A Tour Through the Pyrenees Author:Hippolyte Taine Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. ON THE WAY TO LUZ. The carriage leaves Eaux-Bonnes at dawn. The sun is scarcely yet risen, and is still hidden by the mountains. Pale rays begin... more » to color the mosses on the western declivity. These mosses, bathed in dew, seem as if awakening under the first caress of the day. Rosy hues, of an inexpressible softness, rest on the summits, then steal down along the slopes. One could never have believed that these gaunt old creatures were capable of an expression so timid and so tender. The light broadens, heaven expands, the air is rilled with joy and life. A bald peak in the midst of the rest, and darker than they, stands out in an aureole of flame. All at once, between two serrate points, like a dazzling arrow, streams the first ray of the sun. Beyond Pau stretches a smiling country, golden with harvests, amongst which the Gave winds its blue folds between white and pebbly beaches. Onthe right, far away in a veil of luminous mist, the Pyrenees lift their jagged tops, and the naked points of their black rocks. Their flanks, furrowed by the torrents of winter, are deeply scored and, as it were, turned up with an iron rake. The picturesque country and the great mountains are seen to disclose themselves; the fences of the fields are of small rounded stones, in whose fissures abound waving grasses, pretty heaths, tufts of yellow sedum, and above all tiny pink geraniums, that shine in the sun like clusters of rubies. You are quite ready to seek for nymphs; we come across six in an orchard, not actually dancing, but dirty. They are eating bread and cheese, squatted on their heels, and stare at us with half-open mouth. Coarraze still preserves a tower and gateway, the remains of a castle. This castle has its legend, which Froissart recounts in a style so flowing and a...« less