It was from the heights above Agen--studded with the plum-trees which produce the famous _prunes d'Agen_--that I caught my first glimpse of the Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising of the light smoke from the leaf-covered town beneath, and marking the grand panorama around me--the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up the plum and fig-trees, and the earth frequently yellow with the bursting beds of huge melons and pumpkins--when, extending my gaze over the vast expanse of champagne country, watered by the winding reaches of the Garonne, I saw--shadowy as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far bright air--faintly, very faintly traced, but still visible, a blue vision of sierrated and jagged mountain peaks, stretching along the horizon from east to west, forming the central portion of the great chain of peaks running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and certainly, at least, one hundred and twenty miles distant from me as the crow flies. There they stood,--Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding--one of the great landmarks of the world; a natural boundary for ever; dividing a people from a people, a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power! Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the ancient castle of Agen. Its ruins were demolished, with those of a cathedral, at the time of the Revolution; but its memory recalls a very curious story, developing the true character of the Black Prince, and shewing that, chivalrous and daring as he was, his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the World could occasionally do uncommonly sneaking things. Thus it fell out:--In the year 1368, the Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was, of course, unpopular, and the Gascon lords appealed to the King of France, as Feudal Superior of the Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners--a lawyer and a knight--a summons to Edward, to appear and answer before the Parliament of Paris. The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at Bordeaux, told their tale, and exhibited their missives. The Black Prince heard in silence, and then, after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied: "Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed day at Paris, since the King of France sends for us; but it will be with the helmet on our head, and sixty thousand men behind us."