But I ha'e ma doots; Béarnais peasants are given to romancing. However, if my father would allow me to stay a night or two at Bielle with Mr. Hadow, I would be able to see them, if they really exist, and to draw, plan and measure them. All is well with us. Willy's soul is wrapped up in two little green frogs kept in a bottle and fed with a fly apiece about once a week. Sissy has taken a violent fancy for novels. Mamma dotes on babies. Papa, according to his own accourt, smokes twenty-six cigars in two days, but we suspect he underrates the number consumed. Napsy, that he rides, is so intelligent a horse that the moment my father puts his hand into his pocket for the tinder-box, he instinctively halts till the cigar has been lighted.
"I have opened a second tumulus on the Landes, north of Pau. We came on a layer of cobblestones, and beneath them a black vase, shallow, of graceful form, but another, very large and friable of red ware, probably sun-baked, as it went to pieces when handled, also two gritstone hones with a furrow down the middle. No weapons of any sort. I do not think any bones, but then, had there been these, the ferns and heather that covered the mound would have consumed them in their greed after lime. Indeed we found that these roots had penetrated far, and had formed about them incrustations of iron rust, so as to constitute tubes. The workmen had strange legends concerning these tumuli."
The flowers about Pau were profuse and beautiful. At that time a scarlet anemone was abundant in the vineyards, and every market day roots were for sale in great numbers. When last I was at Pau, this anemone had disappeared except in gardens, so severely had it been ravaged. The saxifraga pyramidalis was like a fountain throwing up a spike of white flower resembling spray. We brought back young plants to England, but they never bloomed as they did in the south of France. When the mother plant has flowered it dies, but it throws out young suckers about the roots. We tried it in beds, but it did not bloom; in the conservatory it bloomed, but feebly. We tried the gentians, and endeavoured to make them thrive on our downs, but with equal lack of success.
In the summer we took the Château d'Areit on the mountainside opposite to Argelez, commanding a glorious view.
I there made friends with the curé of the little village, a good,
