From the higher range of the Pyrenees, which forms as it were an immense barrier between France and Spain, run a multitude of lateral valleys, each enclosing within its bosom its streams, its villages, and its plains, possessing its own peculiar race of inhabitants, its own usages and superstitions, and often having little communication with any world beyond its boundary of mountains. One of the sweetest and (until late years) one of the least frequented of these valleys, is the Valley d'Ossau, which leads apparently in a direct line to the foot of the Pic du Midi de Pau. I had often stood in the park, and looked up the long vista of hills before me, fancying a thousand things in the blue indistinctness of distance, and lending it as many charms as imagination can bestow on uncertainty; a longing took possession of me, to approach myself nearer to these airy hills whose fairy brightness haunted me: and I was never satisfied till we were on our way to the Eaux Bonnes. Of this little watering place, lying in the deepest recesses of the mountains, report had told such tales, that I got out of patience with my own fancy for believing them. You stupid fool, said I, to Imagination, you are only getting up a disappointment for yourself and me; methinks experience ought to have made you wise by this time; witness all the unpleasant scrapes into which you have plunged me. Just as I was reasoning thus with Fancy, came by a blind man, led by a dog; the sturdy cur would come into our court-yard, for some little affair of his own, and kept tugging and pulling at the rope which tied him, till the blind man, who felt he was going wrong, but did not know by what means to set him right, was fain to comply and let him have his own way. So I gave up the matter too, and we ordered horses for the Eaux Bonnes, for it was impossible for the blind man's dog to tug him into our court-yard one bit more violently than my fancy tugged me into the mountains. And hereby I leave and bequeath the similitude between a blind man and his dog, and any man and his fancy, to any person who may be disposed to profit by the same; giving up all right, title, and claim whatever; upon the said similitude or simile, and declaring and avowing that I will have nothing more to do with it. Always provided, nevertheless, and be it hereby understood and agreed, that these presents be no further considered as gift, bequest, donation, or legacy, than as far as in me lies to give, bequeath, or devise, the similitude or simile aforesaid, inasmuch as it may have been uninvented, unpossessed, and unappropriated, by any other person or persons whatsoever, otherwise, this item to be null, void, and of no effect, anything hereinbefore said to the contrary notwithstanding.