From this on, the scenery becomes again increasingly wild.  The gorge now opens and now narrows, the mountains above us here approach over the road, there draw back in a long, sweeping glacis of wood or pasture.  The ledge of the road is at times four hundred feet above the frothy watercourse, which in some spots disappears entirely from sight in the chasm.  Tiny mills are seen standing tremulously near its fierce supply, and there is room for a hamlet here and there, sheltered in a clump of ash or sycamore, on the mountain or at a widening of the valley.  When the road nears the cliffs of Gavarnie, it will expire, from the simple impossibility of proceeding farther; so it is scarcely a thoroughfare, and we meet only infrequent bucolics or a few wood-carts coming down toward Luz.  One fair-sized rustic village is passed through; and, two hours after the start, a second one, Gedre, our more-than-half-way house, is finally seen ahead.

The mountain wall we are approaching begins now to show its battlements, far ahead.  The snowy Tours de Marbore overtop it, and at their right can be plainly seen two small, rectangular nicks, embrasures in this mammoth parapet.  Small they seem, as we sight them from this distance, but these notches are 9000 feet above the sea, and the greater of the two is a colossal gateway into Spain, no less than 300 feet in width and 350 feet deep.  This is the famous Breche de Roland, familiar to all lovers of Gavarnie.  When Charlemagne made his invasion into Spain,—­the invasion from which he was afterward to withdraw by Roncesvalles,—­he sought to enter it, tradition says, by this defile to Gavarnie.  Finding all progress blocked by the walls of the Cirque, he ordered Roland to open a way; and that lusty paladin with one blow of his good sword Durandal opened this breach for the passage of the army.  There is another version of the making, which links it with the throes of Roland’s defeat and death at Roncesvalles, at the end instead of at the beginning of the invasion; but even under unbounded poetic license, the mind refuses to admit that the wounded hero, bleeding and gasping for breath, could have made his way a hundred miles over the mountains from Roncesvalles, to shiver his sword against the cliffs of the Cirque and end his death-struggles at Gavarnie.

At Gedre the horses pause for a rest and a drink, and travelers can do likewise.  From this village, the main defile cuts on to Gavarnie, and another opens off to the left toward another cirque,—­the Cirque of Troumouse.  Thus each branch ends in a similar formation, peculiar to the Pyrenees, a semicircle of cliffs, sudden and blank and impassable.  The Cirque of Troumouse is larger around than that of Gavarnie, but its walls are not so high and its effect is reported to be less imposing.  To reach it from Gedre requires perhaps three hours, the drivers tell us, by a good bridle-path.  We feel tempted to revisit this point from Luz, another day, and explore the route toward Troumouse.