Legends -- Pyrenees; Pyrenees -- Description and travel; Pyrenees -- History
The other cathedral is more interesting. It consists of a nave without
aisles, and an apse constructed out of fragments of Roman buildings,
and over a Roman gateway. The central tower is of the fourteenth
century: octagonal, lighted by windows with triangular heads, and the
whole crowned by a crenellated platform. It affects the Toulouse style,
and is of brick. The magnificent cloister of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries has thirty-two round-headed arches resting on alternate
single and double pillars with quaintly-carved and varied capitals.
Above it is an open walk or cloister, with the pantiled roof supported
on beams, dating from the fifteenth century. Probably the town would
expire altogether were it not kept alive by the lunatics installed in
the episcopal palace, which is lighted by electricity, and such light
as is not wanted in the asylum is distributed over the town.
Like S. Bertrand, this Lyons changed its name and assumes that of one
of the bishops, a native of Lerida, who is said to have saved the
city from destruction by the Visigoths by his intercession. The town
is built on the slopes of a hill above the Salat. It communicates
with the _halte_ by means of a steep-pitched bridge of the twelfth or
thirteenth century, consisting of three unequal arches. Into one of
the piers is built a votive inscription to the goddess Belisama, who
was identified by the Romans with Minerva. Another inscription to this
goddess has been found at Vaison. A tower formerly stood in the midst
of the bridge. Above, on the right bank of the Salat, is a square tower
that defended a fortified mill. This mill has been reconstructed. The
old city is enclosed in the Roman ramparts forming an ellipse, flanked
by a dozen towers, of which six on the north side are square, and the
rest on the south are semicircular. Against the rampart within is the
episcopal keep of the twelfth century, rectangular, and only to be
entered by a wooden bridge that led to the first story from the palace.
The lower rests on Roman foundations.
The valleys of the Couserans do not attract many visitors; they have
not the boldness of those farther west. The Pic de Crabère reaches to
7200 feet, that of Mauberme to 8650, that of Roujos to 8340. There is
a little lake, the Lac d’Arrainge, out of which flows the Isar, but it
is insignificant; others are above Aulus. The principal business of
the people in the upper valleys was the training of dancing bears, and
sometimes when a father married his daughter he would hand over to his
son-in-law as the _dot_ a well-trained Bruin. But the taste for seeing
these beasts led about and made to stand on their hind legs and plead
for coppers has died out. There is no further demand for bears, and
the industry is expiring, if not dead. Perhaps the last was seen by M.
Ardouin-Dumazet:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account