on growing to woman’s estate, left no stone unturned in her attempt to obtain the kingdom of Navarre, but feebly supported by her amiable husband. “Would that I had been born John and you Catherine!” exclaimed the impetuous princess; “and then we would have secured Navarre.” In the end Catherine died of disappointment at the failure of all her schemes, and in dying turned her eyes in the direction of Navarre.
The rest of the story of the viscounts of Béarn, counts of Foix, and titular kings of Navarre, shall be told when we come to Pau.
By some fatality, surely unjustly, the Gascons are credited throughout France with being braggarts, cowards, the makers of bad bulls and as bad jokes. This is what a writer says of them in Le Passe-temps Agréable, Rotterdam, 1737:—
“If in France you would speak of a braggart and swash-buckler, whose magnanimity and courage are discoverable in his speech, and in his speech alone; who speaks of war, without having been in it; say but, He is a Gascon, and this explains everything. Those friends at the table who are faithful so long as it is spread with good cheer, but who vanish when the platter and the beaker are empty—say that they are Gascons, and that explains all. Should you encounter a fellow who boasts of his gallantries and the favours he has received from fair ladies, intimate that he is a Gascon, and all will know the worth of his statements. The word Gascon suffices to comprehend various characters never estimable. But it must not be supposed that all Gascons are such sorry creatures as those spoken of above. There are to be found among them men of rare merit, and men with plenty of courage, men as honest as are any others. But, actually, all Gascons do not come from Gascony. Every nation under the sun breeds its braggarts and false braves. ‘The true Gascons,’ says a writer who knew them well in their own land washed by the Garonne, ‘the true Gascons possess a good deal of heart, and are desirous of making all the world aware of the fact.’ But I am not satisfied that they do not make display of more heart than they actually possess.”
A collection of bons-mots and blunders made by Gascons is found in Vasconia, Lyons, 1730. The description of a Gascon, as given by a fellow-countryman, is more flattering than that above. He says: “To be a Gascon is to be a happy mixture of dazzling virtues and of agreeable and convenient faults. Everything in us is charming, even our imperfections. What if there be blemishes perceptible in us? There are spots in the sun itself.”
CHAPTER III
BAYONNE
Approach to the Pyrenees—Colour of the mountains—Bayonne—Cathedral—Attachment of Bayonne to the English—Quarrels with Norman towns—Taken by the French—Bayonets—Meeting of queens—Wild Scotchmen—Napoleon lures the Infante and King of Spain to Bayonne—Dethrones the King—The crossing of the Pyrenees by Wellington—Battles—About Bayonne—Cemetery—Lakes in the Landes—Biarritz—The Refuge—S. Jean de Luz—Riding en cacolet—Heaving at Eastertide—The Bidassoa—Peace of the Pyrenees—Fontarabia—Passages—San Sebastian—Siege—Charges brought against the English.
Michelet, with florid eloquence, describes the approach to the Pyrenees from Bordeaux in the first chapter of the second volume of his History of France.
“However beautiful and fertile may be the valley of the Garonne, one cannot lag there. The distant summits of the Pyrenees exercise on us a too powerful attraction. But it is a serious matter to reach them. Whether you take the way by Nérac, a doleful seigneurie of the Albrets, or whether you follow the coast, it is all the same, you must either traverse or skirt an ocean of landes, covered with cork trees and vast pine forests, where nothing is met save black sheep under the conduct of a shepherd of the department, that have left the mountains for the plains in quest of warmth. The roving life of these shepherds is one of the most picturesque elements in the South. These nomads, companions of the stars in their eternal solitude, half astronomers, half sorcerers, carry their goods with them. Here in the West they continue to lead the Asiatic life of Lot and Abraham.
“The formidable barrier of Spain now rises before us in all its majesty. The Pyrenees are not, like the Alps, a complicated system of peaks and valleys, they are simply a mighty wall that drops to lower elevations at its extremities. Two peoples, distinct from one another—the Basques at the west, the Catalans at the east—hold the doors of two worlds. These irritable and capricious porters open and shut at will, wearied and impatient at the incessant passage of the nations through these ports. They opened to Abderaman, they shut to Roland. Many graves lie between Roncevaux and the Seu d’Urgel.”
Certain it is that the approach to the Pyrenees across the long level of the Landes lends to them an advantage only possessed by the Alps when seen from the plains of Lombardy. I know nothing so impressive as the scene from a swell on the surface of the Landes, when the eye sees the great range in silver and cobalt stretching to the south from a dim east, in which snowy peaks and silver clouds are indistinguishable, to die away beyond the reach of the eye in the west, and all beheld over a vast sheet of dark green forest, like a sea stretching to their roots. Nowadays we whirl from Bordeaux to Dax and Bayonne by rail. I recall the journey by carriage, when before our eyes for two days we saw that blue ridge tipped with silver half-way up the sky, hour after hour becoming more distinct. I have spoken of the colours of the mountains as cobalt and silver. So they are in the remote distance, but when near at hand the tints are richer. I had a drawing-master at Bayonne, to whom I showed some water-colour sketches of English scenery. He shook his head. “Cobalt!” said he; “that will not do for the shadows of our Pyrenees. For them you must employ ultramarine and carmine.” He spoke the truth. Such are the royal purples of Pyrenean shadows worn in summer and autumn.
Bayonne is a trefoil. There are three towns, but the third is on the north side of the Adour, and in the department of Landes. It has grown up about the railway station and the citadel. Old Bayonne is a city planted on both banks of the Nive, where it joins the Adour. Bayonne is the capital of the Basque country, and the population of the town is composed of Basques, Spaniards, Jews, with a sprinkling only of French. The cathedral, the old castle, the Mairie, and the theatre are in Grand Bayonne on the left bank of the Nive. In Petit Bayonne, on the right bank, are the arsenal, the Châteaux Neuf, and the military hospital.
The old town, cramped within its fortifications, capable of expansion upwards only, has narrow and gloomy streets.
The cathedral was left incomplete by the English when driven out of Bayonne. It lacked a west front and towers; but these have been supplied of late years. Externally the cathedral is not striking, but within it is well-proportioned. Choir and apse pertain to the thirteenth century, the nave to the fourteenth, all constructed when the English were masters of the town. The arms of England, of Talbot, and other noble families that are English, are emblazoned on the keys of the vaulting ribs. On the south side of the church are the beautiful cloisters, almost the largest in France. Their date is 1240.
THE CATHEDRAL, BAYONNE
A good many houses in the town have cellars vaulted with ribs to a key, and on some of these latter are English arms. But few old buildings in the town are of interest. The château dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the new château is of the fifteenth and sixteenth, but neither is architecturally remarkable.
Bayonne and Bordeaux were warmly attached to England during the three hundred years that they pertained to the English crown. Their love was not altogether sentimental; it sprang out of self-interest, as these two ports furnished the wine
