oads we tried, each three separate times, but climb the
machine would not. No one knew why, the writer least of all, and he
had been _chauffeur_ and driver of that automobile for many long
months, and had never found a hill, great or small, that it would not
climb. Automobiles are capricious things, like women, and sometimes
they will and sometimes they will not. At last, after the natives had
had sufficient amusement, and had told us that they had seen many an
automobile party go without lunch because they could not get up that
steep little kilometre, we found a sort of back-door entrance which
looked easy, and we went up like the proverbial bird. It was not the
main road into town, and it took some finding. The writer hopes that
others who pass this way will be as successful. Montrejeau, with its
three steep streets, its excellent hotel (when you finally got in
touch with it), its old-world market-house, and its trim little
cafe-bordered square, will be long remembered.

We debated long as to whether we should drop down to Luchon, and come
around by Bagnerres-de-Bigorre or not, but since they were likely to
be full of "five-o'-clockers" at this season we thought the better of
it, and left them entirely out of our itinerary. When one wants it he
can get the same sort of conventionality at Ermenonville, and need
not go so far afield to find it.

We arrived at Tarbes, at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, late on Sunday
afternoon. The name of the hotel augured well for good cheer, and on
the whole we found it satisfactory enough. One of its most appealing
features is the fact that the kitchens and the garage were once a
convent. It has undergone a considerable change since then, but it
lent a sort of glamour to things to know that you were stabling your
automobile in such a place.

Tarbes is a great busy, overgrown, unlovely big town, which flounders
under the questionable dignities of being a station of an army corps
and a prefecture: Bureaucracy and Officialdom are writ large all over
everything, and a poor mortal without a handle to his name, or a
ribbon in his buttonhole, is looked upon as a sort of outcast when he
enters a cafe, and accordingly he waits a long time to be served.

We got out of Tarbes at a _tres bonne heure_ the next morning without
a regret, headed for Pau. All of us had always had an affection for
Pau, because, in a way, we admired old Henri Quatre, even his
rascality.

We found Pau, too, a great, o