This greediness is not offensive. I once went up the brook of la Soude, behind Eaux-Bonnes: it is a sort of tumbledown staircase which for three leagues winds among the box in a parched ravine. You have to clamber over pointed rocks, jump from point to point, balance yourself along narrow ledges, climb zigzag up the scarped slopes covered with rolling stones. The foot-path is enough to frighten the goats. You bruise your feet on it, and at every step run the risk of getting a sprain. I met there some young women and girls of twenty, all barefooted, carrying to the village, one a block of marble in her basket, another three sacks of charcoal fastened together, another five or six heavy planks; the way is nine miles long, under a mid-day sun; and nine miles for the home journey: for this they are paid ten sous.
Like the beggars and the merchants, they are very crafty and very polite. Poverty forces men to calculate and to please; they take off their cap as soon as you speak to them and smile complaisantly; their manners are never brutal or artless. The proverb says very truly: “False and courteous Béarnais.” You recall to mind the caressing manners and the perfect skill of their Henry IV.; he knew how to play on everybody and offend nobody. In this respect, as in many others, he was a true Béarnais. With the aid of necessity, I have seen them trump up geological disquisitions. In the middle of July there was a sort of earthquake; a report was spread that an old wall had fallen down; in truth the windows had shaken as if a great wagon were passing by. Immediately half of the bathers quitted their lodgings: a hundred and fifty persons fled from Cauterets in two days; travellers in their night-shirts ran to the stable to fasten on their carriages, and to light themselves carried away the hotel lantern. The peasants shook their heads compassionately and said to me: “You see, sir, they are going from the frying-pan into the fire; if there is an earthquake, the plain will open, and they will fall into the crevices, whereas here the mountain is solid, and would keep them safe as a house.”
That same Jeannette who already holds so honorable place in my history, shall furnish an example of the polite caution and the over-scrupulous reserve in which they wrap themselves when they are afraid that they shall be compromised. The master had drawn the neighboring church, and wanted to judge of his work after the manner of Molière.
“Do you recognize that, Jeanette.”
“Ah! monsieur, did you do that?”
“What have I copied here?”
“Ah! monsieur, it is very beautiful.”
