III.
We sit about in the evening in the dim little parlor, and agree once more that Barèges has not been exaggerated. We are united in will to leave this detestable spot to its ghosts of ruin and disease, and to leave it as quickly as we can. Our Luz driver, whom we have judiciously retained to remain with his landau over night, appears respectfully at the door, and is instantly instructed to be ready early in the morning for farther progress; he looks dubious, and warns us of continuing rain; it is nothing; we leave to-morrow in any weather.
"Have you found us a second carriage?" I ask him.
"Monsieur, there is but a petite voiture, a small wagonette, up the street, which one could hire; it is small; if monsieur will have the goodness to come out with me to see it?"
So two of us sally forth into the drizzle with the driver, and a few rods up the street turn off into an alley-way, where the wagonette is found under a shed. It is small,—deplorably small; the seat will ungraciously hold two persons, and a stool can be crowded in in front for a driver. There is no top nor hood of any sort, and the hotel barometer is still falling steadily.
But we are resolved to leave Barèges.
"Is this the best that one can obtain?" I ask ruefully.
"There is one other, monsieur, close by; but it is yet smaller."
This clinches the matter, and we conclude a bargain with the proprietor for an early departure and hurry back to the dim joys of the hotel reception-room.