A Tour Through The Pyrenees

ack arches with a strange relief. An old and thoroughly forbidding cathedral bristled its bell-turrets and dentations in the midst of the p

g now. The conductor joins in, then one of the people in the impériale. They laugh with their whole heart; their eyes sparkle. How far we are from the north! In

man, who is behind her. No humility; she believes herself the equal of the whole world. Gayety is like a spring rendering the soul elastic; the people bend but rise agai

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lowly in the depths of heaven, like a flock of tranquil swans. The eye rests on the down of their sides, and turns with pleasure upon the roundness of their noble forms. They sail in a troop, carrie

I

and Spain. The people have gained in something, I know; they no longer hate their neighbors, and they live at peace; they receive from Paris inventions and news; peace, trade and well-being are increased. They have, however, lost in something; instead of thirty active think

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iful Hostess, which was then called the hotel of the Moon. The count Gaston Phoebus sent in all haste to seek him: "for he was the lord who of all the world the most gladly entertai

erodotus. But, while we feel that in Greece it is going on to unfold itself to the very end, we discover here that

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ening or morning, for the better memory of them in times to come; for there is no such exact retentive as writing." All is found here, the pell-mell and the hundred shifts of the conversations, the reflections, the little accidents of the journey. An old squire recounts to him mountain legends, how Pierre de Beam, having once killed an enormous bear, could no longer sleep in peace, but thenceforward he awaked each night, "making such a noise and such clatter that it seemed that all the devils in hell should have carried away everything and were inside with him." Froissart judges that this bear was perhaps a knight turned into a beast for some misdeed; cites in support the story of Act?on, an "accomplished and pretty knight who was changed into a stag." Thus goes his life and thus his history is composed; it resembles a tapestry of the period, brilliant and varied, full of hunting, of tournaments, battles and processions. He gives himself and his hearers the pleasur

to general ideas; they are bowed down under the w

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Froissart, if you like, but how different! He holds in his hand his manual of canon-law, Peter the

me given by Jean of

lectics by their e

ts.-Tra

rgot the ugly dream as soon as possible, ran in the open air, and thought only of the chase, of war and the ladies; they were not so foolish as to turn their eyes a second time towards their crabbed litany; if they did come back to it, that was out of vanity; they wanted to set some Latin fable in their songs, or some learned abstraction, without comprehending a word of it, donning it for fashion's sake, as the ermine of learning. With us of today, general ideas spring up in every mind,-living and flourishing ones; among the

of Jean Petit on t

ke of

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g into his gallery, he saw that there was but a small fire, and spoke of it aloud. Thereupon a knight, Ernauton d'Espagne, having looked out of the window, saw in the court a number of asses with "billets of wood for the use of the house. He seized the largest of these asses with his load, threw him over his shoulders and carried him up stairs" (there were twenty-four steps), "pushing through the crowd of knights and squires who were round the chimney, and flung ass and load, with his feet upward, on the dogs of the hearth, to the delight of t

s excellent Count de Foix was an assassin, not once only, but ten times. For example, he coveted the castle of Lourdes, and so sent for the captain, Pierre Ernault, who had received it in trust for the prince of Wales. Pierre Ernault "became very thoughtful and doubtful whether to go or not." At last he went, and the count demanded from him the castle of Lourdes. The knight thought awhile what answer to make. However, having well considered, he said: "My lord, in truth I owe you faith and homage, for I am a poor knight of your blood and country; but as for the castle of Lourdes, I wil

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dered him to be cast into the dungeon, which was done; and there he died, for he was ill-cured of his wounds. This dominance of sudden passion, this violence of first impulse, t

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leaped down from his seat, a stake in his hand, and was going to fell his confrèr. Those

"began to have suspicions, for he was full of fancies," and remained so until dinner-time, very thoughtful, haunted and harassed by sombre imaginings. Those stormy brains, filled by warfare and danger with dismal images, hastened to tumult and tempest. The youth came, and began to serve the dishes, tasting the meats, as was usual when the notion of poison was not far from any mind. The count cast his eyes upon him and saw the strings of the bag; the sight fired his veins and made his blood boil; he seized the youth, undid his pourpoint, cut t

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nd the squires fell upon their knees before him weeping, and saying: "Ah, ah! my lord, for Heaven's sake do not kill Gaston; you have no other child." With great

m. He had many of those who served his son arrested, and "put to death not less than fifteen after they had suffered the torture; and the reason he gave was, that it was impossible but they must have been acquainted with the secrets of his son, and they ought t

to death, so great was their affection for him." Still the youth remained in the tower of Orthez, "where was little light," always lying alone, unwilling to eat, "cursing the hour that ever he was born or begotten, that he should come to such an end." On the tenth day the jailer saw all the meats that had been served in a corner, and went and told it to the count. The count was again enraged, like a beast of prey who encounters a remnant of resis

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dy of the youth was borne, with tears and lamentations, to the church of the Augustine Friars at Orthez, where it was buried." * But such murders left an ill-healed wound in

Froissart are from t

: J. Winchester,

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away; the nation, ground down by king, by nobles and by Englishmen, struggled for a hundred years in a slough, between the dying middle-age and the modern era which was not yet opened. And yet a man like Ernauton mus

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ineer is at war with the prefect, or if there is any dispute over a projected canal or road? I am happy indeed in know-all that; happier still in first time, finding fresh sensations, and not being troubled by comparisons and s

, hang at the edge of the ditches. Is it not strange that these pretty creatures remain so solitary, that they should be fated to die to-morrow, that they should scarcely have looked upon us an instant; that their beauty should have flourished only for its two seconds of admiration? They too have their

und the hills; this sinuous movement is of infinite sweetness; the long riband ti

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he fretted creatures lost in its bosom. Others, their neighbors, rudely dint the soil with their haunches and their brown slopes; the human structure here half peeps forth, then disappears under the mineral barbarism; here are the children of another age, ever powerful, severe still, unknown and antique races, whose mysterious history the mind searches without willing it. Tawny moors filled with herds mount upon their fl

te, pulls your sleeve, crying: "The gigot at Orthe

disappeared: the mutton of Dax has blotted out everything. The meadows are so many kilogrammes

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