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202 seen the device, "J'ay belle dame." It was a fancy of the boy Gaston, son of Gaston Phœbus, when he was affianced to Beatrix d'Armagnac, to whom Mauvezin was given as a dower by her father, Count John II. But Gaston was murdered by his father, as already told, before the marriage was consummated, and Beatrix was afterwards married to a viscount of Milan.

Near Mauvezin are the remains of the once famous Abbey of Escaldieu. The church was destroyed by the Huguenots, and rebuilt in the seventeenth century. It is devoid of interest, and is now converted into a coach-house. Only the chapter-house remains of the original abbey, a structure of the fourteenth century, the vaulting sustained by marble pillars.

The great mass of Lannemezan, lying across the threshold of the Val d'Aure, diverts the Neste from flowing north, and turns it to the east, just as the heap of the lande of Pontacq acts at the mouth of the Lavedan, but there deflects the Gave to the west. It falls into the Garonne at the confines of the department, which also for the same reason takes an easterly course for some way, then struggles to the north-east, and only after passing Toulouse turns to take its direction so as to empty itself into the Atlantic. The Neste is a river of very great importance. It rises in two main branches under crests clothed in eternal snows, discharging glaciers into a series of upland lakes. These natural reservoirs have been artificially raised, and their waters conducted into a canal that is carried high above the bed of the river, so as to convey its fertilizing streams over the plateau of Lannemezan. The lake of Caillaouas, under the Pic de Batchinale, and the glacier cirque of the Gours Blancs has been captured at the head of Neste de Luron, and the lakes of Aumar, Aubert,