Montgomery, Queen Jeanne’s ruffian Protestant general, tore through this Catholic valley in 1569, with his devastating mercenaries.  It recovered heart, flowered afresh, and was swept again by enemies from a neighboring province.  Often a winter storm will expose bedrock throughout precious roods of sloping harvest-land, and the farmer must carry up from the valley many painful baskets of soil to replace the loss.  So that, though it smiles so happily in this afternoon warmth, there have been serpents in this Eden,—­serpents of want and of suffering; and judging by the faces of the people, all have not yet been scotched.

But we are at Pierrefitte.  It is five o’clock in the afternoon, and the innkeeper is rejoiced to find that we are thirsty.

IX.

Pierrefitte ends the branch railway from Lourdes, as Laruns ended that from Pau.  In fact, it is all strikingly like Laruns.  A similarly uncompromising mountain, the Viscos, 7000 feet high, walls up the valley behind it, and here again the carriage-roads divide, one going up the gorge on the right to Cauterets, the other up that on the left to Luz and Gavarnie.  The broad Argeles vale has been fittingly described as but the vestibule to the wild dwelling of the clouds, and Pierrefitte as the beginning-point for the narrow stair-flights which lead up to the interior.

As at Laruns, we are now to take the road to the right, at a later day returning to take the other.  The Route Thermale goes on up the latter, passing through southeast to Luz, and then stretching eastward again to Bareges and over successive cols to Bigorre and Luchon.  This we are progressively to follow in its entirety.

The train has come in, here at Pierrefitte, and the diligence for Cauterets is just leaving, attended by a wagonload of trunks.  Horses and travelers refreshed, we soon move after it, and rising from the valley by half an hour’s steep zigzags upward and forward, we pass the great yellow vehicle as it is entering the defile.  Looking back, we have one brilliant view of the wide Eden of Argeles, and pass from light into twilight.

The road to Cauterets is a duplicate of that to Eaux Chaudes.  Possibly the scenery is a trifle more impressive.  We have the straight-cliffed gorge, with the torrent at its bottom and the road buttressed out or cut into the ledge; the turns in the ravine as we pull steadily higher, the bare slate and limestone precipices, the higher peaks.  At times there is only width for the road and the torrent beneath, and the torrent seems uncomfortably crowded at that.  The road does not allow itself to be crowded.  It is hard and wide as always, and lavishly decorated with kilometre-stones.  The stream is crossed, back and forth; the air has grown quickly cooler, and sunshades need no longer shut off the full view.  “Upon nearing Cauterets, the carriage-way would seem as though it had grown phrensied from the mountainous