In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the grey, joined me, rubbing his hands. "This was the place to stop at," he said. "No use of going further. The mountains beyond were just like the mountains here; but the people here were far more unsophisticated than the people beyond. They hav'nt learned to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And, besides, you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells you would only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay, would be no novelty; while, as for price--pooh! you will get a capital dinner here for what they would charge you for speaking to the waiter there." And so it proved. Pending, the preparation of this dinner, however, I strolled about Laruns. It is a drearily-poor place, with the single recommendation of being built of stone, which can be had all round for the carrying. The arrangement of turning the ground-floor into a stable is universal in the houses of any size, and as these stables also serve for pig-styes, sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day is made to come round as seldom as possible, it may be imagined that the town of Laruns is a highly scented one. Through some of the streets, brooks of sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble fulling mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced are hung to dry from window to window, and roof to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old distaff-plying women, lounging _duaniers_, and no end of geese standing half asleep on one foot, until a headlong charge of pigs being driven afield, or driven home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears the way in a moment. The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's anticipations. Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout of the genuine mountain-stream breed--the skin gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed by a roasted _jigot_ of mutton, flavoured as only mutton can be flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic herbage of the high hills--the whole finished off with a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the neat-handed Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and laughed, and was kept in one perpetual blush by M. Martin all through dinner-time. At length, through all this giggling, a plate was broken. "There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin. "You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne, pertly. "Any child knows that to break a plate is good luck: it is to smash a dish which brings bad luck." "They have all sorts of omens here in the hills," said my companion. "If a hare cross the path, it is a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the milking-pail, it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying themselves bewitched----" "No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so long as we keep a sprig of _vervene_ over the fire, we know very well that there's not a _sorciere_ in all the Pyrenees can harm us." I thought of the old couplet-- "Sprigs of vervain, and of dill, Which hinder witches of their will."