Chapter 1

PAU.

Trains and steamers--Bordeaux and its hotels--Lamothe --Morcenx--Dax--Puyoo--Orthez--First impressions of Pau--The hotels and pensions--Amusements--Pension Colbert--Making up parties for the Pyrenees--The Place Royale and the view--The castle of Pau and its approaches--Origin of name--Historical notes--The towers--Visiting hours--The tapestries--The wonderful bedstead--The delusive tortoiseshell cradle--The "Tour de la Monnaie"--The park--The Billères plains--Tennis and golf--The Route de Billères and the Billères woods--French _sportsmen_--Hunting--Racing--Lescar and its old cathedral--Fontaine de Marnières--The bands--The Parc Beaumont --Ballooning--The Casino--Polo--The cemetery--The churches of St. Martin and St. Jacques--The "old world and the new"--Rides and drives--to Bétharram--The start--Peasants and their ways--Vines trained by the roadside--Sour grapes--The "March of the Men of Garlic" --Coarraze--Henry IV.'s Castle--Bétharram--The ivied bridge--The inn--The "Via Crucis"--Assat and Gélos--The Coteaux--Perpignaa --Sketching with a donkey-cart--Over the Coteaux to Gan--The drive to Piétat--Picnicking and rejected attentions--The church--Feather moss--Bizanos--Carnival time--"Poor Pillicoddy" --"Idyllic Colbert."