Some died of this love, lost in ecstasies or drowned in a divine languor. These are the great poets of the middle ages.
From Luz to Gavarnie is eighteen miles. It is enjoined upon every living creature able to mount a horse, a mule, or any quadruped whatever, to visit Gavarnie; in default of other beasts, he should, putting aside all shame, bestride an ass. Ladies and convalescents are taken there in sedan-chairs.
Otherwise, think what a figure you will make on your return.
"You come from the Pyrenees; you've seen Gavarnie?"
What then did you go to the Pyrenees for?
You hang your head, and your friend triumphs, especially if he was bored at Gavarnie. You undergo a description of Gavarnie after the last edition of the guide-book. Gavarnie is a sublime { 327}sight; tourists go sixty miles out of their way to see it; the Duchess d'Angoulême had herself carried to the furthest rocks; Lord Bute, when he saw it for the first time, cried: "If I were now at the extremity of India, and suspected the existence of what I see at this moment, I should immediately leave in order to enjoy and admire it!" You are overwhelmed with quotations and supercilious smiles; you are convicted of laziness, of dulness of mind, and, as certain English travellers say, of _unæsthetic insensibility._
There are but two resources: to learn a description by heart, or to make the journey. I have made the journey, and am going to give the description.
We leave at six o'clock in the morning, by the road to Scia, in the fog, without seeing at first anything beyond great confused forms of trees and rocks. At the end of a quarter of an hour, we hear along the pathway a noise of sharp cries drawing near: it was a funeral procession coming from Scia. Two men bore a small coffin under a white shroud; behind came four herdsmen in long cloaks and brown capuchons, silent, with bent heads; four women followed in black mantles. It was they { 328}who uttered those monotonous and piercing lamentations; one knew not if they were wailing or praying. They walked with long steps through the cold mist, without stopping or looking at any one, and were going to bury the poor body in the cemetery at Luz.
At Scia the road passes over a small bridge very high up, which commands another bridge, gray and abandoned. The double tier of arches bends gracefully over the blue torrent; meanwhile a pale light already floats in the diaphanous mist; a golden gauze undulates above the { 329}Gave; the aërial veil grows thin and will soon vanish.
