A thousand voices burst forth, as if simultaneously, from height and valley, above, around, and underneath; an immense crowd hurried along--some mounting, some descending--amongst the crackling branches, until the intricate alleys and close retreats of this labyrinth of verdure were filled with human beings.
"The lame and wounded, the infirm and paralytic grouped themselves around the fountains, to be ready at the right moment to plunge their afflicted limbs in the cold waters, and then to cast in their offering of a piece of money: some, providing for the future, busied themselves in filling, from the beneficent source, their vases and pitchers to overflowing; for it was firmly believed, that, in memory of the holy baptism administered by the patron of the _fete_, Heaven had endowed the waters with peculiar powers during that favoured night; allowing the virtue to take effect from midnight to the rising of the sun.
"In the humid fern might be seen cattle sent to graze at will, in the hope of being cured of some malady, their tinkling bells indicating where they wandered.

Parties of old men, women, and children, dispersed here and there, were eating cakes prepared for the occasion; while young men and girls danced in circles beneath the ash and elm trees, to the sound of the _flute of three notes_, accompanied by the nasal cadence of the lute of six strings.
"After halting for a considerable time, and taking their part in the religious advantages of the _fete_, the cavalcade resumed its route; and soon descended into the valley of the Bayse, as the sky began to be tinged with the hue of dawn.

When they arrived at the hospital of Aubertin, the first rays of the sun were casting a golden light on the Roman transepts of the church." At the moment that the Dame d'Artiguelouve and her son are alighting from their horses, they are arrested, and impressed with a superstitious feeling of terror, by observing a fine white courser at the door of the church, held by a page.

This was, at the period, a bad omen for the stranger who first saw it, and boded no good to any one.
"'I would not', said Joan Bordenabe--a peasant standing by,--'for the castle of Artiguelouve, have met with so bad an omen, as the Ena[41] Garsende and her noble son, who have come at once, face to face, with that animal, covered, as it would seem by his colour, with the snows of the Pyrenees: by our Lady of Sarrance, their future years will be as black as he is white!' "'But,' replied his companion, 'if I were the knight to whom the charger belongs, I would part with him instantly, even if, at the same time as I drowned him, I must throw into the Gave my sword and golden spurs: don't you see that spiteful-looking magpie, which has just started up before him, after having chattered in his very face?
What awful signs of evil are these! and on such a morning, at the rising of the sun! * * * May the _bon Dieu_, the Holy Virgin, and the white fairies of the subterranean caves, who are always combing their hair at the first glimpse of dawn, and looking into the clear mirror of the fountains, protect that beautiful young lady, who is at this moment entering the church.

It is to be hoped she has made an ample provision of fennel to lay under her bed's head, and in her oratory, to counteract the evil influence of the _Brouches_!'"[42] [Footnote 41: En and Ena are titles of Bearnaise nobility, answering to the Spanish Don and Dona.] [Footnote 42: Witches or Sorcerers of Bearn.] While the young lady, Marie de Lignac, enters the church to perform her devotions, the rest of the party leave her, to join the chase of the wild boar, which the Lord of Artiguelouve, the father of Odon, is following, as his horns announce, in the adjacent forest.
The Hospital of Aubertin, which still exists, is a building of the twelfth century, and was one of many establishments depending on the order of monks hospitalers of Sainte Christine: it served as an asylum to the pilgrims of St.James, and as a resting-place to travellers going and coming to and from Spain, Marie found the church filled with persons of different professions: merchants from Arragon and Catalonia; pilgrims adorned with palms and cockle-shells, emblems of their wandering; shepherds in their red dresses and brown berret-caps; and wayfarers of many sorts, waiting only for the morning to continue their journey in various directions, and offering up their prayers previously to setting out.