Bigorre

“ Sauveur.
GERDE.—A village in the Campan valley, in the Hautes-Pyrénées, near Bigorre. Known chiefly for the palomières or pigeon traps among the trees above it. See Chapter II.
GRIPP (3448 ft.) .—A well-situated village in the Hautes-Pyrénées, on the Route Thermale, between Bigorre and Barèges, 2 1/2 miles from Ste. Marie. Tourists often find the Hôtel des Voyageurs comfortable enough to keep them there for a few days. A little beyond the village on the old road are the Baths of Bagnet, supplied by a cold sulphurous spring; they do not, however, call for much mention. ”

“ In ancient days the horses of the county of Bigorre, the viscounty of Béarn, and of Lower Navarre were highly esteemed; the race was called Navarrine, and it owed its merits to the fact that it was a cross between the Arab and the native Pyrenean stock. The Saracens had crossed the mountains, overflowed Aquitaine, and threatened Northern France, they were met at Poitiers and routed by Charles Martel in 731. ”

“ To the former, then, should always be given the preference in moderately rich countries where agriculture has not arrived at great perfection. Thus it was by means of the Arabian that Limousin, Navarre, Bigorre, the plains of Tarbes and Auvergne, all countries neither very fertile nor wealthy, have formed their unrivalled horses, the hardiness of which suited the productions of the soil. These being unsuited to the more delicate and less vigorous English horse, its introduction was an injury to the native stock. ”

“ It would be difficult to speak with too much weight on the subject of bread, especially where invalids are concerned, and that article in the Pyrenees is essentially bad—we might almost say unfit for food. With the exception of Bagnères de Bigorre—and then only when specially ordered—and in the season, Bagnères de Luchon, the bread throughout the mountain resorts is abominably sour. Travellers do eat it, because they have no other, but to invalids it is positively nauseous. In our opinion it is the only real drawback to enjoying a Pyrenean trip! ”

“ This quartette consisted of Mrs. and Miss Blunt, Mr. Sydney and myself, and though it will be seen by subsequent chapters that the trio decided on staying a fortnight at Biarritz in preference to following my example and spending the time at Bagnères de Bigorre, yet we made arrangements to meet either at Lourdes or Argelès and thenceforward to travel in company.
To see Pau in its beauty, winter must have given place to spring. When the grass once more begins to grow, the trees to unfold their tender leaves, the rivers to swell, and the birds to sing ”

“ Of course it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when Bigot was Intendant-ah, what a rascal was that Bigot, robber and deceiver! He never stood by a friend, and never fought fair a foe—so the Abbe said. Well, Beaugard was no longer young. He had built the Manor House, he had put up his gallows, he had his vassals, he had been made a lord. He had quarrelled with Bigot, and had conquered, but at great cost; for Bigot had such power, and the Governor had trouble enough to care for himself against Bigot, though he was Beaugard's friend. ”

“ Biggar was always repulsive in both appearance and manner. His unfortunate deformity, his gargoyle-like face, his long, bony hands, large feet, the black tail coat and baggy black trousers, the grin and the grating voice, and the fact that pork was his study before Parliament, made Joseph Gillis Biggar's appearance as ugly as his name. ”

“ The wicked Lord Byron was dead at last; and the child of ten was a peer of the realm and the heir to great, though heavily mortgaged estates. He could not take possession of them yet—the embarrassed property needed to be delicately nursed—but still, subject to the charges, they were his. He was taken to look at them, and then, a tenant having been found for Newstead, Mrs. Byron settled, first at Nottingham, and then in London, and her son was sent to school—first to a preparatory school at Dulwich, and then to Harrow. ”

“ Bigot hated the Bourgeois Philibert as one hates the man he has injured. Bigot had been instrumental in his banishment years ago from France, when the bold Norman count defended the persecuted Jansenists in the Parliament of Rouen. The Intendant hated him now for his wealth and prosperity in New France. ”

“ The likeness between Beowulf and Bjarki lies, not in the wingedness or otherwise of the monsters they overthrow, but in the similarity of the position—in the situation which places the most famous court of the North, and its illustrious king, at the mercy of a ravaging foe, till a chance stranger from Gautland brings deliverance. And here the Rímur support, not Saxo, but the Saga, though in an outworn and faded way. In the Rímur Bjarki is a stranger come from abroad: the bear has made previous attacks upon the king's folds. ”

“ He left his native land, but in company with his friend Hobhouse, a man distinguished for his intelligence, and who, instead of testifying to his fellow-traveller's misanthropy, bears witness, on the contrary, to his amiable, sociable disposition.
When this friend was obliged to take leave of him in Greece, and return to England, Lord Byron frequented the society of pleasant persons like Lord Sligo, Mr. Bruce, and Lady Hester Stanhope, whom he met at Athens, alleviating his studious solitude by intercourse with them. ”

“ And Count Gamba, in his interesting narrative of "Lord Byron's Last Journey into Greece," adds:—
"It is impossible to do justice to the coolness and magnanimity Lord Byron showed on all great occasions. Under ordinary circumstances he was irritable, but the sight of danger calmed him instantly, restoring the free exercise of all the faculties of his noble nature. A man more indomitable, or firmer in the hour of danger than Lord Byron was, never existed." ”

“ Remembering the ages and circumstances of the revellers—and remembering also that Moore’s information was derived from some of them—we will try to get as near to the truth as the procurable evidence allows.
Byron, one must always bear in mind, had not yet conquered his place in county society, or in what is now called “smart” society. His mother’s eccentricities and his guardian’s chilly attitude had, as we have seen, kept him out of it. He actually knew no peer who could or would introduce him when he took his seat in the House of Lords. ”

“ Thence, with some gunboats sent to their aid, they reached Missolonghi, in spite of a gale, in which Byron showed great coolness. Byron was heartily welcomed. Mavrocordato was elected governor-general. Attempts were made to organise troops. Byron took into his pay a body of five hundred disorderly Suliotes. He met thickening difficulties with unexpected temper, firmness, and judgment. Demands for money came from all sides; Byron told Parry that he had been asked for fifty thousand dollars in a day. He raised sums on his own credit, and urged the Greek committee to provide a loan. ”

“ But in this Mavrocordato was entirely mistaken, for Byron had long made up his mind as to the course which he meant to steer, and by sheer honesty of purpose and by the glamour of his fame his authority daily increased, while that of Mavrocordato fell in proportion, until his high-sounding title was little better than an empty phrase. The people of Missolonghi were fascinated by the personality of a man who had practically thrown his whole fortune at their feet. They openly spoke of the advantages that would be derived by Western Greece were Byron to be appointed its Governor-General. ”

“ Colonel Stanhope, whom the sad intelligence reached at Salona, thus writes to the Committee:—"A courier has just arrived from the Chief Scalza. Alas! all our fears are realised. The soul of Byron has taken its last flight. England has lost her brightest genius, Greece her noblest friend. To console them for the loss, he has left behind the emanations of his splendid mind. If Byron had faults, he had redeeming virtues too—he sacrificed his comfort, fortune, health, and life, to the cause of an oppressed nation. ”

“ Such a pother about a girl! Damn the women, always, I say, Bigot! A man is never out of hot water when he has to do with them!”
Striking Bigot's hand hard with his own, he promised; wet or dry, through flood or fire, to ride with him to Beaumanoir, and take the girl, or lady,—he begged the Intendant's pardon,—and by such ways as he alone knew he would, in two days, place her safely among the Montagnais, and order them at once, without an hour's delay, to pull up stakes and remove their wigwams to the tuque of the St. Maurice, where Satan himself could not find her. ”

“ The fires are faint; their embers fail in smoke. All is hushed; but the gale sighs on the rocks above. Lightly wheel the Heroes through the slumbering band. Half the journey is past, when Mathon, resting on his shield, meets the eye of Orla. It rolls in flame, and glistens through the shade. His spear is raised on high. "Why dost thou bend thy brow, chief of Oithona?" said fair-haired Calmar: "we are in the midst of foes. Is this a time for delay?" "It is a time for vengeance," said Orla of the gloomy brow. "Mathon of Lochlin sleeps: seest thou his spear? ”

“ But so it was, and Byron was more interesting in that he was the unhappy and noble original from which the pirates of his imagination were drawn. If he changed the scene and wandered over Europe as Childe Harold, he gained in sentiment; if he wore the mask of Manfred, he gained in tragedy; and if he sneered in Don Juan, there was the jaded man of the world, perhaps more interesting. He was, moreover, a peer; but a dead peer certainly is no better than a dead lion, and when he died, why,—the fashion in collars changed. Other living personalities occupied the stage ”

“ Already at Gibraltar, Lord Byron began writing letters full of clever pleasantry, either to his mother or his friends, and his correspondence always continued in the same tone, with nothing that betrayed melancholy, far less misanthropy like Childe Harold's, although he was composing that poem at this time. ”

“ It is true that, to the licence on religious subjects, which revelled through the first acts of that tremendous drama, a disposition of an opposite tendency had, for some time, succeeded. Against the wit of the scoffer, not only piety, but a better taste, revolted; and had Lord Byron, in touching on such themes in Childe Harold, adopted a tone of levity or derision, (such as, unluckily, he sometimes afterwards descended to,) not all the originality and beauty of his work would have secured for it a prompt or uncontested triumph. ”

“ Byron’s influence at Harrow, in short, was exercised over his juniors rather than his contemporaries. It pleased him, when he was big enough, to protect small boys from school tyrants. One catches his feudal spirit again in his appeal to a bully not to lick Lord Delawarr “because he is a fellow peer” ”

“ The slight repulse of a lady's finger--a touch that would not crush a gnat--will sometimes kill a strong man like a sword-stroke. I have known such things to happen," said Bigot.
"Well, happily, my touch has not hurt you, Chevalier. But, having vindicated myself, I feel I owe you reparation. You speak of rescuing Le Gardeur from the Honnetes Gens. In what way can I aid you?" ”

“ So it befell Byron. Born in exile, he had at last returned from exile in a blaze of triumph. All the doors of all the best houses were thrown open to him with a blare of trumpets. He entered them, not as a parvenu, like Moore the Irish grocer’s son, but as the one man without whose presence the festival would have been incomplete. No man, if one might judge by externals, had ever a better chance of making a splendid and noble pageant of [Pg 126] his life. ”

“ To every one who has read Loch-na-Garr, it must be evident that Byron believed, or wished it to appear that he believed, like the Highlanders, that the voices of the dead were heard in the storm, that the souls of departed heroes rode on the wind, and that the dark clouds encircled the forms of chieftain sires that added lustre to their country's glory. But the poet shall speak for himself:—
"Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses! ”

“ The following are the terms in which this heroic chief wrote to Lord Byron:—
"Your letter, and that of the venerable Ignazio, have filled me with joy. Your Excellency is exactly the person of whom we stand in need. Let nothing prevent you from coming into this part of Greece. The enemy threatens us in great number; but, by the help of God and your Excellency, they shall meet a suitable resistance. I shall have something to do to-night against a corps of six or seven thousand Albanians, encamped close to this place. ”

“ His reverend friend, Mr. Becher, finding him one day unusually dejected, endeavoured to cheer and rouse him, by representing, in their brightest colours, all the various advantages with which Providence had endowed him,—and, among the greatest, that of "a mind which placed him above the rest of mankind."—"Ah, my dear friend," said Byron, mournfully,—"if this (laying his hand on his forehead) places me above the rest of mankind, that (pointing to his foot) places me far, far below them." ”

“ Before his departure Byron had moved from Pisa to Genoa, driven to this further migration by the fact that the Tuscan Government had in its turn, expelled the Gambas, and that Madame Guiccioli, for reasons already explained, was once more obliged to accompany them. If he had been as anxious to be rid of her as Hunt hints, and Cordy Jeaffreson, leaning upon Hunt’s testimony, explicitly declares, here was his opportunity. ”

“ After six days of this life, hopeless of being able to continue by land, and getting no answer from Missolonghi (from whence, nevertheless, several gun-boats had been dispatched to meet him, and also the brig "Leonidas," which he only fell in with near the Scrophes) , he resolved on setting out. But the wind, which had never ceased being contrary, soon changed into a furious tempest. Then Byron was truly sublime. His bark was thrown against enormous rocks; the affrighted sailors, seeing their lives in danger, and excited by fear, abandoned the vessel to seek refuge on the rocks. ”