They carry upon their heads their baskets, parcels, and water-jugs, which, I may mention by way of parenthesis, are of the most elegant form. With their amphora on their head, and the long folds of their dress, they might be taken for Greek girls, or the princess Nausicaa going to the fountain.
The Cathedral, built by the English, is rather fine; the portal contains statues of bishops as large as life, executed in a much more natural and careful style than the ordinary Gothic statues, which are handled like arabesques, and completely sacrificed to the exigencies of the architect. On visiting the church, I saw, placed against the wall, the magnificent copy of Christ Scourged, by Riesener, after Titian: it is waiting for a frame.
From the Cathedral, my companion and myself proceeded to the Tower of St. Michael, where there is a vault which possesses the power of mummifying the bodies placed there. The lowest story of the tower is inhabited by the keeper and his family, who cook their victuals at the entrance of the cavern, and live on a footing of the most intimate familiarity with their frightful neighbours. The man took a lantern, and we descended by the worn steps of a winding staircase into the funeral vault. The corpses, about forty in number, are placed around the vault, with their backs against the wall. This upright position, so different from the general horizontal posture of the dead, gives them a horribly phantom-like appearance of life, especially in the yellow and flickering light of the lantern, which oscillates in the hand of the guide, and causes the shadows to change their place every instant. The imagination of poets and painters has never produced a more horrible nightmare; the most monstrous caprices of Goya, the raving productions of Louis Boulanger, the diabolical creations of Callot and of Teniers, are nothing in comparison, and all the most fantastic writers of ballads are here surpassed. Never did more abominable spectres rise from out the night of a German mind. They are worthy of figuring at the midnight orgies of the Brocken with the witches of Faust. Their faces are distorted and grinning; their skulls have half the flesh peeled off; their sides gape open, exposing, through the grating of their ribs, their lungs, dried and shrivelled up like sponge. In one instance the flesh has crumbled into dust, and the bones protrude; in another, the parchment skin, no longer sustained by the fibres of the cellular tissue, floats round the corpse like a second windingsheet. Not one of the heads possesses that impassible calmness which death imparts, as a last seal, to those whom it touches. Their mouths gape frightfully, as if drawn asunder by the immeasurable weariness of eternity, or grin with the sardonic grin of Nothingness which laughs life to scorn. Their jaws are dislocated, and the muscles of the neck swollen. Their fists are furiously clenched, and their spines writhe in the contortions of despair. They appear enraged at being moved from their tombs, and troubled in their sleep by the curiosity of the profane.
The keeper pointed out to us a general killed in a duel; the wound, like a large blue lipped mouth laughing in his side, is distinctly visible; – a porter who expired suddenly while lifting an enormous burden; – a negress, who is not much blacker than her white sisters near her; – a woman with all her teeth, and with her tongue almost fresh; – a family poisoned with mushrooms; – and, as a crowning horror, a little boy who, to all appearance, must have been interred alive. This figure is sublime with pain and despair; never was the expression of human suffering carried to a greater extent. The nails are buried in the palms of the hands; the nerves are stretched like the strings of a violin over the bridge; the knees form convulsive angles; and the head is violently thrown back. The poor child, by an extraordinary effort, must have turned round in his coffin.
The place where these corpses are assembled is a low-roofed vault. The soil, which is of suspicious elasticity, is composed of human detritus, fifteen feet deep. In the middle is raised a pyramid of remains in a tolerable state of preservation. These mummies emit a faint and earthy smell, more disagreeable than the acrid perfumes of bitumen and Egyptian natron. Some of the bodies have been in their present abode two or three hundred years, while others have been placed there sixty years only: the cloth of their shrouds or winding-sheets is yet in a tolerably perfect condition.
On leaving the cavern, we proceeded to view the belfry, composed of two towers, united at the summit by a balcony of a most original and picturesque design. We afterwards went to the Church of Sainte-Croix, next to the Hospice des Vieillards.
The portal is enriched with a multitude of groups, which rather boldly carry out the command: Crescite et multiplicamini. Fortunately the flowery and tufted arabesques soften whatever degree of eccentricity this method of rendering the text of Holy Writ might otherwise possess.
The Museum, which is situated in the magnificent Mansion-house, contains a fine collection of plaster casts and a great number of remarkable pictures; among others, two small canvasses of Bega, which are two pearls of inestimable value: they unite the warmth and freedom of Adrien Brauwer with the delicacy and the peculiarity of Teniers. There are also some extremely delicate specimens of Ostade, some of the most quaint and fantastic creations of Tiepolo, some Jordaens, some Van Dycks, and a Gothic painting, which must be by Ghirlandajo or Fiesole. The Museum at Paris possesses nothing in the way of Middle Age art which is worth it; it is impossible, however, for the pictures to be hung with less taste and discrimination; the best places are occupied by enormous daubs of the modern school, contemporary with Guérin and Lethiers.
The port is crowded with vessels of all nations and every burden. In the haze of twilight, they might be taken for a multitude of floating cathedrals – for nothing more resembles a church than a ship, with its spire-like masts, and the tangled tracery of its rigging. To finish the day, we went to the Grand Théâtre. Our conscience obliges us to say that it was full, although they were playing La Dame Blanche, which is anything but a novelty. The interior is nearly as large as that of the Grand Opera at Paris, but with much less ornament about it. The actors sang as much out of tune as at the real Opéra Comique.
At Bordeaux, the influence of Spanish customs begins to be felt. Almost all the sign-boards are in the two languages, and the book-sellers have quite as many Spanish as French publications. A great number of persons can hablar in the idiom of Don Quixote and Guzman of Alfarache. This influence increases as you approach the frontier; and, in fact, the Spanish portion, in this half-tint of demarcation, carries off the victory from the French – the patois spoken by the inhabitants having much more resemblance to Spanish than to the language of the mother country.
CHAPTER II
FROM BORDEAUX TO VERGARA
The Landes– Arrival at Bayonne – Information for Travellers – Urrugne – Saint Jean de Luz – Human Smuggling – Bridge over the Bidassoa – Irun – Travelling with Mules – Primitive Carts – Beggar Children – Spanish Bridges – Oyarzun – Astigarraga – A Spanish Supper – Puchero – Arrival at Vergara.
On leaving Bordeaux, the Landes recommence, if possible more sad, more desolate, and more gloomy than before. Heather, broom, and pinadas (pine forests), with here and there a shepherd squatted down, tending his flocks of black sheep, or a miserable hut in the style of the Indian wigwams, offer a very lugubrious and by no means diverting spectacle. No tree is seen but the pine, with the gash in it from which the resin trickles down. This large salmon-coloured wound forming a strong contrast with the grey tones of the bark, gives the most miserable look in the world to these sickly trees, deprived of the greatest portion of their sap. They have the appearance of a forest unjustly assassinated, raising its arms to Heaven for justice.
We passed through Dax at midnight, and traversed the Adour during the most wretched weather, with a beating rain and a wind strong enough to blow the horns off an ox. The nearer we approached a warmer climate, the sharper and more penetrating became the cold; and had not our cloaks been at hand, we should have had our noses and feet frost-bitten, like the soldiers of the Grande Armée in the Russian campaign.
When day broke we were still in the Landes, but the pines were mingled with cork-trees, which I had hitherto pictured to my mind only under the form of corks, but which are really
