Argeles is reached sooner than we expected.  There is nothing to detain us here; it is a bright town, tidy and rather attractive, and we see it and all its inhabitants as we drive through.  Here the journey from Eaux Bonnes to Cauterets over the road we have come, twenty-seven miles in all, is often broken for the night; many travelers and all the drivers advise a day and a half for the transit.  We had seen that it could be as readily made within the day, the additional ten miles counting but little in mid-afternoon; and the horses after their long rest at Arrens now trot on, fresh and willing as in the morning.

At Argeles we meet the railroad once more.  It is the Lavedan branch; it has left the main line at Lourdes, and runs southward up the valley, passing through Argeles and penetrating as far on the road to Cauterets as the town of Pierrefitte.  The arrangement is a counterpart of the branch from Pau to Laruns.  Our road now turns south also, going likewise to Pierrefitte, and running mainly parallel with the tracks though at some distance away.  One could take the train from Argeles to Pierrefitte, and there connect with the diligence; but very little would of course be gained.

VI.

We are now out of Bearn, and have entered the ancient province of Bigorre.  In modern terms, we have passed from the Department of the Low Pyrenees to that of the High Pyrenees.  One watering-place in this Department,—­Bagneres de Bigorre,—­which we shall visit in its turn, still preserves the old name of the province.

This county was not a principality like Bearn; though it had its own governors and government, it belonged to France and was held from the king.  Bearn would not have tolerated a like state of dependence.  When our old friend Gaston, Count of Foix, was living, the French king, grateful to him for previous aid in arms, offered him the control of Bigorre.  The king “sent Sir Roger d’Espaign and a president of the Parliament of Paris, with fair letters patent engrossed and sealed, of the king’s declaration that he gave him the county of Bigorre during his life, but that it was necessary he should become liege man and hold it of the crown of France.”  But the high-spirited Count of Foix declined.  He was “very thankful to the king for this mark of his affection, and for the gift of Bigorre, which was unsolicited on his part; but for anything Sir Roger d’Espaign could say or do, he would never accept it.  He only retained the castle of Mauvoisin [on its extreme confines] because it was free land and the castle and its dependencies held of none but God.”

As France and Bearn seldom quarreled, Bigorre should have been a peaceful neighbor.  But its northerly portion was held for a long time by an English garrison for the Black Prince, and this kept the county in constant disturbance.  The strong post of the English was the town of Lourdes, (anciently Lourde,) eight miles north of us.  “Garrisoned,” says one, “by soldiers of fortune in the English pay, part of whose duty and all of whose inclination it was to harass the adjoining French possessions, Lourdes became the wasps’ nest of the Pyrenees; whose fierce occupants were constantly buzzing about the rich hives of the plains for thirty leagues around, and leaving ugly stings behind.”