It is a dull hour.  Within, we are in a murky, musty reception-room, and find no consolation save in ourselves, last week’s Pau newspapers, and a decrepit French guide-book which tells tantalizingly of the magnificent trip on toward the peak.  Without, the rain falls softly and maliciously, slackening at times in order to taunt us with glimpses of fugitive blue overhead.  We wait and conjecture; plans and anecdotes and a good fire help wonderfully to hurry the time.  The landlord offers but dubious prophecies; and the window-panes prophesy as dubiously, as we peer out into the grey mist and the dripping, shivering park.  Nature’s resentments are strong, and when she gives battle she fights to a finish.

At last, in full caucus assembled, we vote the war a failure and elect for a retreat.

VI.

The climb we were to take is to a plateau called Bious-Artigues.  It is about three miles beyond Gabas by bridle-path, and its ascent needs an hour and a half.  Here the full face of the Pic du Midi d’Ossau is squarely commanded.  The view is said to challenge that of the Matterhorn from the Riffel.  The plateau itself is nearly five thousand feet above the sea, and across the ravine before it, this isolated granite obelisk, with its mitre of snow, lifts itself upward more than five thousand feet higher,—­a precipitous cone, “notched like a pair of gaping jaws, eager to grasp the heavens.”

This formidable pyramid was first ascended in 1552, and afterward by Palma Cayet in 1591.  It has often been climbed since, and affords a view over a veritable wilderness of peaks.  From Bious-Artigues, without making the ascent but simply following the sides of the surrounding basin, one can go on to a second and even a third plateau, adding to the outlook each time, and may finally work his way entirely around the Pic and return to Gabas by another direction.  At Gabas too one is but seven miles from the Spanish frontier, and there is a foot-pass that scales the high barrier between the countries and leads down to the Spanish baths of Panticosa.  A great international highway over this pass has been in contemplation,—­the carriage-road to be continued on from Gabas, upward over the crest of the range, and so descending to Panticosa and the plains of Aragon.  It is a singular fact that at present, from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, there is not one such highway over any portion of the chain, but solely around the two extremities.  The only midway access from country to country, (except a poor cart-road from Pau to Jaca,) is by mule-paths, or oftener difficult trails and passes known chiefly to the blithe contrabandista.

Mournfully, yet with philosophy, we muse on these withholden glories, as we drive rapidly homeward.  Umbrellas shut off the scenery where the mists do not, and we are forced to introspection.  We resort for comfort to praising each other for bearing the disappointment so well.  We laud each other’s cheerfulness under affliction.  After all,