"I write this in the village where my father was born and today has been one of the most delightful days of my life. I have invited my old friend Garnier (a dear friend and the most delightful of companions) to travel with me. We left Paris yesterday morning and slept at Toulouse last night. We left there this morning before dawn and saw the sun rise over the Pyrenees on our way to Salies du Salat, a most picturesque and dirty village at the foot of the beautiful mountains. I inquired at the station if any Saint-Gaudens lived there. 'Yes, opposite the mairie.' We walked up a narrow Spanish-looking street and there was a little shoe-store and on it the sign 'Saint-Gaudens.' I woke my cousin up. His is the very house where father passed his childhood. We three walked over the town up to the cradle of the 'Comminges' just back of father's house, and we went around on the sward and on the old moat where the children now play and where his father and my father played when children. I cannot describe to you how I was moved by it all. "After a characteristic déjeuner with the cousin, a typical French peasant, and his typical wife, we hired a wagon with two horses and drove three hours into the mountains through a wonderfully beautiful country, very Spanish in character, to this delightful village. Here father was born, and baptized in the little church right at hand from where I write. There are delightful fountains at every corner and an air of thrift, order, and cleanliness that you cannot imagine. We are in a nice hotel, a homelike place, and tomorrow, after seeing Market Day, we walk to Saint-Gaudens, about 12 miles from here. It is a most romantic spot; all the country and the people here have a good deal of the Spanish dignity. We are 30 miles from the frontier of Spain. I must stop now because my third cousin (his grandfather and mine were brothers) is coming. He is the postman of the village and the surrounding country, a handsome young fellow who carries the mail around on horseback, and who between times makes shoes." Leaving this out-of-the-way corner of Gascony, under the shadow of the Pyrenees, Saint-Gaudens and Garnier traveled by Toulouse to Marseilles. From this port the sculptor had sailed twenty-seven or eight years before, when he first went to study in Rome. Now, with his old friend, he again climbed up to where the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde overlooks the Mediterranean, and was amused to remember the three days he had spent upon that hill-top, with little to eat but figs and chocolate, while awaiting the departure of his ship for Italy.