Around Bordeaux are smiling hills, varied horizons, fresh valleys, a river peopled by incessant navigation, a succession of cities and villages harmoniously planted upon the declivities or in the plains, everywhere the richest verdure, the luxury of nature and civilization, the earth and man vying with each other to enrich and decorate the happiest valley of France. Below Bordeaux a flat soil, marshes, sand; a land which goes on growing poorer, villages continually, less frequent, ere long the desert. I like the desert as well.

Pine woods pass to the right and to the left, silent and wan.

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Each tree bears on its side the scar of wounds where the woodmen have set flowing the resinous blood which chokes it; the powerful liquor still ascends into its limbs with the sap, exhales by its slimy shoots and by its cleft skin; a sharp aromatic odor fills the air.

Beyond, the monotonous plain of the ferns, bathed in light, stretches away as far as the eye can reach. Their green fans expand beneath the sun which colors, but does not cause them to fade. Upon the horizon a few scattered trees lift their slender columns. You see now and then the silhouette of a herdsman on his stilts, inert and standing like a sick heron. Wild horses are grazing half hid in the herbage. As the train passes, they abruptly lift their great startled eyes and stand motionless, uneasy at the noise that has troubled their solitude. Man does not fare well here,—he dies or degenerates; but it is the country of animals, and especially of plants. They abound in this desert, free, certain of living. Our pretty, cutup valleys are but poor things alongside of these immense spaces, leagues upon leagues of marshy or dry vegetation, a level country, where nature, elsewhere troubled and tortured by men, still vegetates as in primeval days with a calm equal to its grandeur. The sun needs these savannas in order properly to spread out its light; from the rising exhalation, you feel that the whole plain is fermenting under its force; and the eyes filled by the limitless horizon divine the secret labor by which this ocean of rank verdure renews and nourishes itself.

Night without a moon has come on. The peaceful stars shine like points of flame; the whole air is filled with a blue and tender light, which seems to sleep in the network of vapor wherein it lies. The eye penetrates it without apprehending anything. At long intervals, in this twilight, a wood confusedly marks its spot, like a rock at the bottom of a lake; everywhere around are vague depths, veiled and floating forms, indistinct and fantastic creatures melting into each other, fields that look like a billowy sea, clumps of trees that you might take for summer clouds,—the whole graceful chaos of commingled phantoms, of things of the night. The mind floats here as on a fleeting stream, and nothing seems to it real, in this dream, but the pools which reflect the stars and make on earth a second heaven.

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Bayonne is a gay city, original and half Spanish. On all sides are men in velvet vest and small-clothes; you hear the sharp, sonorous music of the tongue spoken beyond the mountains. Squatty arcades border the principal streets; there is need of shade under such a sun.

A pretty episcopal palace, in its modern elegance, makes the ugly cathedral still uglier. The poor, abortive monument piteously lifts its belfry, that for three centuries has remained but a stump. Booths are stuck in its hollows, after the manner of warts; here and there they have laid on a rude plaster of stone. The old invalid is a sad spectacle alongside of the new houses and busy shops which crowd around its grimy flanks. I was quite troubled at this decrepitude, and when once I had entered, I became still more melancholy. Darkness fell from the vault like a winding-sheet; I could make out nothing but o o worm-eaten pillars, smoke-darkened pictures, expanses of greenish wall. Two fresh toilettes that I met increased the contrast; nothing could shock one more in this place than rose-colored ribbons.

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I was looking upon the spectre of the middle ages; how opposed to it are the security and abundance of modern life! Those sombre vaults, those slender columns, those rose windows, blood-dyed, called up dreams and emotions which are now impossible for us. You should feel here what men felt six hundred years ago, when they swarmed forth from their hovels, from their unpaved, six-feet-wide streets, sinks of uncleanness, and reeking with fever and leprosy; when their unclad bodies, undermined by famine, sent a thin blood to their brutish brains; when wars, atrocious laws, and legends of sorcery filled their dreams with vivid and melancholy images; when over the bedizened draperies, over the riddles of painted glass, the rose windows, like a conflagration or an aureole, poured their transfigured rays.

These are the remembrances of fever and ecstasy: to get rid of them I have come out to the port; it is a long alley of old trees at the side of the Adour. Here all is gay and picturesque. Serious oxen, with lowered heads, drag the beams that are being unloaded. Rope-makers, girt with a wisp of hemp, walk backward tightening their threads, and twining their ever-growing cable. The ships in file are made fast at the quay; the slender cordage outlines its labyrinth against the sky, and the sailors hang in it hooked on like spiders in their web. Great casks, bales, pieces of wood are strewn pell-mell over the flags.

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You are pleased to feel that man is working and prosperous. And here nature too is as happy as man. The broad silver river unrolls itself under the radiance of the morning. Slender clouds throw out on the azure their band of mother-of-pearl. The sky is like an arch of lapis-lazuli. Its vault rests on the confines of the flood which advances waveless and effortless, under the glitter of its peaceful undulations, between two ranges of declivity, away to a hill where pine-woods of a tender green slope down to meet it, as graceful as itself. The tide meanwhile rises, and the leaves on the oaks begin to shine, and to whisper under the feeble wind off the sea.

III.

It rains: the inn is insupportable. It is stifling under the arcades; I am bored at the cafÉ, and am acquainted with nobody. The sole resource is to go to the library. That is closed.

Fortunately the librarian takes pity on me, and opens for me. Better yet, he brings me all sorts of charters and old books; he is both very learned and very amiable, explains everything to me, guides, informs and installs me. Here I am then in a corner, alone at a table, with the documents of a fine and thoroughly enjoyable history; it is a pastoral of the middle ages. I have nothing better to do than to tell it over for my own benefit.

PÉ de Puyane was a brave man and a skilful sailor, who in his day was Mayor of Bayonne and admiral; but he was harsh with his men, like all who have managed vessels, and would any day rather fell a man than take off his cap. He had long waged war against the seamen of Normandy, and on one occasion he hung seventy of them to his yards, cheek by jowl with some dogs. He hoisted on his galleys red flags signifying death and no quarter, and led to the battle of Ecluse the great Genoese ship Christophle, and managed his hands so well that no Frenchman escaped; for they were all drowned or killed, and the two admirals, Quieret and Bahuchet, having surrendered themselves, Bahuchet had a cord tightened around his neck, while Quieret had his throat cut. That was good management; for the more one kills of his enemies, the less he has of them. For this reason, the people of Bayonne, on his return, entertained him with such a noise, such a clatter of horns, of cornets, of drums and all sorts of instruments, that it would have been impossible on that day to hear even the thunder of God.

It happened that the Basques would no longer pay the tax upon cider, which was brewed at Bayonne for sale in their country. Pe de Puyane said that the merchants of the city should carry them no more, and that, if any one carried them any, he should have his hand cut off. Pierre Cambo, indeed, a poor man, having carted two hogsheads of it by night, was led out upon the market-place, before Notre Dame de Saint-LÉon, which was then building, and had his hand amputated, and the veins afterwards stopped with red-hot irons; after that he was driven in a tumbrel throughout the city, which was an excellent example; for the smaller folk should always do the bidding of men in high position.

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Afterwards, PÉ de Puyane having assembled the hundred peers in the town-house, showed them that the Basques being traitors, rebels toward the seigniory of Bayonne, should no longer keep the franchises which had been granted them; that the seigniory of Bayonne, possessing the sovereignty of the sea, might with justice impose a tax in all the places to which the sea rose, as if they were in its port, and that accordingly the Basques should henceforth pay for passing to Villefranche, to the bridge of the Nive, the limit of high tide. All cried out that that was but just, and PÉ de Puyane declared the toll to the Basques; but they all fell to laughing, saying they were not dogs of sailors like the mayor’s subjects. Then having come in force, they beat the bridgemen, and left three of them for dead.

PÉ said nothing, for he was no great talker; but he clinched his teeth, and looked so terribly around him, that none dared ask him what he would do, nor urge him on, nor indeed breathe a word. From the first Saturday in April to the middle of August, several men were beaten, as well Bayonnais as Basques, but still war was not declared, and, when they talked of it to the mayor, he turned his back.

The twenty-fourth day of August, many noblemen among the Basques, and several young people, good leapers and dancers, came to the castle of Miot for the festival of Saint Bartholomew. They feasted and showed off the whole day, and the young people who jumped the pole, with their red sashes and white breeches, appeared adroit and handsome. That night came a man who talked low to the mayor, and he, who ordinarily wore a grave and judicial air, suddenly had eyes as bright as those of a youth who sees the coming of his bride. He went down his staircase with four bounds, led out a band of old sailors who were come one by one, covertly, into the lower hall, and set out by dark night with several of the wardens, having closed the gates of the city for fear that some traitor, such as there are everywhere, should go before them.

Having arrived at the castle they found the drawbridge down and the postern open, so confident and unsuspecting were the Basques, and entered, cutlasses drawn and pikes forward, into the great hall. There were killed seven young men who had barricaded themselves behind tables, and would there make sport with their dirks; but the good halberds, well pointed and sharp as they were, soon silenced them. The others, having closed the gates from within, thought that they would have power to defend themselves or time to flee; but the Bayonne marines, with their great axes, hewed down the planks, and split the first brains which happened to be near. The mayor, seeing that the Basques were tightly girt with their red sashes, went about saying (for he was usually facetious on days of battle): “Lard these fine gallants for me; forward the spit into their flesh justicoats;” and in fact the spits went forward, so that all were perforated and opened, some through and through, so that you might have seen daylight through them, and that the hall half an hour after was full of pale and red bodies, several bent over benches, others in a pile in the corners, some with their noses glued to the table like drunkards, so that a Bayonnais, looking at them, said: “This is the veal market.” Many, pricked from behind, had leaped through the windows, and were found next morning, with cleft head or broken spine, in the ditches.

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There remained only five men alive, noblemen, two named d’Urtubie, two de Saint-PÉ, and one, de Lahet, whom the mayor had set aside as a precious commodity; then, having sent some one to open the gates of Bayonne and command the people to come, he ordered them to set fire to the castle. It was a fine sight, for the castle burned from midnight until morning; as each turret, wall or floor fell, the people, delighted, raised a great shout. There were volleys of sparks in the smoke and flames that stopped short, then began again suddenly, as at public rejoicings; so that the warden, an honorable advocate, and a great literary man, uttered this saying: “Fine festival for Bayonne folk; for the Basques great barbecue of hogs.”

The castle being burned, the mayor said to the five noblemen that he wished to deal with them with all friendliness, and that they should themselves be judges, if the tide came as far as the bridge; then he had them fastened two by two to the arches until the tide should rise, assuring them that they were in a good place for seeing. The people were all on the bridge and along the banks, watching the swelling of the flood. Little by little it mounted to their breasts, then to their necks, and they threw back their heads so as to lift their mouths a little higher. The people laughed aloud, calling out to them that the time for drinking had come, as with the monks at matins, and that they would have enough for the rest of their days. Then the water entered the mouth and nose of the three who were lowest; their throats gurgled as when bottles are filled, and the people applauded, saying that the drunkards swallowed too fast, and were going to strangle themselves out of pure greediness. There remained only the two men, d’Urtubie, bound to the principal arch, father and son, the son a little lower down. When the father saw his child choking, he stretched out his arms with such force that a cord broke: but that was all, and the hemp cut into his flesh without his being able to get any further. Those above, seeing that the youth’s eyes were rolling, while the veins on his forehead were purple and swollen, and that the water bubbled around him with his hiccough, called him baby, and asked why he had sucked so hard, and if nurse was not coming soon to put him to bed. At this the father cried out like a wolf, spat into the air at them, and called them butchers and cowards. That offended them so that they began throwing stones at him with such sure aim that his white head was soon reddened and his right eye gushed out; it was small loss to him, for shortly after, the mounting wave shut up the other. When the water was gone down, the mayor commanded that the five bodies, which hung with necks twisted and limp, should be left a testimony to the Basques that the water of Bayonne did come up to the bridge, and that the toll was justly due from them. He then returned home amidst the acclamations of his people, who were delighted that they had so good a mayor, a sensible man, a great lover of justice, quick in wise enterprises, and who rendered to every man his due. .

As he was setting out, he had put sixty men at the entrance of the bridge, in the toll-tower, ordering them to look out well for themselves, and warning them that the Basques would not be slow in seeking to avenge themselves. But they flattered themselves that they still had at least one good night, and they busied their throats mightily with emptying flagons. Towards the middle of the night, there being no moon, came up about two hundred Basques; for they are alert as the antelope,* and their runners had awakened that morning more than twenty villages in the Soule with the story of fire and drowning. The younger men, with several older heads, had set out forthwith by crooked circuitous paths, barefoot, that they might make no noise, well armed with cutlasses, crampoons and several slender rope-ladders; and, adroit as foxes, they had stolen to the base of the tower, to a place on the eastern side where it plunges straight down to the bed of the river, a real quagmire, so that here there was no guard, and the rolling of the water on the pebbles might drown their slight noise, should they make any. They fixed their crampoons in the crannies of the stones, and, little by little, Jean Amacho, a man from BÉhobie, a noted hunter ofmountain beasts, climbed upon the battlements of the first wall, then, having steadied a pole against a window of the tower, he entered and hooked on two ladders; the others mounted in their turn, until there were about fifty of them; and new men were constantly coming, as many as the ladders would bear, noiselessly striding over the window-sill.

They were in a little, low ante-room, and from thence, in the great hall of the first floor, six steps below them, they beheld the Bayonnais, of whom there were but three in this place, two asleep, and a third who had just waked up and was rubbing his eyes, with his back turned to the small door of the ante-room. Jean Amacho gave a sign to the two men who had mounted immediately after him, and all jumped together with a single leap, and so nicely that, at the same moment, their three knives pierced the throats of the Bayonnais, who, bowing their limbs, sank without a cry to the ground. The other Basques then came in, and waited at the verge of the great balustraded staircase leading into the lower hall where were the Bayonnais, some in a heap sleeping near the fireplace, others calling out and sharpset at feasting.

One of these feeling that his hair was moist, lifted his head, saw some little red streams running from between the joists of the ceiling, and began to laugh, saying that the greedy fellows up there could no longer hold their cups, and were wasting good wine, which was very wrong of them. But finding that this wine was quite warm, he took some on his finger, then touched his tongue, and saw, by the insipid taste, that it was blood. He proclaimed this aloud, and the Bayonnais starting up grasped their pikes and ran for the staircase. Thereupon the Basques who had waited, not being sufficiently numerous, wished to recover the moment and rushed forth; but the first comers felt the point of the pikes, and were lifted, just as bundles of hay are spitted on the forks to be thrown into a loft; then the Bayonnais, holding themselves close together, and bristling in front with pikes, began to mount.

Just then a valiant Basque, Antoine Chaho, and two others with him, dropped down along the wall, lizard fashion, making a cover of dead bodies; and gliding between the great legs of the sailors of Bayonne, began work with their knives upon their hamstrings; so that the Bayonnais, wedged in the stairway, and embarrassed by the men and the pikes that were falling crosswise, could neither get on nor wield their spits with such nicety. At this moment, Jean Amacho and several young Basques, having espied their moment, leaped more than twenty feet clear into the middle of the hall, to a place where no halberds were ready, and began cutting throats with great promptness, then, thrown upon their knees, fell to ripping open bellies; they killed far more than they lost, because they had deft hands, while many were well padded with wool and wore leather shirts, and besides, the handles to their knives were wound with cord and did not slip. Moreover the Basques from above, who now numbered more than a hundred, rolled down the staircase like a torrent of goats; new ones came up every moment, and in every corner of the hall, man to man, they began to run each other through.

There died Jean Amacho in a sad enough fashion, and from no fault of his own; for after he had cut the throat of a Bayonnais,—his ordinary mode of killing, and, indeed, the best of all,—he held his head too near, and the jet from the two great veins of the neck spirted into his face like the froth from a jar of perry as it is uncorked, and suddenly shut up both his eyes; accordingly he was unable to avoid a Bayonnais who was at his left; the fellow planted his dagger in Jean’s back, who spit out blood, and died a minute after.

But the Bayonnais, who were less numerous and less adroit, could make no stand, and at the end of half an hour there remained only a dozen of them, driven into a corner near a little cellar where were kept the jugs and bottles. In order the sooner to reduce these, the Basques gathered together the pikes, and began driving through this heap of men; and the Bayonnais, as anybody will on feeling an iron point prick through his skin, stepped back and rolled together into the cellar. Just at this moment the torches went out, and the Basques, in order not to wound each other, dressed the whole armful of pikes, and harpooned at random forward into the cellar during more than a quarter of an hour, so as to make sure that no Bayonnais remained alive; and thus, when all was become tranquil, and the torches were relighted, and they looked in, they saw that the cellar resembled a pork-butcher’s chopping-block, the bodies being cut in twenty places, and separated from their heads, and the limbs being confusedly thrown together, till only salt was wanting to make a salting-tub of the place.

But the younger of the Basques, although there was nothing more to kill, rolled their eyes all around the hall, grinding their teeth like hounds after the quarry; they cried aloud continually, trembling in their limbs and clenching their fingers after the handles of their daggers; several, wounded and whitelipped, no longer felt their wounds or their loss of blood, remained crouching beside the man they had last killed, and then involuntarily leaped to their feet. One or two laughed with the fixity of madmen, and varied this with a hoarse roar; and there was in the room such a mist of carnage that any one seeing them reeling or howling thus, might have believed them drunk with wine.

At sunrise, when they had loosed the five drowned men from the arches, they cast all the Bayonnais upon the current of the stream, and said that they might go down thus to their sea, and that this cartful of dead flesh was such toll as the Basques would pay. The congealed wounds were opened again by the coldness of the water; it was a fine sight: by means of the blood that flowed, the river blushed red as a morning sky.

After this the Basques and the men of Bayonne fought several years more, man against man, band against band; and many brave men died on both sides. At the end, the two parties agreed to submit to the arbitration of Bernard Ezi, Sire d’Albret. The lord of Albret said that the men of Bayonne, since they had made the first attack, were in fault; he ordained that in future the Basques should pay no toll, that, on the contrary, the city of Bayonne should pay them fifteen hundred new golden crowns and should establish ten priestly prebendaryships, which should cost four thousand old crowns of the first coinage of France, of good gold and loyal weight, for the repose of the souls of the five gentlemen drowned without confession, which, perchance, were in purgatory, and had need of many masses in order to get out. But the Basques were unwilling that PÊ de Puyane, the mayor, should be included in this peace, either he or his sons, and they reserved the right to pursue them until they had taken vengeance on his flesh and his race. The mayor retired to Bordeaux, to the house of the Prince of Wales, of whom he was a great friend and good servant, and during two o o years did not go outside of the city, excepting three or four times, well steeled, and attended by men-at-arms. But one day, when he had gone to see a vineyard he had bought, he withdrew a little from his troop to lift a great black vine-stock which was falling into the ditch; a moment after, his men heard a little sharp cry, like that of a thrush caught in a snare; when they had run up they saw PÉ de Puyane dead, with a knife a fathom long which had entered by the armpit where he was unprotected by his cuirass. His elder son, Sebastian, who had fled to Toulouse, was killed by Augustin de Lahet, nephew of the man who was drowned; the other, Hugues, survived and founded a family, since, having gone by sea to England, he remained there, and received from King Edward a knight’s fief. But neither he nor his children ever returned into Gascony; they did wisely, for they would have found their grave-diggers there.

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