Well, there it was, and they tell you in the castle,—which is well restored and carefully looked after as a sort of national palace,—that at the Revo- lution, when the people wanted to destroy everything especially royal, the keepers of the chfiteau substituted a false tortoise-shell, which was broken to pieces by the popu- lace, and secretly preserved the true one for more temperate generations. The good Mrs. Markham's historical conscious- ness has so often been called in question, that Henry seems quite delighted to find that her anecdotes at least are not fabulous.
If Pan is the foretaste, Lourdes, the goal of the pilgrims, is the first true taste of Pyrenean scenery. As we reached the station, a long procession of pilgrims became visible approach- ing the church built over the grotto of the Virgin, and for more than half an hour afterwards this procession was still winding on beside the rapid river up to the broad pavement where the pilgrims kneel and pray. The scene was a very striking one. To the south, the great peak of the Pic du Midi de Viscos, as it is called, that towers up above Argeles, and one or two glacier- sprinkled neighbours, were shining in the burning sun. On the east, the grim castle of Lourdes, on its perpendicular rock, the most unassailable of fortresses before the discovery of artillery, —the Black Prince's captains held it for months against a large French army,—completely dominates the dirty little town. To the west, stand the church and grotto of the Virgin, close by the rapid Gave, into which, in the middle of the little town itself, a large tributary is poured from the valley of Argeles. Thus the light and beautiful modern church of the Virgin and the grim castle of the feudal ages, each skirted by the river, directly front each other; while rugged mountains rise over both, themselves surmounted by a still grander chain on the southern horizon. But at Lourdes for a time one forgot the mountains,—one can- not forget for an instant that frowning castle which, even in this century, has had an English prisoner, Lord Elgin having been shut up there by Napoleon during the great French war,— in the multitude of the pilgrims. We must have seen near a. thousand, I imagine, in the single day we spent there, and more men than women, though there were at least 200 nuns amongst them. The church was crowded to the very door. Priests were celebrating mass at several distinct altars, and outside the grotto, where great candelabra of mighty candles burned beneath the image of the Madonna, there was, during the whole time we were there, a crowd of people, scores of them on their knees, reciting litanies to the Virgin. Here were sick people drawn in bath-chairs, evidently going through a novena for the recovery of their health ; there was an epileptic sur- rounded by her friends, laughing idiotically ; here was a simple- looking girl, with a large image of the Madonna, which she could hardly carry, bringing it to be blessed ; and then every half-hour or so, a hymn would be raised, in which all the voices joined, while the clear rushing of the Gave filled up the mo- mentary intervals. At night, there was a great procession of pilgrims to the grotto,—two and two,—each holding a lighted taper ; and this went on for hours. I doubt if during a single hour of the night the grotto was deserted. And the little town was all in keeping. The street leading to the church is crowded with booths full of " objets de pi6t6," statuettes of the Virgin, rosaries of all sorts and sizes, medallions, crucifixes, pictures, all blessed by conse- crated hands ; the saleswomen, of course, as eager to sell, as were the cabmen to entice you to drive hither and thither.
Most of the shops boasted of some connection with the poor girl who first saw the vision of the Virgin,—Maria Soubirous ; one was the shop of her brother, one of some other relative; all sold pictures of her. There was a regular bureau for the sale of the miraculous water. Often you were stopped by kindly-looking nuns begging you to give to their special charity, and promising to pray for you in return. Even at the table d'hede, two or three such depu- tations came round. Certainly never was piety so elaborately organised. On the whole, we liked the faces of the women- devotees much. They were pure, and sweet, and earnest, but the men, I thought, often looked more crafty than pious. The whole thing had in it too much of the whirl and excitement of a watering-place. These devotees themselves could hardly pray, I should think, amidst such feverish surroundings, amidst the hum, and glare, and busy feet, and eager externality, and vivid ripple of expectation, of that strange scene. One was glad to look np at the mountains in their solemn rest. The herds- man, Micah, who cried, "Hear, 0 ye mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth !" would.
have been astonished to see after how strange a fashion that great controversy was being pleaded here.—Yours, &c.,
A WIFE ON HER TRAVELS.
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