One learns that Pau was the seat of a château of the princes of Béarn as early as the tenth century. Its great splendour and importance only came with the establishment here of the residence of Gaston IV., Comte de Foix, the usurper of the throne of Navarre in 1464. In his train came a parliament, a university, an academy, and a mint. Finally came the birth of Henri Quatre, and one may yet see the great turtle-shell used by the afterwards gay monarch for a cradle. These were gay times for Pau, and the same gaiety, though of a forced nature, exists to-day with the throngs of English and Americans who are trying hard to make of it a social resort. May they not succeed. One thing they have done is to raise prices for everything to everybody. This is bad enough to begin with, and so with this parting observation Pau is crossed off the list.
There are eight highroads which cross the frontier passes from France into Spain, and two lines of railway, one along the border of the Atlantic and Hendaye, and the other following the Mediterranean coast to Barcelona.
"Il n'y a plus de Pyrénées," we were told as we were leaving Pau. It seemed that news had just been received that in fourteen hours a Spanish aeronaut had covered the 730 kilometres from Pau to Grenada "comme les oiseaux." Truly, after this, there are no more frontiers.
After Pau our route led to Mauléon (seventy-two kilometres) via Oloron, straight across Béarn, where the peasants are still of that picturesque mien which one so seldom sees out of the comic-opera chorus. One reads that the Béarnais are "irascible, jealous, and spirituel."
This is some one's opinion of times long passed, but certainly we found nothing of the kind; nothing indeed different from all the folk of the South who dawdle at their work and spend most of their leisure energetically dancing or eating.
Mauléon, known locally as Mauléon-Licharre to distinguish it from Mauléon-Barousse, is the douane station for entering France from Spain (Pampelune) via St. Jean-Pied-de-Port and St. Beat, neither of the routes much used, and not at all by automobiles.
A typical little mountain town, Mauléon is the chef-lieu of the Arrondissement, and the ancient capital of the Vicomté de Soule. It has an excellent hotel, allied to the Touring Club de France (Hôtel Saubidet), where one dines well off the fare of the country with no imitation Parisian dishes. There is a sort of a historical monument here, the Château de Mauléon (Malo-Leone—Mauvais Lion—Wicked Lion: the reader may take his choice) of the fifteenth century, which surrounds itself accommodatingly with a legend which the native will tell you, if asked.
There is no great accommodation for automobiles at Mauléon, and one can only buy oil and gasoline by going to a man named Etcheberrigary for it. His address is not given, but any one will tell you where he lives. They may not recognize your pronunciation, but they will recognize your dilemma at once and point the way forthwith.
It was forty-one kilometres to St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, over an "all-up-and-down-hill" road, if there ever was one—up out of one river valley and down into another all the way until we struck the road by the banks of the Nive and approached the town.
St. Jean-Pied-de-Port takes its name from its proximity to one of the Franco-Spanish gateways through the Pyrenees.