[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
A little beyond Lourdes begins the plain, and the sky opens out over an immense space: the azure dome grows pale toward the edges, and its tender blue, graded down by insensible shades, loses itself on the horizon in an exquisite whiteness. These colors, so pure, so rich, so sweetly blended, are like a great concert where one finds himself enveloped in harmony; the light comes from all sides; the air is penetrated with it, the blue vault sparkles from the dome to the very horizon. Other objects are forgotten; you are absorbed in a single sensation; you cannot help enjoying this unchangeable serenity, this profusion of brightness, this overflowing of golden, gushing light playing in limitless space. This sky of the south corresponds to but one state of the soul, joy; it has but one thought, one beauty, but it gives rise to the conception of full and durable happiness; it sets in the heart a spring of gayety ever ready to flow; man in this country ought to wear life lightly. Our northern skies have a deeper and more varied expression; the metallic reflections of their changing clouds accord with the troubled souls; their broken light and strange shadings express the sad joy of melancholy passions they touch the heart more deeply and with a keener stroke. But blue and white are such lovely hues! From here the north seems an exile; you would never have thought that two colors could give so much pleasure. They vanish into each other, like pleasant sounds that grow into harmony and are blended together. The distant white softens the garish light and imprisons it in a haze of thickened air. The azure of the dome deadens the rays under its dark tint, reflects them, breaks them, and seems strewn with spangles of gold. This glitter in the sky, these horizons drowned in a misty zone, this transparence of the infinite air, this depth of a heaven without clouds, is worth as much as the sight of the mountains.
III.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
Tarbes is a good-sized city that looks like a market town, paved with small stones, mediocre in appearance. You alight in a place where great dusty elms make a shade. At noon the streets are empty; it is evident that you are near the sun of Spain. A few women merely, with red foulards on the head, were selling peaches at the corners. A little further on some cavalry soldiers stretched their great awkward legs in the narrow shadow of their wall. You run across a square of four buildings, in the midst of which rises a bell-tower flaring at the base. It is the church; it has but a single aisle, very high, very broad, very cool, painted in dark colors, which contrast with the stifling heat outside and the glare of the white walls; above the altar, six columns of mottled marble, surmounted with a baldachin, make a pretty effect. The pictures are like those everywhere else: A Christ, mingled fresh butter and pale rose in hue, a passion in colored engravings at six sous each. A few, hung very high in dark corners, seem better because you can make nothing out of them. A little further on they have just built a court-house, clean and new as a judge’s robe; the ashler work is well dressed, and the walls perfectly scraped. The front is adorned with two statues: Justice, who looks like a fool, and Force, who looks like a girl. Force has on low boots and the skin of an animal. Instead of fine statues we have ugly riddles. Since they had a fancy for symbols, could they not have dressed Force as a policeman? To compensate ourselves for the statues, we went to visit the horses. In this place, the homely city becomes an elegant city. The buildings of the stud are simple and in good taste. Turf, rosebushes, stairways filled with flowers, a beautiful meadow of high grass; in the distance are poplars ranged as a screen to the limpid horizon. The habitation of the horses is a pleasure-house. There are fifty beasts in a long stable that might serve at need for a ball-room; they are superb creatures with shining coats, firm croup, gentle eye, calm front: they feed peaceably in their stalls, having a double mat under their litter; everything is brushed, wiped, rubbed. Grooms in red vests come and go incessantly to clean them and see that nothing is wanting. Man in the earthly paradise was less happy.