ii8 THE EARLY DAYS OE 



breadth of Europe, I could not possibly be so comfortable else- 

 where. I bowed assent, and told him that althouf^h I was not 

 prepared to endorse all he had said about the Basques, they 

 certainly were not so bad as I had thought them during my recent 

 interview with him. I did not tell him why, just then, as I was 

 not prepared to enter into a long rigmarole about a slight affair 

 which could bripg no glory to myself. But the fact was that when 

 I opened the drawers to pack up my goods, the first thing I saw 

 was my gold pin, stuck in another tie. 



I had no cause for regret in joining this joyous throng, for I made 

 the acquaintance of a man in whose company, during my stay in the 

 Riviera, I passed a good deal of my time. I won't take liberties 

 with his name, for although I am proud enough of his acquaintance, 

 he may not be equally so of mine. I will therefore content myself 

 with describing him as " a perfect gentleman and first-class fellow," 

 the expression used by a French attache to the party who intro- 

 duced us. These, so far as I could discover, were the only English 

 words the attache knew, and he used them indiscriminately to every 

 Englishman he saw. But it may be fairly said he sprung no solecism 

 here, for the name of my new acquaintance with "Professor" added 

 to it, is mentioned in every seat of learning with applause. 



The scene of our pic-nic was on the top of a lovely hill over- 

 looking France and Spain; where the eye can wander over a 

 hundred square miles of vineyard and olive orchards, backed by the 

 Pyrenees capped with peaks of snow, which only fade from sight 

 where the rotundity of the earth dips them below the horizon. It 

 is a Paradise for the botanist, though the constant popping of 

 chasseurs has well-nigh exterminated those rare '* British birds," 

 whose natural habitat is there in Summer. Orioles and Hoopoes, 

 Bee-eaters and Rollers, whose bright plumage, if only spared, would 

 form a pleasing adjunct to the scenery. 



The small-holders in France have also long ago polished off their 

 fish and game of every kind. Few people have flogged the Riviera 

 streams so zealously as I, but I had always to undergo a consider- 



