[Illustration]

It is the festival, we find, of the village’s patron saint, St. John the Baptist.  The twenty-fifth of June renews his yearly compact of protection.  In the afternoon, there will be the full procession, led by the priests, and with a canopied effigy of the saint or of the Virgin borne in solemnity behind them.  Services in the cathedral will follow, and probably an evening of illumination.  We enter the cathedral.  Its floor has been newly strewn with sweet hay, and near the altar, is the sacred image itself, adorned for the procession, dressed in linen and velvet and gilt lace, and with a chaplet of beads in its wooden hand.  The canopy-frame, ready prepared, is close by, with its projecting handle-bars, its four upright poles and its roof of white satin embroidered with gold.

The cathedral itself is somewhat more interesting than we expected to see; it is a Basque rather than a French church, has a very high chancel and altar and no transepts, and the altar is marked by a striking profusion of color and of gilding, which does not degenerate into the tawdry and which lights up vividly under the entering noon light.  The chapels at the sides are similarly decorated.  Dark oaken balconies, elaborately carved, run in three tiers along the upper part of the nave.  The seats in these are reserved for the men, the women being relegated to small black cushions placed on the chairless floor.

St. Jean’s one great event was the marriage of Louis XIV with the Infanta of Spain, which took place in this same church.  “A raised platform extended from the residence of Anne of Austria to the entrance of the church, which was richly carpeted.  The young queen was robed in a royal mantle of violet-colored velvet, powdered with fleurs-de-lis, over a white dress, and wore a crown upon her head.  Her train was carried by Mesdemoiselles d’Alencon and de Valois and the Princess of Carignan.  After the ceremony, the queen complained of fatigue, and retired for a few hours to her chamber where she dined alone.  In the evening, she received the court, dressed in the French style; and gold and silver tokens commemorative of the royal marriage were profusely showered from the windows of her apartment."[6]

[6] MISS PARDOE:  Louis XIV.

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Without, as we turn for an idle stroll, we find a fair-sized town, with provincial streets like much of Bayonne.  Often the stories of the houses jut out, one over the other.  These projections give a relish of local color to the crooking ways, intensified by the round-tiled roofs and by occasional red or blood-colored beams and doorposts.  Although we are still on the French side of the frontier, Spanish influence is already marked, while that of the Basques predominates over both.  St. Jean is also a summer resort, in a modest way, chiefly for quiet Spanish families; and from the heavy stone sea-wall built along