{ 331}Nothing can convey the idea of this light, so youthful, timid and smiling, which glitters like the bluish wings of a dragon-fly that is pursued and is taken captive in a net of fog. Beneath, the boiling water is engulfed in a narrow conduit and leaps like a mill-race. The column of foam, thirty feet high, falls with a furious din, and its glaucous waves, heaped together in the deep ravine, dash against each other and are broken upon a line of fallen rocks. Other enormous rocks, debris of the same mountain, hang above the road, their squared heads crowned with brambles for hair; ranged in impregnable line, they seem to watch the torments of the Gave, which their brothers hold beneath themselves crushed and subdued.
We turn a second bridge and enter the plain of Gèdres, verdant and cultivated, where the hay is in cocks; they are harvesting; our horses walk between two hedges of hazel; we go along by orchards; but the mountain is ever near; the guide shows us a rock three times the height of a man, which, two years ago, rolled down and demolished a house. { 332}We encounter several singular caravans: a band of young priests in black hats, black gloves, black cassocks tucked up, black stockings, very apparent, novices in horsemanship who bound at every step, like the Gave; a big, jolly round man, in a sedan-chair, his hands crossed over his belly, who looks on us with a paternal air, and reads his newspaper; three ladies of sufficiently ripe age, very slender, very lean, very stiff, who, for dignity's sake, set their beasts on a trot as we draw near them. The cicisbeo is a bony cartilaginous gentleman, fixed perpendicularly on his saddle like a telegraph-pole. We hear a harsh clucking, as of a choked hen, and we recognize the English tongue.
As for the French nation, it is but poorly represented at Gèdres. First appears a long, mouldy custom-house officer, who indorses the permission to pass of the horses; with his once green coat the poor man had the air of having sojourned a week in the river. No sooner has he let us go, than a blackguard band, boys and girls, pounces upon us; some stretch out their hands, others wish to sell stones to us; they motion to the guide to stop; they claim the travellers; two or three hold the bridle of each horse, and all cry in chorus: "The grotto! the grotto!" There is nothing for it but to resign ourselves and see the grotto.{ 333}