Luz is a little city, thoroughly rustic and agreeable. Streams of water run down the narrow, flinty streets; the gray houses press together for the sake of gaining a little shade. The morning sees the arrival of flocks of sheep, of asses laden with wood, of grunting and undisciplined hogs, and bare-footed peasant girls, knitting as they walk alongside of their carts. Luz is in a spot where four valleys come together. Men and beasts disappear on the market-place; red umbrellas are fixed in the ground. The women seat themselves alongside their wares; around them their red-cheeked brats are nibbling their bread, and frisking like so many mice; provisions are sold, stuffs are bought. At noon the streets are deserted; here and there in the shadow of a doorway may be discerned the figure of an old woman sitting, but no sound is heard save the gentle murmur of the streams along their stony bed.

The faces here are pretty: the children are a pleasure to look upon, before toil and the sun have spoiled their features. They amble merrily through the dust, and turn toward the passer their bright round faces, their speaking eyes, with slight and abrupt movements. When the girls, with their red petticoats tucked up, and in capulets of thick red stuff, approach to ask alms of you, you see under the crude color the pure oval of a clear-cut, proud countenance, a soft, almost pale hue, and the sweet look of two great tranquil eyes.

II.

The church is cool and solitary; it once belonged to the Templars. These monk-soldiers obtained a foothold in the most out-of-the-way corners of Europe. The tower is square as a fortress; the enclosing wall has battlements like a fortified city. The dark old door-way would be easily defended. Upon its arch, which is very low, may be distinguished a half-obliterated Christ, and two fantastic, rudely colored birds. As you enter, a small uncovered tomb serves as font, and you are shown a low door through which passed the accursed race of the bigots. * Its first aspect is singular, but has nothing unpleasant about it. A good woman in a red capulet, knitting in hand, was praying near a confessional of badly planed boards, under an old brown gallery of turned wood. Poverty and antiquity are never ugly, and this expression of religious care seemed to suit well with the ruins and souvenirs of the middle ages scattered about us.

But deeply rooted in the people is a certain indefinable love of the ridiculous and absurd which succeeds in spoiling everything; in this poor church, tracery, from which the gilding is worn away, crosses a vault of scoured azure with tarnished stars, flames, roses and little cherubs with wings for cravats. A brownish pink angel, suspended by one foot, flies forward, bearing in its hand a golden crown. In the opposite aisle may be seen the face of the sun, with puffy cheeks, semicircular eyebrows, and looking as sapient as in an almanac. The altar is loaded with a profusion of tarnished gilding, sallow angels, with simple and piteous faces like those of children who have eaten too much dinner. All this shows that their huts are very dreary, naked and dull.

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A people that has just emerged from the dirt is apt to love gilding. The most insipid sweetmeat is delicious to one who has long eaten nothing but roots and dry bread.

III.

Luz was formerly the capital of these valleys, which formed together a sort of republic; each commune deliberated upon its own private interests; four or five villages formed a vic and the deputies from every four vics assembled at Luz.

The list of the assessments was, from time immemorial, made upon bits of wood called totchoux, that is to say, sticks. Each community had its totchoti, upon which the secretary cut with his knife Roman ciphers, the value of which was known only to himself. In 1784 the intendant of Auch, who knew nothing of this custom, ordered of the government officials to bring to him the ancient registers; the official came, followed by two cartloads of totchoux.

Poor country, free country. The estates of Bigorre were composed of three chambers which deliberated separately; that of the clergy, that of the nobility, and the third estate, made up of consuls or principal officers of the communes, and deputies from the valleys. In these assemblies the taxes were apportioned, and all important matters were discussed. A valley is a natural fortified city, defended against the outside world and stimulating association. The enemy could be arrested on his way, and crushed beneath the rocks; in winter, the torrents and the snow shut him off from all entrance. Could knights in armor pursue the herdsman into his bogs? What could they have taken as prisoners, except a few half-starved goats? The daring climbers, hunters of the bear and wolf, would willingly have played at this game, sure of winning at it warm clothes, arms and horses. It is thus that independence has lasted in Switzerland.

Free country, poor country. I have already remarked that in the valley of Ossau. The plains are mere defiles between the feet of two chains. Cultivation climbs the slope, wherever it is not too steep. If a morsel of earth exists between two rocks, it is put to seed. Man gets from the desert as much as he can wrest from it: so terraces of fields and harvests mottle the declivity with green strips and yellow squares. Barns and stables sprinkle it with white patches; it is streaked by a long grayish footpath. But this robe, torn by jutting rocks as it is, stops short half-way up, and the summit is clothed only with barren moss.

The harvest is gathered in July, without horses, of course, or carts. On these slopes, man alone can perform the service of a horse: the sheaves are enclosed in great pieces of cloth and fastened with cords; the reaper takes the enormous bundle upon his head, and ascends with naked feet among the sharp-pointed stalks and stones, without ever making a false step.

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You find here ordinances reducing by half the number of men-at-arms required of the country, founded upon the proportion of harvests destroyed each year by hail and frost. Several times, during the religious wars, the country became a desert. In 1575, Montluc declares “that it is now so poor that the dwellers hereabouts are forced to quit their houses and take to begging.” In 1592, the people of Comminge having devastated the country, “the peasants of Bigorre abandoned the culture of the land for want of cattle, and the greater part of them took the road into Spain.” It is not a hundred years since that, in all the country, there, were known to exist but three hats and two pairs of shoes. To this very day, the mountaineers are forced to renew with every year their sloping fields, wasted by the rains of winter. “They burn, for light, bits of resinous pine, and scarcely ever taste meat.”

What misery is contained in those few words! Yet how deep must be the wretchedness that can break the tie that binds man to his native soil! A threadbare text from history, a phrase of passionless statistics, contain within their limits years of suffering, myriads of deaths, flight, separations, degradation. Of a truth, there is too much ill in the world. With every century, man removes a bramble and a stone that had helped to obstruct the way over which he advances; but what signifies a bramble or a stone? There remain, and always will remain, more than enough to lacerate and kill him. Besides, new flints are falling into the way, new thorns are springing up. Prosperity increases his sensibility: an equal pain is inflicted by a less evil; the body may be better shielded, but the soul is more disordered.

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The benefits of the Revolution, the progress of industry, the discoveries of science, have given us equality, the comforts of life, liberty of thought, but at the same time a malevolent envy, the rage for success, impatience of the present, necessity of luxury, instability of government, and all the sufferings of doubt and over-refinement.

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Is a citizen of the year 1872 any happier than one of the year

1672? Less oppressed, better informed; furnished with more comforts, all that is certain; but I do not know if he is more cheerful. One thing alone increases—experience, and with it science, industry, power. In all else, we lose as much as we gain, and the surest progress lies in resignation.

IV.

This valley is everywhere refreshed and made, fertile by running water. On the road to Pierrefitte two swift streams prattle under the shade of the flowering hedges: no travelling companion could be gayer. On both sides, from every meadow, flow streamlets that cross each other, separate, come together, and finally together spring into the Gave. In this way the peasants water all their crops; a field has five or six lines of streams which run hemmed in by beds of slate. The bounding troop tosses itself in the sunlight, like a madcap band of boys just let loose from school. The turf that they nourish is of an incomparable freshness and vigor; the herbage grows thick along the brink, bathes its feet in the water, or lies under the rush of the little waves, and its ribbons tremble in a pearly reflection under the ripples of silver. You cannot walk ten steps without stumbling upon a waterfall; swollen and boiling cascades pour down upon great blocks of stone; transparent sheets stretch themselves over the rocky shelves; threadlike streaks of foam wind from the verge to the very valley; springs ooze out alongside the hanging grasses and fall drop by drop; on the right rolls the Gave, and drowns all these murmurs with its great monotonous voice. The beautiful blue iris thrives along the marshy slopes; woods and Crops climb very high among the rocks. The valley smiles, encircled with verdure; but on the horizon the embattled peaks, the serrate crests and black escarpments of the notched mountains rise into the blue sky, beneath their mantle of snow.

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Back of Luz is a bare, rounded eminence, called Saint-Pierre, crowned by a fragment of gray ruin, and commanding a view of the whole valley. When the sky has been overcast, I have spent here entire hours without a moment of weariness: beneath its cloudy Curtain the air is moderately warm. Sudden patches of sunlight stripe the Gave, or illumine the harvests hung midway on the mountain slope. The swallows, with shrill cries, wheel high in the creeping vapors; the sound of the Gave comes up, softened by distance into a harmony that is almost aerial. The wind breathes, and dies away; a troop of little flowers flutters at the passage of its wing; the buttercups are drawn up in line; frail little pinks bury in the herbage their rosy-purple stars; slender-stemmed grasses nod over the broad slaty patches; the air is filled with the fragrance of thyme. Are they not happy, these solitary plants, watered by the dew, fanned by the breezes?

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This height is a desert; no one comes to tread them down; they grow after their own sweet will, in clefts of the rock, by families, useless and free, flooded by the loveliest sunlight. And man, the slave of necessity, begs and calculates under penalty of his life! Three children, all in rags, came upon the scene: “What are you looking for here?”

“Butterflies.”

“What for?”

“To sell.”

The youngest had a sort of tumor on his forehead. “Please, sir, a sou for the little one who is ill.”

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