There is naught of the pretentious about the Hotel d’Angleterre.  It is listless and antique and not worldly wise, but we very soon find that it is in good order and quite able to entertain Americans unawares.  There is a stone hallway with a large, square staircase in the centre; upstairs, the rooms, though low-ceiled, are commodious and airy; and we find a tolerable reception-room below, near the entrance.  In the rear is a charming garden of terraces and rose-beds and flat-topped trees and odd nooks for cafe-tables; and later in the evening a neat service of tea and tartines brightens our pathway to the wider gardens of sleep.

III.

Arreau, as we find it in the morning, has little more to show than the long street through which we drove on arrival.  Age-rusted eaves overhang the white-washed walls of the houses; there are queer, primitive little shops and local cabarets or taverns, the latter sheltering their outside benches and deal tables behind tall box-plants set put in stationary green tubs upon the pavement.  Midway down the street is a venerable market-shelter, a roomy structure consisting simply of a roof and countless stone pillars.  Its parallels may not infrequently be seen elsewhere in Europe,—­as at Lucerne and Annecy and Canterbury; there is no side-wall, no enclosure; all is public and out of doors, a habit of many years back, and on market-days it is the centre of interest for the entire district.  There is little to tempt, in the stores; beyond dry tablets of Bayonne chocolate and some time-hardened confectionery sold in a musty little shop below the church, we find nothing to buy combining the interest and lastingness of a proper memento.  Arreau is in short an old-fashioned town in all particulars, unawakened even by the thoroughfaring of the Route Thermale.

[Illustration:  “THERE IS NAUGHT OF THE PRETENTIOUS ABOUT THE HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE.”]

The church, with its sculptured arms and round chancel, is another work of the Templars,—­one of several in this valley, for the territory was once assigned by a Count of Bigorre to their order, and one town in the district, Borderes by name, was even erected by them into a commandery.  On the destruction of the order in 1312, nearly all the Templars throughout the county of Bigorre, with their commander, Bernard de Montagu, were seized, and were executed at Auch and their possessions confiscated.  Afterward, the valley passed to the Counts of Armagnac, whose wickedness and family pride were intense enough to have prompted that most transcendent of boasts, “In hell, we are a great house!” and who waged more than one stiff feud with Bearn and the Counts of Foix.