Within the court, the daylight comes in over the dismantled walls.  The ivy green climbs along the grey stones.  We trace the old hearth and the outline of the stone staircase scarred upon the wall.  We conjure up the rest of the structure, but the Northern Wizard is not with us here, as at Kenilworth, to repeople it with life and merrymaking, and it strains the imagination to depart far from the dull, dead present of Fuenterrabia.  Perchance of old there came hither knights and ladies, pricking o’er the plaine, perchance here was dancing and wassail.  We close our eyes and would fain image the scene.  We banish the ruined walls, the sunlight creeping among the ivy.  We see the sheen of cloth of gold and the gleam of greaves and breastplates.  We catch the tale of battle, the passing of the loving-cup, the stately treading of slow Spanish measures.  We hear,—­we hear,—­what is it that we hear?—­the melodious sound of woman’s soft voice, gently whispering:  “Five sous each for the party, monsieur.”

And as we awake and pay and depart, we turn and see again the disillusionizing legend: 

[Illustration:  For Sale]

CHAPTER VII.

AN ERA IN TWILIGHT.

     “Pour faire comprendre le caractere d’un peuple, je conterais
     trente anecdotes et je supprimerais toutes les theories
     philosophiques sur le sujet,”

     —­STENDHAL.

Returning to Hendaye, a train takes us again to Bayonne, connecting there for Orthez and Pau.  The ride to Bayonne needs an hour or less, and from thence to Orthez calls for two.  It is not many decades since much of this journey had to be made by the diligence.  Railways and highways have pushed rapidly toward the Pyrenees.  When in the approaching fortnight we shall come to traverse the Route Thermale, the great carriage-way along the chain, we shall see modern road-making in its perfection; and the rail will keep anxious watch, over the road, running parallel along the distant plain and reaching helpful arms up the valleys to uphold it.

Toward Pau especially, the railroads converge.  That city, a social capital for centuries, is a social capital still, and its winter influx of invalids and pleasure-seekers stimulates every facility of approach.  Then, too, it lies on the way crossing southern France from the Bidassoa to the Rhone, and no line linking these rivers could omit from its chain the Gave[12] de Pau.

[12] Gave is the generic name among the Pyrenees for a mountain stream or torrent.

From Bayonne, the train at first traverses an edge of a singular region.  It is a part of the Landes.  This great savanna, which flattens the entire space from Bordeaux to Bayonne, was crossed in coming southward from Bordeaux, and now as we strike eastward and inland we but briefly skirt its southerly portion.  A sandy, marshy waste, infertile, unhealthful and poor, it lies in utter contrast with the fields and slopes of neighboring provinces.  It is anomalous, incongruous,—­