Cauterets
“C’est le premier jour de septembre que les bains des Pyrénées commencent à avoir de la vertu.” Thus begins the prologue to Marguerite de Navarre’s “Heptameron.” The “season” to-day is not so late, but the queen of Navarre wrote of her own experiences and times, and it is to be presumed she wrote truly.
A half a century ago Cauterets was a dirty, shabby village, nearly unknown, but the exploiter of resorts got hold of it, and with a few medical endorsements forthwith made it the vogue until now it is as trim and well-laid-out a little town as one will find.
The town is a gem of daintiness, in strong contrast to the surrounding melancholy rocks and forests of the mountainside. Peaks, approximating ten thousand feet in height, rise on all sides, and dominate the more gentle slopes and valleys, but still the general effect is one of a savage wildness, with which the little white houses of the town, the electric lights and the innumerable hotels—a round score of them—comport little. Certainly the beneficial effects accruing to semi-invalids here might be supposed to be great—if they would but leave “the game” alone.
A simple mule path leads to the Col de Riou back of Cauterets, though it is more frequented by tourists on foot than by beasts of burden.
Here on the Col itself, in plain view of the Pic du Midi and its sister peaks, the Touring Club has erected one of those admirable guide-book accessories, a “table d’orientation.”