A Book of the Pyrenees/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
THE CANIGOU
THE Pyrenees, before expiring in the cliffs of Cerbère, that drop abruptly into the Mediterranean, make a supreme effort and rise in the Canigou, which, though not one of the first-class heights, is certainly one of the finest. A certain bashfulness prevails among the giants. The Vignemale, the Mont Perdu, the Maladetta retreat behind screens of less elevation and conceal their majesty. But the Canigou makes the most of herself. The height is but 9135 feet, yet it is a stately mountain, grey with eternal snows, as its name implies, and yielding to none in dignity.
Comeliness in a woman is enhanced threefold when she is well set up. Canigou is admirably set up. The fringe of subsidiary hills that hitherto has intervened between the high ranges and the plain here becomes detached and drifts away to the north-east, as the Corbières, leaving the Canigou to reap the advantage of showing from head to foot. It is not even the highest mountain of the Pyrénées Orientales; it is surpassed by the Carlitte, which is 9780 feet, and the Puig Mai, which is 9730 feet; but as these two summits are confounded among a number of other heights rising out of the elevated plateau, it seems impossible, at first sight, to suppose them to be as lofty as the Canigou. This latter mountain is the termination of a chain that breaks away from the main range in a north-easterly direction, built up of granite and mica schist, and is composed of the junction of two ridges, which give to the Canigou the appearance of having two heads. It dominates the whole plain of Roussillon, and has inspired a song known to every peasant there, who, if he does not sing all the words, warbles the air. This song may be rendered into English thus:—
"Of mountains that are wondrous fair
Give me the Canigou!
Where, in the glowing summer air,
Bloom flowers red and blue.
Give me thy love, sweet maid, give me thy love!
"In autumn and in spring as well
The flowers here unfold,
Blush roses, many a purple bell,
Red pinks, and broom all gold.
Give me thy love, etc.
"Her chestnut-brown and laughing eye
Has ravished my heart,
So neat and trim is she, but I
Feel but my cruel smart.
Give me thy love, etc.
"White is she as the Canigou,
Her face as cotton grass,
That's bathèd in the morning dew,
Her eyes are clear as glass.
Give me thy love, etc.
"Her teeth are pearls, her lips are red,
And archèd are her brows.
She wounds my heart, she turns my head;
Maid! hearken to my vows.
Give me thy love, etc."
The Goigs are the "Joys," sacred songs or carols in honour of the Virgin and the Saints. The best known is that in praise of Our Lady of Font-Romeu. The "Goigs dels Ous" "Carol of the Eggs," sung everywhere, an Easter song, is trolled in the streets and throughout the night on the eve of that great festival. One of the chanters carries a basket, to receive eggs and any other contributions accorded to the carolers.
On the Place at Vernet, on Sundays and on the local fête, may be seen Catalan dances about the great elm tree. Unfortunately these dances have lost much of their primitive character since the cornet-à-piston has displaced the old bag-pipe. The ancient bals, sardanas, and seguedillas are danced less frequently every year. The bal is a musical pastoral representing the love-making of a youth and his lass; but this is changing its features, and degenerating into a gallop. The sardana and the seguedilla were ballads, the tunes of which were taken by the joglars, or minstrels, for country dances, but to which formerly the performers sang.
Notwithstanding the degeneration of the dances, the tourist will see in them some traits of the light-hearted character of the people, will be interested in the traditional music, and be pleased with the quaintness of the scene, like a bit out of an opera.
The peaks of Canigou may be reached by train either on the north or on the south. The northern line from Perpignan leads to Prades and Villefranche de Conflent for Vernet, whence the visitor will be able to ascend the Canigou by a 
vernet les bains
We will begin with the first, and not halt till we reach Prades, though there is much on the way of interest. The plain of Prades is two and a half miles wide by two long, not very extensive, but enjoying so sweet a climate, and having such a fertile soil, and so well watered, that fruit and vegetables grow there in marvellous abundance. Prades is a pleasant little town, but without much of interest in its public buildings. The church was completed in 1686 in the unattractive style affected at that period. But if Prades itself lacks antiquities, it is not so with the neighbourhood.
If the visitor likes to run back to the third station on the line by which he has arrived, i.e. to Boule-Ternère, and ascend the lateral valley for five miles, or else take a carriage from Vinca, he can see one of the most interesting monuments of medieval architecture in Roussillon. This is an Augustinian priory of Serrabonna, founded in 1082; Artal II, Bishop of Elne, consecrated the church in 1151. The church consists of a nave and two side aisles, which are cut off from the nave; that on the south, standing on the edge of a precipice, was formerly open to sun and air, supported on columns of white marble, the capitals sculptured with all the richness and quaintness affected in the early twelfth century. The sun has mellowed the marble to a rich golden hue. This aisle is now converted into a stable. The north aisle communicated with the galilee or pro-naos, and with the choir. Between the doorway into the cemetery and that into the nave is the galilee, opening outwards, through a large portal covered with magnificent sculptures. The galilee is composed of a hall supported by round-headed arches resting on pillars, single and double, with richly sculptured capitals all in white marble.
The priory is situated in a wild and desolate region, thinly populated.
Nearer to Prades, within an easy walk, is another ruined religious house, S. Michel de Cuxa, founded in the ninth century. The abbot wore the mitre and exercised quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over fifteen parishes. The abbey obtained a high repute on account of the sanctity of several of its members, as S. Romuald and Peter Orseolo, the latter of whom had been Doge of Venice.
The situation is delightful. The monastery is planted on the summit of a hill above the waters of the Riberetta. About it is an amphitheatre of mountains, opening out to the south to afford a full view of the Canigou. Springs of pure cold water gush forth in many places. The great abbey is now in such complete ruin that it is difficult to distinguish the parts of the monastic building. The splendid cloister has been destroyed, and portions have been transferred to adorn the baths at Prades. The church is Romanesque, with a pointed choir. The nave is now roofless, and is used for a storehouse. The church formerly possessed two towers: one fell in 1839, the other leans. The story goes that the architect who built it, finding that his erection was out of the perpendicular, ran away, and was never heard of again. The fine Renaissance doorway of the abbot's house is intact. It is richly carved in white marble, yellowed by the sun, and is surmounted by a sundial, on which is represented a Benedictine monk looking up at the sun, and bearing the inscription, Sub uno solis radio omnem mundum collectum conspexit.
Five miles above Prades is Villefranche, the terminus of the railway. It is a dreary little place built of grey marble that discolours and stains black. Moreover, it consists of two streets only, usually empty; and the houses are too many for the small population, numbering less than five hundred. The town was built by William Raymond, Count of Cerdagne, in 1095. He surrounded the town with a wall flanked by towers. The castle was erected by Vauban, on a spur of the limestone mountain of Belloch, 450 feet above the river Tet, and reached by a subterranean staircase of 999 steps. In this castle were confined for the rest of their lives two of the assistants of the infamous Marquise de Brinvilliers. These were La Chappelain and Guesdon. A very brief notice of the Marchioness and her crimes must suffice. She was a young and beautiful woman, connected both by birth and marriage with some of the noblest families of France, and was married to the Marquis de Brinvilliers, a man of depraved conduct. She formed a guilty attachment for Sainte Croix, a gay, handsome man, who had learned in Italy the manufacture of slow poisons, especially the Succession Powder. The Marquis and Marchioness separated, but were not divorced. Sainte Croix, who had no fortune of his own, depended on what was given him by his mistress, and as this did not suffice, he proposed to her to poison her old father and brothers and sister, so as to gather into her own hands all their succession. She agreed without hesitation, and herself administered the fatal draught to her father. The brothers were next got rid of, and the sister would have been similarly destroyed had not her suspicions been roused, and she hastily quitted Paris. Others who were inconvenient in one way or another were similarly got rid of, but all was done with such caution that no charge could be made against either. But the day of retribution was at hand, and a terrible mischance brought the murders to light. The nature of the poisons was so deadly that when Sainte Croix worked in his laboratory, he was obliged to wear a mask, to preserve himself from suffocation. One day the mask slipped off, and the miserable wretch perished in his crimes. His corpse was found on the following morning in the obscure lodging where he had fitted up his laboratory, and with it papers which disclosed the whole series of murders perpetrated by the pair. The Marchioness fled to England, where she remained for three years, but went early in 1676 to Liège. There she was caught, brought to Paris, executed, and her body burnt.
La Guesdon, along with her husband, had been in the service of Sainte Croix, and before her marriage had been in that of the Marchioness. She had been implicated in the poisonings. La Chappelain had acted in Paris the part of a fortune-teller. By means of her supposed prevision of the future she was able to presage the death of those marked down by Mme. de Brinvilliers and Sainte Croix for destruction. La Guesdon died in the prison at Villefranche in 1717, La Chappelain in 1724.
In the place itself is the opening into an extensive cavern. In 1674 a conspiracy was raised to capture the citadel and deliver it over to the Spaniards. It was widely ramified through the Cerdagne and Roussillon, neither content at having been made over to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Some of the leading spirits in the plot were the men of the family of Llar, in Villefranche, whose dilapidated and dingy hôtel may be seen in the Rue des Juifs. The cavern mentioned served as a place of meeting and a storehouse for arms. The conspiracy was betrayed by Inez de Llar, daughter of the chief man in the plot, Charles de Llar. He and her brother and relatives involved in it were executed. The unfortunate Inez, broken-hearted at having brought ruin on her family, ended her days in a convent.
In 1793 the Spanish general Crespo succeeded in making himself master of Villefranche, on 4 August; but on 19 September, Gilly, at the head of the second battalion of the Grenadiers of Gard, composed of 450 men, retook the place by an act of audacity. He disposed his men on the heights as though the vanguard of an army, and then rode up to the outposts with sixty grenadiers behind him, and haughtily summoned the Spanish commandant to surrender to General Dagobert, whose army, he said, was at hand, and who would give no quarter if the place were not immediately given up.
The frightened Crespo consented, and an hour later Gilly entered Villefranche at the head of the little army.
From Villefranche the distance is hardly five miles to Vernet, up the valley of the Riu Major. The road passes Corneilla, where there is a curious Romanesque church with a square tower and a fine marble, sculptured doorway, as also, what is a rare feature, a retable of carved marble of 1345, by an artist named Carcall de Berga. It represents incidents in the life of our Lord. At the Revolution it was pulled down, but was re-erected by an unintelligent mason, who put it together badly, as may be seen by the disorder into which the inscriptions have been thrown. The counts of Cerdagne were much attached to Corneilla, and erected here a palace, which was abandoned later and given up to the Augustinian canons.
Vernet is built in an amphitheatre of verdure, commanded by the buttresses of the Canigou. It is composed of two distinct parts, of very different aspect. The upper town is a tangle of little streets between mean, black houses with broken windows and rickety doors, above whose red tiled or slated roofs rise the church and the castle. New Vernet lies along the road lower down, and there are found the baths, the hotels, and the casino. The watering-places of Bagnères de Luchon, Cauterez, S. Sauveur, etc., are frequented only in the months of June, July, August, and rarely September; but at Vernet the season begins in April, and bathers linger on to November. For the use of winter residents a jardin d'hiver has been formed. The cold here is never great; and the salubrity of the spot has induced the erection of an open-air cure sanatorium at the height of 2250 feet, in an isolated position, for the use of consumptives.
From Vernet the ascent of the Canigou can be made on foot or by the newly-constructed cog-railway. There is a station at S. Martin de Canigou, an abbey founded at the edge of a precipice in 1007 by Count Waifre of Cerdagne, and his wife Gisella. Tradition will have it that he was engaged in warfare with the Moors, and had planned to surround them. He committed one detachment of troops to his son, with strict injunctions to delay attack till he himself should appear. But the young man, in his impetuosity, fell on the unbelievers before the arrival of the Count, and was defeated. Waifre in a rage killed him, and then repenting of what he had done, went to Rome, where the Pope required him to build and endow a monastery in expiation of his crime. This is, however, mere fable. As a matter of fact, the foundation was wholly voluntary, and Count Waifre, after having built it retired from the world within its walls, and occupied his leisure in scooping out a sarcophagus that was to contain himself eventually, which sarcophagus, now empty, is still shown. He died in 1049. The abbey, having been dismantled at the Revolution, fell into complete ruin, but has been purchased, and the church restored by Bishop du Pont of Perpignan. He has also revived the pilgrimage to it, which takes place on S. Martin's Day (11 November), when a procession winds up the mountain from Vernet. Whether procession and pilgrims will henceforth go up in trucks by the cog-railway remains to be seen. The church is a very interesting example of earliest Romanesque, the aisles are separated from the nave by granite columns very massive, with Byzantine ornament on the capitals. Beneath the church is the crypt.
The second way to reach the roots of the Canigou, and, if it be desired, to ascend it, is to take the branch line from Elne to Arles-sur-Tech. At Le Boulou (lo Volo) the line crosses the Great Eastern highway into Spain, the main pass from Narbonne to Barcelona in Roman and medieval times, and used by Celts and Iberians before ever Narbonne and Barcelona were thought of. Le Boulou did well as a place through which travellers and merchandise streamed this way and that. But then came the days of steam; the iron road was carried along the coast from Perpignan to Barcelona, and Le Boulou's occupation and prosperity were gone never to return.
Beyond Le Boulou we reach Ceret, famous for its bridge, a daring medieval structure, and for its nuts and cherry orchards. The architect employed on the bridge, unable to throw the bold arch over the Tech, put himself in communication with the Devil, who promised to complete it for the usual consideration. As the fatal day approached the architect became uneasy, and in the night went to the river with a sack on his back, and waited till half-past eleven. Then he let loose a cat with a kettle tied to its tail, and the Evil One, frightened at the noise, let drop the last stone needed to complete the bridge and fled. Thus the bridge never was finished; it lacks one stone to the present day. The bridge spans the river with a single arch, and the height from the key of the arch to the level of the water is 70 feet. The opening of the arch between the piers is 128 feet. It remains the boldest achievement in bridge-building accomplished in ancient France, the only other approaching it was that of Brioude, which no longer exists. This bridge was constructed in 1321. It marked the limit of the Valespir, or upper basin of the Tech.
Ceret really flourishes on hazel-nuts. The plantations extend over other communes, but Ceret is the centre of the industry. Three kinds of nuts are grown; the best is thought to be indigenous; it has a russet shell, pointed, and is contained in a cup divided into four lobes delicately striated. The taste is superior to that of the other kinds, and it is in greater request for the making of nougat. Inferior in taste, but larger, is the second variety, usually sold to be served up at dessert. The third kind is exotic, and is little cultivated. The gathering of the nuts is done by women in the middle of August. After that the nuts have been freed from their cases, they are dried, and the sale begins in October. For the production of nougat the shells are cracked and the kernel released, and this latter is alone sent to the factories of that dainty. A hazel-nut tree will bear the third year after it has been planted, but is not calculated to render a good crop till the fifth. A hectare (2 acres, 1 r., 35 p.) is reckoned to render a crop that will bring in 130 francs.
A little over two miles above the bridge of Ceret is the Hermitage of S. Ferreolus, on the left bank of the Tech. Ferreolus was, so the story goes, a robber chieftain who committed many murders. Seized with compunction, he resolved on expiating his crimes by being rolled downhill from where now stands the chapel, in a barrel, studded internally with nails, a process the same as that which extinguished Regulus. His festival is on 18 September, on which day the chapel is visited, and there is much eating and drinking and dancing. On the following Sunday is bull-baiting.
The line passes within sight of Pallada, most picturesquely situated, at some distance from the iron road; but Pallada is best visited from Amalie des Bains.
The baths were known to and used by the Romans, but were a dependency of Arles-sur-Tech, and so remained till that needy little town in a weak moment disposed of them in 1813, and has regretted the sale ever since.
Amelie, which takes its name from Queen Amelie, occupies a specially favoured site. Mountains fold about it, it faces the sun, and is screened from every wind. The terrible Tramontane, which has bowed the olives and plane trees in Roussillon and Languedoc, is powerless to reach this blessed valley. The north-east wind indeed can steal up the ravine of the Tech, but not till it has been despoiled of its humidity, which renders it so objectionable to the inhabitants of the plain. Frost and snow rarely visit Amelie; the mean number of days when rain falls in the winter is eleven, in spring thirty-two, sixteen in the summer, and twelve in the autumn. There is a military establishment of baths at Amelie, and the place is much frequented by officers during the winter, so that it is never utterly deserted and dead, as is the generality of watering-places.
Amelie has been formed as a commune out of scraps taken from others, but mainly from Arles-sur-Tech, to which the springs originally belonged. Arles is a very curious town, vastly ancient, and is the terminus of the line. Its principal manufacture is chocolate. The little town stands on a height, and is surrounded by mountains. Arles owes its medieval revival to a Benedictine abbey of which a considerable portion remains to this day. The abbot exercised almost episcopal jurisdiction over several parishes, of which he was also temporal lord. In the sixteenth century it was in full decay, and was so poor that its finances had to be helped out by annexing to it the funds of another abbey. The reason was that it was held in commendam, the revenue eaten by a titular abbot who resided in Paris, and discharged none of his duties.
The church of the monastery was finished in 1040, and is very archaic. It underwent, however, additions in 1157, when the curious vaulting was added. As a doubt was entertained whether the piers would sustain it, they were strengthened, and smaller arches added beneath those first erected. The church reminds one of the monolithic church of S. Emillon on the Garonne. The same square, massive piers rising to a great height, quite unadorned, support the round-headed unmoulded arches. Above each arch is a small, round-headed clerestory window. The church consists of five bays, and the nave has side aisles, out of which open chapels of much later construction. There was in the church at one time a richly carved altar-piece of the fifteenth century. But when the present detestable roccoco retable was erected, this was destroyed. Some of the panels were happily preserved and affixed to the pillars in the nave.
Outside the church the western portal is early, with a triangular lintel, on which is cut a shield with a.ω. between A and A. The meaning of these double A's is not understood. In the diminutive yard without, behind is a grating, of an early sarcophagus that contained the bodies of saints Abdo and Senen. It possesses the curious property of filling with water, which can be drawn off by a tap at the side to supply bottles brought by pilgrims, who consider the water as efficacious in many maladies. How it is that the sarcophagus thus fills with water is not known; probably the clergy of the church do not themselves know, as the heavy lid has not been removed for centuries, nor the stone coffin shifted from the spot where it now stands.
But the greatest beauty of the church consists in the large cloister on the north side, of the thirteenth century. The arches are pointed, and rest on graceful pillars with dainty foliaged capitals, all of marble, and coupled. The cloister is not vaulted. This cloister was begun in 1261, but was not completed till the beginning of the fourteenth century.
The patrons of the church are SS. Abdo and Senen, Persian saints who suffered under Decius in 252. In the reign of Constantine the Great their relics were enshrined in Rome, and the marble sarcophagus that contained them still exists there, and their remains are in the church of S. Mark, Rome; but also here. Their day, 30 July, is a high festival at Arles, when the sleepy town is full of animation, and dances take place in the public square; then can be seen the red barretina and the gaily-coloured kerchiefs of the women.
Farther up the valley is a watering-place, Prats de Mollo. The name Prats, as Prades, which occurs in so many parts of the south, derives from the Latin prates, and signifies pleasant meadows by the water-side. The industry of Prats is the making of the red caps worn by the Catalans, and the rope-woven soles of spadrillos. The place enjoyed great privileges under the kings of Aragon, among these was freedom from duty on salt. Louis XIV sought to introduce it, but the people rose and slaughtered the tax-collectors. Louis sent troops to subdue them, and erected a fortress to intimidate them. On a mountain above Prats le Coral is a pilgrimage chapel containing a miraculous image of the Virgin. Crowds visit it—pilgrims from the country round, and bathers from Amelie—to see the combined devotion and jollification on 8 September.