Cauterets might be likened to St. Moritz in the Engadine.  It has no lakes so close at hand, but in its springs and baths, in its fashion and in its general location, a fair parallel is offered.  Some of the important peaks of the range, Mont Perdu and the Vignemale, for example, are near us here though invisible from the town, as is the Bernina chain from St. Moritz.  The Monne will stand for the Piz Languard.  In hotels, Cauterets is hardly outgeneraled even by St. Moritz, though in expensiveness they will yield gracefully to the Engadine.  The Hotel Continental, we find, has rather a pathetic story.  It was built by a widow who had been left rich,—­built only a few years ago, as a hobby, it would seem, and with little care for cost or judicious investment.  It represented nearly three hundred thousand dollars, was extravagantly run, and lost money from the beginning.  She also built a great cafe and music-hall across the street from the hotel, and the losses of the two together swelled in the end to an unbearable burden.  Her fortune was sponged up, to the last franc; the property was bought in by a stock-company, and its unfortunate projector is now, we are told, in a charitable institution at Bordeaux.  One hardly wonders at the result, in admiring the hotel.  Its patronage may be large and rich, but no mere summer season,—­at least without the English and Americans,—­could recoup the interest on its costly outlay.  The Gassion at Pau is profitable if at all because its yearly season is three times longer than this at Cauterets.

There is an evening conjuring performance at a cafe in the town, and some of us desert the ladies and enter its chaos of mirrors and tobacco smoke.  The prestidigitator, a nervous, restive Frenchman with an astonishing rapidity of tongue, stands near the centre of the room and juggles and struggles with hats and rings and eggs and his own overmastering fluency.  Now he will dart across the floor to borrow a listener’s handkerchief; now he assaults our corner with the plea that we verify a card; later the hat is passed for the harvest.  It is an interesting scene, European to the core; the men about the tables sip and smoke, intent on the performance or on their dominoes, grave and contemplative, finding uniformly in this contented cafe-life the needful finis of the day.

[Illustration]

IV.

The son renews his acquaintance, the next morning, with Cauterets, as we start for the Lac de Gaube.  It is the Fourth of July; the hotel manager has good-naturedly procured some fire-crackers for the small boy of the party, and thus our national devotions are duly paid and we are shrived for the day.  Carriages can be taken for part of the way toward the Lac; it is good policy, so saddle-horses for the ladies are sent on to wait for us at the point where the road ends and the bridal-path begins.