Day Thirty: Our Lady of Kitsch
A funny, drippy day for being in a garden, but here I am, keeping surveillance on the gang of peacocks grazing beside the gazebo in the Jardin Massey. It seems to be my Flannery O'Connor day -- first Lourdes ("The miracle is they don't have epidemics"), now peacocks.
Monsieur and I chatted over breakfast today -- I am now habitué de la maison enough to be trusted with my own key to the front door -- he asked how I'd heard of the place, and I whipped out my Cadogan guide. The ice being thusly broken, we talked abut the region and why I was visiting there. I think the family had been a bit shy, about this odd "ferringer", and will now relax a little more.
(Hold on a minute. By virtue of assiduously minding my own business, I have piqued the peacock with the biggest, glossiest tail -- I am glad to report that the other peafowl snub him -- to stand on top of a park bench a few feet away and pseudo-casually lift his tail to take in the breeze. Moral of the story, anyone?)
So I trundled on out to Lourdes, to the only secular sight in town, a castle of Febus-vintage. Unfortunately I misestimated how long it would take me to get there, so by the time I arrived, the castle was closed for lunch. I picked up some pain au choc and wandered the streets a bit.
Well, everything they say about Lourdes is true. It is tacky as all get out. There are indeed Virgin Marys or Bernadettes on every conceivable object -- a good one is the water bottle where Our Lady's crown is the stopper. Mogdalini's got a lot to answer for, that's all I can say. There are indeed pilgrims singing in the streets -- though no one said they'd be singing "La Bamba."
And then a little girl with silky black curls turns her coal-bright eyes on you in the street, laying her hand on where her flawless white cotton blouse covers her heart, and says to you, "Priez pour mon papa." And then it is all extremely unfunny.
I headed out to Tarbes and got back in the groove as far as getting lost is concerned, going around and around and around and AROUND. "This had better be one damn fine garden, that's all I've got to say," I muttered to the statue of Marechal Foch on the sixth pass.
And it is indeed a damn fine garden. The rain had stopped by now, but was still recent enough to keep most everybody away. It's perhaps the size of the San Francisco arboretum, but flat and formalized and considerably less messy. There's a zoolet of Corsican mountain sheep, pheasants and deer... a smallish lake, with subsidiary canals... a playground... a "theatre in the greenery"... a boules field... innumerable beds of flowers and instructional plaques.. the Musee de Massey itself... and a medieval cloister removed bodily from St. Saverdun and reassembled most handsomely. All the capitals have informative captions about the subjects of the carvings. The best is "Les Chattes Affrontees."