Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces

CHAPTER V
ROUSSILLON AND THE CATALANS

ROUSSILLON is a curious province. “Roussillon is a bow with two strings,” say the inhabitants. The workers in the vineyards of other days are becoming fishermen, and the fishermen are becoming vineyard workers. The arts of Neptune and the wiles of Bacchus have however conspired to give a prosperity to Roussillon which many more celebrated provinces lack.

The Roussillon of other days, a feudal power in its time, with its counts and nobles, has become but a Département of latter-day France. The first historical epochs of Roussillon are but obscurely outlined, but they began when Hannibal freed the Pyrenees in 536, and in time the Romans became masters here, as elsewhere in Gaul.

Then there came three hundred years of Visigoth rule, which brought the Saracens, and, in 760, Pepin claimed Roussillon for France. Then began the domination of the counts. First they were but delegates of the king, but in time they usurped royal authority and became rulers in their own right.

Roussillon had its own particular counts, but in a way they bowed down to the king of Aragon, though indeed the kings of France up to Louis IX considered themselves suzerains. By the Treaty of Corbeil Louis IX renounced this fief in 1258 to his brother king of Aragon. At the death of James I of Aragon his states were divided among his children, and Roussillon came to the kings of Majorca. Wars within and without now caused an era of bloodshed. Jean II, attacked by the men of Navarre and of Catalonia, demanded aid of Louis XI, who sent seven hundred lances and men, and three hundred thousand gold crown pieces, which latter the men of Roussillon were obliged to repay when the war was over. Jean II, Comte de Roussillon, hedged and demanded delay, and in due course was obliged to pawn his countship as security. This the Roussillonnais resented and revolt followed, when Louis XI without more ado went up against Perpignan and besieged it on two occasions before he could collect the sum total of his bill.

Charles VIII, returning from his Italian travels, in a generous frame of mind, gave back the province to the king of Aragon without demanding anything in return. Ferdinand of Aragon became in time king of Spain, by his marriage with Isabella, and Roussillon came again directly under Spanish domination.

Meantime the geographical position of Roussillon was such that it must either become a part of France or a buffer-state, or duelling ground, where both races might fight out their quarrels. Neither François I nor Louis XIII thought of anything but to acquire the province for France, and so it became a battle-ground where a continuous campaign went on for years, until, in fact, the Grand Condé, after many engagements, finally entered Perpignan and brought about the famous Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed on the Ile des Faisans at the other extremity of the great frontier mountain chain.

The antique monuments of Roussillon are not many; principally they are the Roman baths at Arles-sur-Tech, the tomb of Constant, son of Constantine, at Elne, and an old Mohammedan or Moorish mosque, afterwards serving as a Christian church, at Planes. The ancient city of Ruscino, the chief Roman settlement, has practically disappeared, a tower, called the Tor de Castel-Rossello, only remaining.

Impetuosity of manner, freedom in their social relations, and a certain egotism have ever been the distinctive traits of the Roussillonnais. It was so in the olden times, and the traveller of to-day will have no difficulty in finding the same qualities. Pierre de Marca first discovered, and wrote of these traits in 1655, and his observations still hold good.

Long contact with Spain and Catalonia has naturally left its impress on Roussillon, both with respect to men and manners. The Spanish tone is disappearing in the towns, but in the open country it is as marked as ever. There one finds bull-fights, cock-fights, and wild, abandoned dancing, not to say guitar twanging, and incessant cigarette rolling and smoking, and all sorts of moral contradictions – albeit there is no very immoral sentiment or motive. These things are observed alike of the Roussillonnais and the Catalonians, just over the border.

The bull-fight is the chief joy and pride of the people. The labourer will leave his fields, the merchant his shop, and the craftsman his atelier to make one of an audience in the arena. Not in Spain itself, at Barcelona, Bilboa, Seville or Madrid is a bull-fight throng more critical or insistent than at Perpignan.

He loves immensely well to dance, too, the Roussillonnais, and he often carries it to excess. It is his national amusement, as is that of the Italian the singing of serenades beneath your window. On all great gala occasions throughout Roussillon a place is set apart for dancing, usually on the bare or paved ground in the open air, not only in the country villages but in the towns and cities as well.

The dances are most original. Ordinarily the men will dance by themselves, a species of muscular activity which they call “lo batl.” A contrepas finally brings in a mixture of women, the whole forming a mélange of all the gyrations of a dervish, the swirls of the Spanish dancing girl and the quicksteps of a Virginia reel.

The music of these dances is equally bizarre. A flute called lo flaviol, a tamborin, a hautboy, prima and tenor, and a cornemeuse, or borrassa, usually compose the orchestra, and the music is more agreeable than might be supposed.

In Roussillon the religious fêtes and ceremonies are conducted in much the flowery, ostentatious manner that they are in Spain, and not at all after the manner of the simple, devout fêtes and pardons of Bretagne. The Fête de Jeudi-Saint, and the Fête-Dieu in Roussillon are gorgeous indeed; sanctuaries become as theatres and tapers and incense and gay vestments and chants make the pageants as much pagan as they are Christian.

The coiffure of the women of Roussillon is a handkerchief hanging as a veil on the back of the head, and fastened by the ends beneath the chin, with a knot of black ribbon at each temple.

Their waist line is tightly drawn, and their bodice is usually laced down the front like those of the German or Tyrolean peasant maid. A short skirt, in ample and multifarious pleats, and coloured stockings finish off a costume as unlike anything else seen in France as it is like those of Catalonia in Spain.

The great Spanish cloak, or capuchon, is also an indispensable article of dress for the men as well as for the women.

The men wear a tall, red, liberty-cap sort of a bonnet, its top-knot hanging down to the shoulder – always to the left. A short vest and wide bodied pantaloons, joined together with yards of red sash, wound many times tightly around the waist, complete the men’s costume, all except their shoes, which are of a special variety known as spardilles, or espadrilles, another Spanish affectation.

The speech of Roussillon used to be Catalan, and now of course it is French; but in the country the older generations are apt to know much Catalan-Spanish and little French.

Just what variety of speech the Catalan tongue was has ever been a discussion with the word makers. It was not Spanish exactly as known to-day, and has been called roman vulgaire, rustique, and provincial, and many of its words and phrases are supposed to have come down from the barbarians or the Arabs.

In 1371 the Catalan tongue already had a poetic art, a dictionary of rhymes, and a grammar, and many inscriptions on ancient monuments in these parts (eighth, ninth and tenth centuries) were in that tongue. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Catalan tongue possessed a written civil and maritime law, thus showing it was no bastard.

A fatality pursued everything Catalan however; its speech became Spanish, and its nationality was swallowed up in that of Castille. At any rate, as the saying goes in Roussillon, – and no one will dispute it, – “one must be a Catalan to understand Catalan.”

The Pays-de-Fenouillet, of which St. Paul was the former capital, lies in the valley of the Agly. Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet is the present commercial capital of the region, if the title of commercial capital can be appropriately bestowed upon a small town of two thousand inhabitants. The old province, however, was swallowed up by Roussillon, which in turn has become the Département of the Pyrénées-Orientales.

The feudality of these parts centred around the Château de Fenouillet, now a miserable ruin on the road to Carcassonne, a few kilometres distant. There are some ruined, but still traceable, city walls at Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, but nothing else to suggest its one-time importance, save its fourteenth-century church, and the great tower of its ancient chapter-house.

Nearer Perpignan is Latour-de-France, the frontier town before Richelieu was able to annex Roussillon to his master’s crown.

Latour-de-France also has the débris of a château to suggest its former greatness, but its small population of perhaps twelve hundred persons think only of the culture of the vine and the olive and have little fancy for historical monuments.

Here, and at Estagel, on the Perpignan road, the Catalan tongue is still to be heard in all its silvery picturesqueness.

Estagel is what the French call “une jolie petite ville;” it has that wonderful background of the Pyrenees, a frame of olive-orchards and vineyards, two thousand inhabitants, the Hotel Gary, a most excellent, though unpretentious, little hotel, and the birthplace of François Arago as its chief sight. Besides this, it has a fine old city gate and a great clock-tower which is a reminder of the Belfry of Bruges. The wines of the neighbourhood, the macabeu and the malvoisie are famous.

North of Estagel, manners and customs and the patois change. Everything becomes Languedocian. In France the creation of the modern departments, replacing the ancient provinces, has not levelled or changed ethnological distinctions in the least.

The low-lying, but rude, crests of the Corbières cut out the view northward from the valley of the Agly. The whole region roundabout is strewn with memories of feudal times, a château here, a tower there, but nothing of great note. The Château de Queribus, or all that is left of it, a great octagonal thirteenth-century donjon, still guards the route toward Limoux and Carcassonne, at a height of nearly seven hundred metres. In the old days this route formed a way in and out of Roussillon, but now it has grown into disuse.

Cucugnan is only found on the maps of the Etat-Major, in the Post-Office Guide, and in Daudet’s “Lettres de Mon Moulin.” We ourselves merely recognized it as a familiar name. The “Curé de Cucugnan” was one of Daudet’s heroes, and belonged to these parts. The Provençal literary folks have claimed him to be of Avignon; though it is hard to see why when Daudet specifically wrote C-u-c-u-g-n-a-n. Nevertheless, even if they did object to Daudet’s slander of Tarascon, the Provençaux are willing enough to appropriate all he did as belonging to them.

The Catalan water, or wine, bottle, called the porro, is everywhere in evidence in Roussillon. Perhaps it is a Mediterranean specialty, for the Sicilians and the Maltese use the same thing. It’s a curious affair, something like an alchemist’s alembic, and you drink from its nozzle, holding it above the level of your mouth and letting the wine trickle down your throat in as ample a stream as pleases your fancy.

Those who have become accustomed to it, will drink their wine no other way, claiming it is never so sweet as when drunk from the porro.

 
“Du miel délayé dans un rayon de soleil.”
....
“Boire la vie et la santé quand on le boit c’est le vin idéal.”
 

Apparently every Catalan peasant’s household has one of these curious glass bottles with its long tapering spout, and when a Catalan drinks from it, pouring a stream of wine directly into his mouth, he makes a “study” and a “picture” at the same time.

A variation of the same thing is the gourd or leathern bottle of the mountaineer. It is difficult to carry a glass bottle such as the porro around on donkey back, and so the thing is made of leather. The neck of this is of wood, and a stopper pierced with a fine hole screws into it.

It comes in all sizes, holding from a bottleful to ten litres. The most common is a two-litre one. When you want to drink you hold the leather bag high in the air and pour a thin stream of wine into your mouth. The art is to stop neatly with a jerk, and not spill a drop. One can acquire the art, and it will be found an exceedingly practical way to carry drink.

It is a curious, little-known corner of Europe, where France and Spain join, at the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees, at Cap Cerbère. One read in classic legend will find some resemblance between Cap Cerbère and the terrible beast with three heads who guarded the gates of hell. There may be some justification for this, as Pomponius Mela, a Latin geographer, born however in Andalusia, wrote of a Cervaria locus, which he designated as the finis Galliæ. Then, through evolution, we have Cervaria, which in turn becomes the Catalan village of Cerveia. This is the attitude of the historians. The etymologists put it in this wise: Cervaria– meaning a wooded valley peopled with cerfs (stags). The reader may take his choice.

At any rate the Catalan Cerbère, known to-day only as the frontier French station on the line to Barcelona, has become an unlovely railway junction, of little appeal except in the story of its past.

In the twelfth century the place had already attained to prominence, and its feudal seigneur, named Rabedos, built a public edifice for civic pride, and a church which he dedicated to San Salvador.

In 1361 Guillem de Pau, a noble of the rank of donzell, and a member of a family famous for its exploits against the Moors, became Seigneur de Cerbère, and the one act of his life which puts him on record as a feudal lord of parts is a charter signed by him giving the fishing rights offshore from Collioure, for the distance of ten leagues, to one Pierre Huguet – for a price. Thus is recorded a very early instance of official sinning. One certainly cannot sell that which he has not got; even maritime tribunals of to-day don’t recognize anything beyond the “three mile limit.”

The seigneurs of Pau, who were Baillis de Cerbère, came thus to have a hand in the conduct of affairs in the Mediterranean, though their own bailiwick was nearer the Atlantic coast. At this time there were nine vassal chiefs of families who owed allegiance to the head. After the fourteenth century this frontier territory belonged, for a time, to the Seigneurs des Abelles, their name coming from another little feudal estate half hidden in one of the Mediterranean valleys of the Pyrenees.

The chapel of Cerbère, founded by Rabedos in the twelfth century, had fallen in ruins by the end of the fourteenth century, but many pious legacies left to it were conceded to the clercs bénéficiaires, a body of men in holy orders who had influence enough in the courts of justice to be able to claim as their own certain “goods of the church.” Louis XIV cut short these clerical benefits, however, and gave them – by what right is quite vague – to his maréchal, Joseph de Rocabruna.

Some two centuries ago Cerbère possessed something approaching the dignity of a château-fortress.

An act of the 25th May, 1700, refers to the Château de Caroig, perhaps the Quer-Roig. The name now applies, however, only to a mass of ruins on the summit of a near-by mountain of the same name. Not every one in the neighbourhood admits this, some preferring to believe that the same heap of stones was once a signal tower by which a warning fire was built to tell of the approach of the Saracens or the pirates of Barbary. It might well have been both watch-tower and château.

CHAPTER VI
FROM PERPIGNAN TO THE SPANISH FRONTIER

ONCE Perpignan was a fortified town of the first class, but now, save for its old Citadelle and the Castillet, its warlike aspect has disappeared.

One of Guy de Maupassant’s heroes, having been asked his impressions of Algiers, replied, “Alger est une ville blanche!” If it had been Perpignan of which he was speaking, he would have said: “Perpignan est une ville rouge!” for red is the dominant colour note of the entire city, from the red brick Castillet to the sidewalks in front of the cafés. Colour, however, is not the only thing that astonishes one at Perpignan; the tramontane, that cruel northwest wind, as cruel almost as the “mistral” of Provence, blows at times so fiercely that one wonders that one brick upon another stands in place on the grand old Castillet tower.

The brick fortifications of Perpignan are, or were, wonderful constructions, following, in form and system, the ancient Roman manner.

It was a sacrilege to strip from the lovely city of Perpignan its triple ramparts and Citadelle, leaving only the bare walls of the Castillet, the sole remainder of its strength of old.

Perpignan’s walls have disappeared, but still one realizes full well what an important strategic point it is, guarding, as it does, the eastern gateway into Spain.

All the cities of the Midi possess some characteristic by which they are best known. Toulouse has its Capitole, Nîmes its Arena, Arles its Alyscamps, Pau its Château, and Perpignan its Castillet.

Built entirely of rosy-red brick, its battlemented walls rise beside the Quai de la Basse to-day as proudly as they ever did, though shorn of their supporting ramparts, save the Porte Notre Dame adjoining. That fortunately has been spared. Above this Porte Notre Dame is a figure of the Madonna, which, as well as the gate, dates from the period when the kings of Aragon retook possession of the ephemeral Royaume de Majorque, of which Perpignan was the capital, – a glory, by the way, which endured less than seventy years, but which has left a noticeable trace in all things relating to the history of the region.

In the tenth century Perpignan was known only as “Villa Perpiniani,” indeed it so remained until it was conquered by Louis XIII, when it became definitely French. Bloody war, celebrated sieges, ravages by the pest, an earthquake or two, and incendiaries without number could not raze the city which in time became one of the great frontier strongholds of France.

The Place de la Loge, the great café centre of Perpignan, is unique among the smaller cities of France. Here is animation at all hours of the day – and night, a perpetual going and coming of all the world, a veritable Rialto or a Rue de la Paix. It is the business centre of the city, and also the centre of its pleasures, a veritable forum. Cafés are all about; even the grand old Loge de Mer, a delicious construction of the fourteenth century, is a café.

What a charming structure this Loge is! Its fourteenth-century constructive elements have been further beautified with late flowering Gothic of a century and a half later, and its great bronze lamps suggest a symbolism which stands for eternity, or at any rate bespeaks the solidity of Perpignan for all time.

Beside the Loge is the Hôtel de Ville, with its round-arched doorways and windows, iron-barred in real mediæval fashion, with dainty colonnettes between.

Next is the ancient Palais de Justice, adjoining the Hôtel de Ville. It has a battery of mullioned twin windows of narrow aperture, and is in perfect keeping with the mediæval trinity of which it is a part.

The cathedral of St. Jean is another of Perpignan’s historical monuments, but it is far from lovely at first glance, an atrocious façade having been added by some “restorer” in recent times with more suitable ideas for building fortresses than churches.

The tower of the cathedral is modern and, taken as a whole, is undeniably effective with its iron cage and bell-rack. The original tower fell two centuries ago during an extra violent blow of the tramontane.

Passing centuries have changed Perpignan but little, and aside from the boulevards and malls the streets are narrow and tortuous and almost devoid of sidewalks. There are innumerable little bijou houses of Gothic or Renaissance times, and in one narrow street, called quaintly Main de Fer, one sees a real, unspoiled bit of the sixteenth century. One curious house, now occupied by the Cercle de l’Union, dates from 1508, and was erected for one Sancho or Xanxo. Its interior, so far as its entrance hall and stairway are concerned, remains as it was when first built.

The Rue Père Pigne has a legend connected with it which is worth recounting. The Père Pigne, or Pigna, as his name was in Catalan-Spanish days, was a cattle-herder in the upper valley of the Tet, beside the village of Llagone. Weary of his lonely life he whispered to the rocks and rills his desire for a less rude calling elsewhere, and the river took him up in its arms and washed him incontinently down on to the lowland plain of Roussillon, and, by some occult means or other, suggested to the old man that his mission in life was to found there a fertile, prosperous city. Thus Perpignan came to be founded.

There may be doubts as to the authenticity of the story, but there was enough of reality attached to it to have led the city fathers to name a street after the hero of the adventure.

Since the demolishment of its walls Perpignan has lost much of its mediæval character, but nothing can take away the life and gaiety of its streets and boulevards, its shops, its hotels and cafés. Perpignan comes very near being the liveliest little capital of old France existing under the modern republic of to-day.

The population is cosmopolitan, like that of Marseilles, and every aspect of it is picturesque. The vegetable sellers, the fruit merchants, the water and ice purveyors, all dark-eyed Catalan girls, are delightful in face, figure and carriage. Their baggy white coiffes set off their dark complexions and jet black hair. The men of this race are more serious when they are at business (they are gay enough at other times) and you may see twenty red onion or garlic dealers and never see a smile, whereas an orange seller, a woman or girl, always has her mouth open in a laugh and her headdress is always bobbing about; nothing about her is passive and life to her is a dream, though it is serious business to the men.

The taste of the Catalans of Perpignan for bright colouring in their dress is akin to that of their brothers and sisters in Spain. The fact that both slopes of the Eastern Pyrenees were under the same domination up to the reign of Louis XIII may account for this.

The Citadelle of Perpignan is closed to the general tourist. None may enter without permission from the military authorities, and that, for a stranger, is difficult to obtain. The great gateway to the Citadelle is a marvel of originality with its four archaic caryatides. Within is the site of the ancient palace of the kings of Majorca, but the primitive fragments have been rebuilt into the later works of Louis XI, Charles V and Vauban until to-day it is but a species of fortress, and not at all like a great domestic establishment such as one usually recognizes by the name of palace.

The Église de la Real, beside the Citadelle, was built in the fourteenth century and is celebrated for the council held here in 1408 by the Anti-Pope, Pierre de Luna.

There are some bibliographical gems in Perpignan’s Bibliothèque which would make a new-world collector envious. There are numerous rare incunabulæ and precious manuscripts, the most notable being the “Missel de l’Abbaye d’Arles en Vallespir” (XIIth century) and the “Missel de la Confrere,” illustrated with miniatures (XVth century), worthy, each of them, to be ranked with King René’s “Book of Hours” at Aix so far as mere beauty goes.

The habituated French traveller connects rilettes with Tours, the Cannebière with Marseilles, Les Lices with Arles, and, with Perpignan, the platanes– great plane-trees, planted in a double line and forming one of the most remarkable promenades, just beyond the Castillet, that one has ever seen. It is a Prado, a Corso, and a Rambla all in one.

The Carnival de Perpignan is as brilliant a fête as one may see in any Spanish or Italian city, where such celebrations are classic, and this Allée des Platanes is then at its gayest.

Another of the specialties of Perpignan is the micocoulier, or “bois de Perpignan,” something better suited for making whip handles than any other wood known. Each French city has its special industry; it may elsewhere be bérets, sabots, truffles, pork-pies or sausages, but here it is whips.

Perpignan has given two great men to the world, Jean Blanca and Hyacinthe Rigaud. Jean Blanca, Bourgeois de Perpignan, was first consul of the city when Louis XI besieged it in 1475. His son had been captured by the besiegers and word was sent that he would be put to death if the gates were not opened forthwith. The courageous consul replied simply that the ties of blood and paternal love are not great enough to make one a traitor to his God, his king and his native land. His son was, in consequence, massacred beneath his very eyes.

Hyacinthe Rigaud was a celebrated painter, born at Perpignan in the eighteenth century. His talents were so great that he was known as the Van Dyck français.

Canet is a sort of seaside overflow of Perpignan, a dozen kilometres away on the shores of the Mediterranean. On the way one passes the scant, clumsy remains of the old twelfth-century Château Roussillon, now remodelled into a little ill-assorted cluster of houses, a chapel and a storehouse. The circular tower, really a svelt and admirable pile, is all that remains of the château of other days, the last vestige of the dignity that once was Ruscino’s, the ancient capital of the Comté de Roussillon.

At Canet itself there are imposing ruins, sitting hard by the sea, of centuries of regal splendour, though now they rank only as an attraction of the humble little village of Roussillon. The belfry of Canet’s humble church looks like a little brother of that of “Perpignan-le-Rouge” and points plainly to the fact that styles in architecture are as distinctly local as are fashions in footwear.

Canet to-day is a watering place for the people of Perpignan, but in the past it was venerated by the holy hermits and monks of Roussillon for much the same attractions that it to-day possesses. Saint Galdric, patron of the Abbey of Saint Martin du Canigou, and, later, Saints Abdon and Sennen were frequenters of the spot.

Rivesaltes, practically a suburb of Perpignan, a dozen kilometres north, is approached by as awful a road as one will find in France. The town will not suggest much or appeal greatly to the passing traveller, unless indeed he stops there for a little refreshment and has a glass of muscat, that sweet, sticky liquor which might well be called simply raisin juice. It is a “specialité du pays,” and really should be tasted, though it may be had anywhere in the neighbourhood. It is a wine celebrated throughout France.

At Salces, on the Route Nationale, just beyond Narbonne and Rivesaltes, is an old fortification built by Charles V on one of his ambitious pilgrimages across France. A great square of masonry, with a donjon tower in the middle and with walls of great thickness, it looks formidable enough, but modern Krupp or Creusot cannon would doubtless make short work of it.

A dozen kilometres to the south of Perpignan is Elne, an ancient cathedral town. From afar one admires the sky line of the town and a nearer acquaintance but increases one’s pleasure and edification.

The Phœnicians, or the Iberians, founded the city, perhaps, five hundred years before the beginning of the Christian era, and Hannibal in his passage of the Pyrenees rested here. Another five hundred years and it had a Roman emperor for its guardian, and Constantine, who would have made it great and wealthy, surrounded it with ramparts and built a donjon castle, of which unfortunately not a vestige remains.

Ages came and went, and the city dwindled in size, and the church grew poor with it, until at last, in 1601, Pope Clement VIII (a French Pope, by the way) authorized its bishop to move to Perpignan, where indeed the see has been established ever since.

Of the past feudal greatness of Elne only a fragmentary rampart and the fortified Portes de Collioure and Perpignan remain. The rest must be taken on faith. Nevertheless, Elne is a place to be omitted from no man’s itinerary in these parts.

The great wealth and beauty of Elne’s cathedral cannot be recounted here. They would require a monograph to themselves. Little by little much has been taken from it, however, until only the glorious fabric remains. To cite an example, its great High Altar, made of beaten silver and gold, was, under the will of the canons of the church themselves, in the time of Louis XV, sent to the mint at Perpignan and coined up into good current écus for the benefit of some one, history does not state whom.

From the beautiful cloister, in the main a tenth-century work, and the largest and most beautiful in the Pyrenees, one steps out on a little perron when another ravishing Mediterranean panorama unfolds itself. There are others as fine; that from the platform of the château at Carcassonne; from the terrace at Pau; or from the citadel-fortress church at Béziers. This at Elne, however, is the equal of any. Below are the plains of Roussillon and Vallespir, red and green and gold like a tapis d’Orient, with the Albéres mountains for a background, while away in the distance, in a soft glimmering haze of a blue horizon, is the Mediterranean. It is all truly beautiful.

In the direction of the Spanish frontier Argelès-sur-Mer comes next. It has historic value and its inhabitants number three thousand, though few recognize this, or have even heard its name. As a matter of fact, it might have become one of the great maritime cities of the eastern slope of the Pyrenees except that fickle fate ruled otherwise.