toward the water, partitioning the beach and breaking up at the edge
into strange, gaunt capes and peninsulas. Black masses of rock, large
and small, are crouching out among the waves, tortured by storms into
misshapen forms and anguished attitudes, patted and petted into
fantastic humps and contortions. The strata dip at an angle of about
twenty-five degrees, and the stone is friable and defenceless.
Soothingly now the water is running over and around these rocks, or
whitens their outlines with foam; granting their piteous torsos, in
merciful caprice, a day's brief respite from the agony of its
scourgings.

The afternoon sun shines brightly against the bathing pavilion,
irradiating its red and yellow brick. Along the narrow; sheltered
platform at its front, sit matronly French dowagers, holding their
daughters, as it were, in leash, and talking of women and things, and
affairs of state. Though early in the season, the beach is well
sprinkled with people. A few attempt the bathing again, but the rest
saunter here and there or enjoy beach-chairs at a stipulated rental. The
elderly French gentleman, a dapper and interesting, specimen rarely
paralleled at home, strolls about contentedly on the asphalt promenade
back from the beach, smoking a cigar and fingering a light bamboo.
Younger men, also well-dressed, pass in couples, or walk with a mother
and daughter,--never with the daughter alone. Boatmen and candy-peddlers
ramble in and out, a Basque fisherman or two linger about the scene, and
dogs, a pony and a captive monkey, add an element of animal life.

Despite its sunny holiday temperament, Biarritz was one of certain
Biscayan villages once denounced as "given up to the worship of the
devil,"--thus denounced by Henry IV's bloodthirsty inquisitor, Pierre de
Lancre, a veritable French Jeffreys, and the same who in 1609 put to