with frequent rests, the horses toil higher, and the Pic seems to rise as we ascend.  Often we are walking, by the side of the carriages.  Other peaks are now coming up into view; the road mounts in long zigzags, shaded plentifully at times and always astir with a trace of breeze.  Our admiration at its skillful construction increases hourly.  Patiently surmounting all obstacles, it moves surely upward, unvexed by resistance, broad and smooth and firm, and protected by parapets wherever the paternal solicitude of the Department could possibly conjecture a need for them.  The trees become scanter as we near the top.  Road-makers are at work cutting stones or repairing here and there; they doff their faded berrets in greeting.  They have frank, hardy faces, marked with belief that life is worth living: 

  “Les tailleurs de pierre
    Sont de bons enfants;
  Ils ne mangent guere
    Mais ils solvent longtemps!”

[Illustration]

By eleven o’clock the top is gained.  We are on the Col d’Aubisque, 5600 feet above tide-water.  The horses pause for a well merited breathing-spell, and we step to the ground for a survey.  Across the valley towers the Ger, still apparently as high above us as at the start.  Farther to the right, the Gourzy, though still in the near distance, has dwindled to a moderate hill, and Eaux Bonnes has throughout been niched from the field of view.  To the left, other peaks, several heretofore unseen, stand silently out; their rocks and snow “of Arctic and African desolation,” as Count Russell has observed of another scene, “since they are both burnt and frozen.”  The Pic du Midi d’Ossau, which should lie to the southwest, is not in sight, being hidden by intervening heights.

We turn for a view to the east.  Here barren pastures sprawl over the hills, dotted in places with herds of cattle or flocks of mountain sheep.  But the Valley of Lavedan, which we expected now to overlook, is not yet in sight.  After a long descent before us, there is another though lower col to surmount before we can point out the villages of the new valley.

We seat ourselves by a snowbank, and enjoy the pleasures of rest for a season.  Enter to us, a peasant upon the scene,—­a woman, crossing the col from the Lavedan side.  The large bundle magically balanced upon her head-cloth wavers never a trace as she steps lithely up the last acclivities and comes upon us.  From a stick held over her shoulder depends another bundle, and over all she is carrying a war-worn and ludicrous umbrella.  The interest is mutual.  Promptly I spring up and pull off my cap in introduction.  Her round face, simple and good-tempered, a comely type of her neighborhood, opens gradually from a stare into a smile, as the ladies add their greetings.  She seems rather glad of the excuse to rest and lay aside her bundles, and in a few moments has grown quite communicative.  She has come, this morning, she tells us, from Arrens, a small village on the way down toward the Lavedan valley and to be our destined halting-place, we recollect, for luncheon.  She is taking to Eaux Bonnes a few woolen goods, stockings and hoods and shawls, knit by herself and her old mother during the long winter.  They are not for fine people; oh, no, but the guides and the hotel maids like them.