During our stay in Pau, the French General Election took place, and according to French practice was on a Sunday (14th October 1877). Everything was quiet, quieter even than it would have been at home, notwithstanding it was politically a time of great anxiety. Although there were some small crowds of people hanging about the streets on the day of election, and on the following day the newspaper shops at the time of publishing were besieged, all was quite orderly. We had it, of course, for the comfort of the old ladies, that all the Protestants were in bodily fear; and perhaps in former times there might have been some risk, for in some parts of France it was an inconvenient custom, occasionally exercised on a sumptuous scale, to burn, shoot, and otherwise destroy Protestants and other obnoxious heretics. In the present day, however, it would no doubt be considered an economic mistake to slay, or to drive away to other lands, the birds which beneficently lay, in hotels, pensions, furnished villas, shops, and other places, their heart–winning, hate–dissipating golden eggs; and instead of a display of unpleasant engines of extirpation, there is great kindliness of feeling towards Protestants, and every provision is made for alluring strangers to Pau, and detaining them there by means of cricket and golf grounds, skating–rinks, fox–hunting, lawn tennis, libraries, museums, and the like active and passive means of enjoyment. XX. _SECOND WINTER IN THE RIVIERA._ WE left Pau for Toulouse on 23d October 1877. The journey occupied upwards of eight hours, or two hours longer than the same journey from Toulouse. At every little station there is a stoppage for an apparently endless length of time, although I suppose the delay is partly attributable to the necessities of the careful system of registration of luggage. One tunnel was shored up, and we went slowly through it and over the ground before and after. When we approached Toulouse, and had to cross the rivers, the train proceeded with the utmost caution. The bridges had evidently been washed away, and what we passed over seemed either unfinished or temporary. It was here, it may be recollected, that in the year 1875 such disastrous floods took place. But whether the condition of the bridges in 1877 was attributable to this or to a more recent flooding, we could not tell. The journey, though long, was agreeable, the rivers resembling our own Scotch rivers, and the Pyrenees clear and crisp, with a slight sprinkling or dusting of snow upon them, though not enough to give them the aspect of snowy mountains. The trees were clothed in their autumn tints of yellow, brown, and red, and the sun was shining. We were accommodated with the rooms we had formerly occupied in the Hotel Sacaron—clean, tidy, but carpetless; the mosquitoes, however, were gone. A good many persons appeared in the _salle à manger_, but there was no common _table–d’hôte_ dinner. Each party dined separately at 5 francs per head.