IV.
At the other side of the hotel we are in Pau. There is not very much that is impressive in its general appearance. We go by a patch of park and through a mediocre street, and find ourselves in the public square,—the Carfax of the city. From this run east and south its two chief streets. All of the buildings are low and most of them dingy. We expected newer, higher, more Parisian effects. At the right of the square is the long, flat market-building, vocal, in and out, this early morning, with bustling hucksters superintending their stalls. The square itself is bright with the colors of overflowing flowers and fabrics and other idols of the market-place. Neat little heaps of fruit, apexed into "ball-piled pyramids," are guarded by characterful old women, alert and intent, whose heads, coifed with striped kerchiefs, nod a reward to the purchaser with a hearty "Merci, monsieur!"
Few of the streets in the town are well paved, and few of the villas seen in driving in the suburbs aid to raise the architectural average. Except for its palace-hotels, Pau seems to show little of artistic building enterprise.
This city, so popular with the English, is rarely spoken of in America. There, in fact, it is singularly little known. This is no truer of Pau than of the Pyrenees themselves; but even to Englishmen who may know as little as we of the latter, the former is familiar ground. Four thousand Britons winter here annually, besides French and other visitors, and Pau runs well in the hibernal race, even against Mentone and Nice. Its hotels alone would evidence this. Up to these, there are all grades of good accommodation,—the pensions, of good or better class; furnished apartments, or a flat to be rented by the season; whole villas to be leased or purchased, as the intending comer may prefer.
One can leave Paris or Marseilles by the evening express and be in Pau the next afternoon,—about the same length of time as required to reach St. Augustine from New York. This is certainly far from a formidable journey, and it is matter for surprise that the adventurous American does not oftener take it.
The favor of the spot, it owes to its climate. Something there is,—some meteorological idiosyncrasy in its location,—which guards its still, mild air, the winter through. Storms rage impotently down from the mountains or across the Landes; they cannot pass the charmed barrier of the coteaux. Winds are rare in Pau. Rain is not rare; but the atmosphere, even when damp, is not chilling, and the lines of rain fall soft and never aslant. There is a tradition of an old sea-captain who once made a brief stay here and who, as he took his daily walks, was noticed as constantly and restlessly whistling. He finally left in disgust, with the remark that there was not a capful of wind to be had in the place.
The winter colony takes full possession of the town. It passes thirty thousand inhabitants under the yoke, as Rome passed their forefathers the Aquitani. Pau in the season is a British oligarchy. Society fairly spins. There are titles, and there is money; there are drives, calls, card-parties; dances and dinners; clubs,—with front windows; theatres, a Casino, English schools, churches; tennis, polo, cricket; racing, coaching,—and, Anglicissime, a tri-weekly fox-hunt! For some years, too, the position of master of the hounds, a post of much social distinction in Pau, was held by a well-known American, so we are told,—a fact certainly hitherto unheralded to many of his countrymen.
Socially, there is a wide range of entertainment at Pau. What Johnson wrote of it thirty years ago is not materially inapplicable to-day: "One set, whom you may call the banqueteers, give solemn, stately dinners immediately before going to bed; another perform a hybrid entertainment, between the English tea-party, and the Continental soirée, where you may enjoy your Bohea and Souchong, play long small whist, and occasionally listen to ponderous harmonies solemnly performed. A third are the formal rout-givers, the white-kid-and-slipper, orchestra-and-programme, dance-and-sit-down-to-supper folks; so like home that it only requires Gunter's men to fancy oneself in Baker Street of olden times. Another is the delightful soirée pur sang, where everybody comes as a matter of course, and where everybody who does not sing, dances or plays, or is a phenomenon in charades, or writes charming impromptus, or talks like the last book, or can play at any known game from loto to chess, or knows all the gossip of the last six hours; and where everybody chats and laughs, and sends everybody else comfortably home in the best of humors just about the time that the great people are expecting the coiffeur to arrive."
Thus there is a stir in the Pyrenees the year around. In the winter, at Pau; in summer, at the twenty cures and centres among the mountains. The proprietor of a winter hotel here will own also his summer hostelry at Bigorre or Cauterets. In the summer, it is the French and Spanish to whom he caters, for they have so far been the ones most appreciative both of the springs and the scenery of these mountains. And so, with the rise and dip of the seasons, the European element waxes as the English wanes, in a kind of solstitial see-saw. And the smiling landlord stands upon the pivot.
The clouds are closing in, after granting us that glittering panorama, and the morning grows dull and dark. We explore the book-stores, and finally find the old Library in the upper story of the market-building. Here two of us at least pass a long and contentful forenoon.