When after breakfast we looked out of our window, we perceived on the opposite side of the way a grim old castle, with little grated windows sunk deep into its walls, like the eyes in a consumptive face. And well, indeed, should that old building hide its eyes from all creation, for did not its walls give shelter to the guilty trio who planned within them the devilish scheme of the massacre of St. Bartholomew,--the Duke of Alva, Catherine de' Medici, and her miserable offspring, Charles IX.? A walk about Bayonne brings to notice of course a great amount of fortification, especially the citadel of Vauban, where Marshal Soult and the Duke of Wellington fought very hard and sacrificed a great number of the soldiers of their respective countries. Proceeding in another direction outside the town, the tourist will come to a cemetery where lie forgotten, mouldering in the dust of a foreign land, the remains of the officers of the British guards who fell during the fruitless siege of Bayonne. Down in a dim dell, amongst old trees whispering a requiem in the breeze of falling night, we stood over those solitary graves, near which there was no sign of life, and where the brambles of the wilderness did their utmost to impede the tributary footsteps of the two English pilgrims to this forgotten shrine of their brave countrymen, on which the last beams of sunset threw what seemed in imagination a bloody light. On a fine southern morning, we climbed on to the top of a crazy diligence, swinging in a very top-heavy and uncomfortable manner over some very high wheels. The vehicle swayed to and fro in such a way that the last carriage of an express train on the narrow gauge would appear immovable compared with it. The _banquette_, with its hood, in which we were travelling for pleasure, seemed quite overburdened with politeness, and bowed in the most humble manner to everybody and everything it met. We were now on our way to Biarritz, a place we reached after an hour's drive in which there is nothing very remarkable to attract the traveller's attention.