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CHAPTER XV
LUCHON
Montréjeau—A bastide—Grotto de Gargas—A cannibal—Blaise Ferrage—Taken and escapes—Final capture—Execution—S. Bertrand de Cominges—Sertorius—Gundowald—His coronation—Treachery of Boso—And of Mummolus—Murder of Gundowald—Destruction of the city—Bishops at Valcabrères—Church of S. Juste—Bertrand de I'Isle-Jourdain rebuilds the town—Bertrand de Got—Jubilee—The cathedral—Nonresident bishops—Counts of Cominges—Murder of a boy husband—Imprisonment of the Countess Margaret—Bequeaths the county to the Crown of France—The Garonne—Bagnères de Luchon—Its visitors—Its antiquity—Lac de Seculéjo—Description by Inglis—Cures for all disorders—Le Maudit—S. Aventin and the bear—Val de Lys—Val d'Aran—S. Beat and its quarries—The valley should belong to France—Viella—The Maladetta—Trou de Toro—Port de Venasque.
AT Montréjeau the line branches off to Bagnères de Luchon from the trunk to Toulouse. Montréjeau was Montroyal, then Montreal, and then what it has now become through deformation by the Gascon tongue. It was a bastide, one of those artificial towns, created first by Edward I, and then copied by great nobles, and by the kings of France, in which every street was either parallel to another, or cut it at right angles; and the houses were built in blocks, the whole surrounded by walls, and the church usually serving as part of the fortification.
Montréjeau was the capital of the Marquesate of Montespan. The site is beautiful; and from the terrace, in clear
