After luncheon I am recommended by the landlord to visit the castle which rises on a hill near the hotel. I have mounted but part way to the height where it stands when a soldier warns me off, "It is not permitted." I suppose the same regulations must hold all over the republic, but it would certainly seem an altogether useless rule off in these mountains, and one would have imagined from the peremptory gestures made that that old ruin was the key to France.
On our return trip we make a long detour to the west, where the roads are not so good and we are glad to strike the main highway once more and speed back to Biarritz.
While Spain is not commended for an auto tour, one can at least go so far into the ancient kingdom as the city of San Sebastian, her great watering place in the north.
The route hence, as far as the French frontier, is a delight to the automobilist. It rises and falls like the lines of a roller coaster or "Montagnes Russes" and you sail up on one side and down the other with a most delicious motion. Hills rise and fall, one's heart is gay and the scene is charming. To the right sparkles the deep blue Atlantic, while to the east and in front and far off to the westward, along the Spanish coast, range the sparkling Pyrenees.
MAISON DE L'INFANTE AT ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ
From a photograph
As we roll into the plaza of St. Jean-de-Luz the people are dancing a fandango and I pause awhile to view the sight. The quaint old place is surrounded on three sides by its ancient houses. That of King Louis XIV. is to your left, while the square towers of the one which sheltered the Infanta are across the plaza, and those are seen in the accompanying illustration. Through the portals of the queer old church the fragrance of frankincense rolls out to you, while the air is full of the wild barbaric music of the land and the sound of the neighbouring ocean. In couples or singly as the humour seizes them, the people are dancing, dancing with a life and a motion known only to the Spaniards and Italians. Flashing eyes and snapping fingers keep time to the shaking of the many tambourines and the clash of sabots. Then the music changes to that of the beautiful Spanish danza; fingers cease to snap and the eyes to flash, and the motion becomes wavy and dream-like, as the dancers float hither and thither over the grass. Then suddenly the multitude falls upon its knees with bowed heads and crossed hands as the Host is borne along to some passing soul.
Passing onward, we pause a moment, to inspect the house where the grand Louis rested the night before he bestowed his affections, together with the crown matrimonial, upon the Infanta of Spain and then turn to her old palace, a quaint red and white brick structure, to which it is said strangers are admitted. A dainty maid answered my clamors of the bell but would not admit me; even the silver key had no effect. I think, had I been younger, matters might have prospered more to my advantage—as it was, I failed ingloriously and took refuge in the church of St. Jean, a very quaint old edifice where the influence of Spain is plainly evident in the rich gilding of the entire choir. Here also the men and women may not worship God together. The women have the whole body of the church while the men are confined to three galleries which rise one above the other on either side. The custom is still in force, but one wonders whether these galleries are over-crowded. If so, the men must be more religious than those in America.