-small, muscular and proud, agile
of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and
childlike in deed.

"There are the men of the Bearnais, mostly from towns of size and
circumstance--educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern
warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of
experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their
Spanish neighbors.

"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength
under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored
faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of
primitiveness--vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a
little subnormal in expression.

"Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in
a pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues,
there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes
itself, each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners,
speech, which make them easily distinguishable one from another."

It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.

If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the
impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange folk
might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on
glowing page.

[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy.]

[Illustration: The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the
Military Academy.]

But that was not the way it served him.

I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think of
those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and the
crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to the
great days of his life that began in 1914--the days when his
comprehension of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them
and harmonize them with one another, meant almost as much to the world
as his military genius.

Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many
centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left. The old
castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned
warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth. The old
palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's
father had his office.

There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but
very dear to the people of Tarbes neve