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