Page:A book of the Pyrenees.djvu/196

160 was dispatched as ambassador from Theodoric the Ostrogoth to sue for peace from Aetius, the Roman general, and was successful. He was the author of a religious poem, the "Commonitorium," still extant, and died in 439 at his monastery in the Lavedan, to which he had retired at an advanced age from his see. This monastery had fallen into bad ways in the eighteenth century, and the repute of the monks was so evil that the Bishop of Tarbes visited it in 1738. The prior took to his heels when he heard that an investigation into his malpractices was to be held. At the time the entire community was reduced to prior, sacristan, and a single monk, and these no longer resided in the monastery, but lodged with the cureé of Villelongue. In the procès instituted against the convent we read:—

"One of the three above-mentioned is the craftiest and most dangerous man conceivable. He is the cock of the village. He attempted to murder the prior. He stole one of the chalices. The other monk is the most imbecile and stupid creature in the place. He has lived on in the house for the last fifty years, and does not know how to read."

The ruins of the church stand boldly above the torrent that descends in a series of cascades. The stream may be followed up to the Lake of Isaby, from which it rises. The basin of Argelez comes abruptly to an end at Pierrefite, surmounted by a ruined castle; here the Pic de Viscos divides, with the chain running from it, the valleys of Luz and of Cauterets; the Gaves from these break out of the cleft rock, for that is what Pierrefite means, on one side and on the other, and here unite. At this point terminates the railway; but hence electric trams ply to Cauterets up one ravine, and to Luz up the other. The line to Cauterez rises rapidly up steep inclines and