Day Twenty-Eight: Pass d'Aspe
Headed off in the direction of Arudy, the area where I first idly put my finger down on a map for Les Malineux's location. Had to simmer myself down from expecting to see it around every curve. Swung past the semi-abandoned baths at St. Christau, where a ferocious vine is tearing apart the empty husk of a grand hotel, just like a W.H. Hudson story.
Came out of the countryside at Oloron again -- Ste. Marie cathedral, to be exact, so I thought it might be good to clear my aesthetic palate before assaulting the Vallee d'Aspe again. Best thing the portal -- very amusing array of folks making music and cooking and fishing and hunting, as the delights of Paradise -- two comically dolorous Saracen prisoners supporting a column in the center. Picked up a postcard of the portal, but unfortunately it fails to capture the expression of indecent glee on the face of the lion devouring a hapless person (his legs hanging out of the lion's mouth like spaghetti ends).
Drove up through THE perfect countryside -- now I know why I could never decide if "the Gave" was the Gave de Pau or the Gave d'Oloron -- because it's the Gave d'Aspe! Sauntered hither to Escot, that chilly, deep portion of the valley where the Heptameron is set. Marguerite was no fabulist -- if the bridges washed out even today, all you're going to be doing is sitting tight and telling stories until the waters recede and somebody builds you some new bridges.
I was about three-quarters of the way through the weensy narrow streets of Escot, when I was suddenly taken with the notion of reversing back to the churchyard and writing down names from tombstones.
...Where I met one Widow Crapuchette, a sturdy old body in rose cardigan and stout oxfords, tending her dearly departed's grave -- alas that the onomatopoeic qualities of her own ancient name prevent its utilization in English fiction! She and I had a chat that probably fascinated us both equally, about who I was and what I was doing there, and how many Escotians had emigrated to California after the war (I'm a little hazy about which war, but it must be recent since the émigrés included near relations of Madame). After she had initiated me into the mysteries of closing (but not locking) the graveyard gate, she left me to gather my research, hobbling under the weight of an aluminum watering can fully half as big as herself.
Headed through the Defile to Sarrance, where, after I'd cooled my heels in a tiny morsel of town square for a while, I entered one of the most charming, beautifully organized and imaginative museums that it has been my fortune to encounter. It is dedicated to Notre Dame des Pierres, a miraculous stone image found in... well, soon enough we'll get to how it was found -- with a cunningly discreet environmentalist, socialist and pro-folklorist message woven in. It is also a technological marvel for presentation -- and once again, I was utterly alone in the enjoyment of it.
First you walk through some thick black curtains into a somewhat disorienting son-et-lumiere depicting, via scary faceless black velvet dummies wearing period costumes, the pilgrimage to Our Lady's shrine in 1932, apparently a high-water mark in the history of the chapel. The "son" part is the sound of feet shuffling on cobblestone, gravel and flagstone (when the procession reaches the church interior), voices reciting rosaries to the Lady, then singing special Bearnaise hymns (spelled out in both French and Bearnaise in printed copies -- everybody sing!). What most disorients is that the scene is backed with mirrors, so that you yourself are part of the procession with the faceless black velvet dummies.
When the hymn-singing revelry is over, you walk upstairs. When you enter the room, a narrated slideshow of the legend begins automatically, illustrated by utterly charming, funny, fabulistic paintings.
Once upon a time in the tiny village of Sarrance, there was an amazingly beautiful bull that appeared every day but vanished mysteriously at night. No one could catch him -- he broke every rope. A bergere cunningly followed the bull to a mysterious spring deep in the woods, where the bull suddenly bowed down and prayed to an image of the Virgin that was sitting on a stone at the source. Well, everyone in town was so very excited about the miraculous appearance of the sculpture. The bishop of Oloron came up to take a look at it, and decided to remove it to the cathedral. But helas! In the morning it had disappeared from the cathedral -- and reappeared at the spring.
A proper shrine was set up in Sarrance, and the Virgin seemed content here and didn't pull any more presto-chango tricks. One day some naughty fellows stole her out of the sanctuary and dropped her in the river -- where, in spite of her being made of rock, she bobbed to the surface and was safely recovered downstream. The stone at the source where she was found became known for helping pregnant women -- they would chip off little pieces of the rock and eat it for an easy birth. The slide show goes on to talk about stone, and water, and birth, and bridges, and community and nature in a very relaxed, non-technical way, explaining symbols without explaining them away.
Then you go upstairs to another room, where the cases light up when you tread in front of them -- about the use of water and bridge building and stone quarrying in the Vallee d'Aspe from ancient to modern days. Which sounds dull as ditchwater, I grant you, but is quite fascinating the way they've laid it out, with reproductions of ancient charters and old sepia tone photographs of mills being constructed and maps of every conceivable vintage.
Then you proceed into another room with magically illuminating displays and magically starting sacred music, to a history of pilgrimages in Sarrance since the Middle Ages. How Sarrance quickly became popular as a "quickie" before, during or after a trek to Compostela -- how the sanctuary was built with mostly village money, until the aristocrats started to be shamed into contributing (an amusing little anecdote of arch-enemies Gaston Febus, Charles the Bad of Navarre and Pierre of Aragon all coincidentally showing up on the same day to contribute their largesse).
Any bustling pilgrimage town starts to attract riff-raff. A certain -- shall we say service-oriented -- class of vendors sprang up to provide pilgrims with the opportunity to get a few more sins under their belts before absolution at the sanctuary tomorrow.
It goes on and on -- how the Virgin disappeared during the wars of religion, and how recovered, and how a division between the town and the monastery in charge of the Lady grew up in the 18th century that resulted in some pretty gruesome comeuppances for the greedy monks (who were charging exorbitant amounts to administer sacraments) during the Revolution. All told in brightly colored wooden panel carvings, with strategically placed objects and reproductions of documents. Honestly, whoever designed this museum really knew what they were doing! I couldn't have enjoyed it more.
Went across the street to the church itself afterwards -- it's certainly seen renovations pretty recently, and looks very sleek and well-fed. The head of Notre Dame des Pierres, looking a little grim and bloodthirsty (I'm betting she was an ancient Iberian Mari), is dressed up in a little white and gold frock in a side chapel. Visit is rounded out by a walk through a small but delightful cloister -- no particular architectural masterpieces, just a homely little walk with a pretty patch of garden, vines on withies and budding roses.
Quite exhausted, I headed back to the inn. While resting, I heard a boisterous but small wedding party in progress outside the church -- rather was looking forward to it getting tangled up with the cows coming home, but alas it was not to be.