Yet, only seven years after this scene of flowers and song, France was in blood, and the age had darkened once more; the evil-minded De Medicis, queen-mother and king, had given the signal for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

VII.

It was Bayonne, too, whose governor, when ordered in advance by the king to arrange for massacring the Huguenots in his city on that epoch-making night, dared to send back a prompt and spirited refusal.  “Your Majesty,” he reported, “I have examined those under my command touching your mandate; all are good citizens and brave soldiers, but I am unable to find for you among them a single executioner!”

The Queen of Spain, widow of Charles II, resided here from 1706 until 1738.  Many stories are told of her good-heartedness and her lavish fondness for display.  The Bayonnais were children still, and loved her for it.  She, too, gave a festival and banquet,—­in honor of some Spanish successes; “it lasted even till the next day among the people, and on board the vessels in the river; and the windows of every house were illuminated....  After the repast was finished,” adds the grave record, “much to the satisfaction of all, a panperruque was danced through the town.  M. de Gibaudiere led the dance, holding the hand of the Mayor of Bayonne; the Marquis de Poyanne bringing up the rear; so that this dance rejoiced all the people, who on their side gave many demonstrations of joy.”

The world has grown stiffer since, and Mayors and Marquises are no longer wont to caper about the streets of great cities in the sportive abandon of a festival dance; in those days it seems not to have abated a jot of their serious dignity.

Bayonne is the key to all roads south and east.  It has a superb citadel.  It has been a valuable military position, has withstood seventeen sieges in its day, and is still an important strategic point.  Here were exciting times during the Peninsular war, when Wellington on his northward march from Spain found Bayonne in his way and undertook to capture it.  More a fancy than a fact, however, is probably the tradition that the bayonet was invented in this locality and took its name from the city.  The story of the Basque regiment running short of ammunition and being prompted by the exigency to insert their long-handled knives into the musket-muzzles, has since had grave doubts cast upon its veraciousness.  This is most unfortunate, for it was a story which travelers delighted to honor.

VIII.

It is mid-afternoon as our breack clatters out again over the paved roadway of the bridge and we turn westward along the river for the return to Biarritz.  A few vessels stand idly moored to the quays.  The Allees Marines are quiet and still; later they will be thronged.  They are the favorite promenade of Bayonne, which thus holds here a species of daily “town-meeting” as the dusk comes on.  At present we see merely a few old women bearing panniers toward the city, and rope-makers at work upon great streamers of hemp which stretch from tree to tree.  Soon we turn off to the southward, and are on the main highway to Biarritz.