"Warsaw's waste of ruin," they will have counted a week in a railway
compartment. Constantinople and Athens lie two thousand miles away,
Naples and Granada nearly as far; all sought, even in summer, though
quivering in the tropics' livid heat. We came round to our Pyrenees: it
needs from Paris but nine hours to Bordeaux, with coigns of vantage
between; in four hours from Bordeaux, you are by the waters of the Bay
of Biscay, or in six, in the centre of the Pyrenees chain.


IV.

And so _La Champagne_ leaves its long wake across the Atlantic, and we
journey down from Paris to the little city of the Maid of Orleans;
wander to Tours, the approximate scene of the great Saracenic defeat;
drive along the quays of Bordeaux, and visit its vineyards and finally
come on, in the luxurious cars of the _Midi_ line, to the shores of
Cantabria and the popular watering-place of Biarritz.




CHAPTER II.

A BISCAYAN BEACH.


Clearly we are in advance of the summer season at Biarritz. It is the
latter part of June. The air is soft and warm, the billows lap the shore
enticingly. But fashion has not yet transferred its court; the van of
the column only has arrived. A few adventurous bathers test the cool