I thought that here I should find the country; a village like a hundred others, with long roofs of thatch or tiles, with crannied walls and shaky doors, and in the courts a pell-mell of carts with fagots, and tools, and domestic animals, in short, the whole picturesque and charming unconstraint of country life. I find a Paris street and the promenades of the Bois de Boulogne.
Never was country less countrified: you skirt a row of houses drawn up in line, like a row of soldiers when carrying arms, all pierced regularly with regular windows, decked with signs and posters, bordered by a side-walk, and having the disagreeably decent aspect of hotels garnis. These uniform buildings, mathematical lines, this disciplined and formal architecture make a laughable contrast with the green ridges that flank them. It seems grotesque that a little warm water should have imported into these mountain hollows civilization and the cuisine.
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This singular village tries every year to extend itself, and with great difficulty, so straitened and stifled is it in its ravine; they break the rock, they open trenches on the declivity, they suspend houses over the torrent, they stick others, as it were, to the side of the mountain, they pile up their chimneys even to the roots of the beech-trees; thus they construct behind the principal street a melancholy lane which dips down or raises itself as it can, muddy, steep, half filled with temporary stalls and wooden wine-shops, lodging-places of artisans and guides; at last it drops down to the Gave, into a nook decked out with drying linen, which is washed in the same place with the hogs.
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Of all places in the world, Eaux Bonnes is the most unpleasant on a rainy day, and rainy days are frequent there; the clouds are engulfed between two walls of the valley of Ossau, and crawl slowly along half way up the height; the summits disappear, the floating masses come together, accumulate because the gorge has no outlet, and fall in fine cold rain. The village becomes a prison; the fog creeps to the earth, envelopes the houses, extinguishes the light already obscured by the mountain; the English might think themselves in London.
The visitors look through the window-panes at the jumbled forms of the trees, the water that drips from the leaves, the mourning of the shivering and humid woods; they listen to the gallop of belated riders, who return with clinging and pendent skirts, like fine birds with their plumage disordered by the rain; they try whist in their despondency; some go down to the reading-room and ask for the most blood-stained pages of Paul FÉval or FrÉdÉric SouliÊ; they can read nothing but the gloomiest dramas; they discover leanings towards suicide in themselves, and construct the theory of assassination. They look at the clock and bethink themselves that the doctor has ordered them to drink three times a day; then they button up their overcoats with an air of resignation, and climb the long, stiff slope of the streaming road; the lines of umbrellas and soaked mantles are a pitiable spectacle; they come, splashing through the water, and seat themselves in the drinking-hall. Each one takes his syrup-flask from its numbered place on a sort of ÉtagÈre, and the throng of the drinkers form in line about the tap. For the rest, patience is soon acquired here; amid such idleness the mind goes to sleep, the fog puts an end to ideas, and you follow the crowd mechanically; you act only at the instigation of others, and you look at objects without receiving from them any reaction.
After the first glass, you wait an hour before taking another; meanwhile you march up and down, elbowed by the dense groups, who drag themselves laboriously along between the columns. Not a seat to be had, except two wooden benches where the ladies sit, with their feet resting upon the damp stones: the economy of the administration supposes that the weather is always fine. Wearied and dejected faces pass before the eyes without awaking any interest. For the twentieth time you look over the marble trinkets, the shop with razors and scissors, a map that hangs on the wall. What is there that one is not capable of on a rainy day, if obliged to keep moving for an hour between four walls, amidst the buzzing of two hundred people? You study the posters, contemplate assiduously some figures which pretend to represent the manners of the country: these are elegant and rosy shepherds, who lead to the dance smiling shepherdesses rosier than themselves. You stretch your neck out at the door only to see a gloomy passage where invalids are soaking their feet in a trough of warm water, all in a row like school-children on cleaning and excursion days. After these distractions you return to your lodging, and find yourselves tÊte-À-tÊte, in close conversation with your chest of drawers and your light-stand.
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II.
People who have any appetite take refuge at the table; they did not count upon the musicians. First we saw a blind man come in, a heavy, thick-headed Spaniard, then the violinists of the country, then another blind man. They play pot-pourris of waltzes, country dances, bits from operas, strung one upon another, galloping along, above the note or below it, with admirable fearlessness, despoiling every repertory in their musical race. The next day we had three Germans, tall as towers, stiff as stones, perfectly phlegmatic, playing without a gesture and passing the plate without a word; at least they play in time.
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On the third day the musicians of a neighboring village appeared, a violin and flageolet; they executed their piece with such energy and discord, in tones so piercing, so long-drawn-out and rending, that, by universal consent, they were put out doors. They began again under the windows.
A good appetite is a consolation for all ills; so much the worse if you will, or so much the better for humanity. It is necessary to bear up against the tediousness, the rain and the music of Eaux Bonnes. The renewed blood then bears gayety to the brain, and the body persuades the soul that everything is for the best in the best of worlds. You will have pity on those poor musicians as you leave the table; Voltaire has proved that an easy digestion induces compassion, and that a good stomach gives a good heart. Between forty and fifty years of age, a man is handsome when, after dinner, he folds up his napkin and begins his indispensable promenade. He walks with legs apart, chest out, resting heavily on his stick, his cheeks colored by a slight warmth, humming between his teeth some old refrain of his youth; it seems to him that the universe is brought nicely together; he smiles and is bland, he is the first to reach you his hand. What machines we are! Yet why complain of it? My good neighbor would tell you that you have the key of your mechanism; turn the spring toward the side of happiness. This may be kitchen philosophy,—very well. He who practised it did not trouble himself about the name.
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III.
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On sunny days, we live in the open air. A sort of yard, called the English garden, stretches between the street and the mountain, carpeted with a poor turf, withered and full of holes; the ladies constitute it their drawing-room and work there; the dandies, lying on several chairs at once, read their journal and proudly smoke their cigar; the little girls, in embroidered pantalons, chatter with coquettish gestures and graceful little ways; they are trying in advance the parts they will play as lovely dolls. But for the red cassocks of the little jumping peasants, the aspect is that of the Champs Elysees. You leave this spot by beautiful shaded walks which mount in zigzags upon the flanks of the two mountains, one above the torrent, the other above the city; toward noon, numbers of bathers may be met here lying upon the heather, nearly all with a novel in hand.
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These lovers of the country resemble the banker who loved concerts; he enjoyed them because then he could calculate his dividends. Pardon these hapless creatures; they are punished for knowing how to read and not knowing how to look about.
IV.
Anomalous beeches sustain the slopes here; no description can give an idea of these stunted colossi, eight feet high, and round which three men could not reach. Beaten back by the wind that desolates the declivity, their sap has been accumulating for centuries in huge, stunted, twisted and interlaced branches; all embossed with knots misshapen and blackened, they stretch and coil themselves fantastically, like limbs swollen by disease and distended by a supreme effort.
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Through the split bark may be seen the vegetable muscles enrolling themselves about the trunk, and crushing each other like the limbs of wrestlers. These squat torsos, half overthrown, almost horizontal, lean toward the plain; but their feet bury themselves among the rocks with such ties, that sooner than break that forest of roots, one might tear out a side of the mountain. Now and then a trunk, rotted by water, breaks open, hideously eventerated; the edges of the wound spread farther apart with every year; they wear no longer the shape of trees, and yet they live, and cannot be conquered by winter, by their slope, nor by time, but boldly put forth into their native air their whitish shoots. If, under the shades of evening, you pass by the tortured tops and yawning trunks of these old inhabitants of the mountains, when the wind is beating the branches, you seem to hear a hollow plaint, extorted by a century’s toil; these strange forms recall the fantastic creatures of the old Scandinavian mythology. You think on the giants imprisoned by fate, between walls that contracted day by day, and bent them down and lessened them, and then returned them to the light, after a thousand years of torture, furious, misshapen and dwarfed.
V.
Toward four o’clock the cavalcades return; the small horses of the country are gentle, and gallop without too much effort; far away in the sunlight gleam the white and luminous veils of the ladies; nothing is more graceful than a pretty woman on horseback, when she is neither imprisoned in a black riding-habit, nor topped with a chimney-pot hat. Nobody here wears this funereal, poverty-stricken English costume; in a gay country people assume gay colors; the sun is a oood counsellor. It is forbidden to return at a gallop, o which is reason enough why everybody should return at that gait. Ah, the great art of imitating the coming in of the cattle! They bend in the saddle, the highway resounds, the windows quiver, they sweep proudly before the saunterers who stop to gaze; it is a triumph; the administration of Eaux Bonnes does not know the human heart, especially the heart of woman.
In the evening, everybody meets on a level promenade; it is a flat road half a league long, cut in the mountain of Gourzy. The remainder of the country is nothing but steeps and precipices; any one who for eight days has known the fatigue of climbing bent double, of stumbling down hill, of studying the laws of equilibrium while flat on his back, will find it agreeable to walk on level ground, and to move his feet freely without thinking of his head; it gives a perfectly new sensation of security and ease.
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The road winds along a wooded hill-side, furrowed by winter torrents into whitish ravines; a few wasted springs slip away under the stones in their stream beds, and cover them with climbing plants; you walk under the
massive beeches, then skirt along an inclined plane, peopled with ferns, where feed the tinkling herds; the heat has abated, the air is soft, a perfume of healthy and wild verdure reaches you on the lightest breeze; fair white-robed promenaders pass by in the twilight with ruffles of lace and floating muslins that rise and flutter like the wings of a bird. Every day we went to a seat upon a rock at the end of this road; from there, through the whole valley of Ossau, you follow the torrent grown into a river; the rich valley, a mosaic of yellow harvests and green fields, broadly opens out to the confines of the landscape, and allows the eye to lose itself in the dim distance of BÉarn. From each side three mountains strike out their feet towards the river, and cause the outline of the plain to rise and fall in waves; the furthest slope down like pyramids, and their pale blue declivities stand out upon the rosy zone of the dim sky. In the depth of the gorges it is already dark; but turn around and you may see the summit of the Ger, gleaming with a soft carnation cherishing the last smile of the sun.
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VI.
On Sunday a procession of fine toilets goes up toward the church. This church is a round box, of stone and plaster, built for fifty persons but made to hold two hundred. Every half-hour the tide of the faithful ebbs and flows. Invalid priests abound and say as many masses as may be wanted: everything at Eaux Bonnes suffers for want of room; they form in line for prayers as for drinking, and are as crowded at the chapel as at the tap.
Occasionally a purveyor of public pleasures undertakes the duty of enlivening the afternoon; an eloquent poster announces the jeu du canard. They fasten a perch to a tree, a cord to the perch, and a duck to the cord; the most serious-minded people follow the preparation with marked interest. I have seen men who yawn at the opera form a ring, under a hot sun, for a whole hour in order to witness the decapitation of the poor hanging creature. If you are generous-minded and greedy of sensations in addition, you give two sous to a small boy; in consideration of which he has his eyes bandaged, is made to turn round and round, has an old sabre given to him, and is pushed forward, in the midst of the laughter and outcry of the spectators.
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“Right! left! halloo! strike! forward!” he knows not which to heed, and cuts away into the air. If by rare chance he hits the creature, if by rarer chance he strikes the neck, or if, indeed, he takes off the head by miracle, he carries off the duck to have it cooked, and eat it. The public is not exacting in matter of amusement. If it were announced that a mouse was to drown itself in a pool, they would run as if to a fire. "Why not?” said my neighbor, an odd, abrupt sort of man: “This is a tragedy and a perfectly regular one; see if it has not all the classic parts. First, the exposition; the instruments of torture that are displayed, the crowd which comes together, the distance that is marked, the animal that is fastened up. It is a protasis of the complex order, as M. Lysidas used to say. Secondly, the action; every time that a small boy starts, you are in suspense, you rise on tip-toe, your heart leaps, you are as interested in the pendent animal as in a fellow-creature. Do you say that the action is always the same? Simplicity is the characteristic of great works, and this one is after the Indian style. Thirdly, the catastrophe; if ever it was bloody it is so here. As to the passions, they are those demanded by Aristotle, terror and pity. See how shiveringly the poor creature lifts its head, when it feels the current of air from the sword! With what a lamentable and resigned look it awaits the stroke! The chorus of spectators takes part in the action, praises or blames, just as in the antique tragedy. In short, the public is right in being amused, and pleasure is never wrong.”
“You talk like la Harpe; this duck would accept his lot in patience, if he could hear you. And the ball, what do you say of that?”
“It is worth as much as the one at the HÔtel de France with fine people; our dancing is nothing but walking, a pretext for conversation. Look how the servants and the guides dance; such cuts and pigeon wings! they go into it from pure fun, with all their heart, they feel the pleasure of motion, the impulse of their muscles; this is the true dance invented by joy and the need of physical activity. These fellows fall to and handle each other like timbers. That great girl there is servant at my hotel; say, does not that tall figure, that serious air, that proud attitude, recall the statues of antiquity? Force and health are always the first of beauties. Do you think that the languid graces, the conventional smiles of our quadrilles would bring together all this crowd? We get further away from Nature with every day; our life is all in the brain, and we spend our time in composing and listening to set phrases. See how I am uttering them now; to-morrow, I turn over a new leaf, buy a stout stick, put on gaiters and tramp over the country. You do the same; let each go his own way, and try not to come together.”
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