The next day by noon--still raining--I was at Pau; and having bidden adieu to M. Martin, started for Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great centre of Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old County of Bigorre, which was given up to England as portion of the ransom of King John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with a gallant train, the Black Prince, to visit the Count of Argmanac--the celebrated Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix--leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be present at the solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes now consist of the scores of small cross-country diligences, which start in every direction from it as a common centre. The main feature of the town is a huge square, nine-tenths of the houses being glaring white-washed hotels, with _messageries_ on the groundfloors. Diligences by the score lie scattered around; and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses who draw them go stalking solemnly across the square beneath the stunted lime-trees. There is an adult population of conductors, with silver ear-rings, and their hands in their pockets, always lounging about; and a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who swarm out upon you, and take your legs by storm. Tarbes is the best place--excepting, perhaps, Arles--for getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you were a centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons, they would all be shining like mirrors in a trice. How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless, indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes mutually, and keep continually paying each other. Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant; and a mountain of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage as freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not much under four hours; and I repaired--it was dusk, and, of course, raining--to the Hotel de France--one of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places. A buxom lass opened the wicket in the Porte Cochere. "I can have a room?" "Oh, plenty!" And we stepped into the open court-yard. The great hotel rose on two sides, and a small _corps de logis_ on the two others. "Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key." And off she tripped. The key! Was the house shut up? Even so. I was to have a place as big as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had been gone a fortnight. Our footsteps echoed like Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign edition, uncarpeted and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange." I was ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms--of a decidedly grander nature than I ever occupied before, or ever occupied since. "The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom. Monsieur may choose whatever room he pleases; and the _table-d'hôte_ bell rings at six."