I ventured to hint, that running water might occasionally be put to analogous, yet by no means so objectionable uses; and I instanced the flour and maize mill, which was working merrily within a score of paces of us. For a moment, but for a moment only, my antagonist was staggered. Then recovering himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant to say that the process of grinding corn was like the process of weaving cloth? It was curious to observe the confusion in the man's mind between analogy and resemblance. As I could not but admit that the two operations were conducted quite in a different fashion, my gratified opponent, not to be too hard upon me, warily changed the immediate subject of conversation. I was not a native of this part of France? Not a native of France at all? Then I came from some place far away? Perhaps from across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed, there was an English lady married, about five miles off—Madame——. Of course I knew her? No? Well, that was odd. He would have thought that, coming from the same place, I ought to know her. However—were there many handloom weavers like himself in England? No, very few indeed. What! did they weave by water-power there, too? were the folks as bad as some of the people in his country? I explained that, not being so much favoured in the way of water-privilege, the people of England had resorted to steam.
The poor weaver was quite overcome at this crowning proof of human malignity. It was more horrible even than the water-atrocities of the Pyrenees.
"Steam!"—he repeated the word a dozen times over, shaking his head mournfully at each iteration,—"Steam! Ah, well, what is this poor unhappy world coming to?"
Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle rattling backwards and forwards through the web, he added heartily: "After all, their moving iron and wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing cloth woven by honest, industrious flesh and blood."
Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political economy in such a case? I left the good man busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting over the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of boiling water.
Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the bed of a muddy torrent, I was rewarded by a sudden watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began to blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before it. From a high ridge, with vast green slopes, all dotted with sheep, spreading away beneath until they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre appeared, the great white hotels peeping from the trees, and the whole town lying as it were at the bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot in summer, when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre, and the high hills about, deaden every breeze. At present, however, the wind was rising to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the Pyrenees. Attaining a still greater height, the scene was very grand. On one side was a confused sea of mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated masses of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before the northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged in the mist, to re-appear again in a moment. Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista of valley, which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity. The mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and above me. Sometimes I would be enveloped as in a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me, and wrapping trees, and rocks, and pastures in its shroud. All this time the wind blew a gale, and roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the sun looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the rolling masses of the fog, with some partial patch of landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the constant movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape appearing and disappearing, the glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the distant plain of Gascony, sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours, sometimes golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,—all this was very striking and fine. At length, however, I reached the Palombiere, situated upon the ridge of the hill—which cost a good hour and a half's climb. Here grow a long row of fine old trees, and on the northern side rise two or three very high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as to allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a monkey to climb to the top, and ensconce himself in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest" which whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out. I found the fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of a tree; they said the wind was too high for the pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs they offered to make believe that a flock was coming, and shew me the process of catching. The bargain made, away went one of the urchins up the bending pole, into the crow's-nest—a feat which I have a great notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's navy would have shirked, considering that there were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on by. Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen of net rose from tree to tree, so that all passage through the row was blocked.
"Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds at this season come flying from the north to go to Spain, and they keep near the tops of the hills. Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the trees, and will fly over them—if it wasn't for the pigeonier."
"The pigeonier! what is that?"
"We're going to show you." And he shouted to the boy in the crow's nest, "Now Jacques!"