A tour through the Pyrenees . CHAPTER III. EA UX I THOUGHT that here I should find the coun-try ; a village like a hundred others, with longroofs of thatch or tiles, with crannied walls andshaky doors, and in the courts a pell-mell of cartswith fagots, and tools, and domestic animals, inshort, the whole picturesque and charming uncon-straint of country life. I find a Paris street andthe promenades of the Bois de Boulogne. Never was country less countrified: you skirt arow of houses drawn up in line, like a row of soldierswhen carrying arms, all pierced regularly with regu-lar windows
A tour through the Pyrenees . CHAPTER III. EA UX I THOUGHT that here I should find the coun-try ; a village like a hundred others, with longroofs of thatch or tiles, with crannied walls andshaky doors, and in the courts a pell-mell of cartswith fagots, and tools, and domestic animals, inshort, the whole picturesque and charming uncon-straint of country life. I find a Paris street andthe promenades of the Bois de Boulogne. Never was country less countrified: you skirt arow of houses drawn up in line, like a row of soldierswhen carrying arms, all pierced regularly with regu-lar windows, decked with signs and posters, bor-dered by a side-walk, and having the disagreeablydecent aspect oihotelsgarnis. These uniform build-ings, mathematical lines, this disciplined and formalarchitecture make a laughable contrast with the THE VALLEY OE OSSAU. Book II. green ridges that flank them. It seems grotesquethat a httle warm water should have imported into. these mountain hollows civilization and the singular village tries every year to extend it-self, and with great difficulty, so straitened and sti-fled is it in its ravine ; they break the rock, theyopen trenches on the declivity, they suspend housesover the torrent, they stick others, as it were, to theside of the mountain, they pile up their chimneyseven to the roots of the beech-trees ; thus they con-struct behind the principal street a melancholy lane Chap. III. EAUX BONNES. 119 which dips down or raises itself as it can, muddy,steep, half filled with temporary stalls and woodenwine-shops, lodging-places of artisans and guides;at last it drops down to the Gave, into a nookdecked out with drying linen, which is washed inthe same place with the hogs. / /J////
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