The castle, perched on a rock at the point of intersection of the seven valleys of Lavedan, had formerly been the key of the mountain districts.

But, in Bernadette's time, it had become a mere dismantled, ruined pile, at the entrance of a road leading nowhere.
Modern life found its march stayed by a formidable rampart of lofty, snow-capped peaks, and only the trans-Pyrenean railway--had it been constructed--could have established an active circulation of social life in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water.
Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy and sluggish amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets and its bleak houses with dressings of marble.

The old roofs were still all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden waters rolled through a perfect solitude of pollard willows and tall grass.

On week-days but few people passed across the Place du Marcadal, such as housewives hastening on errands, and petty cits airing their leisure hours; and you had to wait till Sundays or fair days to find the inhabitants rigged out in their best clothes and assembled on the Champ Commun, in company with the crowd of graziers who had come down from the distant tablelands with their cattle.

During the season when people resort to the Pyrenean-waters, the passage of the visitors to Cauterets and Bagneres also brought some animation; _diligences_ passed through the town twice a day, but they came from Pau by a wretched road, and had to ford the Lapaca, which often overflowed its banks.