A Tour Through The Pyrenees

ied walls and shaky doors, and in the courts a pell-mell of carts with fagots, and tools, and domestic animals, in short, the

and posters, bordered by a side-walk, and having the disagreeably decent aspect of hotels garnis. These uniform buildings, mathematical lines, this disciplined and formal architecture m

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stick others, as it were, to the side of the mountain, they pile up their chimneys even to the roots of the beech-trees; thus they construct behind the principal street a melancholy lane which dips down or raises itself as it can, m

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and crawl slowly along half way up the height; the summits disappear, the floating masses come together, accumulate because the gorge has no outlet, and fall in fine cold rain. The

y can read nothing but the gloomiest dramas; they discover leanings towards suicide in themselves, and construct the theory of assassination. They look at the clock and bethink themselves that the doctor has ordered them to drink three times a day; then they button up their overcoats with an air of resignation, and climb the long, stiff slope of the streaming road; the lines of umbrellas and soaked mantles are a pitiable spectacle; they come, splashing thr

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ing any interest. For the twentieth time you look over the marble trinkets, the shop with razors and scissors, a map that hangs on the wall. What is there that one is not capable of on a rainy day, if obliged to keep moving for an hour between four walls, amidst the buzzing of two hundred people? You study the posters, contemplate assiduously some figures which pretend to represent the manners of the country: these are elegant and r

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er blind man. They play pot-pourris of waltzes, country dances, bits from operas, strung one upon another, galloping along, above the note or below it, with admirable fearlessness, despoiling every repertor

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executed their piece with such energy and discord, in tones so piercing, so long-drawn-out and

able; Voltaire has proved that an easy digestion induces compassion, and that a good stomach gives a good heart. Between forty and fifty years of age, a man is handsome when, after dinner, he folds up his napkin and begins his indispensable promenade. He walks with legs apart, chest out, resting heavily on his stick, his cheeks colored by a slight warmth, humming between his teeth some old refrain of

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read their journal and proudly smoke their cigar; the little girls, in embroidered pantalons, chatter with coquettish gestures and graceful little ways; they are trying in advance the parts they will play as lovely dolls. But for the red cassocks of the little jumping peasants, the aspect

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them because then he could calculate his dividends. Pardon these hapless creatu

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ch. Beaten back by the wind that desolates the declivity, their sap has been accumulating for centuries in huge, stunted, twisted and interlaced branches; al

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r, breaks open, hideously eventerated; the edges of the wound spread farther apart with every year; they wear no longer the shape of trees, and yet they live, and cannot be conquered by winter, by their slope, nor by time, but boldly put forth into their native air their whitish shoots. If, under the shades of evening, you pass by the tortured tops and yawning trunks of these old inhabitants of the mountains, w

k riding-habit, nor topped with a chimney-pot hat. Nobody here wears this funereal, poverty-stricken English costume; in a gay country people assume gay colors; the sun is a oood counsellor. It is forbidden to return at a gallop, o which is reason enough why everybody should return at that gait.

eps and precipices; any one who for eight days has known the fatigue of climbing bent double, of stumbling down hill, of studying the laws of equilibrium while flat on hi

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o whitish ravines; a few wasted springs slip away under the stones in th

went to a seat upon a rock at the end of this road; from there, through the whole valley of Ossau, you follow the torrent grown into a river; the rich valley, a mosaic of yellow harvests and green fields, broadly opens out to the confines of the landscape, and allows the eye to lose itself in the dim distance of Béarn. From each side three mountains strike out their f

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ade to hold two hundred. Every half-hour the tide of the faithful ebbs and flows. Invalid priests abound and say as many masses as may be wanted:

follow the preparation with marked interest. I have seen men who yawn at the opera form a ring, under a hot sun, for a whole hour in order to witness the decapitation of the poor hanging creature. If you are generous-minded and greedy of sensatio

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if it has not all the classic parts. First, the exposition; the instruments of torture that are displayed, the crowd which comes together, the distance that is marked, the animal that is fastened up. It is a protasis of the complex order, as M. Lysidas used to say. Secondly, the action; every time that a small boy starts, you are in suspense, you rise on tip-toe, your heart leaps, you are as interested in the pendent animal as in a fellow-creature. Do you say that the action is always the same? Simplicity is the characteristic of

cept his lot in patience, if he could hear

need of physical activity. These fellows fall to and handle each other like timbers. That great girl there is servant at my hotel; say, does not that tall figure, that serious air, that proud attitude, recall the statues of antiquity? Force and health are always the first of beauties. Do you think that the languid graces, the conventional smiles of our quadrilles would b

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