The favor of the spot, it owes to its climate.  Something there is,—­some meteorological idiosyncrasy in its location,—­which guards its still, mild air, the winter through.  Storms rage impotently down from the mountains or across the Landes; they cannot pass the charmed barrier of the coteaux.  Winds are rare in Pau.  Rain is not rare; but the atmosphere, even when damp, is not chilling, and the lines of rain fall soft and never aslant.  There is a tradition of an old sea-captain who once made a brief stay here and who, as he took his daily walks, was noticed as constantly and restlessly whistling.  He finally left in disgust, with the remark that there was not a capful of wind to be had in the place.

The winter colony takes full possession of the town.  It passes thirty thousand inhabitants under the yoke, as Rome passed their forefathers the Aquitani.  Pau in the season is a British oligarchy.  Society fairly spins.  There are titles, and there is money; there are drives, calls, card-parties; dances and dinners; clubs,—­with front windows; theatres, a Casino, English schools, churches; tennis, polo, cricket; racing, coaching,—­and, Anglicissime, a tri-weekly fox-hunt!  For some years, too, the position of master of the hounds, a post of much social distinction in Pau, was held by a well-known American, so we are told,—­a fact certainly hitherto unheralded to many of his countrymen.

Socially, there is a wide range of entertainment at Pau.  What Johnson wrote of it thirty years ago is not materially inapplicable to-day:  “One set, whom you may call the banqueteers, give solemn, stately dinners immediately before going to bed; another perform a hybrid entertainment, between the English tea-party, and the Continental soiree, where you may enjoy your Bohea and Souchong, play long small whist, and occasionally listen to ponderous harmonies solemnly performed.  A third are the formal rout-givers, the white-kid-and-slipper, orchestra-and-programme, dance-and-sit-down-to-supper folks; so like home that it only requires Gunter’s men to fancy oneself in Baker Street of olden times.  Another is the delightful soiree pur sang, where everybody comes as a matter of course, and where everybody who does not sing, dances or plays, or is a phenomenon in charades, or writes charming impromptus, or talks like the last book, or can play at any known game from loto to chess, or knows all the gossip of the last six hours; and where everybody chats and laughs, and sends everybody else comfortably home in the best of humors just about the time that the great people are expecting the coiffeur to arrive.”

Thus there is a stir in the Pyrenees the year around.  In the winter, at Pau; in summer, at the twenty cures and centres among the mountains.  The proprietor of a winter hotel here will own also his summer hostelry at Bigorre or Cauterets.  In the summer, it is the French and Spanish to whom he caters, for they have so far been the ones most appreciative both of the springs and the scenery of these mountains.  And so, with the rise and dip of the seasons, the European element waxes as the English wanes, in a kind of solstitial see-saw.  And the smiling landlord stands upon the pivot.