yourself with water at dinner.” Of water he had a holy horror. “Drink what good wine you wish and let water alone.” As I had the luxury of a private physician, a friend from Louisiana suggested joining my party with his two young daughters. My Irish doctor was the most sensitive of men. One day I found he could eat no breakfast. I sympathized with him and asked him the cause. He replied, “My dear boy, the habits of your American women. I came down to the breakfast room this morning and there I found the oldest of the Judge’s daughters with her back hair down and the younger one combing it. This settled me.” I assured him this was not the national custom with American women. The young woman was simply trying to captivate him by her lovely, long, flowing tresses. The doctor was a character. On another occasion a Frenchman lighted a cigar in our railway compartment. The Doctor detested cigar smoke, and as there was a large sign in the car, in French, forbidding smoking, he touched the Frenchman and pointed to the sign. The Frenchman simply smiled blandly. The train stopping, the conductor opened our door, when the Frenchman quietly slipped two francs into his hands, saying in French, “Of course I can smoke here, that sign is obsolete, is it not?” The conductor replied, “Oh, yes,” and on we went. My Irishman got up and commenced taking his coat off. “What are you going to do?” exclaimed the Frenchman. “Why, throw you out of that window if you do not at once throw that cigar away.” There was no mistaking the Doctor’s meaning, so the cigar went out and the Frenchman staid in.
My traveling Louisiana friend had a charming way of suggesting each morning, as we paid our hotel bills, that we should toss up a five-franc piece and decide, by heads and tails, who was to pay the bill. I did this once or twice, when I found, as he always won and I lost, it was a losing business for me; but on another occasion was forced into the plan. To ascend the mountain at Lugano, three wretched beasts were brought us by the Italian boys to mount for the ascent. The Judge insisted on tossing up a five-franc piece for choice of animals. I was compelled to give in and accede to his suggestion, and by great good luck won first choice. My friend, the Judge, forbade the Doctor advising me as to the animal I should take, as he knew him to be a good judge of horses. There was a feeble, worthless horse that literally could carry no one; his back all raw; a vicious mule who bit and kicked, and a stone blind pony that would not go. With my experience of mules in the South, knowing what sure-footed creatures they were, I chose the mule, had him blindfolded, mounted him, and off I went. After waiting an hour on the summit, the Judge appeared, coat and hat gone, and swearing terribly that he would prosecute the canton for his treatment, and horsewhip the Italian boys. He had let the horse go, and footed it. I soon slipped away on my mule, letting the irate Louisianian and the Irishman settle it, on top of the mountain, how they were to have satisfaction out of the government for permitting such beasts to be imposed upon travelers. I was two-thirds down the mountain when I looked behind me and heard the most terrible shouts, and saw the Irishman clinging to the pony, over whom he had lost all control, and the Judge hanging on by the pony’s tail, all coming down at a terrific pace. The pony was at first gentle, but it appears would not go beyond a walk. The Judge hung on to his tail to guide himself down the mountain, and finding he would not go fast enough to suit them, he assured the Irishman he would fix him, and immediately stuck his penknife into the beast’s tail. “Fix him,” he did, for the creature was so terrified he dashed off at a break-neck pace, and the Judge, not wishing to be left alone on the mountain, had to hang on by the tail and be dragged along at lightning speed. These beasts alone knew the way down; once parted from them, they were lost, for the Italian boys who had furnished them had long since fled from the Judge’s wrath. The Judge and the Doctor forbade my paying the hotel bill, and I had to do it surreptitiously.
My doctor (who was a victim to rheumatism) called my attention to the fact that on the summit of every Alpine pass we crossed, after all other vegetation ceased, the aconite plant grew, showing nature had provided there a remedy for the disease which the severity of the climate developed in man. My Irish friend, living far from the sea, had a passion for all fish but pike, which he detested, and which was daily served to us wherever we went; finally, reaching Berlin, he insisted on having sea fish. It was promised us, but, lo and behold! when dinner was served, in came the pike, with the apology that no other fish could then be had in the city. After dinner we went to the opera, and there, in the ballet (superbly done as it was), were at least one hundred pike dancing on the stage, which so upset my friend that he seized his hat in a rage and left the house.
WINTER IN PAU.
CHAPTER VI.
Winter in Pau—I Hire a Perfect Villa for $800 a year—Luxury at Small Cost—I Learn How to Give Dinners—Fraternizing with the Bordeaux Wine Merchants—The Judge’s Wild Scheme—I Get Him up a Dinner—General Bosquet—The Pau Hunt—The Frenchmen Wear Beautiful Pink Coats but their Horses Wont Jump—Only the General Took the Ditch.
After you have been a little while in Europe you are seized with a desire to have a house of your own, to enjoy home comforts. Your loss of individuality comes over you. In Paris you feel particularly lost, and as this feeling increased on me I resolved to go to Pau, take a house, and winter there. The Duchess of Hamilton had abandoned the idea of passing the winter in Pau, so that many lovely residences were seeking tenants. For eight hundred dollars a year I hired a beautiful villa, looking on the Pyrénées, directly opposite the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, with lovely grounds filled with camelia bushes, and I then felt that I had all a man could desire—a perfect home made to one’s hand, a climate where the wind never blows hard enough, even in winter, to stir a leaf on the trees, the best cooks in the world, and where people appeared to live but to eat well and sleep. A country of beautiful women; the peasantry a mixture of Spanish and French blood; the climate so soft and genial as to take away all harshness or roughness from their faces—rich Titian-like women, with fine coloring and superb figures—what more could man desire? I was, I may say, a pioneer American there.
A member of a distinguished New York family, who had been our Secretary of Legation at Madrid, had preceded me; he had a lovely English wife, was the master of the hounds, and gave me a cordial reception. I lived there two winters, with a luxury I have never since enjoyed, and literally for nothing, comparing one’s expenses there to living in New York. The desire to entertain took possession of me and I gratified it; such dinners and such wines! I ran down to Bordeaux, made friends with all the wine fraternity there, tasted and criticised, and wormed myself into the good graces of the owners of those enormous Bordeaux caves, learned there for the first time what claret was, and how impossible it was to drink out of Bordeaux, what a Bordeaux connoisseur would call a perfect wine. There I learned how to give dinners; to esteem and value the Coq de Bruyère of the Pyrénées and the Pie de Mars (squab Magpie).
Pau was filled with sick English people. I was one of the few sound men physically in the place. I dashed into society with a vim. My Louisiana friend, the Judge, followed me there, and I had my hands full in establishing him socially. Shrewd, and immensely clever, he came to me one day and said, “My friend, I am going to make a name for myself in this place; wait and you will see.” Some little distance from Pau, there was a large tract of worthless land, utterly valueless, called Les Landes. Shepherds on stilts tended a few sheep on it. The judge at once had an interview with the Prêfet of the Basses Pyrénées (an officer similar to the governor of one of our States), and assured him of the feasibility of reclaiming all this land and making fine cotton fields of it. This scheme, wonderful to relate, was seized upon with avidity by the Prêfet, and my friend, the Judge, was asked to submit his views. This was all he wanted. Of course he never perfected his plans for such work. The Prêfet, however, was at once his friend and admirer, and he was made the distinguished and sought-after stranger of that winter. He then came to me to get up a dinner for him, to be given to his newly acquired friend, which
