They contrast it, however, completely with Biarritz.  Bayonne is a staid and serious city, Biarritz a youthful-hearted resort.  Bayonne is reminiscent of the past; Biarritz is alive with its present.  The genie of modern improvement has not yet come, to rebuild Bayonne.  Neither fashion nor commerce has sufficiently rubbed the lamp.  It holds unlessened its long-time population of about thirty thousand souls; it still drives its comfortable, trade as the second port of southwestern France; it is known as enjoying a mild commercial specialty or two, as in the line of textiles, particularly wools and woolen fabrics; and it displays an artless pride in its reputation for excellent chocolate.  It even pets, a little suburb of winter visitors, and it has caught some quickening rays from the summer prosperity of its neighbor.  But it will never feel the bounding impulse of rejuvenescence that has come to Biarritz.  Bayonne has no potentialities.  It will continue in its afternoon of peace, of easy, quiet thrift, contentedly aside from the main current of events, recounting its traditions, prodigiously and harmlessly proud of its local prestige; like a tribal chieftain of the homage of his clan.

[Illustration]

Basques abound in the streets, and the varied costumes to be seen show the influence of that strange race.  There are Spaniards here, too, and Jews in plenty, mingling with the native French element.  The men wear the berret, a wool cap, like that of the Scotch lowlander, but smaller.  It is of dark blue or brown, and in universal use from Bordeaux southward.  When capping the Basque, particularly, with his rusty velvet sack, crimson sash, dark knee-breeches and stockings, and the sandals or wooden sabots worn on the feet, its effect is vividly picturesque.  The poorer women, as elsewhere on the Continent, become hard-featured and muscular with age; saving a few beggars, they all seem to be busy,—­carrying burdens, washing linen, watching their huckster-stalls or the dark little shops under the arcades.  Here, however, the men themselves are not idle.  One seldomer sees in southern France a sight frequent in Italy and many other parts of Europe,—­that of a woman toilsomely dragging a hand-cart or shouldering a burden while her spouse walks idly by and smokes a thankful pipe.

Diminutive donkeys, hardy and hoarse, are in great use, and we hear in the streets their plaintive and sonorous denunciations of men and manners.  The donkey here seems to take the place of the dog, which in Holland and Scandinavia is taught the ways of constant and praiseworthy usefulness.  There, with a voluble old woman for yoke-fellow, he draws the small market-carts about the streets and grows lusty-limbed in the service.  Here, the donkey does duty for both, dog and old woman, and must develop both muscle and tongue to offset their respective specialties.

IV.