The next morning, in the sunlight, the aspect of the city is charming. Great alleys of old trees cross it in every direction. Little gardens bloom upon the terraces. The Adour rolls along by the houses. Two streets are islands connected with { 414}the highway by bridges laden with oleanders, and their green windows are mirrored in the clear wave. Streamlets of limpid water run from all the open places and all the streets; they cross, dive under ground, reappear, and the city is filled with their murmurs, their coolness, and their gayety. A little girl, seated upon a slab of slate, bathes her feet in the current; the cold water reddens them, and the poor little thing tucks up her worn gown with great care, for fear of wetting it. A woman on her knees is washing linen at her door; another bends over and draws water for her saucepan. The two black and shining trenches hedge in the white road, like two bands of jet. In the inner court or in the vestibule of each house the assembled women sew and spin, some on the steps of the stairway, others at the feet of a ville; they are in the shade, but on the crest of the wall the beautiful green leaves are traversed by a ray of sunlight.
In the neighboring place, some men ranged in two lines were threshing wheat with long poles and heaping up masses of golden grain. Under its borrowed luxury the city preserves some rustic customs; but the rich light blends the contrasts, and the threshing of the wheat has the splendor of a ball. Further on are some buildings where the stream works the marbles. Slabs, blocks, piles of chips, shapeless material, fill the court for a length { 415}of three hundred paces, among clusters of rosebushes, flowery borders, statues, and kiosks. In the workshops, heavy gearings, troughs of muddy water, rusty saws, huge wheels--these are the workmen. In the storerooms, columns, capitals of an admirable polish, white chimney-pieces bordered with leaves in relief, carved vases, sculptured basins, trinkets of agate--that is the work. The quarries of the Pyrenees have, all of them, given a specimen to panel the walls; it is a library of marbles. There are white ones like alabaster, rosy like living flesh, brown speckled like a guinea fowl's breast--the Griotte is of a blood-red. The black Baudéan, veined with white threads, emits a greenish reflection. The Ronce de Bise furrows its fawn-colored dress with dark bands. The grayish Sarrancolin has a peculiar glitter, is marked all over with scales, striped with pale tints, and stained with a broad blood-red spot. Nature is the greatest of painters; her infiltrations and subterranean fires could alone have invented this profusion of shades and patterns: it needed the audacious originality of chance and the slow toil of the mineral forces, to turn lines so capricious and assort tints so complex.