VI.
Bagnères de Bigorre is placed at the opening-out of the broad Campan Valley, some distance out from the higher ranges and about twelve miles on from Grip. The fog passes off as we start again, though it is lightly raining still. In an hour or more we have finished the descent to the floor of the valley, and for the rest of the short afternoon the road runs uneventfully to the northward, for the most part level, and beaded with occasional villages and lesser clumps of houses. Finally, as the light begins to fail behind the clouds, an increased bustle on the road and more frequent houses passed announce the nearness of our destination, and the horses are soon trotting into Bigorre and up the welcome promenade of the main street to the Hotel Beau Séjour.
Past discomforts quickly recede in the warm haze of present satisfactions. We absorb to the full the pleasant glow of the hotel drawing-room, after we have comfortably repaired the ravages of the day. Barèges is a grotesque phantom, and we can hardly admit that to-night there are people still in that shuddering, shivering, banshee-haunted line of hospitals, high in its weird valley, in the cold and in the falling rain. Rayless and despairing their mood must be; escape would seem immeasurably more to be prized than cure. Even the old man of Grip and his rag brighten by comparison, and we agree in viewing our present surroundings as a climax of utter content.