t to be English, advertising the castle for sale. Capitals were
sprinkled about everywhere; the painter had thought they would look
pretty, and evidently it was held out as a lure to Britishers and
Americans that Charles the Fifth had built it and lived in it. I know
Mrs. Washington Potts would love to buy it, and then go home and mention
in an absent-minded manner that she'd "acquired a royal palace in Spain
as a winter residence." Can't you hear her? But oh, poor palace! It's as
airy a mansion now as most castles in Spain, though what's left of its
walls is about fifteen feet thick. Still, the glorious view of sea and
mountains from the roof would be worth paying for, and wouldn't need
thousands of dollars' worth of restoration, like the house.

While we lingered in Fuenterrabia absorbing the atmosphere of old Spain,
the time was inconsiderate enough to run away and leave us with only a
twisted channel among sand-banks to remember it by. So we took an oddly
shaped carriage with a white tasselled awning on it and drove back to
Hendaye and our motor-car. But the day was a great success, and I
congratulated Brown, which Aunt Mary said it was silly to do, as it is
his business to think of everything for us.

Now, as you see by the date of my letter, we're at Pau, to which we came
from Biarritz in a delicious morning's run through a pearl-coloured
landscape trimmed with blue mountains. As we got into the town the
Lightning Conductor, who was driving, whisked us through a few streets,
swooped round a large square, and suddenly stopped the car on a broad
terrace with an air as though he said, "There! what do you think of
_that_?" I think I gasped. I know I wanted to by way of saluting what
must be one of the most wonderful views in the whole world.

We had stopped on a terrace not the least like a street. At one end was
an old grey chateau; then a long line of imposing buildings, almost too
graceful to be hotels, which they really were; a church sending a white,
soaring spire into the blue sky; an open, shady _place_, with a statue
of Henri Quatre; villas hotels, hotels villas in a sparkling line, with
great trees to cut it and throw a blue haze of shadow. That is one side
of the terrace. The other is an iron railing, a sudden drop into space,
and--the view. Your eyes travel across a park where even in this
mid-winter season roses are blooming and date palms are flourishing.
Then comes a hurrying river, giving life and musi