CHAPTER I. FROM LUZ TO BAGNERES-DE-BIGORRE.
I.
Here one must submit to long, stifling ascents; the horses trudge on at a foot-pace or pant; the travellers sleep or sweat; the conductor grumbles or drinks; the dust whirls, and, if you go out, your throat is parched or your eyes smart. There is only one way of passing the evil hour: it is to tell over some old story of the country, as, for example, the following:--
Bos de Bénac was a good knight, a great friend of the king Saint Louis; he went on a crusade into the land of Egypt, and killed many Saracens for {390}the salvation of his soul. But finally the French were beaten in a great battle, and Bos de Bénac left for dead. He was taken away prisoner along the river, towards the south, into a country where the skin of the men was quite burned by the heat, and there he remained ten years. They made him herdsman of their flocks, and often beat him because he was a Frank and a Christian.
One day when he was afflicted and lamenting his lot in a solitary place, he saw appear before him a little black man, who had two horns to his forehead, a goat’s foot, and a more wicked air than {391}the most wicked of Saracens. Bos was so used to seeing black men, that he did not make the sign of the cross. It was the devil, who said, sneering, to him: “Bos, what good has it done thee to fight for thy God? He leaves thee the servant of my servants of Nubia; the dogs of thy castle are better treated than thou. Thou art thought dead and tomorrow thy wife will be married. Go then to milk thy flock, thou good knight.”
Bos uttered a loud cry and wept, for he loved his wife; the devil pretended to have pity on him, and said to him: “I am not so bad as thy priests tell. Thou hast fought well; I like brave men; I will do for thee more than thy friend, the crucified one. This night shalt thou be in thy beautiful land of Bigorre. Give me in exchange a plate of nuts from thy table: what, there thou art embarrassed as a theologian! Dost thou think that nuts have souls? Come, decide.”
Bos forgot that it is a mortal sin to give anything to the devil, and stretched out to him his hand. Immediately he was borne away as in a whirlwind; he saw beneath him a great yellow river, the Nile, which stretched out, like a snake, between two bands of sand; a moment afterward, a city spread on the strand like a cuirass; then innumerable waves ranged from one end of the horizon to the other, and on them black vessels {392}like unto swallows; further on, a triple-coasted island, with a hollow mountain full of fire and a plume of tawny smoke; then again the sea. Night fell, when a range of mountains lifted itself into the red bands of the sunset. Bos recognized the serrate tops of the Pyrenees and was filled with joy.
The devil said to him: “Bos, come first to my servants of the mountain. In all conscience, since you return to the country, you owe them a visit. They are more beautiful than thy angels, and will love thee, since thou art my friend.”
The good knight was horrified to think that he was the friend of the devil, and followed him reluctantly. The hand of the devil was as a vice; he went swifter than the wind. Bos traversed at a bound the valley of Pierrefitte and found himself at the foot of the Bergonz, before a door of stone which he had never seen. The door opened of itself with a sound softer than a bird’s song, and they entered a hall a thousand feet high, all of crystal, flaming as if the sun were inside it. Bos saw three little women as large as one’s hand, on seats of agate; they had eyes clear as the green waters of the Gave; their cheeks had the vermilion of the thornless rose; their snowy robe was as light as the airy mist of the cascades; their scarf was of the hues of the rainbow. Bos believed he had seen it formerly floating on the brink of the {393}precipices, when the morning fog evaporated with the sun’s first rays. They were spinning, and their wheels turned so fast that they were invisible. They rose all together, and sang with their little silvery voices: “Bos is returned; Bos is the friend of our master; Bos, we will spin thee a cloak of silk in exchange for thy crusader’s mantle.”
A moment later he was before another mountain, which he recognized by the light of the stars. It was that of Campana, which rings when misfortune comes upon the country. Bos found himself inside without knowing how it happened, and saw that it was hollow to the very summit. An enormous bell of burnished silver descended from the uppermost vault; a troop of black goats was attached to the clapper. Bos perceived that these goats were devils; their short tails wriggled convulsively; their eyes were like burning coals; their hair trembled and shrivelled like green branches on live coals; their horns were pointed and crooked like Syrian swords. When they saw Bos and the demon they came leaping around them with such abrupt bounds and such strange eyes that the good knight felt his heart fail within him. Those eyes formed cabalistic figures, and danced after the manner of the will-o’-the-wisp in the grave-yard; then they ranged themselves in single file and ran forward; the steel clapper flew against the sounding {394}wall, an immense voice came rolling forth from the vibrant silver. Bos seemed to hear it in the depths of his brain; the palpitations of the sound ran through his whole body; he shuddered with anguish like a man in delirium, and distinctly heard the bell chanting: “Bos has returned; Bos is the friend of our master; Bos, it is not the bell of the church, it is I who ring thy return.”
He felt himself once more lifted into the air; the trees rooted in the rock bent before his companion and himself as beneath a storm; the bears howled mournfully; troops of wolves fled shivering over the snow. Great reddish clouds flew across the sky, jagged and quivering like the wings of bats. The evil spirits of the valley rose up and eddied through the night. The heads of the rocks seemed alive; the army of the mountains appeared to shake themselves and follow him. They traversed a wall of clouds and stopped upon the peak of Anie. At that very moment, a flash cleft the vapory mass. Bos saw a phantom tall as a huge pine, the face burning like a furnace, enveloped in red clouds. Violet aureoles flamed upon his head; the lightning crept at his feet in dazzling trains; his whole body shone with white flashes. The thunder burst forth, the neighboring summit fell, the upturned rocks smoked, and Bos heard a mighty voice saying: “Bos has returned; Bos is the friend of our {395}master; Bos, I illumine the valley for thy return better than the tapers of thy church.”
The poor Bos, bathed in a cold sweat, was suddenly borne to the foot of the chateau of Bénac, and the devil said to him: “Good knight, go now, find again thy wife!” Then he began to laugh with a noise like the cracking of a tree, and disappeared, leaving behind a smell of sulphur. {396}
Morning dawned, the air was cold, the earth damp, and Bos shivered under his tatters, when he saw a superb cavalcade draw near. Ladies in robes of brocade seamed with silver and pearls; lords in armor of polished steel, with chains of gold; noble palfreys beneath scarlet housings, conducted by pages in doublets of black velvet; then an escort of men-at-arms, whose cuirasses glittered {397}in the sun. It was the Sire d’Angles coming to marry the lady of Bénac. They filed slowly along the ascent and were buried beneath the darkness of the porch.
Bos ran to the gate; but they repelled him, saying: “Come back at noon, my good man, thou shalt have alms like the rest.”
Bos sat down upon a rock, tormented with grief and rage. Inside the castle he heard the flourish of trumpets and the sounds of rejoicing. Another was going to take his wife and his goods; he clenched his fists and revolved thoughts of murder; but he had no weapons; he determined to be patient, as he had so often been among the Saracens, and waited.
All the poor of the neighborhood were gathered together, and Bos placed himself among them. He was not humble as the good king Saint Louis, who washed the feet of the beggars; he was heartily ashamed of walking among these pouch-bearers, these maimed and halt, with crooked legs and bent backs, ill clad in poor, torn and patched cloaks, and in rags and tatters; but he was still more ashamed when, in passing over the moat filled with clear water, he saw his burnt face, his locks bristling like the hair of a wild beast, his haggard eyes, his whole body wasted and bruised; then he remembered that his only garment was a torn sack {398}and the skin of a great goat, and that he was more hideous than the most hideous beggar. These cried aloud the praises of the wedded ones, while Bos ground his teeth with rage.
They followed the lofty corridor, and Bos saw through the door the old banqueting hall. His arms still hung there; he recognized the antlers of stags that he had shot with his bow, the heads of bears that he had slain with his bear-spear. The hall was full; the joy of the banquet rose high beneath the vault; the wine of Languedoc flowed generously in the cups, the guests were drinking the health of the betrothed. The lord of Angles was talking very low to the beautiful lady, who smiled and turned towards him her gentle eyes. {399}
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{401}When Bos saw those rosy lips smiling and the black eyes beaming beneath the scarlet capulet, he felt his heart gnawed with jealousy, bounded into the hall and cried out with a terrible voice: “Out of this, ye traitors! I am master here, Bos de Bénac.”
“Beggar and liar!” said the lord of Angles. “We saw Bos fall dead on the banks of the Egyptian stream, Who art thou, old leper? Thy face is black like those of the damned Saracens. You are all in league with the devil; it is the evil spirit who has led thee hither. Drive him out, and loose the dogs upon him.”
But the tender-hearted lady begged them to have mercy on the unhappy madman. Bos, pricked by his conscience, believing that everybody knew his sin, fled with his face in his hands, in horror of himself, and stayed not until he had reached a solitary bog. Night came, and the bell of Mount Campana began to toll. He heard the wheels of the faeries of the Bergonz humming. The giant clad in fire appeared on the peak of Anie. Strange images, like the dreams of a sick man, rose in his brain. The breath of the demon was on him. A legion of fantastic visages galloped through his head to the rustle of infernal wings, and the ravishing smile of the lovely lady pricked him to the heart like the point of a poniard. The little {402}black man appeared near him, and said to him: “How, Bos, art thou not invited to the wedding of thy wife? The lord of Angles espouses her at this very hour. Friend Bos, he is not courteous!”
“Accursed of God, what art thou here to do?”
“Thou art scarcely grateful; I have led thee out of Egypt, as Moses did his loafing Israelites, and I have transported thee, not in forty years but in a day, into the promised land. Poor fool, whose amusement is tears! Dost thou wish thy wife? Give me thy faith, nothing more. Indeed, thou art right; to-morrow, if thou art not frozen, and if thou pleadest humbly with the lord of Angles, he will make thee keeper of his kennels; it is a fine situation. To-night, sleep on the snow, good knight. Yonder, where the lights are, the lord of Angles embraces thy wife.”
Bos was stifling, and thought he was going to die. “Oh Lord my God,” said he, falling on his knees, “deliver me from the tempter!” And he burst into tears.
The devil fled, driven by this ardent prayer; the hands of Bos clasped over his breast touched his marriage ring which he carried in his scapulary. He trembled with joy! “Thanks, O Lord, and bring me there in time.”
He ran as if he had wings, crossed the threshold at a bound, and hid himself behind a pillar {403}of the gallery. The procession advanced with torches. When the lady was near him, Bos rose, took her hand and showed her the ring. She recognized it and threw herself into his arms. He turned towards those who were present and said: “I have suffered like our Saviour, and like Him been denied. Men of Bigorre, who have maltreated and denied me, I pray that you will be my friends as of old.”
On the morrow Bos went to pour a dish of nuts into a black gulf, where often was heard the voice of the devil; after that he left to confess himself to the pope. On his return he became a hermit in a cavern of the mountain, and his wife a nun in a convent at Tarbes. Both piously did penance, and were worthy after their death to behold God.
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II.
A little beyond Lourdes begins the plain, and the sky opens out over an immense space: the azure dome grows pale toward the edges, and its tender blue, graded down by insensible shades, loses itself on the horizon in an exquisite whiteness. {405}These colors, so pure, so rich, so sweetly blended, are like a great concert where one finds himself enveloped in harmony; the light comes from all sides; the air is penetrated with it, the blue vault sparkles from the dome to the very horizon. Other objects are forgotten; you are absorbed in a single sensation; you cannot help enjoying this unchangeable serenity, this profusion of brightness, this overflowing of golden, gushing light playing in limitless space. This sky of the south corresponds to but one state of the soul, joy; it has but one thought, one beauty, but it gives rise to the conception of full and durable happiness; it sets in the heart a spring of gayety ever ready to flow; man in this country ought to wear life lightly. Our northern skies have a deeper and more varied expression; the metallic reflections of their changing clouds accord with the troubled souls; their broken light and strange shadings express the sad joy of melancholy passions they touch the heart more deeply and with a keener stroke. But blue and white are such lovely hues! From here the north seems an exile; you would never have thought that two colors could give so much pleasure. They vanish into each other, like pleasant sounds that grow into harmony and are blended together. The distant white softens the garish light and imprisons it in a haze of thickened {406}air. The azure of the dome deadens the rays under its dark tint, reflects them, breaks them, and seems strewn with spangles of gold. This glitter in the sky, these horizons drowned in a misty zone, this transparence of the infinite air, this depth of a heaven without clouds, is worth as much as the sight of the mountains.
III.
Tarbes is a good-sized city that looks like a market town, paved with small stones, mediocre in appearance. You alight in a place where great dusty elms make a shade. At noon the streets are empty; it is evident that you are near the sun of {407}Spain. A few women merely, with red foulards on the head, were selling peaches at the corners. A little further on some cavalry soldiers stretched their great awkward legs in the narrow shadow of their wall. You run across a square of four buildings, in the midst of which rises a bell-tower flaring at the base. It is the church; it has but a single aisle, very high, very broad, very cool, painted in dark colors, which contrast with the stifling heat outside and the glare of the white walls; above the altar, six columns of mottled marble, surmounted with a baldachin, make a pretty effect. The pictures are like those everywhere else: A Christ, mingled fresh butter and pale rose in hue, a passion in colored engravings at six sous each. A few, hung very high in dark corners, seem better because you can make nothing out of them. A little further on they have just built a court-house, clean and new as a judge’s robe; the ashler work is well dressed, and the walls perfectly scraped. The front is adorned with two statues: Justice, who looks like a fool, and Force, who looks like a girl. Force has on low boots and the skin of an animal. Instead of fine statues we have ugly riddles. Since they had a fancy for symbols, could they not have dressed Force as a policeman? To compensate ourselves for the statues, we went to visit the horses. In this place, the homely city becomes an elegant city. {408}The buildings of the stud are simple and in good taste. Turf, rosebushes, stairways filled with flowers, a beautiful meadow of high grass; in the distance are poplars ranged as a screen to the limpid horizon. The habitation of the horses is a pleasure-house. There are fifty beasts in a long stable that might serve at need for a ball-room; they are superb creatures with shining coats, firm croup, gentle eye, calm front: they feed peaceably in their stalls, having a double mat under their litter; everything is brushed, wiped, rubbed. Grooms in red vests come and go incessantly to clean them and see that nothing is wanting. Man in the earthly paradise was less happy.
IV.
Poor mankind has no city which is not full of lamentable memories. The Protestants took this one in 1570 and butchered all the inhabitants. One of them had taken refuge in a tower whose only ascent was by a narrow staircase; they sent one of his friends, who called to him under pretext of a parley; no sooner had he put his head at the window than he was killed by an arquebusade. The peasants who came to give burial to the dead interred two thousand of them in the {409}ditches. Five years after, the country was almost a desert.
Patience! the Catholics were no gentler than the Protestants; witness that siege of Rabastens, twelve miles distant from Tarbes.
“Suddenly,” says Montluc, “I saw that others besides our foot soldiers should have a hand here, and said to the nobility: ‘Gentlemen, my friends, follow boldly, and give, and be not wonder-struck; for we could not choose a more honorable death.’ And so we all marched with as good a will as ever I saw in my life to the assault, and I twice looked back; I saw that all were closed up so as to touch one another. I had caused three or four ladders to be carried to the brink of the moat, and as I turned backward to order them to bring up two ladders, a volley was given me in the face from the corner of a barricade which adjoined the tower. I was suddenly covered with blood, for I bled from the mouth, nose and eyes. Then almost all the soldiers, and nearly all the nobles too, began to be affrighted and would retreat. But I cried out to them, although I could scarcely speak for the quantity of blood which gushed from my mouth and nose: ‘Where will you go? Will you be frightened on my account? Do not stir, and do not abandon the fight.’ And said to the nobles, ‘I am going to get my wounds dressed: let no one follow {410}me, and avenge me as you love me.’ I took a nobleman by the hand, and so was led to my lodging, where I found a surgeon of M. de Goas’ regiment, named Maître Simon, who dressed my wound and pulled out the bones from both cheeks with his two fingers, so large were the holes, and cut off much flesh from my face, which was covered with wounds.
“Here now is M. de Madaillan, my lieutenant, who was at my side when I went to the charge, and M. de Goas on the other, who was come to see if I were dead, and said to me: ‘Rejoice, monsieur, take courage, we are inside. There are the soldiers with hands that kill everybody; be assured then that we will avenge your wound.’ Then I said to him: ‘I praise God, because I see that victory is ours before I die. At present I feel no concern at dying. I beg you will go back, and show me all the affection you have borne me, _and take care that no one escapes unkilled._
“And immediately he went away, and even my servants all went; so that there remained along with me only two pages, and the advocate de Las and the surgeon. They wanted to save the minister and the captain of the garrison, named Ladous, so as to have them hung before my quarters. But the soldiers had nearly killed them themselves, and took them away from those who held them and tore {411}them into a thousand pieces. The soldiers made fifty or sixty who had withdrawn into the great tower, leap from the top into the moat, and these were drowned. It turns out that two who had hidden themselves were saved. There was a certain prisoner who wanted to give four thousand crowns. But never a man would hear of any ransom, and most of the women were killed.”
With such fits of madness how has the human race managed to endure? “In vain you drain it,” says Mephistopheles, “the fresh spring of living blood forever reappears.”
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