THIRD.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
The third variety walks in troops and makes its excursions by families. You see from afar a great peaceable cavalcade; father, mother, two daughters, two tall cousins, one or two friends and sometimes donkeys for the little boys.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
They beat the donkeys, which are restive; they advise the fiery youths to be prudent; a glance retains the young ladies about the green veil of the mother. The distinctive traits of this variety are the green veil, the bourgeois spirit, the love of siestas and meals on the grass; an unfailing sign is the taste for little social games. This variety is rare at Eaux-Bonnes, more common at Bagnères de Bigorre and at Bagnères de Luchon. It is remarkable for its prudence, its culinary instincts, its economical habits. The individuals making the excursion stop at a spot selected the day before; they unload pâtés and bottles.
If they have brought nothing, they go and knock at the nearest hut for milk; they are astonished at having to pay three sous a glass for it: they find that it strongly resembles goat’s milk, and they say to each other, after they have drunken, that the wooden spoon was not over-clean. They look curiously at the dark stable, half underground, where the cows ruminate on beds of heather; after which, the great fat men seat themselves or lie down. The artist of the family draws out his album and copies a bridge, a mill, and other album views. The young girls run and laugh, and let themselves drop out of breath upon the grass; the young men run after them. This variety, indigenous in the great cities, in Paris above all, wishes to revive among the Pyrenees the pleasure parties of Meudon or Montmorency.