surf; the table-d'hôte is slimly attended; the liverymen confidentially
assure us, as an inducement for drives, that their prices are now
crouching low, for a prodigious leap to follow.

But everything has a pleasing air of anticipation. Since we are to be
out of the season at all, we are glad we are in advance of it. This is
the youth of the summer, not its old age. People are looking forward;
events are approaching, instead of receding; the coming months seem big
with indefinite promise of benefit and pleasure.

We quickly become imbued with the general hopefulness of the place.
Every one has the look of one making ready. You hear, all day long, when
far enough from the waves, a vague, joyous hum of bustle pervading the
town. The enterprising click of hammer or trowel falls constantly on the
ear. The masons are at work upon the new villas, and our hotel is
completing a fine addition for a café; the stores along the busy little
main street are being put in order, the windows alluringly stocked, and
bright awnings unrolled above them, fenders from the summer's heat. The
hotels are fairly awake. Everything is rejoicing that the
semi-hibernation is over.

[Illustration: RELIEF MAP OF THE CENTRAL PYRENEES]

Biarritz, the town, is as delightful, if not as picturesque, as we had
hoped. Perhaps it is too modern to be picturesque. In this part of the
world at least, one rather requires the picturesque to be allied with
the old. The nucleus of Biarritz is old, but that is out of sight in the
modern overgrowth; Biarritz, as it is, is of this half century.

This is not, on the whole, to be regretted. Biarritz has no history, no