It was expeditious, enlivening,—­and highly insecure; that was one of its charms.  Throughout the ride there was a ludicrous titillation of insecurity; but it was greatest at the start and at the finish.  For, the seats being evenly balanced, to mount was in itself high art.  Driver and passenger needed to spring at precisely the same instant, or the result was dust and ashes.  Trial after trial was needed by the neophyte; he must be, as an eye-witness[3] of long ago aptly describes it, “as watchful of the mutual signal as a file of soldiers who wait the command ‘make ready,—­present,—­fire!’ A second’s delay,—­a second’s precipitation,—­proves fatal; the seat is attained, and at the same moment up goes the opposite empty seat, and down goes the equestrian between the horse’s feet....  In descending, it is still worse; because there is more hurry, more impatience, on arriving at the end of a journey; and an injudicious descent does not visit its effects upon one but upon both travelers; for unless the person who descends be extremely quick in his motions, his seat flies up before he has quite left it, and oversets him, and the opposite weight, of course, goes plump to the ground,—­with as fatal effects as cutting the hammock-strings of a middy’s berth.”

[3] INGLIS.

[Illustration]

Perilous balancing feats and a high degree of skill were evidently demanded of him who would journey en cacolet.  Requiring thus a special training, so to speak, as well as a nice equivalence in weight between passenger and driver difficult to always realize, its use is not likely to supersede that of wheeled vehicles.  To take a ride en cacolet, one might have a long hunt before finding a driver who should be his proper counterpoise; and it would be often inconvenient, not to say impracticable, thus to have to order one’s driver according to measure.

It is the evening dining-hour as we find ourselves at last in the open court-yard of our hotel and seek the welcoming light of its salle.  The hotels of Biarritz are handsome, even to elegance,—­elegance which seems wasted on the few people now in them.  But numbers do not seem to affect the anxious concern of Continental hotel-keepers.  The same elaborate and formal table-d’hote is served for our small company and a few others, as will, later on, be prepared for a houseful of guests.  The waiters don the same ducal costume and with it the same grave decorum; and our attendant Ganymede, bending respectfully to present his laden salver, watches my selection of a portion of the pullet with as anxious solicitude as could be shown by the mother hen herself.  The solemnity of a table-d’hote, and the silencing effect it has on the most talkative, is invariable, as it is inexplicable, and accents sharply the contrast with the breezy clatter of the American summer hotel dining-hall.  This is not to say that either is, in all ways, to be preferred.  Each in its own