St. Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the
Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to
Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the Revolution,
and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In
the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place--I can
hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a thousand
inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from
Toulouse to see St. Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, who
were less keen archæologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse,
under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an hour at the
church would satisfy _them_, and all three could then pursue their
journey in the direction of Auch. But our Englishman had come early on
the day in question, and proposed to himself to fill a note-book and to
use several dozens of plates in the process of describing and
photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the
little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design
satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church
for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation,
inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat
brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came,
the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It
was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man
that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other
church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive, or rather hunted
and oppressed, air which he had. He was perpetually half glancing behind
him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be hunched in a
continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting every moment to
find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman hardly knew
whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed delusion, or as one
oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably henpecked husband.