CHAPTER VIII.
PEASANTS OF OSSAU--CAPTIVITY OF FRANCIS THE FIRST--DEATH OF JOYEUSE--DEATH OF THE DUKE DE MAINE--DANCES.
A great deal has been said and written about the peasants of the Vallee d'Ossau; and most persons appear to have been guided rather by enthusiasm than truth, exaggerating and embellishing facts as it suited their views or their humour.

It is the custom to admire the young girls and children who pester travellers with shabby, faded little bouquets, which they throw into the carriage-windows, and to see something peculiar in the custom; but it does not strike me that there is the slightest difference in this, or any other usage, between the Pyrenees and all parts of France, through which I have passed.

On the road from Calais, as well as in the Vallee d'Ossau, ragged dirty groups, eager for sous, place themselves in your way, and endeavour to obtain money: on fete-days they may look better; but on ordinary occasions there is certainly but little to admire, either in their dress or manners.
A lively but sarcastic French writer has observed on the proneness of tourists to exalt the peasants of Ossau into the Arcadian beings of Virgil and Theocritus, representing them as assembling together to sing the verses of Despourrins: that--"it is, perhaps, better to see romance than not to see at all; but those who have discovered these pastoral heroes and heroines, can assuredly never have met with them on the Ger or the Pic du Midi: the only songs that one can hear in that neighbourhood are drawling, monotonous lines, without either rhyme or reason,--a sort of ballad like that of the wandering Jew.

As for their occupations, they are commonly employed in knitting coarse woollen stockings, or in preparing, in the dirtiest manner in the world, the poorest and most insipid cheese that ever was made.

The youths and maidens are by no means Estelles and Nemourins.