A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further episodical visions of desert steeds, but enlivened by the fast increasing thunder of the surf, at length brought us to its foam. Winding through a succession of sand valleys, we climbed a steepish bank, sinking to our knees at every step, and from this last ridge beheld a long, gentle slope, as perfectly smooth as though the sand had been smoothed by a ruler--fining away down to the white creaming sheets of water which swept, with the loud peculiar hiss of the agitated sea, far up and down the level banks. The full force of the great heaving swells was expended in breakers, roaring half a mile from the land; and from their uttermost verge to the tangled heaps of seaweed washed high and dry upon the beach, was a vast belt of foaming water, extending away on either hand in a perfectly straight line as far as the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless expanse of water from the houseless expanse of land. The scene was very solemn. There was not even a seabird overhead--not an insect crawling or humming along the ungrateful sand. Only the grand organ of the surf made its incessant music, and the sharp thin rustle of the moving sand came fitfully upon the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat, the continually shifting sand gradually rose around me, as the waters rose round the chateau of Chatel-morant. Had I stayed there long enough, only my head would have been visible, like the head of the sphinx.
I dined that day at the hotel, _tete-à-tete_ with a young priest, who was returning to Bordeaux from a visit to his brother, one of the officers of the Preventitive Service, whose lonely barracks are almost the only human habitations which break the weary wilderness stretching from the Adour to the Gironde. One would have thought that there could be but little smuggling on such a coast; but the Duaniers are always _autorités_, and the waves of the Gulf of Gascony could not, of course, break on French ground without _autorités_ to help them. With respect to the priest, however, he had one of the finest heads and the most perfectly chiselled features I ever saw. The pale high brow--the keen bright eyes, with remarkably long eye-lashes--the tenuity of the cartilage of the nose, and the perfect delicacy of the mouth--all told of intellect in no common development; while the meek sweetness of the noble face had something in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination an aureole round that head, and you had the head of a youthful martyr, or a saint canonized for early virtues. There was devotion and aspiration in every line of the countenance--a meek, mild gentleness, beautifully in keeping with every word he uttered, and every movement he made. I was the more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not an uglier, meaner, nor, I will add, dirtier, set of worthy folks in all the world, than the priests of France. Nine times out of ten, they are big-jowled, coarse, animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements about the neck show a decided scarcity of linen, and a still greater lack of soap and water. They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures are ungainly, their motions uncouth, and--barring, of course, their scholastic and theological knowledge--I found the majority with whom I conversed stupid, illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest at Teste was the reverse of all this. With manners as polished as those of any courtly _abbé_ of the courtly old _regime_, there was a perfect atmosphere of frankness and quiet good-humour about my companion, and his conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and graceful. I do not know if my friend belonged to the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he was cut out for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy.