We canvass the situation and idly look out on the square before us.  The low houses edging it are of stone, faced with a whity-grey, and have a sleepy, lack-lustre air about them, even under the sun’s rays.  Women are grouped around the old marble fountain near the centre,—­one drawing water, several washing and beating white linen.  There are barnyard fowls in plenty, bobbing their preoccupied heads as they search among the cobbles.  In the foreground stands the temporarily dismantled breack, begirt with awed urchins and venerable Common Councilmen.  Behind all rise the mountains.  There is a pleasing effect of unsophisticated dullness about it all, that seems queerly out of place in a rising railroad terminus.

But a bright-faced, rosy little girl bustles in presently and proceeds to set the table.  She has an unconscious air of confidence in the doings of the chef below,—­this fact cheers; and the cloth is indubitably clean,—­this also cheers.  We take heart.  Napkins and plates appear, white as the cloth; knives, forks, glasses, rapidly follow, seats are placed, we gather around, and the old lady herself comes triumphantly in, with a huge, shapely omelet, silky and hot,—­and lo, our three cheers swell into a tiger!

Well,—­we shall always recall the zest of that lunch.  It was perfection.  The cuisine of the Gassion was more refined but not more whole-souled.  The trout vie with the omelet; the mutton outdoes the trout.  Course after course comes up as by magic from that dark kitchen,—­petits pois, a toothsome filet, mushrooms, pickled goose, tartlets, cheese, fruit,—­and each a fresh revelation of a Pyrenean chef’s capabilities.  Our doubtings vanish with the dejeuner, and we exchange solemn vows never hereafter to prejudge a Gascon boniface by his inn.

II.

Our road forth from Laruns brings us soon to the base of the blockading mountain, the Gourzy.  There it divides, and taking the right-hand branch, the breack strikes at once into the narrow ascending valley which leads southeast to Eaux Chaudes.  Below, a fussy torrent splashes impetuously to meet the incomers.  The driver has pointed out to me an older and now disused wagon-way, short and steep, over the hill at the right; it is tempting for pedestrianizing, and while the breack is pulled slowly around its foot by a broad, easy road, I climb by it for some twenty minutes, gain the crest of the ridge, and passing through a windy, rock-walled cut, come out on the other curve of the valley.  Here the scene has become wholly mountainous.  Grass and box cling to all the slopes; pines and spruces shoot upward wherever they have won footholds.  They are not great peaks that we see yet, nor anything above the snow level; but the mountains in view, with their faces of rock, their massive flanks of green, are imposing notwithstanding.  Far below, the breack has just come in sight, its forward route meeting mine some distance ahead.