This is as one would expect to find it, but it is possible to come across an alien even in the country of the Basque. On interrogating a smiling peasant driving a yoke of cream-coloured oxen, he replied: "_Mais je ne suis pas Basque; je suis Périgourdin_--born at Badefols, just by the old château of Bertrand de Born the troubadour."
One may be pardoned for a reference to the _cagots_ of the Basque country, a despised race of people not unlike the cretins of the Alps. As Littré defines them they are distinctly a "people of the Pyrenees." The race, as a numerous body, practically is extinct to-day. They lived in poor, mean cabins, far from the towns and under the protection of a seigneurial château or abbey. All intercourse with their neighbours was forbidden, and at church they occupied a space apart, had a special holy water font, and when served with blessed bread it was thrown at them as if they were dogs, and not offered graciously.
This may have been uncharitable and unchristianlike, but the placing of separate holy water-basins in the churches was simply carrying out the principle of no intercourse between the Basques and the _cagots_, not even between those who had become, or professed to be Christians. "The loyal hand of a Basque should touch nothing that had previously been touched by a _cagot_."
From the Basque country, through the heart of the Pyrenees, circling Béarn, Navarre and Foix, to Roussillon is a far cry, and a vast change in speech and manners.
Life in a Pyrenean village for a round of the seasons would probably cure most of the ills that flesh is heir to. It may be doubtful as to who was the real inventor of the simple life--unless it was Adam--but Jean Jacques Rousseau was astonished that people did not live more in the open air as a remedy against the too liberal taking of medicine.
"_Gouter la liberté sur la montagne immense!_" This was the dream of the poet, but it may become the reality of any who choose to try it. One remarks a certain indifference among the mountaineers of the Pyrenees for the conventions of life.
The mountaineer of the Pyrenees would rather ride a donkey than a pure bred Arab or drive an automobile. He has no use for the proverb:--