The third variety walks in troops and makes its excursions by families. You see from afar a great { 435}peaceable cavalcade; father, mother, two daughters, two tall cousins, one or two friends and sometimes donkeys for the little boys.
They beat the donkeys, which are restive; they advise the fiery youths to be prudent; a glance retains the young ladies about the green veil of the mother. The distinctive traits of this variety are the green veil, the bourgeois spirit, the love of siestas and meals on the grass; an unfailing sign is the taste for little social games. This variety is rare at Eaux-Bonnes, more common at Bagnères de Bigorre and at Bagnères de Luchon. It is remarkable for its prudence, its culinary instincts, its economical habits. The individuals making the excursion stop at a spot selected the day before; they unload pâtés and bottles.
If they have brought nothing, they go and knock at the nearest hut for milk; they are astonished at having to pay three sous a glass for it: they find that it strongly resembles goat's milk, and they say to each other, after they have drunken, that the wooden spoon was not over-clean. They { 436}look curiously at the dark stable, half underground, where the cows ruminate on beds of heather; after which, the great fat men seat themselves or lie down. The artist of the family draws out his album and copies a bridge, a mill, and other album views. The young girls run and laugh, and let themselves drop out of breath upon the grass; the young men run after them. This variety, indigenous in the great cities, in Paris above all, wishes to revive among the Pyrenees the pleasure parties of Meudon or Montmorency.
Fourth kind: dining tourists. At Louvie, a family from Carcassonne, father, mother, son, daughter and servant, alighted from the interior. For the first time in their life they were undertaking a { 437}pleasure trip. The father was one of those florid bourgeois, pot-bellied, important, dogmatic, well-clad in fine cloth, carefully preserved, who educate their cooks, arrange their house _en bonbonnière_, and establish themselves in their comfort, like an oyster in its shell. They entered stupefied into a dark dining-room, where the half-empty bottles strayed among the cooling dishes. The cloth was soiled, the napkins of a doubtful white. The father, indignant, asked for a cup of tea, and began walking up and down with a tragic air. The rest looked at each other mournfully and sat down. The dishes came helter-skelter, all of them failures. Our Carcassonne friends helped themselves, turned the meat over on their plates, looked at it, and did not eat. They ordered tea a second time; the tea did not appear; the travellers were called for the coach, and the landlord demanded twelve francs. Without saying a word, with a gesture of concentrated horror, the head of the family paid. Then, approaching his wife, he said to her: "It was your wish, madam!" A quarter of an hour later the storm burst forth: he poured his complaint into the bosom of the conductor. He declared that the company would fail if it changed horses at such a poisoner's; he trusted that disease would soon carry off such dirty people. They told him that everybody in the country was so, and that they lived { 438}happily for eighty years. He raised his eyes to heaven, repressed his grief, and directed his thoughts toward Carcassonne.