Day Thirty-Five: Built to Laas
My tally of successes at French conversation increases -- I must be headed for a fall. Madame and I had quite a gab at breakfast today -- I think the key is getting the right mixture of mild shock and sympathy into your "ooh la la" -- Madame also professes herself of the opinion that I speak good French, so I must not be a complete failure. We discussed the importance of having memories, children, work, and the omnipresence of Germans.
I decided to get a better gander at the Vieux Pont in Orthez -- which was a good choice, because the view from the bridge stands out even in my grand collection of beautiful-views-from-bridges. The Oloron fusses and dithers a little, but is generally in less of a hurry than elsewhere -- the broken crags of chalky stone nestle their broods of lichens and wildflowers.
I then stumbled across a lovely little garden -- formal, a maze of low hedges around beds of very dark red roses copiously in bud, but not quite in bloom -- the Jardin de Catherine Bourbon, Henri the Fourth's sister. It is attached to the Maison Jeanne d'Albret, which houses the tourist office. I suffered a pang of conscience about how few brochures I'd picked up lately for my travel agent, and decided to pop in and remedy that situation.
...And discovered that the second floor houses a Musee du Protestantism Bearnais, the existence of which I'd been utterly ignorant of until that moment. I scampered up the stairs toute suite and made the acquaintance of Monsieur and Madame the curators.
The collection focused more on 18th and 19th century stuff... but they did have a few terrific engravings of earlier provenance, including two original Durers, Lot and his daughters preparing to skedaddle from Sodom. You can just tell the daughters are going to get into trouble later on, the way they are lollygagging and gawking. Teenagers.
Got lost working my way from Orthez to Sauveterre, just to keep my hand in. Alas, because of wind the terrace overlooking the bridge was closed at the Hostellerie du Chateau, but I still had a grand lunch -- a pleasant potato and leek soup, a nice omelette au jambon, a poulet Basquise that couldn't have been improved on, finished up by a scrumptious gateau Basque and tea.
Got to Laas about half an hour before the next tour was scheduled, so took a saunter through the gardens -- three of 'em, English, Italian and French, all slightly mad. Examples: topiary shrubs in the shape of dreidels. Stone sphinxes with the heads and coiffures of Second Empire gamines. One boule prominently placed looked like a cross between a bulldog and a catfish.
Backing up a bit... Laas is a modest 18th century chateau set in luxuriant gardens. It, and its rich collection of art and furnishings, were donated to the departmental government by Monsieur and Madame Serbat, two worthies without heirs, on condition that it be kept open for the public.
Madame the tour guide, a chinless dreamy beauty of a very anglais style, in loose silk pastel trousers, got rather a gleam in her eye when she found out I was American (I was the only person waiting for the tour) -- she has been studying English since last summer, and this was her first opportunity to give a tour in it, so all my protests that "je suis en France, il faut parler francais" were roundly ignored.
It was really a most amusing tour for both of us, between her broken English and my broken French, a genuine love for beautiful things. She spirited me under the red velvet rope in the music room when I said yes, I do play a little piano -- and demanded that I try out the 18th century Pleyrel grand... I did my baby version of Beethoven's Ninth. "Do you know any jazz?" I didn't want to tell her that my modern repertoire mostly consists of numbers from "Fiddler on the Roof," for which my piano teacher had an inexplicable fondness.
There was a goooooooooooooooooorgeous Vigee-LeBrun of Madame Serbat's great-great-grandmother -- my yelps of excitement here put me on an infallible wicket with Madame. She sorted out my Brueghels for me -- Laas is chockablock with Brueghels from all the boys -- and when she couldn't remember the English word for cuivre -- which is what some of the paintings were done on rather than canvas -- we rapped gently on it to figure out what it was. (Copper is what it was.) So I've now banged on a Brueghel.
The one problem was that Madame is clearly most enamored by 17th and 18th century things, so we glided over some 16th century portraiture a little too quickly for my liking. But all in all it was a most entertaining afternoon, and I was able to tell Madame with perfect truth that her English is very excellent for one who has been studying so little time. She gave a little shimmy of delight.