We take another walk in the afternoon through the streets of the town, and afterward compare international notes once more with our cordial English clergyman.  It is renewedly grateful to hear again the mother tongue spoken understandingly by a stranger.  The utter and unaccountable absence of our own countrymen’s faces and voices from these Pyrenean resorts gives one constantly a touch of regret.  One longs occasionally for the crisp American greeting,—­the quick lighting-up, the national hand-shake, a comparison of adventures.  Saving by two compatriots met in Biarritz, we have found our nation entirely unrepresented in or near the summer Pyrenees.

III.

Bagneres is too far to the northward to be in touch with true mountain expeditions.  Its only “star” in this line is the majestic Pic du Midi de Bigorre, which, being itself an outlying peak, is much nearer us than the main range and is often ascended from Bigorre,—­a conveyance being taken to Grip and the start on foot or horseback made from that point.  There are, besides, a number of lesser mountains about, and drives and longer excursions unnumbered.  A rifle perhaps most recommendable, though not always mentioned in the hand-books, is one that will bring us back again for a day to the times of our rascally acquaintance, Count Gaston Phoebus, and his contemporaries.  This is to the castle of Mauvoisin before mentioned,—­“Mauvais voisin,”—­“bad neighbor,” as it abundantly proved itself to Bigorre.  It lies but ten miles away, in a northeast direction; it is reached best by the carriage-road, and the trip can readily be made in a half-day.  This was one of the Aquitaine fortresses which with Lourdes, it will be remembered, fell into the hands of the English, about the middle of the fourteenth century, as part of the ransom of King John of France.  Raymond of the Sword was appointed its governor, and a right loyal sword did he prove himself to own.  But Mauvoisin could not resist siege as Lourdes could.  The Duke of Anjou was soon at it, determined to recapture it for the French, and after a stiff course of starving and thirsting, the garrison surrendered and Mauvoisin came back to the French flag.

It was near this spot that a peculiarly savage and yet ludicrous fight once occurred.  It was during the same robberesque period,—­about the middle of the fourteenth century; and Froissart gives us an animated account of it; he was on the way to Orthez through this very region, and his traveling companion tells him of the event as they pass: 

A party of reckless men-at-arms, bent on mischief and plunder, had sallied out from Lourdes, it seems, on a long foray.  They were a hundred and twenty lances in all, and they had two dashing leaders, Ernauton de Sainte Colombe and Le Mengeant de Sainte Basile,—­the latter well called the Robin Hood of the Pyrenees.  They were all men whose very breath of life was in thieving and combat.  The band had “lifted” an abundance of booty; they had exploited the country as far even as Toulouse, “finding in the meadows great quantities of cattle, pigs and sheep, which they seized, as well as some substantial men from the flat countries, and drove them all before them.”