Along with the wines of the Midi may well be coupled the olives. For oil those of the Bouches-du-Rhône are the best. They bring the highest prices in the foreign market, but along the easterly slopes of the Pyrenees, in Roussillon, in the Aude, and in Hérault and Gard they run a close second. The olives of France are not the fat, plump, "queen" olives, sold usually in little glass jars, but a much smaller, greener, less meaty variety, but richer in oil and nutriment. The olive trees grow in long ranks and files, amid the vines or even cereals, very much trimmed (in goblet shape, so that the ripening sun may reach the inner branches) and are of small size. Their pale green, shimmering foliage holds the year round, but demands a warm sunny climate. The olive trees of the Midi of France--as far west as the Comté de Foix in the Pyrenees, and as far north as Montelimar on the Rhône--are quite the most frequently noted characteristic of the landscape. The olive will not grow, however, above an altitude of four hundred metres. The foregoing pages outline in brief the chief characteristics of the present day aspect of the old Pyrenean French provinces of which Béarn and Basse-Navarre, with the Comté de Foix were the heart and soul. The topographical aspect of the Pyrenees, their history, and as full a description of their inhabitants as need be given will be found in a section dedicated thereto. For the rest, the romantic stories of kings and counts, and of lords and ladies, and their feudal fortresses and Renaissance châteaux, with a mention of such structures of interest as naturally come within nearby vision will be found duly recorded further on. CHAPTER II FEUDAL FRANCE--ITS PEOPLE AND ITS CHÂTEAUX It was not the Revolution alone that brought about a division of landed property in France. The Crusades, particularly that of Saint Bernard, accomplished the same thing, though perhaps to a lesser extent. The seigneurs were impoverished already by excesses of all kinds, and they sold parts of their lands to any who would buy, and on almost any terms. Sometimes it was to a neighbouring, less powerful, seigneur; sometimes to a rich bourgeois--literally a town-dweller, not simply one vulgarly rich--or even to an ecclesiastic; and sometimes to that vague entity known as "_le peuple_." The peasant proprietor was a factor in land control before the Revolution; the mere recollection of the fact that Louis-le-Hutin enfranchised the serfs demonstrates this.