the tangle of traffic is so great that it is wiser to take the road going straight ahead at the bridge, passing the grey-towered castle which stands above the road.

The church of Peyrehorade is modern, and beyond the castle just mentioned and the ruins of another—the Château de Montréal, built in the sixteenth century on the banks of the Gave—there is little to delay one. All the way to Orthez the road keeps by the river known as Gave de Pau, which was the line of Marshal Soult’s retreat from Bayonne.

Puyôo is a pleasant village, with steep roofs covered with brown tiles, and rows of ornamental overhanging courses under the eaves, chiefly formed with curved tiles. The name of the place, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, comes from the patois word for the great mound with a hollowed-out top, which was a stockaded fort of the Franks.

The hamlet of Baigts has a railway-station, a ruined castle of the twelfth century, sulphurous baths, and a grand view of the Pyrenees.

ORTHEZ

is the ancient capital of Béarn, and although it has been robbed of much of its architectural charm, it still retains its conspicuously attractive fortified bridge over the Gave, which is illustrated here. The river flows rapidly along a deep rocky channel, with huge masses of stone standing immovably in the midst of the surging waters. The bridge was built in the fourteenth century, and in the centre rises a machicolated gateway. Although restored in 1873, the window remains through which the Huguenots, under Montgomery, forced priests and friars to leap into the river.

There are only a few old houses left in the town, and these are chiefly in the Rue Bourg-Vieux. The church is a fifteenth-century building with a modern spire, but the Tour Moncade is the machicolated keep of the castle built in 1242 by Gaston VII. It was this fortress which was visited by Froissart in 1388, when Gaston VII., surnamed Phœbus on account of his beauty, Count of Béarn and Foix, held his brilliant Court there.

Froissart says so much of his host’s perfection in everything that a false impression of the man might be gained if some rather ugly facts were not known concerning him. In a moment of passion he stabbed Pierre de Béarn, Governor of Lourdes, who was either his brother or cousin, because he refused to give up the castle of Lourdes, and he also murdered his own son Gaston. The wife of Gaston Phœbus was living at Pamplona, after having become estranged from her husband, and while her son was visiting her, Charles the Bad of Navarre gave him a little bag of arsenic, which he declared was a love-potion which would restore his father’s love for his mother if the powder were sprinkled on the Count’s food. The youth wore the bag of arsenic under his clothes, and eventually returned to Orthez; but his half-brother, having seen the bag, warned his father, who waited until his son was serving him at dinner, and then, suddenly seizing hold of his vest, obtained possession of the bag. The powder was sprinkled on some food and given to a dog, who succumbed to the poison soon afterwards. Young Gaston was placed in confinement, and, fearing to be poisoned, refused all food. His father therefore went to the dungeon and stabbed his son with a knife, saying, ‘Ha, traitor! why dost thou not eat?’

Orthez at one time had a Calvinist University, and the building still remains, although it is no longer a University. The Protestantism of the town has been consistent from the time of Jeanne d’Albret down to the present day, for there are more Protestants in Orthez than in any other town in Béarn. Montgomery, who had caused the death of Henri II. while tilting with him in the lists, began his career as leader of the Huguenots by raising an army and capturing Orthez, which had been filled with troops by Charles IX., in order to coerce the people into Roman Catholicism, three years before the massacre of St. Bartholomew. When the Huguenot army took Orthez, Montgomery’s initial success was marred by the savage treatment of the friars already mentioned. When the unfortunate clergy endeavoured to save themselves by swimming to the banks, they were shot.

In 1814, in the last phase of the Peninsular War, when Wellington was driving Soult before him, Napoleon’s marshal decided to give battle at Orthez, placing his army of 30,000 men in a well-chosen position on the hills to the north of the town. Wellington attacked with 50,000 men, and after a desperate fight, in which 10,000 were killed, the French retreated along the road to Pau, at

first in an orderly fashion, but in the greatest confusion when their retreat was threatened. In his despatch Wellington wrote:

The scene of this débâcle is passed through on the way to Pau, but there is nothing at all to suggest the horrors of such a bloody retreat. There is an almost English feeling in the aspect of the country, the villages being tidy; and the large houses, standing in pleasant, well-kept, park-like surroundings, give a feeling of repose to the scenery. To the right, beyond the river, the landscape becomes hilly and dark with woods, and ends with a piled-up horizon of blue-white peaks touched here and there with a pale gleam where the sunlight falls on the snow.

It is interesting to watch the change from tiled roofs to slate, and the high-pitched roofs with hipped ends and splayed eaves, entirely taking the places of the low roofs near Bayonne. Here and there walls built of round stones laid herring-bone-wise recall the cottages and barns of parts of the Sussex coast. The road keeps by the Gave, and goes very straight over the flat alluvial land of the valley until the beautifully situated town of Pau is reached.

SECTION XIII

PAU TO ST. GAUDENS, 61½ MILES
(99 KILOMETRES)

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

PAU

In its situation Pau is most fortunate, for, being raised high above the rushing Gave, the views of the splendid chain of white mountain peaks are uninterrupted, and most of the modern hotels have their balconies commanding the great panorama of the Pyrenees, with the Pic du Midi d’Ossau in the centre. The impressive scenery, coupled with a mild and genial climate and much winter sunshine, has lifted Pau from the obscurity into which history had allowed it to fall into one of the most popular inland resorts in France.

It is a clean and healthy town, having had much attention paid to its sanitation, the authorities knowing that the English and American visitor has a strong antipathy to a tainted atmosphere. The town even has a supply of pure drinking-water, and besides the indoor attractions of a modern Winter Palace, there are golf, tennis, polo, and a pack of foxhounds.

There is a season all through the year, for tourists follow the winter visitors; then there are the crowds of the ‘faithful’ on their way to Lourdes, and those who come to immerse themselves in the thermal waters for which the Pyrenean range is famous.

In its history Pau is chiefly interesting during the sixteenth century. Before that there was a fortress rebuilt between 1373 and 1380 by Gaston Phœbus, the keep of which can be seen to-day; but Pau only rose to importance when it became the capital and the residence of the Sovereigns of Béarn.

In 1527 Marguerite de Valois, the charming young sister of François I., was married to Henri d’Albret of Béarn. She not only obtained architects from Italy to remodel the castle on the Renaissance style, and made what was then considered the most beautiful garden in Europe, but attracted to her Court the leading artists, poets, and savants, as well as the best of the nobility of her time. Further than this, Marguerite encouraged the Reformation movement so warmly that Calvin and Clément Marot, whose psalms were sung by the Huguenots, found a refuge with her at Pau. Marguerite’s daughter was the famous Jeanne d’Albret, who became the mother of Henry of Navarre, the great Protestant champion who eventually became Henri IV. of France. Jeanne’s husband, Antoine de Bourbon, died in 1562, leaving her the ruler of Béarn and Navarre; and being free to act as she chose, Jeanne made a public declaration of her belief in Protestantism, and then made the mistake of endeavouring to force her people to take the same step. It therefore became necessary for Charles IX. to send an army against Béarn; but Jeanne d’Albret, assisted by the Prince of Condé and the English, raised a strong force, commanded by Montgomery, and defeated the Catholics. These victories, as already mentioned in connection with Orthez, were marred by the savage treatment of the Catholics, including a massacre at a feast held on August 24, 1569, of ten lords whose lives Montgomery had promised to spare. The apartment of the château in which this bloody deed was carried out is hung with tapestry, and is called the Grand Salon de Réception de Henri II. (of Navarre).

Under Louis XIII. Navarre and Béarn were made into a province, and Pau, no longer possessing a royal Court, soon dropped into an obscurity in which it remained until English visitors began, in 1850, to draw attention to the attractions of the climate and scenery.

The Château (open every day between 10 and 5 from April 1 to September 30, and between 11 and 4 from October 1 to the end of March). The fourteenth-century keep of red brick, built by Gaston Phœbus, as already mentioned, stands to the left on entering the courtyard through the open arches of the east side. On the left—that is, overlooking the river—is the beautiful façade restored by Henri d’Albret (Henri II. of Navarre). It contains the grand salon where the massacre mentioned above took place, and also the Chambre de Henri IV., where the Protestant king was born on December 13, 1553. His cradle, in the shape of a large tortoiseshell, is still preserved in the room.

An interesting story concerning the birth of the child is told by Miss Sichel in her work on Catherine de Medici.

It is a pity that the château has been so much restored. The work was chiefly carried out, with poor taste, under Louis Philippe.

In No. 5, Rue Bernadotte, which is marked with an inscription, Bernadotte, King of Sweden, was born on January 26, 1764.[H] He was a lawyer’s son, who entered the army, and, at the early age of thirty years, had become General of Brigade. When the heir to the throne of Sweden died, Bernadotte was chosen, in 1810, as his successor, Napoleon thinking that his late General would submit to his wishes. Bernadotte, having no friendly feeling towards Napoleon, acted with complete independence, and in the fatal Battle of Leipsic the Swedish troops under him had a large share in Napoleon’s defeat. The lawyer’s son became Charles XIV. of Sweden in 1818.

THE ROAD TO TARBES

goes as straight as an arrow, except where it ascends and descends from the high ground that encloses the plain of Tarbes. The chief features are the huge views of the Pyrenees and the roadside houses, which very often have curiously thatched roofs.

At Soumoulou a turning to the right goes, through Pontacq, to the Roman Catholic Mecca of Lourdes.

Before 1858 this famous pilgrimage centre was a village of no importance at all. It can now be

reached by a railway and by good roads, and there are large hotels for the thousands of Catholics who flock there every year. Unlike Rocamadour, there is no architectural charm, nor is there any peculiarity of situation, about Lourdes. It stands in one of the many picturesque valleys that open out from the main Pyrenean chain, and its medieval castle, mentioned in the previous chapter, has been much modernized. No, Lourdes became famous because a little village girl, fourteen years of age, named Bernadette Soubirous, who minded pigs, stated that she had seen and conversed with the Virgin on several occasions. Roman Catholic apologists admit that Bernadette was a diseased, asthmatic, and underfed child, and also that ‘she was not particularly intelligent.’ On the first occasion when the girl claimed to have seen the Virgin she was accompanied by her sister Marie and another companion, but neither of them saw any vision, nor did they hear the sound of wind which Bernadette thought she heard. The crowds who watched her during the numerous other occasions in the same month (February, 1858), when she went to the grotto by the Gave to see the Virgin, are said to have been impressed with the change which came over the child’s features, but she alone claimed to see anything appear in the grotto. Zola’s book pointing out the absurdity of the belief in the miraculous visions was scarcely needed; but, like Joan of Arc, the girl seems to have believed implicitly in the hallucinations which had come to her, and no doubt her consistent attitude gave the superstitious people of the neighbourhood the confidence which caused them to regard the vision as a genuine fact.

After delaying any action for some months, the Bishop of Tarbes appointed a commission to inquire into the affair which was causing so much stir and excitement in Lourdes, and finally gave out his opinion in favour of Bernadette’s visions! Pope Pius IX. endorsed the Bishop’s credulity with a Bull. In 1876 a church was built above the grotto, and year after year thousands of pilgrims travel great distances to see the holy place, and to have all kinds of infirmities cured. A sacred spring, which flowed from the grotto when Bernadette, at the Virgin’s request, made a hole in the wet sand, has such remarkable effects that the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, and the nearly dead are restored to health with the application of a little of the water!

The hotel-keepers of Lourdes have no complaints to make—in fact, they probably feel some gratitude to Pius IX. and to the good Bishop of Tarbes.

*   *   *   *   *   *

An excellent and easily followed road leads from Lourdes to Tarbes.

The main road from Pau to Tarbes direct makes a great zigzag descent into the green plain, giving as it does so some most remarkable views, the level ground below being contrasted with the jagged line of mountains to the south.

Ibos, just to the right of the road, is a small village, with an aggressive church of the fourteenth century. It is narrow and lofty, with enormous buttresses and two towers.

TARBES

does not make appeals to the passing tourist. It is the centre of the great horse-breeding industry carried on in the fertile plain, which grows tobacco, vines and maize, and is a loosely built, unpicturesque town, having been half destroyed in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. In 1569 Montgomery, the Huguenot leader, captured Tarbes, drove out the inhabitants, and burnt the churches and monasteries. Scarcely had the people returned when the Huguenots again took the town, this time levelling the walls and leaving the place in ruins.

Mr. Baring-Gould calls the cathedral the ‘most cumbrous, ungainly minster in all France.’ There are three windows of the twelfth century in the apse, and a thirteenth-century rose-window in the north transept. The fourteenth-century Church of St. Jean is not very interesting, and that of Ste. Thérèse is a modernized building of the fifteenth century.

On the door of the Lycée a Latin inscription, dated 1699, says: ‘May this building endure, until the ant has drunk the waters of the ocean and the tortoise made the tour of the globe.’

The Jardin Massey was given to the public by the manager of the gardens at Versailles in the time of Louis Philippe. Massey was a native of Tarbes, who began life as a working gardener.

On the western side of the town is the Haras, or breeding-station, where the English and Arab stallions are kept.

Barère, the regicide, whom Macaulay regarded as approaching ‘nearer than any person mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of consummate and universal depravity,’ was born at Tarbes in 1755.

The road becomes exceedingly hilly as soon as the plain of Tarbes is left behind near Barbazan-Debat, and new views of steep-sided valleys, wooded ridges, and the snowy Pyrenees, appear every few minutes.

After passing the railway viaduct at Lhez, the road goes south-westwards to Tournay, a small town renamed after Tournai in Hainault, but of no particular interest.

The road ascends for several miles in a beautiful wooded valley, and after passing under a bridge one goes to the left across the railway, turning at once to the right parallel with it and nearly due east.

The long climb has brought one up to a lofty heathery moorland, commanding grand views in all directions. On this high plateau, where the River Gers has its source, is the little town of Lannemezan. The church dates back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and has a fine Romanesque doorway.

Pinas, a small slate-roofed village, has picturesque gateways to its farmhouses, and before reaching Montrejeau (pronounced Mont Rejeau), one sees on the left M. le Baron de Lassus’ huge modern Château de Valmirande, built between 1892 and 1898. It commands a magnificent view into a valley leading up to the main mountain chain.

MONTREJEAU

is a small and picturesque town, with red roofs, brightly painted shutters, arcaded streets in the Italian style, and a sixteenth-century Hôtel de Ville, supported on pillars, with the market beneath. The Church of St. Jean has a great octagonal belfry, originally built as the castle keep. The situation of the town on a hill above the beautiful Garonne is delightful. Montrejeau was one of the bastide cities founded in 1272 by the Sénéchal de Toulouse, and was built on a regular plan, as one may see to-day.

A straight and level road by the Garonne leads to St. Gaudens, which is described in the next section.

SECTION XIV

ST. GAUDENS TO CARCASSONNE,
105 MILES
(169 KILOMETRES)

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

St. Gaudens gets its name from a boy of thirteen years who was martyred in 475 for holding to the Christian faith under the persecution of Euric, King of the Visigoths. It is a dusty little town, with a busy market-place and a beautiful Romanesque church, dating from the beginning of the twelfth century, when the place began to grow prosperous with the establishment of a college of canons at the martyr’s tomb. The church was formerly fortified, and the upper part of the Romanesque tower has been rebuilt by Laffolye, who restored the sculpture of the small tower door of the same period, the carving having been badly mutilated by Montgomery’s Huguenots. One enters by a fine Flamboyant doorway, and finds a very dark interior, with walls hung with old tapestries, and a horrible atmosphere, suggesting an entire lack of ventilation. It is worth while, however, to endure this polluted air in order to examine the finely carved capitals, showing Biblical scenes, including a very interesting Nebuchadnezzar in the fields. The sacristy, with a vaulted roof, and the carved choir-stalls should also be seen.

The road follows the Garonne, and on nearing St. Martory runs close beside it, with a great wall of orange-coloured rock on the left.

ST. MARTORY

is a curious town with two imposing eighteenth-century gateways, one of them by the bridge which is crossed on the way southwards to St. Girons. Arthur Young marvelled at their magnificence when he saw them in 1787. He thought they could only have been built to please the eye of travellers! The gendarmerie is built of the stone brought from the ruined Abbey of Bonnefont, and the Romanesque doorway of the church (sixteenth century) comes from the same monastery, a little south of the town.

A Renaissance château stands on the right bank of the river.

After crossing the hills south of St. Martory, the road drops down to the village of Mane, on the Salat, and all the way to St. Girons one follows that river without crossing it. At a point about 6 kilometres from Mane, where there is a bridge to Lacave, one is tempted to cross the river, as the road appears to be entering a stone quarry, but one must not be deterred by this.

ST. LIZIER

is piled up romantically on a steep and almost isolated mass of rock rising from the rushing Salat. It is now a small decayed place without an hotel, but its very steep and picturesque streets lead up to Roman remains of a most interesting character.

Under the name of Lugdunum Consoranorum, St. Lizier was one of the nine cities of Novempopulania; it was the capital of Conserans, the seat of a bishopric founded in 450 by St. Vallier, and it remained an episcopal possession until the Revolution. One crosses the medieval bridge of three or four unequal arches, noticing a piece of Roman marble inscribed to the goddess Belisama let into one of the piers, and then, ascending a precipitous street, turns to the right towards the church at the corner, illustrated here.

The interesting Romanesque church dates from the twelfth or the following century, and is built of red brick, with a central tower, now well restored. Roman remains are built into the apse, and there is also a Roman doorway. The sacristan keeps the key of the beautiful cloisters, every capital of which is different and worth study. A tomb dated 1303

is that of Bishop Chatillon, and in the sacristy are portraits of other bishops, whose imposing residence still crowns the highest portion of the town: but this former home of episcopal dignity is now a lunatic asylum. Permission to enter is, however, easily obtained, a gardien conducting the visitor to the small fourteenth-century cathedral and the twelfth-century chapter-house. The bases of the walls of the bishops’ palace are undoubtedly Roman. There were six semicircular and six square towers, and even the twelfth-century episcopal keep stands on a Roman base, just inside the ramparts. Many picturesque corners and some quaint timber-framed houses invite one to linger at St. Lizier, and the time spent there would not be wasted.

ST. GIRONS,

on the other hand, is uninteresting, and as its hotels are uninviting, there is every reason for pushing on. Arthur Young went there in 1787, and wrote as follows:

The church was rebuilt in 1857, leaving the fourteenth-century tower only, and the château founded in the thirteenth century, is now the not very interesting Palais de Justice.

The way to Le Mas-d’Azil is along the Route de Foix as far as the fork at Lescure, where one goes to the left. There is a stone direction-post in front of the house at the corner.

ALTERNATIVE ROUTE TO PAMIERS THROUGH FOIX

After passing Lescure the road winds upwards and then falls at an easy gradient in a rocky valley,

with great grey ridges of rock standing out boldly, their highest points crowned with Calvaries. At Clermont there is a new church, the grey ruin of its castle, and a Calvary. The fields, tilted at every angle, are ploughed with oxen, whose heads are protected with a piece of sheep-skin.

THE GROTTE DU MAS-D’AZIL

A few kilometres beyond Clermont the road curves, and suddenly one is confronted with a vast cliff of yellowish-cream limestone, containing a cavern of gigantic dimensions, into which the green waters of the Arize pour tumultuously. At the side of the cavern’s mouth a small hole has been bored, and into this the road unhesitatingly plunges. The lofty roof of limestone is delicately coloured with mauve, emerald, and pink tints near the mouth, but farther in the darkness is so great that the road is lighted with oil-lamps. Birds fly in and out of the yawning mouth of the cavern, but the sound of their wings is drowned by the roar of the river on its rock-strewn bed. A suppressed excitement fills the mind of the motorist who for the first time drives into this subterranean way, but all too soon there is a glimmer of white light round a bend, and the roof of rock, which has lowered to within a yard or two of his head, suddenly comes to an end, as the car runs out into the dazzling sunshine just beyond the cavern.

The little town of Le Mas-d’Azil has an hotel in the dusty market-place, which can provide a capital déjeuner. The church is of uncertain age from a casual glance, and the offensive smell of its interior, combined with the cobwebs, dirt, and damp, make one inclined to hurry away. Protestantism flourished in the town in the seventeenth century, and some of the people still adhere to the reformed faith. In 1625 the Calvinists were obliged to seek refuge in the cavern when attacked by the Catholics. They would have been forced to abandon it through their enemies having dammed up the river and reduced them to extremes of thirst, if the obstruction the Catholics had built had not been broken through by a party of Protestant soldiers.

From Le Mas-d’Azil the road goes through Sabarat and Menay to Pailhès, on the Lèze, where a picturesque château, dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, stands on a wooded spur above the village.

The road to Pamiers goes to the right and then to the left, and winds for about fifteen kilometres through a very picturesque hilly country, with superb views of the Pyrenees across up-and-down country, chequered with growing corn, pale brown ploughed fields, and purple woods. Sowing seed in the old broadcast method still prevails here.

PAMIERS

More bends in the road follow, and then Pamiers appears down below, on the margin of a fertile plain watered by the broad Ariège.

Although having an interesting story, Pamiers does not make many appeals to the visitor. The original town was called Mas St. Antonin, but it has decayed so much that there is scarcely anything to be seen even of its abbey, which gave birth to the town which has vanished.

The cathedral was mainly built between 1658 and 1689, with a brick tower of the fourteenth century. Notre-Dame-du-Camp has a colossal red brick façade of the fourteenth century, with machicolation and two towers, a most astonishing illustration of the Church militant. The Church of the Cordeliers dates from 1512, and is in the style known as Toulousian Gothic, from the town a little to the north. There are a number of old houses in Pamiers, but they are near the ironworks, which are an ugly feature of the town, and in most instances they are frowsy and dilapidated. From the site of the destroyed castle there are fine views of the Pyrenees, but they are no better than those that the road commands.

THE ROAD TO CARCASSONNE

goes south-westwards from the southern side of Pamiers, and turns to the left at a fork, crossing the railway, and running in a straight line over the level plain to the valley of the River Hers, upon which is built the exceedingly attractive little town of

MIREPOIX

It is disposed of with a few cold words in the ordinary guide-books, but it is nevertheless a place of singular picturesqueness. There is an old nucleus, surrounded by wide tree-bordered boulevards, and the hurrying tourist sees none of the antiquity of the town if he does not penetrate the central square. It is surrounded on all sides with arcaded houses resting on heavy wooden pillars, with rows of curiously carved brackets in between. There are pictures everywhere, for at one end of the square is a medieval gateway, and on one side stands the Church of St. Maurice. The interior of this building is a vast aisleless space, and the whole of the walls and the modern roof are covered with painting. The building dates almost entirely from early in the fifteenth century.

All the rest of the way to Carcassonne there are huge views north and south, and there are only two small places to be mentioned. The first is Fanjeaux, which stands out most picturesquely on the left side of the road, with a pair of quaint windmills on the hill opposite. The church dates from the thirteenth century, and is believed to have been built on the site of a temple of Jupiter the present name coming from Fanum Jovis. The little town standing out boldly against the sky at sunset is an exceedingly fine sight, and the colour of the foregrounds of nearly every picture the road presents is the burning gold of gorse.

Montréal stands on an isolated hill, and has a fourteenth-century church, built upon a terrace commanding a vast view of the Pyrenees.

SECTION XV

CARCASSONNE TO MONTPELLIER,
94¼ MILES