There is a monastery just out from the town.  It is but a short walk, we are told, so while the horses are brought around, two of us explore.  We follow a shaded avenue, triply garnished at the left with a brook, a foot-path and a long-row of small cottages; and soon mount a short hill, pass through an open gateway, and are before the churchly pile.  Not a soul is about the place, and we have to look into the building entirely unciceroned.  An apartment opening wide from the main hall is evidently some priest’s oratory.  We venture to peer tentatively in through the doorway.  The room is plain, containing beside other furniture a small crucifix, a shrine, and a praying-chair,—­and nearer us a recent number of Figaro open on the table.  Thus it goes:  the secular blending harmoniously with the spiritual.

The place is known as Poey le Houn or Hill of the Fountain; its site commands an extensive view, but otherwise there appears little about it that is distinctively interesting,—­save as it is one of the fortunate Catholic institutions of the Lavedan spared from Montgomery’s Huguenot raids.  The chapel, entered from without by another portal, is sombre and rather large.  We feel lonesome and intrusive without some guide, and do not examine it very carefully.  A few towels are bleaching in the sun, on the paved court before the chapel,—­the only sign of recent human presence.  It is the home of brotherly deeds, and we piously turn the towels to bleach on the other side.

V.

We start again on the afternoon’s drive with renewed zest.  The hostess allows herself the luxury of several friendly smiles as the carriages move, and we give her farewell and good wishes in return.  Umbrellas and parasols quickly go up to screen from the sun, and we lean restfully back, in contented anticipation of the remaining half of the day’s ride.

At our right, for a while, at the far end of a valley, we have a mountain in view, whiter than common with excess of snow.  This is the Balaitous, craggy, irregular and weird, too far off to be imposing, yet one of the highest of the range.  It is not an easily accessible mountain, nor is it often climbed.  There is deemed to be something uncanny about it.  Its ascent is very dangerous, they say.  Accidents have occurred there; a strange ill omen, it is believed, invests those ghostly snows; the death-clutch of the Balaitous holds many a brave mountaineer.  As seen from here, it has an indefinably spectral, repellent look; there seems something almost hideous in its white and wrinkled cerements.

The road has now an easy course before it.  We are but eight miles from the town of Argeles, where we shall be on the floor of the Lavedan valley; and the downward slant is slight.  From Argeles, it will be but ten miles more to Cauterets.  The scenery has softened greatly; cliffs and peaks are out of view, and we have rounded hills and easy, green, swelling curves and here and there a basking village.