How instantly the type of the people changes as we cross the border! What superb-looking women gaze at one over the line of this frontier! How deep and magnificent are their great black eyes! Yonder is a Spanish blonde with golden hair and brown eyes; what a subject for a painter, in that picturesque dress and framed by that window, draped in wisteria in full bloom! The little soldier guarding here is funny to look at,--one cannot imagine his meeting fire and ball. Were our late opponents such boys? If so, we committed rank murder. His features are regular and he has fine eyes, but he certainly does not weigh one hundred and twenty pounds and is not five feet tall. However, his conceit is colossal, and he struts up and down with all the dignity of a Don Carlos, paying no attention to me until I happen to dismount near him and he gasps at my six feet and over. After a little, he attempts conversation, and asks if I am English. "No." And I hesitate to add "American," and when I do his eyes look doubtfully into mine until I smile and offer him my hand, which he smilingly accepts, and two francs seal our acquaintance; rather cheaper that than the unnecessary twenty million dollars we paid his country for a possession very doubtful in profit to us, some think, but----. We are off over the road into Spain and at once note the difference in its quality, bumpy and dusty and dirty, all the way, and I think on the whole that the people would rather like a break-down on our part. However, we roll into the modern town of San Sebastian and after a pause of some time turn back to France. San Sebastian has no interest for the traveller unless there is a bull fight on at its fine amphitheatre, but there is none now and this is not the season here, so we coast back to the protection of the French republic, pausing an instant at the frontier to receive the seven francs. The little soldier then shows me a wife and baby which he knows is more than I can do. So he smiles at me in happy content and would not think of changing places--that is if he had to leave wife and baby. At all events there is no envy in his glance as my red car speeds off towards France. CHAPTER XI DEPARTURES FOR THE NORTH--CRAZY CHICKENS--GRAND ROADS--DAX--RIDES THROUGH THE FORESTS--FRENCH SCENERY AND PEOPLE--MARMANDE--"AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF FRANCE" AND ITS WORK To-day we start for the heart of France. It is misty as we leave the hotel at Biarritz, but mist generally portends a fine day later on.