Pau and the Surrounding Country
Arms of the City of Pau
PAU, ville d’hiver mondaine et cosmopolite, is the way the railway-guides describe the ancient capital of Béarn, and it takes no profound knowledge of the subtleties of the French language to grasp the significance of the phrase. If Pau was not all this it would be delightful, but what with big hotels, golf and tennis clubs, and a pack of fox-hounds, there is little of the sanctity of romance hanging over it to-day, in spite of the existence of the old château of Henri IV’s Bourbon ancestors.
The life of Pau, in every phase, is to-day ardent and strenuous, with the going and coming of automobile tourists and fox hunters, semi-invalids and what not. In the gallant days of old, when princes and their followers held sway in the ancient Béarnaise capital, it was different, quite different, and the paternal château of the D’Albrets was a great deal more a typical château of its time than it has since become.