He besieged Paris, but would not storm it.  “I am like the true mother in the judgment of Solomon,” was his famous declaration; “I would rather not have Paris at all than see it torn to pieces.”  “The Duke of Nemours sent all useless mouths out of Paris; the king’s council opposed his granting them passage; but the king, being informed of the dreadful scarcity to which these miserable wretches were reduced, ordered that they should be allowed to pass.  ‘I am not surprised,’ said he, ’that the Spaniards and the chiefs of the League have no compassion upon these poor people; they are only tyrants; as for me, I am their father and their king, and cannot hear the recital of their calamities without being pierced to my inmost soul and ardently desiring to bring them relief.’”

Take it good and bad, lion of ewe, the character of Jeanne’s high son is crystallized in one saying of his:  “I would give a whole finger to have a battle,—­and two to have a general peace.”

* * * * *

With delight Pau watched her merry monarch; backed his final claim to the throne of St. Louis, made on the death of the last of the Medici kings and traced back through nine generations; followed tensely his long contest for that high prize, his rivalry with the League and with Philip of Spain, his victories at Arques and Ivry, his coronation, and his wise reign as Henry the Fourth of France.  His fame was hers.  The hour he died,—­stabbed while in his state-carriage at Paris by the dagger of a fanatic,—­“a tempest broke over the place of his birth, and lightning shivered to pieces the royal arms suspended over the gateway of the castle.”

          "Rubente
  Dextera sacras jaculatas arces,
  Terruit urbem"

IX.

A winter station such as Pau is a hub with many spokes.  Excursions and drives are in all directions.  Idle fashion enjoys its outlets to the air, and invalidism demands them.  Each hamlet is a picnic resort.  One has choice of time and space, from an hour’s ramble in the park, to a day’s long visit to the monster sight of the mountains, the Cirque of Gavarnie.  The park, as we pass, deserves its hour’s ramble.  Its wide promenade, arched with great trees, is entered not far from the castle, and leads along the torrent of the Gave, whose source we are later to see in the snows around Gavarnie itself.  It is the scene of the favorite constitutional of Pau,—­a neutral ground for all social factions.

Four drives in particular point us each to its own quarter of the compass.  One is long, with the watering places of Eaux Chaudes and Eaux Bonnes for its double destination.  The others, nearer in distance, lead farther in event,—­back through the centuries, ninety, fifty, thirty decades, in turn.