Orthez is known to our century as the scene of a spiteful battle between Wellington and Soult, engaging eighty thousand men, and ending in the victory of the former and the rout of the French.  But the town is so deeply sunk in the past that its kinship with modern events seems almost cause for resentment; and we will leave it as it is, with its older glories and memories thickly crusted upon it.

CHAPTER VIII.

“THE LITTLE PARIS OF THE SOUTH.”

When the Count of Foix made a hunting trip to his chateau mignon on the present site of Pau, he found it a goodly journey.  There were quagmires and waste land to pass, and the visit and return were not to be made in a sun’s shining.  More greatly than avenging spirits from his dungeons the spirit of steam would affright him to-day, as it goes roaring over the levels in a hundred minutes to the same destination.

From Orthez, it is less than two hours by rail, and we are at last in Pau.  The Midi line is accurately on time.  These French railroads are operated by the State; they are not afflicted with parallel lines and bitter competition; they have no occasion, as our roads have, to advertise a faster schedule than can possibly be carried out.  Consequently their time-tables aim to state the exact truth, and the roads can and do live up to it.

It is late in the evening when we arrive, and we seek no impressions.  A comfortable omnibus winds us up an infinity of turns, through an apparent infinity of streets, and we are at the Hotel Gassion.

It is impossible to be entirely impressionless, even for travelers at ten at night.  It is the hotel itself which makes the dent.  Our vague misgivings as to the “dismal roadside inns” awaiting our tour have already been arrested at Biarritz and San Sebastian.  They are sent into exile from Pau.  The Hotel Gassion, whose name honors a stout old Bearnais warrior, is fitly a palace.  It cost four hundred thousand dollars.  A cushioned elevator lifts us smoothly upward to our rooms, which prove high-ceiled and unusually large and have dressing-rooms attached.  The dark walls accord with a deep mossy carpet.  The furnishings are massive in mahogany, polished and carved:  a wardrobe, dressing-cases, a writing-desk; a sofa-couch, made inaccessible, as everywhere in Europe, by the barrier of a huge round table; padded arm-chairs, upholstered in silk damask; and, acme of prevision, a praying-chair.  The beds seem beds of state, covered and canopied with some satiny material; and both silk and lace curtains part before the windows, showing separate balconies in the night outside.  The dining-hall and the parlors, which we do not seek until the morning, prove to be on an equally expensive scale; paintings of the Pyrenees hang in the wide halls; and there is a conservatory and winter-garden opening on the terrace.  The building is of grey stone, with corner towers and turrets and an imposing elevation, and has less the look of a hotel than of a royal Residenz.