I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen to Pau: cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy conveyances. The pace at which they crawl puts it out of the question that they should ever see a snail which they did not meet; while the terribly long stages to which the horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on to Auch, on the great Toulouse road, one of those towns which you wonder has been built where it chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and boasting a grand old Gothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kindest manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on fat, dropsical pillars. The question was now, how to get on to Pau. The Toulouse diligence passed every day, but was nearly always full; I might have to wait a week for a place. A voiturier, however, was to start in the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down at Tarbes, whence locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so with this worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed me a fair looking vehicle, and we were to start at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a carrier's shed, with an army of roulage carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels there in vain, for not a bit could I see of voiture or voiturier. Seven struck—half-past seven—the north wind was bitterly cold, and a sleety rain began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that voiturier. As it was, the wind got colder and colder; the streets became deserted, and the rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud, shrieking rattle, when a wilder gust than common came thundering up the narrow street. At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth, into a vast, broad-eaved auberge, the house of call, I supposed, for the carriers; and entering the great shadowy kitchen, almost as big and massive looking a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew—the voice of the rascally voiturier himself—struck my ear, exclaiming with the most warm-hearted affability, "Entrez, monsieur; entrez. We were waiting for you."
Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men in blouses, and two or three fat women, who were to be my fellow-passengers, there was the villain, discussing a capital dinner—the bare-armed wenches of the place rushing between the vast fireplace and the table, with no end of the savouriest and the most garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in the highest state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence of the greeting, however, tickled me amazingly; and room being immediately made, I was entreated to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it would be a good many hours before I had another chance. This looked ominous; and besides, the whole meal, full of nicely browned stews, was so appetising, that I fear I committed the enormity of making a very tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight we at last got under weigh.
But not in the vehicle which I had been shown. There was some cock-and-bull story of that having been damaged; and we were squeezed—six of us, including the fat ladies—into a dreadful square box, with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks of a faggot, in the centre. Oh, the woes of that dreary night!—the gruntings and the groanings of the fat ladies—the squabbles about "making legs," and, notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity of the pinching cold—one window was broken, another wouldn't pull up, and the whole vehicle was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale had increased to a hurricane; the rain and sleet lashed the ground, so that you could hardly hear the driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire. After an hour or two's riding, the water began to trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies said they could not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip of a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper with the most vehement "Merci-bien merci!" I ever heard in my life. About one in the morning we pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of which the passengers refreshed themselves with coffee, and I myself, to their great surprise, with a liberal application of cognac and hot water. But the French have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The rest of the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I believe we had the same horses all the way. Day was grey around us when we heard the voices of the market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking forth, after a short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around me a wide champaign country, as white with snow as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the boasted South of France, and the date was the twentieth of October!
CASTLE OF PAU.
[CHAPTER VII.]
Pau—The English in Pau—English and Russians—The View of the Pyrenees—The Castle—The Statue of Henri Quatre—His Birth—A Vision of his Life—Rochelle—St. Bartholemew—Ivry—Henri and Sully—Henri and Gabrielle—Henri and Henriette D'Entragues—Ravaillac.
Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pau is the most Anglicised town in France. There are a good many of our countrymen congregated under the old steeples of Tours which every British man should love, were it only for Quentin Durward; but they do not leaven the mass; while in Pau, particularly during the winter time, the main street and the Place Royale look, so far as the passengers go, like slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or Cheltenham. You see in an instant the insular cut of the groups, who go laughing and talking the familiar vernacular along the rough pavé. There is a tall, muscular hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt collar, and a lady on each arm—fresh-looking damsels, with flounces, which smack unmistakeably of England. It is a young gentleman with his sisters. Next come a couple of wonderfully well-shaved, well buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay English officers, talking "by Jove, sir," of "Wilkins of ours;" and "by George, sir," of what the "old Duke had said to Galpins of the 9th. at the United Service." An old fat half-pay officer is always a major. I do not know how it happens, but so it is; and when you meet them settled abroad, ten to one they have been dragged there by their wives and daughters.
"By Jove, sir!" said one of these veterans to me at Pau—he was very confidential over a glass of brandy and water at the café on the Place—"By Jove, sir, for myself, I'd never like to go further from Pall Mall than just down Whitehall, to set my watch by the Horse Guards' clock; but the women, you know, sir, have a confounded hankering for these confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what is an old fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir?"