IV.
The road is bordered with vines, each of which carries up its tree, elm or ash, the crown of a fresh verdure, and lets its leaves and tendrils fall again in plumes. The valley is a garden long and narrow, between two chains of mountains. On the lower slopes are beautiful meadows where the living waters run in orderly fashion in trenches, nimble, prattling irrigators; the villages are seated alone the little river; vine-stocks climb alone the dusty wall. The mallows, straight as tapers, lift above the hedges their round flowers, brilliant as roses of rubies. Orchards of apples pass continually on both sides of the coach; cascades fall in every hollow of the chain, surrounded with houses that seek a shelter. The heat and the dust are so terrible that they are obliged every time we pass a spring to sponge the nostrils of the horses. But at the end of the valley a mass of dark, rugged mountains lifts itself, with tops that are white with snow, feeding the river and closing the horizon. Finally, we pass beneath an alley of fine plane-trees, between two rows of villas, gardens, hotels, and shops. It is Luchon, a little city as Parisian as Bigorre.
