A Tour Through The Pyrenees

so the horses walk on the heads of nails and foot-passengers on the points of them. From Bordeaux to Toulouse such is the usage, such the

t whitish oxen, decked with a piece of hanging cloth, a net of thread upon the head and crowned with ferns, all to shield them from the gray flies. This suggests food for thought; for the skin of man is far more tender than that of the ox, and the gray flies have sworn no peace with our kind. Before the oxen ordinarily marches a peasant,

e two hundred leagues only to remain in the same place. I am here on purpose to visit the sixteenth century; one makes a journey for the sake of changing, not place, but ideas. Point out to a Parisian the gate by which Henry IV. entered Paris; he will have great difficulty in callin

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; his imagination, out of its element, may run at random; no known object will trip him up and make him fall into the cares of interest, the passion of to-day; he enters into the past as a matter of course, and walks there as if at home, at his ease. It was eight o'

ley in the distance; two bell-turrets project from the front toward the west; the oblong body follows, and two massive brick towers close the line with their esplanades and battlements. It is connected with the city by a

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l, a row of medallions in stone; upon the sides, doors of every form and age; dormer windows, windows square, pointed, embattled, with stone mullions garlanded with elaborate reliefs. This

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bre, painfully labored yet magnificent in style, carrying the mind at once back toward that age of force and effort, of boldness in invention, of unbridled pleasures and terrible toil, of sensuality and of heroism. Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry IV., crossed France

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ged grandfather rubbed the lips of the new-born child with a clove of garlic, poured i

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their children through French luxuries. And, indeed, he brought him up in the Bearnese manner, that is, bareheaded and barefoot, often with no more nicety than is shown in the bringing up of children among the peasantry. This odd resolution was successful, and formed a body in wh

followers as their general. At sixteen years old, at the combat of Arnay-le-Duc, he led the first charge of cavalry. What an education and w

rcise. Henry carries it on as briskly as a dance, with a Gascon's fire and a soldier's ardor, with abrupt sallies, and pursuing his point against the enemy as with the ladies. This is no spectacle of great masses of well-disciplined men, coming heavily into collision and falling by thousands on the field, accordi

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o was sentinel at the portal, and he cut the cord in the slide of the portcullis, so that it fell immediately almost on the croup of your horse and that of your cousin, M. de Béthune the elder, and hindered the troop which was coming up on the gallop from entering, so that the king and you fifteen or sixteen alone remained shut up in this city, where all the people, being armed, fell upon you in divers troops and at divers times, while the tocsin rang furiously, and a cry of 'Arm, arm!' and 'Kill, Kill! resounded on all sides,-seeing which, the king of Navarre, from the first troop which came up, some fifty strong, in part well, in part ill armed, he, I say, marching, pistol in hand, straight at them, called out to you: 'Come now, my friends, my comrades; it is here that you must show courage and resolution, for thereon depends our safety; let each one then follow me and do as I do, and not fire until the pistol touches.' At the same time, hearing three or four cry out: 'Fire at that scarlet tunic, at tha

sacking of this city, which is yours, on account of the madness of a few worthless fellows, who should be driven out. He placed himself, I said, at the head to prevent pillage: thus there was committed neither vi

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for your court is too full of lovely ladies to know any lack of them." Henry escaped like a true paladin, and lost his victory at Contras in order to carry to the beautiful Corisandre the flags that he had taken. To act, to dare, to enjoy, to expend force and trouble like a prodigal, to

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y with the sumptuous costumes described by Brant?me: ladies "clad in orange-color and gold lace, robes of cloth of silver, of crisped cloth of gold, stuffs perfectly stiff with ornaments and embroidery. Queen Marguerite in a robe of flesh-colored Spanish velvet, heavily loaded with gold lace, so decked out with plumes and precious stones as nothing ever was before." I said to M. de Ronsard: "Do you not seem to see this beautiful queen, in such guise, appearing as the lovely Aurora

that the good king wa

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trouble, not knowing what to do, fearful on the one hand lest she should be discovered, and on the other lest she should want help, for he loved her dearly. He determined, finally, to confess all to me, and to beg me go to her assistance, for he knew well that, whatever might have passed, he should always find me ready to serve him in anything that could please him. He opens my curtain and says to me: 'Dearest, I have concealed from you one thing which I must confess to you: I beg you to excuse me for it, and not to remember all that I have sai

as returned from the chase, he went to see her according to his custom; she begged him that I would come to see her, as I was accustomed to visit all my maids when they were ill, thinking to stop by this means the spread of the report. The king my husband came into the chamber and found that I had gone to bed again, for I was tired with getting up so early, and with the trouble I had had in rendering her assistance. He begged that I would get up

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the queen, do not pity her too much: she punished

ons, instead of extinguishing it, only inflame; the heart overflows on that side as on the others. When the lazzarone has stabbed his enemy, he finds a second pleasure, says Beyle, in prating about his anger, alongside a wire grating in a great box of black wood. The Hindoo that gets excited and

t; for they had an infinite desire to assist at the holy sacrifice, of which they had been deprived for several years. And, urged by this sacred desire, the inhabitants of Pau found means, at Whitsuntide, before the bridge was raised, to enter the castle, and slip into the chapel, where they were not discovered until toward the end of mass, when, half openin

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per; never did more vigorous passions unfold themselves with more of sap and greenness. Walking through these silent halls, disturbed from time to time by fair invalids or pale young consumptives who walk there, I fancied that enervation of the inner nature came from the enervation of the bodies. We spend our time within doors, taken up with discussions, reflections and reading; the gentleness of manners removes dangers from us, and industrial progress fatigues. They lived in

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ky of the south, and was it necessary to come to the happy country of the Béarnais to find such melancholy impressions? A little by-way brought us to a bank of the Gave: in a long pool of water was growing an army of reeds twice the height of a man; their grayish spikes and their trembling leaves bent and whispered under the wind; a wild flower near by shed a vanilla perfume. We gazed on the broad country, the ranges of rounded hills, the silent plain under t

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ign. The arcades, in small gray stones, still round themselves with an elegant boldness; beneath are stowed away carts and casks and pieces of wood; here and there workmen were

festal; the dazzled eyes close beneath the brightness which deluges them and which runs over, radiated from the burning dome of heaven. The current of the river sparkles like a girdle of jewels; the chains of hills, yesterday veiled and damp, extend at their own sweet will beneath the warming, penetrating rays, and mount range

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softened, colors are blended, the Pyrenees are only the graceful bordering of a smiling landscape and of the ma

care; he has lost his gayety, his spirit, his confidence in his fortune, his proud bearing. His air is neither that of a great nor a good man, nor of a man of intellect; his face is discontented, and one would say that he was bored with Pau. I am not sure that he was wrong: and yet

udge on that account, so piteous is their appearance, with their ridgy backbones, hanging ears, and shrunken bellies. The coachman rises on his seat, pulls the reins, waves his arms, bawls and storms, clambers down and up again; his is a rude calling, but he has a soul like his ca

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and pointing out to them the danger to the vehicle, which was leaning back, and so needed ballast in front

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e more richly; the stalks of maize spring from the earth like discharges of rockets, and their strong, wrinkled leaves

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ater; a pellucid stream borders the road, with waters sombre and hurried under the cover of the trees, and then, by fits and starts, brilliant and blue as the sky. Four times in the course of a league it encounters a mill, leaps and foams, the

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e anfractuosities as if in creeks; its contour folds itself about each new mass; it essays to scale the lower ridges, and stops, vanquished by the barren rock. We go through three or four hamlets whitened by dust, whose roofs shine with a dull color like tarnished lead. Then the horizon is shut off; Mount G

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