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 Balaïtous, 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 Balaïtous 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 Argelès, where we shall be on the floor of the Lavedan valley; and the downward slant is slight. From Argelès, 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.
Argelès is reached sooner than we expected. There is nothing to detain us here; it is a bright town, tidy and rather attractive, and we see it and all its inhabitants as we drive through. Here the journey from Eaux Bonnes to Cauterets over the road we have come, twenty-seven miles in all, is often broken for the night; many travelers and all the drivers advise a day and a half for the transit. We had seen that it could be as readily made within the day, the additional ten miles counting but little in mid-afternoon; and the horses after their long rest at Arrens now trot on, fresh and willing as in the morning.
At Argelès we meet the railroad once more. It is the Lavedan branch; it has left the main line at Lourdes, and runs southward up the valley, passing through Argelès and penetrating as far on the road to Cauterets as the town of Pierrefitte. The arrangement is a counterpart of the branch from Pau to Laruns. Our road now turns south also, going likewise to Pierrefitte, and running mainly parallel with the tracks though at some distance away. One could take the train from Argelès to Pierrefitte, and there connect with the diligence; but very little would of course be gained.