The etablissement is large and fairly good, but nothing like what one finds in all the Austrian and German baths.  When I first go in, coming out of the fresh morning air, I am rather oppressed with the smell of hot air, damp clothing, and many people crowded into little hot bath-rooms.  There are terrible little dark closets called cabinets de repos.  Many doctors in white waistcoats and red ribbons are walking about; plenty of baigneuses, with their sleeves rolled up, showing a red arm that evidently has been constantly in the water; people who have had their baths and are resting, wrapped up in blankets, stretched out on long chairs near the windows; bells going all the time, cries of “Marie-Louise,” “Jeanne,” “Anne-Marie.”  It is rather a pandemonium.  Our baigneuse, who is called Marie-Louise, is upstairs.  At the top of the stairs there is a grand picture of the horse who discovered the Bagnoles waters, a beautiful white beast standing in a spring, all water lilies and sparkling water.  A lovely young lady in a transparent green garment with roses over each ear, like the head-dress one sees on Japanese women, is holding his bridle.  The legend says that a certain gallant and amorous knight of yore, having become old and crippled with rheumatism, and unable any longer to make a brave show in tournaments under fair ladies’ eyes, determined to retire from the world, and to leave his horse—­faithful companion of many jousts—­in a certain green meadow traversed by a babbling brook, where he could end his days in peace.  What was his surprise, some months later, to find his horse quietly standing again in his old stable, his legs firm and straight, his skin glossy, quite renovated.  The master took himself off to the meadow, investigated the quality of the water, bathed himself, and began life anew with straightened limbs and quickened pulses.  The waters certainly do wonders.  We see every day people who had arrived on crutches or walking with canes quite discarding them after a course of baths.

[Illustration:  L’Etablissement, Bagnoles de l’Orme.]

The hotel is full, mostly French, but there are of course some exceptions.  We have a tall and stately royal princess with two daughters and a niece.  The girls are charming—­simple, pretty, and evidently much pleased to be away for a little while from court life and etiquette.  They make their cure quite regularly, like any one else, walking and sitting in the Allee Dante.  The people don’t stare at them too much.  There are one or two well-known men—­deputies, membres de l’Institut—­but, of course, women are in the majority.  There is a band—­not very good, as the performers, some of them good enough alone, had never played together until they came here.  However, it isn’t of much consequence, as no one listens.  I make friends with them, as usual; something always draws me to artists.  The boy at the piano looks so thin—­really as if he did not get enough to eat.  He plays very well, told me he was a premier prix of the Conservatoire de Madrid.  When one thinks of the hours of work and fatigue that means, it is rather pathetic to see him, contented to earn a few francs a night, pounding away at a piano and generally ending with a “cake walk,” danced by some enterprising young people with all sorts of remarkable steps and gestures, which would certainly astonish the original negro performers on a plantation.