In this plateau is a boundary-stone, and we pass anew into Spain,—­stopping to cross and recross the frontier several times, with grave ceremony, and to the unconcealed mystification of the guide.  The path slopes up again, passes a dejected little mountain tarn, and another half hour brings us to the final cone, the summit just overhead.  The mists are still whirling down, but as often lift again; the Pic de la Pique has disappeared under a berret of cloud, but other and greater peaks beyond it are still cloudless; so, as we push on up the last slope of rock and scramble upon the summit, we see that the panorama is not gone after all and that the climb will have its reward.

For the view is a wide one from the Pic d’Entecade.  The summit, 7300 feet above the sea, is an island in a circle of valleys.  The hospice basin has dwindled into insignificance.  Behind is the trough of the Luchon depression, its floor invisible but the main contour traceable for miles.  The Valley of Aran, which opens out below us on the east, shows the fullest reach in the view; its entire course lies under the eye, and the lines of rivers and roads are marked as on a map, while we count no less than fourteen villages spotting its bottom and sides.  Beyond and about roll the mountains, in swells and billows of green, roughening into grey and the finishing white.

But it is their culminating summit at the right that at once absorbs attention; it is the monarch of the Pyrenees; we are looking at last upon the Maladetta.  It stands in clear view before us, well defined though distant.  It is rather a mass than a mountain; it shows no accented, unified form; the wide crests rise irregularly from its wider shoulders of granite and glacier, and fairly blaze for the moment in the break of sunlight.

At nearer quarters, as from the Port de Venasque, the true dimensions of the Maladetta are better realized.  There one sees it from across a single ravine, as the Jungfrau is seen from the Wengern Alp.  But here from the Entecade also, we can seize well its proportions,—­

      “In bulk as huge
  As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
  Titanian or Earth-born, that warr’d on Jove.”

The highest point of the Maladetta, the Pic de Nethou, is 11,165 feet above the sea.  The mountain has always been regarded superstitiously; the name itself,—­Maladetta, Maudit, the Accursed,—­tells of the traditions of the mountaineers.  For long, no one dared the ascent.  Ramond finally attempted it in 1787, but failed to gain the highest point.  In 1824, a party renewed the attempt, and were worse than unsuccessful, for one of the guides, Barreau by name, was lost,—­precipitated into a crevasse almost before the eyes of his son,—­and the body was never recovered.  This added to the evil repute of the mountain; years passed before the cragsmen would have anything further to do with it.  It was not until 1842 that M. de Franqueville, a French gentleman, accompanied by M. Tchihatcheff, a Russian naturalist, and by three determined guides, successfully gained the summit,—­taking four days and three nights for the enterprise.  Since then the ascent has a number of times been made.