And, among the latter, one showed conspicuously, coloured as it was a lively green, adorned with lofty mirrors, and surmounted by a broad board bearing in gilt letters the inscription: "Cazaban, Hairdresser".
M.de Guersaint and Pierre went in, but there was nobody in the salon and they had to wait.

A terrible clatter of forks resounded from the adjoining room, an ordinary dining-room transformed into a _table d'hote_, in which some twenty people were having _dejeuner_ although it was already two o'clock.

The afternoon was progressing, and yet people were still eating from one to the other end of Lourdes.

Like every other householder in the town, whatever his religious convictions might be, Cazaban, in the pilgrimage season, let his bedrooms, surrendered his dining-room, end sought refuge in his cellar, where, heaped up with his family, he ate and slept, although this unventilated hole was no more than three yards square.

However, the passion for trading and moneymaking carried all before it; at pilgrimage time the whole population disappeared like that of a conquered city, surrendering even the beds of its women and its children to the pilgrims, seating them at its tables, and supplying them with food.
"Is there nobody here ?" called M.de Guersaint after waiting a moment.
At last a little man made his appearance, Cazaban himself, a type of the knotty but active Pyrenean, with a long face, prominent cheek-bones, and a sunburned complexion spotted here and there with red.