The chapel was visited by Queen Hortense in 1807; she had recently lost her son, the Prince Royal of Holland, and she founded here a Mass to be said in perpetuity for the repose of his soul. The Abbé Pome, then owner and chaplain of the sanctuary, wrote to give the Queen an account of the first anniversary Mass. “That day, which should have been one of mourning by recalling the memory of a prince born to be the successor of the great Napoleon, has become a day of joy and thankfulness through the birth of another prince, who, generated in our mountains, and, if I may presume to say so, under the special protection of the Virgin, has dried up all our tears, has reanimated our courage, and has become the object of our most flattering hopes.” This prince just born was Louis Napoleon, who became Emperor of the French. In 1870 Mr. Lawlor published his _Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees_, and in it says of Napoleon III:-- “The protection of Our Lady of Poëy-la-hun would seem never to have deserted him through all his adventures and dangers.” An unhappy sentence written shortly before the disaster of Sedan in 1871. On a beautifully wooded height on the right as ascending the Valley of Argelez are seen the tower and church and buildings of S. Savin, where was an abbey of great importance, but of which now all that remain are the church and the chapter-house. The abbot was Seigneur over the so-called Valley of S. Savin, and that of Cauterets, then desert and poor, which belonged to the confraternity. But although seigneur, the abbot was by no means a despotic lord. The little republic of S. Savin would not admit him into his monastery, let him even cross the bounds of the “valley” till he had taken oath to respect the ancient rights and liberties of the place. Its electors went by the name of _voisins_; but the abbot alone represented S. Savin in the Estates of Bigorre, and he presided over the deliberations of the assembly of _voisins_ and _voisines_, for women as well as men were the representatives of the will and rights of the little republic, and a single veto would suffice to prevent the execution of any measure voted. On one occasion a _voisine_, named Galhardine de Fréchon, opposed her veto to the rest of the assembly which was otherwise unanimous, and thus paralyzed their action. The abbot and his monks doubtless lived well: hunted, and lounged and slept in their comfortable quarters, without discharging their religious duties other than in a perfunctory manner, for the Chevalier Bestin, in his verses relative to a stay in the Pyrenees, boasted of-- “Le long dîner, la courte messe Du bon abbé de Saint Savin.”