Nearer in than the castle, however, the new town--the rich and noisy city
which had sprung up in a few years as though by miracle--spread out on
either hand, displaying its hotels, its stylish shops, its lodging-houses
all with white fronts smiling amidst patches of greenery. Then there was
the Gave flowing along at the base of the rock, rolling clamorous, clear
waters, now blue and now green, now deep as they passed under the old
bridge, and now leaping as they careered under the new one, which the
Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had built in order to connect the
Grotto with the railway station and the recently opened Boulevard. And as
a background to this delightful picture, this fresh water, this greenery,
this gay, scattered, rejuvenated town, the little and the big Gers arose,
two huge ridges of bare rock and low herbage, which, in the projected
shade that bathed them, assumed delicate tints of pale mauve and green,
fading softly into pink.
Then, upon the north, on the right bank of the Gave, beyond the hills
followed by the railway line, the heights of La Buala ascended, their
wooded slopes radiant in the morning light. On that side lay Bartres.
More to the left arose the Serre de Julos, dominated by the Miramont.
Other crests, far off, faded away into the ether. And in the foreground,
rising in tiers among the grassy valleys beyond the Gave, a number of
convents, which seemed to have sprung up in this region of prodigies like
early vegetation, imparted some measure of life to the landscape.
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