An afternoon of peace, such towns as Bayonne have earned and gained.  This one has added few notable pages to universal history, but its own personal biography would be an exciting one.  It is worn with adventure, and old before its time.  The quarrelings of its hot youth, the tension of strife and insecurity, the life of alarms it has lived, have aged it.  They have aged many another city of Europe, and endeared the blessing of repose.

They were different days, those of the past of Bayonne.  These streets are narrow, the houses stoutly walled, because they were built for siege as well as shelter.  The doorways are low-browed, the stone-lined rooms little lighter than caves, because every man’s hand might rise against his neighbor, and every man’s hovel become his castle.  Humanity was a hopeless discord; individual security lay only in individual strength.  It is hard to conceive clearly the fierce life of the Darker Ages.  The rough jostling, the discomfort and pitilessness, the utter animality of it all,—­it is hard to conceive it even inadequately.  The curtest historical sweep from then to now, shows how far the world has come.  The savage unrest of slum and faubourg to-day shows too how far the world has yet to go.  Not till civilization becomes more than a veneer, will it lose its liability to crack.

The picture is not wholly dark.  There were many of the humanities.  There was culture and thought and refinement, much of it of a high type.  Light and shade,—­both were strongly limned.  But in the mass, it was barbarism.  For the lower classes, occupation, brawling; mental thermometer at zero; cruelty and greed the ethical code.  “You should feel here,” declares Taine,[4] “what men felt six hundred years ago, when they swarmed forth from their hovels, from their unpaved, six-feet-wide streets, sinks of uncleanness, and reeking with fever and leprosy; when their unclad bodies, undermined by famine, sent a thin blood to their brutish brains; when wars, atrocious laws, and legends of sorcery filled their dreams with vivid and melancholy images.”  Hear him tell over one of the trenchant tales from the annals of Bayonne: 

[4] Tour Through the Pyrenees; translated by J. SAFFORD FISKE, New York:  Henry Holt & Co.

V.

“Pe de Puyane was a brave man and a skillful sailor, who, in his day, was Mayor of Bayonne and admiral; but he was harsh with his men, like all who have managed vessels, and would any day rather fell a man than take off his cap.  He had long waged war against the seamen of Normandy, and on one occasion he hung seventy of them to his yards, cheek by jowl with some dogs.  He hoisted on his galleys red flags, signifying death and no quarter, and led to the battle of Ecluse the great Genoese ship Christophle, and managed his hands so well that no Frenchman escaped; for they were all drowned or killed, and the two admirals, Quieret and Bahuchet, having surrendered themselves, Bahuchet had a cord tightened around his neck, while Quieret had his throat cut.  That was good management; for the more one kills of his enemies, the less he has of them.  For this reason, the people of Bayonne, on his return, entertained him with such a noise, such a clatter of horns, of cornets, of drums and all sorts of instruments, that it would have been impossible on that day to hear even the thunder of God.