The small town of Lourdes is situated in the department of the Hautes-Pyrenees, at the embouchure of the seven valleys of the Lavedan, between the last undulations of the hills terminating the plain of Tarbes and the first escarpments with which the Grande Montagne commences. Its houses, scattered irregularly over an uneven surface, are grouped as it were in defiance of order at the base of an enormous rock, entirely isolated; on the summit of which, rises like the nest of an eagle, a formidable castle. At the foot of this rock, beneath the shade of alders, oaks and poplars, the Gave hurries rapidly along, breaking its foaming waters against a bar of pebbles, and serving to turn the noisy wheels of three or four mills built on its banks. The din of these mills and the murmur of the wind in the branches of the trees are mingled with the sound of its gliding waves.
The Gave is formed by the several torrents of the upper valleys, which in their turn themselves issue from the eternal glaciers and stainless snows which mask in the depths of the chain, the arid sides of the Grande Montagne. The most important of these tributaries proceeds from the cascade of Gavarine, which falls, as every one knows, from one of those rare peaks which no human foot has yet been able to scale.
Leaving on its right the town, the castle and all the mills of Lourdes (with the exception of one built on its left bank), the Gave, as if anxious to reach its ultimate destination, flows rapidly towards the town of Pau, which it hurries by in order to join the Adour and finally the ocean.
In the environs of Lourdes, the scenery on the banks of the Gave is sometimes wild and savage, sometimes charming; verdant meadows, cultivated fields, thick woods and lofty rocks, are reflected by turns in its waters. Here, the eye gazes over smiling and cultivated farms, the most graceful landscape, the high road to Pau, continually dotted with carriages, horsemen and travelers on foot; there, over stern mountains in all the terror of their solitude.
The castle of Lourdes, almost impregnable before the invention of artillery, was in days of yore the key of the Pyrenees. It has been handed down by tradition that Charlemagne, at war with the Infidels, was long unable to take possession of it. Just as he was on the point of raising the siege, an eagle, winging his flight above the highest tower of the beleaguered fortress, let fall upon it a splendid fish which it had just captured in a lake in the neighborhood.
Whether it was that on this particular day the laws of the Church prescribed abstinence, or that the fish was a christian symbol still popular at that epoch, one thing is certain—the Saracen chief Mirat, who occupied the castle, regarded the occurrence in the light of a prodigy, and became a convert to the true faith. It needed nothing less than this miraculous conversion of Mirat and his subsequent baptism, to re-incorporate this castle into the domains of Christendom. Further, the Saracen, as the chronicle informs us, expressly stipulated, that “having become the champion of Our Lady, the Mother of God, he would have it understood, both in his own case and in that of his descendants, that his dignity of Count, free from all earthly fiefdom, was held from Her alone.”
The punning coat of arms of the town testify to this extraordinary fact of the eagle and the fish. Lourdes bears on a field gules three towers or, faced with stone-work sable on a rock argent. The center tower, higher than that on either side, is surmounted by an eagle with outstretched wings sable, holding in his beak a trout argent.
During the whole period of the Middle Ages, the castle of Lourdes was a center of terror to the surrounding country. Sometimes in the name of the English, sometimes in that of the counts of Bigorre, it was occupied by a kind of free-booting captains, who, in point of fact, warred strictly on their own account, and levied contributions on the inhabitants of the plain in a circle of forty or fifty leagues. Their incredible audacity, we are told, carried them even to the extent of laying violent hands on persons and property up to the very gates of Montpelier, after which they sought security, like veritable birds of prey, in their own inaccessible aërie.
In the eighteenth century the castle of Lourdes was converted into a state prison. It was the Bastile of the Pyrenees. The Revolution opened the gates of this prison to three or four persons confined in it by the arbitrary power of despotism, and in return peopled it with several hundreds of criminals, who, to tell the truth, were culpable in a very different way. A contemporary author has noticed on the prison register the offences of these unfortunate wretches. He gives us specimens of the designations of the crimes attached to the name of each prisoner: “Unpatriotic—Having refused the kiss of peace to citizen N—— before the altar of our country—Troublesome—A drunkard—Cold as ice toward the Revolution—Hypocritical in disposition and reserved in his opinions—A peaceable Harpagon, indifferent towards the Revolution, etc., etc.”
From this we perceive that the Revolution had just reasons for complaining of the arbitrary power of kings, and had substituted a regime of mild toleration and entire liberty for the terrible despotism of the monarchy.
During the Empire the Castle of Lourdes preserved its character of state-prison, and only lost it on the return of the Bourbons. Since the Restoration, the terrible castle of the middle ages having become in the natural order of things a place of fourth or fifth-rate importance, is now peaceably garrisoned by a company of infantry under the orders of a commandant. The town has nevertheless remained the key of the Pyrenees, but in quite a different point of view to what it was formerly.
Lourdes is the point of intersection of all the roads leading to the warm baths, whether you go to Barèges, to Saint Sauveur, to Cautarets, to Bagnères de Bigorre, or from Cauterets or Pau you attempt to reach Luchou, you must always pass through Lourdes. From the earliest times since the baths of the Pyrenees have been visited by strangers, the innumerable diligences employed for the conveyance of passengers to the baths during the summer season were in the habit of stopping at the Hotel de la Poste. Travelers were usually allowed time to dine, to visit the castle, and to admire the scenery before resuming their journey.
We see then that for the last one or two centuries this little town has been constantly traversed by those resorting to the baths, and by tourists from every corner of Europe. A tolerably advanced state of civilization has been the result.
In 1858, the period when this history commences, the greater part of the Parisian newspapers had long been regularly received at Lourdes. Several of its inhabitants took in the Revue des deux Mondes. As is everywhere the case, the cabarets and cafés supplied their customers with three numbers of the Siecle—to-day’s, yesterday’s and the day before yesterday’s. The Bourgeoisie and the Clergy were divided between the Journal des Débats, the Presse, the Moniteur, the Univers and the Union.
Lourdes boasted a club, a printing establishment and a newspaper. The Sous-préfet resided at Argelès; but the grief experienced by the inhabitants of Lourdes at being deprived of this functionary, was somewhat alleviated by the joy of having the Tribunal de première instance, that is to say three Judges, a Procureur Imperial and a Substitut. As inferior satellites of this luminous centre, there gravitated around it a Juge de Paix, a commissary of Police, six Huissiers and seven Gendarmes (one of them a Brigadier). Within the town there was a hospital and a prison, and, as we shall have perhaps an opportunity of explaining, circumstances occurred when some strong-minded persons, nourished on the wholesome and humanitarian doctrines of the Siecle, pretended it would be necessary to place the criminals in the hospital and transfer the sick to the prison.
But in addition to these powerful reasoners, at the bar of Lourdes and in the medical profession, there might be found men equally learned and distinguished in manner—men of remarkable powers of mind and of impartial observation, such as are not always to be met with in places of greater importance.
The mountain races are generally gifted with firm and practical good sense. The population of Lourdes having had little admixture with foreign blood, was excellent. Few places could be cited in France where the schools are more numerously attended than at Lourdes. There is not a boy in the place who does not go for several years to some lay institution or to the school conducted by the Brothers; not a little girl who does not in the same manner attend the school of the Sisters at Nevers, until she has completed the education adapted to her place in society. With more instruction than the working classes of most of our cities, the people of Lourdes have, at the same time, the simplicity of rural life. They are warm in their affections, upright in heart, abounding in southern wit, and strictly moral. They are honest, devout, and averse to innovations.
Certain local institutions, dating from time immemorial, serve to maintain this happy state of things. The inhabitants of these regions long before the pretended discoveries of modern progress, had understood and reduced to practice under the shadow of the Church, those ideas of joint responsibility and prudence which have given birth to our mutual aid societies. Societies of such a description exist at Lourdes and have been in operation for centuries past; they date from the middle ages; they have emerged victoriously from the Revolution, and the philanthropists would have long ere this sung their praises, had they not derived their vitality from the religious principle and were they not still called, as in the fifteenth century, “Brotherhoods.”
“Almost all the people,” says M. de Lagreze, “enter these associations which combine philanthropy with devotion. Those of the laboring class, united under the name of confrères, place their work under the patronage of heaven and mutually exchange assistance and christian charity. The common coffer receives the weekly offering of the workman when in high health and full vigor, to return it one day to him when laid low by sickness or distress. When a workman dies the expenses of his funeral are paid by the association, and its members accompany him to his last resting place. Each Brotherhood (with the exception of two which share the high altar between them, has a private chapel, the name of which is assumed by the members and the expenses of which are defrayed by the offertory on Sunday. The Brotherhood of Notre Dame de Grace is composed of husbandmen; that of Notre Dame de Carmel, of slaters; that of Notre Dame de Monsarrat, of masons; that of Saint Anne, of cabinet-makers; that of Saint Lucy, of tailors and seamstresses; that of the Ascension, of quarry men; that of the Holy Sacrament, of church-wardens; that of Saint John and St. James, of all those who have received either of these names in baptism.”
The women are in the same manner members of similar religious associations. One of them, “The Congregation of the Children of Mary,” is of a peculiar character. It is also, though in a spiritual point of view, a mutual aid society. In order to obtain admission into this Congregation, which is of course confined to the laity, the candidate must have been long known as of irreproachable character. Little girls think of it long before they become young women. The members of this Congregation pledge themselves never to incur danger of falling by frequenting worldly society—in which the religious spirit is lost—not to follow the absurdities of fashion, and on the other hand to attend punctually the meetings and instructions which take place every Sunday. Admission into the Congregation is deemed an honor, while exclusion from it is considered a disgrace. The good effected by this association in preserving a high tone of morality in the country and preparing young women for their maternal duties is incalculable. Consequently, in a great number of dioceses many Confréries have been founded on the model of this Mother Congregation.
The whole country has a peculiar devotion for the Virgin. Numerous sanctuaries are consecrated to her in the Pyrenees from Piétat or Garaison to Bétharram. All the altars in the parish church at Lourdes are dedicated to the Mother of God.
658,762
The Gave is formed by the several torrents of the upper valleys, which in their turn themselves issue from the eternal glaciers and stainless snows which mask in the depths of the chain, the arid sides of the Grande Montagne. The most important of these tributaries proceeds from the cascade of Gavarine, which falls, as every one knows, from one of those rare peaks which no human foot has yet been able to scale.
Leaving on its right the town, the castle and all the mills of Lourdes (with the exception of one built on its left bank), the Gave, as if anxious to reach its ultimate destination, flows rapidly towards the town of Pau, which it hurries by in order to join the Adour and finally the ocean.
In the environs of Lourdes, the scenery on the banks of the Gave is sometimes wild and savage, sometimes charming; verdant meadows, cultivated fields, thick woods and lofty rocks, are reflected by turns in its waters. Here, the eye gazes over smiling and cultivated farms, the most graceful landscape, the high road to Pau, continually dotted with carriages, horsemen and travelers on foot; there, over stern mountains in all the terror of their solitude.
The castle of Lourdes, almost impregnable before the invention of artillery, was in days of yore the key of the Pyrenees. It has been handed down by tradition that Charlemagne, at war with the Infidels, was long unable to take possession of it. Just as he was on the point of raising the siege, an eagle, winging his flight above the highest tower of the beleaguered fortress, let fall upon it a splendid fish which it had just captured in a lake in the neighborhood.
Whether it was that on this particular day the laws of the Church prescribed abstinence, or that the fish was a christian symbol still popular at that epoch, one thing is certain—the Saracen chief Mirat, who occupied the castle, regarded the occurrence in the light of a prodigy, and became a convert to the true faith. It needed nothing less than this miraculous conversion of Mirat and his subsequent baptism, to re-incorporate this castle into the domains of Christendom. Further, the Saracen, as the chronicle informs us, expressly stipulated, that “having become the champion of Our Lady, the Mother of God, he would have it understood, both in his own case and in that of his descendants, that his dignity of Count, free from all earthly fiefdom, was held from Her alone.”
The punning coat of arms of the town testify to this extraordinary fact of the eagle and the fish. Lourdes bears on a field gules three towers or, faced with stone-work sable on a rock argent. The center tower, higher than that on either side, is surmounted by an eagle with outstretched wings sable, holding in his beak a trout argent.
During the whole period of the Middle Ages, the castle of Lourdes was a center of terror to the surrounding country. Sometimes in the name of the English, sometimes in that of the counts of Bigorre, it was occupied by a kind of free-booting captains, who, in point of fact, warred strictly on their own account, and levied contributions on the inhabitants of the plain in a circle of forty or fifty leagues. Their incredible audacity, we are told, carried them even to the extent of laying violent hands on persons and property up to the very gates of Montpelier, after which they sought security, like veritable birds of prey, in their own inaccessible aërie.
In the eighteenth century the castle of Lourdes was converted into a state prison. It was the Bastile of the Pyrenees. The Revolution opened the gates of this prison to three or four persons confined in it by the arbitrary power of despotism, and in return peopled it with several hundreds of criminals, who, to tell the truth, were culpable in a very different way. A contemporary author has noticed on the prison register the offences of these unfortunate wretches. He gives us specimens of the designations of the crimes attached to the name of each prisoner: “Unpatriotic—Having refused the kiss of peace to citizen N—— before the altar of our country—Troublesome—A drunkard—Cold as ice toward the Revolution—Hypocritical in disposition and reserved in his opinions—A peaceable Harpagon, indifferent towards the Revolution, etc., etc.”
From this we perceive that the Revolution had just reasons for complaining of the arbitrary power of kings, and had substituted a regime of mild toleration and entire liberty for the terrible despotism of the monarchy.
During the Empire the Castle of Lourdes preserved its character of state-prison, and only lost it on the return of the Bourbons. Since the Restoration, the terrible castle of the middle ages having become in the natural order of things a place of fourth or fifth-rate importance, is now peaceably garrisoned by a company of infantry under the orders of a commandant. The town has nevertheless remained the key of the Pyrenees, but in quite a different point of view to what it was formerly.
Lourdes is the point of intersection of all the roads leading to the warm baths, whether you go to Barèges, to Saint Sauveur, to Cautarets, to Bagnères de Bigorre, or from Cauterets or Pau you attempt to reach Luchou, you must always pass through Lourdes. From the earliest times since the baths of the Pyrenees have been visited by strangers, the innumerable diligences employed for the conveyance of passengers to the baths during the summer season were in the habit of stopping at the Hotel de la Poste. Travelers were usually allowed time to dine, to visit the castle, and to admire the scenery before resuming their journey.
We see then that for the last one or two centuries this little town has been constantly traversed by those resorting to the baths, and by tourists from every corner of Europe. A tolerably advanced state of civilization has been the result.
In 1858, the period when this history commences, the greater part of the Parisian newspapers had long been regularly received at Lourdes. Several of its inhabitants took in the Revue des deux Mondes. As is everywhere the case, the cabarets and cafés supplied their customers with three numbers of the Siecle—to-day’s, yesterday’s and the day before yesterday’s. The Bourgeoisie and the Clergy were divided between the Journal des Débats, the Presse, the Moniteur, the Univers and the Union.
Lourdes boasted a club, a printing establishment and a newspaper. The Sous-préfet resided at Argelès; but the grief experienced by the inhabitants of Lourdes at being deprived of this functionary, was somewhat alleviated by the joy of having the Tribunal de première instance, that is to say three Judges, a Procureur Imperial and a Substitut. As inferior satellites of this luminous centre, there gravitated around it a Juge de Paix, a commissary of Police, six Huissiers and seven Gendarmes (one of them a Brigadier). Within the town there was a hospital and a prison, and, as we shall have perhaps an opportunity of explaining, circumstances occurred when some strong-minded persons, nourished on the wholesome and humanitarian doctrines of the Siecle, pretended it would be necessary to place the criminals in the hospital and transfer the sick to the prison.
But in addition to these powerful reasoners, at the bar of Lourdes and in the medical profession, there might be found men equally learned and distinguished in manner—men of remarkable powers of mind and of impartial observation, such as are not always to be met with in places of greater importance.
The mountain races are generally gifted with firm and practical good sense. The population of Lourdes having had little admixture with foreign blood, was excellent. Few places could be cited in France where the schools are more numerously attended than at Lourdes. There is not a boy in the place who does not go for several years to some lay institution or to the school conducted by the Brothers; not a little girl who does not in the same manner attend the school of the Sisters at Nevers, until she has completed the education adapted to her place in society. With more instruction than the working classes of most of our cities, the people of Lourdes have, at the same time, the simplicity of rural life. They are warm in their affections, upright in heart, abounding in southern wit, and strictly moral. They are honest, devout, and averse to innovations.
Certain local institutions, dating from time immemorial, serve to maintain this happy state of things. The inhabitants of these regions long before the pretended discoveries of modern progress, had understood and reduced to practice under the shadow of the Church, those ideas of joint responsibility and prudence which have given birth to our mutual aid societies. Societies of such a description exist at Lourdes and have been in operation for centuries past; they date from the middle ages; they have emerged victoriously from the Revolution, and the philanthropists would have long ere this sung their praises, had they not derived their vitality from the religious principle and were they not still called, as in the fifteenth century, “Brotherhoods.”
“Almost all the people,” says M. de Lagreze, “enter these associations which combine philanthropy with devotion. Those of the laboring class, united under the name of confrères, place their work under the patronage of heaven and mutually exchange assistance and christian charity. The common coffer receives the weekly offering of the workman when in high health and full vigor, to return it one day to him when laid low by sickness or distress. When a workman dies the expenses of his funeral are paid by the association, and its members accompany him to his last resting place. Each Brotherhood (with the exception of two which share the high altar between them, has a private chapel, the name of which is assumed by the members and the expenses of which are defrayed by the offertory on Sunday. The Brotherhood of Notre Dame de Grace is composed of husbandmen; that of Notre Dame de Carmel, of slaters; that of Notre Dame de Monsarrat, of masons; that of Saint Anne, of cabinet-makers; that of Saint Lucy, of tailors and seamstresses; that of the Ascension, of quarry men; that of the Holy Sacrament, of church-wardens; that of Saint John and St. James, of all those who have received either of these names in baptism.”
The women are in the same manner members of similar religious associations. One of them, “The Congregation of the Children of Mary,” is of a peculiar character. It is also, though in a spiritual point of view, a mutual aid society. In order to obtain admission into this Congregation, which is of course confined to the laity, the candidate must have been long known as of irreproachable character. Little girls think of it long before they become young women. The members of this Congregation pledge themselves never to incur danger of falling by frequenting worldly society—in which the religious spirit is lost—not to follow the absurdities of fashion, and on the other hand to attend punctually the meetings and instructions which take place every Sunday. Admission into the Congregation is deemed an honor, while exclusion from it is considered a disgrace. The good effected by this association in preserving a high tone of morality in the country and preparing young women for their maternal duties is incalculable. Consequently, in a great number of dioceses many Confréries have been founded on the model of this Mother Congregation.
The whole country has a peculiar devotion for the Virgin. Numerous sanctuaries are consecrated to her in the Pyrenees from Piétat or Garaison to Bétharram. All the altars in the parish church at Lourdes are dedicated to the Mother of God.
658,762
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